Aristotle on Acquittal and the GOP cult of Trump

But we must remember that good laws, if they are not obeyed, do not constitute good government.[1]

The mere establishment of a democracy is not the only or the principal business of the legislator, or of those who wish to create a state, for any state, however badly constituted, may last one, two, or three days; a far greater difficulty is the preservation of it.  The legislator should therefore endeavor to have a firm foundation according to the principles already laid down concerning the preservation and destruction of states; he should guard against the destructive elements, and should make laws, whether written or unwritten, which contain all the preservation of states.[2]

The conclusion is evident: that governments which have a regard to the common interest are constituted in accordance with strict principles of justice, and are therefore true forms; but those which regard only the interest of the rulers are all defective and perverted forms, for they are despotic, whereas a state is a community of freemen.[3]

Aristotle, Politics, circa 350 BC

 

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[1] Aristotle, Politics, tr. Benjamin Jowett in The Basic Works of Aristotle, ed. Richard McKeon, intro. C.D.C. Reeve (New York: The Modern Library, 2001), p. 1217 [Book IV, Chapter 8].  See also Marsilius of Padua, The Defender of the Peace, ed. and tr. Annabel Brett (Cambridge University Press, 2005), pp. 69,70 [Discourse 1, Chapter, Section 6].  Unfortunately not all of Marsilius’s references to Aristotle here match up with the translator’s references to Aristotle. Hence I am unable to locate in Politics the statement: “There is no profit if sentences are passed about what is just, but these are not carried through.”  Marsilius finished The Defender of the Peace in the year 1324.

[2] Aristotle, Politics in Ibid., pp. 1270,1271 [Book  IV, Chapter 5]

[3] Ibid., p. 1185 [Book III, Chapter 6]

Hubris and hospitalization: Trump's nemesis is himself

 

     Trump mocking Biden's mask-wearing at the first

     presidential debate on Tuesday, September 29.

     

Hobbes on Trump, Mitch McConnell, and Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s seat

So that in the first place, I put for a general inclination of all mankind a perpetual and restless desire of power after power that ceaseth only in death.  And the cause of this is not always that a man hopes for a more intensive delight than he already attained to or that he cannot be content with a moderate power, but because he cannot assure the power and means to live well, which he hath present, without the acquisition of more.  And from kings, whose power is greatest, turn their endeavours to assuring it at home by laws or abroad by wars; and themselves are inclined to rash engaging, and in the approach of danger or difficulty to retire if they can, because not seeing the way of safety they will rather hazard their honour, for which may be salved with an excuse than their lives, for which no salve is sufficient.[1]

Hobbes, Leviathan (1651)

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[1] Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan, ed., A.P. Martinich (Peterborough, ON: Broadview Press, 2002), pp.75, 76. (Chapter XI).

Mitt Romney and “A Defence of Liberty against Tyrants”

Mitt Romney’s speech in the Senate on February 5, when, against the constitutional invertebracy of his fellow Republicans, he voted to impeach President Trump, draws inspiration from the classic Huguenot text in revolutionary literature, known as Vindiciae Contra Tyrannos, A Defence of Liberty against Tyrants,[1] published in 1579 during the era of the French religious wars. More particularly it appeared after the St. Bartholomew’s Day Massacre of 1572, along with other less-celebrated resistance documents.  Vindiciae was re-issued in mid-17^th century England at the height of its Civil Wars, and it later helped shape Locke’s thinking in Two Treatises of Government (1690).[2]

It is not my purpose here to discuss the text of Vindiciae at any length, portions of which can be found in a previous blog entry of mine dated January 2012 (see the link below).  Rather, I wish to point out that Romney, who (as he says) is “profoundly religious”, and who believes the American Constitution to be “inspired by Providence” shares a central assumption with this historic text, as George H. Sabine puts it in his A History of Political Theory (1971): “Every Christian must agree that his duty is to obey God rather than the king, in case the king commands anything against God’s law.”[3]  In his work Constitutionalism and Resistance in the Sixteenth Century (1969), Julian Franklin makes much the same point but in a somewhat more explicit fashion echoing Romney, his love for family and country, and his deep conscience: “The Vindiciae, finally, begins very cautiously but clearly to anticipate resistance by private individuals who have been specially inspired by the call of God.”[4]

Click here for further text and discussion of Vindiciae:

http://joergedyrkton.blogspot.com/2012/01/defence-of-liberty-against-tyrants-or.html

Click here for Mitt Romney’s speech:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C5oPNG6HLgM

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[1] For the sake of brevity and clarity I shall refer to the text here as Vindiciae.

[2] Although the first edition of Locke’s Two Treatises of Government appeared in 1690, it was written before the events of 1688 and the Glorious Revolution of 1689.  See Peter Laslett, “‘Two Treatises of Government’ and the Revolution of 1688” in Two Treatises of Government, ed. Peter Laslett (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008), pp. 45-66, esp. p. 65.

[3] George H. Sabine, A History of Political Theory, 3^rd ed., revised. (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1971), p. 380.

[4] Julian H. Franklin in Constitutionalism and Resistance in the Sixteenth Century: Three Treatises by Hotman, Beza, & Mornay, ed. and tr. Julian Franklin (New York: Pegasus, 1969), p. 43.

