Philosopher Presidents are Not for Us

Plato and Aristotle

A recent book by Harvard historian James T. Kloppenberg, Reading Obama, argues that the president is philosophically driven, coming from the tradition of American pragmatism. In other words, we have a philosopher president, the closest thing we can have in America to a philosopher king. Whether or not, he certainly does the royal aloofness thing well, and the I-can-run-your-life-better-than-you-can part of the job.

A couple of weeks back, I posted "Philosopher Kings and Our Republic" on Worldmag.com. I argue that the notion of a philosopher king, a person so outstanding in wisdom and moral virtue that he should simply have authority over everything, is fundamentally antithetical to republican government. "Because of his unparalleled wisdom and public-spiritedness, he would, of course, govern without the restraint of law."



Regardless of what Prof. Kloppenberg says in his book, it is remarkable what an emphasis President Obama has placed on the rule of science in his administration. (Modern science is the only form of philosophy that we recognize as having any legitimacy these days.) He first signaled this in his inaugural address:

“We’ll restore science to its rightful place, and wield technology’s wonders to raise health care’s quality and lower its cost. We will harness the sun and the winds and the soil to fuel our cars and run our factories. And we will transform our schools and colleges and universities to meet the demands of a new age. All this we can do. All this we will do.”

Then, just before the election, he looked with pity on the poor benighted and angry voters for being so hostile to science in their hostility to his administration:

“Part of the reason that our politics seems so tough right now and facts and science and argument does [sic.] not seem to be winning the day all the time is because we’re hardwired not to always think clearly when we’re scared. And the country’s scared.”

Then there are all those big initiatives by which he has tried to centralize large chunks of American life, viz. health care, home financing, college loans, the auto industry, the financial sector. Central administration is the mark of a scientific society.

I conclude that he has been working (albeit unwittingly) from the wrong model: Plato, instead of Aristotle.

"In The Politics, Aristotle holds that, for a free people, i.e., a law-abiding people who are capable of participating in government intelligently and responsibly, the best form of government combines a strong executive, a selection of the best citizens, and an active role for the people at large. Under those circumstances, the benevolent but autocratic rule of a philosopher king would be unjust because it would deny capable citizens the chance to govern themselves."

Climate Science As One Would

There is a great need for more Francis Bacon (the philosopher, not the "artist") in the news coverage of our day, many have been saying (I bet).

I provide this in my recent WORLDmag.com post, "Political Climate Science."

The global warming scam has been pressed upon us with frantic alarm by everyone from Al Gore to the Climate Research Unit (CRU) at the University of East Anglia to virtually every teacher in the public school system. Life on the planet, we were told, is in mortal danger from climate change brought on by carbon emissions. The research was in, and there was a solid “consensus” in the scientific community. The only rational and morally defensible course was to empower governments everywhere to impose severe restrictions not only on manufacturing but also on every aspect of human life. Call it our own generation’s “fierce urgency of now,” as Martin Luther King Jr. put it with far greater justification. Then we discovered that what we were assured was settled science as a basis for worldwide emergency measures was actually, as National Review’s Rich Lowry put it, just “global-warming advocacy rather than dispassionate inquiry.”

Read on to find Lord Bacon's explanation for this scandal, and my own reflection on the priests in white lab coats.

Leon Kass, Physician-Philosopher

On May 21 in Washington DC, Leon Kass delivered the 38th Annual Jefferson Lecture for the National Endowment for the Humanities, "Looking for an Honest Man: Reflections of an Unlicensed Humanist."

Leon R. Kass, M.D., Ph.D., is the Addie Clark Harding Professor in the Committee on Social Thought and the College at the University of Chicago and Hertog Fellow in Social Thought at the American Enterprise Institute. He was chairman of the President's Council on Bioethics from 2001 to 2005.

The lecture is about the lifelong pursuit of answers to the great human questions, the questions which Socrates began to address after his famous "turn" from natural philosophy to the deepest moral and political questions.

He summarizes his quest this way:

I have sought wisdom about the meaning of our humanity, largely through teaching and studying the great works of wiser and nobler human beings, who have bequeathed to us their profound accounts of the human condition.

This is classic Kass, the physician-philosopher:

I found that I loved my patients and their stories more than I loved solving the puzzle of their diseases; where my colleagues found disease fascinating, I was fascinated more by the patients—how they lived, how they struggled with their suffering. Above all, I hated the autopsy room, not out of fear of death, but because the post mortem exam could never answer my question: What happened to my patient? The clot in his coronary artery, his ruptured bowel, or whatever diseased body part that the pathologist displayed as the putative explanation of his death was utterly incommensurable with the awesome massive fact, the extinction of this never-to-be repeated human being, for whom I had cared and for whom his survivors now grieve.

Kass describes a turn of his own.

In summer 1965, interrupting my research, Amy and I went to Mississippi to do civil rights work. We lived with a farmer couple in rural Holmes County, in a house with no telephone, hot water, or indoor toilet. ... [O]n returning to Cambridge, I was nagged by a disparity I could not explain between the uneducated, poor black farmers in Mississippi and many of my privileged, highly educated graduate student friends at Harvard. A man of the left, I had unthinkingly held the Enlightenment view of the close connection between intellectual and moral virtue: education and progress in science and technology would overcome superstition, poverty, and misery, allowing human beings to become at last the morally superior creatures that only nature’s stinginess and religious or social oppression had kept them from being. Yet in Mississippi I saw people living honorably in perilous and meager circumstances, many of them illiterate, but sustained by religion, extended family, and community attachment, and by the pride of honest farming and homemaking. Indeed, they seemed to display more integrity, decency, and strength of character, and less self-absorption and self-indulgence, than did many of my high-minded Harvard friends who shared my progressive opinions.

