Digressions&Impressions

Caught between Being and Un-Being: The Secret Service, Political Legitimacy, and the Relative A Priori

We're a bit like the third-person narrator of a novel....He's the one who decides what will what will happen and the one who does the telling, but he can't be challenged or interrogating. Unlike a first-person narrator, he has no name and he's not a character, therefore we believe and trust him; we don't know why he knows what he knows and why he omits what he omits and keeps silent about what he keeps silent about and why it is that he can determine the fate of all his creatures, without once being called into question. It's clear that he both exists and doesn't exists, or that he exists but, at the same time, cannot be found, He's even undetectable. I'm speaking about the narrator, mind, not the author, who is stuck at home and is not responsible for anything his narrator says; even he can't explain why the narrator knows as much as he does. In other words, the omniscient third-person narrator is an accepted convention, and the average reader of novels doesn't usually stop to ask why the narrator takes the floor and doesn't relinquish it for hundreds of pages, droning on in that invisible man's voice, that autonomous external voice that comes from nowhere...Well, we're something similar, an accepted convention, just as one accepts and doesn't object to chance, as one accepts and doesn't dispute accidents or coincidences, illnesses, catastrophes, events fortunate and unfortunate. We can stop a disaster from happening, but rather as a sudden change in the wind direction can save a boat, or a fog can conceal the pursued from their pursuers, or a snowfall can erase the footprints of the former, disorienting the latter and their dogs, or as a black night can stop someone in their tracks and black their view. Or just as the sea parted to make way for the Israelites, then closed again on Pharaoh's army following behind them in order to destroy them. That's what we are, and we really don't represent anyone. Javier Marías Berta Isla (2018) translated by Margaret Jull Costa (2018), p. 119

Regular readers of Marías know (recall) that he has a perhaps excessive fondness for self-referentiality and intertextuality which used to be called postmodern. The settings are often Oxford and Madrid. He also often presents narrations in which spies and secrets play significant role. The passage is quoting a spy-recruiter/handler in the midst of the act of initial recruitment, if not entrapment; the quoted passage is expressed in a pub, The Eagle and Child, in Oxford. The listener (Nevinson) is a Madrid born student at Oxford.  So the quoted passage can be used as a key to interpret the novel, which -- I note -- shifts between different third and first person narrators.

Here I am interested in going in the other direction, and use it to reflect a bit on the nature of spies in liberal democracy. To be sure, the quoted passage makes no such restriction, and you, my dear reader, need not do so either if you so wish. Okay, with that out of the way, let's do some stage-setting. First, I take it that in the passage, "average reader of novels" stand in for the public in a democracy. Not any citizen (or non-citizen) -- because not everybody reads novels --, but those that read the papers, sign petitions, and may even call representatives from time to time.

Second, I take it that the author stands for the government. The government is often taken to be the author of the actions of spy agencies, but the whole point of having spies is to allow the government to deny, plausibly, responsibility for actions she does not want to be held accountable for. And, in fact, governments are, themselves, often, as we have been reminded during the last few years, on a need-to-know basis lest they accidentally or deliberately reveal state secrets (or valuable assets) or are infiltrated by other countries' spies. And, third, spooks are taken to be like third-person narrators. 

Now, the first crucial point to make is that the actions of spies are somehow authorized by the government, but that in so doing they do not represent the government. The functionality of this to government and spooks is pretty obvious so I won't belabor that. But in virtue of being nameless and characterless, the spy simply cannot play the metaphysical, moral, legal, and political role(s) of being a (institutional) person that can held be held accountable or represent. Without a name, there is no object or person to play such roles. 

There is not nothing, of course, because spies do produce (inter alia) intelligence. Strikingly, their epistemic authority does not rely on the methods or causal story that produces their utterances. All of that is black-boxed in the way that miraculous,  learning algorithms spit out stuff. (If you look inside the box all you see is a string of computer code.)* This is also the conceit of the novel, where the life of the spy is left mostly invisible and recounted strictly in terms of the effects on his family and love life. Neither his actions nor his inner life are disclosed.

This is, of course, profoundly unsettling for democratic legitimacy and accountable because it suggests that true, as opposed to ritual, oversight and accountability of intelligence agencies is not really possible (unless one has one's own spies, and then infinite regress looms). For, in a non-trivial sense there is no there, there. I think something similar is happening with oversight of central banks where what they do, and how they do it, and when they do it, has become illegible to parliaments and governments. All that's being tracked are effects, many of which not at all attributable to anything--these days even central bankers (who have a name and are held accountable in some sense, but who are primarily authorized to do stuff), admit they are clueless about the so-called transmission mechanisms (here's the ECB:  "The transmission mechanism is characterised by long, variable and uncertain time lags." Take a look at the accompanying chart.) Spies leave traces, but one can't tell if they are dummies or not.

This much is familiar enough. But, the sting in the passage is not the assumed paraconsistent ontology ("he both exists and doesn't exists"),** but the thought that the shapeless (viz., spies) is constitutive of political life and so while changeable (particular "conventions" are not eternal after all), indispensable to states in the way that any novel to count as a novel must have an implied narrator. 

As an aside, the mechanisms of such kind of constitutive devices are central to the aesthetics, and political theory, pursued by Stanley Cavell and his school. So, I don't mean to suggest the claim is novel to Marías. I also think there is an interesting question whether what is claimed in the quoted passage is really true of novels. It's not impossible that by now there is an avant-garde version of the novel that has dispensed entirely with the shapeless narrator (even as a mechanism to be denied or refuted or mocked), but that has not shaken our stereotype of the nature of the novel.

One may wonder why spy agencies are not a dispensable convention. Perhaps, it is mere self-interest or a useful consoling-to-spies-professional myth that they are indispensable the way numbers are to science? For, one may be tempted, if one has any liberal faith left, to think their existence is a by-product of the global order, which, while not perhaps a Hobbesian state of nature, is full of potential and real enemies. So, if this were right, sleuths are not intrinsic to states, but just a contingent fact of the absence of world-government or federation.

But if we stipulate a benevolent Kantian world federation on liberal principles with no enemies, it is still likely that spying follow naturally. For, the possibility, real or imagined, of anti/non liberal enemies of the state cannot be ruled out. Democratic theorists do often rule out illiberal citizenry by fiat, but we are not interested in them here. And such enemies, even if we stipulate that they are a minority, need not play by liberal rules. So, for the state to be possible over time it, it must have ways to protect itself against enemies who cannot be bought off and are, in principle, not persuadable. 

