The Idea of Virtue in Antiquity (I): Plato (A)

This blog posting is dedicated to the memory of Robert W. Bretzlaff (1918 - 1988), who was a master farmer in Champaign County, Illinois; who maintained interests in agriculture and civil engineering; and who held all matters of music and of the mind in high regard.  He would have been 105 years old as of the day of this posting, and he has been greatly missed.  From 1854 to the present day, from his predecessors Gustave and Henry W.; and to his successors Robert S., William S., Zachary J., and Ethan H.; this Bretzlaff line in the U.S.A. has greatly enjoyed the blessings of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness - - and not even to mention the benefits of occasional blog postings!

In this blog posting (and its successors), we want to investigate the idea of virtue in Plato’s Republic (Books I - IV), which is famously centered on the idea of justice in a city-state.  For initial working definitions, let us assume that a virtue is a trait of excellence in action (moral virtue) or in thought (intellectual virtue); and that justice is the actual awarding to an individual human person of his due, or what he has earned, be it reward (distributive justice) or punishment (retributive justice).  There may be other traits besides justice that are virtues, as well as alternative definitions of justice.  Moreover, there might be disagreement regarding whether justice is properly predicated of individual human persons, of society at large, or of both.

Background regarding justice: Someone claiming proceeds from labor or capital might be told “Having been subsidized by good government, ‘you didn’t build that,’ meaning that you didn’t earn anything beyond the subsidy; and any continuing income stream accrues to the government!”  Someone requesting protection from illegal activity via the deterring effect of a criminal justice system might be told “Having been oppressed by bad government and evil victimizers, some individuals previously known as criminals have been recategorized as “the victimized”; whose conduct has been contextualized, and whose punishment has been cancelled!”  If such claims and requests are routinely denied, then, evidently, one would be forced either to abandon the possibility of justice or else to re-examine its underlying rationale.  Perhaps there are alternative ways to ground justice as rights and obligations pertaining to life, liberty, and property; and if so, then those rights and obligations must be secured by a sovereign who - - although striking terror into the minds of a rebellious populace - - can at least prevent life from becoming truly solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.

Plato’s dialog, the Republic, bears the title Politeia in transliterated Greek and De Republica in Latin.  The Latin title may also be rendered in English as “On the Public Thing” or “Public Affairs.”  The Republic examines the ethical questions: “What is virtue?” “What is justice?” and “Why should a person or city be just?” 

For a work widely known as a discussion of political theory, the Republic gets off to a somewhat surprising start: Socrates’ interlocutor, Cephalus, fields a question about the greatest benefit that accrues, in old age, from the possession of property (Book I: 330d - 331b).  Cephalus states that he is concerned about his personal fate in the afterlife.  Not being personally aware of any debt that he still owes to other individuals, to his city-state, or to the ancient Greek deities - - and evidently presupposing that unencumbered wealth is an independent, summary indicaton of being debt-free - - Cephalus hopes to attain to the poetic model of a man living out his days in justice and piety.  

Of course, the mere mention of a concept or idea like justice entices Socrates to start one of his typical examinations.  Socrates, Cephalus, and Polemarchus consider the definition of justice (331c - 336a) and advance to the point of saying that to be just is to benefit friends and harm enemies.  Suddenly, Thrasymachus breaks into the conversation, maintaining that “the just is ‘nothing else’ than the advantage of the stronger” (336b - 338c).  

Whereas Cephalus had started with the presupposition that being just is an attribute of an individual human person, Thrasymachus stated an abstract version of the just that could be applied equally well to governments, their ultimate rulers, and by extension, to any individual human person.  In fact, Socrates quickly pivots from individuals to governments and their leaders (338c - 356b).  Socrates deduces that justice is virtue and wisdom, while injustice is vice and ignorance (350d); that disunity (inner faction and lack of self-agreement) destroys individuals, while political faction destroys cities (351e - 352a); and that injustice can never be more profitable than justice (354a).  

It is during this dialog with Thrasymachus that Socrates enunciates the Greek presuppositions that the soul (psyche, or principle of life) has its own unique work (353d); that a good or bad soul manages “things” (living generally) either well or badly (353e); and that he who lives well is either happy (be it on a dichotomous or on a continuous scale) or even blessed (as an asymptotic limit to the continuous variable of happiness - see 354a).  

“Happiness” is a value term, synonymous with well-being or flourishing.  A second construal is as a word that purports to be a purely descriptive psychological term, grouped together with terms like ecstatic, tranquil, or depressed; and serving as a metric for relentlessly utilitarian government programs.  The purely psychological construal is certainly not what Plato had in mind, because Platonic happiness requires ethical action in order to live consistently with the objective essence of rational human persons.