Trump’s Senate “Acquittal” – a tweet

Given that neo-infantilism is all the rage at the White House, it’s not surprising to see a bunch of toddler-types (bar one) play follow the leader.[1]

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[1] For more on Trump the “neo-infantilist”, etc., see Adam Shatz, “Too Important to Kill” in The London Review of Books, Vol 42, No. 2 (23 January 2020), p. 3 ff. 

The Republican Party (minus Bolton) as “crowd”: ideas on a Senate Impeachment Trial

Appearances have always played a much more important part than reality in history, where the unreal is always of greater import than the real.[1]

It is not, then, the facts in themselves that strike the popular imagination, but the way in which they take place and are brought to notice.  It is necessary that by their condensation, if I may thus express myself, they should produce a startling image which fills and besets the mind.  To know the art of impressing the imagination of crowds is to know at the same time the art of governing them.[2]

From the dawn of civilisation onwards crowds have always undergone the influence of illusions.  It is to the creators of illusions that they have raised more temples, statues, and altars than any other class of men.[3]

The masses have never thirsted after truth.  They turn aside from evidence that is not to their taste, preferring to deify error, if error seduce them.  Whoever can supply them with illusions is easily their master; whoever attempts to destroy their illusions is always their victim.[4]

 

As soon as a certain number of living beings are gathered together, whether they be animals or men, they place themselves instinctively under the authority of a chief.

In the case of human crowds the chief is nothing more than a ringleader or agitator, but as such he plays a considerable part.  His will is the nucleus around which the opinions of the crowd are grouped and attain identity.  He constitutes the first element towards the organisation of heterogeneous crowds, and paves the way for their organisation in sects; in the meantime he directs them.  A crowd is a servile flock that is incapable of ever doing without a master.[5]

Juries, like all crowds, are profoundly impressed by prestige, and President des Glajeux very properly remarks that, very democratic as juries are in their composition, they are very aristocratic in their likes and dislikes: “Name, birth, great wealth, celebrity, the assistance of an illustrious counsel, everything in the nature of distinction or that lends brilliancy to the accused, stands him in extremely good stead.”[6]

“Debates in the House of Commons,” says the English philosopher Maine, “may be constantly read in which the entire discussion is confined to an exchange of rather weak generalities and rather violent personalities.  General formulas of this description exercise a prodigious influence on the imagination of a pure democracy.  It will always be easy to make a crowd accept general assertions, presented in striking terms, although they have never been verified, and are perhaps not susceptible of verification.”[7]

Gustave Le Bon, The Crowd: A Study of the Popular Mind (1896).

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[1] Gustave Le Bon, The Crowd: A Study of the Popular Mind (London: T. Fisher Unwin, 1896 [Filiquarian Reprint, 2005]), p. 60.  Originally published in French in 1895.

[2] Ibid., p. 64.

[3] Ibid., p. 104.

[4] Ibid., p. 106.

[5] Ibid., p. 114.

[6] Ibid., pp. 166,167.

[7] Ibid., p. 192.

To Duffy on Dues and Duty (with help from Collingwood)

For those not in the know, Senator Mike Duffy’s $90,000 expense claims, considered invalid by audit, were to be secretly paid for by personal cheque from Prime Minister Harper’s former chief of staff, Nigel Wright.  Given that the highest-ranking official behind the “Harper Government” has now stepped down, Duffy is left to once again to ponder his accountability, a matter in which Harper and his subordinates allegedly take pride. Here is what R. G. Collingwood (1889-1943), the English philosopher and historian would say to Duffy on his “dues” and “duty”.

17. 12.  ‘Due’ and ‘duty’ first appear in English in the late thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries to describe various aspects of the state of indebtedness.  They always contain a reference to the past, debitum being a past participle; a past act of incurring the debt; logically past; it need not be also temporally past.

17. 13. They are medieval words, and in the Middle Ages the idea of debt was associated less with the expectation of a money payment than with that of a payment in kind; or, still oftener, that of rendering to a ‘lord’ a ‘service’ not necessarily conceived as having a monetary equivalent.

17. 14.  The idea of a debt incurred by one act and discharged by another had already found a vernacular English expression in a new sense of the Germanic verb ‘owe’.  Originally this meant ‘own’, but from the tenth century onwards it is the current English translation for debere.

17. 15.  When ‘due’ and ’duty’ first appeared in English, therefore, they found Germanic synonyms derived from the verb ‘owe’ already established; in particular the past tense ‘ought’, where the same reference to a logically past act of incurring debt is implied.

17. 16.  Etymologically, then, ‘it is my duty to do this’ and ‘I ought to do this’ mean the same; viz. that I am conscious of an obligation or debt incurred in the past by an act that generated the obligation, and to be discharged in the future by the act referred to as ‘this’.

17. 17.  In modern English, consciousness of obligation is distinguished from other forms of consciousness by the name ‘conscience’.  ‘Conscience’ has a first-order subject, viz. the obligation itself. ...[1]

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[1] R. G. Collingwood, The New Leviathan, or Man, Society, Civilization and Barbarism, ed. David Boucher (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1992), pp. 119,120.  Emphasis added.