That is, while the category of the (domestic) enemy of the state lends itself to great abuse, to not acknowledge its possibility, is to put the state at great peril with no chance to correct. Once one has had that thought, a secret reserve/force becomes a live thought. The justification of having unaccountable, unrepresentative forces is to destroy enemies of the people (cf. Pharaoh, Israelites, etc.) Of course, in reality that may be worse than the problem it is purportedly solving. And if one is small, poor, and insignificant enough, one may well decide, reasonably, that one must make do without uncontrolled, invisible forces. 

That is to say, a state without enemies has no need for secret agents. But such a state would then deny the founding myths that secure its legitimacy. 

 

Hume, Enthusiasm, the Gospel of Success, some Kant and Grouchy with more Adam Smith

[T]he mind of man is also subject to an unaccountable elevation and presumption, arising from prosperous success, from luxuriant health, from strong spirits, or from a bold and confident disposition. In such a state of mind, the imagination swells with great but confused conceptions, to which no sublunary beauties or enjoyments can correspond. Every thing mortal and perishable vanishes as unworthy of attention. And a full range is given to the fancy in the invisible regions or world of spirits, where the soul is at liberty to indulge itself in every imagination, which may best suit its present taste and disposition. Hence arise raptures, transports, and surprising flights of fancy; and confidence and presumption still encreasing, these raptures, being altogether unaccountable, and seeming quite beyond the reach of our ordinary faculties, are attributed to the immediate inspiration of that Divine Being, who is the object of devotion. In a little time, the inspired person comes to regard himself as a distinguished favourite of the Divinity; and when this frenzy once takes place, which is the summit of enthusiasm, every whimsy is consecrated: Human reason, and even morality are rejected as fallacious guides: And the fanatic madman delivers himself over, blindly, and without reserve, to the supposed illapses of the spirit, and to inspiration from above. Hope, pride, presumption, a warm imagination, together with ignorance, are, therefore, the true sources of ENTHUSIASM.--David Hume "Of Superstition and enthusiasm"

It is a bit odd that Hume's final summary of the sources of enthusiasm ("hope, pride, presumption, a warm imagination, together with ignorance") leaves out what is most surprising and distinctive about his approach (which he mentions first): that enthusiasm is a consequence of things we ordinarily take to be  states of well-being (or welfare), success and health, or causes thereof: an energetic and confident disposition. To emphasize the point: it's those elements we tend to associate with the gospel of success that are the fertile grounds of enthusiasm, which, in Hume's hands, is relies a species of overconfidence. And since Hume is one of the best and first defenders of the merits of commercial life, this should give us pause.

Of course, Hume is not here, in the first instance, despite the presence of over-confidence, talking about excessive risk appetite. But there is a speculative quality that cannot be ignored: "reason" is "rejected" and, I would add, could not function properly because "the imagination swells with great but confused conceptions." Hume makes clear that in this world there is no possible referent that accords with these conceptions. That is to say, according to Hume (recall also this post), when somebody is in the grip of enthusiasm, she is thinking (we may say) the tremendously impossible (recall Grouchy).

Strikingly, an initial consequence of enthusiasm is something we may well find attractive: the liberty to indulge one's imagination. That there is something attractive here was picked up by Adam Smith, who made such free play (recall) constitutive of his account of liberty,+ and by Kant, who made the "free play of the imagination" a center piece of his aesthetics. To be sure, whatever Kant meant by the "free play" of the imagination it is clearly not, in the final analysis, Hume's notion of enthusiasm (even if one may well suspect that commentators are bit too quick to dispel the touch of enthusiasm lurking here). My point being that according to Hume, enthusiasm is a consequence not just of things we associate with (causes of) welfare, but also with ends we may value as ends, (e.g., freedom of thought). 

I want to develop the point in the subsequent paragraph(s). But before I do that I should emphasize that for Hume the three-fold problem with enthusiasim is the trespassing beyond our cognitive limits such that one comes (i) to feel chosen by (ii) God, and, thereby, (iii) incapable of being constrained by reason or morality.* When one is in the grip of full enthusiasm one may be a danger to society.

Even so, as noted, the (Humean) enthusiast, possesses character traits that may well be the grounds of things we value. For example, Hume writes: 

all enthusiasts have been free from the yoke of ecclesiastics, and have expressed great independence in their devotion; with a contempt of forms, ceremonies, and traditions....The fanatic consecrates himself, and bestows on his own person a sacred character, much superior to what forms and ceremonious institutions can confer on any other.

As is well known, Hume, too, wants to free people from the yoke of priestly power and its many of their ceremonies. But more important, the idea that we need to consecrate ourselves and, thereby, bestow a sacred character in ourselves is a key move in Smith's account to explain what motives could ground the desire to act in praiseworthy fashion (recall): 

It is not the love of our neighbour, it is not the love of mankind, which upon many occasions prompts us to the practice of those divine virtues. It is a stronger love, a more powerful affection, which generally takes place upon such occasions; the love of what is honourable and noble, of the grandeur, and dignity, and superiority of our own characters.--The Theory of Moral Sentiments.

That is to say, from the perspective of Humean moral psychology, Smith grounds the pull of the praiseworthy in what we may call a tempered or (to use the Humean term) moderated species of enthusiasm.+  

On the God Within (Seneca, Spinoza, and the Bible/Vergil)

[I]t is foolish to pray for this when you can acquire it from yourself. We do not need to uplift our hands towards heaven, or to beg the keeper of a temple to let us approach his idol's ear, as if in this way our prayers were more likely to be heard. God is near you, he is with you, he is within you. 2. This is what I mean, Lucilius: a holy spirit indwells within us, one who marks our good and bad deeds, and is our guardian. As we treat this spirit, so are we treated by it. Indeed, no man can be good without the help of God. Can one rise superior to fortune unless God helps him to rise? He it is that gives noble and upright counsel. In each good man

A god doth dwell, but what god know we not [quis deus incertum est] habitat deus].--Seneca, Letter 41. Translated by Richard Mott Gummere

To achieve a sound mind [ad bonam mentem] prayer [optare could also be mere wishing] won't do; there are not just opportunity costs involved, but our attention is misdirected outward. For, Seneca, as is familiar by now, self-cultivation is, simultaneously, a withdrawal from the world of the crowd and popular approval. He comes very close to suggesting here that public displays of religion is a participation in the worship of false idols (such as characterize the market-place, the political crowds, and the amphitheater).