Later in the Republic, Book IV, we will be told that the soul can be considered as having three faculties: See 436a for the distinction between learning [facts or reasons], desiring [and willing] pleasures, and feeling anger.  This “psychology section” in Book IV runs from 436a to at least 440d.  The three-fold faculties of the human soul are referred to the intellect, the will (or desire), and the emotions.  It is taken to be self-evidently true that the intellect - - dealing as it does with rational processes - - is the highest faculty of that rational animal known as the individual human person; and that, for the favored few, the rational process known as the contemplation of the Forms of truth, beauty, and goodness is the highest activity, approaching the limit of blessedness. 

Returning to the end of Book I, Thrasymachus “abandons the field,” and Socrates summarizes the investigation so far as follows (Book I: 354b): We interlocutors have failed to determine “what justice is” (regarding its essential nature) before trying to ascertain “something about it” (regarding its description as virtue or vice).  Asking whether justice is virtue and knowledge, or whether injustice is ignorance and vice, is premature as long as no one knows “what justice is.”  Consequently, Socrates says that “the present outcome of the discussion is that I know nothing.  For if I don’t know what the just [or justice] is, I shall hardly know whether it [justice] is a virtue or not, and whether its possessor is or is not happy.”

Glaucon and Adimantus now ask Socrates (Book II: 357b) if he had really thought that he had convinced them of the superiority of justice during his previous argument against Thrasymachus.  In other words, “Is it always better to be just than unjust?”  Glaucon challenges Socrates to give a better argument for his [Socrates’] position (357b - 358d).  Socrates accepts the challenge (358d).  Glaucon then recapitulates and embellishes Thrasymachus’ argument (358e - 362c).  Next, Adimantus continues the development of Thrasymachus’ objections to the thesis of the superiority of justice over injustice (362e - 367e).  

At that point (368c - d), Socrates remarks that their examination of the nature and origin of justice requires keen vision.  This keenness is like that required for seeing, from a distance, small letters (of the alphabet) drawn on a wall or surface.  Reading larger drawn letters on a larger, closer surface would be helpful in discerning letters, words, sentences, and meaning.  It is accepted by Adimantus that there is an analogy between discerning such drawn letters by sight and discerning justice by intellectual vision and rational argument. 

In 368e - 369a, we are told that because there is more justice in the larger object [city or city-state], therefore the city-state is more amenable to the analysis of justice than is the individual person.  We want to continue “looking for the likeness of the greater in the form of the less.”  (The idea of “more justice in the larger object” is also mentioned in Book IV: 434d - e.)  Moreover, if we can theoretically construct the origin of a city-state, then we should be able to pinpoint the origin of justice and injustice within the city-state.  In other words, Socrates believes that an account of the nature and origin of a good city - - and of its justice and virtue - - will help identify justice and virtue in an individual human person.  

Next week we will continue to follow Plato’s construction of the ideal city-state and his illumination of the idea of virtue in the ancient world. 

Secular Enigmas (2): Ancient to Modern

During the 300’s A.D., the Roman Emperors who were Christian gradually disfavored pagan sacrifice and finally made it illegal.  Christian asceticism (e.g., living on the tops of columns as stylites or in the desert as hermits), being thought to inculcate spiritual virtue, served as a substitute for the increasingly limited opportunities for Christian martyrdom.  Ultimately, an “athletes of God” movement arose, based on Biblical sources (e.g., Heb. 12:1, II Tim. 2:5; 4:7-8).  Some would-be ascetics withdrew from the world by living in monasteries under the administration and discipline of an abbot, who enforced the terms of written monastic rules (regulae).  Benedict of Nursia (480-563 A.D.) and others wrote alternative sets of rules defining various monastic orders.  For non-ascetically inclined Christians, however, parishes were set up as subsets of geographical areas known as dioceses, which were administered by bishops and intended jointly to cover the entire surface area of all Christian kingdoms world-wide.

Some of those Christians set apart according to a regula could also become ordained clergy, and those so ordained were known as regular clergy.  In contrast, clergy in local parishes - - or “out in the world,” from the monastic perspective - - belonged to no monastic order and were known as secular clergy.  But at this point, one is left wondering why the word “secular” was chosen as an adjective meaning “out in the world,” or “belonging to no monastic order.”  Today, as we saw in the first blog posting in this series, “secular” means either not religious, or adhering to the theory of the separation of church and state, or espousing civil religion, or emphasizing a naturalistic or metaphysical worldview.  Wouldn’t it have been easier just to call the local clergy irregular?  

