Excavations


... nothing is more essential to public interest than the preservation of public liberty.

- David Hume



Tuesday, August 18, 2020

Montesquieu’s “Persian Letters” on Trumpism

Most legislators have been men of limited abilities who have become leaders by chance, and have scarcely taken anything into account except their own whims and prejudices.  They seem not even to have been aware of the grandeur and dignity of the task: they have passed the time making puerile regulations, which, it is true, have satisfied those without much intelligence, but have discredited them with men of sense.

They have buried themselves in useless detail and descended to particular cases: this indicates lack of vision, which means seeing things partially and never taking a comprehensive view. …

They have often abolished unnecessarily the laws that they found in force, and this meant throwing their countries into the confusion that is inseparable from change.[1]

Usbek to Rhedi, at Venice in Montesquieu, Persian Letters (1721)



[1] Montesquieu, Persian Letters, tr. C. J. Betts (Toronto: Penguin, 1973), p. 229 [Letter 129].

Incompetence as a Contagion

I have already compared this, our desire to worship incompetence, to an infectious disease.  It has attacked the State at the very core, in its constitution, and it is not surprising that it is spreading rapidly to the customs and to the morals of the country.[1]

Émile Faguet, The Cult of Incompetence (1910)



[1] Émile Faguet, The Cult of Incompetence, tr. Beatrice Barstow (New York: E. P. Dutton, 1916), p. 123 [Bibliolife Reprint].   Originally published as Le Culte de l’Incompétence in 1910. 

Monday, August 17, 2020

Aristotle on demagogues and Trump’s penchant for decrees

 

A fifth form of democracy … is that in which, not the law, but the multitude, have the supreme power, and supersede the law by their decrees.  This is a state of affairs brought about by demagogues.  For in democracies which are subject to the law, the best citizens hold the first place and there are no demagogues; but where the laws are not supreme, there demagogues spring up.  For the people becomes a monarch, and is many in one; and the many have the power in their hands, not as individuals but collectively …. At all events this sort of democracy, which is now a monarch, and no longer under the control of law, seeks to exercise monarchical sway, and grows into a despot; the flatterer is held in honour; this sort of democracy being relative to other democracies what tyranny is to other forms of monarchy.  

The spirit of both is the same, and they alike exercise a despotic rule over the better citizens. The decrees of the demos corresponds to the edicts of the tyrant; and the demagogue is to the one what the flatterer is to the other.  Both have great power; – the flatterer with the tyrant, the demagogue with democracies of the kind which we are describing.  The demagogues make the decrees of the people override the laws, by referring all things to the popular assembly.  And therefore they grow great, because the people has all things in their hands, and they hold in their hands the votes of the people, who are too ready to listen to them. … Such a democracy is fairly open to the objection that it is not a constitution at all; for where the laws have no authority, there is no constitution.  The law ought to be supreme over all ….  So that if democracy be a real form of government, the sort of system in which all things are regulated by decrees is clearly not even a democracy in the true sense of the word, for decrees relate only to particulars. [1]

Aristotle, Politics (c. 350 BC)



[1] Aristotle, The Basic Works of Aristotle, ed. Richard McKeon (New York: Modern Library/Random House, 2001), pp. 1212, 1213 [Politics, Book IV, Ch. 4].  This edition of Politics was translated by Benjamin Jowett.  

Thursday, August 6, 2020

Plato on Trump’s America: a tweet from Hellas

The excess of liberty, whether in States or individuals, seems only to pass into excess of slavery.

Plato, The Republic (c. 370 BC)[1]

 



[1] Plato, The Republic, tr. Benjamin Jowett (Project Gutenberg EBook) Book VIII, 564a.