Part of self-cultivation is the development of what we may call conscience, the observer and custodian [observator et custos] of the good and bad we perform. Interestingly Seneca presents the operation of conscience as a reciprocal, relationship between the agent and this hidden faculty. When we nurture conscience, we are, in turn, nurtured by it. This form of boot-strapping is the path toward overcoming the rule of chance [recall, inter alia, also letter 39 here], and to participate (as we have seen) in a life rule by necessity (recall the start of the Letters) and, thereby, become godlike (recall this post on self-reliance in letter 31). A good person is precisely the one that has justly come to rely on conscience.*

I don't mean to ignore how the people that exemplify such self-controlled god-likeness, exemplify a species of (almost Nietzschean) magnanimity, laughing at our fears and at our prayers and willing them over and over again, (Vis isto divina descendit; animum excellentem, moderatum, omnia tamquam minora transeuntem, quidquid timemus optamusque ridentem, caelestis potentia agitat.)

Now, Gummere helpfully notes that the last line of the quoted passage is itself a quote from Vergil's Aenid 8.352. Seneca here proves true to his principle that the origin of a truth is less important than the fact that (recall) there is no exclusive property right in wisdom and that it can be made available to all of mankind. Even so it is notable that he quotes a poet here and not (as he had done before) a member of a competing philosophical school. (In the previous letter (40), he made a similar point with Homer.)

There is a lot to be said about the context of 8.352 and how it relates to the political self-conception of Rome and its founding. But, at this point, and in virtue of a recent lecture by Steven Nadler that I attended, I am reminded of the epigram to Spinoza's Theological Political Treatise (hereafter TTP): Per hoc cognoscimus quod in Deo manemus,/et Deus manet in nobis/quod de Spiritu suo dedit nobis (1 John 4:13; in the King James, Hereby know we that we dwell in him, and he in us, because he hath given us of his Spirit.) What's clever about this is that the first two parts of the verse, just express the Spinozism of the Ethics (we are in God and he in us). Later, in chapter 14 of the TTP, when he comments on the very verse, Spinoza explains that to have possession of the (holy) spirit just means exhibiting faith in works, that is obedience to God, that is showing one's charity (or 'lovingkindness' in Curley's translation).+

Now, Spinoza and Seneca agree that a holy spirit dwells within us and that being attentive to it guides our good behavior. They also agree on a structural feature: that to behave in accord with it, is to be guided by (an eternal property, that is,) reason, that is, necessity, that is, (one's second) nature. And that to do so is the path of salvation (see the rest of letter 41). I don't mean to suggest that they agree, exactly, on the contents of conscience or what the holy spirit demands from us. That's for another time.

Rather, I want to close with a final observation prompted by one of the most striking passages in the TTP (from Chapter 5):

So the narratives contained in the Old and New Testaments are better than the other, secular narratives, and among the [Scriptural narratives], some are better than others, in proportion as the opinions which follow from them are salutary. Hence if someone has read the stories of Holy Scripture, and has had faith in it in every respect, and has nevertheless not attended to the lesson Scrip­ture intends to teach with those stories, nor improved his life, it is just the same as if he had read the Koran, or the dramas of the Poets, or even the ordinary Chronicles, with the same attention as the multitude commonly give to these things. On the other hand, as we have said, someone who is com­pletely unfamiliar with these stories, and nevertheless has salutary opinions and a true manner of living, is absolutely blessed and really has the Spirit of Christ in him.**

There is a lot to say about this passage (recall), but the key point is that one has the Spirit of Christ if one exhibits the right kind of behavior and that one does not need exposure to Scripture nor philosophy to attain it. More subtly, and controversially, perhaps, any text, if read attentively, can be made to yield the salutary opinions needed to instruct others -- as Seneca instructs Lucillius -- in the art of living...if, and perhaps only if, one has a well-prepared mind, as Seneca shows with his use of Vergil.

 

Not for Long, Adorno & Horkheimer

In Book 22 of the Odyssey, there is a description of the way in which Odysseus’ son punishes the faithless women who had reverted to prostitution. Emotionless, and with an inhuman composure rivaled only by the impassibilité of the major nineteenth-century novelists, Homer describes the movement of the nooses and coldly compares the women’s appearance as they hang to that of birds caught in a net; the reticence and composure of the narration are the true marks of eloquence. The passage closes with the information that the feet of the row of suspended women “kicked out for a short while, but not for long” [Odyssey 22.473] The precision of the descriptive artist, which already exhibits the frigidity of anatomy and vivisection, [61] is employed to provide evidence of the dying convulsions of the subjected who, in the name of law and justice, were cast down into that realm from which Odysseus the judge had escaped. As a citizen reflecting momentarily upon the hanging, Homes assures himself and his audience (actually readers) that it did not last long--a moment and then it was all over. But after the "not for long" the inner flow of the narrative is arrested. Not for long? The device poses the question, and belies the author's composure. By cutting short the account, Homer prevents us from forgetting the victims, and reveals the unutterable eternal agony of the few seconds in which the women struggle with death. No echo of the "not for long" remains except the Quo usque tandem that the rhetors of the later period unwittingly devalued by themselves laying claim to the long-suffering attitude in question. In the narrative account of atrocity, hoever, hope attaches to the fact that it happened a long time ago. Homer offers consolation for the entanglement of prehistory, savagery, and culture by recourse to the once-upon-a-time device. Yet the epic is novel first, and fairytale after.--Theodor Adorno & Max Horkheimer (1947) Dialectic of Enlightenment, translated by John Cumming, p. 80 [emphasis in original]

Much of the so-called Excursus 1 ("Odysseus or Myth and Enlightenment") of Dialectic of Enlightenment -- is nearly unreadable unless one is steeped in the Gymnasium culture that marked the aspirations to Bildung of Wilhelmine Germany (and its European equivalents). The Excursus -- latin for digression -- is a lengthy re-interpretation of the Odyssee. It may seem peculiar to do so in exile in Los Angeles in the early 1940s, especially in a book with 'Enlightenment' (or Dialectic) in its title. But (with an explicit nod to Nietzsche) Homer is treated as "the basic text of European civilization." (46)

I had to memorize the opening lines of the Odyssee. I flunked the assignment initially. My latin teacher had me repeat the in the teacher's lounge (in front of her bemused colleagues) a few weeks later. I still remember the first line, but the second one required a check online:

ἄνδρα μοι ἔννεπε, μοῦσα, πολύτροπον, ὃς μάλα πολλὰ
πλάγχθη, ἐπεὶ Τροίης ἱερὸν πτολίεθρον ἔπερσεν:

That I associate the quoted passage with Gymnasium culture is not primarily due to this minor personal trauma, but due to the little puzzle Adorno & Horkheimer lodged in this text, their untranslated, Quo usque tandem. I recognized at once Cicero's opening lines of the first Catiline Oration:  Quo usque tandem abutere, Catilina, patientia nostra? Quam diu etiam furor iste tuus nos eludet? How long will you abuse our patience, O Catiline...* And not for the first time I reflected on the curiosity of the centrality of that nouveau riche defender of aristocratic values in a decayed republic, Cicero, in the Latin curriculum of a Gymnasium in Amsterdam in the 198s0. 

