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Essays, Opinion, & Commentary |
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The American Teacher and the Restoration of Society (Continued)
Allan Bloom notes in The Closing of the American Mind: How Higher Education Has Failed Democracy and Impoverished the Souls of Today's Students that today's university students seldom argue about the adequacy of our present political system, and almost universally accept unquestioningly the freedom and equality upon which our society is based. No longer are there debates on the merits of other regimes, such as monarchy or aristocracy. All agree that the American political experiment is far superior to anything that came before. Yet the ultimate success of a "democratic republic" was never a foregone conclusion. Our form of government, though sometimes called an "indirect" or "representative democracy," is obviously not a democracy in the Greek sense of the word. For both Plato and Aristotle, democracy is characterized by "freedom" and "equality," but with important qualifications. Their "freedom" is more extreme than what we enjoy, and by "equality" they mean, primarily, equality of political opportunity, e.g., the opportunity for all citizens to directly vote on all issues in the Assembly, and election to office by lot rather than vote. And, of course, their political model was the Greek polis. But despite the differences, the similarities are too close for us not to examine what the Greeks thought about democracy, not to mention that our regime derives to a large extent from theirs', Athens' in particular. Plato understood democracy and considered it one of the four "imperfect" types of society, with timarchy, oligarchy and tyranny. Indeed, according to Plato, pure democracy arises from the corruption of pure oligarchy, due to the oligarchs' excessive greediness, which causes them to neglect and exploit the young of their society. A democracy, in turn, evolves into a tyranny, but in its final stages of corruptness Plato notes that "The teacher fears and panders to his pupils, who in turn despise their teachers and attendants; and the young as a whole imitate their elders, argue with them and set themselves up against them, while their elders try to avoid the reputation of being disagreeable or strict by aping the young and mixing with them on terms of easy good fellowship" (Republic, 563a-b). As per Plato, the authority of our teachers is undermined. They feel pressure to feign interest in the trivial concerns of their students, e.g. "Who are you going to the prom with?" Our teachers are reluctant to insist on what they know to be best, for fear of students reporting back to permissive parents or unsupportive, politically-minded school administrators. And when a teacher orders a student to do something for which the student doesn't comprehend the reason, an argument often ensues, and obedience depends upon the teacher explaining to his student why he should comply. Aristotle considered democracy as a "deviation" from the "correct" regime of polity. The latter, though not clearly defined, contains a "middling element," or middle class, which serves as a stabilizing force in the regime by being large and powerful enough to offset the political ambitions of the many poor and the few rich. Pursuant to his decision to treat political relationships as a science (techne), with the goals of completeness and comprehensiveness, Aristotle identified not simply democracy, or oligarchy, per se, but many different democracies and oligarchies, each corresponding to the proportional "preeminence" of the different parts which compose every society, these elements being, among others, the households, the poor, the rich, the "middling," the armed, the unarmed, the farmers, the merchants, the "warriors," the "vulgar" and the "notables" (Politics, 1289l26-1290al13). Thus, according to Aristotle, a democracy can be more or less aristocratic, according to the relative preeminence of the "notables" in the society. At the risk of presumption against 'l maestro di color che sanno, I believe Aristotle would characterize our regime as having been originally a "better sort" of democracy, one "based on law" in which "a popular leader does not arise, but the best of the citizens preside" (Politics, 1291bl40-1292al9). But I think he would say that, over the more than two centuries since its founding, our regime has evolved from a more aristocratic democracy to a less aristocratic democracy, corresponding to the gradual loss of "preeminence" of the "notables" over the other elements of society, which lost out to the "middling" and the "merchant" classes, in particular. When our regime was first instituted, the beliefs and traditions of the Old World were very much alive, and it was against some of these that our Founding Fathers reacted. Indeed, not a few of the Founders were aristocrats in the traditional sense, landed, with servants and slaves who labored to support their privileged lifestyles, giving them leisure to read, think, and write. But such a lifestyle was not to be institutionalized in the new republic, and the Founders wrote clauses into their constitution which discouraged aristocracy. In particular, they abolished titles and state religion, primogeniture and entail having been done away with during the Revolution. And, until very recently, we were able to tolerate such discouragements to aristocracy as "the marriage penalty" tax and high estate taxes, things which our aristocratic forebears would have called "outrages." But history and human nature are hard to shrug off, and aristocratic ideas continued to play an important part in American political life after the founding. On four occasions, pairs of American presidents have been related: John Adams and