Volume 35
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A JOURNAL OF POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY
Interpretation
Spring 2008
105
William H. F. Altman
How to Interpret Circero’s Dialogue on
Divination
123
Steven Berg
An Introduction to the Reading of Dante:
Inferno, Cantos I-VII
153
Nathan E. Busch
International Duties and Natural Law: A
Comparison of the Writings of Grotius
and Plato
183
Fabrice Paradis Béland An Update of Strauss’s Notes and
References in the First Part of the Chapter
“The Crisis of Modern Natural Right” in
Natural Right and History
195
Will Morrisey
Book Review:
Aristotle and Modern Politics: The
Persistence of Political Philosophy
edited by Aristide Tessitore
Spring 2008
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Volume 35 Issue 2
A JOURNAL OF POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY
Spring 2008
105
William H. F. Altman
How to Interpret Circero’s Dialogue on
Divination
123
Steven Berg
An Introduction to the Reading of Dante:
Inferno, Cantos I-VII
153
Nathan E. Busch
International Duties and Natural Law: A
Comparison of the Writings of Grotius
and Plato
183
Fabrice Paradis Béland An Update of Strauss’s Notes and
References in the First Part of the Chapter
“The Crisis of Modern Natural Right” in
Natural Right and History
195
Will Morrisey
Book Review:
Aristotle and Modern Politics: The
Persistence of Political Philosophy
edited by Aristide Tessitore
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reproduced in any form without written permission of the publisher.
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How to Interpret Cicero’s Dialogue on Divination
1 0 5
How to Interpret Cicero’s Dialogue on Divination
W I L L I A M H . F. A LT M A N
UNIVERSIDADE FEDERAL DE SANTA CATARINA (BRAZIL)
[email protected]
Despite the fact that De Divinatione is by no means the most
familiar of Cicero’s philosophical works, the second of its two books begins
with a passage that is customarily cited whenever those works receive critical
attention: a catalogue of his philosophical writings to date (2.1-4). There is a
good deal that might be written about this catalogue and its importance for
interpreting Cicero’s philosophical writings: (1) he arranges them in accordance with reading order (the introductory Hortensius stands first) rather than
order of composition, (2) some of his earlier works—the Laws is a good example—are omitted, and (3) the catalogue’s last division is devoted to rhetoric. It
is the purpose of this article to show that it is not only the catalogue with which
Book II begins that sheds valuable light on how Cicero’s philosophical writings
are to be interpreted: De Divinatione as a whole illuminates Cicero’s skill as a
writer of dialogues and indicates that this frequently underestimated classical
writer may well deserve Quintillian’s remarkable compliment in De Institutione
Oratoria (10.123; translation mine): “He stands out as the rival of Plato.”
Cicero draws attention to the fact that De Divinatione consists
of two books in two ways, one of them remarkably subtle: in the catalogue with
which he begins its second book, it is treated as if it contained only one. A striking feature of the catalogue is that Cicero enumerates his writings by means of
the books each discrete work contains; it is thanks to the fact that he divides the
early dialogue De Oratore into its three books, for example, that the set of
rhetorical works contains five books, not three. The number five, as it turns
out, dominates not only the last but also the first three sets: having grouped the
lost Hortensius with what were once the four books of the Academica, Cicero
calls attention to the fact that both De Finibus and the Tusculan Disputations
(which directly follow) are likewise composed of five books apiece. And this
pattern continues, or rather appears to continue, in the fourth set, the one that
contains De Divinatione itself.
©2008 Interpretation, Inc.
1 0 6
Interpretation
These things having been published, three books On the Nature of
the Gods have been completed [perfecti sunt] in which every inquiry
of this type is contained. And in order that these might be plainly
and copiously completed [quae ut plane esset cumulateque perfecta],
we have begun to write On Divination for these books [his libris], to
which—as is my plan [in animo]—when we have added On Fate,
enough in abundance [abunde satis] will have been done for this
whole inquiry. And to these books are to be added six On the
Republic…
(2.3; translation mine)
It is remarkable that De Divinatione is the only multi-book
work in the Book II catalogue that is not explicitly identified as such. Nor,
as the quoted passage indicates, is this the only notice Cicero gives us that
De Divinatione must be read with considerable care. Since Cicero’s catalogue
emphasizes the comprehensive nature of the completed De Natura Deorum,
the careful reader’s attention is piqued when he claims that De Divinatione will
render its three books even more complete. This in turn becomes comical
when he tells us that he plans to add yet another book De Fato that will render
this already completed and then copiously completed task “abundantly sufficient” (see Schofield 1986, 48; he calls abunde satis “a palpable oxymoron”).
Most importantly, while not making it explicit that De Divinatione is written in
two books, he nevertheless draws attention to precisely that second book not
only by beginning it with a catalogue that reveals in what order his philosophical writings as a whole are to be read but one that simultaneously appears to
conceal—and therefore may be said, at least in the case of the careful reader,
to reveal—the way that De Divinatione itself must be read: carefully and with
particularly careful attention to the fact that it consists of two books, not one.
The structure of De Divinatione seems straightforward
enough: after an introduction presented in his own voice (1.1-8), and then a
dialogue between Cicero and his brother Quintus (1.8-11), Quintus, without
interruption, defends divination beginning with divination by art (1.11-37)
and then proceeding to natural divination, first by prophetic frenzy (1.37-38),
then by dreams (1.39-69; the subject is revisited at 1.110-16), and finally to the
theory behind both (1.70-131). Only at the very end of Book I (1.132) does
Marcus (i.e. Cicero qua interlocutor; see Addendum 1) speak: he notes simply
that Quintus has come well prepared. After the catalogue with which Book II
begins (2.1-4), an introduction in Cicero’s own voice continues until 2.8, and
then Marcus proceeds to dismantle his brother’s arguments one by one. After
completing his arguments against divination by art (2.8-99), Cicero pauses
before proceeding to natural divination: this allows Quintus to distance himself from the form of divination Cicero has been attacking (2.100). Marcus
How to Interpret Cicero’s Dialogue on Divination
1 0 7
thereupon makes a fresh start (2.101) and, after dealing with some of the theoretical arguments repeated by his brother (2.101-9), turns to prophetic frenzy
(2.110-18) and finally to dreams (2.119-47). Some concluding remarks on the
superstition of the masses as opposed to Cicero’s own skeptical approach
(2.148-50) bring the dialogue to a close. Although questions have recently been
raised about Cicero’s intentions (Schofield 1986, followed by Krostenko 2000),
the traditional view is that Cicero himself endorses the skeptical position of
Marcus in Book II, i.e. that at least as far as Cicero’s own views are concerned,
De Divinatione consists of a single significant book: the second (Pease 1963, 1213; Rawson 1975, 243-44; and Momigliano 1979, 209).
In Book II, Cicero makes no effort to conceal his skeptical
attitude towards a Roman state religion based on divination: those traditions
are to be upheld for strictly political reasons. In fact, Cicero goes out of his way
to suggest that his approach to the potentially subversive subject is open and
honest:
In discussing separately the various methods of divination, I shall
begin with soothsaying, which, according to my deliberate judgement, should be cultivated from reasons of political expediency and
in order that we may have a state religion. But we are alone [sed soli
sumus] and for that reason we may, without causing ill-will, make
an earnest inquiry into the truth of soothsaying [licet verum
exquirere sine invidia], certainly I can do so, since in most things my
philosophy is that of doubt [mihi praesertim de plerisque dubitanti].
(2.28)
Although Cicero is going to be open about things that would
normally be concealed for political reasons, it is impossible to miss the fact that
he is nevertheless writing between the lines in De Divinatione: after all,
“Marcus” and “Quintus” are scarcely “alone” but in fact only exist as Ciceronian
constructions in a published text. It would, moreover, be profoundly selfdefeating to draw attention in public to the distinction between one’s public
position—that which one adopts to avoid invidia—and one’s private views
unless one were fully aware of the irony involved (Goar 1968 and Rawson 1973
are to be consulted for the disparity between De Divinatione and De Legibus,
where divination is defended).
Nor is this the only deliberate self-contradiction in the
passage: Cicero’s skeptical inclination to doubt (mihi…dubitanti) suggests the
opposite of his expressed intent to seek out the truth (verum exquirere). If there
is any doubt about this, consider the following passage:
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Interpretation
I must now reply to what you said [Marcus is addressing Quintus],
but I must do so with great diffidence and many misgivings, and in
such a way as to affirm nothing and question everything. For if I
should assume anything that I said to be certain [si enim aliquid
certi haberem quod dicerem] I should myself be playing the diviner
[ego ipse divinarem] while saying that no such thing as divination
exists [qui esse divinationem nego]! (2.8)
In order to refute divination with certainty, Cicero would
need to be a diviner; he who negates the existence of divination would himself
be practicing it. Since Marcus will refer to the paradox of the Cretan liar at
2.11—between the two passages quoted above—it is clear to the careful reader
that Cicero is not simply rejecting divination in De Divinatione. As Malcolm
Schofield (1986, 63) aptly puts it: “Div. is no simple tract but a multilayered
work of surprising obliqueness and complexity.” What Schofield doesn’t
remark is how close his own description of Cicero’s writing is to Cicero’s
description of Socrates: “[whose] many-sided method of discussion [multiplex
ratio disputandi] and the varied nature [varietas] of his subjects and the greatness of his genius…has been immortalized in Plato’s masterpieces” (Tusculan
Disputations 5.11; translation Rackham). Nor is this the only indication of
Cicero’s debt to Plato:
Of course I’m also aware that I often seem to be saying original
things when I’m saying very ancient ones (albeit having been
unheard by most) and I confess myself to stand out as an orator—if
that’s what I am, or in any case, whatever else it is that I am [aut
etiam quicumque sim]—not from the ministrations of the rhetoricians but from the open spaces of the Academy. For such is the
curricula of many-leveled and conflicting dialogues [multiplicium
variorumque sermonum] in which the tracks of Plato have been
principally impressed. (Orator 12; translation mine)
Schofield points out that Cicero uses two techniques to cast
doubt on what Cicero himself must have realized was merely the apparent
meaning of his dialogue: in Book II, Marcus not only devotes considerable
attention to refuting views that Quintus hasn’t bothered to defend in Book I,
but also leaves unrefuted other views that his brother has defended with considerable skill (Schofield 1986, 62). An important example of this second
technique—not noticed by Schofield—involves Plato; since it well illustrates
Cicero’s own multiplex ratio disputandi, and since Cicero derives the latter from
Plato, it is worthy of careful attention.
The subject is divination by dreams, a branch of what
Quintus called “natural” as opposed to artificial divination. It will be noted
How to Interpret Cicero’s Dialogue on Divination
1 0 9
from the earlier summary that Quintus devotes far less attention to artificial
than natural divination while Marcus does the opposite: he spends far more
time refuting artificial divination than its natural counterpart. These disparities may be said to subsume both of the techniques identified by Schofield,
although it is conceivable that Marcus could have dispensed briefly with views
Quintus had developed in considerable detail. But Marcus never discusses the
passage from Plato’s Republic (IX 571c3-572b1) that Quintus quotes at length
nor ever refutes the theoretical possibility of divination by dreams that Socrates
endorses there (Vegléris 1982). The key passage is found at 572a1-3, where
Socrates describes the rational part of the healthy and temperate soul whose
appetitive and high-spirited elements, having been lulled to sleep,
leave that best part alone pure and by itself, to consider and to long
for the perception of something it doesn’t know, either something
that has been, or is, or is going to be… (Bloom 1968)
It is, to begin with, completely disingenuous to say that
Quintus offers the reader a careful translation of an extended passage in Plato:
it is, of course, Cicero himself who has done so. With that said, the fiction can
be conveniently preserved by pointing out that, beginning at 1.60, Quintus
translates and quotes the passage in Platonis Politia (“in Plato’s Republic”) from
571c3 to 571e2 with considerable literalness (see Pease 1963 and Wardle 2006
ad loc.) but then begins to deviate from the text, first with a gloss, then more
dramatically:
—for, as a rule, the edge of thought is dulled whether nature is
starved or overfed—and, when such a man, in addition, has the
third part of the soul, in which the power of anger burns, quieted
and subdued—thus having the two irrational parts under complete
control—then will the thinking portion of his soul shine forth and
show itself keen and strong for dreaming and then will his dreams
be peaceful and worthy of trust [tranquilla atque veracia]. (1.61)
Although a comparison with the original will show other variations, by far the
most important—especially given the fact that the subject is divination by
dreams—is the deletion of the Socratic account of the healthy soul’s acquisition of knowledge about the past, present, and future while dreaming. The
reader already familiar with the passage from Plato is therefore fully aware that
Cicero (through Quintus) is intentionally inaccurate when he adds: “I have
reproduced Plato’s very words” (see Poncelet 1957, 253).
But Quintus is not finished: despite a defense of the honesty
of Epicurus by Carneades (1.62), the position of Epicurus—who rejects
1 1 0
Interpretation
divination entirely—falls before the authority of Plato or Socrates (“who
though they gave no reason, would yet prevail over these petty philosophers by
the mere weight of their name”; compare Tusculan Disputations 1.39) and
Pythagoras, whose ban on beans is humorously discussed. Only then does
Quintus add:
When, therefore, the soul has been withdrawn by sleep from contact
with sensual ties, then does it recall the past, comprehend the future,
and foresee the future. For though the sleeping body then lies as if it
were dead, yet the soul is alive and strong, and will be much more so
after death when it is wholly free of the body. (1.63)
It will be noted that this passage not only restores the deleted portion (see
Wardle 2006, 265) but does so in a way that no longer refers to the three parts
of the soul; it also draws heavily on the notion—found in the Phaedo—that
philosophy is a preparation for death (Phaedo 64a4-6 and 66e2-4). Made
conspicuous by its absence at first, the Socratic account of veridical dreaming
from Republic IX now reappears in the context of an enhanced and thoroughly
dualistic Platonism that emerges from the mouth of Cicero’s apparently Stoic
brother (see Addendum 2). From this point on, Quintus refers repeatedly to
the separation of the soul from the body (1.70, 1.110, 1.113, and 1.114).
The closest that Marcus comes to refuting the Socratic or
Platonic account of veridical dreaming is to conflate it with the Pythagorean
anodyne for flatulence; this, in turn, supplies the context for one of Cicero’s
most famous remarks:
Then Pythagoras and Plato, who are most respectable authorities,
bid us, if we would have trustworthy dreams [in somnis certiora
videamus], to prepare for sleep by following a prescribed course in
conduct and in eating. The Pythagoreans make a point of prohibiting the use of beans, as if thereby the soul and not the belly was filled
with wind! Although I don’t know why, nothing so absurd can be
said that is not said by one of the philosophers.
(2.119; last sentence my translation)
Here Cicero uses enlightened ridicule against revelation, a method that betrays
its own weakness (see Strauss 1968, 254; compare Denyer 1985, 9-10). But the
structure of Book II proves that dreams are serious business for Cicero: it is
with dreams that Marcus ends his attack on divination. And between proving
“that absolutely no reliance can be placed in dreams,” and the final exhortation,
“then let dreams, as a means of divination, be rejected along with the rest”
(2.147-48), Cicero addresses Plato, or rather fails to address him, for the
last time:
How to Interpret Cicero’s Dialogue on Divination
1 1 1
This becomes especially evident [sc. that “no reliance can be placed
in dreams”] when we consider that those who have the dreams
deduce no prophecies from them [illi ipsi qui ea vident nihil divinent]; that those who interpret them depend on conjecture [ei qui
interpretantur coniecturam adhibeant] and not upon nature; that
in the course of almost countless ages, chance has worked more
miracles through all other agencies than through the agency of
dreams; and finally, that nothing is more uncertain than conjecture
[coniectura], which may be led not only into varying, but sometimes
into contradictory conclusions [in contrarias]. (2.147)
What Marcus ignores throughout is that the Socratic account applies only to
healthy and temperate souls (cf. 2.120) who stand in need of no interpreters to
explicate the meaning of their dreams (2.122, 2.142-45). Neither of the two
sources of prophetic dreams refuted by Marcus—the gods who send them or
the interpreters who explain them (2.124)—is therefore germane to the
Republic. And it is not only the interpretum coniecturae (“the conjectures of the
interpreters of dreams;” 2.144) that lead us in contrarias: Marcus, whose own
veridical dream becomes a topic in the dialogue, contradicts himself on
precisely this point.
Quintus brings up the subject of Cicero’s own prophetic
dream at 1.59 (see Harris 2003); it is described just before the extended quotation from Republic IX (1.60-61). He also records his brother’s reaction to the
subsequent events that confirmed his dream:
it was reported to me that as soon as you heard that it was in Marius’
temple that the glorious decree of the Senate for your recall had
been enacted on the motion of the consul, a most worthy and most
eminent man, and that the decree had been greeted by unprecedented shouts of approval in a densely crowded theater, you said
that no stronger proof could be given of a divinely inspired dream
than this [nihil illo Atinati somnio fieri posse divinius]. (1.59)
His brother’s familiarity with this dream—Quintus calls it, from the place
where Marcus dreamt it,“that Atinate dream”—may well be a sufficient reason
for Cicero’s decision to make him the interlocutor in De Divinatione. But when
Marcus discusses his dream in Book II, he offers a naturalistic explanation: “in
the time of my banishment Marius was often in my mind” (2.140). The
remarkable fact, however, is that the Senate’s vote of recall was taken in the
temple Marius had dedicated; Marcus passes over this point. He also claims
that he can remember no other dream besides the one about Marius (2.142);
this is all the more unlikely because he has recently embraced the custom of
taking afternoon naps (2.142; see Addendum 3). But even if “that Atinate
1 1 2
Interpretation
dream” had been his only one, it is enough to contradict what he says next:
Yet despite all this time spent in sleep I have not received a single
prophecy in a dream, certainly not one about the great events now
going on. Indeed, I never seem to be dreaming more than when I see
the magistrates in the forum and the Senate in its chamber. (2.142)
In the topsy-turvy world of post-Civil War Rome, with its
impotent Senate, life has now become a dream. But nothing can change the fact
that Marius once came to the exiled and despondent Cicero in Atina, and led
him to his temple “saying that there you should find safety” (1.59); a prophecy
that came true more than a decade before De Divinatione was written, when
the real Senate of the true republic—not the post-Civil War dream state of
today—brought Cicero, the Arpinate heir of Marius, back from political death.
This dream required no interpreter. I have been trying to prove that the same
cannot be said of the text in which this dream is described.
There is a noteworthy passage in Book I where Cicero invents
a second story—at least there is no trace of it or its antecedent in any surviving
Greek source (see Addendum 4)—about the divine sign of Socrates: the setting
is the retreat from Delium. Socrates, Laches, and some others stand at the intersection of three roads, what the Roman called a trivium (2.123). The majority
decides to follow one path; Socrates—“he said that he was deterred by god
[deterri se a deo dixit]” (1.123)— refuses to follow their lead; these others meet
a predictably bad end. Although this little story raises a number of questions in
its own right (see Addendum 5), not least of all why Marcus never discusses the
sign of Socrates in Book II, it stands here as a metaphor for the three choices
open to the interpreter of De Divinatione.
One of these is to follow a political path: there is more than
enough data to suggest that Cicero’s purpose in De Divinatione is to comment
on the political condition of Rome in the wake of Caesar (see Addendum 6).
Among many other texts, the following—Quintus is the speaker—is crucial for
this path:
However, there is a certain class of men, though small in number,
who withdraw themselves from carnal influences [a corpore]and are
possessed by an ardent concern for the contemplation of things
divine [ad divinarum rerum cognitionem]. The auguries [auguria] of
these men are not of divine impetus but of human reason. For
example, by means of natural law, they foretell certain events, such
as a flood, or the future destruction of heaven and earth by fire.
Others, who are engaged in public life [in re publica exercitati], like
How to Interpret Cicero’s Dialogue on Divination
1 1 3
Solon of Athens, as history describes him, discover the rise of
tyranny [orientem tyrannidem] long in advance [multo ante prospiciunt]. Such men we may call ‘foresighted’ [prudentes]—that is,‘able
to foresee the future’ [providentes]… (1.111)
Cicero’s decision to teach us the etymological origin of “prudence” in the context
of political “foresight” cannot be accidental. And there is no question that
Cicero himself, the Roman archetype of the human being in re publica exercitatus
(see Pangle 1998, 239-40) was a diviner in this eminently political sense: his alltoo-human auguria were accurate, if unheeded by his countrymen. In other
words, quite apart from the dream that comforted him in Atina, his banishment itself clearly indicated the orientem tyrannidem. Cicero divined what was
to come; he was prudens because he was providens.
The second path is also to be seen in the passage just quoted.
The foregoing analysis has been sufficient to leave the careful reader inclined to
believe that, despite his skeptical pose (2.150; compare Beard 1986), Cicero
himself underwrites the Platonic dualism of body and soul defended by
Quintus (see Addendum 7): it is of crucial importance for interpreting
De Divinatione to grasp that neither the views of Plato nor the testimony
of Socrates are ever refuted by Marcus. In other words, there is some reason
to think that Cicero’s insight is not simply political or natural foresight but
is rather derived from a spiritual segregation a corpore that opens his soul ad
divinarum rerum cognitionem. Whether in his afternoon naps or simply from
the power of his mind—nor is it clear that the two are really different—Cicero
gives us some reason to think he has seen Babylon and looked Homer in the face.
We even shape things which we have never seen—as the sites of
towns and the faces of men. Then, by your theory, when I think of
the walls of Babylon or of the face of Homer, some ‘phantom’ of
what I have in mind ‘strikes upon my brain’! Hence it is possible for
us to know everything we wish to know, since there is nothing of
which we cannot think. (2.139)
Although rejecting his brother’s theory, Marcus does not explain the source of
his own implicit insights. To be sure, even these examples are still human, but
they point to a road that leads away from politics towards the divine. And we
cannot be sure that Cicero, much in the spirit of Plato’s Ion—echoes of which
may be heard at 1.80, 1.86, 1.113-14, and 2.12—isn’t leaving open the possibility of divination through prophetic madness, just as he refuses to rule out the
possibility that those who can transcend the body can gain knowledge of the
past, present, and future in their dreams.
1 1 4
Interpretation
Fascinating as the possibilities opened up by these two
interpretive paths undoubtedly are, it is the third path that I consider crucial and
will therefore follow to the end. Just as we can learn a great deal about
hermeneutics from Ion the hermêneus (“interpreter” at Liddell and Scott; compare Ion 534e4-535a9 and 530c3-4), so also can we learn a great deal about
interpretation itself—of divining an author’s hidden purpose, whether that purpose be political, divine, or both—by reading Cicero’s De Divinatione, an obscure
and ambiguous text that demands an interpreter no less than a dream does:
The same is true of dreams, prophecies, and oracles: since many of
them were obscure and doubtful [multa obscura, multa ambigua],
resort was had to the skill of professional interpreters [explanationes
interpretum]. (1.116)
Consider also the following passage from Book II where Marcus attacks divination through dreams:
Of what kind, then, is the mind of the gods if neither the things
they signify to us in dreams can we ourselves by our own efforts
understand nor even things for which we possess interpreters
[interpretes]? If the gods send us these unintelligible and inexplicable
dream-messages they are acting as Carthaginians and Spaniards
would if they were to address our Senate in their own vernacular
without the aid of an interpreter [sine interprete]. (2.131; the translation of the first sentence is mine)
The question posed by this discussion is: how are we to interpret Cicero’s
De Divinatione? I suggest that the first step to answering this question is to
recognize that by repeatedly and therefore deliberately leading us in contrarias
and thereby forcing us to raise this question as a question, Cicero deftly
requires his readers to become interpretes and to propose for themselves, when
confronted by his text, the coniecturae interpretum. In other words, the reader
must become a diviner in the face of Cicero’s consciously obscure form of
writing: Cicero’s text becomes the literary equivalent of an enigmatic dream.
In the case of dreams, their obscure character proves to
Marcus that the gods haven’t sent them.
In truth, now: to what end do these obscurities and enigmas [obscuritates et aenigmata] of dreams pertain? For surely the gods were
obligated to wish to be understood by us in those matters which
they warn us for our sake? (2.132; translation mine)
If, as seems likely, Cicero is writing for our sake, does he not likewise owe it to
us to make his meaning plain? And yet his text, like a dream, is clearly filled
How to Interpret Cicero’s Dialogue on Divination
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with obscuritates et aenigmata. Nor is he unique among writers, as he admits
by raising an internal objection to what he has just said:
What? Is there nobody [nemo] obscure qua poet, nobody [nemo]
qua physicist? This Euphorion is surely too obscure as well, but not
Homer. Which therefore is better? Heraclitus is very obscure,
Democritus least of all. Surely therefore they can’t be compared? For
my sake you alert me [me mones] to what I won’t understand. Why
alert me at all? (2.132-33, translation mine; see Addendum 8)
Not only does Cicero conceal his meaning throughout De Divinatione, he is
particularly enigmatic there while writing about obscure writers. Is Cicero
saying here that, unlike Euphorion, Homer is never obscure? Is he claiming
that Heraclitus (see De Finibus 2.15) and Democritus (see 2.139) are never to
be compared (compare 2.30 with Juvenal 10.28-35)? And how would he
answer his own question, the question he puts to the gods? Surely it is not
impossible that a loving author who would warn us of our perilous condition
and even offer us salvation would nevertheless see fit to make us, motivated by
our own peril, seek out that salvation deeply buried between his lines.
Chrysippus defined the interpretation of dreams as “the
power to understand the visions sent by the gods to men in sleep” (2.130). It
would seem that Cicero usurps the place of the gods. If so, as he then points
out, no ordinary man will be able to understand him:
Then, if that be true, will just ordinary shrewdness meet these
requirements, or rather is there not need of surpassing intelligence
and absolutely perfect learning [eruditione perfecta]? We, however,
have known nobody of this kind [talem autem cognovimus
neminem]. (2.130; the second sentence is my translation)
This is the first time that “nobody” appears in the text; he will reappear shortly
for the third and fourth time in the nemo…nemo of 2.132 quoted above. The
second time follows immediately after the first:
Look, then: not even if I will have conceded to you that divination
exists—which never will I do—would we be able to find this
nobody [neminem] howsoever divine. (2.131; translation mine)
Here then is the first possibility: Cicero, qua enigmatic god, offers the reader
an unintelligible text that nobody will be intelligent and educated enough to
understand. It is precisely because no god would do such a thing, argues
Marcus, that divination by enigmatic dream doesn’t exist (2.134): “My conclusion is that obscure messages by means of dreams are utterly inconsistent
with the dignity of the gods.” On this reading, then, there is no such thing as
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divination. But by coming close to doing in his text what he says no god will
actually do, Cicero opens up a second possibility: that he himself possesses
learning and intelligence enough to create a literary world—one that replicates
the actual world both in its abysmal mysteries and its hidden solutions (see
Addendum 9)—that “nobody” could interpret for himself unless equipped
with “outstanding genius and complete erudition” (2.130; translation mine).
From the start, Cicero leaves the reader in no doubt that he is
a poet: Quintus repeatedly quotes from his brother’s poetry in Book I (1.13-15
from Aratus, 1.17-22 from Cicero’s own De Consulatu, now lost, and 1.106
from Cicero’s lost Marius). And twice does Quintus make an analogy between
the grammarians who interpret poets and those adept at divination (1.34 and
1.116). But the most impressive example of Cicero’s poetic gift is a verse translation from the Iliad quoted by Marcus at 2.63-64. In light of the evident skill,
doubtless the result of considerable effort, with which Cicero both preserves
Homer’s sense and creates for Virgil’s subsequent use (see Duff 1960, 271-72)
his own distinctly Latin poetry (Ewbank 1933, 226-31), it is striking that
Marcus says that the passage comes from a speech of Agamemnon (2.63). As is
the case with other denigrated authors, Xenophon for example (see Addendum
10), Cicero’s misattribution of the speech—it is actually spoken by Odysseus—
is traditionally ascribed to carelessness and haste (see Ewbank 1933, 227, and
Pease 1963). But just as the careful reader was alerted to Cicero’s interest in the
Platonic account of veridical dreaming by its conspicuous absence from the
passage quoted at 1.60-61— “Plato’s own words,” Quintus called it at 1.61—so
also is that same reader alerted to the absent Odysseus at 2.63. In the first case,
the true Platonic account appeared only a moment later at 1.63; in the second,
Cicero forces the reader, having now been trained, to wait until 2.130-32 for the
reappearance of Odysseus, now disguised as “nobody” (compare De Oratore
3.65 and Brutus 322). This reappearance occurs when Cicero, no longer
analogous to the unintelligible god who proves that divination doesn’t exist,
stands revealed as a new Odysseus—a Socratic spinner of even more westerly
Phaeacian tales—who finds in the reader his equal at last: another “nobody”
who recognizes that divination exists not only because it would require a
diviner to be certain that it doesn’t, but also because she has learned how
to interpret Cicero’s De Divinatione, at once the product of Cicero’s and the
fulfillment of Plato’s Socratic dreams.
How to Interpret Cicero’s Dialogue on Divination
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ADDENDUM 1
Gotoff 2002, 223-34 introduces the use of “Cicero” (in this
case, the orator’s persona in the Caesarian speeches) as distinct from the man
himself. Some such distinction is equally necessary for catching sight of Cicero
the philosopher, as this article is intended to prove. It is an irony—an irony
rooted in Cicero’s own considerable capacity for irony—that Cicero the politician is generally dismissed as a conceited and over-inflated windbag while
Cicero the philosopher is taken, by contrast, to be an unassuming skeptic (see,
for example, Görler 1995) or even a slavish epitomizer of his predecessors. The
rediscovery of Cicero depends on realizing that the skeptical “Cicero” of his
philosophica (e.g. the “Marcus” of De Divinatione) must be distinguished from
Cicero himself, just as the ironically self-deprecating Socrates of the Platonic
dialogues (see Academica 2.15) must be distinguished from Plato. “Cicero”
grounds his “own” skepticism in a conception of Socratic ignorance
(Academica 2.74) that Cicero knows is not only unhistorical (note Varro’s
necessary fere at Academica 1.16; compare also Apology 21d4-6) but also selfcontradictory (Academica 1.45). To put it another way: it is an awareness of the
deliberate self-contradictions of “Cicero” the skeptic that guide the reader to
Cicero the Platonist.
ADDENDUM 2
It is a defense of divination based on Stoic monism—a position
intermittently embraced by Quintus—that Marcus consistently refutes in
De Divinatione (e.g. 2.29). Given the anticipation of Spinoza’s deus sive natura
by the Stoics (compare De Natura Deorum 2.77 and 2.85), there is something
to be said for comparing Descartes to the Epicureans, Cicero to Kant (consider
Academica 2.73 and 2.127-28), and Caesar’s imperial apologists to Hegel.
ADDENDUM 3
“Think then how many nights in my long life I have spent
in vain [frustra]! Moreover, at the present time, owing to the interruption of
my public labours, I have ceased my nocturnal studies [lucubrationes], and
(contrary to my former practice) I have added afternoon naps [meridiationes].”
It is as difficult to believe that his former lucubrationes were in vain as that his
present meridiationes are dreamless.
