In Which the Blog is Remembered and Apologies are Tendered
Hullo everyone, Erica here. Sorry for the ridiculous delay. You’re probably wondering what’s happened with my life. If you even read this. I like to think that you are, but I might just be typing into the Void. Not that it matters either way. But yeah. Uhm. I’ve really got no excuse for my ridiculously delayed absence, other than being insanely busy with being a college student and kicking ass and taking names in stupid lib-arts classes like “Wisdom & Deception” and “Gender in Islamic Societies” and “F is for Fake (or, A Philosophy of Forgery)”.
To prove all of this, I’ve got a treat (not really) for all of you. That is to say, the first paper I wrote for Wisdom & Deception (posted as I procrastinate on the second one, which is due at 10am tomorrow, and for which I have done none of the prep-work or readings).
A note: This paper contains an internal game. Kyra and Jess assigned me five tasks to complete in my five page paper (isn’t that smart of them?), which were:
1) Every third sentence must end with a word beginning or ending with ‘w’
2) Every fifth sentence must contain an internal rhyme or alliteration
3) “Ubiquitous” must appear at least once
4) The conclusion must end with “Ultimately,”
5) A colorblind reference must be made
The State & the Sheeple: On Moral Thought & Political Theory
Good and evil, right and wrong. There are no shades of grey in the eyes of the common man. Fortunately, the common man does not ever need to see the world in terms of anything other than pristine black and white. Morals serve as rules for the peasant class, keeping the hoi-polloi restrained and preventing it from succumbing to the madness that results from indecision. No, it is rather the upper class, what Plato calls the “guardian” class (Plato 9), to whom the shades of grey fall. For these guardians, absolute moral rules become more like guidelines to be retained or discarded as necessary to keep the peasants pliant.
In his essay “On Lying,” Augustine of Hippo presents his readers with a perplexing moral quandary: of these two men, which one is the liar? The man who “says a false thing that he may not deceive, or he who says a true thing that he may deceive” (Augustine 3)? After a rousing internal debate on the subject, he comes to the corollary that the conditions of the lie are irrelevant, so long as the speaker’s conscience remains clear. His conclusion, however, lies within the context of Christian theology—morals, in other words. It is precisely within this Christian framework that Augustine’s argument begins to fall apart.
In his article “Political Action: The Problem of Dirty Hands,” political theorist Michael Walzer presents the three “utilitarian arguments” (Walzer 169) often used to justify the fact that “political actors must sometimes overcome their moral inhibitions” (Walzer 168). His first argument follows the pragmatic approach, declaring that decisions “ought to be made solely in terms of particular and immediate circumstances” (Walzer 169). His third is formed around a pre-assumed perspicacity of morality; leaders must sometimes make questionable decisions, but that these choices should then “[leave] pain behind…even after the decision has been made” (Walzer 174).
It Walzer’s second argument, however, under which a truly excellent leader can stake his claim. This second argument is based around the idea that “moral life is a social phenomenon,” that morals are merely “guidelines” designed to “ease our choices in ordinary cases,” but which “do no more than that” (Walzer 169). Here, the distinction is made clear: these rules are appropriate, even necessary, to maintain order over society as a whole.
This second utilitarian argument is put to meritorious use in Niccolo Machiavelli’s The Prince. In his book, originally scripted as a gift to Italian duke Lorenzo de’ Medici, Machiavelli depicts the different methods by which men come to power, and the best way to maintain that power once it has been acquired. In the chapter dealing with “Cruelty and Mercy, and Whether It Is Better to Be Loved Than Feared, or the Contrary,” he contends that “each prince should desire to be held merciful and not cruel” (Machiavelli 65), but that “it is much safer to be feared than loved” (Machiavelli 66). Fear, he states, “is held by dread of punishment” (Machiavelli 67), whereas love is “held by a chain of obligation” which is easily weakened (Machiavelli 66). He then describes the case of the esteemed classical general, Hannibal, who held together a “very large army” by virtue of nothing “other than his inhuman cruelty” which made him “venerable and terrible in the sight of his soldiers” (Machiavelli 67). The portrait Machiavelli paints of Hannibal is especially compelling in that it demonstrates a man who discarded traditional morality in favor of monstrous actions which resulted in the utter and unquestioning loyalty of an army “mixed with infinite kinds of men” (Machiavelli 67).
The next chapter, “In What Mode Faith Should Be Kept by Princes,” expands on Machiavelli’s previous discourse, explaining the best way to “avoid hatred” (Machiavelli 68) after his reign has been established. He explains that there are “two kinds of combat: one with laws, the other with force,” and makes himself clear that combat with law is always better than combat with force, elucidating that “the first is proper to man, the second to beasts” (Machiavelli 69). However, he adds, “because the first is often not enough, one must have recourse to the second,” so the prince must “know well how to use the beast and the man” (Machiavelli 69). “A prudent lord,” Machiavelli attests, “cannot observe faith, nor should he” (Machiavelli 69). The prince here is not a paragon of saintly virtue, nor is he expected to be. Rather, the prince is above and outside the confines of moral rectitude, required to answer to nothing higher than his own wit and wisdom.
If The Prince is the stream of realpolitic, Plato’s Republic is the glacier from whence it flows. One of the earliest and most ubiquitous discourses on ethics and morality, The Republic outlines Plato’s rules for a transcendent utopia. According to Plato, the key to an ideal republic lies in giving each person over to the tasks for which they are best suited. However, human nature prevents such acquiescence on the part of simple subjects. Socrates suggests the Myth of the Metals as a method of clarification, explaining that each human has a metal mixed in with his soul-stuff: bronze for “farmers and craftsmen,” silver for the “auxiliaries,” who defend the city and keep the peace, and gold for “those of you who are capable of ruling” (Plato 100). These “guardians” with the gold in their souls are “the sort least likely to do the city evil,” the wisest and most athletic of all the citizens of the Republic (Plato 104). They must “guard in every possible way” against the city holding anything beyond a moderate reputation, and they prevent anything “that goes against the established order” (Plato 108). Beyond this, though, the guardians bear one even greater responsibility: to protect the happiness of their fellow citizens.
Plato establishes the soul as a tripartite entity consisting of reason, ambition, and appetites. Each of these qualities is associated with a particular social class: reason belongs to the guardians, the auxiliaries possess ambition, and the peasants are ruled by their appetites. Because the plebeians are so dominated by their appetites, they are incapable of making rational choices, and robbed of their chance at happiness. Thus it falls to the guardians to keep the proclivities of the proletariat at bay, lest it fall prey to their own wants.
Thus the guardians find themselves in a precarious position of power. Their responsibility is, first and foremost, to the city. Its citizens are a secondary concern, whose continued safety is contingent on the safety of the city as a whole. Morals have been sent down by the “gods” or, rather, the guardians acting as gods, to maintain the strict caste system upon which the society is based and upon which the guardians’ power rests. The guardians themselves, as the creators of the morals, can easily break, bend, and twist the rules to their own aims, engaging in such “immoral” but necessary practices as lying to protect the safety and stability of the Republic.
Ultimately, though Plato’s Republic is a utopian thought experiment, and Machiavelli’s The Prince is a handy guidebook to navigating the waters of the most treacherous political climate in European history, the two works come together to enhance and embed Walzer’s second utilitarian argument of political ethics. The men in control are the makers of morals, building and breaking ethical codes of conduct as current conditions demand, colorblind save for shades of grey. The world is their sandbox, the structure as fluid as the substance itself, and the only limit is imposed by the lengths of one’s creativity.
If anyone’s wondering…I got an A- on the paper.