his son John Quincy Adams; William Henry Harrison and his grandson Benjamin Harrison; Theodore and his cousin Franklin; and George Bush and his son George W. And it is still not unusual to find congressman, senators and governors who have family ties to previously elected officials. The Kennedys serve as example. Yet all this is but a poor remnant of a political relationship which was dominant throughout Western history -- the political rule of "certain persons who are preeminent on the basis of family and claim not to merit equal things on account of this inequality: they are held to be well-born persons, to whom belong the virtue and wealth of their ancestors" (Politics, 1301bl1-4). Thus, there is today little left of the aristocratic element of our regime, and an almost complete ascendancy of the middle class and their values. Alongside this tyranny of the bourgeois, there is what contemporary scholars call "radical individualism," as if they discovered it, but which was clearly understood by Plato as the biggest danger of a democracy. In the Republic, he makes much of the idea that a democracy is characterized by "the greatest variety of individual character," and that it's a "wonderfully pleasant way of carrying on," but only in the "short run" (557b-558a). Plato says "an excessive desire for liberty at the expense of everything else is what undermines democracy and leads to the demand for tyranny" (562c). Indeed, along with enslavement to public opinion, this tendency toward so-called "radical individualism" is the main reason why both Plato and Aristotle consider democracy as inherently flawed. The idea of aristocracy in our culture is now relegated to the land of cat food and Jaguar commercials. Yet the existence of these ads proves that there is still something within the American character which responds positively to such outdated notions as gentility, leisure, and education. The recent popularity of films based on the novels of authors such as Charlotte Bronte and George Eliot, with their portrayals of the lifestyles of Victorian aristocrats, further illustrates this. While some may delude themselves to the contrary, with their money and leather-upholstered motor carriages, the lifestyles of even the wealthiest Americans have little in common with the way of life portrayed in Sense and Sensibility. Although wealth and aristocracy usually accompanied one another throughout history, wealth has never been a necessary condition for an aristocrat, let alone a sufficient one. Indeed, the true aristocrat was above such mundane concerns as money, and, historically, the ideal among true aristocrats was to avoid the inclusion of such a "common" topic from "polite conversation," as being a thing beneath them. Yet the relation between wealth and aristocracy has always been strong, and, until recently, wealthy Americans often assumed the aristocratic trappings of the past: education, manners, a sense of decorum, and a paternal attitude toward the multitude. Andrew Carnegie was an author, art collector, and philanthropist. H. C. Frick, less deluded and more honest than his business partner, was nevertheless an art collector, and when he wasn't working (which was rare), lived in the grand style of a gentleman in a mansion with sculpture, paintings and a library. And both men vacationed in such places as a Scottish castle and the infamous South Fork Hunting and Fishing Club. Yet they were aristocrats only in their minds, which Frick understood at the end of his life when he told Carnegie he would see him in hell. Carnegie and Frick tried to exemplify an historical type; today's millionaires and billionaires don't even know how to make the attempt. Those I've personally known are indistinguishable from the bourgeois. These people possess ambition, business acumen, the "Protestant work ethic," and, of course, money, but lack the education and manners of even an Andrew Carnegie. They can't recognize the Homeric allusions in the "foolish speech" given by Gabriel in The Dead, let alone compose such a thing for their own boorish dinner parties. And while they can afford to tour the great museums of Europe, they don't understand what they're looking at. So, what is an aristocrat, if not person who lives in a big house and drives a fancy car? The word literally means power of the best," but its referent is complex with ambiguities and contradictions. The aristocrat was frequently discussed by the philosophers of ancient Greece, pertaining to their emphasis on virtue and quest for what constitutes the good life, and is a major, though frequently overlooked, theme in Western literature. True aristocracy, according to Aristotle, is "the regime that is made up of those who are the best simply on the basis of virtue, and not of men who are good in relation to some presupposition . . . for only here is it simply the case that the same person is a good man and a good citizen, while those who are good in others are so in relation to their regime" (Politics, 1293bl1-8). For Aristotle, this -- not the polity, as some say -- is the theoretical best of all possible regimes. Of the six fundamental practicable regimes, he considers (practicable) aristocracy, along with kingship and polity, "correct" regimes, as well as, in addition, certain "harmonious" and "finely mixed" blends. And Plato's ideal regime, the "republic," may be described, albeit simply, as an aristocracy of philosophers. One of the greatest literary works dealing with the theme of aristocracy is the novel, The Memoirs of Barry Lyndon, Esq., by William Makepeace Thackeray, published in 1844. Here Thackeray hearkens back to the second half of the previous century, making a deliberate attempt to write in the style of the popular fiction of the time, and Henry Fielding, in particular, whom he greatly