(Aristotle 6) Limits of Aristotle, cont. Dante and Aquinas, Aristotle Christianized

I have been reading Dante since I first read The Inferno at the age of 18 at Centre College in the course that changed my life (for better or worse): Literature and Philosophy, taught by Professor Milton Riegelman. (I still remember sitting around his fireplace around Halloween drinking Sassafras tea and discussing Dante’s trip through Hell. Since then I have probably reread the epic poem thirty times at least. Fascinated and disturbed. Love and hate. But in this meditation on Aristotle, I think I realize why in the end I hate the religious vision that informs the poem. (You can check the Internet for a summary of the poem, Sparknotes, for example, or Wikipedia.)

   It is known that Dante (1265-1321) was heavily influenced by St. Thomas Aquinas, some going so far as to suggest the Divine Comedy is like a translation of Thomist thought into epic poetry. (I agree with those who point out Dante makes some wild and probably heretic changes to Thomas.) Thomas is a major philosopher and theologian for me, has been for many years. I guess he made it possible for me to come back to Christianity at the age of 33 by offering a Christian vision starkly different from the evangelical protestant version I had known growing up and that by that time meant nothing to me, had meant nothing to me since I was a teen. In Thomas’ thought, philosophy and theology, human reason and divine revelation were married; the Creation received a powerful and powerfully relevant (and true) interpretation; his understanding of reality, reason, knowledge still appeal to me. His moral realism still appeals to me: that is, the belief that the reality of people and the Creation is meaningful and makes claims on me to respect it, etc. His thought gave me the resources to understand and reject the corrosive subjectivism of capitalist culture. I could go on. Thomas was able to speak to me because, as people say, he Christianized Aristotle: transcended the limitations of Aristotle’s own Greek culture, and reinterpreted his thought in a way that left space for love and human dignity, which is to say, for morality, for the Good (in Plato’s sense). Yes, he also reconciled Plato and Aristotle for me.

    And yet, as with Dante, something always held me back. I never “identified” as a Thomist, for example. Dante tells me why. Now I think I understand why. It has shaken up my belief system (not for the first time in my life lol). That is one of the dangers of trying to think.

    So here it is. I’m giving the short version here.

Aristotle’s philosophy implies a gap between those people who by nature and luck are capable of developing into a truly real, valuable human being – of course, only by living in a certain kind of community, a community with the structure of a practice like piano playing, basketball, or teaching - a type of community that is not impossible for us but increasingly out of reach for majorities. And hardly anyone is fully formed by such a community in our time. Especially since such a community came with a political dimension such that you can reveal who you are (as an individual and a human being) through showing your character (loving the good of the community, possessing the character traits necessary to thrive in a community and contribute to making it better) but also through meaningful words and actions. I agree with Aristotle that mere human life is a pretty poor thing outside such a community. That is my reason for thinking it is ‘natural’ for us, that being deprived of such an opportunity violates our nature, our reality, our essence. (Marx draws heavily on Aristotelian thought. So does Wendell Berry.)

     I have pointed out the problem with this kind of thinking for those of us who find it compelling: what to do with those who fall outside it, who remain private egos – whether it be those so oppressed by poverty and social demeaning that life becomes a war of all against all to survive or those super-rich parasites who through their power to command labor and governance have placed themselves outside of the community (and any number of seemingly disparate categories of people). Aristotle, his mind clouded by the injustices of his time (as ours are by those of our time), believed that some people were deprived by nature of full humanity, lacked the capacity to develop the highest potential and participate meaningfully in a political community. We mostly reject this (e.g. we believe it largely of the mentally handicapped, pathological criminals, mental patients, etc.). But some people for Aristotle and us are deprived of this opportunity contingently, through bad luck or injustice (thus social democrats at least believe in using the power of the state to expand such opportunities). But the gap between those human beings who do in a sense ‘bear fruit’ and those who don’t or can’t remains.

   Dante and Thomas apply this aspect of Aristotelianism to religion, to eternity. What the polis (political community) was for Aristotle, the Church was for Thomas, is for Catholics. In the Church you develop in the most perfect, most human way those virtues Aristotle prized: self-restraint (or moderation), courage, justice, and wisdom. But to fully become a living soul, not just a human being who bears fruit in a community, three other virtues, the so-called theological virtues, are necessary: faith, hope, love (of which love is the highest, as God’s essence is ‘Being-and-Love.’ The idea is that only in the community of the Church, the community of the saints, can a person fully activate his full humanity, can become a living soul.

    And this set up the same dichotomy for all eternity between those who are in the community of the Church on their way to becoming saints (almost all of us fall short in this life, in spite of the community life of the Church, and thus need Purgatory, which is the second part of the Divine Comedy) – and those who are not. (A saint is for the Church was the "great-souled man" was for Aristotle: the ideal type of human being brought forth by the best kind of community.) In contrast to Aristotle’s purely worldly beliefs, when those deprived of actualizing their humanity were dead, their suffering was over. In Dante’s Christian universe, that pain is just beginning and it goes on for eternity.

    I cannot accept that. In our human world we have the possibility – by shifting away from an Aristotelian belief system – of keeping those who by nature or bad luck are deprived of living rich, virtuous, meaningful lives with us: through compassion, pity, understanding. Jesus taught us not to judge anyone in some final sense: “He belongs in Hell; may he be punished in Hell forever” is a profoundly sinful thought, one that separates the person thinking it from his soul, other people, the Creation, and his Creator. He taught us that we are all (metaphorically) “God’s children,” that God is our “father.” He must forgive each other. That defines the community of those who want to follow his teachings. Call that “the Church.”

   That goes against a powerful human tendency. Those who do not practice it, those outside the Church, as I said, are cut off from the community, from nature, and from God. In Christian-Aristotelian terms, they fail to realize the point of their existence, to become what they were intended to be. They were created as fruit trees but through. . . what? Their own actions and choices made in radical freedom? Or were they deprived by nature or society? Were they just unlucky to have been born in a world like Aristotle’s where such beliefs were not even thinkable by the wisest? I believe this was the reason Jesus taught us not to “cast the first stone.” We are not angels choosing between good and evil in perfect knowledge, perfect freedom. If any of us becomes halfway good, there is a lot of luck involved. If you understand the biography of most people who fail to be good, who fail to love, who end up violating love, violating nature, you will find grounds to pity them unless they have hurt you so bad your reason is clouded by pain and hate. That is at least part of the reason for “Let he who is without sin or guilt cast the first stone.”

   Some of the Pharisees (as described in the New Testament) rejected that. They cast the followers of Jesus outside of their community, and the followers of Jesus cast them out of theirs. There is always an implicit criterion: group x belongs to the saving or fully human community because of a set of beliefs and virtues; group y doesn’t. Humanity depends on belonging to the right community. Only thus can we acquire the right beliefs and virtues. Only thus can we become fully human. Belonging, whether in Aristotle or Dantean Christianity, is more essential than our common humanity; more essential than what we abstractly call “human dignity.” Christianized Aristotelianism. Every church presupposes an (all-too-human) in-group and an out-group, and this distinction goes deeper than common humanity. This is the toxic thought at the root of Christianity, Islam, and at least some forms of Judaism (and all forms of nationalism).