We can start to unravel this puzzle by referring to the etymology of the word secular mentioned in the first blog posting in this series.  The English word “secular” derives from the Latin word “saecularis,” which means belonging to an age, era, or epoch.  An age in this sense is in Latin a “saeculum,” carrying with it the possible connotations of a human generation, or a characteristic time for a civilization to be transformed, or an average longevity of a particular cohort (group of people sharing a common characteristic such as year of birth). 

The Latin nouns “saeculum” (singular) and “saecula” (plural) had a long and venerable history, stretching back into Etruscan times centuries before Christianity.  The great Roman scholar, Marcus Terentius Varro (116 – 27 BCE), wrote about saecula in his treatise, De Saeculis.  Saecula are periods of historical time, typically endowed with mythic importance.  For example, some previous Roman writers had interpreted the appearance of twelve vultures at the founding of the city of Rome as implying that Rome would last 1200 years.  Varro himself associated the passing of the saeculum with the passing of the Roman Republic in the first century BCE.  The Roman Republic lasted from 509 BCE (overthrow of last Etruscan king) to either 31 BCE (Battle of Actium) or 27 BCE (Octavian designated as Caesar Augustus).  Thus, the Republic’s saeculum was either 478 or 482 years long, and its passing was an earth-shattering event.

Evidently, no one thought about declaring a saeculum in 509 BCE: That saeculum was comprehensible only ex post facto.  But there were also to be saecula of shorter length defined a priori by Roman Emperors.  In each case, the Imperial goal was to promote the idea that the incoming dynasty would promote an era of peace, prosperity, and stability worthy of celebration in games, coinage, and inscriptions.  Each new Emperor and his Pax Romana were optimistically projected to issue in a new era, or saeculum.  Because of its association with the political power of the incoming Emperor, the saeculum came to signify “the present age (era) of the world.”  Events occurring in an Imperial saeculum were said to be secular.  The first Roman Emperor, Caesar Augustus, reinvented an obscure series of public games, of mythical origin, as new-fangled “games of the saeculum,” or the “Secular Games” (“Ludi Saeculares”).  

Regrettably, however, these new saecula were quite a bit shorter than the approximately 480 years of the Republic’s saeculum.  From 235 to 285 CE there were perhaps 25 individuals technically rising to the level of Emperor, which averaged out to a very paltry two years per Emperor or per saeculum.  Early Christians came to contrast the new, and increasingly ephemeral, Imperial saecula with an eternal, heavenly realm and with an eschatological view of history, in which there would be a very lengthy Christian saeculum, possibly terminated by an event even more earth-shattering than the Battle of Actium.  Alternately, Augustine would later say that Christians are already living in the last period of history.

Recapitulating, we now see that the word “secular” came to be the designator for time in the current age (era) of the world and its Pax Romana.  Clergy in local parishes, belonging to no monastic order and receiving no direct benefits from the supposedly strict rules and religious purity of the monasteries, were deemed to be clergy of the saeculum, or secular clergy.  Most Christians not only lived in geographical areas beyond the monasteries’ cloistered walls but were also immersed in the flow of time beyond those walls.  In other words, the saeculum came to refer to both the space and time in the ordinary world.

Temporarily digressing from our analysis of the word “saeculum,” we observe, generally, that grammar is the overall set of rules for a language.  Its elements include subjects and verbs, etc.; its syntax governs word order; and its semantics provide a study of meaning.  Moreover, Latin is a so-called declined language.  Declensions are variations in the form of a noun, pronoun, adjective, adverb, or article by which grammatical case, number, and gender are specified.  The grammatical case labels a subject, possessed object, indirect object, or direct object as nominative, genitive, dative, or accusative, respectively.  (Two Latin cases are omitted here.)  For the declension of the word, saeculum, both the nominative and accusative cases have saeculum for singular and saecula for plural.  The corresponding genitive singular and plural are saeculi and saeculorum, respectively.  Hence, the Latin phrase “in saecula saeculorum” translates literally as “into ages of ages”; or, figuratively, as “into centuries of centuries” or “world without end.” 