admired. Barry Lyndon is a fictional autobiography of a man who considers himself a "gentleman of quality and fashion," although, in reality, his claims had tenuous legitimacy, Barry having been being born into the petty Irish gentry. This, however, doesn't stop Barry from assuming aristocratic "airs" and insisting to anyone who will listen that he is "the descendant of the kings of Ireland" (Thackeray, p. 68). Early on, Barry informs his reader, "I never had a taste for anything but genteel company, and hate all descriptions of low life" (Thackeray, p. 62). And through his will, persistence, machinations, natural talents and bravery, he finally gains admittance into polite society, living as "a gentleman of leisure" in a huge English country estate with a beautiful young countess as wife. Never mind that Barry was a "rogue" and a "scoundrel," considered by the other nobility as "a common opportunist." In the motion picture by Stanley Kubrick, Lord Wendover, from whom Barry was attempting to secure a title, explains to him what an aristocrat is: "My friends are the best people. Oh, I don't mean that they're the most virtuous -- or, indeed, the least virtuous -- or the cleverest, or the stupidest, or the richest, or the best-born, but the best." Despite their humorous quality, these lines provide, I think, ultimately, a good definition of an aristocrat. As unsatisfying as this definition is, the loss of the "preeminence" of this sort of person is at the very root of our "social recession." Aristotle writes, "For whatever the authoritative element conceives to be honorable will necessarily be followed by the opinion of the other citizens" (Politics, 1273al39-41), and this has been called his greatest political insight. Throughout much of European history, the "authoritative element" was composed of the land-owning nobility and the clergy of the state religion of each country, and represented a perpetuation of a time-honored system of values to the people, even when individual nobles, bishops, and even kings were seen to flout them. And despite an abundance of the latter down through history, the people generally subscribed and submitted to the system because they perceived a general agreement about what should be represented. No such perception exists today. And gone is the agreement and tension which existed between the church, which represented religious piety and virtue, and the temporal powers of the state. Historically, the role of the true aristocrat (of which there were many, but few appear in history books) was to exemplify virtues of honor, bravery, justice, grace, modesty, Christian piety, education, loyalty, military prowess, courtesy, and generosity toward the disadvantaged. His proper function was not to live at society's expense, but rather to "set the example" and give the common people a role model and something to admire. The true aristocrat offered the common people a vision to lift them out of their daily toils and mundane lives. The true aristocrat offered the people a concrete example of beauty and virtue in a world of suffering and death. Regarding state support of the aristocrat, Edmund Burke, an opponent of the slave trade, a strong advocate of the American cause before and during the American Revolution, and the father of modern conservatism, writes:
Again and again, Aristotle warns aristocrats against any appearance of arrogance toward those beneath them, and the French Revolution may be seen as a result of a general failure to heed him. After the execution of the King, however, the French people -- who loved Louis XVI to the end -- made several attempts to restore the Monarchy and the Church, such was the compelling power and attraction of the ancien regime. Aristocracy survived the French Revolution, but died in World War I, along with so much else. The authoritative element of our regime should have continued to exemplify the aristocratic virtues which it did at the beginning. But they eroded in proportion to the rising preeminence of the merchant and middling classes. Instead of exemplifying the values of virtue and piety, our government conveys the message that free-thinking, secularism, tolerance, relativism, mercantilism, and money are what it "conceives to be honorable." President Clinton lies, breaks the law and his marriage vows; President Coolidge says, "The chief business of the American people is business" [1] -- the people take their cue from this, as per Aristotle. At best, our founders did not adequately think through the consequences of predicating a political system on Locke's axioms; the abolishment of titles and the so-called "separation of church and state" were ticking time bombs. Guns, gangs, consumerism, drugs, divorce, suicide -- these are merely the symptoms of the terminal stage of a diseased regime. The failure of our regime to adequately safeguard against the dangers inherent in every democracy and the relentless assault of science thus combine to produce the "social recession" Myers illustrates. According to Nietzsche, science is motivated by a "will to power" far more than a "will to truth," and because of our ignorance of the fact that science is a convention, a naivete, a simplification, a falsification, a specific choice among competing metaphysics rather than "the privileged road to the truth" (Appleyard, p. 227), we have allowed a specific human type -- variously characterized by Nietzsche as "small-souled," "slavish," "dependent," and "herd animal" -- to gain power over us, and prevail over our very spirits, as Homais over Madame Bovary.
[1] Cf. Rousseau: "The politicians of the ancient world were always talking of morals and virtue; ours speak of nothing but commerce and money." (Discourse on the Arts and Sciences, p. 17) Return |
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