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The Family and Civic LifeBy Daniel N. Robinson |
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I. My remarks of this morning touch upon a chapter in the founding of the American republic and the implications for contemporary life under regimes of justice. I should say at the outset that the subject is vast and complex, and that I can offer here what is no more than a sketch of the main points. I should say, too, that, although I will focus on the past, the history of the American founding is never too far removed from contemporary concerns. It is, after all, in the very nature of government by law that historical precedents and historical reasoning serve both to guide and to judge the shifting enthusiasms of party and politics. By way of further clarification, let me be clear that the argument I will sketch applies only to republics and would be invalid if offered as an outline for radically different forms of political organization. In this I walk in the steps of Montesquieu whose The Spirit of the Law was widely read and admired by the American founders. It is in the second chapter of that work that Montesquieu considers the forms of education that will be most needed for life within a civic society. But "education" here should be understood in the broadest terms; not merely what takes place in the school room or even in the parlor, but more generally what imposes itself on the thoughts and actions of the young in their most malleable stages of development; education in the ancient Greek sense of Paideia. Montesquieu examines the relationship between education thus understood and those principles of governance under which one must then live all the days of one's life. For Montesquieu, all the varieties of government settle finally into one of three broad categories: They are either tyrannies or monarchies or republics, and each of these calls for subjects or citizens who have acquired the right sort of disposition. (Note that monarchies committed to the collective purposes of those who have consented to be thus governed are, themselves, republics in all but name). Thus, those who would be groomed for life within an monarchy, he says, must be educated in honor; those who would live under despots and tyrants are to be educated in fear: whereas those who would be citizens of republics must be educated in virtue. The reasoning behind these conclusions was perhaps better and more widely understood in the 18th century than today, but it is not so distant as to be inaccessible. Consider first what Montesquieu calls "the school of honor". As with all schools, this one, too, is very much in the world. But in "the school of honor" one acquires those virtues designed more to ennoble oneself than to serve others: virtue here is an external mark of distinction; something that sets one apart from the group. The man of honor will readily accept a humbling comparison with the greatness of the king in return for the borrowed greatness conferred by kingly companionship. It is by way of the very code of honor that the true nobleman is more strongly bound to its terms even when these are not in any sense "statutory". Tyrannies change all this. Under despotic regimes the ruled are educated in fear, the process here as Montesquieu says "...making a bad subject in order to make a good slave" (Book IV, Ch. V). It is in this same section that he offers his famous conclusion that "every tyrant is at the same time a slave" himself. The despot has been cut off from that very exercise of deliberation and discourse by which the mind rises to a state of power and independence. In the absence of accountability the power of critical inquiry is diminished. Willfulness feeds on itself, at the utter expense of those who might otherwise participate as citizens within a worthy polis. Indeed, the really good citizen who somehow does rise to the surface finally will expose both himself and the regime to ruin; for it is a regime he must work to destroy at his own peril. But it is in his discussion of education for life within a republic that Montesquieu most influenced the American Founders and supported what has been called a form of "conservative communitarianism" (Shain, 1995). Within a republican form of government, he says,
and this because it is education in virtue, which entails self-renunciation. He goes on,
The whole power of education must be devoted to cultivating this preference; this preference for what is good at large; a principled aversion to what is mean and opposed to the general welfare. It is worth recalling at this point that Aristotle identified lawgivers as those who make citizens good by training them in the habits of right action, going so far as to declare that, "...this is the aim of all legislation":
Montesquieu was persuaded that the love of laws and of country is not only peculiar to democracies but is necessary to their survival. The very point of education, of civic education, must be developing a love, a bond of genuinely friendly affection that commits the individual to the good of the whole. And then, echoing ancient wisdom on this point, Montesquieu concludes that such an education is transmitted chiefly by elders and by parental example, noting:
As the American founders agreed, life within a republic calls for education in virtue. There is in this truism first the notion of a republic", and then the notion that within it -- one might say its very point -- is a form of life that is and aspires to be virtuous. Accordingly, it is not just any type of association that yields a republic. It would be an abuse of language to refer to "a republic of 'mafians'" or "the pirates' republic". The defining character of associations within a bona fide republic is that they are principled, which is what makes them voluntary in the first place. Republics are not the accidental consequence of unexamined traditions, but the most refined and fully intended expression of our essentially political nature. They are brought into being by deliberation and, as such, they are the precious gift of the rational side of human nature. And, as they are brought into being by deliberation, they are brought into being for a purpose, which is at once a collective purpose and also one that is nonetheless individuated at the level of the person. Were it otherwise, the form of government would be despotic or autocratic or monarchial in the sense of an absolute monarchy. To describe the form of association within republics as principled is to refer not only to the association between the people and the state but to the associations established among the people themselves. I should like to consider this first within the context of an easily misunderstood claim advanced by Aristotle in his Politics, where