Adorno and Horkheimer are a bit quick to suggest Homer prevents us from forgetting the victims. The twelve condemned women, on the testimony of Eurykleia (Odysseus's wet-nurse), are left nameless. Their 'crime' according to Eurykleia was to show her and Penelope no honor. It is notable that Eurykleia explicitly denies that Telemachos had been mistreated by them. For, Telemachos changes his father's sentence (from death by sword to death by hanging) in virtue of their lack of honor to him and for consorting with Penelope's suitors ('prostitution').** In Telemachos' treatment of the twelve nameless women -- they are hung after being forced to clean the mayhem subsequent Odysseus' murderous revenge on his wife's suitors+ -- there are gruesome anticipations of the fate of women who served occupying forces in the world war. 

There is, I think, no consolation (or 'hope') in citizen Homer. After the gruesome deeds are done, there are rites of purification (and the cleaning up of the corpses, etc--now done by Odysseus), and life goes on without the nameless twelve women.  

I had started this impression by wanting to write about a lost culture such that whatever Adorno & Horkheimer wished to say has become opaque. But my intentions are deflected by my train of thought. In the quoted passage, they treat the devaluation of language by political rhetoric as an accident ("unwittingly").++ But this -- appropriating another's lived experience, even of death -- is always a temptation of political rhetoric, Adorno & Horkheimer's not excepted. 

 

On Repetition, Politics, and Science

He exchanges pound notes for the letters M.P. As the dominant cultural fiction of developed societies, money is the ideal nonsensical sign. I have always found it amazing that in exchange for paper I can get a book or a dress, that the stock market actually rises and falls on rumor — mere talk — and that people trade in something called Futures, as if such a thing were possible. I accept that all this is part of my world, and yet I continue to find it bizarre. Dickens obviously shared this bafflement. As powerful as it is, money refers to nothing real. Currency floats. Dickens reiterates Marx’s idea of money as society’s founding gibberish, as “the general confounding and compounding of all things — the world upside down.” When money is hoarded, it becomes even more meaningless because it buys nothing. It just accumulates like so much wastepaper.

Why money should be so precious to an ass so dull as to exchange it for no other satisfaction, is strange; but there is no animal so sure to get laden with it, as the Ass who sees nothing written on the face of the earth as the three dry letters L.S.D. not Luxury, Sensuality, Dissoluteness, which they so often stand for, but the three dry letters.

In an age when designer labels and celebrity names are used to sell everything from cars to lipstick, when meaningless slogans and lyrics and acronyms are constantly beamed and displayed and written on screens and billboards and the covers of magazines, when right-wing politicians hammer out the same empty phrases ad nauseam, corrupting words like freedom and truth until they are no longer recognizable and refer to absolutely nothing,--Siri Hustvedt "Charles Dickens and the Morbid Fragment" in (2006) A Plea for Eros, pp. 166-7

One often hears economist say with respect, that is, without irony, put your money where your mouth is (see here Cowen and Tabarrok). The underlying idea is not just that money is more solid than cheap talk, but that staking money is a form of serious agency -- skin in the game -- whereas mere talking is prattle. (I consider the epistemologist, who treats betting as the sine qua non of rationality, in the same boat.)

Hustvedt, a terrific novelist and even better essayist, helps us note that this disdain for talk is puzzling not only because (i) talk often moves markets (and so is causally efficacious, one is tempted to say talk better be treated as an endogenous variable), but also because (ii) money is ultimately grounded in some gibberish.+

As an aside (for those who follow recent high profile debates surrounding modern monetary theory (hereafter MMT [see here for Krugman, here my friend Alexander Douglas (who used to be more in favor)], one reason I suspect why modern monetary theory seems so attractive to some is that in it money is not grounded in nonsense (nor the labor theory of value) but in the very real power of the state (which can demand payment in its  own I.O.U.s.)* MMT is ultimately grounded in a kind of Hobbesian intuition.** 

Let me return to Hustvedt, in virtue of the fact that money originates in gibberish and floats, she is inclined to suggest that it cannot refer to something real. The underlying idea is hitched to the (correct) thought that signs are arbitrary. (Given how philosophically sophisticated Hustvedt is, one may even say that the PSR is lurking behind her position.) Unlike Hustvedt I think that money can refer to something real even if (as I grant her) it is founded in the arbitrariness of nonsense and tracked with something arbitrary (a sign).  

How so?

As any Connecticut poet (hoobla-how, hoobla-hoo, and hoo), or Humean-Deleuzian, can tell you, repetition can turn gibberish into something causally efficacious. And as Spinoza teaches, to be is to be a cause (and vice versa). This fact, that some of our beings/causes are grounded in nonsense, is an affront to those who think our starting points should be clear propositions. Be that as it may, because it has causal powers, money is as real as talk.++

In The Summer Without Men (Husvedt's 2011 novel), her narrator writes, "Repetition. Repetition, not identity. Nothing is repeated exactly, even words, because something has changed in the speaker and in the listener, because once said and then said again and again, the repetition itself alters the words." (51) I think the intuition -- the power of repetition -- is sound even if I am uneasy about Husvedt's manner of expressing it. While above I noted that repetition can generate identity, Husvedt is clear it can also, in the opposite direction, as it were, undermine identity. 

In her comment on Dickens, Hustvedt makes the point in stark fashion: repetition can create gibberish from truth. Her claim is not the familiar one associated with the theory of propaganda that through repetition lies can become thought true,*** but rather that one can debase words, even true and respected ones, by repeating them in certain ways. That is, certain forms of repetition vacate truth.

That is it for now. But I add a perhaps puzzling paragraph as a promissory note (and explication on my first paragraph above). As regular readers know, I think (recall) Arendt is right that only a limited number of institutions (related to science and justice) are capable of producing truth in a reliable fashion.+++ (It's now a familiar thought that replication is important in some of their practices.) The slide from [A] 'X=true' to [B] 'X=true if and only you are willing to take a bet on X' is made possible, I suspect, by a certain form of such vacating, that is, pernicious repetition.