ADDENDUM 4
In the first story, Socrates had tried to prevent Crito from
taking a walk in the country where he injured his eye (2.123). In this story,
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Interpretation
“Socrates” replaces the sign with himself: “you didn’t obey me calling you back
[mihi revocanti]” (translation mine). Marcus has already been somewhat misleading, doubtless in order to test the reader’s knowledge of Plato, about the
true nature of the sign—it always only prevented Socrates from doing something he was intending to do (see Apology 31c7-d4 and Theages 128d2-5)—at
2.122: “it never urges me on, but often [saepe] holds me back [revocanti].” If
this means that it “often holds me back” but sometimes does something else, it
is false. Only if it means that the sign frequently occurs but always holds me
back from doing something I myself intended to do when it does so, is it true.
ADDENDUM 5
“Upon his refusal to take the road that the others had chosen
he was asked the reason and replied: ‘The god prevents me.’ Those who fled by
the other road [alia via] fell in with the enemy’s cavalry” (2.123: the translation
in the text is mine). Wardle 2006, 405, may or may not indicate a problem when
he writes “the alternate routes” (emphasis mine). If Cicero is making up the
story—he indicates that it is not among the “the mass of remarkable premonitions” collected by Antipater at 1.123, but Wardle 2006, 403, is certain its source
is Posidonius—then the fact that it is a trivium must be significant. Note that
the three-fold division (compare 1.64) made by Posidonius that is introduced
by Quintus soon after at 1.125: “Wherefore, it seems to me that we must do
as Posidonius does and trace the vital principle of divination in its entirety
to three sources: first to God [a deo], whose connection with the subject has
been sufficiently discussed; second to Fate; and lastly, to Nature.” Since Socrates
follows the guidance of god, which of the two remaining roads leads to
disaster? This question is answered in De Fato.
ADDENDUM 6
Among the texts relevant to a political reading of De
Divinatione are 1.11, 1.17-22, 1.24, 1.26-27, 1.29, 1.33, 1.47 (Callanus the
Indian may be analogous to Cato of Utica), 1.56, 1.58-59, 1.67 (both Catiline
and Clodius are frequently linked with or even likened to torches), 1.68, 1.90,
1.92, 1.95 (if judged significant, the absence of remark about the present at
1.97-100 may be important), 1.106, 1.111 (discussed in the text), 1.119, 2.7,
2.22-23, 2.37-41, 2.52-53 (an important contrast), 2.70, 2.78-79, 2.99, 2.114,
2.118, and 2.149. The interested reader should consult Lindersky 1982,
Schäublin 1986, and Krageland 2001.
How to Interpret Cicero’s Dialogue on Divination
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ADDENDUM 7
“While we sleep and the body lies as if dead, the soul is at its
best, because it is then freed from the influence of the physical senses and from
the worldly cares that weigh it down. And since the soul has lived from all eternity and has had conference with numberless other souls, it sees everything
that exists in nature, provided that moderation and restraint have been used in
eating and drinking, so that the soul is in a condition to watch while the body
sleeps. Such is the explanation of divination by dreams” (1.115). So original is
the synthesis described by Quintus at 1.115 that Glucker 1999, 36-37, is at considerable pains to identify the lost source from which Cicero must have copied
it: “Some intermediate source, between Plato and Cicero, has connected the
two statements in Meno and in Republic 10, into one compound explanation
for the omniscience of the soul (under certain conditions…).”
ADDENDUM 8
See Pease 1963, 559, for retention of the doubled “nemo”
which is not found in Falconer 1923 but is the reading of the manuscripts.
ADDENDUM 9
“And, further, what is the need of a method which, instead of
being direct, is so circuitous and roundabout that we have to employ men to
interpret our dreams?” (2.127). Compare De Natura Deorum 1.10 (Rackham):
“Those however who seek to learn my personal opinion on the various questions show an unreasonable degree of curiosity. In discussion it is not so much
weight of authority as force of argument that should be demanded. Indeed the
authority of those who profess to teach is often a positive hindrance to those
who desire to learn; they cease to employ their judgement, and take what they
perceive to be the verdict of their chosen master as settling the question.”
A D D E N D U M 10
“That disciple of Socrates, Xenophon—and what a man he
was! [Xenophon Socraticus (qui vir et quantus!)]” (1.52). For the underestimation of Cicero, even by an unusually sympathetic and careful scholar, see
Schofield 1986, 62: “I leave aside the embarrassing circumstance that Book II
[sc. of De Divinatione] attacks a definition of divination (II. 13-19) which Book
I had already emended (I.9: presumably to draw the teeth from the attack).
This is a local carelessness of composition no doubt due to inadequate work on
his sources by Cicero in his well-known haste.”
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Interpretation
REFERENCES
Unless otherwise indicated, translations from De Divinatione
will be those of W.A. Falconer in the Loeb edition of Cicero (vol. 20)—i.e.
Falconer 1923—and citations will be by book and section number to this text.
Translations from other works by Cicero (and other Roman authors) will,
except where noted, be found in the Loeb editions. I would like to acknowledge
the help of Hilail Gildin, Thomas Schneider, and an anonymous reviewer for
their criticism and support.
Beard, Mary. 1986. Cicero and Divination: The Formation of a Latin
Discourse. Journal of Roman Studies 76, 33-46.
Bloom, Allan, trans. 1968. The Republic of Plato. New York: Basic Books.
Denyer, Nicholas. 1985. The Case against Divination: An Examination of
Cicero’s De Divinatione. Proceedings of the Cambridge Philological Society
211, 1-10.
Duff, J. Wight (edited by A.M. Duff). 1960. A Literary History of Rome: From
the Origins to the Close of the Golden Age. New York: Barnes & Noble.
Ewbank, W.W. 1933. The Poems of Cicero. London: University of London
Press.
Falconer, William Armistead, trans. 1923. De Senectute, De Amicitia, De
Divinatione. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Görler, Woldemar. 1995. Silencing the Troublemaker: De Legibus I.39 and the
Continuity of Cicero’s Scepticism. In J.G.F. Powell, ed., Cicero the
Philosopher. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Glucker, John. 1999. A Platonic Cento in Cicero. Phronesis 44, 30-44.
Goar, Robert J. 1968. The Purpose of De Divinatione. Transactions and
Proceedings of the American Philological Association 99, 241-48.
Gotoff, Harold C. 2002. Cicero’s Caesarian Orations. In James M. May, ed.,
Brill’s Companion to Cicero: Oratory and Rhetoric. Leiden: Brill.
Harris, W.V. 2003. Roman Opinions about the Truthfulness of Dreams.
Journal of Roman Studies 93, 18-33.
Kragelund, P. 2001. Dreams, Religion and Politics in Republican Rome.
Historia 50, 53-95.
How to Interpret Cicero’s Dialogue on Divination
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Krostenko, B. 2000. Beyond (Dis)belief: Rhetorical Form and Religious
Symbol in Cicero’s De Divinatione. Transactions of the American
Philological Association 130, 353-91.
Lindersky, Jerzy. 1982. Cicero and Roman Divination. La Parola del Passato
37, 12-38.
Momigliano, Arnaldo. 1984. The Theological Efforts of the Roman Upper
Classes in the First Century. Classical Philology 79, 199-211.
Pangle, Thomas L. 1998. Socratic Cosmopolitanism: Cicero’s Critique and
Transformation of the Stoic Ideal. Canadian Journal of Political
Science/Revue canadienne de science politique 31, 235-62.
Pease, Arthur Stanley. 1963. M. Tulli Ciceronis De Divinatione. Darmstadt:
Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft. [Reprint of the 1920-23 University of
Illinois–Urbana original].
Poncelet, R. 1957. Cicéron traducteur de Platon. Paris: E. de Boccard.
Rawson, Elizabeth. 1973. The Interpretation of Cicero’s “De Legibus.” In
Aufstieg und Niedergang der Römischen Welt 1.4, 334-56.
———. 1975. Cicero: A Portrait. London: Allen Lane.
Schäublin, Christoph. 1986. Ementita auspicia. Wiener Studien 99, 165-81.
Schofield, Malcolm. 1986. Cicero for and against Divination. Journal of
Roman Studies 76, 47-65.
Strauss, Leo. 1968. Liberalism Ancient and Modern. Chicago: University of
Chicago Press.
Vegléris, E. 1982. Platon et le rêve de la nuit. Ktema 7, 53-65.
Wardle, David, trans. 2006. Cicero on Divination: De Divinatione Book I
(with introduction and historical commentary). Oxford: Oxford
University Press.
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An Introduction to the Reading of Dante: Inferno, Cantos I-VII
1 2 3
An Introduction to the Reading of Dante:
Inferno, Cantos I-VII
STEVEN BERG
BELLARMINE UNIVERSITY
[email protected]
Though admiration for Dante’s powers as a poet is nearly
universal, an appreciation of the magnitude of the accomplishment those powers
made possible is less common. Dante single-handedly revived the tradition of
epic poetry that had lain dormant for more than a thousand years and did so
by an appeal to and incorporation of precisely that which seemed to render
such a revival out of the question: Holy Scripture or revelation. As Dante himself
describes it, poetry conveys its truth through the fabrication of “beautiful lies”
(Convivio, II.1). Chief among these beautiful lies are the gods of the poets or,
in the words of Dante’s Virgil, “the false and lying gods” (Inferno, I. 72; the
translations from the Comedy offered here are those of the Singleton edition).
By contrast, Holy Scripture claims to represent the truth through the truth and
that this truth derives from and is embodied in the god of Christian revelation.
Thus the writings of the Christian religion appear to exclude the writings of the
epic poets both essentially—insofar as they anathematize the gods of the poets
and deny that beautiful lies are the proper vehicle for the conveyance of
truth—and strategically—insofar as they stigmatize the poets’ works in an
attempt to fend off the possibility that they themselves be taken as no more
than a subspecies, if an extremely impoverished one, of epic poetry (Lessing
1984, 74; also Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil, section 121). Dante proved
capable of reviving the tradition of epic poetry not by confronting this conflict
with scripture directly and offering a defense of poetry before the bar of
revelation, but simply by pretending that no such opposition exists. As a
consequence of this remarkable strategy we find within the Comedy, on the one
hand, the “false and lying gods” (Pluto, Proserpina, Mercury, Hercules,
Fortuna, Apollo, etc.) co-existing alongside the one true god—or even, at the
most extreme, the former simply identified with the latter (e.g., Inf., XIV. 52,
©2008 Interpretation, Inc.
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Interpretation
68-70; XXXI. 44-45; Purg., VI. 188-220)—and, on the other hand, Dante’s
portrayal of himself as both a poet who is the intimate and associate of Virgil
and Homer and a prophet on a par with Paul and John (Inf., II. passim; IV.
82-102; Purg., VIII. 58-66; XXVI. 127-29; XXIX. 100-105).
The reader of the Comedy is thereby thrust upon the horns of
a dilemma such that he must take Dante either as a prophet and accept the
result that through the agency of the one true god it was revealed to Dante that
the “false and lying gods” of the poets are in fact true, or as a poet and accept
the consequence that Dante wishes to place the one true god on a plane of
existential equality with the false and lying gods of the poets. Dante must either
indicate that Homer and Virgil were themselves prophets or that Paul and John
were certainly no more, and perhaps a good deal less, than poets. To accept
either alternative is obviously compromising to the claims of scripture to represent the truth through the truth. Yet Dante presents these alternatives as
exclusive. As the full character of Dante’s achievement is rarely acknowledged,
so the difficulties that he presents to his reader in pursuing the strategy that
made this achievement possible are generally ignored.
It is the purpose of the present essay to confront these
difficulties as they first come into view in Dante’s introduction to the Comedy:
Cantos I-VII of the Inferno (Boccaccio, Life of Dante, chap. 14). Through a
reading of these cantos we will articulate an understanding of the meaning and
intention of Dante’s work that departs significantly from the starting points
and conclusions of the most generally accepted interpretations of the Comedy.
Dante will appear here not as the poet shaped by and celebrative of medieval
Christianity and its theology, but as a thinker out of place in the context and
out of sympathy with the dominant opinions of his time (Par., XVII. 116-20).
That it is possible to arrive at contradictory interpretations of
Dante’s thought, particularly in regard to his assessment of the status of
Christianity, is in part explained by the fact that Dante often conceals his heterodox views by clothing them in the garments of orthodoxy. He thereby
obscures the extent of the distance separating him from his contemporaries.
Such obfuscation is part and parcel to the practice of the art of poetry as Dante
understands it. We have already noted that Dante describes the vocation of the
poet as not only compatible with, but dependent upon the ability to lie.
According to Dante, the falsehoods of the poet exhibit a complex structure. In
the writings of the poet, the deceptive surface that works to convey a deeper,
hidden truth to men of understanding, also acts to pacify the affections of the
unreasonable. Dante suggests that Ovid transmitted this very truth to those
An Introduction to the Reading of Dante: Inferno, Cantos I-VII
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readers of wakeful mind, by means of his “beautiful lie” regarding the capacity
of Orpheus to tame through his music “wild beasts and [to make] trees and
rocks move toward him”: for “the wise man with the instrument of his voice
makes cruel beasts grow tender and humble and moves to his will those who
do not devote their lives to knowledge and art; and those who have no rational
life are almost like stones” (Conv., II.1). Dante recognizes a fundamental
distinction in mankind between those of a rational and those of a sub-rational
nature. It is in the light of this same recognition, he argues, that the poets have
devised an art of writing that allows rational men to commune across barriers
both temporal and geographical, while preserving themselves and their works
from destruction at the hands of those who “live perpetually like beasts”
(Conv., IV.15). Dante ranks as one of the greatest practitioners of this art. The
implications of this fact are not often drawn with sufficient rigor: Dante not
only belongs, as he himself insists, in the company of the poets of antiquity,
but stands as well in the camp of those “modern” authors whose most famous
representative is Averroes (Averroes 2001, 23-29; Maimonides 1963, 6-20,
371-72; Fortin 2002, 48-50, 67-72; Cantor 1996, 145-47). The interpretation of
Dante’s poem offered in the following essay is developed on the basis of an
attempt to keep this fact and its implications constantly in mind.
I. OBSTACLES
Dante’s poem begins with the narrator of the work recalling an event that occurred “midway through our life’s journey.” He has
wandered from the straight way through insufficient wakefulness and
become lost in an “obscure wood.” In his bewilderment, he has nearly
forfeited his life: he has just emerged from a pass “that has never left anyone
alive.” All this has pierced him to the heart with fear (Inf., I. 1-27; all references to canto and line numbers will be to the Inferno unless otherwise
noted). The precise character of the danger that the poet faces is unclear. We
may begin to clarify it by means of the following considerations. Since the
narrator who is recounting his difficulties is identical with the poet who is
the author of the poem we have begun to read and this poem itself proves to
be an account of how that poem allegedly came to be written, had Dante
met his end in the deadly pass this poem would never have existed and
Dante’s life as a character within his own poem would have been precluded.
The “pass” is then representative of that which would stand
in the way of the composition of Dante’s work. The poet compares the pass
to “dangerous waters” and later Virgil reports that Lucia aroused Beatrice’s
solicitude towards her friend by making literal this simile: she asks whether
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she does “not see the death that assails [him] on the flood over which the
ocean has no vaunt” (II. 107-8).
Robert Hollander has provided a service to the reader of
Dante by pointing to the parallel between the opening of Dante’s poem and the
opening of Virgil’s Aeneid. As the poet is nearly lost upon “the flood” at the
opening of his Comedy, so Aeneas nearly founders in a tempest at sea at the
opening of Virgil’s work (Hollander 1969, 83-85). What Hollander does not
observe is that if Aeneas’ difficulty at sea has as its ultimate cause the wrath of
the chief of feminine gods, so the poet’s trials must find their origin in a similar
source. The deepest of the wounds suffered by Juno and eliciting her hottest
anger against the Trojan hero appears to be the judgment of Paris. Injured
vanity has transformed the goddess into a tireless engine of vengeance. The
danger Dante faces would seem to have its origin in a similarly jealous god, a
divinity enraged by an actual or potential slight to a feminine sense of vanity:
the wish to be admired as the supreme object of erotic desire. That the poet’s
difficulties do indeed derive from a similarly jealous and wrathful god is
confirmed by the renewed appearance of danger in the form of three beasts—
a leopard, a lion, and a she-wolf (I. 31-60). The beasts are taken directly from
Jeremiah where they are visited upon the people of Israel in recompense for
their having forsaken the god of their fathers and turned to the “love of foreign
gods” (Jer. 1:16; 2:10-11, 25; 5:6; see Addendum 1).
Dante encounters these beasts in his effort to ascend the hill,
which Virgil later calls “the delectable mountain” (I. 77), at whose crest the rising sun is poised. This seems to be the first appearance of the good that Dante
says he found amid the bitterness of the harsh wood (I. 8-9). Dante’s ascent to
the good then is blocked by the three beasts or rather primarily by the latter
two, for he seems to entertain “good hope” in regard to the “beast with the gay
skin.” As we learn in the sequel, Dante attempted to use the knotted and coiled
cord around his waist to capture the leopard and put him in his service (XVI.
106-8). He apparently thought to make use of the leopard in his ascent to the
good. He has no such hope in relation to the lion and his fear before it devolves
into despair when the she-wolf makes her appearance.
To what precisely these beasts as figures refer has long been a
subject of inquiry and controversy. That Virgil, when he appears, makes a
prophecy concerning a fourth beast—the Greyhound—who will drive the shewolf from all the cities of Italy both indicates that the she-wolf is a
contemporary political power of some kind and brings the sum of the bestiary
to four (I. 100-108). This latter fact permits us to connect this passage not only
An Introduction to the Reading of Dante: Inferno, Cantos I-VII
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to Jeremiah but the Book of Daniel. In Daniel’s dream of the four beasts he is
informed by a man—who appears to him in much the same fashion as Virgil to
Dante—that the four beasts represent four succeeding kingdoms or empires
(Dan. 7:1-28). Exegetical tradition in the time of Dante interpreted these
kingdoms as those of Babylon, Persia, Greece, and Rome (Archer 1958, 72-76;
Jerome, Comment. In Jeremiam Proph., lib. I, cap. 5). The penultimate beast of
Daniel’s dream corresponds to the first of the beasts of the Inferno: the leopard.
But if Dante’s leopard, like Daniel’s, represents Ancient Greece, then the lion
ought to represent Ancient Rome and the difficulty would be to determine the
identity of the she-wolf. Yet the last is clearly emblematic of Rome and it is not
at all evident how the antique kingdoms of Greece and Rome might stand as
contemporary obstructions to the poet’s further progress. Both difficulties are
solved in a single stroke when we understand the she-wolf as a contemporary
political power to represent not the old, but the new Rome (Armour 1989,
79-80) and the antique empires of Greece (leopard) and Rome (lion) to be
present insofar as they are retained as remnants within the new Rome. Indeed,
both Dante and Virgil finally collapse the three beasts into one (I.88, II.119).
Greece is present in the New Rome as philosophy subordinated to theology
and Ancient Rome in the office of the Holy Roman Emperor as subordinate to
Christianity in general and the pope in particular.
The danger that blocks the path to the coming into being of
Dante’s Comedy and the poet’s ascent to the good, then, is the jealous wrath of
the one true god or the spiritual and temporal powers of the Christian Church.
It was the remnants of Ancient Greece within the new Rome that Dante hoped
to use as means in an ascent to the good. This strategy, it seems, nevertheless
proved to be inadequate, at least in the immediate circumstances. Indeed it is
an Ancient Roman—albeit one of a Grecophile disposition—who must come
to Dante’s aid and make possible his further progress, that is, both the composition of his poem and his appropriation of the good. It is Virgil who shows
him that a direct ascent up the delectable mountain is not the proper route to
the good: an indirect path involving a prior descent is required, since it is only
on this longer route that one may circumvent the three beasts, though such
circumvention will prove to require confronting them once more in different
shapes. Through his search through Virgil’s “volume,” a search in which “long
study and…great love” were combined (I. 82-84), Dante has come to understand that the way to the good in the circumstances of “modernity” requires a
thorough-going examination of the New Rome and its claims to spiritual and
political universality. As Virgil’s analysis of the character of Ancient Rome
undermined its claim to have translated humanitas into Romanitas or to have
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Interpretation
comprehended and completed human life (see Addendum 2), so Dante’s
analysis of the New Rome will reveal the emptiness of its claim to have
resolved all fundamental human problems in a final manner and thereby
make possible a renewal of Greek philosophy or an ascent to “the heavenly
Athens” (Conv., III.14).
This return to Greece through Rome, however, will require
not simply an inquiry, but a military campaign. Virgil seems to display his
credentials to the poet in this regard when he claims that, even before the fact
of the establishment of “the empire” of “the Emperor who reigns above” he was
“rebellious to his law” (I. 125-28): by means of his “volume” Virgil has been
conducting a “war of piety” for over a thousand years and is thus supremely
competent to offer himself as a comrade in arms in Dante’s similar fight (II. 4-5).
II. R O M A N S
AND
GREEKS
Despite Dante’s doubts brought on by a sudden failure of
nerve, Virgil seems to insist that he take as his models in the conduct of this war
both Aeneas and Paul (II. 1-48). Is Dante through this combat to become the
founder of a new kingdom and a new faith (cf. Hollander 1969, 222)? Or
should we rather assume that as Aeneas was the founder of the old Rome and
Paul of the new, so Dante is to become, with Virgil’s aid, the founder of a “new
New Rome”? According to Dante himself, however, though it was fitting that
both the Trojan captain and the apostle of god “went there” (II. 28)—that is,
the “immortal world”—it would seem to be madness (folle) for Dante to
undertake “the deep passage” (l’alto passo) (II. 12, 35). In anticipating the
words of his own Ulysses (XXVI. 125, 132), the poet declares his true predecessor to be neither the founder of the old Rome, nor the prophet of the new, but
the most prudent of the Greeks at Troy, the man responsible for the victory of
the Greeks over the Trojans through the “stratagem of the horse” (XXVI. 59).
The most obvious distinction between Aeneas and Paul, on the one hand, and
Ulysses, on the other, is that while the former undertook their journeys to the
“immortal world” as chosen by god, Ulysses did not. Indeed, the fear that
Dante feels in anticipation of this journey seems well warranted when we
remember (or anticipate) the fate of Dante’s Ulysses who not only made his
way through Hades, but, unlike either Aeneas or Paul and like the poet himself,
arrived at the foot of Mount Purgatory: here Ulysses succumbed to the wrath
of god in the form of a tempest the description of which Dante borrows from
the same passage at the opening of Virgil’s Aeneid on which the beginning of
the Comedy is modeled (XXVI. 136-42). Dante is not the founder of a new New
Rome, but is rather a new Greek who is as far from home and standing in as
An Introduction to the Reading of Dante: Inferno, Cantos I-VII
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precarious a position in relation to “the one true god” as the old Greek was in
his “following the sun” in pursuit of “virtue and knowledge” (XXVI. 117, 120;
cf. Borges 1999, 280-83; also Barolini 1992, 57-58).
Dante portrays Ulysses as having come to ruin by god’s cutting short his journey in quest of “experience of the world and of human vice
and worth” (XXVI. 98-99). Independent inquiry into the nature of the human
good as the means to becoming fully human runs head-on into Christianity’s
claim that only through God’s power and grace and man’s obedience to his
commands and faith in his righteousness is the good for man and a fully
human life available. It is this claim then that Dante faces as the core of the
opposition to his further progress.
This progress is, nonetheless, made possible, as Virgil declares,
by the fact that three ladies from among the blessed have taken up his cause as
their own (II. 49-126). The names of the latter two are familiar to Dante—
Lucia and Beatrice. The name of the lady who persuades Lucia to persuade
Beatrice to command Virgil to put his “ornate” and “honest” speech at Dante’s
disposal in order to insure his salvation is not to be found in Dante’s work.
Modern commentators assume that this third lady is the Virgin Mary
(Hollander 2000, 41). One searches in vain for a single line in the Comedy that
might support this view. Indeed, the only other lady (apart from Rachel who
sits at Beatrice’s side) that Virgil ever names as residing among the blessed is
Dame Fortune (VII. 73-96), and, given his permanent exile from god’s city, the
only possible source for his knowledge of Fortuna as dwelling with the blessed
is Beatrice. Whether Beatrice called her, as does Virgil, a “goddess,” we cannot
know, but, according to Virgil’s account, Dante has been chosen not by the one
true god, but a goddess who is one among several gods (VII. 87; the lines of
Canto II devoted to the nameless lady are 94-96, and the lines in Canto VII
describing Fortuna as among the blessed are also 94-96). Lucia and Beatrice
are, therefore, merely agents of Fortuna. But, insofar as Fortuna presides over
the necessary transfer of empire from one people to another (VII. 73-84), one
may say that Virgil attempts to instill courage into Dante in his war of piety by
informing him that it is his good chance to confront the empire of the new
Rome at a propitious time: its decline has already begun and its degeneracy and
corruption must prove a boon to those who would seek a return to the Greeks
in spite of the opposition of Rome (see Addendum 3).
It is by these means that Virgil sets about expelling cowardice
from the poet’s heart and instilling “good courage.” He exhorts him to be, from
henceforth, “ardently bold and frank” (II. 123). Dante compares the effect that
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Interpretation
Virgil has upon him to that of the morning sun upon “little flowers…bent
down and closed by the chill of night” (II. 127-30). That Virgil and his speeches
stand in the place of the sun that appears to represent the good (cf. XI. 91) indicates something of the character of that good. At the opening of Canto III
Virgil declares to Dante that in entering Inferno he “will see the sad people who
have lost the good of intellect.” The good that Virgil represents is the goodness
of mind and one of the effects of the goodness of mind is to dispel all fear of
that which has no power to do one harm (II. 85-90). So Virgil, “as one who
understands,” now reiterates and insists that Dante “let go all [lasciare ogne]
fear” and “let all cowardice be dead” (III. 14-15). These words echo the last of
those upon the portal of Inferno: “Let go all [lasciate ogne] hope you who
enter” (III. 9). The latter words mean one thing for the dead, who are condemned to suffer eternal punishment within the infernal city, and another for
the living poet. Upon entering Hell the poet is enjoined to let go all fear and
hope in relation to all that he is to meet beyond this portal. As Virgil makes
clear, this is the way to gladness and understanding and the preservation of the
good of intellect among the shadows (ombre) of the “immortal world” (II. 14-15).
It seems to have been the obscurity and “hardness” (III.12) of
the meaning of the writing which forms the gateway into Hell that led Virgil to
reiterate his exhortation to boldness and daring on the poet’s behalf. The
implication is that only in letting go all fear and hope in relation to a writing
that purports to represent the word of god can one understand or interpret its
obscure and difficult significance. What the poet seems to find so hard to make
intelligible is the claim of the writing that justice, power, knowledge, and love
are unified in god as the creator of the sorrowful city that is the embodiment of
his punitive wrath. One might believe that the obscurity of this claim lies
chiefly in the proposition that wrath may be identified with love. The poet may
find equally difficult, however, the proposition that punitive justice and power
can be combined with the highest knowledge: the irrational or brute force of
power exercised in the name of punitive justice seems just as incompatible with
the highest rationality as with “first love.” God or a writing that purports to be
that of god claims that two pairs of traits which seem to be incombinable are
united in god and the result is the creation of the sorrowful city.
The speeches that form the gateway into Hell seem to represent the character of scripture in general. Virgil’s assurance that if Dante
undertakes his journey free of cowardice he will come to the proper interpretation of the seemingly unintelligible claims of this speech, therefore, indicates
that Dante’s Comedy is directed to an interpretation of scripture that will reveal
An Introduction to the Reading of Dante: Inferno, Cantos I-VII
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its “secret things” (III.21) or the true and hidden significance of these claims.
That Virgil should be his “master” and “leader” (II. 140) in such an effort indicates that Dante will somehow employ Virgil’s writings—and the writings of the
ancient poets in general—as a key to the interpretation of the biblical writings.
III. T H E O M AC H Y
At the outset this effort seems to meet with a formidable
resistance. Dante is plunged into a whirlwind of unintelligibility: diverse languages, accents and utterances of anger and pain, shrieks, the noise of the
beating of hands, all form an incoherent cacophony (III. 22-30). This infernal
babel defines the precincts immediately beyond Hell’s portal wherein those
who were neither rebellious nor faithful, who pleased neither god nor his enemies, are confined. Any possible position of neutrality in relation to the biblical
god has been nullified by the biblical god, who understands the attempt to
adopt a position of detachment in relation to him and his kingdom to be a declaration of war (III.39; cf. Par., XVII. 69). One is either for him or against him.
To say neither “yes” nor “no” then in relation to the biblical god—that is, to
doubt as Dante understands it (VIII. 110-11)—is an offense against God or a
sin. But such doubt is necessarily the starting point of all unfettered inquiry
and genuine interpretation. Such inquiry is blocked from the beginning, then,
by the criminalization of doubt by revelation.
The way that Dante describes this situation is in terms of
god’s pleasure or displeasure: all human actions are either pleasing or displeasing to god (III. 62-63). There is no action then that is neither an act of piety nor
of impiety and nothing that is, from god’s point of view, neither holy nor
unholy. Yet, since god’s pleasure looks to no higher measure than that pleasure
itself and the will to which it is identical (Par., XX. 77-78)—or since that will is
itself the sole criterion of the holy and the unholy, the pious and the impious—
all human action, indeed everything in the world, is deprived of intrinsic
intelligibility (Par., XXI. 91-96; cf. Par., VII. 94-96). The Christian god is
himself the whirlwind of unintelligibility that Dante encounters upon first
entering Inferno.
We now realize the deeper import of Virgil’s claim that he
was “rebellious to [God’s] law”: the biblical god can support no position of
neutrality vis-à-vis his rule and as such must attempt to deprive not only his
enemies, but all the world of “the good of intellect.” Antique poetry and
philosophy are banished from his Paradise and seemingly condemned to
the sorrowful city whose inhabitants are defined, according to Virgil, by the
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Interpretation
absence of mind. Though the neutrals are separated from the antique poets
and philosophers by the river Archeron, Dante effaces this division by leaving
unexplained his transit across these waters. Yet Virgil and his fellow occupants
of the “Noble Castle” in Limbo are afflicted neither with sadness nor pain (IV.
28, 41-42, 84) and are certainly not deprived of the good of intellect. The
ancients of Limbo are, therefore, properly speaking exterior to Inferno as it has
been defined. They are obviously occupants of neither Purgatory nor Paradise.
They are outside of the order of the biblical god altogether.
Through the invention of his Limbo Dante denies the biblical
claim that one is either a partisan or an enemy of god and that all human
thought and action is a matter of piety or impiety (De Monarchia III.2.4). On
what grounds does this denial rest? Since the brotherhood of poets are the first
to greet Dante and since it is they who usher him into the Noble Castle where
mind is preserved amidst the mindlessness of the sorrowful city of which god
is the creator, Dante seems to wish to suggest that it is above all the works of the
poets, in which the gods of the poets survive, that have established this neutral
terrain (see Addendum 4). This assumption is confirmed by the fact that along
the way into Limbo Dante for the first time intrudes into the Christian Hell
the characters and topography of Virgil’s underworld—the arrival at the banks
of the river Archeron and the encounter with the ferryman Charon are the
immediate preludes to the poets’ entrance into the no man’s land of Limbo.