The “in saecula saeculorum” became part of Christian liturgy as early as the 500’s CE via the short hymn “Gloria Patri,” which affirms glory to the Holy Trinity using the Latin text “Gloria Patri, et Filio, et Spiritui Sancto. Sicut erat in principio, et nunc, et semper, et in secula seculorum.  Amen.”  The most familiar English version renders this as “Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Ghost.  As it was in the beginning, is now and ever shall be, world without end. Amen.”  The glory due to God extends in saecula saeculorum, or into ages of ages, or [as] a world without end.  The strength of any one Imperial saeculum is truly puny compared to that of the Christian secula seculorum.

The increasing Christian asceticism over the course of centuries beginning in the 300’s A.D. may be characterized as secularization of type #1: Cutting-edge, regular clergy saw the secular clergy, and other Christians generally, as existing in the world and its saeculum; and ipso facto separated from the regular domain of asceticism, purity of belief, and eternity prefigured.  Secularization #1 envisioned a truly purified Christian life splitting off from an inferior saeculum.

With the advent of the French, Russian, and other radical revolutions, however, a truly purified intellectual and political life was to be split off and freed from the influence of any clergy whatsoever.  Beyond regular clergy, beyond secular clergy, beyond every possible impediment to the revolutionary life, there seems to have arisen a blessed vision of a Hegelian-style Absolute Beyondism, in which a political order would rule the world with liberté, égalité, and fraternité. 

The increasingly radical political revolutions of 1789 or later may be classified as secularization of type #2: Cutting-edge revolutionaries see both regular and secular clergy, and Christians generally, as existing in a saeculum populated by individuals suffering from “false consciousness,” as in Marx.  Such individuals are incapable of acting in their own best interest.  For example, if someone comes into equilibrium with his or her world by adopting theistic beliefs as one part of a web of basic beliefs, then those theistic beliefs are attributed to false consciousness, abetted by a presumed ignorance of the Marxist theory of the opiate of the masses.  In contrast, some of today’s revolutionaries believe that they can act in the best interests of everyone: “Woke” individuals, analogous to the ghosts in Dicken’s Christmas Carol, exist and are experts in reparation of inequities past, detection of inequities present, and prevention of inequities future.  “Ideological rigorism” has thereby replaced “Christian asceticism.”  Secularization #2 envisions a truly rigorous intellectual and political life splitting off from an inferior saeculum and its befuddled masses.

In conclusion, there may be many types of secularization, but in each of the two historical types of secularization discussed here, I have argued that there are two common factors: an exalted class of leaders (ascetic or monastic in the first case, intellectual or political in the second) and a rationale for the second-class status of all non-leaders.  In other words, secularization, as here described, is the splitting and distancing of an elite class from the hoi polloi.

Secular Enigmas (1): Elusive Definitions

One very often hears the word “secular” bandied about in discussions of sociology, politics, and religion.  Amazingly, one also hears the very same word used in discussions of technical matters in mathematics, astronomy, and physics.  Few people, however, are aware that the adjective “secular” refers to the noun “saeculum” in Latin.  Even fewer people are cognizant of the fact that saeculum refers to an age, era, or epoch.  Still fewer people know how and why the ancient temporal concept of the secular was gradually transformed into the modern political notion of the separation of church and state.  Drastically fewer people are aware of the motivations behind the usage of that same word, secular, in certain types of mathematics, astronomy, and physics.  A very small fraction of the mathematicians and scientists who actually use the so-called auxiliary, or characteristic, or secular equations know the origin of the term “secular” in their fields of study.  These technical workers merely use the term “secular” in order to label either a certain type of astronomical motion or an equation that occurs in the solution of certain differential equations via algebraic equations.  If one may hijack a saying attributed to Mark Twain, “Everybody talks about ‘the secular,’ but nobody - - or virtually nobody - - does anything about it, at least by way of etymology.”  In order to remedy this defect, we now undertake to investigate the meaning and etymology of the word “secular.”

Before citing a dictionary definition of the word “secular,” the present writer will rehearse his own knowledge of a variety of meanings imputed to this word.  

First of all, some of those meanings are negative, i.e., indicative of what the secular is not: To be secular is to be vaguely non-religious; or at least not specifically religious in any well-defined sense; or, on the other hand, very well separated from any ideas, experiences, or practices associated with personal relationships, historical identities, or organized religions. 