    Thus you get Hell – one sin at least of which pre-Christian Judaism seems to be free – an idea that transcends in evil anything Aristotle could think. I think Aristotle would be appalled were he to read The Inferno. You get a Christian saint (Thomas) arguing that it affronts God to pity the souls in Hell. Aquinas asserted that God's justice is perfect and infallible. The souls in Hell are there as a result of their own choices and actions, having freely chosen to reject God's grace and commit mortal sins without repentance – no more of ‘there but for the grace of God go you or I.’ Since the punishment of the souls in Hell is a just consequence of their sins, pitying them would imply questioning or opposing God's perfect justice. To pity them would be to suggest that God's judgment is somehow unfair or excessive, which contradicts the belief in God's perfect justice and righteousness. If you feel that the chamber of horrors Dante imagines for the sinners in Hell is positively “medieval”, is why a more humane generation of human beings wanted to outlaw torture and “cruel and unusual punishment,” then St. Thomas would reply that God's wisdom surpasses human understanding. The eternal damnation of souls is part of the divine plan, which is ultimately good and just, even if it is beyond human comprehension. Pitying the damned – even your own parents or children – is a failure to trust in God's wisdom and plan. That implies that those more human people of the Enlightenment had a better understanding of justice and mercy than God Himself.

    I don’t believe Hell is only a result of applying this Aristotelian dichotomy between full humanity in the best kinds of community versus those who don’t have that option, whether self-chosen or not. Hell was a thing before Aquinas wove Aristotelian thought into Christian thought. Jesus himself used Aristotelian-type metaphors for it:

Whose fan is in his hand, and he will thoroughly purge his floor, and gather his wheat into the garner; but he will burn up the chaff with unquenchable fire. (Matthew 3:12)

 

Jesus does teach that we should not attempt to separate the wheat from the chaff; it is not our job. Judging others is the task of Jesus, and when we try to take this responsibility upon ourselves, we are practicing a form of idolatry by putting ourselves in the place of Jesus. Besides, we are notoriously bad judges. But perfect love, justice, and wisdom judge us, and we end up with Dante’s Inferno.

    I would want to believe that God’s love is greater than ours, not less. Would any father send his child to Dante’s Inferno, any of its circles? Is not our common humanity a gift of the idea that we have a common source, a common Creator, conceived as a loving father? This is what I think Tolstoy understood. I heard Pope Francis comfort a boy whose father - not a Christian -  had died with similar words.

   In the history of Christian churches, two sources of blindness exist that have hidden this from view: importing the attitude of the Pharisees into the Christian church – God gives commands, you are righteous is you obey the commands, hell-bound if you don’t. (Again, this is much worse than the Pharisees – again, as depicted in the gospels – who at least didn’t imagine the adulteresses that got stoned to death would suffer eternally in Hell after the temporary earthly Hell was over.) And the second source was bring Aristotelian worldly thought into Christianity.

 

 [Did Jesus really teach burning the chaff? I don’t know. I hope not. Much of the Gospels – written decades after Jesus lived and died – is church-building. Scholars assume that some of the teachings – the Sermon on the Mound, for example – are genuine. Some words are obviously put in Jesus’ mouth. I think the consensus is that Jesus really did teach that Hell is real and perhaps is much like Dante depicts it. I cannot reconcile Hell with the reality of God as Jesus otherwise reveals that reality.]

     [I take Hell seriously as a possibility of myself, in a spiritual, metaphorical sense: i.e. I believe life can cut a person off from their own body and soul, from other people and community, from nature-as-Creation, from God. I believe we can more or less choose those things, though I doubt choice is the dominant cause of them. I believe I could do things that would result in despair. I have done and thought things that have brought me to the brink of that abyss. But I know that none of us are perfectly free and knowing, like an angel. We shouldn’t cast the first stone because we don’t know what it is like to be the adulteress. Our lives are so much luck, starting with whether we had wise and loving parents, lived in a time of peace and plenty, were not born into a system that oppressed us, etc. We can pity the worst of us. A mother can cry when her son is executed for terrible crimes. Thomas says we can’t pity the damned, no more than Aristotle could pity the slave by nature. We can't be both intelligible objects of love, and therefore pity, and at the same time devils. If God is real and if God is love and if there is a life after death, then there is hope for us all and we need not believe that anyone is in Hell. But the possibility of losing ourselves is probably necessary for us to appreciate the seriousness of how we live. I am not denying that we can and do for all kinds of reasons lose ourselves. They a human being can curse the day they were born. That a human being can find existence a horrible mistake. What I do deny is that we cannot and should not have compassion for them, and ourselves to the extent we feel like that. I deny that a loving father - or mother - real or metaphorical would make Dante's Inferno to eternally torture and punish such souls, any soul.]

 (Aristotle 5) Limits of Aristotle, continued.

If anyone were to read this, I feel the need to apologize. It's just a journal, hurriedly written. Not writing really fit for a public. My main teachers for this line of thinking: Alasdair MacIntyre, Raimond Gaita, Christopher Cordner, Hannah Arendt - and of course Aristotle, whose Ethics I have been re-reading with great pleasure)

The Greeks in general and Aristotle in particular had no concept of ‘human dignity’: an abstract idea meaning that every human being, as human being, regardless of achievement, virtue, community standing or anything that has its source in our social being, has a kind of dignity, intrinsic worth, is somehow precious – and therefore deserves respect, recognized as morally our equal.

     In Shakespeare’s tragedy King Lear, Lear, having been cast out, encounters on the heath in a storm “Poor Tom”, a naked, barely clothed, obviously insane beggar (in reality Lear’s ‘good son’, Edgar, who is a fugitive, in disguise), and is moved to pity: “Is man no more than this? Consider him well. Thou owest the worm no silk, the beast no hide, the sheep no wool, the cat no perfume. Ha! here’s three on ‘s are sophisticated! Thou art the thing itself: unaccommodated man is no more but such a poor, bare, forked animal as thou art (III, iv).” Being homeless now himself, Lear shows some compassion for the vulnerability of the homeless and poor in the terrible storm. Prior to this he had never really thought about their plight. But in the storm he is learning to empathize with those at the bottom of society. He acknowledges that as King when he had the power and authority to effect social change he could have done more for them. Men who live in luxury should expose themselves to what the poor and homeless feel, he declares, so they can give their surplus wealth to them and make the world a more just place.

Poor naked wretches, whereso’er you are,

That bide the pelting of this pitiless storm,

How shall your houseless heads and unfed sides,

Your loop’d and window’d raggedness, defend you

From seasons such as these? O, I have ta’en

Too little care of this! Take physic, pomp;

Expose thyself to feel what wretches feel,

That thou may’st shake the superflux to them

And show the heavens more just.