Virgil has as his allies in the “war of piety” and “rebellion to
god’s law,” then, Homer, Ovid, Horace, and Lucan (IV. 80-93), and the truth of
this “rebellion” is not Virgil’s or Homer’s enmity toward god, but the enmity of
the gods of Virgil’s Aeneid or Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey to the god of the Old
and New Testaments. But if the biblical god finds the foundation of his existence in a writing, that writing in its opposition to the surviving writings of the
antique poets in which the existence of the antique gods endures establishes a
theomachy such that the “pleasures” of the biblical god come into conflict with
the pleasures of the gods of the poets. What is holy and pious to Zeus cannot be
so to the god of Moses and Paul. But then, as Socrates argues in the Euthyphro,
in the face of the plurality of hostile gods, a single action may be both holy and
unholy or, moreover, neither (Euthyphro, 9d ). The neutral territory required to
decriminalize doubt and initiate inquiry into the “secret things” of the
“immortal world” (the interpretation of Christian revelation)—a neutrality in
the light of which the intelligibility of the world is conceivable and the appropriation of the good of intellect possible—is guaranteed by the persistence of
the gods of the poets in the works of Virgil, Homer, and Ovid. Polytheism and
An Introduction to the Reading of Dante: Inferno, Cantos I-VII
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its theomachy allows for the neutral terrain to be established upon which one
may exercise one’s intellect as neither friend nor foe, partisan nor antagonist, of
the holy. The “war of piety,” therefore, is not an action that Dante and Virgil
themselves conduct, but an action they establish as a precondition for their
proper activity, viz., the inquiry into the “secret things” or what Dante calls the
“war of the journey” (II. 4-5). Virgil declares to Dante upon entering Limbo
that its occupants, though lacking faith, did not sin or that doubt is no sin (IV.
33-36). In response Dante says, for the first time, that here he recognized “people of great courage and worth [valore]” (IV. 44).
At the very same moment Dante, for the first time, politely
expresses his doubts in regard to the Christian faith: he questions whether Jesus
ever undertook the fabled harrowing of Hell, that is, whether he rose again in
glory. Virgil’s response concerning a “mighty one” who passed through shortly
after his own arrival, though appearing to dispel Dante’s doubt and confirm
the teachings of the faith, in fact has the effect of purging Limbo of all biblical
accretions (IV. 46-63). There can be no loyal citizens of Jerusalem on the
neutral terrain of Limbo. The effect, therefore, is to eliminate from this terrain
Moses and his claim that the one true god is not only supremely wise, but, as
such, a law-giver or a just ruler of a particular people and city. But this seems to
be merely the necessary effect of the re-instantiation of polytheism and not
only in the sense that the presence of the great teacher of monotheism is hardly
compatible with the presence of the inventors and preservers of the gods of the
Greeks. For under the pressure of the gods of the poets, or what those gods ultimately represent, the ostensible unity of the biblical god, in which
the attributes of power, justice, knowledge, and love are said to be identical,
is shattered. Dante shows that the Christian god implicitly contains within
himself the theomachy of the ancient gods (Burger 1999, 48).
In his Convivio, Dante argues that what, according to the
testimony of the poets, the Greek religion took to be gods, Plato understood to
be “universal forms or natures” which he called “ideas” (Conv., II.4; see
Addendum 5). As examples of such pagan gods Dante offers Jupiter, “god of
power,” and Pallas or Minerva, “goddess of wisdom.” The gods of the Greeks
separate what Moses sought in his god to join. Dante claims that the pagans
were right to do so insofar as when we turn to examine the “intelligences” or
what the common people call “angels” (i.e., the most obvious remnant of both
Greek polytheism and Aristotelian cosmology within Christianity) we are
forced to attribute to these intelligences two forms of blessedness,
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Interpretation
since human nature…has not only one blessedness but two, namely
that of civil life and that of contemplative life, it would be illogical
for us to find these beings have the blessedness of the active, that is,
of the civil life, in governing the world [i.e., moving the heavens]
and not that of the contemplative life which is more excellent and
divine. (Lansing 1990, 48)
However, as Dante goes on to argue, “the one that has the
blessedness of governing cannot have the other because their [the angels’]
intellect is one and eternal” (Lansing, 1990, 49), that is, contrary to the teaching
of Christian theology, contemplation in the proper sense and ruling are essentially incompatible and combinable in one human life, e.g., that of Dante, only
due to the manifold character of the human soul (Conv., III.2) and only over
time. Wisdom as such cannot exercise political rule. Dante thus divides the
angels into two orders and implicitly denies that the motion of the heavens is
guided by intelligence properly speaking. However, if the virtue of political rule
or the active life is justice, as that of the contemplative life or the exercise of the
intellect properly speaking is wisdom, we may conclude that Dante’s division of
the angels into two separate orders corresponds not only to the poet’s separation of rule and mind in Jupiter and Minerva, but to what Dante takes to be
Plato’s separation of the “ideas” of justice and wisdom or knowledge.
Dante applies this same division to the inhabitants of Limbo,
dividing their ranks into those who engaged in the life of political rule and
those who engaged in the life of the mind and forces a figure like Cicero to
choose: he is not enrolled in the ranks of the active or political, who are, with
the exception of Saladin, all Roman or proto-Roman (i.e., Trojan), but with
those of the contemplatives who are all, with the exceptions of Averroes and
Avicenna, Greeks or Grecophile Romans.
That the biblical god, even in his alleged transcendence, is
not exempt from this essential division of political justice and wisdom or
knowledge is made clear precisely through Virgil’s testimony regarding the
“mighty one’s” salvation of the children of Israel who were once inhabitants of
the underworld, i.e., the very speech that appears designed to confirm Dante’s
faith in fact overturns the foundation of that faith as it is exhibited in the
“writings of god.” For god’s election of, e.g., Adam over Socrates or David over
Junius Brutus, i.e., on the one hand, of the first man who, knowing both god
and his commandment, rejected both and thereby brought sin into the world
over a man who, though ignorant of god and his law, lived a life of blameless
virtue or, on the other hand, of a ravisher, adulterer, murderer and exemplar of
the injustice of monarchical rule over an avenger of adulterous ravishment and
An Introduction to the Reading of Dante: Inferno, Cantos I-VII
1 3 5
the expeller of unjust monarchical rule, gives the exercise of divine power and
justice the appearance of injustice.
One might argue, however, that god’s justice takes on the
aspect of its contrary precisely because it is united with his knowledge and love
and so comes to be indistinguishable from the determinations of prudence
which, because of their singularity and uniqueness—i.e., their liberation from
any universal or general rule—may assume the appearance of the arbitrary in
the eyes of the ignorant. Yet god, in his salvation of the Hebrews and rejection
of the Romans and Greeks, exhibits not the particular and individual determinations of prudence, but a general and universal rule: he advances the Hebrews
as a class over, e.g., the Greeks as a class. And yet he prefers the Hebrews as a
class not according to the intrinsic merit of the members of that class, but
solely because he has chosen that class as a class. There is no measure beyond
god’s will according to which that choice might be made intelligible. God’s
choice itself abundantly confirms this fact, for god chooses and loves a class
based upon an ostensible community of body (the “seed of Abraham”) over a
class based upon a genuine community of mind (the “school” of the poets and
the “family” of the philosophers). God’s wisdom as a principle of election
determining the character of his justice is unwise.
God’s “justice” (in its union with his knowledge) is, therefore,
injustice and his “knowledge” (in its union with his justice) ignorance.
Knowledge and love, on the one hand, and justice and power, on the other,
cannot be made to cohere in god. The ancient poets were right to portray
Jupiter and Minerva as two and, it would seem, they are rightly said to be two
distinct “ideas” or “universal forms or natures.” Thus, just as Dante reintroduces the structure of polytheism into the context of Christian faith, he
uncovers and liberates the structure of Plato’s ideas latent within the alleged
unity of the Christian god. By these means Dante submits god’s pleasure and
will to an intelligible measure and through this establishes the neutral terrain
required as the starting point of all inquiry.
That Dante is able to do this on the basis of a demonstration
that this structure is of necessity already implicitly present in the Christian god
despite the assertions to the contrary of Christian theology, indicates that the
opposition Dante displays in his Limbo between the Greeks as representative of
the contemplative life and Romans of the civic or active cannot be overcome in
the kingdom of god. Dante argues that the attempt of Christianity to unify
Athens and Rome in the New Jerusalem is necessarily a failure. He is now in a
position, therefore, to disassemble once again the single beast that ultimately
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Interpretation
blocked his path into the three beasts that he originally encountered; he can
separate out the Greek and the Roman elements from within their inclusion
and apparent oneness in the new Rome. We are prepared, therefore, for a
return of the structure of the three beasts, and our expectation is not disappointed. Dante applies the three beasts to the writing of the gate of Hell and the
result is the three gatekeepers of the second, third, and fourth circles of Hell.
The last of these is called by Virgil “wolf.”
The three cantos wherein the three circles over which these
gatekeepers preside are depicted (V-VII) articulate the nature of these three
beasts, that is, of the Greek and the Roman insofar as they have been incorporated within the New Rome and of the roots of the empire of the New Rome
itself. Through this articulation Dante shows that the elements that the New
Rome pretends to elevate and unify within itself are, in fact, debased and further
fragmented through this inclusion. Not only does the attempt to unify knowledge and love, on the one hand, and power and justice, on the other, fail, but in
the attempt love and knowledge are severed and power and justice disjoined.
Before turning to examine these cantos, we should note that
the poet’s arrival in Limbo recapitulates the opening of the poem in the
obscure wood. Now, however, rather than the discovery of the delectable
mountain with the sun at its summit, Virgil leads him through the “wood of
thronging spirits” towards a “fire that vanquished a hemisphere of darkness”
(IV. 65-69). It is at this moment that Virgil and Dante encounter Homer, Ovid,
Horace, and Lucan in whose company they proceed “onward toward the light,
talking of things it is beautiful to pass over in silence, even as it was beautiful to
speak of them there” (IV. 102-5). This conversation accompanies their progress
through the seven walls of the Noble Castle and their entrance into
its interior where they find “an open place which was luminous and high”
(IV. 115-16).
In his new beginning Dante has replaced a thwarted ascent
out of darkness into the light of the sun, with a successful partial illumination
of the darkness within the realm of darkness. What Dante portrays imagistically must reflect the content of the “beautiful” conversation between the poets
that he withholds from the reader: the conversation must itself have represented an illumination of the darkness of the immortal world by means of
which Dante is now able to appropriate “the good of intellect,” or the core of
what is Greek, without obstruction. But if the next three circles of Inferno
(Cantos V-VII) articulate the reality of the three beasts that previously posed
an obstacle to Dante’s appropriation of the good, then Virgil’s and Dante’s
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unhindered passage through and examination of the inmates of these three
circles must reflect the conversation between the ancient poets and Dante
that allowed for this appropriation. This conversation then consisted in an
examination of things modern in the light of the wisdom of the ancients. What
Dante has learned from Virgil, Homer, Aristotle, Plato, Socrates, et al.,
is that there can be no direct ascent to the good, but only an indirect appropriation of it through the examination of or inquiry into the false appearances or
shadows (ombre) that obscure its truth. What initially appeared to be merely an
obstacle to any ascent proves ultimately to be simultaneously the necessary
means to any ascent (Benardete 1989, 149).
IV. L OV E
AND
L AW
If the figure of the leopard represents the swiftness of
Alexander’s—the West’s—conquest of Persia—the East (Archer 1958, 75;
Scofield 1984, 873, 881-82)—the figure of Minos, which now takes the
leopard’s place (V. 4), seems to represent the result of Christianity’s attempt to
fuse the claims of Greek philosophy to transcend the horizon of the city and its
law (the West) with the divine law of the Jews (the East). Minos is the son of a
god and the author of a quasi-divine law that was famous for its unusual rigor
and severity. According to Virgil, his kingdom was in the exact center of
the Mediterranean or midway between East and West (XIV. 94, 103-5). Dante
represents this concatenation by describing Minos as possessed of both a
superhuman knowledge (of sin) and a subhuman bestiality (V. 4-10).
The inhabitants of the second circle—those who submit
reason to “desire” (talento)—reflect this same fusion of West and East:
Semiramis, Dido, and Paris, representative of Eastern empires and kingdoms,
are joined with Cleopatra, Helen, and Achilles, Greek inhabitants of the East.
As a modern, Tristan, the great adulterer, seems out of place on the list, yet
together with Paolo and Francesca, whose crime is also adultery, he proves
to embody the effect of Christianity as a fusion of the Greek West and the
barbarian East. Semiramis, “who made lust licit in her law” (V. 56), that is, gave
a legal sanction to the most antinomian of erotic longings so that she might
conduct “legally” a love affair with her son, seems to reflect Christianity’s
attempt to combine law and the transcendence of law. Christianity makes
sacred the antinomian erotic longing to join with the source of both the law
and one’s own being (Rom. 3:19-23; 4:13-15; 6:1-6, 12-14; 8:12-17, 27-30; 10:4;
12:4-5). But antinomian desire being made the core of piety results, paradoxically, in the “spiritual” criminalization of a particular form of antinomian
erotic desire: adultery is no longer subject to temporal but eternal punishment,
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Interpretation
since marriage or eros subordinate to law is made holy as a pre-figuration of
the trans-legal union of man and god. This appears to be what Francesca
means by the “perverse evil” (V. 93) which afflicts Paolo and herself: a religion
of trans-legal love has made trans-legal love a metaphysical crime (Matt. 5:2732; 1 Cor. 6:9-10).
The fact that Christianity cannot bring itself to sacralize a
form of sexual eros which seems to resemble its own pretensions so closely
points to the failure of Christianity to effect the transcendence of the law to
which it aspires. Francesca herself makes clear the character of this failure in
her narrative of her love for Paolo. She explains that after love for her beautiful
appearance (persona) had seized her lover, she was compelled to return his
love as “love…pardons no loved one from loving.” But the mutual love
commanded by love himself was so strong that it has resulted in their eternal
union in one death (V. 100-106). A god of love that pardons no one who does
not return his love and who rewards love with a completion in eternal bodily
union—or the shadow of such a union—is an apt description of the Christian
god who punishes those who fail to return his love and rewards those who do
with an eternal union with this eternal lover which is ultimately of a bodily
character: god himself is incarnate and his lovers in union with him enjoy the
possession of a glorified body. That the law stands behind the importation of
punishment and reward into the context of love is clear. But that the law is also
at work in the representation of the fulfillment of love in bodily union is
made evident when one notes that it is characteristic of the law to portray the
completion and perfection of the soul in terms of the satisfactions of body
(Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics II.3, III.9-10; Plato, Republic 518d-e).
The genuinely trans-legal fulfillment of eros in the mind’s
pursuit of knowledge of the beings (viz., philosophy) seems to be alluded to in
a simile which makes it difficult to believe that Dante was unfamiliar with at
least one of Plato’s dialogues in addition to the Timaeus. Dante compares the
souls in the second circle to flocks of birds and Francesca and her lover as they
descend to Dante and Virgil to “doves with wings raised and steady” to their
“sweet nest” (V. 83). But if Francesca and Paolo are to nesting doves as Dante
and Virgil are to nestlings, then Dante and Virgil would seem to be in the
process of wing growing. Though not confined to Plato’s Phaedrus, the conceit
of eros as winged and wing-growing is given its most elaborate expression
there (249c-252c). According to the argument of the Phaedrus, however, eros as
wing-growing is ultimately directed not to the beautiful appearance of
the beloved—which, when properly used, serves only as a reminder of the
An Introduction to the Reading of Dante: Inferno, Cantos I-VII
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beautiful itself—but to the ascent to and cognition of the hyper-Uranian
beings, among which the “beautiful itself” stands (247c-248c, 250c-d). Eros
is directed not to bodily union or even knowledge of the whole which the
material cosmos might appear to represent, but to mind’s cognition of the
trans-cosmological beings.
That Francesca and Paolo are related negatively to a version
of this account of the proper end of love is made clear first of all by the fact that
in their confusion they have been cast into a dark whirlwind which is the
counterpart of the whirlwind of unintelligibility that Dante and Virgil first
encountered in passing through the gate of Hell and—far from their wings
permitting an ascent beyond the heavens—they are confined in their flight to
an unlit cavern beneath the earth. Moreover, as Dante has explained, those here
confined are characterized by their having been unable to combine reason and
desire in the proper manner (V. 37-39). Francesca and Paolo are the first genuine inhabitants of Inferno insofar as they are the first to exhibit the class
characteristic of the “damned”—they have lost the good of intellect.
When Dante asks about the cause of this loss in their case
he is informed by Francesca that the “root” of their subjecting reason to misdirected desire was a book, Lancelot of the Lake (V. 124-28). The book’s topic is
a trans-legal love affair (that between Lancelot and Guinevere). The book,
therefore, represents an attempt to combine mind and reason (in the form of
the written word) with a love that finds its satisfaction beyond the limitations
of the law. The effect of the book, however, is the splitting asunder of reason
and love: Francesca and Paolo cease to read and commence to embrace (V. 13338). The book which pretends to unite mind and a love that transcends the
boundaries of the law, in teaching that the end of love is a union of bodies,
causes the separation of mind and love in its readers who make reading the
book instrumental to that end.
As T. E. Swing has observed (Hollander 1969, 112), the phrase
with which Francesca so discreetly indicates the final result of her literary
encounter with Paolo—“that day we read no further”—seems intended by
Dante to echo the famous phrase employed by Augustine to describe his final
conversion to Christianity after his reading (under very special circumstances)
of a passage from the Bible—“and then I read no further” (Confessions, VIII.
12; cf. IV.3). Francesca and Paulo represent the effects of the Bible—a book that
purports to offer the way to the final union of love and mind—upon those
readers who are converted to its teaching: the separation of mind and love and
the confusion of the end of the latter with bodily union. The book that claims
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Interpretation
to fulfill more perfectly than Greek philosophy the unity of mind and eros in a
transcendence of the city and its law, in fact reproduces the effect of the law
upon the soul—the gospel is simply the “New Law” (Rom. 8:2; Aquinas,
Treatise on Law, Ques. 91, Art. 5).
Before recounting the cause of her present affliction,
Francesca had declared that “there is no greater sorrow than to recall, in
wretchedness, the happy time” and insisted that Virgil knows this as well as she
(V. 121-23). The passage from the second book of the Aeneid to which she
refers, however, is that wherein Aeneas, in response to Dido’s demand to hear
the story of his wanderings from its beginning in the fall of Troy, insists that to
recall his grief and pain is to renew that grief and pain in this happy time of his
recent salvation from Juno’s wrath. Francesca proves that she is an incompetent
reader and in her confusion equates grief with happiness and pain and
wretchedness with salvation.
In her reference to Virgil’s Aeneid, however, Francesca not only
spells out the terms of her “conversion”—how she became a citizen of god’s
sorrowful city—but points to Virgil’s volume as an alternative to god’s volume
insofar as it is the cause of contrary effects: we recall that Dante, on his first
encounter with Virgil, exclaimed, “Oh, glory and light of other poets, may the
long study and great love that have made me search your volume avail me”
(I. 82-84). The aid provided by Virgil and his volume has so far proven indispensable to Dante in his confrontation with Christianity, and one of the secrets of its
antidotal power has now been made clear. It joins what god has split asunder.
V. B L AC K S
AND
WHITES
Dante replaces the image of the lion as representative of
Rome with Cerberus, the three-headed guard dog of Hades (VI. 13-15).
Cerberus presides over the circle of the gluttonous. Yet the canto’s most manifest concern is neither the sin nor the sinners of the third circle, but the
problem of civil war as it is exhibited in the case of the Florentine republic. A
three-headed dog would appear to be a perfect representation of the city at war
with itself (De Monarchia I.16.1-5), if it were not for the fact that the parties
within Florence seem to be but two. Cerberus is a more fitting image then of
the civil war that convulsed the empire of Rome at the end of the Republic,
insofar as each outbreak of strife was preceded by an attempt at rule by
triumvirate. The civil wars that afflicted Rome, however, came only at the
culmination of her expansion and rise to greatness and dominion. In the case
of the Florentine republic these wars are occurring in her infancy and prevent-
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ing her rise to greatness and dominion. This may be attributed to the fact that
what is a late development coinciding with the corruption of her polity in the
case of Rome—viz., the fusion of man-god and universal king in the person of
Caesar—is a first principle of all political life in medieval Florence: the “new
Caesar” and his legions, i.e. the priesthood (cf. Paradiso XXIV.59; also Armour
1989, 85), form the third faction in addition to the split between Whites or
“plebeians” and Blacks or “patricians” within the party politics of Florence.
Cerberus proves to represent perfectly the internal divisions within the city.
Moreover, the civil dissension between Bianci and Neri is rooted in the transcivil dissension between the Guelphs (the party of the papacy) and the
Ghibellines (the party of the empire). The result of the intrusion of the legions
of the New Caesar into the life of the Italian cities is thus the disjoining of
political power from political justice on two levels: civil strife makes impossible
the rule of law and the power of the papacy is a power that claims to transcend
in its sovereignty any and all political law. “God” is the cause not of the union
of justice and power, but their division.
That Virgil is able to silence Cerberus’ three barking heads by
letting them feed upon the earth which they crave reflects the gluttony of the
“submerged” who are the occupants of the third circle (VI. 15). Both point to
the materialism of the city, that is, its directedness to the goods of the body. The
“bodies” of those submerged upon which Virgil and Dante tread, however, are
described by the poet as “vanities” (VI. 36). They are the degraded and empty
images of the soul. Despite its low concern with the bodily good, the city fraudulently claims to be able to provide the soul with what it requires apart from
the body. The city is the locus of political idealism according to which moral
virtue is the good of the soul. The New Rome or the city of god, however, has
taken over both these aspects of political life: it is greedy for “earth” (territory
and wealth) and it claims, through its teachings regarding moral virtue, to be
able to provide the soul with its true good.
The materialism of the church explains its ruinous involvement in the affairs of Florence and the other Italian cities, to which Ciacco
(“the Hog”) alludes in speaking of the one who, though “temporizing” now,
will soon intervene in the affairs of Florence, viz., Boniface VIII (VI. 67-72).
The church’s claim to be able to minister to the soul, as trumping that of the
city, however, turns out to be the deeper cause of the corruption of the city
of man at the hands of the ecclesiastical polity. Ciacco, in answer to Dante’s
question regarding the origins of the “discord” that has “assailed” Florence,
locates the ultimate causes of strife in three passions: pride, envy, and avarice
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Interpretation
(VI. 74-75). That this account of the causes of discord in Florence is inadequate
is obvious. The citizens of every city that has ever existed have
been animated by these same passions, but not every city at all times has
been afflicted with civil war. Rome, whose citizens exhibited these passions as
violently as those of any city before or since, owed her greatness to the proper
and prudent exploitation of precisely these affections. Ciacco’s condemnation,
nonetheless, points to the deepest cause of Florence’s disintegration: according
to the teaching of the city of god, these passions are not the natural engines of
political life to be prudently refined and harnessed—i.e., through habituation
worked up into political or moral virtues—in the interest of the pursuit of freedom and empire, but sins to be condemned and, with the help of god’s grace,
extirpated from the human heart in the interests of preparing the soul for
citizenship within the kingdom of god. The church, in its ostensible transcendence of political life and political law, condemns the roots in the human soul
of political virtue and political greatness. The desire for glory and the striving
for distinction (i.e., pride and envy) as yoked to the quest for empire (i.e.,
avarice)—the roots of the beautiful virtues of the antique city (e.g., courage
and magnanimity)—are condemned as, at best, “splendid vices” by the New
Rome, while the anti-political qualities of humility, meekness, and “poverty of
the spirit” are praised as the truth of moral virtue as instrumental to the
allegedly supra-political end of “blessedness.”
However, since the passions at the root of antique moral and
political virtue, though they may be reviled, can never be expelled from the
human soul—human beings are political animals and these are the unavoidable accompaniments of political life—the teachings of the church concerning
moral virtue, insofar as they are authoritative, ensure that political life is
carried out under the pall of moral reprobation and the fog of hypocrisy. That
is to say, the teachings of Christianity ensure that these passions are disjoined
from an aspiration to moral and political virtue or from the pursuit of the
noble or beautiful. Christianity undermines political idealism as political and
leaves in its wake a cynicism in regard to the conduct of political affairs which
ensures that only the lowest aspirations of the city—the acquisition of wealth
or material gain—are pursued in a petty and narrowly self-interested way:
political power becomes simply a means to amassing a personal fortune. In this
the kings and princes of medieval Europe simply follow the example of the
princes of the church who, though they may in their speeches praise earthly
poverty and recommend the laying up of “spiritual” riches in heaven, in their
deeds demonstrate their concern for laying up earthly treasure here and now
(Purg., XVI. 100-102).
An Introduction to the Reading of Dante: Inferno, Cantos I-VII
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The political result of this state of affairs is the radical diminution of political life: the horizon of political ambitions is lowered and narrowed
and the city left fractured and disordered. Florence and her sister cities are cast
in the mud and “submerged” (Purg., VI. 76-126, XVI. 12-129). That this coincides with the interests of the church and its political ambitions, likewise carried
out under such a pall and fog, is evident: the greater the disorder of the cities of
Italy and Europe—i.e., the weaker the secular power—the wider the dominance
of the papacy may extend (Machiavelli, The Prince, chap. 7).
Ciacco’s response to Dante’s inquiry regarding the fate of the
best men among the Florentines points to the same issue of the dwarfing of
political life under the influence of the moral teachings of Christianity. These
men “who were so worthy” and “put their genius to doing good” turn out to be,
according to the judgment of god, “among the blackest souls and different
faults weigh them down toward the bottom” (VI. 77-87). The greatest of these
figures, Farinata, whose worth was proved by the fact that he held the good of
Florence above the good of his faction, is among the “Epicureans” of the sixth
circle or those who lacked any belief in the immortality of the soul (X. 32).
Tegghiaio Aldobrandi and Jacabo Rusticucci, on the other hand, are
condemned among the Sodomites for the “sin” of homosexuality (XVI. 40-45).
Two of the more common attributes of the greatest political men—attributes
which, whether moral faults or no, might plausibly be thought to be at a
minimum incidental, and at a maximum genuinely serviceable to the just
conduct of political affairs and the pursuit of the common good (lack of belief
in a good beyond this life and of an attachment to a private, familial interest
might be considered conditions for a wholehearted devotion to a this-worldly
public or political good)—are, according to Christian teaching, among the
“blackest” of sins. The absurdity and destructiveness of such views from a
political point of view is thus made clear by Dante.
The Christian moral teaching, therefore, runs counter to the
possibility of wholehearted devotion to the public good both incidentally and
essentially. On the one hand, it condemns those passions—pride, envy, and
avarice—the gratification of which, through the prizes of honor, political
office, and material gain, are the means whereby certain men are persuaded to
serve the city as if it were of greater value than their own souls; and on the other
hand, it consistently enjoins one to turn away from the “temporal” political
goods of the city of man to the “eternal” and “spiritual” or allegedly trans-political rewards of the city of god.“God’s” judgment and justice are, accordingly, in
fundamental conflict with what is required for the justice and public good of
the city. Within the Christian polity, the authoritative teaching regarding the
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Interpretation
truth of justice and the sound exercise of political power are necessarily at
odds. The Christian polity is necessarily an unjust polity.
What Dante suggests at the end of Canto VI, however, where
Dante and Virgil discuss the niceties of divine punishment and reward as it is
related to the question of the resurrection of the body (VI. 94-111), is that the
Christian moral teaching proffers its condemnation of the city as ministering
merely to the goods of the body, precisely in the name of a hypertrophic appeal
to the satisfaction of the body. Through the teaching of the resurrection of the
body, Christianity ultimately rejects the doctrine of the reality of the separate
soul as vigorously as any Epicurean and looks forward to the delights of bodily
union with as much relish as the most enthusiastic Sodomite: the Christian
doctrine of the resurrection of the body—dependent as it is upon the doctrine
at the core of the Christian conception of divinity, viz., the incarnation—is
simply an exaggerated version of the city’s own confusion of the good of the
body for the good of the soul.
VI. C A E S A R
AND
PETER
Near the end of Canto VI, Virgil identifies God and his ministers—whose arrival will mark the time of the last judgment and herald the
reunion of the souls of the damned with their bodies—with “the enemy
power” (96). Dante’s identification of Pluto, king of the dead, god of wealth
and the guardian of the fourth circle, as “the great enemy” (VI. 115) and Virgil’s
reviling him with the epithet “accursed wolf ” (VII. 8) makes clear that this
third gate-keeper is a new version of the she-wolf or an image of the prince and
the power of the New Rome. Indeed, Pluto declares himself to be such in his
babbling (Hollander 2000, 140). Dante’s calling him a “cruel beast” brings to
mind both the fact that “snarling” Minos sports a tail and the porcine character
of Ciacco. On the one hand, the bestialization of the human and the gods of
human shape cannot but remind us of the fate of Ulysses’ men at the hands of
Circe and her witchcraft. On the other hand, Ulysses’ ability, with the help of
the god Hermes, to resist Circe’s spells finds its parallel here in the way in which
Virgil overcomes both his friend’s fears and the power of Pluto by demonstrating the insubstantiality of the claim of the prince of the church (pape satan) to
be first (allepo). In response to Virgil’s command to silence himself, he collapses
“like sails swollen by the wind full in a heap when the mainmast snaps” (VII.
13-15). His power is shown to be wholly unreal.
Ulysses and his voyage are brought to mind once more when
Dante compares the punishment of the inmates of the fourth circle to the
An Introduction to the Reading of Dante: Inferno, Cantos I-VII
1 4 5
crashing of wave upon wave over Charybdis (VII. 22-24). Dante attributes the
configuration of this punishment directly to the justice of god (VII. 19-21).
The previous canto has shown this justice to be identical to injustice on the
political plane. This “justice” has established a “joust” or trial of arms between
two contending parties who roll enormous weights around the track of the
circle, pushing them with their chests until they collide with the opposing
party, at which point each party simply reverses course, one crying “why do
you hoard?” and the other “why do you squander?” and the contest begins
again (VII. 25-35). It is a trial of arms in which victory can never be gained and
each side is equally a loser. It is an eternally thwarted race around a track upon
which an insurmountable obstacle inevitably arises.
From their tonsured heads, Dante is able to recognize that all
of the members of one of the parties in this contest are clerics. Virgil confirms
this surmise and adds that avarice is the sin for which these priests, cardinals,
and popes pay the price (VII. 37-48). They are the “ill-keepers”—those who
hoard—and they are pitted against a host of “ill-givers”—those who squander.
When Dante suggests that he surely will be able to recognize some of the
priestly contestants, Virgil informs him that this is impossible: their own lack of
knowledge precludes all knowledge of them (VII. 52-54). In the case of the
clerics, at the very least, it is a form of ignorance that has committed them to
this fruitless contest. Virgil, however, remains silent as to the precise nature of
the knowledge that they lacked, the character of the “brawl” they have fallen
into with their opponents, and the identity of these opponents themselves. The
solution to this enigma is revealed by Dante in the Purgatorio where we find a
similar sequence of Ulyssean allusions.
In Canto XIV of Purgatorio the poet encounters a fellow
Tuscan, Guido del Duca, who declares that the inhabitants of the Po valley
“have so changed their nature that it seems that Circe had them at pasture.” He
compares them to “filthy pigs,” “little snarling dogs,” wolves and “foxes full of
fraud.” The cause of this universal bestialization he claims to know: “virtue is
fled from as an enemy by all, as if it were a snake.” As to why virtue is thus
shunned he can offer no sure explanation (29-54).