Secondly, some of those meanings are political: To be secular is to be rigorously isolated from any ideas or practices associated with the American Christianity of the Revolutionary Era, i.e., to fall within the purview of the Jeffersonian theory of the wall of separation between church and state.  Eventually, this theory encompassed all religious groups and the secular state.  Over time, the idea of the secular state came to co-exist uneasily with the metaphor of melting-pot assimilation of immigrant subpopulations, each of which expected some type of interaction between church and state.  This problem was originally papered over by the idea of civil religion, which could provide moral examples of good citizenship while lying outside the theoretical scope of the separation of church and state.  For example, John Adams presupposed the compatibility of the secular state with civil religion when he stated that “Our Constitution was made for a moral and religious people.  It is wholly inadequate for the government of any other.”  The idea of civil religion persisted into the 1950’s, when Dwight David Eisenhower said that “America makes no sense without a deeply held faith in God - - and I don't care what it is.”

Thirdly, some of those meanings are due to the European Enlightenment (ca. 1715 to 1804).  One task of the secular state was the suppression of any preceding, historical religion that violated Enlightenment norms of rationality.  The secular state might, however, institute a civil religion; provided that the ideas of eternity, eternal perspectives, and absolutes in philosophy or religion were rejected.  At the height of the French Revolution, the so-called Cult of Reason was instituted by the secular French state as a suitably secular, non-historical, and atheistic religion not subject to separation between historical church and state.  One notes in passing that this Enlightenment view of religion is at variance with the Platonic idea of time as the moving image of eternity: Any experience of time, or moving images, presupposes the existence of eternity.

Finally, the present writer is aware of at least three more-positive ways of belonging to a secular or non-religious world.  The secular may refer to the physical and temporal world, including the space, time, and events occurring in the physics of all bodies fast or slow, large or small.  In this sense, the secular pertains to an objective world in classical physics as appropriately amended by special relativity, general relativity, and quantum mechanics.  Moreover, the secular pertains to the subjective time occurring in the psychology of natural consciousness, including the long-term mental effects of religious practices considered as research variables, as opposed to existential beliefs.  Alternately, the secular may be said to pertain to an impersonal rationality or spirituality (the Zeitgeist), which arises from the joint activity of finite spirits.  These finite spirits explore the universe and contribute to an asymptotic approach to the Hegelian goal of Absolute Knowledge. 

By way of comparison, we now turn to the five definitions of the adjective “secular” stated in Webster’s New World Dictionary of the American Language (1968): (1) belonging to the world as opposed to the church, i.e., not sacred or religious; as with secular music or schools. (2) living in the outside world unrestricted by monastic vows or rules, e.g., secular clergy as opposed to regular clergy. (3) occurring only once in an age or century. (4) continuing for a long time or from age to age. (5) secularistic, or according to secularism, i.e., rejecting any form of religion, and, typically, endorsing the theory of the separation of church and state.

That same 1968 edition of Webster’s dictionary gives the etymology of “secular” as deriving from the Latin word “saecularis,” which means belonging to a generation or age, which in Latin is a “saeculum.”  The Latin word “saeculum” carries with it the possible connotations of a human generation, a characteristic time for a civilization to be transformed, an era, or an epoch.  The English word “age” is here understood as an epoch, era, or average longevity of a particular cohort, rather than as the lifespan of a particular individual.  

In subsequent postings to this blog, we shall attempt to point out some of the many ways that the idea of “the secular” has developed from ancient times up until our own.  In particular, we shall explore how the usage of the word “secular” has proliferated from ancient history, to history of the Christian church, to certain astronomical phenomena, and to some of the mathematics required for theoretical advances in astronomy and physics, including quantum mechanics.

Status of Citizens on Constitution Day, 2022

This essay is the third in a trio of blog-postings (8/1/22, 9/1/22, and 9/17/22) analyzing the waxing and waning of historical republics, as has been discussed in Victor Davis Hanson’s outstanding book, The Dying Citizen (Basic Books, 2021).  A republic presupposes citizens, as opposed to individuals existing in a state of nature or as the subjects of an autocracy or oligarchy.  This year’s Constitution Day (September 17, 2022) marks 235 years since the signing, in Philadelphia, of the U.S. Constitution prior to its adoption by the states and its establishment of the U.S. as a republic of citizens.

Before the institution of a republic, Hanson considers individuals to be “pre-citizens.”  In the immediately preceding (9/1/22) blog post, we looked at one type of pre-citizen, the peasant.  In today’s blog post, we examine two additional concepts of pre-citizen: the resident and the tribe member.  We will conclude with an estimate of the status of U.S. citizens on Constitution Day, 2022.

Citizens are members of a civil society who are united for the purpose of forming a republic and making laws.  Following Kant, we observe that the citizen has three characteristics: the lawful freedom to obey no other law than that to which he has given his consent; equality with all others before the law; and economic autonomy, or the responsibility for one’s own support as a member of the commonwealth (republic).  Whether in a constitutional convention or as an accumulation of precedent, the people constitute themselves as a state with coercive power in an original contract.  The people thereby give up their external freedom and take it back immediately as members of a republic.