Mere humanity for Aristotle is like a fruit tree that was diseased or damaged by weather and never comes to bear fruit. Such a tree is worthless as a fruit tree whatever other uses can be devised for it. Mere humanity is not natural, as Lear almost suggests, who contrasts “unaccommodated” man with “pomp.” Let me just read “pomp” as Lear’s new understanding of everything society can give. For Aristotle, only a certain social-political form provides fertile soil for humanity to blossom into what it truly is. (I still remember my first football coach teaching us that we were the “real men” of the school. I learned to think of all the boys who didn’t play football as somehow inferior to us. They would never blossom into “real men.” Aristotle is not free of that kind of mentality.) True, it would be shameful for a virtuous man to belittle or harm a character like Poor Tom. But it wouldn’t be morally wrong in our sense. It wouldn’t have violated Poor Tom’s reality had Lear passed him by without even acknowledging he was there (for Aristotle).

     But like mine pity for the beggar, Lear’s pity seems laced with condescension. He can only see Poor Tom as a King sees a beggar, albeit a fallen King. He pities someone outside of an honor community from the perspective of someone in it. It is not that his pity includes the thought-feeling that, in essence, stripped of all the artificial add-ons of society, Lear is nothing but Poor Tom. When he says he should have “shown the heavens more just” he is partly saying that as King he should have taken measures to ensure no one end up like Poor Tom. The implication is that a life such as Poor Tom’s – the life of a mere human being not enriched by human society – is not worth living, is without inherent dignity. Such people are to be pitied precisely because they have been deprived of what Lear calls “pomp” incapable of developing their full human potential.

       We tend to emphasize compassion for those on the lowest end of the social scale much more than did the Greeks, but the attitude is basically Aristotle’s: it would have been better never to have been born; having been born, it is better to die soon. Despite our official commitment to human dignity, this attitude is very much with us. Consider this preface to a debate in the European Parliament:

 

Since the introduction of prenatal screening in Iceland, for instance, the vast majority of women (close to 99%) whose foetus tested positive for Down syndrome have terminated their pregnancy. Some EU Member States are not very far behind. In France, it is estimated that the proportion of women who have terminated their pregnancy due to Down's syndrome is around 77%, while in Denmark the rate is 97%. In Italy, Germany, the UK and Belgium, the rate exceeds 90% (from Parliamentary question - E-003055/2020, European Parliament).

 

What this reveals is the distinction between human life considered valuable and human life considered better not to exist.

   Or consider this description of a psych ward (from the book A Common Humanity, 2000) in which philosopher Raimond Gaita (a teacher of mine through his books) worked in a psychiatric hospital (his motivation coming from the mental illnesses suffered by both his parents as recounted in his autobiographical Romulus, My Father):

 

  In the early 1960s when I was seventeen years old, I worked as a ward assistant in a psychiatric hospital … It reminded me of some of the enclosures at Melbourne zoo. When patients soiled themselves, as some did often, they were ordered to undress and to step under a shower. The distance of a mop handle from them, we then mopped them down as zoo-keepers wash down elephants.

     The patients were judged to be incurable and they appeared to have irretrievably lost everything which gives meaning to our lives. They had no grounds for self-respect insofar as we connect that with self-esteem; or, none which could be based on qualities or achievements for which we could admire or congratulate them without condescension. Friends, wives, children and even parents, if they were alive, had long ceased to visit them. Often they were treated brutishly by the psychiatrists and nurses.

    A small number of psychiatrists did, however, work devotedly to improve their conditions. They spoke, against all appearances, of the inalienable dignity of even those patients. I admired them enormously. Most of their colleagues believed these doctors to be naive, even fools. Some of the nurses despised them with a vehemence that was astonishing …

      In contrast to Aristotle’s time – and Nazi Germany whose attitude towards such incurables shocked us but would not have shocked Aristotle, pity or compassion can barely keep such human beings among us. We couldn’t stomach the idea of “euthanasia.” We come up with institutions, sometimes, to deal with people in a “humane” way while separating them from everyday life. Arendt’s emphasis on the “right to have rights” I would translate as the need to live in a meaning-community. That is pure Aristotle. It is just another, more contemporary and less robust way of putting Aristotle’s core idea: that the full realization of human nature and the attainment of a good and virtuous life (eudaimonia) are possible only within the context of a political community (polis). I say less robust because to belong to a political community and enjoy the rights of being a citizen might be a necessary condition for humanity for Aristotle but it is not yet a sufficient condition. In addition, active participation is required.

     I could of course multiply such examples but will offer one more discussed by Hannah Arendt: the stateless. In The Origins of Totalitarianism, Arendt examines the plight of stateless people and how their situation challenges the notion of inalienable human dignity (she discusses human rights but the thinking works even better for dignity). Arendt argues that human dignity, supposedly inalienable and universal, is effectively meaningless when individuals are stripped of citizenship and the protection of a state. Stateless people, who lack any national affiliation, find themselves without the legal and political framework necessary to exercise and protect their dignity. Human dignity is thus compromised when individuals are deprived of a community that recognizes it.

        Stateless people do possess full human capacities. But although they may be highly educated and competent, they are still mere human beings without a community, having been expelled from theirs. As Arendt put it, they can say whatever they want but it doesn’t matter to anyone. Their actions may be unconstrained but they are not free because they don’t matter to anyone. This reveals an even deeper level of Aristotelian thought. It is not just developing virtues, as though the community is nothing but a means to becoming individually a full human being with a rich life. Being in a common life – with common projects – makes possible speech and action that reveals not only what we are (the dimension Aristotle focuses on) but who we are (the dimension that Arendt focuses on). It is only through mutual recognition as belonging that our words and actions matter. It is only through mutual recognition that our isolated ego can be transformed into something richer. It is through words and actions that stories can be told about it. It is through those possible stories that human plurality becomes actualized: that fact that we are (in potential at least) different in a qualitative sense that any person who has ever lived, who is alive today, and who will ever live. No two biographies would ever be the same for people who have the chance to reveal who they are through speaking and acting in meaningful ways. The fact that multiple biographies could be written of anyone is also a sign of a meaningful life. (Like anything meaningful – a poem – interpretation is needed.) The world is where this happens. To conceive of communities as belonging to a world is how Arendt deepens Aristotle without departing from him. We not only need a polis but a world.

     The beggar, the severely handicapped, the severely mentally ill, the statement, the pathological narcissist (i.e. the purely private self), the hedge fund manager, etc. are all in a sense outside the world looking in, in very different ways acting on or at least impinging on the world (and the community) from a position outside of it. It is only through pity or compassion that we can keep them among us. But pity is a conviction that – for whatever reason – a person has been contingently deprived of the possibility of living a fully valuable human life. And that is not a conviction that the lives of those we keep among us through pity are our moral equals or valuable as they are.

(Capitalism or whatever you want to call this economic-technological mechanism that determines the lives of people all over the earth is other-worldly. It is slowly but surely draining the world – the possibility of worlds – from human life. It is draining the possibility of meaning. The best metaphor for it is from Michael Ende’s Neverending Story: “the Nothing.” "The Nothing” is a multifaceted metaphor representing the dangers of losing imagination, creativity, hope, cultural heritage, and spiritual values – which are the source of meaning and which can only exist in the world, in a particular community in the world. In a way, we are all faced with the threat of becoming world-less beings for whom nothing outside the private, pre-worldly self can matter.)