Dante himself, however, has shown this recoil from virtue to
be a pan-European phenomenon and, in accord with his teaching regarding
the bestialization of Florentine politics in Inferno VI, located its cause in the
authority of the Christian religion: in the “valley of the princes”—a grander
version of Guido’s pasture of Circe and the poet’s own “bordello” of Italy
(Purg., VI. 76-78)—we have been shown how two “angels with broken swords”
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Interpretation
prevent any contact between the most significant political rulers of the time
and the serpent who tempted Eve (Purg., VII. 64–VIII. 108). These emissaries
of the kingdom of god prevent these rulers from combining with their rule
something like independent knowledge of good and evil or the Ulyssean “experience of the world and of human vice and worth,” that is, from acquiring
political prudence.
In Purgatorio XVI, Dante encounters Marco Lombardo who
claims to have gained the knowledge of the world and to have loved the worth
that Ulysses sought. In the light of his alleged knowledge he is able and willing
to offer the poet what Guido del Duca could not: in response to the poet’s
“double doubt” about the cause of virtue’s desertion of the world—whether it
lies in “the heavens” (as Sordello argued) or here below (as Guido del Duca
suggested)—Marco locates the cause not in the heavens, but in the affairs of
men. The world has been made wicked, however, not through the corruption
of men’s nature (i.e., through the biblical “fall”), but through “ill-guidance.”
Rome, which made the world good, was wont to have two Suns,
which made visible both the one road and the other, that of the
world and that of god. The one has quenched the other, and the
sword is joined to the crook: and the one together with the other
must perforce go ill—since the one does not fear the other…. [T]he
Church of Rome, by confounding in itself two governments, falls in
the mire and befouls both itself and its burden. (106-12, 126-29)
The poet claims Marco for his own (“O Marco mine”) and declares that he
“reasons well.”
Marco’s image of the two Suns adumbrates Dante’s arguments from De Monarchia against the doctrine of papal supremacy articulated
most forcefully by Boniface VIII in his bull Unam Sanctam (Tierney 1964,
189). According to the latter, the authority of the papacy stands in relation to
the authority of the emperor as Sun to Moon: as the Sun is first in the order of
creation and the source of the Moon’s light, so the pope is first in the order of
rule and the source of Caesar’s power. According to Marco’s image and Dante’s
reasoning, the political authority of the emperor is entirely independent of the
spiritual authority of the pope (De Mon., III. 12, 16; Conv., IV.6; Kantorowicz
1957, 458-60). Marco’s teaching, therefore, is a refutation of the fraudulent
claims concerning the ostensible Donation of Constantine that Boniface and
his allies used to support their case for papal supremacy and according to
which the emperor rightfully ceded rule over the Western half of the empire to
the Roman pontiff (Inf., XIX. 115-17).
An Introduction to the Reading of Dante: Inferno, Cantos I-VII
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It is now possible to recognize the particular character of the
“ill-keeping” of which the priests, cardinals, and popes of the fourth circle are
guilty: they are the claimants to the illegitimate Donation of Constantine.
Their rivals in the contest—the “ill-givers”—are the princes, kings and emperors (the sons of Constantine) who put their temporal authority in the thrall of
the ecclesiastical polity. They are the rulers of the valley of the princes, the
swine in Circe’s pen. The round weights they push and crash against one
another in their joust are representative of the two Suns whose fire and light
have been extinguished through their ill-giving and ill-keeping. Their brawl
itself is the constant clash between Caesar and Pope that is the inevitable result
of the latter’s attempt to yoke supreme political authority to the office of pontifex maximus, that is, to make the priest not fifth and first, but simply first in
the order of the political regime (Aristotle, Politics 1328b 12-13). The contest of
arms is necessarily inconclusive—i.e., will never lead to the sort of victory and
universal empire that Rome attained—because the strife between the
spiritual and temporal powers is the root of the dissolution of whatever unity
the city is able to achieve (cf. Strauss 1963, 254).
VII. C O N C LU S I O N
In Cantos V through VII of Inferno Dante has offered
the reader his portrait of the most far-reaching claims of Christianity and
the Catholic Church, at the same time demonstrating their spuriousness and
elaborating upon the malignant effects of the attempt to translate them into
action. As Dante presents it, Christianity pretends to possess, on the one hand,
the truth regarding both man’s intellectual or spiritual nature and his moral,
political or temporal nature and, on the other hand, insight into the fact that
the latter should and can be made a means to the fulfillment of the former. This
pretense culminates in the church’s doctrine of papal supremacy, through
which it lays claim to the legitimate exercise of power not simply over the
spiritual but the temporal lives of men as well. The church, in other words,
claims to possess knowledge of the best regime or that political order in which
man’s nature can reach its perfection in preparation for the realization of his
ultimate, supernatural end—union with god.
Thus the church asserts a right to rule on the basis of the
alleged possession of a comprehensive wisdom, indeed a divine science,
regarding man and his relation to the whole of things and the first principle
of that whole, viz., god. The church claims to combine power and justice,
with wisdom. The doctrine of papal supremacy then echoes the teaching of
scripture (or “god’s dead writing”) that god unites perfectly in his own person
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Interpretation
wisdom with power and justice. Indeed, it is wholly derivative of the latter:
theological monarchy is simply a reflection and prefigurement of the kingdom
of god. Dante, in demonstrating the speciousness of the unity of justice, power,
and wisdom in god, simultaneously refutes the church’s claim to legitimately
unite spiritual and temporal power in its empire over every aspect of human
existence.
Dante concludes that what the advocates of papal supremacy
understand to be the best regime—the comprehensive rule of a divine science
or wisdom that transcends the law—is actually, as Virgil suggests in Canto VII
when insisting on the priesthood’s lack of knowledge, the worst possible
regime, viz., the comprehensive rule of lawless ignorance. Dante, therefore,
suggests that the universal theological monarchy of Christendom is a sophistical tyranny on the grandest possible scale (see Addendum 6). Because the
Islamic version of a universal theocracy is necessarily based in law, however
imperfect that law may be, it is significantly superior to that regime to which
the Catholic Church, at its most pretentious, aspires. Mohamed and his successors built a great empire. Saladin’s conduct, according to Dante, puts him in the
same class as the greatest rulers of ancient Rome. No Christian prince has ever
come near to rivaling such accomplishments.
Insofar as the church aspires to the kind of authority to which
Boniface’s Unam Sanctam lays claim and, therefore, to the authority to suppress any alternative and superior understanding of the political, the
trans-political and the proper relation between them, the church itself is
responsible not only for the fact that men flee from virtue as from a snake, but
for having erected a blockade on the road to “an experience of the world and
of human vice and worth,” that is, to any genuine knowledge of the human
good and the best regime. The New Rome is the obstacle both to the practical
recovery of any sound political order, and to the theoretical acquisition of
a Ulyssean political knowledge or to a recovery of political philosophy as
originally conceived by the Greeks—Plato and Aristotle (Fortin 2002, 173).
Dante’s Comedy is dedicated to a renewal of Greek political philosophy and,
therefore, to a thorough analysis of the obstacles standing in the path to such a
renewal. This analysis, first presented in concentrated form at the opening of
the Comedy in Dante’s treatment of the “three beasts,” is then unfolded and
given complete articulation over the course of the work as a whole. Yet Dante’s
Comedy is not merely propaedeutic: to articulate the obstacles to the recovery
of Greek political philosophy is already to resurrect it on new and alien terrain.
An Introduction to the Reading of Dante: Inferno, Cantos I-VII
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ADDENDUM 1
Hollander shows the link between the metaphor of the flood
of his heart in which Dante nearly drowns at the opening of the poem and the
metaphorical river in which Dante bathes his eyes before his final vision of the
“reality” of which this river is a metaphor at the end of the poem (Hollander,
1969, 196); but if the river represents god and his kingdom, so too must the
dangerous flood.
ADDENDUM 2
At the center of the Aeneid (VI. 750-853), Virgil discriminates
between the character of Rome—to bring peace to the conquered, spare the
defeated, and tame the proud—and that of Greece—to perfect the arts, discover the science of rhetoric, and “trace the ways of heaven” (i.e., philosophize).
In doing so he demonstrates the self-defeating trajectory of the former—as
soon as its empire is established and peace prevails its raison d’être evaporates—and the superior humanity of the latter (Benardete, 2002, 218).
ADDENDUM 3
That the medieval church was indeed in a state of radical
decline is made evident by the victory of Philip the Fair in his contest with
Boniface VIII and the establishment of the Avignon papacy under Clement V.
Dante allows his Bonaventure to describe the continuing corruption and weakening of the legions of the New Rome despite the efforts of Dominic and
Francis to renew their strength (Par., XII. 37-45, 106-20).
ADDENDUM 4
The striking difference between the Christian and Muslim
contexts for the recovery of Greek philosophy, viz., the revival of the pagan
gods in the former case alone, was made possible not only by the survival of
Latin literature in the West, but also by Dante’s retrieval of those gods in the
“modern” context.
ADDENDUM 5
Cf. Maimonides, Guide (1963), 521: “The books [of the
ancients] extant among us today contain an exposition of the greatest part of
the opinions and practices of the Sabians; some of the latter are generally
known at present in the world. I mean the building of temples, the setting-up
in them of images made of cast metal and stone, the building of alters and the
offering-up upon them of either animal sacrifices or various kinds of food, the
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institution of festivals, the gatherings for prayer and for various kinds of worship in those temples in which they locate highly venerated places that are
called by them the temple of the intellectual forms.”
ADDENDUM 6
“If the pope had…such fullness of power that in temporal
and spiritual matters he could by right do without exception anything not
against divine or natural law, then Christ’s law would involve a most horrendous servitude, incomparably greater than that of the old law. For all
Christians—emperors and kings, and absolutely all their subjects—would be
in the strictest sense of the term the pope’s slaves, because there never was nor
will be by right anyone with more power over any man whatever than power
over him in respect of all things not against natural and divine law. The pope
could therefore by right deprive the king of France and every other king of his
kingdom without fault or reason, just as without fault or reason a lord can take
from his slave a thing he has let him have.” (William of Ockham 1992, 23-24)
REFERENCES
Archer, Gleason L., trans. 1958. Jerome’s Commentary on Daniel. Grand
Rapids, MI: Baker Book House.
Armour, Peter. 1989. Dante’s Griffin. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
Averroes. 2001. Decisive Treatise and Epistle Dedicatory. Trans. Charles
Butterworth. Provo, UT: Brigham Young University Press.
Barolini, Teodolinda. 1992. The Undivine Comedy. Princeton: Princeton
University Press.
Benardete, Seth. 1989. Socrates’ Second Sailing: on Plato’s Republic. Chicago:
The University of Chicago Press.
———. 2002. Encounters and Reflections. Chicago: The University of Chicago
Press.
Borges, Jorge Luis. 1999. The Last Voyage of Ulysses. In Selected Non-Fictions.
New York: Viking Press.
Burger, Ronna. 1999. Making New Gods. In Plato and Platonism, ed.
Johannes M. Van Ophuijsen. Washington, DC: The Catholic University of
America Press.
An Introduction to the Reading of Dante: Inferno, Cantos I-VII
1 5 1
Cantor, Paul. 1996. The Uncanonical Dante: The Divine Comedy and Islamic
Philosophy. Philosophy and Literature 20.
Fortin, Ernest L. 2002. Dissent and Philosophy in the Middle Ages: Dante and
His Precursors. Trans. Marc LePain. New York: Lexington Books.
Hollander, Robert. 1969. Allegory in Dante’s Commedia. Princeton: Princeton
University Press.
———. 2000. Dante: The Inferno. New York: Anchor Books.
Kantorowicz, Ernst H. 1957. The King’s Two Bodies: a Study in Mediaeval
Political Theology. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Lansing, Richard H. 1990. Dante’s Il Convivio. New York: Garland Publishing.
Lessing, Gotthold Ephraim. 1984. Laocoon: An Essay on the Limits of Painting
and Poetry. Trans. E. A. McCormick. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins
University Press.
Maimonides, Moses. 1963. The Guide of the Perplexed. Trans. Shlomo Pines.
Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.
Scofield, C. I., ed. 1984. Oxford NIV Scofield Study Bible. New York: Oxford
University Press.
Singleton, Charles S. 1973. Dante Alighieri: The Divine Comedy. Princeton:
Princeton University Press.
Strauss, Leo. 1963. Marsilius of Padua. In History of Political Philosophy, ed.
Leo Strauss and Joseph Cropsey. Chicago: Rand McNally.
Tierney, Brian. 1964. The Crises of Church and State: 1050-1300. Englewood
Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall.
William of Ockham. 1992. A Short Treatise on Tyrannical Government. Trans.
Arthur S. McGrade. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
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International Duties and Natural Law: A Comparison of the Writings of Grotius and Plato
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International Duties and Natural Law:
A Comparison of the Writings of Grotius and Plato
NAT H A N E . BU S C H
CHRISTOPHER NEWPORT UNIVERSITY
[email protected]
The fields of international relations and international law have experienced a
resurgence of interest in Hugo Grotius’s doctrines of just war theory and natural
law, as scholars have become increasingly aware that the positivist traditions of
international law do not sufficiently address such issues as humanitarian interventions or anticipatory self-defense. But even though scholars often cite Grotian
natural law as a supplement to or replacement of positivist law, they have seldom
examined the theoretical underpinnings of Grotius’s conceptions of natural law
itself. This paper analyzes difficulties with Grotius’s natural law doctrines, which
especially come to light when compared with the teachings on justice, human
sociality, and international relations in Plato’s Republic.
In recent years, there has been a resurgence of interest in just
war theory and natural law among legal scholars and scholars of international
relations. As Randy E. Barnett recently put it, “We are in the midst of a natural
law revival” (1995, 93). Scholars have become increasingly aware that the positivist tradition in legal theory—which grounds international duties and
obligations solely on treaties—is unable to address ongoing challenges and
moral dilemmas in international relations, from humanitarian interventions to
preemptive and preventive military strikes. Especially in the aftermath of the
NATO intervention into Kosovo (which took place without the approval of the
United Nations Security Council), the U.S. military operations in Afghanistan
and Iraq, and the ongoing ethnic cleansing in the Darfur region of Sudan,
scholars have increasingly turned to natural law as a moral and legal justification for international actions and foreign policy (see, for example, Nardin
2004; Hall 2001; Bellamy 2004; Rychlak 2004; Coverdale 2004; Davenport
2005; Johnson 2005; Adams 1993; Donnely 2006).
©2008 Interpretation, Inc.
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One of the primary theorists to whom contemporary scholars
have turned for a discussion of just war and natural law is Hugo Grotius, whose
arguments were laid out in his major treatise, The Law of War and Peace (for
just a few of these instances, see Elshtain 2005, 753; Nardin 2004, 15–16; Fixdal
and Smith 1998; Magenis 2002; Saunders and Mantilla 2002; Bradford 2004,
1433–34). Grotius argues that human nature, specifically our natural human
sociality, links everyone together in an international society. According to
Grotius, this sociality gives rise to a natural law, which defines states’ obligations and ought to guide their actions in the international realm.
In this return to Grotian conceptions of natural law, however,
neither the proponents nor the critics of the return sufficiently engage the theoretical foundations of Grotius’s natural law doctrine. Proponents too often
turn to Grotius’s thought as a convenient means of supporting their arguments, while critics too often simply dismiss Grotius’s natural law doctrines
without addressing his understanding of human sociality (Binder 1999, 217).
Despite the renewed interest in, and application of, Grotius’s thought to international relations and legal scholarship, a more systematic engagement of the
theoretical underpinnings of Grotian natural law is necessary if one is either to
accept or reject his teachings.
A natural starting point for this theoretical examination of
human sociality would lie in the thought of the classical political philosophers,
not least because Grotius draws his greatest inspiration from the classical foundations of Socratic political thought, referring repeatedly to the writings of
Aristotle, Plato, and Cicero and drawing heavily on their notions of man as a
naturally social animal (Pangle and Ahrensdorf 1999, 162; for the decisive discussion of the connection of Cicero to Socratic political thought, see Strauss
1953, 153–56). And, yet, it is precisely the classical notions of human sociality
that provide the greatest contrast with, and challenge to, Grotius’s thought. As
Leo Strauss notes in Natural Right and History, although classical notions of
natural right begin with the idea that man is “by nature a social being,” the kinship that men feel for one another as a result of this sociality is by nature
limited: man’s “power of love or of active concern is by nature limited; the limits of the city coincide with the range of man’s concern for nonanonymous
individuals” (1953, 129, 131). As Strauss thus elaborates, while the Socratic
philosophers would have likely agreed with Grotius that humans are naturally
social, they suggest that our sociality at most extends to concern for our own
society, and not for humanity as a whole (an apparent exception is Cicero; but
see Addendum 1). Insofar as our duties arise from our natural sociality, then,
International Duties and Natural Law: A Comparison of the Writings of Grotius and Plato
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the classical philosophers would suggest that states are not obliged to be just
toward each other.
Perhaps the clearest elaboration of this Socratic challenge
to Grotian conceptions of natural law can be found in the works of Plato. In particular, in the Republic, Plato’s dialogue on justice, we see an elaboration of
human psychology that includes a presentation of thumos, or love of one’s own,
which constrains our feeling of kinship primarily to “nonanonymous individuals” (Strauss 1953, 131; see also Arnhart 1998, 146; Bloom 1968, 349-51; and
Pangle 1988, 452-55). The political implications of thumos are revealed in the
best or most just city that Socrates and his two young interlocutors go to great
lengths to create. It turns out that even in this best city, justice consists almost
exclusively in what I will call “internal justice”—that is, each part performing its
appropriate function within the city. In his very definition of justice, therefore,
Plato’s Socrates implicitly rejects Grotius’s attempt to apply natural law to the
international realm. As I will argue, a primary reason for Socrates’ limitation of
justice in the city arises from his understanding of thumos.
To be sure, however, Plato’s Socrates is far from being an
advocate of genocide or ruthless aggression; his recommendations for foreign
policy are not guided by natural law, but they are nevertheless humane. For
Socrates’ view of foreign policy, and of politics in general, is elevated by his
understanding of the end of politics. Politics, for Socrates, aims at the cultivation of the good life, understood as moral or philosophic virtue. Yet, as I hope
to show, this elevated end for political life is perfectly compatible with, and may
even necessitate, a limitation of our duties in the international realm.
In the following discussion, I will begin by outlining the reemergence of natural law doctrines in current debates on international law.
Part II will examine Grotius’s basic precepts on natural law, the law of nations,
and just war, and show how his conclusions about foreign policy follow from
these precepts. Part III will then explain the grounds of a Platonic disagreement
with the Grotian teaching and analyze the extent to which the arguments in the
Republic reveal the limitations in Grotius’s foundation for international duties.
Finally, I will discuss the implications of this analysis for current debates on
natural law.
I. A R E -E M E R G E N C E O F N AT U R A L L AW
IN LEGAL THEORIZING
Natural law dominated legal thinking on international law for
centuries, beginning with the Roman incorporation of natural law to rule its
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empire, the Catholic Church’s doctrines of natural law encapsulated in St.
Thomas Aquinas’s writings, and later, in the 1600’s, especially with Grotius—
the so-called “father” of modern international law. Beginning in the eighteenth
and nineteenth centuries, however, natural law began to fall out of favor and
was largely replaced by legal “positivism”—the grounding of international
duties in treaties and other commitments voluntarily entered into by sovereign
states (Nardin 2004, 17; Hall 2001, 271–84).
This positivist tradition has, however, consistently encountered serious theoretical and practical difficulties, especially in binding states to
international duties. As Stephen Hall notes, the transition from natural law to
exclusively positivist law has created a “crisis of identity” for international law,
resulting from “legal positivism’s radical refusal to acknowledge the juridical
character of any object which is not sourced to an act of sovereign will located
in history. In particular, it expels from the realm of legal thought those pre-positive juridical norms of the natural law, from which the positive law draws all its
authority” (2001, 271; cf. Hollis 2005, Joyner 2002). The core of the problem
cited by legal scholars is that positivist law, including the legal framework
encapsulated by the United Nations, centers almost exclusively on the idea of
national sovereignty (Charter of the United Nations 1945, Article 2:7). This
sovereignty gives states exclusive authority over their own territory and largely
prevents any kind of external interventions into their territory—including
those intended to prevent widespread human rights abuses within a state or
those aimed at eliminating a growing threat to other states—unless the state
has signed a treaty explicitly allowing such interventions. And, obviously, no
state would voluntarily sign such a treaty. Given these limitations in positivist
international law, a number of scholars have returned to the just war tradition
and notions of natural law in efforts to better address and clarify duties in the
international realm (Nardin 2004, 11–28; Bellamy 2004, 131–47; Adams 1993,
271; Coverdale 2004, esp. 222, n.1).
For example, Jean Bethke Elshtain turns to the just war tradition to justify the U.S. actions in the Global War on Terrorism, arguing that the
use of military power to combat terrorism and to aid in humanitarian interventions not only serves the U.S. interests, but is also morally justified by
natural law (2003; 2005). Similarly, Fixdal and Smith argue that the just war
tradition is “able to encompass most of the main arguments in the current
humanitarian intervention literature and, thus, that the debate on humanitarian intervention would benefit from a more explicit use of this framework”
(1998, 285).
International Duties and Natural Law: A Comparison of the Writings of Grotius and Plato
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International lawyers have also looked to natural law as
a grounding for anticipatory self-defense, or preemption. For example, Sean D.
Magenis argues for the superiority of the natural law tradition over that of positive law: “Any valid system of international law cannot deny the inherent right
of self-defense. The inherent right of self-defense includes the right of anticipatory self-defense and reprisal. A natural law system allows both anticipatory
self-defense and reprisal while ‘positivist’ international law does not. Therefore,
natural law is superior to positivism in the field of international law on the use
of force” (2002, 434).
The justification for anticipatory self-defense becomes more
controversial, however, when it comes to preventive strikes, which are intended
to eliminate an adversary’s capability to strike before the adversary has fully
acquired that capability (i.e., while the adversary is stockpiling weapons, developing weapon systems, etc.). But on this subject as well, legal scholars have
turned to Grotius’s just war doctrine to justify their arguments. For example,
Steven Barela argues that the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003 did not conform to
Grotius’s notions of just war because Grotius only defends preemptive strikes
when an expected attack is imminent, and Iraq posed no imminent threat
(2004). On the other hand, William Bradford argues that Grotian conceptions
of natural law actually justify the U.S. invasion of Iraq. Given that today’s world
has weapons of mass destruction that can be delivered without prior warning,
Bradford maintains that it would be too late to engage in a preemptive strike
when that threat became imminent. He therefore argues that the United States
was justified in using not only preemptive force, but also preventive force to eliminate Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction programs (2004). Similarly, Jacob
Knepper argues that the doctrine of preemption laid out in the 2002 National
Security Strategy of the United States of America largely fits with Grotius’s theories of just war, even though it expands the notion of preemption to include
preventive strikes (2004).
It is clear from the above discussion that natural law and the
just war tradition have made a comeback in legal theorizing, and that Grotius’s
writings are frequently cited as an alternative to the positivist legal tradition. But
too often, proponents of this alternative have focused exclusively on whether or
not particular actions are justified by the natural law—or, more troublingly, they
appear to resort to natural law merely because no other tradition can support
actions they believe strongly in—without sufficiently examining the deeper,
theoretical underpinnings of natural law itself. In the next section, we will
therefore examine the foundations of Grotius’s natural law doctrines.
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II. G ROTIUS ’ S C ONCEPTION OF THE L AW OF NATURE ,
THE L AW OF N ATIONS , AND I NTERNATIONAL D UTIES
In The Law of War and Peace, Grotius presents his just war
doctrine, which says that a state has the right to engage in warfare, but only if
the war is just, or lawful. This doctrine is based mainly on the premise that man
is rational and social by nature. In the preface, or Prolegomena, to his work,
Grotius begins by arguing against philosophers such as Carneades, who say
that there is no such thing as natural justice. Carneades argues that men are
naturally self-interested, and laws are merely created in order to help them to
achieve their self-interest. Grotius responds quite strongly to this argument
because it implies that there are no duties in the international realm (nor,
in fact, in the domestic realm). For if laws are created for the sake of our
self-interest, we are fully justified in violating the laws when they no longer
serve our interest (Grotius 1925, Prolegomena [P], 5). While Grotius does
think that it is in the long-term interest of every state to obey international
laws, he nevertheless thinks it is necessary to ground the obedience to law on
duty, rather than mere self-interest (P, 18). He attempts to accomplish this by
referring to human nature (Pangle and Ahrensdorf 1999, 162–63).
Men, Grotius argues, are not only inclined to look to their
own advantage; because they are naturally social, they desire the company of
others and care for others. Grotius explains this sociality most clearly in his
Prolegomena: “among the traits characteristic of man is an impelling desire for
society, that is, for social life—not of any and every sort, but peaceful, and
organized according to the measure of his intelligence, with those who are of
his own kind” (P, 6). The natural desire for society, Grotius argues, is the source
of natural law: “For the very nature of man, which even if we had no lack of
anything would lead us into the mutual relations of society, is the mother of the
law of nature” (P, 16). And this natural law extends to the relations among
states, since man’s natural sociality is not limited to the borders of his own
state. Natural law is thus the basis for our moral duties, both domestically and
internationally (P, 8).
There certainly is a great deal to this argument. We do desire
company (and feel lonely when this desire is not satisfied) and we are often
sincerely concerned with the welfare of others. It therefore makes some sense to
side with Grotius against Carneades. But it is one thing to admit that we are
social, and another to say that this sociality causes us to care for all of humanity. It is worth examining Grotius’s description of our sociality carefully, since it
is his foundation for our international duties. In the statement quoted in the
International Duties and Natural Law: A Comparison of the Writings of Grotius and Plato
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preceding paragraph, Grotius says that man desires life in a “peaceful and
organized” community, with those “of his own kind.” Grotius makes two
assumptions in this statement. First, men must be able to identify with everyone else enough to consider them to be “their own.” If not, then our sociality
actually limits our spontaneous concern for all of humanity. And second,
it must be possible to conceive of the world as a “peaceful and organized”
international community. If this is not the case, then our sociality might incline
toward other political associations, such as the state, which are “peaceful and
organized,” and can thus more properly be called a “community.” These two
assumptions are important, for they are the very assumptions with which
Plato’s Socrates appears to disagree. Grotius, however, thinks that both of these
are possible and that our sociality therefore does extend to the international
realm. This becomes clear in Book I, where Grotius presents a detailed
discussion of the various types of law and shows how they apply to international relations.
Grotius’s discussion of the different types of law
Although Grotius lays out three different meanings of the
word “law” [ius] in Book I, there is one main principle underlying all—that
man is a rational and social animal. His first definition of law is simply that
which is just, or more specifically, that which is not unjust (I.i.3). Although this
definition does constitute a significant lowering of the Socratic conception of
justice as human flourishing (Pangle and Ahrensdorf 1999, 163–64; Forde
1998, 640–41), Grotius nevertheless grounds his notion of justice (and injustice) on human reason and sociality (I.i.3). Our reason tells us whether a given
practice is opposed to the nature of society by determining whether it accords
with a general principle: if the practice were general, “human society and the
common good would of necessity be destroyed” (ibid.). And, as Grotius adds,
the reason why we should be just is because we are naturally social. Thus,
because of our social nature, we avoid certain actions because they are inconsistent with a healthy society. As he quotes approvingly from Seneca, “men
refrain from injuring one another because we are born for community of life.
For society can exist in safety only through the mutual love and protection of
the parts of which it is composed” (ibid.).
On the basis of this first signification of law, Grotius says there
are two kinds of social ties, those based on equality, among for example “brothers,
or citizens, or friends, or allies,” and those based on pre-eminence, such as
those “between father and children, master and slave, king and subjects, God
and men.” Justice incorporates both of these types of social relations: “so there
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is one type of that which is lawful applying to those who live on an equality,
and another type applying to him who rules and him who is ruled, in their
relative positions” (ibid.).
The second meaning of the word law, or right, arises from the
first. It is “a moral quality of a person, making it possible to have or to do something lawfully” (I.i.4). These privileges are derived from the two types of social
ties, equality and pre-eminence, that are governed by the first law. Thus, this
conception of legal right “includes power, now over oneself, which is called
freedom, now over others, as of that of the father (patria potestas) and that of
the master over slaves” (I.i.5). In addition, this right includes the freedom we
have to possess and use property. So this second definition grants us certain
“private” rights, as individuals, which other individuals and the public are
obligated to respect. The public, however, has certain “superior” rights, “since
they are exercised by the community over its members, and the property of its
members, for the sake of the common good” (I.i.6).
The third meaning of the word law is “a rule of moral actions
imposing obligation to what is right” (I.i.9). Grotius divides this third kind
of law into two categories, natural law and volitional (or positive) law, and
discusses each in turn. Natural law is supported both by principles of reason
and by God:“the law of nature is a dictate of right reason, which points out that
an act, according as it is or is not in conformity with rational nature, has in it a
quality of moral baseness or moral necessity; and that, in consequence, such an
act is either forbidden or enjoined by the author of nature, God” (I.i.10). But
this concept of law does not simply depend upon God, since Grotius argues in
his Prolegomena that the law of nature would still be valid even if there were no
God or if He had no concern for human affairs (P, 9). Nor, in fact, could God
change the law of nature if He wanted to (I.i.10). God might have been the
source of natural law insofar as He gave us our natures, but having done so,
they are no longer dependent upon His will.
The Law of Nature is proven by two types of arguments, “a
priori and a posteriori.” The a priori argument “demonstrat[es] the necessary
agreement or disagreement of anything with a rational and social nature”
(I.i.12), while the a posteriori one is based on the fact that all or most nations
agree on certain laws. Since, he says, “an effect that is universal demands a
universal cause” (I.i.12), the universal effect—identical laws in all or most
nations—must have the same universal cause—man’s social nature.
Volitional or positive laws, on the other hand, are not strictly
International Duties and Natural Law: A Comparison of the Writings of Grotius and Plato
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natural; they arise from either human or divine will. Grotius says that there are
three types of human volitional laws: (1) municipal law, which originates in
the sovereign power of the state; (2) a less extensive right, which includes the
codified rights of parents over children; and (3) the law of nations, which “has
received its obligatory force from the will of all nations, or of many nations”
(I.i.14). Men consent to these laws because proper action must be enforced,
and there is no natural means of doing so (P, 15). The volitional laws derive
their authority from consent, but the obligation to obey them actually arises
from natural law: “the mother of municipal law is that obligation which arises
from mutual consent; and since this obligation derives its force from the law of
nature, nature may be considered, so to say, the great-grandmother of municipal
law” (P, 16; see also I.i.10).
Although volitional laws make obligatory many of the precepts
of natural law, they are not identical to it. We see this, for example, in the difference between the law of nature and the law of nations. As Grotius says, the
law of nature is unchanging and (nearly) universally recognized among all
nations, while the law of nations can vary from region to region (I.i.14). There
are several ways that volitional laws can differ from the law of nature: they can
require actions that are neither commanded nor forbidden by the law of nature
(e.g. the law requiring us to drive on the right side of the road); they can forbid
actions that are allowed by the law of nature (e.g., the laws against polygamy);
and, surprisingly, they can allow actions that are specifically forbidden by law
of nature. I will return to this third difference later in my discussion.