 

 

On Aristotle's Cave (on Plato's Cave via --- ahh, yes -- Cicero) and Design Arguments

Great was the saying of Aristotle: 'Suppose there were men who had lived always underground, in good and well-lighted dwellings, adorned with statues and pictures, and furnished with everything in which those who are thought happy abound. Suppose, however, that they had never gone above ground, but had learned by report and hearsay that there is a divine authority and power. Suppose that then, at some time, the jaws of the earth opened, and they were able to escape and make their way from those hidden dwellings into these regions which we inhabit. When they suddenly saw earth and seas and sky, when they learned the grandeur of clouds and the power of winds, when they saw the sun and learned his grandeur and beauty and the power shown in his filling the sky with light and making day; when, again, night darkened the lands and they saw the whole sky picked out and adorned with stars, and the varying lights of the moon as it waxes and wanes, and the risings and settings of all these bodies, and their courses settled and immutable to all eternity; when they saw those things, most certainly they would have judged both that there are gods and that these great works are the works of gods.' Thus far Aristotle.--Quoted from Ross's Works of Aristotle, quoting Cicero (who is quoting Aristotle), On the Nature of the Gods (2. 37. 95-96[see here for Cicero's latin].), pp. 85-6. [HT Eric Brown & Monte Johnson]

In the context of Balbus's articulation and further elucidation of what I have dubbed (recall) the 'Posidonian argument,' the passage attributed to Aristotle above is quoted. Bywater (1876; HT Eric Brown) offers compelling reasons to believe that this is a fragment of Aristotle's lost dialogue, "On Philosophy" (or can at least traced back to it; Bywater's essay is worth re-reading for more reasons). 

Some other time I want to reflect on how we can read this passage as a comment on Plato's famous Cave (especially striking that Aristotle's cave dwellers have pictures and statues). Here I'll focus primarily on the passage itself (and the use Cicero makes of it). The inhabitants of the cave have everything that is thought needed for happiness. I am unsure, if we need to read into this Aristotle's disagreement with what is thought. But I am going to assume that this makes no difference to Aristotle's general claim.

What may well make a difference is that happy cave people have heard about God's will and power (numen et vim deorum). This is worth noting for two reasons: first, more speculatively, it may indicate that Aristotle is toying with the idea that stories about the gods (we may say that's the original sense of 'theology') arises naturally in any human community.* Elsewhere Aristotle connects the θεολόγοι with the circle around Hesiod (see Metaphysics 1000a9).

But earlier, okay here's some Plato: Aristotle allows that others (Plato) think that such ('theological' θεολογήσαντας) reflection on the gods predates philosophy greatly and goes back to earliest times (Met. 1.983b). So, it's possible that the whole Aristotelian thought experiment is meant to reveal something about Plato's anthropology/philosophy (for the political significance of this recall this post on Republic 427; and this one on the city of pigs).

Second, one wonders to what degree the fact that the cave-dwellers already had views on god influenced their judgment about the perception of the phenomena. That is, intentionally or not, Aristotle's thought experiment raises the question of confirmation bias (or theory mediated perception). Of course, I can't prove this claim, but it is worth noting that at least one of the perceptions they have -- orbits of astronomical bodies settled and immutable to all eternity --is not the product of mere unmediated impressions. Let's allow that the former cave dwellers can discover in fairly short notice that the planetary motions are sufficiently regular. But that their orbits are eternally fixed requires something which cannot be founded in such experience, but requires cosmological and physical backgrounds commitments.

To be sure, I am not denying that even without the supposition that the orbits are eternally fixed, the inference from celestial regularity to a providential god may still be likely. In particular, Cicero's Aristotle, relies on the grandeur of nature (and we are extremely close to the sublime here; yes, that is supposedly anachronistic, but I am capturing the repetitive magnitudinem pulchritudinemque.) Even so, in the thought experiment, the celestial bodies are made co-extensive in existence with the eternal god(s). That is to say, if you are properly primed, then the fact that nature is grandly ordered generates the natural, even inevitable inference that it (the order) is god(s)'s workmanship.

So, the way I read the Aristotle passage it could be part of an unmasking error theory,+ but it need not be so. After all, there may well be independent arguments for the existence of gods and their magnificent workmanship. In fact, Cicero's Balbus uses the passage in this latter (non-unmasking) way. For according to Balbus once you have been exposed to philosophical arguments for the existence of god -- and the previous passage offers a wonderful argument against the epicureans that (i) from start of great disorder random motions can never produce the particular order we have, and (ii) if they could, why not also houses and palaces (so much easier than a whole universe)? -- order in nature is evidently due to rational design.** 

 

On An Unphilosophical Legislation of Utopia.

[1] But they report (and there remains good marks of it to make it credible) that this was no island at first, but a part of the continent. Utopus, that conquered it (whose name it still carries, for Abraxa was its first name), brought the rude and uncivilised inhabitants into such a good government, and to that measure of politeness, that they now far excel all the rest of mankind. Having soon subdued them, he designed to separate them from the continent, and to bring the sea quite round them. To accomplish this he ordered a deep channel to be dug, fifteen miles long; and that the natives might not think he treated them like slaves, he not only forced the inhabitants, but also his own soldiers, to labor in carrying it on. As he set a vast number of men to work, he, beyond all men’s expectations, brought it to a speedy conclusion....

[2] They say the whole scheme of the town was designed at first by Utopus, but he left all that belonged to the ornament and improvement of it to be added by those that should come after him, that being too much for one man to bring to perfection. Their records, that contain the history of their town and State, are preserved with an exact care, and run backwards seventeen hundred and sixty years [244BC].

[3] At the first constitution of their government, Utopus having understood that before his coming among them the old inhabitants had been engaged in great quarrels concerning religion, by which they were so divided among themselves, that he found it an easy thing to conquer them, since, instead of uniting their forces against him, every different party in religion fought by themselves. After he had subdued them he made a law that every man might be of what religion he pleased, and might endeavor to draw others to it by the force of argument and by amicable and modest ways, but without bitterness against those of other opinions; but that he ought to use no other force but that of persuasion, and was neither to mix with it reproaches nor violence; and such as did otherwise were to be condemned to banishment or slavery. This law was made by Utopus, not only for preserving the public peace, which he saw suffered much by daily contentions and irreconcilable heats, but because he thought the interest of religion itself required it.--Thomas More, Utopia

While much of the narrative  of book 2 of Utopia is focused on the present, the reader also learns quite a bit about the origin of the polity. While More himself is no Aristotelian, and so may be unmoved by this consideration, an explanation is incomplete without analysis of the origin, which is of independent interest.Above I have collected the three main passages pertaining to the pre-history and founding of Utopia. 