    Is there a philosophical or religious attitude that allows us to see those who have fallen through the net of the world as fully our equals, a morally “one of us”? There is, and I am slowly and painfully working my way toward it. Before I get there I need to talk about how Aristotle was just as toxic for Christianity as Pharisaism (not as it was perhaps but as represented in the gospels).  I see this toxicity in two of the greatest minds of the Middle Ages: Dante and Aquinas. I see the way toward a non-condescending love or respect for those who fall through the cracks of Aristotle’s world in Tolstoy, Primo Levi, and Raimond Gaita. And yet Aristotle is also necessary, which my discomfort with aspects of Socrates and even Jesus teach me.

 (Aristotle 4) Limits of Aristotelian Virtue (and Reason)

It’s like I have two souls, one Aristotelian and one Platonic-Christian. I think Aristotle was right in the big picture (though not on all his details, which are bound to his place and time). I think life would be a poor thing with no opportunities to develop the qualities of mind and spirit necessary to master any genuine discipline (i.e. become the kind of person that can thrive in a community practice). I even believe him when he tells us that a person who is not a part of an active political community – and MAGA is a Satanic parody of a genuine political community – falls short of living the best kind of human life. In capitalist mass societies, real politics – where your words and deeds matter, where you are taken seriously for what you say and do – are not really possible for the vast majority of people. (If I were a German citizen, I might join a party and see whether something like political life happens in such a party.) We can at best experience a kind of attenuated political life – for example, my department at the university is largely self-governing and in principle we all have a say in how the department is run. Disagreements are part of this. I am also mistrustful of a self that is nothing but a private self, unacquainted with the life of a real practice or discipline that includes some need to share a community with others.

     At the same time, I am moved by a picture of human life that doesn’t necessarily contradict this Aristotelian picture but is just very different and is often in tension with it. I will try to illustrate what I mean first.

   Ever since the boys started school I have occasionally encountered a particular beggar, sitting on the ground with his cup out. When I give him a little something, he always says “Merci” and “Alles Gute der Familie.” Now he is outside all those practices with their communities that enrich human life, which from Aristotle’s perspective makes human life worth living in the sense that we can only become fully human as part of them. [You can be a better or worse beggar, more or less effective. There is perhaps some skill and knowledge involved. But it is not a practice or a community in the relevant sense.] So for Aristotle the ground for respecting – honoring – that man does not exist. In justice I owe him nothing, not even the most basic form of acknowledgement. He belongs to the species homo sapiens but is not fully human – as for Aristotle neither were slaves, women, or children – or anybody else who was either deprived through no fault of their own or not capable of community, competence, or reason (which you develop within a practice or above all in a political community: recall for Aristotle you become courageous by doing courageous things, honest by telling the truth over and over, just by practicing justice, etc.; you need the political community for that). Aristotle could justify slavery and assigning women and children subordinate social roles for this reason without violating justice.

     It is easy for us to condemn Aristotle for these attitudes. But that is too shallow. The truth is that I cannot eliminate a residue of condescension in my charity to the beggar, and I don’t think I am alone. At my best I can pity him, can say to myself “there but for the grace of God go I.” But I don’t believe it. Part of me says: rather kill myself than humiliate myself like that. At best I can see the man as a person deprived by accidents of fate from becoming the kind of person who can lead a kind of life worth living. I cannot in my heart of hearts consider him my moral equal. A sign of this is that were I to learn that he died I might be sad but I would not feel like I felt when I heard this week that Bill Walton died of cancer at age 71, not just a great basketball player and someone who cared greatly about social justice, but a man with a zest for life that was always infectious. I didn’t even know Walton personally, but his death occasioned a kind of grief, like part of my world had also died. Because, as I am here just assuming that because I consider his life unworthy, thus consider him unworthy, I cannot consider his death an occasion for grief. So a bit of Aristotle is in me, in most of us perhaps. But the difference is: I don’t like it. I consider it a fault. Aristotle could only think that attitude was sentimental.

   Why do I feel like this? I will go on with this later.  

(Aristotle 3) What it is to be Human and Live a Meaningful Life - for Aristotle 

What I feel does not depend on a desire that originates in the isolation of my own subjective life. If I see my children are thriving I am happy as a father. If I see my students learning, I am happy as a teacher. If someone tried to damage my reputation – say, because I am a “white man” and they were resentful – then I would be indignant not only as an individual but as a teacher, as a member of the teaching practice. What I feel as a member of a community – a family is the primal community –  is never just as an individual.

. . .

I want at some point to think of how Aristotle would respond to Tolstoy’s story The Death of Ivan Ilych. Ivan was a judge in 19^th century Tsarist Russia. He is a conformist. His values, desires, and behavior are wholly determined by the opinions and expectations of his social superiors. He chooses his friends based upon their social standing. He decides to marry because it is considered the right thing to do. Ivan's life is terrible and empty as he realizes when he becomes mortally ill.

   Aristotle could not recognize the society to which Ivan conformed as a corruption of something necessary for any human being to thrive.  Corrupt because its members saw it only as a means to the end of personal wealth and status – individual goods that can theoretically be had in other ways in different circumstances. No community exists, but rather a social game with rules for advancement. The game itself has no other value than to allow the winners to shine. So of course Aristotle would agree with Ivan’s assessment after his illness that his life had been fake and empty:

It is as if I had been going downhill while I imagined I was going up. And that is really what it was. I was going up in public opinion, but to the same extent life was ebbing away from me. And now it is all done and there is only death. (chapter 9)

   The life devoted to so-called external goods – prestige and comfort – leads to meaninglessness for Aristotle, though that is a modern way of putting it: Aristotle might have said it is contrary to nature and thus reason or that it prevented a human being from becoming what a human being ought to be. The distinction between “internal” and “external” goods – and the right attitude towards each – is crucial for a meaningful life.

  Internal goods are benefits or outcomes that are intrinsic to a particular practice, activity, or community. These goods are directly related to the nature and purpose of the practice itself and are achieved through engagement and excellence within that practice. They are valued not just for what they enable but for their own sake, contributing to the fulfillment and integrity of the activity. Here are the essential, defining features of intrinsic goods.

·        Internal goods are valued for their inherent qualities and contributions to the practice. They are inherently good and desirable within the context of the activity.

·        Achieving internal goods typically requires a high level of skill, competence, and commitment to the standards of excellence specific to the practice. They often result from sustained effort and dedication.

·        Internal goods are unique to the particular activity or community. For example, the sense of artistic achievement in music, the development of strategic thinking in chess, or the pursuit of truth in scientific inquiry.

·        Engaging in practices that yield internal goods contributes to developing of virtues and personal growth. It shapes character and fosters qualities like discipline, integrity, and creativity. To be a part of any community a person needs to learn to be just and to acquire a degree of commonsense wisdom pertaining to life in that community.

·        Internal goods often have a communal aspect, where the benefits are not just individual but shared among those who participate in the practice. This can include mutual respect among practitioners.

 

For example, I asked ChatGPT to list some internal good of playing an instrument - amazingly, I couldn't have done it much better myself.

 

·        Musical Skill and Mastery: Developing technical proficiency and expressive capabilities on an instrument is a primary internal good. This includes understanding music theory, improving finger dexterity, and mastering techniques specific to the instrument.