The law of nature and international duties
After establishing his definitions of the different kinds of law,
Grotius applies them to international relations. This is the subject of Book I,
chapter 2, “Whether it is Ever Lawful to Wage War.” He bases his arguments
largely on Cicero’s discussion in De Finibus. Cicero says that “first principles of
nature [are] those in accordance with which every animal from the moment of
its birth has regard for itself and is impelled to preserve itself” (I.ii.1). Grotius
agrees with Cicero that “it is one’s first duty to keep oneself in the condition
which nature gave to him” (I.ii.1; see Addendum 2). These first principles of
nature are wholly in accordance with warfare. In fact, it seems, they would
justify not only defensive wars, but also offensive ones:“In the first principles of
nature there is nothing which is opposed to war; rather, all points are in its
favor. The end and aim of war being the preservation of life and limb, and the
keeping or acquiring of things useful to life, war is in perfect accord with those
first principles of nature” (I.ii.1, emphasis added).
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But Cicero adds that these first principles are not the only
principles of nature. Secondary impulses later arise in us, which ought to take
precedence over the primary ones: “there follows a notion of the conformity of
things with reason, which is superior to the body. Now this conformity, in
which moral goodness becomes the paramount object, ought to be accounted
of higher import than the things to which alone instinct first directed itself”
(I.ii.1). These secondary impulses arise from our rational and social nature,
and forbid actions that go against this nature. Grotius concludes that “Right
reason...and the nature of society...do not prohibit all use of force, but only that
use of force which is in conflict with society, that is which attempts to take away
the rights of another” (I.ii.1). And since man’s sociality extends beyond the
borders of one’s state, these natural laws ought to govern relations among
states. Grotius approves of Themistius’s statement that “kings who measure up
to the rule of wisdom make account not only of the nation which has been
committed to them, but of the whole human race, and that they are, as he himself says, not ‘friends of the Macedonians’ alone, or ‘friends of the Romans,’ but
‘friends of mankind’” (P, 24).
Grotius argues that there are such things as just wars, but they
must correspond with the principles of law that he has laid out. There are
therefore two kinds of just war: (1) in defense of one’s rights, such as life and
property, and (2) to correct abuses in others, even if they don’t directly affect
oneself (II.xxv.1; see also Cutler 1991, 46; Bull 1971, 171). Aggressive wars which
attempt to take away the rights (including the property) of others are forbidden,
since they are in conflict with society. As Grotius again quotes Cicero: “if every
one of us should seize upon the possessions of others for himself and carry off
from each whatever he could, for his own gain, human society and the community of life would of necessity be absolutely destroyed” (I.ii.1). But both
defensive wars and offensive wars in defense of rights are justified, since they are
in accordance with both the primary and secondary principles of nature.
Grotius does not, however, say that a state is justified in using
use any means necessary to allow it to win these wars: “Least of all should that
be admitted which some people imagine, that in war all laws are in abeyance.
On the contrary war ought not to be undertaken except for the enforcement of
rights; when once undertaken, it should be carried on only within the bounds
of law and good faith” (P, 25). Man’s natural sociality does not disappear once
warfare breaks out. Wars must therefore be conducted within the bounds of
law, either the law of nature or the law of nations: “between enemies written
laws, that is, laws of particular states, are not in force, but…unwritten laws are
International Duties and Natural Law: A Comparison of the Writings of Grotius and Plato
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in force, that is, those which nature prescribes, or the agreement of nations has
established” (P, 26). So far, Grotius’s teaching has seemed relatively straightforward—states have the duty to obey the law of nature and the law of nations,
even during war. But this teaching is complicated by the fact that the law of
nature and the law of nations often place different obligations on nations.
Grotius’s resolution of this difficulty is by no means simple.
The relation between the Law of Nature and
the Law of Nations
Since Grotius says that the law of nature is almost universally
accepted among nations (I.i.12), one might expect that the law of nations
would never conflict with the law of nature. But in fact, that is far from being
true. Grotius even goes so far as to say that the law of nations often allows what
the law of nature forbids (III.iv.15). Even more surprising is the fact that
Grotius does not simply reject the law of nations as unjust when it conflicts
with the law of nature. Instead, he makes certain concessions to the law of
nations when these conflicts occur. Grotius addresses these cases most directly
in Book III, which discusses “what is permissible in war.” In Book III, Grotius
says that certain actions are “permissible” in war that would be forbidden in
most other cases (Forde 1998, 641–46). This permission can arise from the law
of nature or the law of nations. Certain actions are permissible by nature if they
are “necessary for the purpose of securing a right, when the necessity is understood not in terms of physical exactitude but in a moral sense” (III.i.2). Some
examples of actions that are permissible by nature are killing others if this is
absolutely necessary for the preservation of one’s life (even if the person has
actually done nothing wrong), and seizing another person’s property if it places
one in imminent danger (even if the owner did not intentionally threaten one).
Permission that arises from the law of nations is somewhat
more troubling. In these instances, the law of nations permits what the law
of nature forbids. When this occurs, Grotius argues, a state should not be
punished for following the law of nations. But this, in fact, allows some horrible
practices at times, including the rights to keep land that one takes even in an
unjust war, to lay waste to the enemies’ homes and countryside, and the right to
slaughter women, children, and even supplicants. The reason why Grotius takes
this position appears to be because he thinks “law fails of its outward effect
unless it has a sanction behind it” (P, 19; I.i.9). In these cases, it is necessary to
make concessions to the law of nations; while the law of nations allows certain
injustices, is better than no sanctioned law at all (P, 15; Forde 1998, 643, 647).
1 6 4
Interpretation
So what does this imply for the law of nature? Has Grotius
simply sided with the law of nations over and against the law of nature? No—
the law of nature is still critical for Grotius’s teaching on international relations.
As we have seen, the obligation to obey the law of nations still arises from the
law of nature (P, 15; I.i.10). Recall Grotius’s reasons for rejecting the teaching of
Carneades. If Grotius completely severed the link to the law of nature, there
would be no obligation to obey even the law of nations. But Grotius argues that
the law of nature obliges us to obey even those laws that have arisen from
human will, such as the law of nations.
Second, although certain vicious actions are permitted by the
law of nations, they are still morally objectionable. In other words, the law of
nature is still morally binding, even though a given state cannot, and should
not, be punished for following the law of nations when it allows something that
the law of nature forbids: “something is said to be permissible, not because it
can be done without violence to right conduct and rules of duty, but because
among men it is not liable to punishment” (III.iv.2). The nation, it seems,
still has a moral duty to obey the law of nature, even though it should not be
punished for following the law of nations (P, 35; Forde 1998, 644). One can
thus conclude that, while Grotius makes certain exceptions in the enforcement
of laws, the law of nature is still central to his conception of duties in the international realm. The law of nature is what keeps all duty in the international
realm (including the duty to follow the law of nations) from unraveling (Forde
1998, 644–45).
But the very fact that the law of nations often conflicts with
the law of nature points to a serious theoretical problem in Grotius’s presentation of human sociality. Grotius has tried to prove that we are naturally social
by arguing that we have a spontaneous desire for the company of others, and a
spontaneous concern for others. And he derives the natural law from this
sociality. For our duties to extend to the entire international realm, therefore,
we must have a spontaneous concern for all of humanity. But the fact that the
law of nations often conflicts with the law of nature must make one question
whether this is true. Could it be that our sociality does not, in fact, incline us
toward an equal concern for all of humanity? If this is the case, then it is hard to
see how we could ground a natural law that extends equally across all of
humanity. This is the precise issue that drives Socrates’ discussion of international politics. Socrates appears to limit our duties in the international realm
because he questions whether our sociality can expand to include all of
humanity. If we are to understand the full extent of the Socratic challenge to
Grotius, we must examine Socrates’ teaching on international relations.
International Duties and Natural Law: A Comparison of the Writings of Grotius and Plato
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III. J USTICE , H UMAN S OCIALITY, AND THE I MPLICATIONS
OF D OMESTIC C IVIC V IRTUE IN P LATO ’ S R EPUBLIC
Taken as a whole, one finds several areas of disagreement with
Grotius’s doctrines of international duties and natural law in Plato’s dialogues.
For example, several of the Platonic dialogues present a criticism of the justice
of natural law itself in the name of natural right: law, including natural law, is
too blunt an instrument to be applicable in every circumstance and, as such,
cannot consistently form the basis of just human action (see for example,
Plato’s Statesman, 271d–272b, 294a–296a; Laws, 720c–e, 861b; Strauss 1953,
146–56). The present discussion, however, will focus more directly on the arguments in the Republic that draw into question the fundamental starting points
for Grotius’s doctrines on natural law, particularly Grotius’s understanding of
human sociality and the goals of justice. In the Republic, Socrates and his two
young interlocutors, Adeimantus and Glaucon, attempt to create the perfectly
just city in speech. And yet, surprisingly, when Socrates defines the justice of
their city, he explicitly limits the city’s justice to relations inside the city’s borders, effectively ruling out international duties. As we will see, the reasons for
this limitation of justice arise from the natural limits of human sociality and
the necessary requirements for justice inside the city. Given the centrality of
these notions for Grotius’s doctrines of natural law, Plato’s Republic presents a
fundamental challenge to Grotius’s arguments.
The definition of justice in the Republic
In order to understand the political teaching in the Republic,
we must begin with Socrates’ definition of justice. At 433a, Socrates defines justice as the proper arrangement of the parts of a whole. This definition applies
both to the city and the individual. In the city, this means that “each one must
practice one of the functions of the city, that one for which his nature made
him most naturally fit” (433a). Socrates and his interlocutors agree that the citizens will have three different natures, making them fit for three corresponding
functions within the city: the “golden” natures will be the rulers;
the “silver” ones, the soldiers; and the “bronze,” the artisans. The city will be
just, therefore, if these three classes perform their functions well. As for the
individual, justice requires that the parts of the soul perform their functions
well: reason must rule; thumos or spiritedness must help reason do so; and
desire must obey the rule of reason (441e–442a). In no case, however, does this
doctrine suggest that there is a natural “whole” larger than the city. Political justice is entirely concerned with the proper functioning of the city’s internal parts.
1 6 6
Interpretation
This definition of justice has serious and far-reaching
implications for international relations. By limiting justice to the city and the
individual, Socrates implies that a state has no duties or obligations to be just
to other states. These implications will be explained in the course of the
discussion below. Yet it is appropriate to begin by asking why Socrates puts
forward the limited definition that he does. Why, in other words, does he
implicitly deny what Grotius strongly asserts—that one can consider a ‘whole’
to encompass every state in the international sphere, or even all of humanity?
Socrates gives essentially two arguments showing that beyond the city there is
no natural whole on which obligations can be based. In the sections that
follow, I will show how these arguments develop in the pages of the Republic
leading up to Socrates’ official definition of justice.
Socrates’ reasons for limiting justice to the city
Let us first try to get our bearings. It will be useful if we
summarize the political exigencies, foreign and domestic, that in Plato’s view
must be addressed by any sound analysis of political justice. One such exigency
is the city’s foreign relations, which prominently (and perhaps surprisingly)
affect the city almost from the city’s inception. These foreign relations are
introduced in Book II, after Glaucon rebels against the first city they create
(372d ff.). Socrates and Adeimantus have just finished creating a city which is
directed towards the satisfaction of only our basic bodily needs. The men of
this city join together because they cannot provide for these needs alone, and
they trade for those products they do not have. Glaucon is disgusted with this
city, however, dismissing it as a city of sows (372d). What he wants is a city
which pursues more than merely the necessary; he wants a luxurious city
(372e). Such a city introduces infinite desires, and will therefore need to take
money and land from other cities. As Socrates asks, “Then must we cut off a
piece of our neighbors’ land, if we are going to have sufficient for pasture and
tillage, and they in turn from ours, if they let themselves go to the unlimited
acquisition of money, overstepping the boundary of the necessary?” (373d).
Since the desires are “unlimited,” the city will not just cut off one piece of land
from its neighbor and expand no more. If the city has unlimited desires, then
its expansion is potentially infinite. This, Socrates says, is the origin of
war (373e). Because the city will engage in warfare, it will need spirited, or
thumotic, soldiers both to attack other cities and to defend their city from
attackers. Thus, not only do foreign relations affect this city almost from the
start, but these foreign relations are characterized above all by warfare. Now
that we have established the background for the discussion, we are ready to
International Duties and Natural Law: A Comparison of the Writings of Grotius and Plato
1 6 7
examine Socrates’ two arguments about why justice cannot be extended to the
international realm.
a. The natural limits of love of one’s own
To state this argument simply, Socrates suggests that there is a
natural limit to man’s sociality which at most inclines one to devote oneself to
a city, but not beyond. Man’s sociality is limited because (when considered
from the politically decisive standpoint) it stems from that part of human
psychology which Socrates calls thumos, and thumos is naturally limited. What
exactly is thumos? The term is hard to define, but roughly speaking, it is the
source of anger, most forms of courage, and the love of one’s own. Thumos
makes its first appearance in the Republic with the soldiers of the city. Although
thumos is presented as an element in every human soul (435e–436b), the soldiers must be especially thumotic because they will need to defend their own,
their city, and fight everyone else. But once soldiers are introduced, they
become the source of a great deal of trouble for the city. For Socrates and
Glaucon are now faced with the problem of making the soldiers just. Socrates
poses the problem: “with such [thumotic] natures, how will [the soldiers] not
be savage to one another and the rest of the citizens…? [T]hey must be gentle
to their own and cruel to their enemies” (375b). Socrates points out, however,
that thumos actually helps to keep the soldiers from turning on their own: “You
know, of course, that by nature the disposition of noble dogs is to be as gentle
as can be with their familiars and people they know and the opposite with
those they don’t know” (375e). Thus, we can see the source of a natural limit to
justice: as fundamentally thumotic, the soldiers, and in fact all men, are naturally gentle only to their own, the people they know. Grotius himself points to
man’s thumotic nature when he says that man desires society only “with those
who are of his own kind” (P, 6). But in this discussion, Socrates highlights both
the political opportunities and the political limitations arising from thumos.
Of course, Socrates does not suggest that thumos alone is
sufficient for making the soldiers in his city just to their fellow citizens. It must
be guided and reinforced or else it will give rise to conflict within the city. For
this reason, much of their subsequent discussion is spent finding additional
ways to keep the soldiers in check; otherwise they will look to their own
advantage, even at the expense of the rest of the city. It is for this reason that
Socrates introduces the rigorous education of the guardians to virtue (376c),
the communism of property (416c-d), and the main reason for avoiding
excessive wealth and poverty in the city (421d–422a; see also Plato’s Laws,
1988, 744d). But thumos is the natural foundation which all these institutional
1 6 8
Interpretation
structures are intended to guide and support.
Socrates lays particular emphasis on the city’s need to be
neither too big nor too small if the citizens are to love each other as their own
rather than divide into hostile factions. At 423a, Socrates has just finished
explaining how every other city is actually more than one city, since they are all
divided into many different factions. Their own city, on the other hand, will be
the “biggest,” since it will not be divided into many cities. Socrates then says
that they must not make their city too large, or it will divide into factions. He
therefore concludes that “this would be the fairest boundary for our rulers; so
big must they make the city, and, bounding off enough land so that it will be of
that size, they must let the rest go” (423b). After Glaucon asks what particular
boundary he has in mind, Socrates says “I suppose this one...up to that point in
its growth at which it’s willing to be one, let it grow, and not beyond” (423b).
There seems to be a natural limit to the size of a city; it should expand until it
reaches that limit, but no further, if it is to avoid faction and civil war. At this
point in the dialogue, we have therefore come full circle from Glaucon’s initial
introduction of infinite passions into the city. If the city is to be just internally,
it must not pursue the unlimited acquisition of wealth and land.
The reason why there is a natural limit to the size of the city is
that there is a natural limit to the love of one’s own. In this discussion, Socrates
suggests that man is a social animal, but apparently denies that it is possible for
our sociality to extend to people we do not, and never will, know. Justice
requires mutual friendship and trust, something which is only possible within
one’s own city, where people know each other (Strauss 1953, 130–31). Above all
else, the citizens must consider each other to be ‘their own’ or justice completely collapses. It is primarily for this reason that the Athenian Stranger says
in the Laws: “There is no greater good for a city than that its inhabitants be well
known to each other” (738e). This is why the ancient polis, a small, restricted
community, was considered to be the only setting in which virtue could truly
flourish. Plato’s Socrates would therefore probably agree with Aristotle’s statement that the size of a city should be limited to two degrees of
separation—that is, one’s friends and one’s friends’ friends (Aristotle 1984,
1326b2–20; Strauss 1953, 130–31). We have thus seen Socrates’ sociological
reason for denying that justice can extend beyond the borders of the city: such
a conception goes against man’s nature. Men are not naturally inclined to be
just to people they do not know. If men cannot conceive of even their own city
as a ‘whole’ when it grows too large, there is no possibility that they could
conceive of many cities, or all of humanity, as a ‘whole.’ As we often hear, there
International Duties and Natural Law: A Comparison of the Writings of Grotius and Plato
1 6 9
might be only six degrees of separation dividing everyone in the world. But
Socrates suggests that civic virtue begins to collapse after the second degree.
From this argument, one can see the core of a Platonic
criticism of Grotius’s attempt to apply natural law to the international realm.
As we have seen, Grotius argues that natural law arises from our natural desire
for social companionship and a natural concern for others. And yet, he also
admits that man has a desire only for society with those “of his own kind.”
Plato’s Socrates would appear to agree with this statement, but he shows its true
political implications: it is extremely difficult, if not impossible, to expand this
love of one’s own to include all of humanity. But if this is the case, then our
spontaneous concern for all of humanity will be very weak indeed. If this
Socratic understanding of the limits to human sociality is correct, then
Grotius’s foundation for our duties in the international realm collapses.
b. The recurring threat of international conflict
The Republic also presents a second reason why the conception
of the ‘whole’ cannot be extended to the international realm. It is impossible
because the international realm is characterized by a continual threat of war.
If all cities are potential enemies of each other, there can be no coherent
conception of a whole that extends beyond the individual cities. And the most
striking feature of this argument is that even healthy cities will engage in
aggressive warfare. Although Socrates has removed (or attempted to remove)
unlimited acquisition in his city, he does not remove acquisition altogether. He
says explicitly that the city must expand to reach its natural size: “up to that
point in its growth at which it’s willing to be one [i.e., not divided by faction],
let it grow, and not beyond” (423b). Depending on the number of cities and the
extent of unoccupied land, even natural or internally just cities might need to
cut off a piece of their neighbor’s land (373d). Even if we suppose (for
now) that no cities expanded more than is healthy or natural, they would
nevertheless wage war on each other when land is limited.
But the constant threat of war becomes much worse when we
recognize that most cities will not be healthy—they will not limit their desire
for wealth and land. Socrates has already suggested that other cities will wage
war because “they let themselves go to the unlimited acquisition of money,
overstepping the bounds of the necessary” (373d). Even though Socrates has
limited (but not eliminated) the aggressiveness of his own city by limiting its
desire for the acquisition of wealth and land, it is unlikely that other cities will
do the same.
1 7 0
Interpretation
In this second argument, we can see several reasons why
justice does not apply to the international realm. First, it is impossible to
consider the international realm to be a ‘whole.’ For it to be a whole, there
would need to be some kind of coherent, ordered, international society;
it would be ridiculous to consider a field of actual and potential enemies to
be such a whole. Second, the international realm simply does not match the
official definition of justice that Socrates gives. In each case where he has
applied the definition, in the city and the individual, there has been a wise
ruling part that governs the other parts. The international realm simply has no
ruling body to ensure that the other parts act according to the rule of wisdom.
Finally, it is unlikely that other cities will be internally just, or ruled by wise
rulers; most of them will therefore pursue infinite acquisition and war. Since
there is very little chance that such cities would perform their functions as
a part of a larger whole, justice in the international sphere breaks down. Justice
is impossible to maintain if the other states are unwilling to be ruled by
wisdom, which they almost certainly will be.
This argument gives us additional grounds for questioning
Grotius’s assumption that our sociality causes us to have a spontaneous
concern for all of humanity. Grotius has argued that man has a desire for “for
social life—not of any and every sort, but peaceful, and organized” (P, 6). But
Socrates’ second argument makes us doubt whether the international realm
can seriously be considered such a community. If this is the case, then the international realm simply cannot satisfy our social desires. We are much more
likely to associate with our individual states, which are much more peaceful
and organized. Since Grotius attempts to ground duty on our social inclinations, and these inclinations are better satisfied domestically, Grotius’s own
premises may make it impossible for our duties to expand to the international
realm.
Socrates’ specific foreign policy recommendations
In case there was any question of the implications of Socrates’
arguments, in Book IV Socrates describes the foreign policy of his city: the city
will not hesitate to use ruthless war tactics against its enemies. As we will
see, Socrates later appears to moderate the city’s warfare in important ways
(469b ff.), but the ruthless tactics described in Book IV are necessitated by the
internal requirements of the city.
In order to make their city just, Socrates and his interlocutors
have needed to limit its size and wealth. But we now encounter a serious
International Duties and Natural Law: A Comparison of the Writings of Grotius and Plato
1 7 1
problem: because their city must be relatively small and poor, it will necessarily
be weak. Adeimantus asks: “how will our city be able to make war when it
possesses no money, especially if it’s compelled to make war against a wealthy
one?” (422a). The city now finds itself in a tough predicament: the conditions
necessary for justice inside the city have made it vulnerable to external attack
by large, wealthy powers. Socrates answers Adeimantus’s challenge by arguing
that the soldiers’ military toughness will be a sufficient defense against any
attacker, especially attackers made soft and fat by their wealth. In fact, Socrates
asserts they will be able to fight with several such cities at once. Although this
initial response satisfies Adeimantus, it is terribly inadequate. Wealth does not
necessarily make a city soft; it often makes the city powerful and imperialistic.
Moreover, only a rich city can afford the expensive technologies, such as a large
navy, that are essential for successful warfare. As a citizen of Athens,
Adeimantus should have known that much (for a discussion of wealth as the
source of Athenian power, see Thucydides 1998, II.xiii). Tough, virtuous
soldiers will obviously aid in the defense of the city, but it is not clear that they
will be sufficient (see also Plato’s Laws 1988, 627a–d, 638a–b). Since Socrates’
argument that their city can defeat large, wealthy cities in open military battles
is so obviously defective, he then turns to outline more, let us say, ‘innovative’
strategies for its defense.
Socrates suggests to Adeimantus that they can combine forces
with one of their opponents to attack a third, richer, city (422d). The soldiers
will say to their attackers: “‘We make use of neither gold nor silver, nor is it
lawful for us, while it is for you. So join us in making war and keep the others’
property’” (422d). Socrates says that no city “will choose to make war against
solid, lean dogs rather than with the dogs against fat and tender sheep” (422d).
We now see why Socrates has introduced the idea of the city’s defending itself
against more than one aggressor: when the city has two attackers, the city can
join forces with one attacker against the other. But will the city always have
such an option? One must wonder what it would do if there were only one
potential enemy. In these instances it might be necessary to join with the enemy
to attack an innocent city. Socrates certainly does not rule out this option.
Socrates appears to have no reservations in encouraging
another city to undertake what most people would consider an unjust foreign
policy, namely attacking another city in order to plunder it. Granted, Socrates
never says that their own city will keep any plunder, but this is certainly not a
strategy that Grotius would recommend. Indeed, Grotius argues that “it is not
lawful to urge or press anyone to do what is unlawful for him to do” (III.i.21),
1 7 2
Interpretation
and he clearly says that it is unlawful to attack another city in order to plunder
it (II.xxii.3; P, 8). And these aren’t the only underhanded war tactics that
Socrates recommends. In response to Socrates’ first innovative suggestion,
Adeimantus says: “But if the money of the others is gathered into one city, look
out that it doesn’t endanger the city that isn’t rich” (422d–e). Socrates then
describes a second strategy. In order to keep the city they have helped from
becoming too powerful, they will team up with the poor in that city to defeat
the city’s rich, “offering to the [poor] the money and the powers or the very
persons of the others” (423a). In other words, in order to defend themselves,
they will cause a civil war in the opposing city by encouraging the poor to steal
from the rich, and even to enslave them.
Moreover, in this second defensive strategy, Socrates suggests
that they create a revolution in the other city without even considering whether
or not the city is still their enemy. After all, they were just allies. But the simple
fact that the city was threatening at one point, combined with the fact that it is
even more powerful now, is enough for Socrates to suggest inciting a civil
war. We can see very clearly the fundamental disagreement between Socrates’
and Grotius’s political recommendations. While Grotius thinks that a state is
justified in engaging in a pre-emptive attack against another city, he says that
the danger “must be immediate, and, as it were, at the point of happening”
(II.i.5). Indeed, he later re-iterates this point: “quite inadmissible is the
doctrine proposed by some that by the law of nations it is right to take up arms
in order to weaken a rising power, which, if it grew too strong, might do us
harm” (II.i.17). But this seems to be precisely what Socrates is recommending.
As Thomas Pangle concludes in his analysis of this passage, “in order to maintain its own security, the best city (and therefore, in principle, any city, or the
city as such) may have to actively undermine the security and independence of
its neighbors, and not only as a just punishment for the neighbors’ acts or plans
of injustice” (Pangle 1998, 383).
This foreign policy is a necessary result of arguments “a” and
“b” above. Because of our limited sociality and the necessity of cultivating
virtue, the just city must be small and relatively poor. And since other cities
will not be internally just, but will instead give themselves to the unlimited
acquisition of wealth and land, they will become wealthy, powerful, and
imperialistic. The just city is thus at a disadvantage when it comes to war and
will need to use ruthless defensive strategies. The conditions necessary for
justice inside the city have forced the city to engage in ruthless defensive
strategies. In short, virtue at home requires ruthlessness abroad.
International Duties and Natural Law: A Comparison of the Writings of Grotius and Plato
1 7 3
One must underscore that the most fundamental reason for
this paradoxical situation is that, for the classical philosophers, including Plato,
the goals of virtue are placed so high. As Steven Forde notes, “Grotius’s natural
law bars only clear, positive injustices, acts that are unambiguously destructive
to society” (1998, 640). This lowering of the goals of justice and the other
virtues allows Grotius to extend moral obligations farther than the Ancients
do. But, insofar as the goals of virtue aim higher than this “minimalist”
definition, the political constraints that Socrates highlights in the Republic—
particularly the need for a small, comparatively poor city—necessarily apply
and explain why Socrates limits justice to the boundaries of the city (Strauss
1953, 135-36).
But the discussion in Book IV is not Socrates’ last word on the
foreign policy of his and his interlocutors’ city. At the end of Book V, he seems
to give a very different account of how the city should engage in warfare (for a
similar recognition of the differences between the discussions of war in Books
IV and V, see Kochin 1999, 416–21, and Pangle and Ahrensdorf 1999, 39). It
might seem that in this section Socrates is now advocating justice among states
in the international realm, or more precisely among Greek cities. And this view
is partially right—Socrates does argue for gentler war policies than previously
existed. This passage is especially striking, since it seems so fundamentally
different from the previous discussion of justice in international politics found
in the Republic. Any thorough treatment of the Socratic teachings on foreign
policy will therefore need to address this section.
The discussion of war in Book V
In this discussion, Socrates attempts to change the way Greek
cities conduct warfare. His reforms stop the common practices of enslaving the
citizens of the other Greek cities (469b), plundering corpses (469e),
ravaging the countryside, and burning houses (471a). He even goes so far as to
assert that they will say that other Greeks are “by nature friends” (470c). How
do we account for this apparent change in foreign policy? Has Socrates simply
forgotten his discussion at 422a–423b? Or has he changed his mind? While
there does seem to be an attempt to soften the sharp distinction that Socrates
previously drew between his city and others, I do not think this section constitutes a retraction of his earlier discussion. While the previous discussion
focused on how to defend the city against actual or potential threats, this one
focuses on what punishments the city should administer after it has defeated its
enemy. Socrates therefore never retracts his previous war strategies: when the
city is threatened, it ought to defend itself in any way it can. But Socrates does
1 7 4
Interpretation
try to make the city less retributive after the war is over.
There is, however, a significant difference between this discussion and the ones in Books II–IV. In this discussion, Socrates explicitly
attempts to expand the love of one’s own to include the other Greek cities,
something which seemed impossible before. This expansion is accomplished
by drawing a sharp contrast between Greeks and the barbarians: “I assert that
the Greek stock is with respect to itself its own and akin, with respect to the
barbaric, foreign and alien” (470c). And this distinction is fairly convincing: the
Greek cities did share essentially the same language, religion, and culture; they
do seem very similar when one compares them to the barbarians. A Greek
would probably feel a greater kinship with a Greek citizen of another city than
with a Persian (especially when the Persians were attacking all of Greece). Thus,
as far as it goes, this does seem to be a change from the portrayal of
thumos that we saw in Books II–IV. To a certain degree, love of one’s own might
be able to include all of Greece. But one is left wondering how deep this thumotic attachment would run. The strength of the love of one’s own would
diminish as one moved out from immediate family and personal friends, to
the city, to Greece as a whole. Especially given the earlier discussion, it is
questionable whether Socrates would believe that the thumotic attachments
would be strong enough to support justice (except when faced with an
immediate threat of invasion). It is striking, for example, that Socrates actually
never says he believes that the other Greeks are by nature friends; he merely says
“we’ll say that they are by nature friends” (470c). In this section, Socrates has
done all he can to expand the love of one’s own to incorporate all of Greece, but
he might remain skeptical about how successful this attempt will be.
And, of course, he never even attempts to expand the love of one’s own to
incorporate all of humanity.
Nevertheless, we must ask why Socrates tries to implement
these reformed war strategies. If we keep the discussion of Book IV in mind, we
have reasons to doubt that he really thought that states have duties towards
each other. So why does he try to make the city more gentle towards the other
Greeks, if it is not for the sake of justice? He does clearly point one reason for
this: there is a constant threat of invasion by the barbarians. As Socrates
says, they should not enslave other Greeks because they are “well aware of the
danger of enslavement at the hands of the barbarians” (469c). Thus, while the
previous discussion took for granted that the city’s enemies would be Greek,
this discussion considers the very real threat of an invasion by the barbarians.
Indeed, in the past, Greece repelled the Persian invasion only by uniting to fight
International Duties and Natural Law: A Comparison of the Writings of Grotius and Plato
1 7 5
against it. If the Greeks consider themselves enemies, they will not be able to
unite against another invasion. When possible, then, the city should maintain
good relations with other cities. If they are to be able to unite, they must first be
able to trust each other. By softening the retribution after war, Socrates hopes
to make the Greek cities consider themselves “by nature friends” and make
victors in war “have the frame of mind of men who will be reconciled and not
always be at war” (470e). If Socrates’ city wants to escape being conquered
by the barbarians, it must be able to unite with other Greek cities. It must
therefore maintain gentler, friendlier relations with them than Greek cities
typically do (see Addendum 3).