Residents are merely those who live in a particular place, whereas citizens are individuals who have legal rights and duties even if they temporarily live outside the republic granting them citizenship.  Historically, as Hanson writes in his Chapter Two, immigrants arriving in the U.S. were expected to surrender their previous identities (e.g., to forego acting as foreign agents, etc.) and to adopt an American identity out of gratitude for the rights conveyed by the U.S. Declaration of Independence and the U.S. Constitution (i.e., to adopt American values as delineated in the republic’s founding documents).  The existence of this gratitude or adopted set of values - - in a word, this assimilation - - was freely presupposed, for why else would new immigrants have undertaken the arduous journeys required in previous centuries?

New immigrants to the U.S., it was originally thought, had no more reason than anyone else to create factions within the U.S.; in any event, the U.S. was governed by checks and balances countering potential factions.  Eventually, the legal differences between citizens and various types of aliens (from the Latin alienus, meaning foreigner, stranger, or belonging to another country or people) were established in U.S. law; and the U.S. became the world’s oldest functioning constitutional republic of citizens.

Today, Hanson observes, social cohesion (assimilation of immigrants) in the U.S. is challenged by the huge numbers of impoverished, illegal aliens arriving in the U.S. without high school diplomas, fluency in English, or the incentive to assimilate.  It would seem that there is a progressive elite in the U.S. that encourages non-assimilation in order to cultivate a dependent class of clients and future voters.  Hanson offers a flagrant example of such encouragement of non-assimilation on his page 71: In a recent U.S. Presidential primary election, a certain non-Spanish-speaking, third-generation American candidate, who holds a Stanford degree, appealed for pollical support from non-assimilated individuals from Mexico and Latin America.  These non-assimilated individuals were presumably thrilled by that candidate’s consistent use of trilled r’s and of Spanish pronunciations for the buzz-words of identity politics.  Hanson finds (page 75) that huge numbers of immigrants arise from an open-border policy that is consistent with corporate America’s desire for cheap labor and with many politicians’ desires for client-voters.

On his pages 96-97, Hanson finds that open borders are being accepted in popular media and elite institutions as a universal right to emigrate anywhere in the world.  Thus, “we are reverting to the world of the pre-citizen and to a pre-nation mindset,” which is reminiscent of “the latter fifth century AD, when Vandals, Visigoths, Ostrogoths, and Huns freely crossed into Roman lands.”  The U.S. Constitution does not guarantee anyone such a right, and this immense immigration “suggests that citizenship, as defined by the Constitution, in some ways no longer really exists.”

Tribalism, the subject of Hanson’s Chapter Three, is the theory that the divisions of a traditional society are based primarily on kin groups (sets of individuals with blood ties) and their chieftains.  The word tribe derives from the Latin for “three-fold,” referring to the tradition that there were originally three tribes in the Roman state before the advent of one unified citizenry in the Roman Republic.  As Hanson remarks on his page 100, “Rome gave us the word natio (nation) to reflect the revolutionary idea that the free citizens of a state did not all have to look the same way … [in order] to enjoy the same rights.”  In other words, the Roman Republic rejected tribalism.

Likewise, American multiracialism envisions one unified citizenry within the U.S., with one common culture existing in any number of races.  The U.S. Constitution, adopted in 1788, provided for the abolition of the foreign slave trade after 20 years, as well for the infamous “3/5 compromise,” which were necessary both for the unanimous adoption of the Constitution and for the establishment of the former colonies’ common defense.  (Like clockwork, in 1808 Jefferson signed enabling legislation outlawing the foreign slave trade.)  In other words, the U.S. Constitution aims at the ideal of a non-racial citizenship.

Today, however, a new competitor, multiculturalism, is at war with traditional American multiracialism.  Multiculturalism seeks to define the country by many cultures, some of which are mutually antagonistic; and envisions a continual feuding of various races, sects, tribes, and identities for hegemony in an existential fight to control culture and government.

Tribalism, now seen as essentially synonymous with multiculturalism, was until recently regarded as backward, reactionary, and pre-civilizational, marking a road to chaos (Hanson, p. 101).  Examples of disastrous tribalism appear in the Jim-Crow South, the castes of India, the racial laws of fascist states, the apartheid of South Africa, and the warring regions of the former Yugoslavia.