We learn that its origin is in conquest. The original inhabitants lived on a peninsula. This peninsula was eminently defensible, but they lost their freedom for two reasons: first, they were technologically inferior to the conquerors; second, they were dis-unified due to religious disagreements. The latter is significant because it shows that the effects of religion on the dispositions conducive to unity cannot be ignored by those who wish to remain politically independent.

Unusually, the conquest is not followed by permanent subordination, slavery, or destruction of the original inhabitants by the conquerors. For the conquerors are force-ably leveled down and put to work. This has the symbolic significance that the conqueror and conquered are treated equally. It also symbolizes two further facts: first, it dignifies work and, in particular, public works.  Second, no permanent leisure or extractive renter class is permitted to emerge. More subtly, Utopus is ehibited not just as a skillful military commander, but also a kind of despot capable of forcing his own followers to do things against their will (and presumably expectation).

In the previous paragraph I used 'public work.' But the digging of the channel turns the peninsula into an island. This exhibits the control by mankind over nature aimed at in Utopia (which anticipates New Atlantis in this respect).* A further effect is to turn the society into a fortified castle. While it's not the main focus of the description of Utopia, military prowess, even imperial conquest, is not an irrelevant element of its ongoing function (recall this post too).

As an aside, it's unclear how the initial succession of Utopus was arranged. But (eventually) Utopia has evolved into an elective principality. This prince is chosen for life but can be removed if he appears to wish to become a tyrant. He has power to punish crimes, and to pardon them (because he has kept the "prerogative.") In other respects the elected prince has not much further power (except that I assume he is at the head of armed forces).

To return to the main point. Utopus's design for utopia is deliberately unfinished in various respects; it presupposes the possibility of open-ended economic and aesthetic progress ('ornament and improvement'). I am not claiming that modernity is here first invented, but it is a notable break from the more cyclical template(s) that can be found in the classical models to which More richly alludes. 

The possibility of open-ended progress can also be found (recall) in the laws of religion. This is an unusual mixture of requiring core doctrinal agreement about a few core dogmas -- in particular, that souls are immortal and will be punished/rewarded in the afterlife; that God is watchful and providential -- all of which quite clearly conducive to enforcing morality on earth, while simultaneously allowing religious innovation outside the core. However, such religious innovation is, in turn, constrained by the requirements of public order. (All of this anticipates the outlines of Spinoza's position.) The state religion is, with those qualifications, broadly ecumenical and tolerant in spirit. The underlying idea is the product of the fact that "Utopus judged it not fit to determine anything rashly; and seemed to doubt whether those different forms of religion might not all come from God, who might inspire man in a different manner, and be pleased with this variety." Underlying this is the providential idea -- often attributed to J.S. Mill --  that in the long run through the force of polite arguments truth will prevail "he imagined that the native force of truth would at last break forth and shine bright, if supported only by the strength of argument, and attended to with a gentle and unprejudiced mind.")

There is more to be said about this. But the important point is this. Utopus anticipates the Rousseau-ian legislator who introduces and sets a constitution on sound footing and then becomes dispensable. Notably, while there is room for technological and medical innovation on the island, there is little room for genuine political philosophy (or [recall] civilized philosophy) or even speculation (or school philosophy) on Utopia. Moreover, there is little evidence he was guided by such philosophy. This last point may be speculative, but it is made explicit in one of the poems (often attributed to Peter Gilles) that accompanied Utopia in its early printings.

My king and conqueror Utopus by name,
A prince of much renown and immortal fame,
Has made me an isle that once no island was,
Full fraught with worldly wealth,

with pleasure and solace.
I one of all other without philosophy,
Have shaped for many a philosophical city.
And mine I have nothing dangerous to impart,
So better to receive I am ready
with all my heart.*--probably Peter Gilles.

 My only reservation is that the judgment on the philosophical character of Utopia (the city) is incomplete without further evaluation of the blue print in light of the conversations (and the different polities) described in Book I. But that's for another time.

On a Humean Debate with Plato over Enthusiasm (and poetry/demagogues).

We may observe the same effect of poetry in a lesser degree; and this is common both to poetry and madness, that the vivacity they bestow on the ideas is not deriv'd from the particular situations or connexions of the objects of these ideas, but from the present temper and disposition of the person. But how great soever the pitch may be, to which this vivacity rises, 'tis evident, that in poetry it never has the same feeling with that which arises in the mind, when we reason, tho' even upon the lowest species of probability. The mind can easily distinguish betwixt the one and the other; and whatever emotion the poetical enthusiasm may give to the spirits, 'tis still the mere phantom of belief or persuasion.--David Hume, Treatise 1.3.10.10.*

I have noted before that Hume's relationship to poetry is rather complicated (recall here and a bit here). I even even claimed (at the time now four years ago) that according to Hume we need to read poetry for what it reveals about us and its discerning the limits of mortal possibility. One may worry, however, that the quoted passage above suggests a rather deflationary attitude toward poets. Hume makes two claims here: first, that while all of us can be moved by poetry equally, the cognitive or epistemic effects of poetry are due to the character and disposition of the person impacted by it. Second, that regardless of its (shall we say) emotional impact, poetry cannot make us really believe what is not.  

One may well wonder who would think otherwise. Before I get to that, I want to pause at Hume's use of 'poetical enthusiasm.' Today, ‘enthusiasm’ means something like ardor—an energetic interest in a topic. Enthusiasm is derived (via Latin and French) from the  Greek enthousiasmos "divine inspiration, enthusiasm (produced by certain kinds of music, etc.)," and enthousiazein "be inspired or possessed by a god, be rapt, be in ecstasy," from entheos "divinely inspired, possessed by a god."

Of course, Hume primarily uses ‘enthusiasm’ to describe species of religious fervor (see his famous essay, “Of Superstition and Enthusiasm”). While Hume stance is, in general derogatory toward enthusiasm (a form of religious zeal), he recognizes that enthusiasm is grounded in at least some dispositions worth having: “hope, pride, presumption, a warm imagination, together with ignorance, are, therefore, the true sources of enthusiasm.” Moreover, he thinks that while in the short run enthusiasm generates fanaticism, in the long run it can have good political effects in the service of liberty.