But this is not the only reason why Socrates attempts to make
retribution gentler, since he also recommends softening retribution against the
barbarians themselves. For example, Socrates argues that Greeks
as Greeks…won’t ravage Greece or burn houses, nor will they agree
that in any city all are their enemies—men, women, and children—
but there are always a few enemies who are to blame for their
differences. And, on all these grounds, they won’t be willing to ravage lands or tear down houses, since many are friendly. (471b,
emphasis added)
Glaucon responds to this statement by attempting to re-direct their savagery
towards the barbarians:“I for one...agree that our citizens must behave this way
towards their opponents; and towards the barbarians they must behave as the
Greeks do now toward one another” (471b). But Socrates does not allow this;
he simply ignores Glaucon’s interjection. Instead, he makes a general, categorical statement, forbidding any such destruction: “So, shall we also give this law
to the guardians—neither waste countryside nor burn houses?” (471b–c). Of
course, Socrates does not forbid retribution altogether. Rather than burning
the countryside, he recommends taking away the defeated enemy’s crops for a
year (470b). There must, after all, be some punishments to deter potentially
aggressive states. Nevertheless, by reducing retribution after war, Socrates
seems to want to make people more gentle, or less vicious overall. But what are
the reasons for this? Apparently, Socrates does not think that such viciousness
is healthy for the citizens of the city: simply put, the best life does not involve
infinite acquisition, warfare, retribution, or cruelty. Thus, a clear-sighted,
courageous ruler will not hesitate to use ruthless methods when forced by
necessity to defend the city, but this fact does not mean that he should encourage these qualities in his citizens. But these principles are not introduced for the
sake of justice, or duty to another city, but for the sake of his own citizens’ souls.
We must recall Socrates’ statement that he wants the victors “to have the frame
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Interpretation
of mind of men who will be reconciled and not always be at war” (470e, emphasis added). He focuses not on justice, or the evils of war itself, but on the
disposition of the victors. It is because he sees cruel, vindictive men as
unhealthy that Socrates limits retribution in war; it is not because the victors
are obligated not to punish the defeated city (see Addendum 4).
In the discussion of war in Book V, Socrates does try to make
the citizens of the city in speech (and perhaps the readers of the Republic) more
gentle than the Greeks typically were. But I have tried to show that Socrates’
reasons for presenting this teaching are not grounded in the belief that cities
have duties towards one another. One must conclude that Socrates consistently
maintains the official definition of justice that he presented in Book IV. Justice
is the proper arrangement of the parts of a whole, and the whole cannot be reliably extended beyond the city.
C O N C LU S I O N
This article attempts to show how the Platonic understanding
of human sociality undermines Grotius’s attempt to extend the dictates of
natural law to the international realm. Plato’s Socrates has shown the political
limitations that result from the natural inclination to distinguish between one’s
own—kin, friends, and country—and the rest of humanity. Grotius’s attempt
to ground our international duties on our human sociality fails for precisely
this reason.
In addition, Plato’s Socrates would likely view Grotius’s
attempt to ground international relations on natural law as simply too idealistic.
In his treatment of foreign relations, Socrates repeatedly draws attention to the
fact that states have no assurance that other states will not attack them;
there exists a perpetual—and very real—threat of war. When such conditions
prevail, states will find it necessary to use whatever means are available to
maintain their security. Grotius does make some major concessions to this idea
in his doctrine of “permissions”—states cannot be punished for violating the
law of nature when such actions are permitted by the law of nations. But he
nevertheless condemns such actions as immoral, despite the fact that such
strategies are expedient, and often absolutely necessary. Socrates, on the other
hand, suggests that a state cannot be blamed for doing what is necessary for its
survival. But he does try to limit the ruthless actions of states to times when
they are absolutely necessary. He therefore eliminates offensive wars for the
sake of infinite wealth and land, makes the city’s retribution more gentle after
war, and has the citizens of the city in speech attempt to educate other Greeks
International Duties and Natural Law: A Comparison of the Writings of Grotius and Plato
1 7 7
to adopt the same policies. Nor would he necessarily rule out intervening
to help another state, provided that there was not a significant risk. But as the
discussion in Book IV makes very clear, when a state’s vital security interests are
at stake, it need not be bound by any international duties.
Needless to say, this Platonic conception of international
relations shares a great deal with the modern “realist” school in international
relations thought, and would certainly come as a disappointment to many
natural law theorists. But given the renewed application of Grotius’s arguments
to international relations and legal theory, the Platonic challenge to Grotian
conceptions of natural law is increasingly important. If scholars are going to
incorporate Grotius’s thought into their theories of natural law, they need to
address this challenge directly.
It is also possible that, after examination, other traditions of
natural law could provide a more solid foundation for natural law than
Grotius’s. As John Coverdale notes, there are multiple traditions of natural law,
some of which are not based on the same theoretical foundations as Grotian
natural law (2004, 222–23). Despite the apparent difficulties with the Grotian
strain of natural law, it would therefore be hasty to write off natural law
altogether at this point. For example, the Catholic tradition of natural law finds
its support ultimately through divine law, rather than human sociality per se.
Alternatively, the so-called “new natural law” school grounds duties not on
human sociality but on practical reason alone (Finnis 1980; George 1992;
Discher 1999). Each of these distinct natural law traditions would need to be
examined on its own terms. And, while such an examination is beyond the
scope of this essay, such a similar critical analysis of these other natural law
traditions would be necessary if natural law is to re-establish its place in
contemporary legal scholarship.
ADDENDUM 1
Cicero presents a doctrine of natural law based on human
sociality. But even Cicero highlights this problem, the limits of sociality, in
De Finibus, the very work where he elaborates the natural law doctrine:
“a closer [fellowship] exists among those of the same nation” than among all
of humanity, “and one more intimate still among those of the same city. For
this reason our ancestors wanted the law of nations and civil law to be different”
(1994, III.69). For an extended discussion of Cicero’s distancing himself from
the Stoic natural law teaching, see Strauss 1953, 153–56.
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Interpretation
ADDENDUM 2
It is not clear how Grotius can move from the fact that one is
“impelled” to preserve oneself to a “duty” to preserve oneself. Just because one
has a natural inclination towards certain actions does not by any means imply
that he has a duty to carry out those actions. This is a theoretical difficulty, since
Grotius attempts to make the same leap between our natural inclination
towards society and a duty to look to the good of society. For additional discussions of this theoretical difficulty, see Finnis 1980, 46, and Forde 1998, 640.
ADDENDUM 3
If Socrates’ goal is to enable the Greeks to unite against a
barbarian invasion, one must ask the question: what if the other Greek cities
are unable or unwilling to unite? Socrates would likely say that it might be
necessary to make them unite, regardless of whether they agree. For reasons of
defense against the barbarians, a state might therefore need to unite the Greek
cities by force. Socrates appears to point to this necessity in the Gorgias (1998,
515a–519d). In that discussion, Socrates criticizes Pericles, Cimon, Miltiades,
and Themistocles (515c) for making the Athenian people more money-loving,
vicious, and imperialistic by leading Athens in war. But at the end of
this lengthy criticism, Socrates repeats his list and omits Miltiades (519a). The
reason for this seems to be that Miltiades, the hero of Marathon, led Athens in
a defensive war against the Persians. He indeed might have made the Athenians
more vicious, but there was no alternative; they needed to repel the Persian
attack. But what does one make of Socrates’ criticism of Miltiades’ son, Cimon,
who created the Delian League in order to unite Greece against the Persians?
Athens led the Delian League, and collected tribute from other Greek cities so
that they could keep their defenses strong enough to repel another Persian
attack. At times, Cimon even kept the cities in league by force. Over time,
the Delian League gradually became the Athenian empire. Socrates seems
to disapprove of this, but it is not clear that there was any alternative. If the
cities wanted to withdraw in spite of the continued Persian threat, defense
required Athens to use force to keep the Greek cities allied. There is no
clear line between defense and offense: when others around you are trying
to establish an empire, you might need to establish an empire yourself out of
self-defense (for similar arguments, see Aristotle 1984, 1333b15–22, and the
arguments of the Athenian envoys at Sparta in Thucydides 1998, I.75).
International Duties and Natural Law: A Comparison of the Writings of Grotius and Plato
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ADDENDUM 4
Michael Kochin similarly argues that the discussion of war in
Book V is intended to moderate the citizens of the city, but he maintains that
it also makes “war compatible with justice” (1999, 421), in part because this
gentler warfare will also “habituate other Greek cities” to refrain from enslaving
Greeks and using other brutal tactics during war (ibid., 419). While I agree that
this new war doctrine is intended to moderate the citizens, I believe that
Kochin’s account dismisses the teaching in Book IV too quickly. For one thing,
it assumes that other Greek cities will be educable, even though the citizens in
other cities lack the rigorous education and training that the guardians and
auxiliaries have received. Moreover, this new teaching never actually retracts
the ruthless and underhanded tactics employed by the city in Book IV when its
survival is threatened.
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The author would like to thank Peter Busch, Elizabeth Kaufer
Busch, Steven Maaranen, Clifford Orwin, Peter Lawler, David Welch, and an
anonymous reviewer for their comments and suggestions on earlier drafts of
this article. The views expressed in this paper are the author’s own.
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An Update of Strauss’s Notes and References...in Natural Right and History
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An Update of Strauss’s Notes and References
in the First Part of the Chapter “The Crisis of Modern
Natural Right” in Natural Right and History
FABRICE PARADIS BÉLAND
WITHERSPOON INSTITUTE, PRINCETON
[email protected]
Every serious reader of Natural Right and History has probably
already been confronted with the difficult task of consulting the passages
of Rousseau’s works referred to by Leo Strauss in the first part of the chapter
“The Crisis of Modern Natural Right.” This endeavor is made difficult by two
different things. First, given the unavailability in 1953 of the Pléiade edition
of Rousseau’s complete works in five volumes, Strauss had to refer to multiple
different editions. Those editions can prove hard to gather today. Hence, the
reader of Natural Right and History will find provided here a transposition of
all of Strauss’s references to Rousseau’s works in the aforementioned Pléiade
edition. Second, in certain cases, the information provided to us by Strauss
about the editions he used is inaccurate. In one particular case, that of Émile, he
even makes a mistake. Indeed, contrary to what he tells us, the edition of Émile
that he used is not the one from Garnier, but the one from Flammarion in two
volumes. For some of Rousseau’s works — Lettres à M. de Beaumont, Discours
sur l'inégalité, Observations (Réponse au Roi de Pologne), Dernière Réponse
(À M. Bordes), Lettre à Grimm, Lettre à Lecat, Lettre à l’abbé Raynal, Essai sur
l’origine des langues, Lettres écrites de la montagne, Préface au Narcisse —
Strauss relies on books (the first volume of Hachette’s edition of Rousseau’s
complete works, the Garnier edition of Rousseau’s Contrat Social, a collection
called Discours et Rêveries, and the Flammarion edition of the Rêveries du
Promeneur solitaire) that each contain more than one of Rousseau’s works.
Furthermore, and without mentioning it, Strauss quotes on nine occasions G. R.
Havens’ commentary on Rousseau’s First Discourse, as well as a note written by
the editor of Rousseau’s Dernière Réponse (À M. Bordes) in the first volume of
Rousseau’s complete works edited by Hachette. Those mistakes or imprecisions
©2008 Interpretation, Inc.
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Interpretation
represent an unnecessary obstacle to the comprehension of Strauss’s text, an
obstacle that the present work is intended to iron out. In what follows, the
roman numeral in parentheses after each title of Rousseau’s refers to one of the
five volumes of the Pléiade edition of Rousseau’s complete works.
(1) a) “D’Alembert” = Lettre à d’Alembert sur les spectacles, ed. Léon Fontaine
(Paris, Garnier).
➔ Lettre à d’Alembert, Paris, Pléiade, Œuvres Complètes, Tome V, 1995,
pp. 1-125.
b) “Beaumont” = Lettre à M. de Beaumont, apud Contrat Social (Paris,
Garnier ed.).
➔ Lettre à Beaumont, Paris, Pléiade, Œuvres Complètes, Tome IV, 1969,
pp. 925-1007.
c) “Confessions” = Les Confessions, ed. Ad. Van Bever (Paris, Crès, 1927). _
Les Confessions, Paris, Pléiade, Œuvres Complètes, Tome I, 1964, pp. 1656.
d) “C.S.” = Du Contrat Social ou Principes du droit politique, ed.
Halbwachs (Paris, Aubier).
➔ Du Contrat social ou Principes du Droit Politique, Paris, Pléiade, Œuvres
Complètes, Tome III, 1969, pp. 347-470.
e) “First Discourse” = Discours sur les sciences et les arts, ed. G. R. Havens
(New York/London, Oxford University Press, 1946).
➔ Premier Discours, Paris, Pléiade, Œuvres Complètes, Tome III, 1969, pp.
1-30
➔ Introduction and commentary by G.R. Havens, editor of Discours sur les
sciences et les arts (New York/London, Oxford University Press, 1946).
Henceforth quoted as Havens’ Commentary.
f) “Second Discourse” = Discours sur l’origine de l’inégalité, in Discours et
Rêveries (Paris, Flammarion ed.).
➔ Discours sur l’origine de l’inégalité parmi les hommes, Paris, Pléiade,
Œuvres Complètes, Tome III, 1969, pp. 109-223.
g) “Émile” = Émile ou de l’éducation (Two volumes, Flammarion ed.,
1937).
➔ Émile de l’éducation, Paris, Pléiade, Œuvres Complètes, Tome IV, 1969,
pp. 239-868.
h) “Hachette” = Rousseau, Oeuvres complètes, Vol. 1, ed. Lahure (Paris,
Hachette ed.)
➔ Observations. Réponse au Roi de Pologne, Paris, Pléiade, Œuvres
Complètes, Tome III, 1969, pp. 35-57. Henceforth quoted as Observations
(Answer to the King of Poland).
An Update of Strauss’s Notes and References...in Natural Right and History
1 8 5
➔ Dernière Réponse. À M. Bordes, Paris, Pléiade, Œuvres Complètes,
Tome III, 1969, pp. 71-96. Henceforth quoted as Last Answer (To Mr.
Bordes).
➔ Lettre à Grimm, Paris, Pléiade, Œuvres Complètes, Tome III, 1969, pp.
59-70. Henceforth quoted as Letter to Grimm.
➔ Lettre à Lecat, Paris, Pléiade, Œuvres Complètes, Tome III, 1969, pp.
97-102. Henceforth quoted as Letter to Lecat.
➔ Lettre à l’abbé Raynal, Paris, Pléiade, Œuvres Complètes, Tome III,
1969, pp. 31-33. Henceforth quoted as Letter to the Abbé Raynal.
➔ Essai sur l’origine des langues, Paris, Pléiade, Œuvres Complètes, Tome V,
1995, pp. 371-429. Henceforth quoted as Essay on the Origin of Languages.
i) “Julie” = Julie ou la Nouvelle Héloïse (Garnier ed.).
➔ Julie ou la Nouvelle-Héloïse, Paris, Pléiade, Œuvres Complètes, Tome II,
1964, pp. 1-745.
j) “Montagne” = Lettres écrites de la montagne, apud Rêveries du
Promeneur solitaire (Paris, Garnier ed.).
➔ Lettres écrites de la montagne, Paris, Pléiade, Œuvres Complètes, Tome
III, 1969, pp. 683-897.
k) “Narcisse” = Préface de Narcisse, apud Discours et Rêveries (Paris,
Flammarion ed.).
➔ Préface au Narcisse, Paris, Pléiade, Œuvres Complètes, Tome II, 1964,
pp. 957-974.
l) “Rêveries” = Les Rêveries du promeneur solitaire, ed. Marcel Raymond
(Lille/Genève, Giard/Droz, 1948).
➔ Rêveries du Promeneur Solitaire, Paris, Pléiade, Œuvres Complètes,
Tome I, 1964, pp. 993-1099.
(2) First Discourse (III), pp. 19-20 Narcisse (II), pp. 967-969, 971 n.; Second
Discourse (III), pp. 112-113, 113-114, 118-120; D’Alembert (V), pp. 61-62,
93-94, 121-122; Julie (II), pp. 154-156; C.S. (III), IV, 4, 8; Montagne (III),
pp. 880-882. No modern thinker has understood better than Rousseau the
philosophic conception of the polis : the polis is that complete association
which corresponds to the natural range of man’s power of knowing and
of loving. See especially Second Discourse (III), pp. 111-113 et C.S. (III), II,
10.
(3) First Discourse (III), pp. 7 n., 11-12 n., 22. “On me reproche d’avoir affecté
de prendre chez les anciens mes exemples de vertu. Il y a bien de l’apparence que j’en aurais trouvé encore davantage, si j’avais pu remonter
plus haut” in Observations (Answer to the King of Poland) (III), p. 42.
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Interpretation
(4) The classic formulation of this interpretation of Rousseau is to be found in
Kant’s “Idee zu einer allgemeinen Geschichte in weltbürgerlicher Absicht,”
Siebenter Satz (The Philosophy of Kant, ed. by Carl J. Friedrich [“Modern
Library” ed.], pp. 123-127).
(5) C.S. (III), I, 1; II, 7, 11; III, 15; Émile (IV), 248-252, 310-312, 316; Second
Discourse (III), pp. 111-112, 189-190, 192, 207-208.
(6) First Discourse (III), pp. 5, 9-10, 12. Last Answer (To Mr. Bordes) (III), pp.
82-83: Morality is infinitely more sublime than the marvels of the understanding.
(7) First Discourse (III), pp. 14, 22; Émile (IV), pp. 605-606; Julie (II), pp. 588
ff., 698-699; Montagne (III), pp. 758-759.
(8) First Discourse (III), pp. 13-14; Second Discourse (III), p. 192; Julie (II), pp.
391-392; Observations (Answer to the King of Poland) (III), pp. 54-57:
Original equality is “the source of all virtue.” Last Answer (To Mr. Bordes)
(III), pp. 87-88: Cato has given the human race the spectacle and the model
of the purest virtue which has ever existed.
(9) Narcisse (II), pp. 968-969, 970-971, 971 n.; Émile (IV), pp. 523-524; C.S.
(III), I, 8; Confessions (I), p. 181.
(10) Observations (Answer to the King of Poland) (III), pp. 49-50, 54-57; Second
Discourse (III), pp. 112-113, 185-187; Montagne (III), pp. 837-838.
Compare the quotation from Plato’s Apology of Socrates (21b ff.) in the
First Discourse (III) (p. 13) with the Platonic original: Rousseau fails to
quote Socrates’ censure of the (democratic or republican) statesmen; and
he substitutes for Socrates’ censure of the artisans a censure of the artists.
(11) First Discourse (III), p. 30; Second Discourse (III), pp. 154-157; Émile (IV),
pp. 502-504, 522-523; Confessions (I), p. 147; Observations (Answer to the
King of Poland) (III), pp. 36-37, 41-42; Last Answer (To Mr. Bordes) (III),
pp. 91-94.
(12) This procedure is unobjectionable, since Rousseau himself said that he did
not yet reveal his principles fully in the First Discourse and that that work is
inadequate also for other reasons (Havens’ Commentary, pp. 51, 56, 92,
169-170); and, on the other hand, the First Discourse reveals more clearly
than do the later writings the unity of Rousseau’s fundamental conception.
(13) First Discourse (III), pp. 8-9, 14-15, 22-24; Narcisse (II), pp. 964 n., 966967, 971 n.; Second Discourse (III), pp. 111-113, 178-179, 211-213; C.S.
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(III), II, 8 (toward the end); Émile (IV), pp. 248-249; Gouvernement de
Pologne, chaps. ii et iii; Montagne (III), pp. 703-707 .
(14) First Discourse (III), pp. 6-7, 11-12, 17-19, 25-26; Last Answer (To Mr.
Bordes) (III), pp. 91-92; Narcisse (II), pp. 965-968; Second Discourse (III),
p. 192; D’Alembert (V), pp. 14-15, 16-17, 25; Julie (II), pp. 605-606; Émile
(IV), pp. 469-470.
(15) First Discourse (III), pp. 8-9, 15-16, 17-19, 26, 27-29; Narcisse (II), pp. 970971, 971 n.; Second Discourse (III), pp. 118-119, 193-194; C.S. (III), II, 7;
Confessions (I), pp. 391-392. Observations (Answer to the King of Poland)
(III), p. 46 n.: “Ce serait en effet un détail bien flétrissant pour la philosophie, que l’exposition des maximes pernicieuses et des dogmes impies de
ses diverses sectes […] y a-t-il une seule de toutes ces sectes qui ne soit
tombée dans quelque erreur dangereuse? Et que devons-nous dire de la
distinction des deux doctrines, si avidement reçue de tous les philosophes,
et par laquelle ils professaient en secret des sentiments contraires à ceux
qu’ils enseignaient publiquement? Pythagore fut le premier qui fit usage
de la doctrine intérieure; il ne la découvrait à ses disciples qu’après de
longues épreuves et avec le plus grand mystère. Il leur donnait en secret
des leçons d’athéisme, et offrait solennellement des hécatombes à Jupiter.
Les philosophes se trouvaient si bien de cette méthode, qu’elle se répandit
rapidement dans la Grèce, et de là dans Rome, comme on le voit par les
ouvrages de Cicéron, qui se moquait avec ses amis des dieux immortels,
qu’il attestait avec tant d’emphase sur le tribunal aux harangues. La doctrine intérieure n’a point été portée d’Europe à la Chine; mais elle y est née
aussi avec la philosophie; et c’est à elle que les Chinois sont redevables de
cette foule d’athées ou de philosophes qu’ils ont parmi eux. L’histoire de
cette fatale doctrine, faite par un homme instruit et sincère, serait un terrible coup porté à la philosophie ancienne et moderne.” (The italics are not in
the original.) Cf. Confessions (I), p. 468.
(16) First Discourse (III), pp. 6-7, 8, 29; Second Discourse (III), pp. 161-162; C.S.
(III), I, 6, 8; II, 7; Émile (IV), pp. 248-251.
(17) First Discourse (III), pp. 11-12, 15-16, 17, 20-21, 30; Narcisse (II), pp. 965966; Second Discourse (III), pp. 189-190; C.S. (III), I, 9 (end); Observations
(Answer to the King of Poland) (III), p. 46 n.
(18) First Discourse (III), pp. 5-6, 17, 21-22, 26-27, 29-30; Narcisse (II), pp. 960961, 968-969.
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Interpretation
(19) First Discourse (III), p. 3 (cf. Havens’ Commentary, pp. 38, 46, 50); Narcisse
(II), pp. 968-969, 971-973, 974 n.; Second Discourse (III), pp. 112-113, 114115, 177-178, 179-180, 184, 184-185, 187-188, 191; Julie (II), Preface
(beginning); C.S. (III), I, 1; Beaumont (IV), pp. 966-968.
(20) First Discourse (III), pp. 3, 9 n., 13-14, 15, 19, 26-27, 28-30; Havens’
Commentary, p. 227; Letter to Grimm (III), pp. 60-61, 64-65; Observations
(Answer to the King of Poland) (III), pp. 36-37, 38-40, 41-42; Last Answer
(To Mr. Bordes) (III), pp. 71 [Strauss quotes here a note written by the
editor of Rousseau’s Complete Works published by Hachette (page 47, note
1), which goes as follows: “Rousseau n’a répondu à Bordes qu’une seule
fois; mais il avait déjà répondu au Roi de Pologne. Il appelle cette réponse
dernière réponse, pour avertir qu’il ne répondra plus à personne”], 72-73,
77-79; Letter to Lecat (III), p. 102; Second Discourse (III), pp. 132-133, 212213, 217-218; D’Alembert (V), pp. 6-7; Beaumont (IV), pp. 966-967;
Montagne (III), pp. 727-729, 782-783, 871-872. A critic of the First
Discourse had said: “On ne saurait mettre dans un trop grand jour des
vérités qui heurtent autant de front le goût général …” Rousseau replied
to him as follows: “Je ne suis pas tout-à-fait de cet avis, et je crois qu’il faut
laisser des osselets aux enfants”. (Letter to the Abbé Raynal (III), p. 33; cf.
Confessions (I), p. 407). Rousseau’s principle was to say the truth “en toute
chose utile” (Beaumont (IV), pp. 967-968, 994-995; Rêveries (I), IV); hence
one may not only suppress or disguise truths devoid of all possible utility
but may even be positively deceitful about them by asserting their
contraries, without thus committing the sin of lying. The consequence
regarding harmful or dangerous truths is obvious. (Cf. also Second
Discourse (III), end of the First Part, and Beaumont (IV), pp. 955-956.
Compare Dilthey, Gesammelte Schriften, XI, p. 92 : “[Johannes von
Mueller spricht] von der sonderbaren Aufgabe : ‘sich so auszudrücken,
dass die Obrigkeiten die Wahrheit lernen, ohne dass ihn die Untertanen
verstünden, und die Untertanen so zu unterrichten, dass sie vom Glück
ihres Zustandes recht überzeugt sein möchten’ ”.
(21) First Discourse (III), pp. 6-7; Montagne (III), pp. 787-788; Confessions (I),
pp. 638-639, 649-650; Rêveries (I), V-VII.
(22) First Discourse (III), pp. 11-12 n.; Narcisse (II), pp. 966-968; Second
Discourse (III), pp. 138, 142-143, 155-156, 207-208; Julie (II), pp. 491-494;
Émile (IV), pp. 269-271, 348-349, 509-511, 534-536; Last Answer (To Mr.
Bordes) (III), p. 92: “osera-t-on prendre le parti de l’instinct contre la raison? C’est précisément ce que je demande.”
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(23) First Discourse (III), pp. 3, 5, 6, 8-9, 13-14, 15, 17, 17-18, 18 n., 18-19, 2627, 30; Observations (Answer to the King of Poland) (III), pp. 41-42;
Narcisse (II), pp. 962-963, 965-966, 970-971; Second Discourse (III), pp.
122, 124-125; Émile (IV), pp. 570, 626-627, 627; Beaumont (IV), pp. 945946. Cf. Kant, Grundlegung zur Metaphysik der Sitten, Erster Abschnitt
(toward the end).
(24) First Discourse (III), p. 8; Second Discourse (III), pp. 139-140, 145-146, 167168, 192-193, 210-211; Confessions (I), pp. 277, 638-639, 639-642,
649-650; Rêveries (I), VI (end) and VII.
(25) Confessions (I), pp. 388, 406-407.
(26) Cf. especially C.S. (III), I, 6 (beginning), which shows that the raison d’être
of the social contract is set forth, not in the C.S., but in the Second
Discourse. Cf. also C.S. (III), I, 9.
(27) Second Discourse (III), pp. 133-134. Cf. Confessions (I), pp. 404-405. Cf.
Jean Morel,“Recherches sur les sources du discours de l’inégalité”, Annales
de la Société J.-J. Rousseau, V (1909), pp. 163-164.
(28) Second Discourse (III), pp. 140-144, 164-165, 183-184, 208-209; Julie (II),
p. 684 n.*; Émile (IV), pp. 580-581, 592-593; Beaumont (IV), pp. 955-958;
Rêveries (I), III. Cf. Havens’ Commentary, p. 178.
(29) As regards the prehistory of this approach, see above, pp. 173-74 and 203-4.
(30) Second Discourse (III), pp. 123-124, 215-216.
(31) Second Discourse (III), pp. 124-125, 125-126, 138-139, 139-140, 142-144,
151-152, 153-154, 164-165, 166, 192-193; Julie (II), pp. 155-156; C.S. (III),
I, 2; II, 4, 6. Cf. Émile (IV), pp. 600-601.
(32) Second Discourse (III), pp. 156-157. Cf., C.S. (III), I (beginning);
D’Alembert (V), pp. 99-100, 101; and Confessions (I), p. 422. Rousseau was
fully aware of the antibiblical implications of the concept of the state of
nature. For this reason, he originally presented his account of the state of
nature as altogether hypothetical; the notion that the state of nature was
once actual contradicts the biblical teaching which every Christian
philosopher is obliged to accept. But the teaching of the Second Discourse
is not that of a Christian; it is the teaching of a man addressing mankind;
it is at home in the Lyceum at the time of Plato and Xenocrates, and not in
the eighteenth century; it is a teaching arrived at by applying the natural
light to the study of man's nature, and nature never lies. In accordance
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Interpretation
with these statements, Rousseau asserts later on that he has proved his
account of the state of nature. What remains hypothetical, or less certain
than the account of the state of nature, is the account of the development
leading from the state of nature to despotism, or “the history of governments.” At the end of the First Part of the bipartite work, Rousseau calls
the state of nature a “fact”: the problem consists in linking “two facts given
as real” “by a sequence of intermediate and actually or supposedly
unknown facts”. The given facts are the state of nature and contemporary
despotism. It is to the intermediate facts, and not to the characteristics of
the state of nature, that Rousseau refers when he says in the first chapter
of the C.S. that he does not know them. If Rousseau’s account of the
state of nature were hypothetical, his whole political teaching would be
hypothetical; the practical consequence would be prayer and patience and
not dissatisfaction and, wherever possible, reform. Cf. Second Discourse
(III), pp. 123-124, 126-127, 131, 132-135, 151-152, 161-164, 191, 192-194,
207-208; cf. also the reference to the “thousands of centuries” required for
the development of the human mind (ibid., p. 146) with the biblical
chronology; see also Morel, op. cit., p. 135.
(33) Second Discourse (III), pp. 122-124, 131-133, 138-139, 146-147, 152-154,
180-182, 202-203, 217-218.
(34) Second Discourse (III), pp. 122-126, 138-139, 142-144, 151-152, 169-170,
170-171, 216-217; cf. also Condorcet, Esquisse d’un tableau historique des
progrès de l’esprit humain, Première époque (beginning).
(35) Second Discourse (III), pp. 124-126, 150-151, 154-157; cf. also Émile (IV),
pp. 505-506.
(36) Second Discourse (III), pp. 125-126, 136, 138-139, 145-147, 151-152, 154157, 161-162, 166, 169-171, 189-190, 192-193, 198-200, 202-204, 207-208,
218-220.
(37) Second Discourse (III), pp. 134-135, 138, 141-143, 146-147, 148-149, 149150, 152-154, 155-156, 157-158, 160-161, 164-165, 199-200, 210-211. Morel
(op. cit., p. 156) points in the right direction by saying that Rousseau
“substitue à la fabrication naturelle des idées générales, leur construction
scientifiquement réfléchie” (cf. above, pp. 172-74). In Rousseau’s model,
Lucretius’ poem (V, 1028-1090), the genesis of language is described without any reference to a genesis of reason: reason belongs to man’s natural
constitution. In Rousseau, the genesis of language coincides with the genesis
of reason (C.S. (III), I. 8; Beaumont (IV), pp. 935-936, 950-951).
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(38) Rousseau’s contention that man is by nature good is deliberately ambiguous. It expresses two incompatible views — a rather traditional view and a
thoroughly anti-traditional one. The first view can be stated as follows:
Man is by nature good; he is bad through his own fault; almost all evils are
of human origin: almost all evils are due to civilization; civilization has its
root in pride; i.e. in the misuse of freedom. The practical consequence of
this view is that men ought to bear the now inevitable evils of civilization
in a spirit of patience and prayer. According to Rousseau, this view is based
on belief in biblical revelation. In addition, natural man or man in the
state of nature, as Rousseau describes him, is incapable of pride; hence
pride cannot have been the reason for his leaving the state of nature
(a state of innocence) or for his embarking on the venture of civilization.
More generally expressed, natural man lacks freedom of will; hence he
cannot misuse his freedom; natural man is characterized, not by freedom,
but by perfectibility. Cf. Second Discourse (III), pp. 134-135, 138, 141-143,
149-150, 202-203; C.S. (III), I, 8; cf. above, n. 32.
(39) Cf. Spinoza’s criticism of Hobbes in Ep. 50 with Tr. theol.-pol., chap. iv
(beginning) and Ethics III, praef.; cf. above, chap. v, A, n. 9.
(40) Second Discourse (III), pp. 114-115, 122-124, 139-140, 142-145, 146-148,
161-162, 164-166, 168-169, 170-171, 172-173, 173, 174-175, 177-178, 179,
179-180, 184, 184-185, 187-188, 221-222; Narcisse (II), pp. 968-969, Julie
(II), p. 731 n**.
