Cynicism and the Modern Art of Politics: the 2008 Presidential race through the lens of La Rochefoucauld
Owen Scott, Ph.D.
“1.--What we term virtue is often but a mass of various actions and divers interests, which fortune, or our own industry, manage to arrange; and it is not always from valour or from chastity that men are brave, and women chaste.”
The Germans have Nietzsche, the British Bacon, America produced Ben Franklin, and the French have La Rochefoucauld. Each of these men made a reputation with his ability to distill gems of wisdom into pithy sayings. With this post, I launch a series devoted to discussing la Rochefoucauld’s famous maxims in the context of the current race for the Presidency of the USA. What does a seventeenth century French nobleman have to teach us about presidential politics? Possibly quite a lot.
From his own time to the present, La Rochefoucauld has been controversial, some believing his insights provide invaluable training in the hidden realities of power and ambition, others claiming that by denigrating much of what we put forward as virtue, he has done humanity a disservice. In a letter to Dr. Price arguing for a system of government with built in checks and balances, John Adams quoted La Rochefoucauld:
The ambitious deceive themselves, when they propose an end to their ambition; for that end, when attained, becomes a means.
If la Rochefoucauld’s arrows of wisdom were on target, they should still hit the mark today, i.e., his maxims should be applicable across time. They should help us understand our own political world without the need for a deep knowledge of the author’s life, times and circumstances. But was La Rochefoucauld right? Do his maxims contain wisdom that can help make sense of the relentless back and forth volleys of spin, plays and talking points? Answering this requires knowledge of our lives, times, and circumstances. To facilitate a debate on the truth and universality of La Rochefoucauld’s assertions, each installment will present one or two maxims along with a significant and widely-reported event from the current race. The exploration will be done by posing questions, suggesting some answers, and inviting interested readers to fight it out in their comments.
51 minutes ago
2 comments:
"... it is not always from valour or from chastity that men are brave, and women chaste.”
In my view, government, hence politics, is a necessary evil. As a species, humankind is a radically social animal; we thrive in community and aspire to social order. Because we are radically finite, "enjoying" a rather tragic universal human condition, our unitive strivings toward full communion will necessarily fall short of our highest ideals and loftiest aspirations. The practical upshot of this is that, for the most part, then, our social ordering must be coerced; hence, the necessary evil.
Politics, then, is the art of the possible. It traffics mostly in the currency of ways and means and strategies and less so deals with ends and goals. Our government presumes ends and goals and values and has already encoded them in such as the UN Declaration of Human Rights, the US Declaration of Independence, and our US Constitution & Bill of Rights.
The greatest cynicism in politics, then, is the mischaracterization of others' political positions as values-based or as moral stances when, most of the time, rather, those positions are practically determined or pragmatic stances. The political coin of the realm purchases answers to such questions as What is effective? or What works?, while the cynical politician pretends the questions are, instead, What is right or wrong? or What is good or evil? and lays claim to a pretentious moral superiority.
The great theologian, Lonergan, would probably say that our collective goal is the sucessful institutionalization of intellectual, affective (emotional), moral, sociopolitical and religious conversion, which might also be to say that we are aspiring to practice what the developmental folks like Piaget, Erikson, Kohlberg, Fowler et al have described for the human transformative journey. And to the extent that humankind, as a whole, is on a developmental journey, and to the extent it is still a tad early vis a vis our collective moral development, for example, we must sacrifice some of our freedom in order to advance the common good; we must surrender to a certain amount of coercion (need I count or recite the ways?) and the good must, as they say, suffer for the bad.
This is not to say there isn't a good bit of valor and chastity, too, but it ain't quite as much as some would have us believe! So, in addition to your local donations to charity, on April 15th, would you prefer an automatic debit or would you rather write a check? or do you think we can abolish the IRS and aspire to a more virtuous system of voluntary donations to the common good?
Thankfully, I have already seen McCain and Obama framing up their political questions in terms of what is the most effective course of action, eschewing facile caricaturizations and detestable (but all too common) demonizations. Both of these men speak in pragmatic terms, moreso than ideological.
I think they will also eschew the oversimplified false dichotomies such as self-love vs altruism. I think of Merton's description of Bernardian Love: love of self for sake of self; love of God/other for sake of self; love of other/God for sake of God/other; and love of self for sake of God/other. These dynamisims do not exist as over against one another but as comfortably co-existing realities, like CS Lewis' eros, storge', agape and philia.
Merton spoke of two major crises in life: continuity (death in all its manifestations and forms) and creativity (making a difference). The latter was well summarized by my good friend Ed Timmons, who taught that Everybody's got to be somebody! Obama recognizes the power of empowering people at the point of their deepest needs, which is to say that he invites and encourages us to continue to make a difference as we move through loves moments -- of self and of other -- going beyond but not without all of these ways of loving. I think Thomas Merton would vote for Obama!
Uncle John,
I am surprised to find such a substantive comment so quickly after I posted my working draft of the introduction to my planned series on La Fochefoucauld. That's one sophisticated reply, too. I use this blog as an archive for my political posts and comments. I am thinking in terms of posting this series simultaneously on Daily KOS where I go by "sundiata" and Talking Points Memo (TPM) where I'm known as Dr Morpheus. I look forward to your being a part of the conversation. Owen
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