Carnes Lord: Education and Culture in the Political Thought of Aristotle. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1982.
Earlier version published in Interpretation: A Journal of Political Philosophy. Republished with permission.
Aristotle can still teach us—’we moderns’—about education. Although the ancient polis was no modern state, and the education it offered its citizens made no attempt at ‘enlightenment’ by an experimental science it did not have, “the encounter between Greek philosophy and the world in which it arose… remains an event of immense importance for the self-understanding of modern man” (11)—in part because modern education arose in an encounter between the new science and Christendom, with its great universities, animated by a combination of Biblical doctrine and Aristotelian philosophy.
Lord begins by contrasting classical and modern ideas of beauty. Modern estheticians make much of ‘creativity’—the transformation of “reality as it is ordinarily experienced” “effected and appreciated by a faculty of ‘imagination'” (18). Classical philosophers (there were no estheticians as such in antiquity) regard art as mimetic, imitative of nature. If this imitation includes the imitation of men “not only as they are but as they should be,” art can “serve as the core of a civic education” by providing “models of moral and political behavior” (19). Modern thinkers have regarded nature as scarcely worth imitating, unbeautiful beneath the surface, better conquered than admired. Experimental science conquers nature in economic and (it is hoped) political life, under the aegis of its instrument, the modern state. Imagination conquers nature in our esthetic life, a life now severed from nature; insofar as modern politics imagines, it threatens to break the citizen’s hold on reality, beckoning him to a belief in wonders promised by the publicists of statist rule while satiating him with pleasing phantasms which distract him from the fact that he is ruled, and does not share in rule. The ‘realists’ among the moderns tend either to dismiss art as daydreaming or conscript it for propaganda.
In the last two books of the Politics, Aristotle discusses the right place of education and culture in the best regime, the regime as it should be. Addressing himself to gentlemen—”potential or actual statesmen or legislators”—he also offers them “practical guidance… even and precisely in regimes where they do not constitute a ruling class in the political sense” (32-33). He thus presents education as civic and practical, not philosophic and theoretical. His argument “proceeds dialectically or rhetorically rather than by strict demonstration in order to engage or transform the opinions of his audience” (32). For the gentlemen, “musical culture” and not science should have a “central place,” as it both “reinforces moral virtue and prudence” and “serves to moderate the claims of politics” (34-35). Aristotle thus can present a glimpse of part of the best regime to certain non-philosophers without causing their utter alienation from the regimes in which they live, regimes that can benefit from their allegiance. Unlike some moderns, Aristotle (along with Plato) does not denigrate poetry, recognizing that, “given the limits imposed on man by nature, philosophy or reason could never be fully effective in political life” (35).
Five chapters follow Lord’s introduction. The first concerns the relation between education and politics in the best regime. Aristotelian education is political in the sense that citizens learn (by means of habituation) to be ruled and they also learn (by means of logos) to rule. Learning to be ruled consists of training the body and the passions; education centering on bodily training goes from age seven to puberty, whereas education centering on the passions continues until about age sixteen. From then until the age of twenty-one, the lad undergoes rigorous physical training designed to fit him for the military duties “required of young citizens” (62), and do so not only by strengthening his body but by testing his courage.
Civil education encompasses no philosophy. (Indeed, “one is tempted to suggest that scientific or philosophic education in the best regime will be fundamentally a private affair” [50]). The citizens’ education “will not be completed,” however, “before they are rulers strictly speaking” (38). To prepare them for ruling, the public education of the young gentlemen should consist of letters, gymnastic, drawing and painting, and “music.” The latter’s purpose is “noble leisure”—not mere play but “a way of life or an activity that combines the seriousness of occupation with the pleasures of play” (55). Music education will also teach the noble pleasure (“pastime”) of the mature citizen. “Music education is above all an education in moral virtue,” not philosophy (66). Moral virtue requires not theoretical but practical reason.
In the second chapter Lord examines the relation between music and practical reason. There is “an intimate connection between prudence in the precise sense [by which Aristotle means the practical wisdom which thinking logically about our experiences will bring] and the ‘pastime’ of mature men” (72 n.8). Aristotle commends “the enjoyment and judgment not so much of music itself as of the ‘decent characters and noble actions’ which music is able to represent” (75). While mere play causes us to forget pain and the purpose pain serves, noble leisure restores the individual with a view toward future exertion. It is prudent whereas play is childish. “[W]hat is most fundamental in music is its capacity to affect the character and the soul,” that is, its capacity for moral education (83). It does so by imitating and simultaneously encouraging its audience to imitate. Its power is not limited to children or young men but extends to the mature. And the “judgment” it forms is “not of those imitations as imitations [esthetics] but rather of the things they imitate—of ‘decent characters and noble actions'” (103-104).
In the third chapter Lord examines the relation between music and the passions, particularly the phenomenon of catharsis. Aristotle’s theory of catharsis is “wholly new” (109) and deserves the careful attention Lord gives it. All tunes and harmonies are “imitations of character” and therefore ethically important; “passion is a constituent element of the soul broadly understood” (117). Aristotle distinguishes between “enthusiastic” catharsis—the cure for a kind of madness—and the “normal enthusiasm” aroused by cathartic tunes, which is harmless and delightful to most men but does not bring catharsis to them (127-133). The catharsis experienced by men viewing a tragic drama and listening to the accompanying tunes is for mature men; it moderates but does not entirely purge those potentially sobering passions, pity and fear. It is not for all mature men. Non-citizens who reside in the polis will hear the more extreme harmonies, particularly at their religious festivals. Tragic music is for citizens only, for those who share the task of ruling. “If the ‘best regime’ is in the strictest sense the way of life of the class which rules in the well-constituted city, it is entirely appropriate that the well-constituted harmonies should be reserved for the music which contributes to the formation of that way of life” (145).