(41) Moses Mendelssohn, Gesammelte Schriften (Jubiläums-Ausgabe), II, p. 92;
cf. Second Discourse (III), pp. 132-133, and above, pp. 230-31.
(42) Cf. C.S. (III), II, 6 (see chap. iii, n. 18, above). As for the connection
between the C.S. and the Second Discourse, see nn. 26 and 32 above.
(43) Cf. C.S. (III), II, 4 and Second Discourse (III), pp. 125-126.
(44) Rousseau agrees with the classics by explicitly agreeing with the “principle
established by Montesquieu” that “liberty not being a fruit of all climates,
is not within the reach of all people” (C.S. (III), III, 8). Acceptance of this
principle explains the moderate character of most of Rousseau’s proposals
which were meant for immediate application. Deviating from
Montesquieu and the classics, Rousseau teaches, however, that “every
legitimate government is republican” ((III), II, 6) and hence that almost all
existing regimes are illegitimate: “very few nations have laws” ((III), III,
15). This amounts to saying that in many cases despotic regimes are
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Interpretation
inevitable, without becoming, by this fact, legitimate: the strangling of a
sultan is as lawful as all governmental actions of the sultan (Second
Discourse (III), p. 191).
(45) Essay on the Origin of Languages (V), pp. 380-381, Émile (IV), pp. 502-504,
521-522, 599-601.
(46) Second Discourse (III), pp. 141-142 (cf. Spinoza, Ethics, III, 9 schol.), pp.
161-162, 174-175, 181-182, 183-184, 192-193; C.S. (III), I, 1 (beginning),
4, 8, 11 (beginning); III, 9 n. (end). Cf. the headings of the first two parts of
Hobbes’ De cive; also Locke, Treatises, II, secs. 4, 23, 95, 133.
(47) “Wissenschaftliche Behandlungsarten des Naturrechts,” Schriften zur Politik
und Rechtsphilosophie, ed. Lasson, pp. 346-347: “In einer niedrigern
Abstraktion ist die Unendlichkeit zwar auch als Absolutheit des Subjekts in
der Glückseligkeitslehre überhaupt, und im Naturrecht insbesondere von
den Systemen, welche anti-sozialistisch heissen und das Sein des einzelnen
als das Erste und Höchste setzen, herausgehoben, aber nicht in die reine
Abstraktion, welche sie in dem Kantischen oder Fichteschen Idealismus
erhalten hat.” Cf. Hegel’s Encyclopädie, secs. 481-82.
(48) Second Discourse (III), pp. 151-153, 167-168, 171-172, 189-190, 202-206;
cf. also Émile (IV), pp. 502-504.
(49) Cf. n. 28 above.
(50) See pp. 172-74 above.
(51) C.S. (III), I, 6, 8; Second Discourse (III), pp. 111-112. As for the ambiguity
of “freedom,” cf. also Second Discourse (III), pp. 181-184.
(52) Second Discourse (III), pp. 111-112, 151-153, 162-165, 167-168, 170-171,
189-190, 192-193, 202-206, 219-222; Nouvelle-Héloïse (II), pp. 458-459;
C.S. (III), II, 11; III, 15; Émile (IV), p. 676.
(53) Second Discourse (III), pp. 111-112, 123-124, 125-126, 131, 155-157, 160161, 164-165, 166, 170-171, 173-174, 174-175, 178-179; C.S. (III), I, 6
(beginning), I, 2.
(54) Second Discourse (III), pp. 131-132, 153-154, 162-164, 164-165, 170-171,
173-174, 175-179, 184, 187-188, 193-194; C.S. (III), I, 2, 8, 9; II, 4, (toward
the end); Émile (IV), pp. 524-525, 841-842.
(55) C.S. (III), I, 6, 7; II, 2-4, 7; Émile (IV), pp. 248-249. The discussion of the social
contract in the Second Discourse (III) is admittedly provisional (p. 184).
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(56) C.S. (III), I, 7; II, 3, 6. Cf. ibid., II, 12 (“Division of Laws”) with the parallels in Hobbes, Locke and Montesquieu, to say nothing of Hooker and
Suarez; Rousseau does not even mention natural law.
(57) Second Discourse (III), pp. 112-113, 185-186; Julie (II), pp. 552-555; C.S.
(III), IV, 4; Montagne (III), pp. 837-838, 888-891. Cf. Rousseau’s criticism
of the aristocratic principle of the classics in Narcisse (II), pp. 965-966, and
in the Second Discourse (III), pp. 222-223.
(58) Narcisse (II), pp. 970-971; Second Discourse (III), pp. 112-114, 185-186;
C.S. (III), II, 3, 6-7; III, 2, 11. Compare the reference to miracles in the
chapter on the legislator (C.S. (III), II, 7) with the explicit discussion of the
problem of miracles in Montagne (III), ii-iii.
(59) Julie (II), pp. 588-593; C.S. (III), IV, 8; Beaumont (IV), pp. 975-976;
Montagne (III), pp. 693-710, 758-759; cf. also n. 28 above.
(60) Narcisse (II), pp. 970-971; Second Discourse (III), pp. 112-114, 122, 168169, 170-171, 192, 211-213; C.S. (III), II, 8, 10, 12; III, 1; Émile (IV), pp.
829-831; Pologne, chaps. ii-iii; cf. also Alfred Cobban, Rousseau and the
Modern State (London, 1934), p. 284.
(61) Cf. especially C.S. (III), I, 8; II, 11. Second Discourse (III), pp. 170-172, 192;
Julie (II), pp. 276-277, 335-336, 338-339; Émile (IV), pp. 603, 816-818;
Confessions (I), pp. 358-359, 416, 448-449, 516-517; Rêveries (I), vi.
(62) Second Discourse (III), pp. 167-168, 169-170; D’Alembert (V), pp. 106-108;
Julie (II), pp. 320-321, 399-400, 466-467, 487-488 (cf. also pp. 113-114,
193-195, 199-200, 223 n., 244-245, 334-336); Rêveries (I), x (p. 1099).
(63) Second Discourse (III), pp. 157-158, 182-183.
(64) Second Discourse (III), pp. 144-145, 164-165, 192-193, 207-208; Émile
(IV), pp. 502-503; Rêveries (I), V and VII. See above pp. 261-62.
(65) Second Discourse (III), pp. 133-134, 161-162, 170-172; Beaumont (IV),
pp. 966-967.
(66) First Discourse (III), pp. 18-19; Rêveries (I), VI (end).
(67) Rêveries (I), IV (beginning).
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Interpretation
Book Review: Aristotle and Modern Politics: The Persistence of Political Philosophy
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Aristide Tessitore, ed., Aristotle and Modern Politics: The Persistence of
Political Philosophy. Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 2002, 438
pp., $32.95.
WILL MORRISEY
HILLSDALE COLLEGE
[email protected]
By “modern politics” Aristide Tessitore means first and foremost modern liberalism, variations of which continue to flourish, despite
rumors of liberalism’s imminent demise, some of them more than two
centuries old. In recent years the debates over liberalism often center on
Aristotle, of all people, a philosopher rightly described here as “unacquainted
with modern politics” (2).
Then again, philosophers tend toward some acquaintance in
principle with every major human possibility. For example, Aristotle’s firm
critique of those who elevate the life of acquiring goods for the household
above the management of those goods after they arrive in the household stands
as an expression of reluctance toward any project such as that introduced
by Machiavelli in The Prince, which begins with an invitation to a life of acquisition. What is more, intelligent non-philosophers or would-be philosophers
or self-imagined philosophers—contributors to scholarly journals, for example
—have reached for help from Aristotle in their attempts either to shore up
modern liberalism or to bring it down, whether those attempts address the
question of the structure of political communities (liberalism vs.‘communitarianism’), the moral foundations of liberalism, or the relations between political
economy or ‘acquisition’ and government or ‘management.’ Finally, Aristotle
continues to offer guidance on the vexed question of philosophy’s relationship
to political life, a question ideologues of the past hundred years—with their
grand claims to wisdom and their often squalid, vicious effects in practice—
have sharpened to an edge that even Aristotle might be supposed unacquainted
with.
©2008 Interpretation, Inc.
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Interpretation
Another theme ought to be mentioned, however, as it haunts
many of these essays rather in the manner that the specter of communism
haunted industrializing Europe, according to Marx. Machiavelli conceived of a
political device instrumental to his politics of acquisition, namely, the state.
Centralized, bringing government to bear throughout the prince’s realm in
a way not seen since the ancient polis, and yet extending far beyond the polis
in the size of the territory it could rule; ruling with a material effectiveness
impossible for the Church; dominating hitherto independent nodes of authority such as aristocracies, towns, and provinces, the state might be formed into
one of at least two regimes—monarchy and republic. But, as it actually developed, the state folded into every regime an indispensable regime-unto-itself: a
new kind of regime of ‘the few.’ This regime-within-the-regime, required in
practice by every modern state, features a new kind of aristocracy (eventually
called `meritocracy’ and imbued with technical competence as its chief virtue)
with a new kind of oligarchy (the rule of the few who were not personally rich,
but rich by virtue of their command of the wealth of the state, and by the state’s
command, its regulation, of the wealth of the wealthy). Aristotle never saw such
a thing, but contemporary Aristotelians have, and must address it.
This is why Tessitore’s concentration on liberalism makes
sense. Insofar as political life, ruling and being ruled, finds some direct
expression in modernity, within its states, liberal states permit that life in
ways not seen in (for example) Wilhelmine Germany or today’s Russia or
China, let alone in the tyrannies that oppressed those nations for much of
the last century.
The first three essayists bring Aristotle to bear on considerations of modern liberalism and communitarianism. In his unfailingly sensible
contribution to the volume, Bernard Yack recalls Aristotle’s insistence that the
political community is in some sense `prior to’ the individuals who compose it.
He rightly observes that this priority does not support any aspiration to communal harmony; Aristotle understands political communities as scenes of
“conflict, competition, and compromise”: “just as there are peaks of virtue and
cooperation that can be found only among citizens, so there are forms of distrust, conflict, and competition that only citizens experience” (19). Aristotle
rejects the communism of Plato’s guardians, let alone “the exaggerated hopes
for moral harmony and elevated behavior associated with today’s communitarianism” (20).
Aristotle’s zoon koinonikon finds pleasure in his group, finding
in his capacity to reason a means “to see the mutual advantage to be gained”
Book Review: Aristotle and Modern Politics: The Persistence of Political Philosophy
1 9 7
from ‘groupishness.’ Human groups comprise persons who differ from each
other in some significant (at best complementary) ways but who also share
goods and dangers, establish ways to manage what they share and their mutual
relations to those things, and who bind themselves to one another by ties
of friendship and justice. But Aristotelian fathers, villagers, tribesmen, and
citizens differ from the communalists envisioned by such moderns as
Rousseau, in at least two ways. “Nowhere will you find in Aristotle’s writings
the lyric celebration that Rousseau, among others, has taught us to associate
with community. Nor will you find a discussion of Rousseau’s favorite passion,
love of country, in Aristotle’s account of the passions in the Rhetoric” (22).
Aristotle formulates no General Will; rather, it is “individual actors”—“fathers,
ship-captains, oligarchs, demagogues, or tyrants—who speak in the name of
Aristotelian communities” (23). Aristotle wants to know, Who rules?
Aristotelian friendship “means a disposition to give individuals what is good
for them,” and rests on “a sense of mutual obligation,” not an impassioned
attachment (26-26). Justice is still less a sentiment but develops rather from
long habituation and requires “extensive training and moral education” (29).
Justice derives from nature, not in the Rousseauian sense of natural sentiment
but from the distinctively human capacity to speak and to deliberate about the
good. “[W]hile many animals surpass human beings in social friendship and
mutual concern, only human beings hold each other accountable to standards
of justice” (30). Justice differs from friendship,“which involves other-regarding
actions we are ourselves disposed to perform,” because it “concerns otherregarding actions that we are disposed to demand from others” (30).
Establishing such habits of action in any community must “reflect a choice that
some individuals make and impose on others” (30); in political communities,
these are the regimes.
Thus Aristotle does not involve himself in such modern
dichotomies, fundamentally derived from Rousseau, as mechanism versus
organism, Gemeinschaft versus Gesellschaft. Not regarding human communities
as contracts among anti-social or a-social beings in a state of nature, nor
needing to respond powerfully to other thinkers who do so regard those
communities, Aristotle feels no temptation to run to the other extreme.
“Aristotle’s understanding of community cuts right across these familiar
modern dichotomies” (32).
“Communitarians have been making vain predictions about
the coming dissolution of liberal and individualistic societies since the end
of the French Revolution” (35). But the countries where modern liberalism is
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oldest give every appearance of the greatest social stability—far more so than
many communities that would hold themselves together with much stronger
social bonds. The experiences of the past two centuries provide “good reasons
for doubting that communion always arises out of community and that the
sense of belonging that communitarians seek can be anything more than a
temporary social phenomenon” (36). Aristotle would not be surprised, himself
having doubted, famously, that harmony can be reduced to a single beat.
Martha C. Nussbaum writes on “Aristotelian Social
Democracy.” This is an unusual theme, inasmuch as Aristotle more than
suspects that the many who are poor, when they rule, will (as the expression
goes) ‘soak the rich.’
Rightly observing that Aristotle “spoke about human being
and good human functioning” along with “the design of political institutions,”
and that he “connected these two levels of reflection through a certain conception of the task of political planning,” Nussbaum argues that the task of such
planning “is to make available to each and every citizen the material, institutional, and educational circumstances in which good human functioning may
be chosen; to move each and every one of them across a threshold of capability
into circumstances in which they may choose to live and function well” (47).
For Aristotle, such considerable political and material ambitions immediately
raise the question, ‘Who is a citizen?’ Nussbaum seems to take this as settled,
however, at least in the modern West. There, most residents of each country are
citizens of that country. But the debaters over immigration in Europe and
North America remind us that Aristotle’s question remains pertinent.
Public health, common meals for the poor, free and equal citizenship for all adults, the setting aside of half of privately-owned lands for
common use as in Sparta (48-49), without either the slavery or the military
aristocracy of Sparta: these begin the list, which also includes “being able to
laugh, to play, to enjoy recreational activities” and “being able to live one’s own
life in one’s very own surroundings and context” (70).“The job of government,
on the Aristotelian view, does not stop until we have removed all impediments
that stand between [the] citizen and fully human functioning” (60). The liberalism of this social democracy—its share of liberty—inheres mainly in one
feature: “The government aims at capabilities, and leaves the rest
to the citizens” (59). That is (for example), Nussbaum’s social democracy
will provide us with parks but will not force us to stroll in them. “The entire
structure of the polity will be designed with a view to these functions” (76). In
order to choose freely and prudentially citizens need coercively to frame and
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enforce a set of social and political structures in which choice can flourish (85).
With Yack, Nussbaum acknowledges Aristotle’s interest in the
way practical reasoning distinguishes human sociality from animal sociality—
indeed, how it distinguishes all non-autonomic human activities from animal
activities.“Practical reason is both ubiquitous and architectonic. It both infuses
all the other functions and plans for their realization in a good and complete
life” (72). Here, however, is where the silent presence of the modern state
begins to loom.“It is important to notice that in defending common ownership
Aristotle is not defending state ownership. Common ownership is in a very real
sense ownership by all the citizens in common, and not by some remote
bureaucratic entity” (77). “[I]t is especially difficult to foster common ownership under modern conditions of size and population,” she prudently notes,
citing as an example the worker-controlled industry (ibid.). She does not
here sufficiently reflect upon the size and bureaucratic character of modern
industrial corporations themselves, which Tocqueville already compared
to empires.
Perhaps in response to the difficulties of modern statism,
Nussbaum finds that social democracy “needs a scheme of basic rights in order
to give further definition to the concept of strong separateness,” by which she
means individuality or personal integrity (85). “In this area the Aristotelian
must diverge from Aristotle” (86). Aristotle is too paternalistic and harsh in
ways “likely to horrify most liberals” (86). He does not engage in “sustained
philosophical reflection on the limits of the law” (86).
This criticism might strike one as implausible, given the
dialogue between the citizen and the philosopher Aristotle presents in the late
chapters of the Politics and indeed given the importance for Aristotle of
the very prudential reasoning in which citizens engage—quite apart from
questions of the philosopher’s way. But Nussbaum’s dilemma really reflects the
problem of the modern state itself, the problem faced squarely by such writers
as Benjamin Constant and Tocqueville. The next essay does not take up this
problem. Susan D. Collins raises instead an ethical question, which in turn
leads to the volume’s second set of essays, on moral virtue.
Collins addresses the question of justice in Aristotle, considering not the Politics but the Nicomachean Ethics. Today’s “neo-Aristotelians”
would bring Aristotle into the camp of liberalism. In doing so, they tend to
favor one of two aspects of human life that Aristotle himself tries to balance:
virtue “as a quality of civic devotion” and virtue “as a constituent of human
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flourishing” (106). As a quality of civic devotion, justice differs “in different
political orders or regimes,” and also according to circumstances (106). The
political and the exigent can make human flourishing possible, but they can
also limit it. The magnanimous man, whose soul “comprises all the virtues and
each to the greatest degree” (107), might find his great soul limited in any
regime, even in a kingship ruled by him.
Neo-Aristotelian liberals (among whom Collins numbers the
social-democratic Nussbaum) incline to see politics and human flourishing as
mutually reinforcing, in principle if not in practice. Aristotle doubts this:
“Aristotle confronts in a full and systematic way the questions of either side of
virtue’s coin” (111). Although human beings are indeed political animals who
require the polis in order to flourish, and although politics is “the ‘authoritative’ voice with respect to the human good,” it “does not follow” that politics is
therefore “the correct or true voice” (111).
Accordingly, Aristotle presents “two meanings of justice”: justice as the lawful—“general” justice—and justice as the fair—“particular”
justice (113). Justice in its “lawful” aspect points not merely to conventionality;
if it did, there would be no theoretical problem, inasmuch as one could easily
say that there is justice defined by the polis and justice according to nature. But
“lawful” justice points to the unique feature of justice, its ‘other-directedness.’
“[J]ustice is not complete virtue simply but complete as the sum of the virtues
‘directed toward another’”; “justice is thus identical with the ‘use [chresis] of
compete virtue,’” the use of virtue “‘with a view to another, and not only with a
view to [the virtuous individual] himself’” (115). “Citizenship in the community means that any action, including a virtuous action, has a dual aspect: it can
be understood from the point of view either of one’s own good or another’s
good” (115). These two things might easily contradict one another, as anyone
who considers the policy of military conscription will see.
Further, the same problem arises with respect to “particular”
justice, which is that part of general justice that “pertains to the desire for gain”
(117). Justice as fairness refers to either the distribution of goods, including
public honors and offices, or the redress of unjust distributions. Once again, in
practice it is the regime that determines what acts of particular justice will be
practiced, from one polis to another. And an act of distribution that serves the
common good might not entirely serve the good of the individual to whom the
distribution is made. “[T]his is the dilemma of moral virtue: as justice, it looks
to the good of the community, and as virtue, it looks to the good of the virtuous individual, yet these are different ends and different perfections” (122).
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This dilemma would be eased but not removed by taking up residence in the
best regime—a regime notoriously difficult to find, even in the pages of
Aristotle’s Politics.
The dilemma of justice in the polis may disappear among
friends, who share all things and wish one another’s good. Thus Aristotle “is
at one with liberalism in marking a sphere outside of the political that might
be called private” (123). But in the liberal modern state the virtues seen in
true friendship are only “one possibility among many possible pursuits of
happiness” (123). That is to say, liberalism in modernity means liberty first,
perhaps because privacy marks out a sphere of protection against the state, a
formidable type of political organization that Aristotle does not contemplate.
The collection next turns not toward a consideration of the
state, however, but to a consideration of virtue in essays by Tessitore, David K.
O’Connor, and Charles R. Pinches. Tessitore takes up Alasdair MacIntyre’s
critique of modern rationalism. MacIntyre charges that the teachings of such
moral philosophers as Diderot, Hume, Smith, and Kant depend upon “a shared
historical background” their rationalism rejects; the substance of that moral
tradition owes its existence to Aristotle (136). In rejecting, contra Aristotle,“any
notion of a human telos,” rationalists “ensured the failure” of their project, leaving only an account of human nature and a set of “moral injunctions” without
“their teleological context” (137). But human nature without a telos wrecks
itself on nihilism, as Nietzsche eventually insisted.
MacIntyre himself rejects the foundations of Aristotelian
moral teleology—its “now discredited metaphysical biology,” its “understanding of community” that assumes “the Greek polis,” and the Platonic notion
of “the unity of individual and political virtue” (138). For these MacIntyre
substitutes, first, what he calls “practice” (“a complex form of socially
established human activity that leads to the attainment of a good internal to
the activity of the activity at issue”—e.g., chess, which aims at the good of
checkmate, or victory); second, what he calls “narrative unity” (“the historical
narrative of a particular human life”); third, “tradition” (“a set of practices and
a particular understanding of their importance and meaning”; 138-40). To put
it perhaps too bluntly, MacIntyre purges Aristotelian moral philosophy of
nature and of politics. In Tessitore’s words, MacIntyre “attempts to establish a
delicate balance between Nietzsche’s insight into the historicity of all truth
claims without surrendering the Aristotelian argument for an objective order, a
larger truth to which and by which our efforts are and must be measured” (140).
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But, far from being a passive ‘epistemological’ victim of his
historical circumstances, Aristotle “questions authority” (141). This may be
seen, Tessitore observes, in Aristotle’s “notoriously problematic teaching on the
relationship between ethical and intellectual virtues” (142), the account of the
rival modes of life, political and philosophic, to which Aristotle provides precisely no conventional answer, and no clear answer at all. “Against MacIntyre’s
view that Aristotle inadvertently codifies an existing and authoritative Greek
tradition of class-based morality, his account…in fact preserves and reveals,
rather than dispels, a wide range of persistent tensions that necessarily characterize human attempts to live well” (146). The polis itself turns out to be
imperfect, thus “a catalyst for the full development of both practical and theoretical excellence” (147). Prudence and the capacity for political philosophy are
“permanent political needs,” needs “logically prior to the notion of political
authority in Aristotle’s thought,” providing “the ground by which the authoritative good held out by the polis is established and evaluated” (147). Although
Aristotle never saw the modern state, he of course did see a form of political
organization other than the polis, namely, the empire in which he lived, to say
nothing of the sub-political communities of household, village, and tribe. “It
may well be the case that the fortuitous set of circumstances that gave rise to
the development of the Greek polis becomes the locus classicus for Aristotle’s
study less out of cultural bias, and more because it offers the most transparent
window from which to view the ethical capacities and problems of political
animals” (148); one might agree with Tessitore by observing that the polis may
be the one circumstance in which human beings can fully achieve autarchia or
self-rule. One might also add that Tocqueville’s critique of modern statism
rests on a similar judgment, a fact that gives evidence for the non-‘relative’
character of Aristotle’s argument.
MacIntyre’s attempt to replace Aristotle’s natural teleology
with a historical teleology or “narrative unity” is unnecessary if one does not
assume that biology is destiny. Aristotle does not so assume, and neither does
much of the modern biology that has in many ways superseded Aristotelian
biology. Enlightenment mechanism does not fully explain nature, which turns
out to be more complicated than Newton supposed, in the estimation of
Newton’s modern-scientific successors. It is Newtonian physics that underlies
the attack on teleology seen in the Enlightenment moralists.
MacIntyre’s traditionalism too easily elides the distinction
between Aristotle and philosophy generally and the Bible. Tessitore reminds his
readers that the Great Tradition didn’t start out as a tradition at all; it took
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Aquinas to convince generations of thinkers that philosophy and revelation
could mix. And Aquinas rests the authority of his achievement not on “the verdict of human history” or “the powers of human rationality” (156).
“Paradoxically, MacIntyre’s historicist defense of the superiority of the
Thomistic perspective is unable to account for the heart and soul of the very
version of inquiry he upholds as the example par excellence of the rationality of
tradition” (156).
Notwithstanding the profound differences separating the Thomistic
tradition from the modern paradigms of [Enlightenment] encyclopedia and [Nietzschean] genealogy, there is one respect in which all
three versions of inquiry have more in common with each other
than with Aristotle—all are imbued with some form of the historical consciousness that informs MacIntyre’s own analysis. The
Thomistic, or more generally biblical, tradition elevates history as
the locus of divine revelation and lives from a hope that is directed
to the City of God. The encyclopedic tradition looks to a secularized
version of Christian hope, one that will be fully achieved in history
based on the gradual and steady progress of science. The genealogical perspective registers disappointment at the loss of
Enlightenment hopes for rational progress, unmasking all claims to
larger purpose as disguised expressions of the will to power.
MacIntyre’s critique of contemporary sensibilities is circumscribed
by the historical consciousness from which it arises. (156-57)
None of what Tessitore here classifies as historicist versions of inquiry actually
refutes the Aristotelian understanding of human ‘groundedness’ in nature or an
“unchanging ground of being from which these [historical] variations arise”
(157). Aristotle’s “account of human nature” moreover “is free from both the
hopes and disappointments entangled in historical consciousness” (ibid.) and,
if so, may prove morally superior to them. MacIntyre’s account of biblical revelation may itself partake too much of a later historicism. ‘History’ or the course
of human events may be the locus of divine revelation, but, according to the
Bible, the origin of such revelation is God, creator of that locus and of all else
besides. That is, the Holy Spirit of the Bible is not the Absolute Spirit of the historicists—the latter being immanent, not holy or separated.
In contrast to MacIntyre, Leo Strauss turned to Aristotle after
listening to the most radical of the historicists, Martin Heidegger. David K.
O’Connor’s essay on “Strauss’s Aristotle” is a highlight of this collection.
“The existential choice between the political life and the
philosophic life informs all of Aristotle’s investigations of political affairs,”
O’Connor contends (163), and Strauss’s interpretation of Aristotle “became
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the central vehicle through which Strauss worked out his own complicated
appropriation of and resistance to Martin Heidegger” (164). Strauss appropriated some of Heidegger’s “account of philosophy’s responsibilities to
prephilosophic experience” while resisting “Heidegger’s attack on the
Aristotelian dichotomy between politically engaged practical reason and
detached or disinterested theoretical reason” (164). Heidegger’s conflation of
theory and practice, (seen in his celebration of ‘resoluteness’ and ‘authenticity’)
struck Strauss as politically dangerous and philosophically dubious, but that
conflation does at least follow from giving the prephilosophic pragmata their
due. Strauss aimed to show that the Aristotelian insistence on the integrity
of prephilosophic experience as the ground of philosophy need not issue in
radical historicism, as it does in Heidegger, where it “infect[s] philosophy with
the very aspects of willfulness, passion, and partisanship that made Heidegger’s
view of philosophy distasteful to Strauss” (167).
Philosophy for Heidegger consists of an energeia or “being-atwork” that forms as well as informs human beings through their national
culture and political existence; philosophy “is essentially ‘practical’” and “essentially ‘patriotic’”—inherent in the patria or fatherland (168). This energy, it
might be said, resembles Hegel’s Absolute Spirit not of course in its dialectical
rationality but in its immanence and its thoroughgoing ‘historicity.’ O’Connor
finds in Strauss’s exchanges with his philosophic friend, Alexander Kojeve, a
dialogue with Heidegger ‘once-removed.’ (There are limits to the HeideggerKojeve parallel. O’Connor mentions Kojeve’s employment as “a minister
playing midwife to the birth of the Common Market” [193]. It is unlikely that
a Heideggerian would find such a job interesting; as Nietzsche said about the
‘common good,’ is not the Common Market ineluctably common?)
In Strauss’s estimation, the “unqualified attachment
to human concerns” seen in historicism leads not to philosophy but to tyranny
(176), to an ultimately mad attempt at godlike creation, a comprehensive
re-shaping of reality beyond the capacities even of the highest human beings.
Although O’Connor does not quite say this, Strauss regards the historicist
project—in its very resolute commitment to practice—as profoundly imprudent,
and therefore impractical as well as self-deluding. Genuine wisdom must
‘place’ human individuals, nations, and even humanity itself within their real
context, which is nature. The desire to know is not the same as care for the
human (178). At the same time, the philosopher does rightly and prudently
care for those who do or might in his estimation share in his enterprise. This
philosophic care for philosophers and for potential philosophers rests not on
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the historicist concern for “intersubjectivity and recognition” (179) but on the
shared love of wisdom, “the intrinsic nobility of resolute openness to questioning” (180, italics in original). Philosophic resolution differs from political
resolution in needing no enemies to ‘energize’ it; “philosophic friendship can
often be closer among those who ‘incline’ to different solutions [to philosophic
problems] than among those who incline to the same solution: one’s zetetic
friends may be quite different from one’s fellow sectarians”—as the StraussKojeve friendship demonstrates (180). For such friendships no philosopher
need engage in “the total direction of human affairs” (Strauss, quoted 181).
Indeed, the attempt to direct human affairs through the impersonal bureaucratic structure of a modern state or would-be super-state might likely
preclude friendship, insofar as that attempt absorbed the attention of the
philosopher.
Strauss’s Aristotle addresses political men “without inflaming
political passion” and addresses philosophic men “without inflaming political
passion” (182, italics in original). Strauss’s Aristotle makes this dichotomy
sharper than Aristotle himself does, O’Connor argues, because historicism has
changed the political and intellectual circumstances in which philosophers live.
Aristotle’s own treatment of the choice between the political and the philosophic life gives more “autonomous dignity” to “morality and politics” than
Strauss’s Aristotle because radical historicism has transformed nomos into pure
will, not pure reason (185). “In resisting the Heideggerian intensification of
this common ground between theory and practice, Strauss intensifies instead
the philosophic perception of the ‘secondary’ status (NE 10.8, 1178a9) of
merely political action” (185). Secondary status does not imply either strict
subordination or a complete separation of the practical from the theoretical.
A philosopher might find himself a place not as a citizen-philosopher, then,
but as a foreigner or ‘stranger’ who serves as “a teacher of legislators” (195),
a role unlikely to endanger either the body of the philosopher (landing it in a
circumstance in which it must ingest hemlock) or the philosopher’s soul,
untempted by the ambition of making ‘its’ philosophic inclinations “essentially
formative of nation and state” (196). “To steel oneself to Machiavellism is not
to untrammel one’s mind, but to close it” (197).
O’Connor closes with some remarks on Strauss’s abiding
philosophic interest in piety, an interest O’Connor describes as more Socratic
than Aristotelian. That is to say, Strauss’s Aristotle does not exhaust the philosophic interests of Strauss. Piety is the topic of this volume’s third and
concluding essay on virtue. Charles R. Pinches points to another man who
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“transforms Aristotle as he uses him” (208). Unlike Strauss, Thomas Aquinas
“runs [Aristotle] through the mill of Christian theology” (208), but they share
what Pinches calls a non-instrumental understanding of virtue, an appreciation of virtue as a condition of the soul ‘good for its own sake.’ As a Christian,
Pinches regards neither Aristotle nor Thomas as congruent with modern
liberalism and resists efforts by liberals to appropriate either.
A crucial distinction between modern liberal and “classical
accounts” of virtue is simple: “according to liberalism, one does not need to be
good (be virtuous) to know the good”—“a substantial change” from the
Aristotelian and Thomistic views (212-13). For modern liberals, for example,
‘prudence’ means only the ability to identify “what is advantageous or useful to
the attainment of the goals that suit us or me” (213); prudence is no longer
“perfected practical reason” (214), a thing noble in itself.