Okay, let's return to Treatise, 1.3.3.10. It's worth asking who the target of Hume's remarks are. I suspect they were prompted by Shaftesbury's (1707) "Letter Concerning Enthusiasm," (included in the Characteristics of Men). For in historicizing fashion, Shaftesbury thinks the poets among the ancients (but not the moderns),+ were capable of inspiring belief in what is not (just as modern false religious enthusiasts are also so capable according to him).** The ultimate target here is, of course, Plato or somebody inspired by Plato:

Stop now and tell me, Ion, without reserve what I may choose to ask you: when you give a good recitation and specially thrill your audience, either with the lay of Odysseus leaping forth on to the threshold, revealing himself to the suitors and pouring out the arrows before his feet, or of Achilles dashing at Hector, or some part of the sad story of Andromache or of Hecuba, or of Priam, are you then in your senses, or are you carried out of yourself, and does your soul in an ecstasy suppose herself to be among the scenes you are describing, whether they be in Ithaca, or in Troy, or as the poems may chance to place them? (Ion 535B-C)

Indeed, Socrates uses one such connate (of enthusiasm) to describe poetic frenzy. To be sure, it’s not used to capture the frenzied mania of divine inspiration, but rather to represent the phenomenal experience – the what it’s like – of a poet’s loss of self or identity, in presentating or performing her poem. (Greek poetry is meant to be  performed.) In context (Ion 235b-c), the poetic-performance ecstasy entails that the poet leaves her own body at a particular space and time, and mentally transports himself to the represented reality (somewhere else in time),++ the scenes described. Plato has the poet, Ion, affirm the experience: "I will tell you without reserve: when I relate a tale of woe, my eyes are filled with tears; and when it is of fear or awe, my hair stands on end with terror, and my heart leaps." (Ion 535)

The described effect is politically important because (sophistic) rhetoric produces, in Socrates’s reported experience, an analogous effect on its audience (see Menexenus 235a-c): "they bewitch our souls...when thus praised by them feel mightily ennobled, and every time I listen fascinated I am exalted and imagine myself to have become all at once taller and nobler and more handsome," (etc.). As I noted before (recall here, here, and here), De Grouchy, who lived through the French revolution, was very concerned about the effect of enthusiastic modern, demagogues who may well appear to believe their own rhetoric.

Let's close with Hume. It's possible he was convinced by, say, Shaftesbury that poetic enthusiasm was no political danger at all anymore; that the dangers could be contained by increased freedom of speech, especially the freedom of raillery "for against serious Extravagances and splenetick Humours there is no other Remedy than this." But the way Hume argues in the Treatise he seems to think that given human nature, there is simply little danger that we can be made to believe something just by beautiful words alone. As he put it, "there is something weak and imperfect amidst all that seeming vehemence of thought and sentiment, which attends the fictions of poetry." (1.3.10.10) While Plato may be thought to take the problem too seriously, and to ignore the downside risks of banishing the poets, one may even be tempted to accuse Hume of some complacency in the other direction (if we didn't have Hume's later writings ).

But there is a more interesting point lurking in Hume's position. There is no doubt Hume thinks that enthusiasm can produce strong emotions that make us behave as if we believe its fictions; spirits are excited and our attention is roused. But Hume suggests that if one looks closely there is no firm conviction. People want to believe pleasing poets and demagogues -- as Nietzsche noted "man would rather will nothingness than not will," -- and will express behavior that makes it seem they do. (And the art of demagogues is to make his audience hear what it wants.) But Hume tells us to look more closely, and what one finds is not melancholy, as Shaftesbury thought, but a fragile weakness ("something weak and imperfect"). This entails, I think, that the responsible, political response to enthusiasm should be directed at finding ways of acknowledging this fragility and redirecting it to less harmful ends.

 

 

"Skyscraper" is a metaphor: On Azzouni on Aesthetics & Outlaws:

• 1. We express our personality by what we say and by what we do.
• 1.1 What we say we say with words...
• 1.2 What we do, we do in many ways, and these ways "show" a personality.
• 1.21 "Style" is a word sometimes used to describe this. Style is the invention of a pattern of variations where variations are allowed t be invented.
• 1.211 (It cannot be seen ahead of time what variations are allowed to be invented.)
• 1.212 Personality  is shown when variations coalesce into a pattern we can "grasp."
• 1.2121 (Consistency is not required of such a pattern. What would it mean to be inconsistent? To open and close a door simultaneously.)
• 1.213 Those who invent a pattern of variations which is not allowed to be invented always show the same personality -- the outlaw -- as long as those variations are not allowed. (Later retrospection can reclassify outlaws as showing distinct personalities.)
• 1.2131 "Outlaws are capable of anything." (Of course, this is never true.)...
• 1.231 And our actions always show more than we say. (Unless they don't coalesce into a pattern. Unless we are outlaws.")---From: "Numbered Paragraphs: An Essay on Aesthetics, in The Lust for Blueprints: A Collection of Poems by Jody Azzouni, (Providence: 1999) p. 71.

Azzouni's "Numbered Paragraphs" has attracted almost no (published) philosophical attention.  This is a shame because it raises interesting puzzles and also expresses, we may say, philosophical style.

To start with a surface puzzle of classification: the "essay" (which I have partially quoted above) can be naturally read as a kind of appendix or commentary on the poems that precede it in the collection and, less naturally, as itself a poem (or both; or neither). In either case, it can also be read as an imitation of, and simultaneous homage of/commentary on, Wittgenstein, and so be seen to rival Kripke's (1982).

What kind of dizzying control over language must one have to pull off these projects simultaneously?

--But, but, numbered paragraphs cannot be a poem!

If I understand Azzouni correctly, [A] "Numbered paragraphs" is a poem if and only if it is included in something like "A Collection of Poems" and it gives aesthetic pleasure.* 

For [A] to be taken as true, requires the intervention of the critic, which helps grasp the poem and so increases -- or makes possible -- our aesthetic pleasure at Numbered Paragraphs. A poet can be her own critic, and simultaneously need more critics. 