he states that the polis precedes both the family or household (oikia) and the individual (1253a19-20). It is a claim that seems counterintuitive, not to say contrary to fact, until one reflects on the essential nature of family and of persons. Consider that "family" may refer to nothing more or less than entities sharing some number of genes in common, drawn from an identifiable breeding pool. Understood in this way it would not be possible to distinguish between human clans and bee hives. It would not be possible for an adopted child to have membership in any family except the one he lost in infancy. Moreover, from the mere fact of genetic relatedness, nothing of moral consequence would follow. It may one day be possible to "clone" a person and to have the clone develop on another planet. Surely the mere contingent fact of genetic identity would not in and by itself establish either moral or political ties between the source and the clone. Family" understood, however, as a pattern of duties and obligations attaching to parents, to children, to brothers and sisters -- to the very monumentum supplied by the deeds of one's ancestors -- "family" in this robust sense -- now presupposes an irreducibly political form of social life; a form of society having the rational and moral resources needed to establish and promulgate just patterns of duties and obligations: the resources needed to transform the biological fact of parentage into the essentially civic office of parent. And what, then, of the individual person? Aristotle surely was not making the preposterous claim that there were no human beings until there was a political community: just as he was not suggesting that genetically related human beings begin to live together only after the creation of a polis. Rather, he was recording once more the ambiguous and marginal standing of that most pathetic creature Homer can find within his fertile imagination: the lawless, stateless, hearthless man. Once one is no longer a neighbor, a citizen, a son or daughter, wife or husband, father or mother, soldier or statesman -- once there is simply no civic or familial identity at all -- what is left over, except some unrealized potentiality for a personhood yet to be claimed? It is, then, within the polis, that one obtains those offices, so to speak, that are constitutive of distinct persons, distinct "personalities". And it is precisely because of this that one's character, no matter how promising it might be at the outset, must become diminished and degraded and woefully and dangerously incomplete within a corrupt regime. If the aim of all legislation is to make men good by training them in the habits of right action, then the aim of the polis itself is educational: its aim and purpose must be that civic education -- that education in virtue -- by which nothing less than one's full humanity is realized. If this all refers to the principled basis on which each citizen stands in relation to the polis, then on what basis do citizens stand in relation to each other? The question resolves itself finally into an inquiry into the nature of friendship. Citizens within a republic are claimed by Montesquieu to love the government, for it is theirs. On Aristotle's account, they are faithful to the government, for through it they are able to realize most fully their very humanity, thus rendering the life of a rational being ever more rational, ever more flourishing, ever more virtuous. So there is finally an affectionate bond: a bond of friendship, which is the most voluntary of voluntary associations, and therefore the form of association for which one can be held fully accountable. Thus have Montesquieu and Aristotle, two millennia apart, arrived at the same place. II. I move now to the matter of families and the inextricable connection between the civic and the familial forms of social life. It must be clear that a continuing state of hostility between the family and the state -between the family and the polis -- must lead to the destruction of both for, in the absence of the polis families degenerate into merely tribal enclaves. But it is not the survival of the polis that is the ultimate goal of family life. Rather, both the family and the polis have the central purpose of leading citizens toward flourishing, productive and meaningful lives. What both have in common centrally is a species of friendship as the enduring bond of association. To make this clear I must pause to consider briefly what is certainly one of the most celebrated treatments of friendship ever offered: that which Aristotle develops in his ethical writings. Friendship, Aristotle observes, is common throughout the animal kingdom, but is especially strong among human beings, providing the binding force for the polis itself (1155a23-24). Indeed, he says, lawgivers place a higher premium on friendship than on justice itself, for friendship is at the foundation of that very unity of purpose that the law seeks to promote. He is even inclined to declare that the highest form of justice -- tOn dikiOn to malista -- seems possessed of what is at base friendly feeling: philikon (1155a28). Well, just what is it that excites such sentiments of strong affection? Seeking the most general classification, Aristotle identifies three attributes that might be found in a person which would give rise to feelings of affection or love in another. These are the good (to agathon), the pleasant (E Edus) and the useful (E chrEsimos). Friendships form when the partners have good feelings for each other. This very sentiment arises from one or some combination of the good, the pleasant, the useful. However, these different groundings of friendship yield friendships of a quite different character. To befriend another solely for the pleasure that is thereby excited is to establish a relationship that can last only as long as the pleasure itself. Similarly, friendship based on usefulness must weaken as the gains are lessened, and disappear when there is simply nothing any longer useful in it. Friendships thus grounded are not based finally on anything intrinsic to the friends, but only on what associations with them add to one's own life. It is finally self regard that directs these friendships and that will easily redirect them to more promising candidates. Recalling Montesquieu's identification of republican virtue with the strong "preference of public to private interest", we see how incompatible such self regarding friendships are with those associations on which republics most decidedly depend. If the republic in an association of friends, its health and endurance are jeopardized by civic attachments that are transitory and selfish. Considerations of pleasure and utility, however, are of just this stripe. Pleasure and usefulness run their course, and in their very impermanence render unstable all that depends on them. Such friendships as are built on these, says Aristotle,