Tragedy consists of poetry, verbal music, as well as nonverbal harmonies. The fourth chapter concerns the relation between poetry and education, even as Lord ranges beyond the Politics into the Nicomachean Ethics and the Poetics. We remain in the realm of the passions, but language necessarily points to things beyond the passions. Tragic catharsis involves all passions associated with the experience of pain, including pity and fear. These passions have to do with thumos or spiritedness. Obviously, as a colleague of Plato, Aristotle knew of both the indispensability and the danger of thumos, which can guard reason or overthrow it. Tragic catharsis purifies the spirited passions of “their dangerous excesses,” thus moderating “spirited gentlemen” when they are most dangerous—at home, in peacetime, with no external enemies to fight (164). “Spiritedness is indispensable for the best city just as it is an inescapable fact of political life as such; but it represents at the same time a grave danger, as it constantly threatens the predominance in politics of prudence or reason” (164). Although other forms of catharsis consist of presenting the gentleman with an imitation of violent passions in order to allow him to participate in those passions vicariously, and thus as it were burn them out of him, tragic catharsis works not by inspiring anger but by making the gentleman feel pity and fear as he contemplates the fate of a fellow gentleman who succumbed to overweening anger and thus met a cruel fate. Prudence or practical wisdom by itself, so to speak, may seem a rather dull virtue, but it begins to look attractive indeed when one contemplates a soul without it. “Tragic error is not simply a mistake of fact or a mischance, but a moral failure which issues ineluctably from the character of the hero” (171); it does not imply deliberate evildoing (Milton’s Satan, who says “Evil be thou my good,” is no tragic hero in Aristotle’s sense), and neither can it be blamed on the gods. In the Poetics, Aristotle recommends excluding divine intervention from tragedy.
Comedy, too, can serve as a vehicle for spiritedness and for instruction against error, typically by subjecting excessively ‘thumotic’ characters (who so often take themselves very seriously) to ridicule. Whether tragic or comic, only poetry combines universals and particulars in a way similar to the operation of practical reason. Thus it excels either philosophy or history in the education of gentlemen. The reason for this lies in the nature of mimesis: “Poetic ‘imitation’ is not imitation of action in the sense that it merely reflects events of actual life or of history”; “it imitates action in a manner designed to bring out the universals of action,” which in turn “renders action imitable by its audience” (178). Practical wisdom or prudence also encompasses universals and particulars, which is why “there can be no science or art of action properly speaking” (178). Neither philosophy nor history provides adequate guidance for citizenship, which is not to say that scientific and historical knowledge are useless to citizens—far from it. But they are not enough for citizens’ education. In his overall treatment of education and of ethics, “Aristotle appears to presuppose what would be denied by the thinkers of early modernity—that prudent actions involves and indeed is inseparable from moral virtue” (179). Lord does not explicitly elaborate on his choice of the word “appears,” but his later book, The Modern Prince, elaborates on that very point.
His final chapters, on the relation between politics and culture, culture and “gentlemanship,” do contain some suggestions on the question. From “a certain point of view” one can “identify the actions deriving from moral and political virtue as the primary content of the leisured pastime” of gentlemen (180). From another, superior, point of view, moral and political action is necessary and useful but not truly noble. Culture, not moral and political education, is “the cultivation of the mind in a manner that is at once pleasant and serious and noble” (180). This may resemble the activity of philosophy, but Lord takes care not to allow us to confuse culture with philosophy. The “fundamental political fact” remains spiritedness—a species of the irrational (191). (Lord writes that the necessity for a foreign policy alone ensures this, given the distinction between ‘us’ and ‘them’ upon which foreign policy depends; one might add that even a ‘world state,’ were one possible, would involve it in attenuated form, inasmuch as even if ‘humanity’ could be made a comprehensive political category, the distinction between rulers and ruled would remain, and that too presupposes ‘us’ and ‘them’). The gentlemen are and must remain spirited. At the same time, “most men are somehow aware that political activity by itself cannot be the end of the best life”; one rules for the sake of rewards, including leisure and the “good things that are enjoyed by leisure” (197).
Yet most gentlemen can never engage in philosophy; their very spiritedness prevents it. Aristotle’s recommendation for such men is “the leisured enjoyment of music and poetry” (198). Good music and poetry can fortify moderation and justice (a word seldom seen during the course of Lord’s argument) without weakening courage and endurance. The gentleman will not by a philosopher but a philomythos. He will share with the philosopher “a sense of awe or admiration for the noble and beautiful” but he will lack the philosopher’s “sense of his own ignorance,” his “desire to remedy it,” and the “strength of mind” needed to remedy it (199 n. 21). The philomythos “remains within the horizon of habit and convention” (199 n. 21). Most important, this magnanimous man will engage in politics while tolerating philosophy. He will not execute Socrates, or drive Aristotle into exile.
A classicist’s knowledge of Greek culture, particularly Greek musical theory, embellish Lord’s study. Combined with a sensitivity to the way Aristotle develops his argument as a political philosopher, this gives the book its admirable balance of erudition and insight. Above all, Lord shows how Aristotle’s understanding of education and culture avoids the moral and political shortcomings of modern education by illuminating the link between music and morality, seen particularly in effect of catharsis on souls which, then as now, need both courage and moderation to animate a good life in families and cities.
Recent Comments