 

·        Aesthetic Appreciation and Creativity: The ability to appreciate and create beautiful music is an internal good. This involves interpreting and performing pieces with emotional depth and creativity, contributing to the artistic value of the music.

 

·        Personal Fulfillment and Joy: The sense of personal satisfaction, enjoyment, and fulfillment that comes from playing music is an internal good. This intrinsic pleasure is derived from engaging deeply with the music and the instrument.

 

·        Discipline and Focus: The development of discipline, concentration, and focus through regular practice and dedication is an internal good. These qualities are essential for improving as a musician and are cultivated through the practice itself.

 

·        Expressive Communication: The ability to communicate emotions and ideas through music is an internal good. Musicians can express themselves and connect with others on an emotional level through their performance.

 

·        Sense of Achievement: The accomplishment of mastering a difficult piece or improving one’s skills provides a sense of achievement and pride, which is an internal good.

 

·        Cognitive and Emotional Growth: Playing an instrument enhances cognitive abilities, such as memory and problem-solving skills, and emotional intelligence, as musicians learn to express and manage their emotions through music.

 

·        Community and Collaboration: Engaging in musical activities often involves collaboration with others, such as playing in a band or orchestra. The sense of community, teamwork, and shared purpose are internal goods that enrich the musical experience.

 

And here are some internal goods you only get from participating in the political life; I had to modify these:

 

·        Politics fosters the key virtues of justice (towards individuals and the common good of the community), practical wisdom, self-restraint, and courage – virtues essential to becoming a good human being for Aristotle.

·        Politics encourages individuals to analyze information critically, evaluate arguments, and assess the validity of different perspectives. This ability is essential for making informed decisions and navigating complex political issues.

·        Participation in politics involves persuading others, building coalitions, and negotiating compromises to advance one's goals and interests. Developing a competence in rhetoric fosters effective communication and consensus-building.

·        Politics provides opportunities for individuals to take on leadership roles, inspire others, and mobilize support for collective action. Effective leadership in politics requires vision, integrity, and the ability to motivate and empower others.

·        Politics requires strategic planning, goal setting, and tactical execution to achieve desired outcomes. Developing strategic thinking skills helps individuals anticipate challenges, identify opportunities, and plan effective strategies.

·        Real politics fosters empathy and understanding by exposing individuals to diverse perspectives, experiences, and viewpoints. Engaging with different communities and hearing their concerns helps cultivate compassion and solidarity.

 

·        Politics often involves managing conflicts, resolving disputes, and finding common ground among conflicting interests. Developing conflict resolution skills helps individuals navigate disagreements constructively and promote reconciliation. Genuine politics forces you to develop a sense of proportion.

·        Politics raises ethical questions and dilemmas that require individuals to consider the moral implications of their actions and decisions. Cultivating ethical awareness and integrity is essential for responsible political engagement. Without integrity, a politician will become corrupt.

·        Politics can be challenging and demanding, requiring individuals to withstand criticism, setbacks, and obstacles. Developing resilience and perseverance enables individuals to stay committed to their principles and goals despite adversity.

·        Political landscapes are dynamic and constantly evolving, requiring individuals to adapt to changing circumstances, unexpected events, and new challenges. Cultivating adaptability and flexibility enhances individuals' ability to navigate uncertainty and respond effectively to changing political environments.

·        Engaging in politics instills a sense of civic responsibility and duty to participate in the democratic process, uphold democratic values, and contribute to the welfare of society. Embracing civic responsibility is essential.

 

In political life, we realize our full humanity for Aristotle. [The political life for Aristotle is synonymous with democratic politics, defined as equal dignity among free (i.e. not economically a serf/peasant) native-born men.] The highest virtues are courage, justice, self-restraint (or moderation, a sense of proportion), and practical wisdom (an intimate familiarity with one’s community and the ability to understand priorities and reflect on the best means to achieve them). These are the preeminent human virtues. In politics everything is at stake. If your chess club or baseball league is dissolved, that impoverishes your life; if Alexander the (so-called) Great dissolves your political community, the world ends, the very possibility of a certain kind of human being – for Aristotle the best – ends. Human nature, to flourish, requires the best kind of political community. To this extent, democratic politics is the natural form of political association. Still, to the extent they depend on a community tradition, private practices like chess and sports require their members to cease being a purely private self. In chess communities, justice takes the form of fair play, respectful behavior, etc.

     It requires a near-total transformation: it is no longer what I want or what is good for me as a private individual; it is about what is good for the political community as a whole. To the extent you experience a conflict between purely private and public interests, you have not completed this transformation and are a pre-political, private self – a lesser self for Aristotle. This experience is hardly possible for us given the way our political life is structured. But in sports or the military we can understand it. Some of us still criticize players for ‘selling out’ as opposed to being loyal to a team and the community that supports it. (I recall the hostility of University of Kentucky basketball fans when their beloved coach agreed to become coach of their arch-rivals.) Many soldiers have a hard time even thinking of personal honor as opposed to the honor of the regiment.

   Essential is this: the self as transformed by community practice is richer, more human than the purely private self that weighs everything by purely private gain, that is purely transactional in the way a Trump is. It is more human. You are more human as a basketball player on the University of Kentucky’s 1978 championship basketball team than Donald Trump because you are good at something (complex as it is to ‘be good’ at something) either by being minimally competent or by exceptional achievements. And you are able to be a member of a team or club or practice, either in a minimally competent or exceptional way (I hear the late Bill Walton was an exceptional teammate – which is to say he excelled at those virtues needed to bond with others.)

 

   The purely private self, the un-bonded self, of course, cannot understand or value internal goods or virtues, since they stand on the outside of any form of community practice or community life. They are like dogs watching TV. Like Trump here:

In a conversation with senior staff members on the morning of the scheduled visit, Trump said, “Why should I go to that cemetery? It’s filled with losers.” In a separate conversation on the same trip, Trump referred to the more than 1,800 marines who lost their lives at Belleau Wood as “suckers” for getting killed.

You can only understand the distinction between internal and external goods, and the value of each, from a position inside a community practice, just like you can only understand and appreciate a game of chess between two masters if you are already quite proficient yourself; or understand and appreciate a Bach fugue only if you already have a highly educated ‘ear.’ You might still ‘like’ a chess match between masters or a Bach fugue without this background, but not for the same reasons, not for intrinsic reasons.

   The purely private, unsublimated self knows only external goods. For the private self, value is a function of desire, and desire is disconnected from anything beyond it – or rather, what is beyond it only has value relative to the self. If is hard to imagine, say, a basketball player who has the discipline to spend the time and effort needed to achieve excellence in the game, but for whom the game meant nothing but a means to get money, fame, and beautiful women; who when he could get those things without basketball, he would do it. In our system it is much easier to image a politician who is in it only for the wealth, fame, and power. A usurer makes the pursuit of an external good – money – his life’s purpose.