Recent liberal thinkers friendly to Christianity tend to want to
use Christianity: “Liberalism as a political system has a need for virtue among
its citizens if it is to be sustained,” such liberals argue. “Put bluntly, liberalism is
in need of virtue capital” (215). “[T]his is a deal the church can do without,”
Pinches’ own prudence tells him (217). The Christian regime—specifically, the
Christian Bios ti or way of life—must not lend itself to the task of propping up
something other than itself, subordinating itself to some way of life other than
that commanded and exemplified by Jesus. Among the several extant liberalisms, Pinches prefers the attempt by Richard Rorty to make liberalism into a
sort of religion, albeit a ‘secularized’ one—the sort of progressivist historicism
seen in John Dewey and Walt Whitman. This effort at least refuses to abstract
from the circumstances of America, but rather makes of American history
a sort of teleological story or myth. Pinches clearly regards Rorty’s project
as wrong, but at least it has the modest virtue of avoiding cynicism. More
profoundly, it shares with Christianity (as Pinches understands it) and also
with Aristotle (as Pinches understands him) a rootedness in a particular “social
location” (222), not in a state of nature, a categorical imperative, or an original
position. Rorty “embraces his particular location as an American ‘reformist
liberal’ at the turn of the twenty-first century,” even as Aristotle “presumed the
setting of the polis in fourth-century Greece” and as (if I understand Pinches)
a Christian will understand himself as part of the concrete and Providential
circumstances that inflect his own life (222). Liberals are insufficiently historicist,
to use that term in a loose, none-too-Hegelian way.
Christians must also finally reject Aristotle as well as liberalism,
Pinches argues. Following Harris Rackham, Pinches translates megalopsychia
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as “pride” (221). Aristotle understands vice, which he regards as reparable, but
not sin, which Christians learn to be humanly irreparable, because Aristotle
does not know the God of the Bible, or the Bible’s Satan, for that matter. In
contrast with Aristotle,“according to St. Paul and to Augustine, there is nothing
we can do to break the power of sin in our lives” (225). Only God’s grace can
free us from that power. That is why Aquinas “insists that the theological
virtues of faith, hope, and charity, which transform the life of virtue particularly as they transform prudence, are ‘infused’ rather than ‘acquired’” (225).
Human equality “resides in that we are all equally condemned by a righteous
God”; but “Aristotle knew nothing of such ideas,” regarding human beings as
decidedly unequal, at least with respect to virtue and vice (225-26). Rorty’s
progressivism shares the pride of Aristotelianism (if little else?) and therefore
cannot satisfy Christians, even if it is superior in honesty to non-historicist versions of liberalism.
Pinches does not clarify the Christian’s proper relationship to
the modern, liberal state. If Christianity must not serve that state, should, can,
Christians nonetheless make it serve them? Not in the sense of making of the
state an instrument of Christian education or legislation, but rather in the
sense of using the liberal state as early Christians arguably used the Roman
Empire: as a sort of dangerous but often convenient platform for Christian
evangelism. Liberalism’s hard-won freedoms of travel, of speech, and of religion itself present themselves as instruments for Christian use. Might these
features of the liberal state not commend themselves to Christians, even if
Christians politely (and piously) decline to serve as instruments of liberalism?
The liberal state might not so much “buy virtue from the Christians” (as
Pinches acidulously describes the ambition of some liberals [215]) but find a
loving limit in their free activities and spirit, thus remaining liberal.
The liberty of citizens within the liberal state requires the
right of property defended by the rule of law—limits to the liberal state. That
Miriam Galston, Jill Frank, Douglas J. Den Uyl and Douglas B. Rasmussen find
Aristotle a helpful adviser in these matters betokens his status as a philosopher
and not merely as a thoughtful observer and critic of ancient Greek politics.
Galston considers the varieties of legal theory in the United
States, recalling the textual formalism of the nineteenth century, largely
replaced in the twentieth century by the legal realism of Oliver Wendell
Holmes and the sociological jurisprudence of Roscoe Pound. She sees in recent
years a “renewed interest in formalist-type theories, such as neo-Aristotelian
natural law theory” (234), in the writings of such scholars as Russell Hittinger,
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John Finnis, and Robert P. George, as well as a turn toward anti-rationalist theories—critical legal studies, post-structuralism, and some forms of feminism.
In their several ways, all American legal theories address not only the ‘rule of
reason’ but the role of reason in the rule of law. Between the “two extremes” of
formalism and subjectivism/relativism lie “theorists of the middle way” who
“reject the idea that knowledge must be absolute and unchanging to be worthy
of the name” (234); Cass R. Sunstein, Suzanna Sherry, and Bruce Ackerman
exemplify this approach.
Aristotle famously teaches that the precision possible in
mathematics does not obtain in ethics. He does not call this “a practical concession to the limitations of human cognition” or an admission of the superior
truth of the precise sciences (235). Similarly, “middle-way” legal theorists do
not quickly advert to ‘abstract’ moral and political principles, principles “that
exist independently of a particular legal order”; at the same time, they do
“recognize and incorporate such principles into reasoning about human affairs
to some extent” (235). Middle-way theorists prefer community-wide debate,
government by consent, and “transformative political participation” to any
more elite-centered account of lawmaking and legal interpretation (237);
they pay attention, therefore, to the conditions under which such debate is
conducted and such consent attained, lest some citizens be excluded.
Galston finds a philosophic precedent for this in Aristotle’s
practice of reviewing prevailing opinions and putting them to the dialectical
test. But Aristotle differs from middle-way theorists in widening the dialogue
to include those not present and even those long dead; in America he would
engage not only his neighbors but Publius and Jefferson. Nor does Aristotle
assume the democratic principle of equality: “Aristotle equates the force of the
opinion of one wise man with the opinion held by all or most people” (238).
Aristotle does not use the word ‘autonomy’ to describe the formation of law
by citizens; rather, “the importance of being able to govern oneself (and be
governed by others) finds pride of place in his philosophy” (239). He defines
politics itself as such reciprocal ruling and being-ruled, a practice that requires
practical wisdom. “Aristotle thus differs from contemporary legal theorists in
identifying self-governance with the active exercise of reason rather than the
initiation of, participation in, or assent to rules by which a person is governed”
(239). One might say that Aristotle never loses sight of the regime behind
the rules, of the political character of decent regimes, or of the life of reasoned
discussion seen in those regimes.
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Middle-way legal theorists also incline toward what might be
called transformative conventionalism. They hope to generate public goods
and also moral virtues in individuals out of sociopolitical processes engaged in
by adults. Aristotle, less optimistic than they about the malleability of human
nature, looks to childhood education as the main source of “the moral qualities
upon which social cooperation depends” (240). If you would have a moral
citizenry, begin before your children are old enough to join in citizenship.
Moral virtue culminates in citizenship, is not ‘created’ by it. Concomitantly,
Aristotle does not understand political association merely as one social activity
among many; it is the authoritative political community that most clearly
requires us to think comprehensively of the good life as such. “Aristotle warns
the reader against imagining that fitness to govern any one type of association
can be generalized to fitness to govern any other” (240).
Galston sees in this tendency among middle-way theorists
a reflection of life in the modern state. “Given our enormous and diverse
country, it may well be that intermediate associations bear a closer resemblance
to certain aspects of the classical city than our nation as a whole ever can”
(241). But such civic associations, however salutary, seldom consider the
common good in the way a self-governing political community must. Further,
middle-ground theorists, in imagining the production of the common good,
assume an egalitarianism that modern states—centralized, anti-aristocratic,
bureaucratic—themselves encourage. In one sense these theorists aim too
high, expecting a selflessness not to be found in this world if only each voice
can make itself heard through the right social preconditions undergirding
the political process itself. On the other hand, the very assumption that the
political playing field can be so effectively leveled reflects and conduces to the
anti-political statism that middle-way theorists abhor. But the common good’s
commonness inheres in its political character; in ruling and being ruled, not
everyone exhibits the same degree of practical wisdom. This is an ineluctable
natural reality, not only an excrescence of unjust social institutions. “Aristotle’s
ideas thus expose a conceptual difficulty at the core of theories of liberal
constitutional democracy” (248)—or, at least, at the core of the theories of
the theorists of the middle way.
Under liberal constitutions the laws protect and regulate
private property as a means of the reciprocal rule of civil society and the central
state. Jill Frank asks, “What form of private property might more successfully
integrate private right and public good and so facilitate rather than obstruct
the practices integral to liberal-democratic politics?” (259). Consulting
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Interpretation
Aristotle, she argues that private property has not only exchange value but also
value in use. The ‘use value’ of private property can bind the individual and the
family to “the practices of citizenship” (259).
As a thing to be exchanged, private property means “the
power to hold, to withhold, and to exclude” (261). I hold my property against
you, and against the state, limiting both social and bureaucratic-governmental
encroachment. This might often be very good. But it might also “thwart rather
than…enable common action and therefore…be inimical to the social coalition
integral to the practices of democratic politics” (261). Private property might
conduce to what Tocqueville calls individualism, a comfortable anti-civic
isolation that invites the very overweening statism private property rights are
intended to prevent by leaving government up to the officials.
Frank cites Thomas Jefferson’s phrase, “the earth belongs in
usufruct to the living” (263). That is, the earth belongs to each living generation
as a trust fund belongs to its trustees; the right to use comes with an obligation,
“that the beneficiaries must hand the trust over to the next set of trustees”
(263). Jeffersonian agrarianism rests upon this principle. Whereas feudal aristocracy consisted of the few ruling the many, who did not own the property
they used, and modern commerce “allows for and encourages the accumulation of wealth unlimited by use,” fostering a new kind of “privilege and
hierarchy,” agrarian property-owners are (now in Jefferson’s words again) “the
most precious part of the state” because their property combines the stability
and limitation of natural property in land with self-governing ownership of
that property and of the fruits thereof (264). “Their property, via its use,
anchors their independence and freedom, and it allows them to cultivate the
virtues necessary for self-governance, good citizenship, and the pursuit of the
common good” (264). Jefferson’s friend James Madison broadens this understanding of property to include human nature; one’s property includes “a
person’s opinions and faculties, his labor, leisure and time, and his liberty of
conscience” (265). In this sense it helps to constitute our civic identity “insofar
as the use of one’s faculties relates individual owners to society at large” (265).
Aristotle gives a fuller account of “the relation between property and virtue” (265). For example, he elaborates parallels between the rule of
the household and the rule of the polis, both of which subordinate acquisition
of property to the management of it for the good of the whole. As both private
and public, property is “a site of the practice of virtue” (267). In this property
instantiates virtue itself, which consists both of ‘holding’ (I might be said to
‘have’ certain virtues) and of ‘using’ (I act according to my own virtues,
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strengthening or weakening my moral habits with practice and with disuse).
[G]ood habit, as a matter of holding [property] properly depends
on using properly what is held, that is, acting well. And we can
see that acting well, as a mode of proper use, depends on holding
properly what one has as one’s own, hence ownership. As the
practice of holding and using things properly, property, like any
activity, already calls for good habit conjoined with acting well, that
is, virtue. And, as the practice of holding and using habits properly,
virtue calls for property. It is by understanding property as a verb
and not strictly as a noun, as an activity of use and not strictly as a
fungible thing, that property is bound to, is indeed a site of virtue.
(268)
Property “emerges in the presence of a proper ordering of the soul, even as the
practice contributes to that proper ordering,” cultivating “the individual virtues
associated with both self-government and the pursuit of the common good”
(270). In so doing it not only resists the encroachments of the modern state
but connects citizens to the state, interesting them in the common good as
considered by their representatives ‘in’ the state.
Douglas J. Den Uyl and Douglas B. Rasmussen give Aristotle
an (announced) ‘libertarian’ twist—doing with Aristotle what Aquinas does
with him, but on behalf of ‘classical liberalism’ not Christianity. Beginning
with might be termed the Lysander Spooner thesis—that moral action requires
freedom of the will, therefore the conditions of free willing must be secured first
and foremost—they reconcile libertarianism with the Aristotelian esteem for
“self-perfection” (280). “The single most common and threatening encroachment upon self-directedness and consequently self-perfection is the initiation
of physical force by one person (or group) against another”; this
in practice requires the establishment of “a sphere of freedom whereby
self-directed activities can be exercised without being trampled by others or
vice-versa” (281), to “structure a political principle that protects the condition
for self-perfection rather than leading to self-perfection itself” (282-83).
Central to this sphere of freedom is the right to property.
Because “human beings are material beings, not disembodied ghosts, and
being self-directed is not merely some psychic state,” “human beings need
to have property rights to things that are the result of their own productive
efforts” (283). Property inheres primarily not in non-human nature but in
“the intellectual and physical efforts of individual human beings,” who are “in
a significant sense value creators” (284-85). Den Uyl and Rasmussen endorse
what Marx would later call the labor theory of value, an idea already
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Interpretation
propounded by Locke; “there is no such thing as pre-existing (in other words,
pre-transformed) wealth” (286). Unlike Marx but like Locke, they regard the
right to property as natural, and the indispensable precondition to the “human
flourishing” sought by Aristotle (289).
On the economic side of the human ledger this of course
leads to the free market. On the political side the right to property in this sense
leads to civic friendship, an association for mutual advantage among citizens.
Friendships founded upon mutual advantage are not “friendships of virtue,”
which only “occur in circles much smaller than those that characterize a state”
(299). “All highly pluralistic and commercial cultures fail to live up to this
standard,” they rightly observe (300). At best, such large political societies can
achieve the virtue of just rather than unjust mutual advantage, but they
can never achieve an ethos of selflessness. In turn, this “confirms our view, not
always or necessarily shared by Aristotle himself, that the attainment of the
good life is an individual quest” (301). “The aim of politics is not virtue, but
peace and order,”“the natural right to liberty” (301).
Aristotle might well regard the regime of commercial republicanism as the best practicable regime under the conditions of modernity. He
would not defend it on the ‘voluntarist’ grounds libertarians defend, inasmuch
as that would entail treating a means—personal liberty—as an end—human
flourishing. He would therefore remain skeptical of the claim that the attainment of the good life is an individual quest primarily, recognizing the need for
self-government and thus, realistically, the need for political life. If the aim of
politics is not virtue but peace and order, do peace and order not aim at some
virtue or human good? And are not peace and order likely in need of coercive
defense and of at least mildly enforced cooperation?
It is to politics that the final three essays of the volume turn.
Beyond the protection of property rights broadly understood, modern liberalism usually attempts to address the problem of how political life, understood as
reciprocal ruling and being-ruled, can be sustained within the framework of
the state, which centralizes authority and tends toward bureaucracy. Each
author here addresses this problem.
Gerald M. Mara contributes an excellent discussion of
Aristotle’s Regime of Athens. Mara praises John Rawls’s last book, Political
Liberalism, for its attentiveness to the need for “political culture” (307)—
roughly the equivalent to Aristotle’s notion of the ‘way of life’ of a political
community. Noticing that in the tolerant regimes of modern liberalism many
Book Review: Aristotle and Modern Politics: The Persistence of Political Philosophy
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citizens pursue very different ways of life founded on different moral and
religious principles, Rawls seeks an “overlapping consensus” among citizens—
the ‘overlap’ consisting of all principles and practices consistent with liberal
politics (308). As Jefferson famously contended, it matters not whether my
neighbor believes in one god or a thousand; this neither picks my pocket nor
breaks my leg. Muslim and Hindu alike may agree that robbery and battery are
wrong, and citizens who agree on such things may be able to live together in
the same political community, so long as they ‘agree to disagree’ on their more
strictly theological convictions. Mara notes that Rawlsian “liberal culture” is
“possible only for those who already accept liberal principles as compelling”
(308). An especially stern Muslim or Hindu (or Christian or Marxist) might
require the justification of liberal principles themselves, and such justification
cannot come from a culture that effectively commands ‘Be tolerant.’ But why
should the liberal tolerate even himself? Cultural liberalism “sees practical
rationality as a cultural or political, rather than a natural or anthropological
possibility” (309) and thus collides with philosophic problems long associated
with conventionalism.
Aristotle understands reason as a capacity of “cross-cultural
validity” (310). He treats democratic Athens not as the political equivalent of a
windowless monad but “as a striking example of the most radical and most
dangerous democracy, a popular regime with a (relatively) urban base which
exercises its rule not by law but by decree,” yet also a regime animated by
“a gentleness or mildness that could be extended into a certain kind of moderation” (312). In Athens Aristotle saw more than Athens, but “simultaneously
the most and the least typical, the worst and the best, of democracies” (312).
His study of Athens presents three themes: he considers the regime’s “central
principles,” freedom and equality, as they are institutionalized and not as they
might be conceived ‘abstractly’; he considers the regime’s purposes and the
dual temperament that strives for them, boldness and gentleness; he considers
“models of democratic political activity” as seen particularly in prominent
Athenian statesmen.
The many poor overthrew the oligarchs; the new rulers’ sense
of freedom derived ‘negatively’ from their prior feeling of oppression. But of
course a regime does require rule, rule now by the many poor, who might
enslave the few, contradicting the principle of freedom. Aristotle suggests that a
certain kind of institutionalized equality, equality before the law, can limit the
rule of the many, as seen in the reforms of Solon. Equality before the law gives
both the many poor and the few rich a kind of political equality, a capacity to
2 1 4
Interpretation
rule and to be ruled: Aristotle’s definition of political rule simply. “Solon’s
reforms do not so much make Athens more democratic as make it more
political” (315). Solon’s reforms opened some political institutions to every
class of citizens and more generally made “the regime’s legal structures into
frameworks that manage conflict, rather than into strategic weapons for use
within power contests” (315).
Solon does not attempt to homogenize difference by creating a
common civic ethos which would make social distinctions either
irrelevant or pernicious. While the institution of legal equality
makes the social differences between noble and base irrelevant from
the point of view of justice, in another sense it maintains respect for
differentiation among social classes since class positioning cannot
justify social aggression. (316)
This made Athenian democracy more like a ‘mixed regime’—the decent
form of the rule of the many—than it otherwise would have been. But such
institutional forms, however well designed, will not work without a certain
Bios ti, a way of life consonant with them.
Aristotle would move democracy away from the aggressive
boldness displayed in revolution and toward “the peaceful virtues,” above
all “a prudent gentleness” (320). Hence his reservations about democratic
imperialism. “He indicates that Athens’ boldness toward other cities and
the demos’ boldness within the politeia are reciprocally related,” a point illustrated by Pericles’ Funeral Oration. Democracy brings war; war feeds
democratization (and not only in Athens: see the account of America in the
War of 1812 by Henry Adams and Henry Cabot Lodge,“Von Holst’s History of
the United States,” North American Review, October 1876—an account brought
to my attention by my colleague Robert Eden). “To the degree that boldness
compromises prospects for regime gentleness, it threatens to undermine those
activities that are most politically worthwhile” by hardening souls for combat
not only against foreigners but against fellow-citizens at home (321). It
damages “one of the central requirements for good citizenship”: “the ability to
understand that what is good for the community as a whole is not simply
reducible to the interests of any single economic, social, or cultural class” (323).
Citizenship requires “a sort of rationality,” an ability to look at partisan
concerns and not only to engage in struggles over them (323).
The Solonian founding failed not because its institutions
failed but because subsequent Athenian statesmen misused them. Along with
his policy of imperialism, Pericles democratized the regime by paying the poor
Book Review: Aristotle and Modern Politics: The Persistence of Political Philosophy
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to serve in the law courts, partly in order to compete with a political rival.
Aristotle praises the contrasting policies of Theramenes, the founder of
two moderate oligarchic regimes in Athens, policies that aimed at “mov[ing]
democratic and oligarchic regimes away from conditions of extremism” (329).
In this Theramenes resembled Socrates: both men attempted “to make
the regimes in which they [found] themselves less unjust,” and both were
“eventually executed at the hands of extremists” (330). They diverged in that
the philosopher did not exercise rule or compete with others for public honor,
whereas the political man’s “moral hardness” “ensnar[ed] him in political
violence” (331).
What does Aristotle’s assessment of Athenian democracy
teach moderns? He first teaches that modern liberals such as Rawls, Habermas,
and Connally fail to see the “inherently strained and inconsistent” character
of democratic politics—freedom and equality, boldness and gentleness,
democrats and oligarchs competing for rule (332). “The present focus on
liberal culture can be challenged for not taking cultural complexities seriously
enough” (332). This means, secondly, that none of the principles advanced by
modern liberals—pluralism, proceduralism, and the like—will really serve as a
guide for liberal democracy because those principles themselves result in
“drawbacks” as well as “goods” (333). Precisely because any understanding of
democracy that remains on the ‘cultural’ or conventional level involves us in
such contradictions and difficulties, no purely cultural/conventional account
of liberalism or of democracy will do. A “full consideration” of “the possibilities
and dangers of the Athenian polity” will require “a rationality that is not
culturally circumscribed”—an ascent from the cave, to coin a phrase (333).
“The Regime of Athens’ need for this sort of theoretical supplementation is
signaled by its own incompleteness” (333).
Such supplementation need not involve us in that bugbear of
modern philosophy, metaphysics. It emerges rather from the nature of politics
itself, from the universal intention of citizens to identify “better and worse public choices” (333). This intention is not exhausted by what has come to be
called ‘public choice theory.’ Citizens who reason with one another “practice
substantive intellectual and moral virtues”; they do not merely practice “a conversation structured in a certain way” (333). They rule and are ruled, willingly,
and this points them not toward pure democracy or the unfettered rule of the
many but to the mixed regime, that institutional embodiment of “political life
itself” (334). Theory itself “should not be understood as a set of systematically
related concepts, but as a kind of attentive regard which considers the full range
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Interpretation
of possibilities and problems facing people living together in a democratic
regime”; “political theory is a resource for practical choices, rather than the
derivation of political norms from abstract rational or moral principles” (335).
For Aristotle, that is what natural right is. Under conditions of modernity, one
“decent, flawed regime is liberal democracy,” and it is from there that we must
proceed (335).
Stephen S. Salkever distinguishes Aristotelian deliberation
from the neo-Kantian theory of ‘deliberative democracy’ advanced by
Habermas and Rawls. Deliberative democracy opposes modern liberal contractarianism, liberal utilitarianism, the ‘participatory democracy’ advanced in
the 1960s by the New Left, and the communitarianism of such writers as
Charles Taylor and Robert Bellah. Deliberative democrats follow Rousseau and
Kant in their identification of humanity as “the natural species whose dignity
lies in its transcendence of mechanical nature, in moral freedom in obedience
to laws it gives itself” (343). Unlike many contractarians and utilitarians, deliberative democrats understand public reason in a non-instrumental sense;
unlike many participatory democrats and communitarians, they prize reason
as central to good citizenship. They do not, however, recur to reasoning as
understood by Aristotle, as “the ability to discover true things about the world
and our interests” (346). Rather, they regard public reason as the means by
which human beings conquer their own ‘given’ natures as complex but ‘determined’ machines—even as scientific reason discovers and invents the means by
which we conquer ‘external’ nature. The need for democratic deliberation
comes from the moral requirement of universal consent to the laws formulated
by the citizens within political societies: ‘no adult left behind’ might be its slogan.
The deliberation prized by deliberative democrats occurs
only within the confines of the regime of democracy itself and only by means
of a form of reason that does not question the wisdom of the modern project
of the conquest of nature. That is to say, the public reason of deliberative
democracy rests on a dogma. It demands that human self-legislation proceed
without human self-knowledge or, at least, without reopening the question of
human self-knowledge, regarding that question as settled. What it calls the triumph of reason rests on a triumph of the will. Deliberative democracy has
decided once and for all on the truth of its own foundations.
“My central contention is that, for Aristotle, the core project
of pre-philosophic moral education or character (ethos) development is not
to instill duty or responsibility… but to develop a certain kind of practical
rationality; and that the business of moral and political philosophy is not to
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anchor character in theoretical certainty, but to supply us with a set of
questions and standards for examining our own characters and regimes and
those of others” (354). Practical reason or phronesis aims at particular actions,
but it “calls for the study” of political science, which aims at knowledge of
human beings as political animals, neither beasts nor gods (355). Reciprocally,
one cannot know human nature without the ability to reason about particulars, without the sort of character that has the presence of mind, so to speak, to
see particulars clearly before ‘generalizing’ from the particulars. Human beings
who are fully human exercise prohairesis: “not merely ‘choice’ or ‘intentional
choice,’ and certainly not ‘free will,’ but the ability and the inclination to
think through the options available to us and then to act on the basis of those
deliberations” (355). This is “very hard to do” (355). “We are to learn to treat
ethical practices not simply as the endoxa [reputable opinions] that they are,
but as if they were criticizable solutions to problems posed by our inherited
biological nature under various distinct circumstances, problems concerning
how the prohairetic life can best be realized” (356). Ethics does not consist,
finally, either in learning rules or in legislating for ourselves. Ethics does not
require us to dare to know but to want to know, for our own good.
‘Wanting’ does not oppose reasoning or knowing, Aristotle
argues, because desire does not mean a passive response to external stimuli.
Desire or eros animates all living beings; human beings differ from others in
our capacity for deliberation and reflection upon our desires and their objects.
But deliberation and reflection do not oppose the desires as such; therefore,
Aristotle needs nothing that transcends the desires—a rational will or categorical
imperative, for example. Ethical life instead requires character or ethos, the
combination of “emotion, desire, and reason in summing up an individual’s
‘nature,’ an identity formed initially by habituation on the basis of biologically
transmitted potentials, but gradually in the course of education becoming
active, a motive force in an individual life” (359).
How exactly does character arise, and what has it to do with
politics? Fred D. Miller concludes the volume with an essay distinguishing
Aristotelian self-rule or autarchia from modern autonomy, a distinction crucial to understanding the differences between ancient and modern political
philosophy. Miller compares the account of education in the Nicomachean
Ethics and the Politics with the account of the soul in De Anima, and finds that
he has a lot of explaining to do. The moral and political books present the soul
as educable for a life of reasonable citizenship, for “knowing both how to rule
and how to be ruled on a basis of justice” (376). But in De Anima it seems that
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Interpretation
desire or orexis animates human beings; at best, then, reason would be a scout
for the passions and education would consist of teaching the scout to see
farther and more clearly.
But “a careful reading of De Anima reveals that Aristotle is
really committed to the rule of reason in his theoretical psychology, so that his
philosophy of education is after all supported by his psychology” (380). The
reading that follows proves indeed both careful and persuasive. Over-simply
put, desire has objects; objects move the soul via desire, “but the way in which
the object of desire plays this role depends on the cognitive condition of the
agent” (382). The ‘I’ that desires the object knows or imagines things ‘about’
what is good for it. Whether I “do the right thing ultimately depends upon
whether [I] seek a truly good end, as opposed to a seemingly good end, and this
depends upon how [I] exercise [my] thought and imagination” (384). This is
where prohairesis comes in, as described also by Salkever; Miller identifies three
forms of it, namely, deliberative desire (bouleutike orexis), cognitive desire
(orexis dianoetike) and desiderative thought (orektikos nous). “This characterization of choice as a commanding element is consistent with the thesis that
reason ultimately initiates action” inasmuch as “reasoning may lead a person to
wish for an object” (385). With education, what I want will become more and
more reasonable, more and more a reflection of what I should want as a human
being living in my circumstances, not the least of which will be the regime of
my city. “By revealing to agents their natural end, [reason] enables this end,
which is as such unmoved, to become an object of action for the agent, and
thereby to bring about desire, the movement or change in the soul which is the
proximate cause of action” (385).
Autarchia means this rule of reason in the individual soul,
which then recognizes that, as an individual, and even as a member of a family,
village, or tribe, it cannot achieve all of the goods that it should have. This is
where autarchia (more often translated as ‘self-sufficiency’ than more literally
as ‘self-rule’) finds fulfillment rather than contradiction in the interdependence
of political life. The city or polis enables human beings to develop their
“natural potentials,” which they cannot do “on their own” (386). “Hence, the
city-state is one of the greatest human goods,” and “when Aristotle declares
in De Anima that the faculty of desire is the moving principle in human beings
as well as animals, he does not compromise his political ideal of reason’s rule
in the human soul,” inasmuch as political ‘autonomy’ for Aristotle consists
of “self-government of the citizens under law” (386).
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Although Aristotle did not see the modern state, his political
science speaks to those who would engage in ‘state-building,’ not to say regime
change, in modernity.
A population fit for political rule satisfies three requirements
[Miller writes, summarizing Aristotle’s observations]: it is capable
of defending the city-state, it possesses sufficient wealth, and it is
capable of sharing in governance. Such a population must know
how to rule as well as be ruled, or else they will only be capable of
despotic rule. The hallmark of such a population is equality: “The
city-state wishes to consist of equal and similar persons as far as
possible…. Political rule requires that the citizens share in governance, taking turns in ruling and being ruled or holding different
offices. Each person must be willing to rule with a view to the
advantage of others and to yield up authority when it is another
person’s turn. This requires that individuals abide by legal procedures governing their term of office, the selection of new officials,
and the rights and duties associated with each office. (387)
A political founder or law-giver must “prepare the citizens for rational
self-rule” (390). “Political autonomy (political rule according to law) requires
some measure, at least, of individual autonomy (self-governance of the soul):
that is, a city-state is (politically) autonomous only if the citizens are (individually)
autonomous to some degree” (390). The rule of law consists not of blind
obedience but of the prudent and moral use of the law for the ends of the city,
including justice.
Whereas modern or ‘Kantian’ autonomy splits reason from
desire and conceives of autonomy as freedom from desire or the conquest of
desire by rational self-legislation, Aristotle ‘works with’ desire, seeing that desire
pervades all animals, including human animals, and is not in itself bad. Reason
is rightly neither the scout for the desires nor their stern ruler but their guide.
The autarchic individual “is both ruled by reason and motivated by desire”
(394).
This fine volume of essays suggests a concluding thought on
what Aristotle might offer to those who think about modern politics. Any
science classifies the objects it knows; Aristotle’s political science classifies political communities according to their ‘regimes.’ Regimes consist of three
elements: ruling persons, ruling structures, and characteristic ways of life.
Ruling structures are impersonal, but the other two elements are not. The
‘personalism’ of Aristotelian political science contrasts with the principled
impersonality of the modern state, whether considered as a structure—a
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Interpretation
bureaucracy in which each employee directs his loyalty to his function in the
apparatus, not toward some person—or as an expression of the General Will,
impersonal because general. The impersonality of the modern state is one
result of the impersonality of Machiavellianism; if the ruler or ‘prince’ means
not to be good or evil, but to use good and evil, then ‘he’ is nothing more than a
throbbing nerve of libido dominandi, one set against persons divine and
human who have characters. Rule by persons distinguishes itself from rule by
persons who want to remake themselves into forces by its origin in speech and
deliberation, particularly speech and deliberation about what is good and how
to attain what is good. The conquest of nature commended by Machiavelli
must finally require the conquest of human nature, embodied in persons who
speak and deliberate.
Liberalism therefore seems un-modern in its commitment
to freedom of speech. Modern liberals much esteem speech, so much so that
they require toleration of all speech, marking off a sphere for talk within the
modern state, the ruling apparatus of which wants above all to act. This great
achievement of liberalism has moderated the Machiavellian project, which
might otherwise have done more to efface humanness from the world than it
has been able to do, so far.
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