*Azzouni's Lust precedes the impact of the internet -- technology is represented by video --, so it would require some updating. For example (both on this note and on the nature of an outlaw), we learn about the poet (p. 95) that "Jody prepared a series of miniature cards which, inserted into books in stores, provided a sort of alternative to the sparsely attended readings and to restrictive conventional media -- thus creasing a new guerrilla-publishing method." A decade later Azzouni could have been encouraged to start a YouTube channel.** It's left unsaid in "about the poet" that he is identical to Jody Azzouni the philosopher, or that Jody is a he, or that behind Jody there is a legal identity.  (To say that 'identity is trivial,' is to lack poetic sensibility?+)

Numbered paragraphs violate(s) expectations about what a poem can be. In so doing Jody (the poet, that is) reveals the personality of a poetic outlaw. Logic and Aesthetics have this in common: "merely stipulative constraints" can be "transformed into the normative language of law and proscription." (See: 3.233211) There is a more subtle point here: stipulated constraints are often grasped only after they have been violated by the outlaw.

That is, even stipulated constraints can start out (ahh) tacit?

--I must be losing the plot.

So, the function of the outlaw in poetry is to show us our expectations, and make the violations of  these pleasing aesthetically.  But this turns the outlaw-poet into a kind of literary critic. The difference is the critic is parasitic whereas the outlaw-poet is part of the tradition, retrospectively (leaving aside the exceptions [3.2211]).

Perhaps, "numbered paragraphs" is not a philosophical tract, but an imitation of it (see 3.233543).+

This raises the more challenging question: what would it mean to imitate philosophy? Can a literary critic ask that question?

Here's an answer: in imitative philosophy, let's stipulate, the form and matter is identical to (ahh) a real philosophy, but it (the imitative philosophy) is not original (because a copy). 

That strikes me as off. 

Here's another purported answer: in imitative philosophy, let's stipulate, the form and matter is identical to (ahh) a real philosophy, but it shows...no personality.

'No personality' follows the language of the poem; but I thought you would say 'bad faith.'++

So, we need a clunky distinction between imitative philosophy and philosophy that imitates. A poet could invent the proper vocabulary. (1.23311)

--I warned you (cf. 5.4), this is not some kind of postmodern joke. 

Why not try this answer: in imitative philosophy, let's stipulate, the form and matter is identical to (ahh) a real philosophy, but it (the imitative) becomes a philosophical cul-the-sac; it gives no birth to a series, or tradition.

On Seneca's Self-Reliance

Sail, therefore, not just past one insidious place because of its treacherous delights, but past every city. Be deaf to those who love you most of all; they good natured [bono animo] pray for the wrong sort [mala] of things on your behalf. And, if you would be happy [felix], entreat the gods that none of their fond desires for you may be brought to pass. What they wish to have upon you are not really good things; there is only one good, the cause and the main prop [firmamentum] of a happy life,-trust in oneself [sibi fidere].--Seneca, Letter 31

It is often the case that unsolicited advice from others is more informative about the person proffering the advice than the one receiving it. It can be allowed that practical wisdom may not be rare (even if as Seneca suggests in this letter it involves a certain skill or artistry [prudens atque artifex]), but that, in practice, other people tend not to see your circumstances with the clarity they deserve because it is your path to be trodden not theirs. This is familiar enough. 

In our age of religious pluralism, it is not uncommon for an atheist, say, to receive well wishes by way of prayers to a deity. It does not take any effort to show gratitude and among friends to comment that even if the success of the procedure is doubted, the effort is appreciated and, when efficacious, the benefits welcomed. After all, we can all use all the help we can get when the sailing gets rough. (Seneca deliberately echoes Socrates's understanding of philosophers as the true sailors at Republic 488-9.)

Seneca, however, challenges us to reject, even actively challenge (at least with their gods!), other people's good wishes even prayers because they tend to desire the wrong sorts of things (success, beauty, money, etc.) for us. What we should desire is to become the kind of person that does honorable, enduring things; others have a tendency not to pray for that on our behalf.

And this gets me to the two radical thoughts lurking here. For one may well think surely the god(s) won't listen to and heed misguided prayers. And why is there even a need to ask the gods to ignore the wrong sort of prayers? And Seneca's answer is not to deny the power of the common gods, but to suggest that they don't know what's good for us. Rather, we ought to make ourselves happy [fac te ipse felicem] by doing the right sorts of things.

For, the point of the highest good is not to be a supplicant of the gods but to become godlike (or to be joined in fellowship with god) [incipis deorum socius esse, non supplex]. And to make clear what this entails, Seneca sketches the contours of what we may call (and I now get to the first of two radical things), a philosophical non-anthropomorphic (without beauty or violence) god: the highest and most powerful of beings, who is the true support of all things [deus ille maximus potentissimusque ipse vehit omnia.] With such an (philosophical) godly exemplar, we should turn ourselves into great souls who exhibit integrity and goodness [playing around a bit with animus, sed hic rectus, bonus, magnus]. I emphasize integrity because the highest good for Seneca is to be virtuous and have an internally harmonious and proportionate life [aequalitas ac tenor vitae per omnia consonans sibi] which relies on knowledge of human and divine things.

As an aside, Seneca quotes Virgil's Aeneid "et te quoque dignum/finge deo" to emphasize the point that we should model ourselves on a godly exemplar. He had used the same fragment in Letter 18. (There he had (recall my post) done so to illustrate the rejection of riches as fellowship with the gods.) Seneca hereby shows, without having to say it, that true philosophy needs to rely poetry when it teaches virtue. (He uses a passage in which Aeneas is being exhorted to emulate Hercules by humble Evander--the exact spot is where Rome's symbols of imperial might will stand.)

And, second, Seneca emphasize that each of us [e.g., a Roman knight just as well as into a freedman's son or a slave] can become godlike in this fashion. One can leap to the heights from the slums [Subsilire in caelum ex angulo licet].* For -- and here Seneca puts his own political career in its proper perspective -- human hierarchy is always and everywhere the offspring of human ambition and misdeeds [nomina ex ambitione aut iniuria nata].

Let me come to a close. Seneca poetically introduces his philosophical conception of God at the very moment when he rejects the very idea of any human exemplar to the best form of life.  He does so, however, with  a kind of anti-poetics, which anticipates Romans 9.21 (and, recall,  Smith and Spinoza), because the god we must emulate is molded not from gold or silver, but clay. The point is to inspire us to become generous souls [Generosos animos] who promote noble causes through hard work. And to do this we must dare to be steadfast and turn our backs on the wisdom and wishes of crowds.

And, yet, by withdrawing from popular opinion, and inspiring heroic deeds, Seneca flirts with abjuring kindness and disowning gentle love. And so his prototype of self-reliance edges perhaps too closely to the sort of fanatic who shudders at human touch.