    Usury is not a practice like basketball or teaching, though it does make sense to say a person is a better or worse usurer. The key distinction between practices that have internal or intrinsic goods valued in themselves and practices like mafia money-making or usurious banking lies in the nature of the goods pursued and the ethical framework within which the practices are conducted. In humanly enriching practices, internal goods are inherently valuable and contribute to human flourishing. Examples include truth in science, justice in law, and artistic expression in the arts. The purpose of engaging in virtuous practices is to realize and embody the intrinsic goods they offer. For example, a scientist seeks to discover truth, a musician aims to create beauty, and a judge strives for justice.  These goods are pursued for their own sake and are aligned with the development of virtues and personal growth. Practices with true internal goods operate within a moral and ethical framework that promotes the well-being of individuals and communities. They aim to cultivate virtues such as honesty, fairness, and sometimes even compassion. Indeed, virtuous practices are generally recognized and esteemed by society: even if I can’t appreciate certain sports, say, I can still recognize their value. Achieving excellence in such practices is socially rewarded and admired because it aligns with collective values and contributes to the common good. Engaging in practices with internal goods fosters the development of virtues such as wisdom, courage, moderation, and justice. These virtues contribute to a richer life, and are thus honorable in themselves.

     In stark contrast, practices like mafia money-making or usurious banking seek purely instrumental-external goods (e.g., wealth, power) that leave the purely private self – the fat, relentless ego – as covetous as ever. They may well involve actions that are harmful, exploitative, or unjust. In such practices, the primary motivation is often extrinsic, such as acquiring money, power, or control, rather than realizing intrinsic goods. The practice serves as a means to an end rather than being valuable in itself. Group activities driven by getting money, power, or purely physical pleasure foster vices like greed, dishonesty, and ruthlessness. These are corrosive of character and corrupt our better natures.

    The purely private self treats all practices as means-to-ends. For Aristotle, the extent to which people resemble the purely private self is like a rose bush that has been poisoned and can bring forth only sick, ugly blossoms. Or a poisoned fruit tree whose fruit cannot be enjoyed.

  [In my uncompletely dissertation, I connected this Aristotelian line of thought to Marx’ thoughts on alienation. A very concise summary: Capitalist work and business is premised on maximizing the acquisition of external goods (money above all). Efficiency replaces the pursuit of internal goods. Whereas the traditional craftsman was part of a community practice in every sense – with its own set of internal goods – factory labor reduced the worker to a commodity and a tool. That is a paradigm for all kinds of capitalist work and leisure. Thus capitalist economics and the social and ideological forms that are in tune with it deprive most of us of the opportunity to realize our full humanity. Deprived also of the chance to transcend our pre-political, private self (the fat, relentless ego) and blossom into something closer to real humanity. It is not impossible in capitalist society, but it is almost only through a difficult rebellion against capitalist norms that a person moves in the direction of real humanity in Aristotle’s sense. Thus capitalist society is “unnatural” – hostile to human nature, though not as much so as, say, Stalinism or Naziism. Some space remains for humanity, though that space is getting smaller with every generation. This goes some way in explaining the fact that so many moderns cannot experience their lives as meaningful. ]

. . .

The worth of a member has two aspects: each member is owed respect as a member, which means as someone who has acquired the basic abilities to be in that community / practice and who shares with others a genuine love or devotion for it. Thus every member of a basketball team (or the Athenian polis) is owed respect. Secondly, a person is valued for their achievements in the community / practice. Thus Michael Jordan or Magnus Carleson have a degree of honor over and above that due to those who just belong to the basketball or chess community.

    This points to the limit of Aristotelian ethical-political thought. Respect, self-worth is a function of a certain kind of community. I played American football, so I will use that experience as an analogy. Every member of the team I respected. We all went through the difficult practices. We all had to have a certain kind of courage: to be hit hard, for example, or endure significant physical distress. Thus there was a gap between someone on the team who was owed this respect, and those who were not on the team, who weren’t. Perhaps these others were owed respect for belonging to other valuable practices: those who were academically strong, those who were musically competent and played in the school band, etc. But what about those on the outside of all such practices? The – relative to the school community – purely private selves? The ones who thus achieved nothing, or nothing the community recognized as valuable? The ones in my school who took to dealing in drugs perhaps? How would Aristotle think of them? Well the answer is clear: not much. He would consider them lesser human beings or lesser worth. They have impoverished lives, underdeveloped potentials (or by nature gift-less); are therefore lesser human beings. They have no ‘honor.’ Nothing intrinsic to mere humanity confers value on them. It would thus be no violation of their reality to treat them with a certain indifference, or even subordinate them in a way that they would at least be useful to the community.

   I guess you – like me – do not feel entirely comfortable with this implication of Aristotle’s thought. I also suppose you recognize it as a way we do feel about such people, and at some level about ourselves to the extent we fit the description. 

   Tolstoy points to another light in which to see humanity in The Death of Ivan Ilych. I want to think about that soon.

(Aristotle 2)   Aristotle and the Concern with One’s Honor

    I have been trying to formulate the limits to Aristotelian-style ethics in a thesis. Well, here it is: Aristotelian-style virtue-in-a-just-community-as-our-nature ethics is a necessary but not sufficient condition of our full humanity. It falls short of what we think of as “morality.” It doesn’t get us to a common humanity. It leaves no conceptual space for the absoluteness of Good and Evil. It is ultimately grounded in a high understanding of honor but falls short of love. It blocks out the light breaking in from a dimension beyond our interpreted everyday world, without which we must remain rather shallow than ever profound. (Something like this was the thesis of my long-abandoned doctoral dissertation, but I have never been able to stop thinking about it.

   [We cannot completely share Aristotle’s Greek idea of a community, and thus aspects of his picture of a virtuous man and even his understanding of certain virtues. But his basic approach has been translated into terms befitting a certain kind of Christian community by Aquinas and developed into something extremely insightful by Alasdair MacIntyre.]

 

  We all think that a person who does what he does, who lives as he does, just for the sake of appearances and the effects on other people is superficial. Aristotle agreed.

    In the movie Patton, we see General Patton disobeying orders and making his own battle plan to get to Messina before the British Field Marshall Montgomery. In his own mind, his was the better battle plan. Although his army suffered heavy casualties, he was convinced the casualties would have been higher had he just followed orders. But as portrayed, his main motivation was the fame and glory that would go to Montgomery and not him. He would not have wanted the fame had he not been convinced he deserved it. The fame was not an end in itself. But neither would just being a good general have satisfied him, without the fame. The desire for fame was so great we are at least invited to wonder whether it didn’t distort some of his decisions. I think Aristotle would have been critical of Patton’s desire for fame (as depicted in the movie).

    Much worse than Patton was Hitler’s taking the credit and thus the glory for Germany’s victory in the Battle of France (1940). True, Hitler was not happy with the new-and-supposedly-improved Schlieffen Plan; true, Hitler was open to and ultimately approved the actual battle plan. He deserved credit for that. But he took credit for the actual plan itself – which was made by General Erich von Manstein and his staff – so that he could present himself as the second coming of Frederick the Great to the world. He was worse than Patton because – rather like the narcissist Trump – he cared only for appearance without bothering about the substance. [As a teen, I was susceptible to this. On a camping trip with two buddies from high school, I pretended to other boys we met to be a college football player, just to bask in the “honor” of being seen as someone I believed better than myself, a kind of living out of a compensatory daydream. One of the more shameful episodes of my life, if not the most consequential. Utterly trivial compared with Hitler and Patton, but the same underlying structure: a concern for how you appear before others as a primary motive for acts and how you live.]