Earlier, Thucydides had argued that tribal people were inherently nomadic and incapable of civilization.  In contrast, the Greek polis replaced blood ties with the offer of rights and duties for citizens.  Various republics waxed and waned over time, yet tribalism never went wholly extinct.  Tribalism has now reappeared as the preferred progressive tool for identification of individuals by race and gender.  Hanson notes (p. 108) that in the 1950’s American campus housing was segregated by race, that in the 1960’s such segregation was banned, but that by the 2020’s segregated living quarters and “safe spaces” have become trendy again.  Multiculturalism is eclipsing multiracialism.

Why, Hanson asks (p. 115), has the theory of race and gender victimization overtaken the Marxist doctrine of class oppression as the main revolutionary creed?  One might speculate that the class of the poor, typically defined as the lowest-income 20% of the U.S. population, is smaller than the class of non-whites, which is around 40% of the U.S. population.  Moreover, upward and downward mobility ensures that the lowest-income 20% are not the same individuals year after year, whereas ethnicity is presumably a fixed characteristic.  Hence, some politicians would expect to find at least twice as many clients if race and gender are the defining categories of victimization instead of income level.

“Marginalized groups” are defined as sets of individuals supposedly victimized today due to the behavior of some others’ ancestors in the remote past.  Multiculturalism, or tribalism, results in individuals within “marginalized groups” now being treated unequally (preferentially) at the expense of individuals within officially non-marginalized groups in a perverse, Orwellian rendition of equality and fairness.  For example, Hanson points out (pp. 131-132) that the “chief diversity and inclusion officer” in a major city fired a prominent, white city employee in 2017 on the basis of race, because it was deemed necessary to “uplift our identities and our separate ethnicities in order to instill a sense of pride and community and support for one another.”  Thus, we see that tribalism is a way to give social preferences to individuals based on superficial appearance rather than on merit or the legal treatment of citizens.

Conclusion: Throughout history, republics have waxed and waned (see the 8/1/22 blog posting).  The U.S. Republic and its citizens are now under duress, based on three metrics that Hanson has presented: First, a bimodal distribution of peasants and masters has largely replaced an economically autonomous middle class via unfair trade and ruinous debt (see the 9/1/22 blog posting).  Second, open borders, combined with patron-politicians and client-voters, have replaced the ideal of assimilated citizens with the fact of “mere residents.”  Third, a retribalization of society has occurred, in which superficial appearance has largely replaced merit and the legal rights of citizens.  Based upon this evidence, it would seem (to the current reviewer) that the prognosis for U.S. citizens and their republic on this Constitution Day is for a future that is “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short,” as its ruling class attempts to retain power.  There is always the possibility, however, that U.S. citizens might discover a previously unknown, modern-day Horatius at their bridge into the future, a Horatius who might ward off attackers and prolong the tenuous existence of the U.S. Republic.

The Peasant as a Type of Pre-Citizen

One month ago on this website, we began a discussion of the historical waxing and waning of republics, which is the subject of Victor Davis Hanson’s excellent book, The Dying Citizen (Basic Books, 2021).  Hanson references Kantian political theory before proceeding to focus on U.S. citizens.  

Section 46 of Kant’s Metaphysical Elements of Justice [Metaphysische Anfangsgruende der Rechtslehre], which is a subset of his Metaphysics of Morals [Die Metaphysik der Sitten], defines citizens as the members of civil society who are united for the purpose of forming a republic and making laws.  The citizen has three characteristics: the lawful freedom to obey no other law than that to which he has given his consent; equality with all others before the law; and civil independence, or the responsibility for the provision of his own support as a member of the commonwealth.  Proceeding from the presupposition that a citizen must be sufficiently muscular in order to wield the tools of war and commerce, thereby becoming “materially invested” in the success of the state; Kant finds that people such as apprentices, servants, minors, and women, etc., may be designated as “fellow comrades of the state,” but not as voters or citizens - - at least not in the year 1797.

It is to be emphasized that there are three basic characteristics of a Kantian citizen: freedom to choose one’s republic and vote for its laws, equality before the law, and economic autonomy.

In Section 47 of his Metaphysical Elements, Kant introduces the notion that the act by means of which the people constitute themselves as a state (a civil society with coercive power) is the original contract.  (One assumes that “the people constituting themselves” may be a one-time constitutional convention, an accumulation of historical precedents, or some combination thereof.)  The people give up their external freedom and take it back immediately as members of a commonwealth (republic).  An individual, as a “pre-citizen,” abandons his wild, lawless freedom (the Hobbesian “perpetual and restless desire of power after power that ceases only in death”) in order to find his freedom as a law-abiding citizen.  