Aristotle also recognizes that any number of psychological and contextual factors incline persons to one or another form of friendship. In youth, which is governed by the emotions, the chief impulse to friendship is pleasure, and as tastes for pleasure are quite fickle at this stage of life, friendships are entered into and broken quickly; often, he says, before the day is out! In old age, when persons are inclined to pursue profit more than pleasure, the grounds of friendship tend to be utilitarian and survive even where there is not much by way of a mutual liking. But then there is that rare foundation of friendship, established only by those who are essentially equal in their virtue and goodness. This is, says Aristotle, perfected friendship (Teleia Philia). Those who are joined in this rare form of friendship,
Now, although Aristotle, no less than we, appreciates that mature friendship cannot obtain between adults and infants or young children, it is clear that the spirit of friendship is what animates the actions of the good parent. It is wanting for the young what is good for them and for their own sake. This, of course, is different from wanting for them what they, in their innocence and ignorance, might want for themselves. It is also different from wanting for them what merely adds to our self regarding pleasures. The true friend offers what the other needs to be deserving of true friendship. Now, if this all seems "ancient" and "aristotelian", we should remind ourselves that this very rationale was incorporated into the major documents on which the American republic was based. Both Virginia and Massachusetts had adopted Bills of Rights before there was a Constitution. In Virginia, a Declaration of Rights was adopted on May 15, 1776, less than two months before the signing of the Declaration of Independence. Granting in Section 1,
the Virginia Declaration goes on to proclaim in Section 15,
Similarly, the Massachusetts Bill of Rights of 1780 affirms the natural equality of all, each possessing "certain natural, essential, and unalienable rights", quickly going on to observe that,
Indeed, the Massachusetts Bill goes even further, insisting that,
Thus, again in Article XVIII of the Massachusetts Bill of Rights, we find not only an affirmation of these precepts but the insistence that they be uppermost in the selection of officers of State:
Note, then, that the values essential to the development of the person are the same as those that Massachusetts would incorporate into law and to which Massachusetts then would bind its legislators and judges. Nothing in the subsequent deliberations leading to the U.S. Constitution would be at variance with these conceptions of government and of citizenship. The purpose of government is to secure the happiness of the governed, but this very happiness depends centrally and essentially a civic life that is moderate, just and pious. The government most assuredly is not to impose religious orthodoxies, but equally assuredly it is to respect those on which its own authority ultimately depends; namely, the very "orthodoxies" by which a rational being surrenders himself to justice and the moral dictates of conscience. The Massachusetts Bill speaks of what is "necessary to preserve the advantages of liberty", thus making clear that liberty itself is regarded in instrumental terms: It is good insofar as it is generative of what itself is good. It is good when it grounds the life rightly lived. What is evident more generally in these two foundational Bills of Rights is the recognition -- now nearly lost to memory -- that political rights are actually forms of empowerment and therefore generate civic duties. Properly understood, what we claim as "rights" are protections occasioned by our vulnerabilities. What we take to be duties are constraints occasioned by our powers. Far from somehow entailing each other, therefore, rights and duties are drawn from different domains. This neglected fact about the grounding of rights and duties leads to important if surprising consequences. As duties arise from our powers, they are enlarged with each enlargement of our powers. It is in the manner in which these enlarged powers are deployed that one may continue to have a valid claim on them. What we mean by "an abuse of power" is precisely the deployment of power in a manner at variance with its very purposes. Thus, no one validly can claim to have a "right" to do wrong. There is no relationship -- not even that between master and slave -- in which the powers of one party can exploit the vulnerabilities of the other as completely as that between parent and child. In a just and caring regime -- a regime in which the ultimate purposes of law are not unlike those that bind virtuous friends -- such vulnerabilities are the wellsprings of legally conferred rights. Children in this sense have the right to be cared for and guided, protected and nurtured, molded into citizens themselves committed to justice and fairness. They are not "possessions" to be used, abused or destroyed according to the whims of the owners. If they are to be created only then to be killed, or if they are to be raised in contexts that place them at moral risk, it cannot be by the "rights" of those who have but do not own them. The State has duties proportioned to its powers and must not abuse the power. But the laws of the State can surely incline where they would not ruthlessly determine. As these laws pertain to the family, they must incline parents toward virtue, toward the proper use of parental power, toward a daily recognition that the fate of nations depends on what elders do to and for the young. None of this is to be held hostage to some specious "privacy right" advanced by those who reject any claims that civic duty would attach to their liberties. The ultimate privacy is enjoyed only by that "lawless, stateless, hearthless" figure in Homer who would be described by Aristotle as one either rising above humanity or sinking below it. References Commager, H. and Morris, R. (eds). The SQirit of 'Seventy-Six. (1958) New York: Harper and Row. Aristotle, The Works of Aristotle. Jonathan Barnes, ed. (1984) Princeton: Princeton University Press. Montesquieu, Charles de Secondat, The Spirit of Laws (1748). Thomas Nugent, trans. (1878) London: George Bell & Sons. Shain, Barry, The Myth of American Individualism. (1995) Princeton: Princeton University Press. |
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Daniel N. Robinson Distinguished
Research Professor, Georgetown University Prepared for the NGO Conference at BYU, 13-15 January 1999 |
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