   In different degrees, both Patton and Hitler cared about how they appeared before others as something worthy in itself, as the highest value. Fame, glory, and honor – taken as ends-in-themselves, as a reason for living and acting – are “a bit too superficial” to be the goal of a good (ethical) life for Aristotle and us.

   Aristotle has been criticized for the importance he places on ‘proper pride’ or the concern about how others perceive you. I don’t think the criticism is justified, not all of it. Some part of ‘proper pride’ or ‘self-respect’ for Aristotle is connected to his immediate culture. But much of what he says about the right attitude towards how others perceive you is right on. In a genuine community, it matters. Honor, respect, and good reputation are the “greatest of all the external goods.” It is something that – as a member of a community (and it is our natural form of being, to be in a political community).

   We see this most clearly in communities in which life and death are at stake: in the army. I have listened to many stories told by veterans of many wars. It is always the same. When, for example, one soldier cannot leave another behind even though nothing of military significance depends on bringing him back and one must risk one’s life, it is never the case that the main motivation for doing so was glory – say, to win the Congressional Medal of Honor. Soldiers don’t risk their lives to save their comrades or brothers as a means to the end of getting a medal and so basking in the glory of being a hero. [If we knew one for whom this was the motive, there would be no honor in it: it would be self-defeating.] Not to leave someone behind is a matter of honor. It expresses a form of love between soldiers (who may not even like each other personally, who may not even be decent human beings in all respects). The lives of every combat soldier depend on the bravery and competence of every other soldier. If one fails, they could all be wiped out. This grounds a mutual respect (love) that transcends everyday morality. It is like an unconditional duty not to leave anyone behind (all things being equal).

    So imagine someone who doesn’t abandon his brothers and at great risk to his own life brings them back. Imagine he is awarded the Medal of Honor. Winning the medal wasn’t any part of his motivation, but a recognition of the significance of what he did. What should his attitude be towards the medal? Toward the honor? Such soldiers have different attitudes towards it. Some don’t place any great value on it because they experience it as so external to what matters to them: the group of soldiers they served with. Some see it as an impersonal honor, given to one individual who sees himself as nothing but a representative of his unit. It is an honor for his unit of which he is arbitrarily the steward. For others, it means a great deal as a proper recognition for what he suffered and did on behalf of others, though getting a medal was no part of his reason for so acting. He did what he had to do.  

   In no case, however, would such a soldier be indifferent to how others treated him. He may well eschew any hero worship. He may well downplay the heroism of his action before others. But if someone treated him as Trump did John McCain, in effect demeaning the significance of his suffering and his bravery, he would not be indifferent. And we – his community – would not be either. That would be treated as a grave insult to him and the community: both at the same time; you can’t separate the individual from the community in this, which was precisely Aristotle’s point. [Trump is not part of the community, not part of any community. He is incapable of community.] There is no prescribed way to react to such demeaning trash. (Had I been McCain, I would have shot the bastard. But McCain had more dignity and sense.) But we know how unbearable it is to witness an honorable person demeaned and humiliated by outsiders.

   I once met my friend’s father, who I knew was a veteran of Korea and Vietnam. He had a photograph on his wall of the President awarding him a medal. Now it didn’t matter that I thought the Vietnam War was a strategic and moral disaster. It didn’t matter what kind of a man my friend’s father otherwise was (how he was as a father, what his politics were, etc.). I spontaneously felt a kind of deep respect because I knew he had experienced something terrible, something that might have broken my courage or most men’s courage, and he had done something noble in the face of extreme danger. That deserves honor. I feel the same in the presence of such soldiers from other countries than my own. [Only war crimes would negate this feeling. If fact, a soldier is deserving of honor partly because they are in a situation in which the line between crime and non-crime is so blurred, a situation in which keeping your decency is a high achievement in itself.] It would be a violation of the meaning of what my friend’s father had suffered and done to have acted towards him as though he were a criminal or a servant or even a person who had never been in such a situation.

      And he would have a real reason to feel demeaned or insulted had I done so. There is such a thing as an appropriate response to the meaning (the reality) of people and their lives. That is what Aristotle meant by proper pride. And this only makes sense in a community. (Again, Trump as the counter-example: everything for him is transactional. There is no honor. The men who died in combat in the service of their country are to him “suckers and losers.” Where there is no possible community, that is in fact an intelligible response. Trump represents the apotheosis of individualism.)

  I used examples from the military because that is what Aristotle himself believed best exemplified what he was getting at. But it applies any area where there is a community. I once witnessed a history teacher remove a disrespectful student from his class. He was a good teacher, always prepared, who cared about his subject. The open disrespect of this student demeaned not only the teacher as an individual, but teachers in general and the subject of history. The teacher’s anger was justified not primarily because the disrespectful student disrespected him as an individual. As a history teacher, the teacher represented the community of teachers in general and historians in particular. Many people can overlook purely personal insults but cannot overlook disrespect to their community. As a representative of that community and its genuine value, the teacher was justified in his anger. Not to have cared would have signaled that he, the teacher, did not care or did not care enough. That would indeed be a defect of the teacher’s character.

  And it is not superficial to care about one’s reputation as a teacher for the same reasons. This proper care – a care that has nothing to do with egotism or narcissism – is not superficial. It is a response to the meaning of, in this example, the teaching of history, perhaps even the love of teaching and history. Love often implies a protective attitude about what you love, and concern with reputation can be part of that. Individualism is blind to such things.

  I could multiply examples from sports, medicine, law enforcement and justice, politics, and so on. This is not alien to us even today. The difference between us and Aristotle is that this community-being structured the best kind of human life for Aristotle. We experience it, if at all, only as soldiers, teachers, doctors, athletes, etc. – i.e. in fragments of our lives. Most of our lives are determined by mass society in capitalism, with its consumerism, subjectivism, radical individualism, narcissism. The marketplace of products or personalities knows no honor – Trump may be taken as a pure example of a capitalist personality, undiluted by any older community ethos (which many of us still have some experience of). And our moral ideas, such as they are, stem from religion, not from Aristotle, a thoroughly worldly philosopher.

    There is an inside-outside dynamic here. Whether a regiment, a basketball team, a profession (e.g. historians, judges, physicians, etc. - any community devoted to any worthy purpose) or what: there are skills, understanding, and virtues required to be a functioning member - beyond that which is required just to be a human being in a sense. Members owe each other respect on that basis alone. And for those who do exceptional things, an added kind of respect of due. The individual is never just an individual here but a member. Outsiders' perceptions - while they may be due - have a different quality than insider perceptions. I suppose for the hero, the probably quiet acknowledgement of his brothers matters most; for the teacher, the acknowledgement of fellow teachers and students matters most; for the judge the acknowledge of fellow judges as well as legal scholars and lawyers matter most; for the basketball player, the acknowledgement of fellow players and coaches, etc. Honor from the outside community is a function of the significance of the practice for the community at large. The honor is grounded in virtue, and exceptional instances of virtue.