One notes here a certain, ever-present danger of equivocation on the term “pre-citizen.”  First, that term may refer to hypothetical or quasi-mythical individuals lost in the mists of time, some of whom are said to have participated in a legendary constitutional convention or to have memorialized certain political precedents.  Alternately, that term may refer to a definite population from which were drawn certain known individuals who participated in an actual constitutional convention.  Finally, that term may refer to contemporary, erstwhile citizens who have lost their previously inalienable rights due to a revolution against a previously established republic.

According to Hanson, there are three types of pre-citizens: peasants, “mere residents,” and tribes.  Today, the concept of peasant focuses primarily not on an originally agrarian type of work, but rather on an abject subservience and lack of upward mobility.  In the third blog posting in this series (8/1/22, 9/1/22, and 9/17/22), the concepts of “mere residents” (individuals purporting to have the rights of citizenship without the corresponding duties) and of tribes (individuals purporting to have social preferences based on superficial appearance rather than on legal merit) will be discussed.

In the Kantian analysis of citizenship, it would seem to follow that if the constitution of a republic is corrupted by physical violence or by an Orwellian redefinition of terms; then erstwhile citizens will be divided de facto into one or another of two new classes: either a newly subjugated, non-free, unequal, and dependent class of “pre-citizens,” analogous to the “head count” of ancient Rome and sorely in need of a new constitutional convention; or a newly privileged ruling class of “post-citizens,” by which is meant a class of overlords who rule as unelected bureaucrats, evolving-document theorists, and economic globalists.

The thesis has often been advanced that a republic and its citizens depend on the existence of a middle class that can moderate some occasional political storms.  (Hanson notes on his pages 22-23 that this idea dates back to the ancient Greeks, who doubted the reliability of the poor, who could not afford weapons; as well as the zeal of the rich, who were too indolent to defend their polis.)  Failing such a middle-class defense, a republic can easily bifurcate into a new class of contemporary pre-citizens who lose the enforceability of their rights, however recently deemed to have been inalienable; and into a new class of post-citizens who gain overlordship via purported expertise in public administration, in flexible legal interpretation, and in beneficent economic redistribution.  

Kant’s third criterion for citizenship, namely, that citizens be civilly independent (economically autonomous) is violated in case the middle class does not have the material resources to resist encroachments against its freedoms.  If a middle class sees declining economic circumstances and ruinous debt (think: unfair trade and trillions of dollars of student-loan debt); then the corresponding republic wanes, its citizens move away and/or die off, and a bimodal distribution of peasants and masters arises.  In this case, Hanson writes on his page 15, “the function of government is not to ensure liberty but to subsidize the poor [in order] to avoid revolution and to exempt the wealthy” from adverse outcomes of government policy.  The wealthy then “reciprocate by enriching and empowering the governing classes.”

On his pages 40-42, Hanson points out that the contemporary U.S. middle class foresees very limited possibilities for long-term employment and family formation; and a much greater likelihood of becoming peasants resembling their rural predecessors in having few options.  However, some problematic options do exist: Hanson writes of two recent, government-sponsored advertisements for ameliorating individual helplessness via public largess.  First, the Pajama Boy (2010), an Obamacare supporter, portrays a young man who appears self-assured and at ease while pitching Obamacare despite wearing a child’s red-plaid pajamas.  This advertisement, Hanson finds, is an inadvertent confirmation of de Tocqueville’s warning about the connection between government subsidies and eternal childishness.  Second, the Life of Julia (2012) is the story of a woman reflecting back on her satisfying lifetime of harvesting public payments and accommodations, all the while oblivious to the looming financial problems of the Social Security system.  Neither the Pajama Boy nor Julia offer a real solution to the contemporary violation of Kant’s third criterion for citizenship.

In sharp distinction to Julia’s lifetime reflections on her dependency, Hanson (on his page 60) can reflect back on his “free-range” childhood in Fresno County, California, and see something completely different: He and his siblings could wander unsupervised over miles of rural countryside as the children of free citizens in a stable Republic.  By today, however, that Republic - - a least in its previous incarnation - - has already fallen; because its citizens, having run afoul of Kant’s third criterion for citizenship, have for the most part gone bankrupt, moved away, and are dying out.  Indeed, allowing children so to roam the countryside today would be considered as a form of child abuse because of ubiquitous gangs, untethered fighting dogs, and illegal, toxic trash dumps.  The Republic that we see today does indeed seem largely to have achieved the bimodal distribution of peasants and masters that Hanson has described.