     I am still marking out areas of agreement with Aristotle. Now I can go on not so much as to criticize his thought but to argue that it is not the whole story. And also give Plato his due.

Evil and Understanding: Some Thoughts on Raskolnikov and Macbeth 

                                              Jon Finch as Macbeth in Roman Polanski's film

Understanding Macbeth and understanding an act of mine. if we truly understood that an action was evil, we couldn't do it. That counter-intuitive thought becomes more plausible in the light of remorse.  Of course, we could say to ourselves that murder is evil, and still commit murder, as Dostoevsky's Raskolnikov does in Crime and Punishment.   But a man like Raskolnikov doesn't really know the evil he contemplates until he suffers from the pained recognition of guilt – remorse. “Oh my God, what have I done!” uttered in horrified recognition shows that the remorseful person has understood the evil done; and with such an understanding he never would have been able to do the evil in the first place. His understanding of what he has done comes with an understanding of the reality of human beings as creatures who can be wronged in such ways. To understand the meaning of an act is always to understand something about reality. Through the pain of a lucid remorse a deep aspect of the real world and the human spirit is revealed.

      Macbeth's remorse, however, had a different character due to the clarity and honesty of his foreknowledge of the evil he contemplated. Unlike Raskolnikov, for example, Macbeth renounced pseudo-philosophical justifications or rationalizations. He possessed an understanding of what was involved before his crime that is usually only granted to the evil-doer after the crime if he suffers remorse. Macbeth's murder of Duncan is “premeditated” in the deepest sense possible: He cannot say “Oh my God, what have I done!” in horrified recognition: his courage and truthfulness ensured that he did (terrifyingly) understand precisely what he proposed to do. To understand the evil of murder is just to recoil in horror over the temptation to do it – or to suffer remorse after having done it.  Macbeth does both.

      What further makes Macbeth tragic is that – in a grand way – his fall into the worst evil at the same time precludes final condemnation on our part. To be possessed by deep desires and tempted to realize such desires through evil is a common human fate.  Macbeth's deep desire to be King as well as to overcome the limitations of the human condition (cf. Lear) in fulfilling it reflects his high social standing, his exceptional valor, and his sublime imagination. But this very combination destroys the distance between temptation and action that characterizes Hamlet, for example, and I suppose most of us as well.         

        The sense in which Macbeth was indeed blind and acted in ignorance is so universal that few of us can resist the attraction to identify with him in spite of the hideousness of his crimes.  Macbeth knew he was losing his soul for the sake of his deep desires; he knew the horror of this loss, knew that, when the time came, the horror would be beyond what he could imagine, even if he trusted his courage to endure it.  But what he did mistakenly hope was that the moment, that present at least, when his deep desires were fulfilled, would be glorious.  The glorious present of fulfillment was to be the prize for which damnation is the price – a price only the most valorous could contemplate. That was his trap.

       But the prize and the price are not incommensurable – the Good (or morality) is absolute and can't be weighed against other goods. “Damnation” just means evil can never be a price for anything desired.  The very idea that there is a prize (deep desires) to be traded for Macbeth's “precious jewel” turns out to be an illusion that Macbeth only sees in the end, in utter despair.  Through his sublime imagination Macbeth tries to seal off the present moment of fulfillment – always deferred until after the next crime: as though he could imagine that only the present were real and enjoyable, not care about the past evil or the future despair. But the present cannot be isolated from the past or the future in the play's moral universe. Only gradually does it dawn on him that the prize was a chimera. Having grasped finally the emptiness of the prize, Macbeth “heroically” accepted the final despair that was always the inevitable consequence of evil done. Not only his insight into the evil he did but, at the end, the illusory nature of the enjoyment of the desires for which it was done (here the point of the witches equivocation) complete the revelation of truth. – In a purely private, middle-class way, this is the story of a betrayal of mine: understanding life through literature; understanding literature through life.

 

 

Macbeth cannot pray. I cannot imagine Macbeth praying given the irreversible nature of what he did. Repentance seems impossible. It is as though he married Hell while still in earthly life. Having grasped finally the emptiness of the prize, Macbeth “heroically” accepted the despair that was always the inevitable consequence of evil done. Not only his insight into the evil he did but, at the end, the illusory nature of the enjoyment of the desires for which it was done (here the point of the witches’ equivocation) complete the revelation of truth. Yet even in the face of Hell (the final meaningless of the “sound and fury” soliloquy), Macbeth refuses to repent due not just to the very “courage” that stood in such tension with his conscience, but because the essence of the act, its sublimity, is just that it precluded repentance. Having committed himself in full knowledge of the evil, he would seem false and cowardly in his own eyes to wish all undone at the point when he must pay the price. Or rather: to repent would be to concede that his act lacked all heroic or tragic stature – ‘oh, sorry, I didn’t really mean it’; that his understanding of his act did not manifest who he was, did not disclose a man whose courage put him beyond good and evil, but merely an ambitious man driven shabby justification for a power grab, spurred on by the supernatural assurance of success.

        Compare me: to deny the sublime dimension to my Eros for woman A would mean my betrayal of woman B was just a piece of shabbiness for the sake of all-too-human but reprehensible lust of an aging man for a younger (unstable) woman. There is a structural similarity to Macbeth’s inability to repent. I can repent almost everything, but I cannot think my Eros for A was less than real and profound (as it indeed felt) without at the same time the judgment being forced upon me – ‘you are utterly contemptible’. Contemptible means: better not to have existed, a drag on the universe. 

     There seem to be two Hells: one for those who wish they had never been born; another for those who, to become what they mistakenly imagine they really are, violate the meaning of their lives, of human life. I do believe deep wishes, even deep needs are sometimes in conflict with the real meaning of our lives, and that there is something tragic in this – but that might be a piece of opportunism. Macbeth is a sacred text because it has the power to reveal the depths of the human spirit.

. . .

The sound and fury soliloquy is still the best statement of what Hell is that I have read, the clearest revelation of Hell as final meaningless, as the utter absence of love. It is the end goal of all evil. It is what every evil deed tends towards and embodies, though outside of Shakespeare hardly anyone can look at this truth so clearly (why did Tolstoy hate Shakespeare?). This comes as a response to the news of Lady Macbeth's death and his inability to register any grief at all:

                            Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow,

                            Creeps in this petty pace from day to day,

                            To the last syllable of recorded time;

                            And all our yesterdays have lighted fools       

                            The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!         

                            Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player,

                            That struts and frets his hour upon the stage,

                            And then is heard no more. It is a tale

                            Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,

                            Signifying nothing.

I have no idea how to think about Heaven and Hell ontologically. But I do know they are symbols of the human spirit, Heaven at one end, signifying affirmation, love, joy, love of beauty, creative joy, quiet appreciate of the goodness that is at least part of life; at the other end Hell, final despair, the loss of the capacity, even the desire to love and be loved, the inability to care about anything, utter meaninglessness projected from the emptiness and cold of the lost soul onto all of Creation.  Nihilists don't undertake an impartial metaphysical investigation of existence and rationally conclude on the basis of evidence that existence is meaningless, human life a mistake. Rather they carry that meaningless around with them and project it onto existence, make any investigation prove this felt thesis that reflects the state of their souls.