From there, he takes us through his encounters in the late 1960s with Rousseau's Discourse on the Arts and Sciences, Huxley's Brave New World, and Lewis's The Abolition of Man. After 1970, when others were attempting to bring moral theory up to speed with advances in the biological sciences, Kass was turning to ancient writers for the wisdom that moderns in their rush for technological advance had largely forgotten.

No friend of humanity should trade the accumulated wisdom about human nature and human flourishing for some half-cocked promise to produce a superior human being or human society, never mind a post-human future, before he has taken the trouble to look deeply, with all the help he can get, into the matter of our humanity—what it is, why it matters, and how we can be all that we can be.

In the remainder of the lecture, he discusses three inquiries that have been central to his forty year reflection on the human meaning of science.

First, addressing the conceptual danger, stressed by Lewis, of a soul-less science of life, I have worked toward a more natural science, truer to life as lived. Second, addressing the practical danger, stressed by Huxley, of dehumanization resulting from the relief of man’s estate, I have worked toward a richer picture of human dignity and human flourishing. And third, addressing the social and political dangers, stressed by Rousseau, of cultural decay and enfeeblement, I have looked for cultural teachings that could keep us strong in heart and soul, no less than in body and bank account.

Here is a select Leon Kass bibliography.

Books:

Being Human: Core Readings in the Humanities (W. W. Norton, 2004).

The Beginning of Wisdom: Reading Genesis (The Free Press, 2003).

Human Cloning and Human Dignity: The Report of the President’s Council on Bioethics, (President’s Council on Bioethics, 2002).

Life, Liberty, and Defense of Dignity: The Challenge for Bioethics (Encounter Books, 2002).

Wing to Wing, Oar to Oar: Readings on Courting and Marrying [with Amy A. Kass] (University of Notre Dame Press, 1999).

The Ethics of Human Cloning [with James Q. Wilson] (American Enterprise Institute, 1998).

The Hungry Soul: Eating and the Perfecting of Our Nature (Free Press, 1994).
Toward a More Natural Science (Free Press, 1985).

Articles:

“Ageless Bodies, Happy Souls: Biotechnology and the Pursuit of Perfection,” in New Atlantis, Spring 2003.

“The Aims of Liberal Education,” in The Aims of Education, John Boyer, ed., (University Chicago Press, 1997).

“Am I My (Foolish) Brother’s Keeper?,” in American Enterprise, November/December 1994.

“The Case for Mortality,” in American Scholar 52, 1983.

“Death with Dignity and the Sanctity of Life,” in Commentary, March 1990.

“Defending Human Dignity,” in Commentary, December 2007.

“Dehumanization Triumphant,” in First Things: A Monthly Journal of Religion and Public Life, August/September 1996.

“Educating Father Abraham: The Meaning of Wife,” in First Things: A Monthly Journal of Religion and Public Life, November 1994.

“The End of Courtship,” in Public Interest, Winter 1997.

“Evolution and the Bible: Genesis I Revisited,” in Commentary, April 1989.

“Experimental Genetics and Human Evolution,” in The Future Is Now: American Confronts the New Genetics, William Kristol and Eric Cohen, eds., Lanham: Rowman and Littlefield, 2002.

“Farmers, Founders, and Fratricide: The Story of Cain and Abel,” in First Things: A Monthly Journal of Religion and Public Life, April 1996.

“For the Love of the Game: Against the Adulteration of American Sport” [with Eric Cohen], in New Republic, March 26, 2008.

“Human Frailty and Human Dignity,” in New Atlantis, January 27, 2005.

“Human Stem Cell Research Is Unethical,” in Ethics, Brenda Stalcup, ed. (Greenhaven Press, 2000.)

“Love of Women and Love of God: The Case of Jacob,” in Commentary, March 1999.

“Making Babies—The New Biology and the ‘Old’ Morality,” in Public Interest, Winter 1972.

“‘Making Babies’ Revisited,” in Public Interest, Winter 1979.

“Man and Woman: An Old Story,” in First Things: A Monthly Journal of Religion and Public Life, November 11, 1991.

“Neither for Love Nor Money: Why Doctors Must Not Kill,” in Public Interest, Winter, 1989.

“The New Biology: What Price Relieving Man’s Estate?,” in Science 174, 1971.

“On Aldous Huxley’s ‘Brave New World’,” in First Things: A Monthly Journal of Religion and Public Life, March 2000.

“On Religion and Science,” in Commentary, July 2007.

“Regarding Daughters and Sisters: The Rape of Dinah,” in Commentary, April 1992.

“What’s Wrong with Babel?,” in American Scholar, Winter 1989.

“Wisdom of Repugnance: Why We Should Ban the Cloning of Human Beings,” in New Republic, June 2, 1997.

Quality Time With The Venerable Dead

Samuel Davies (1723-1761) was one of America's greatest preachers. He was a Virginian and the fourth president of the College of New Jersey, known today as Princeton University, succeeding Jonathan Edwards. As a pastor in Virginia, he had the privilege of discipling young Patrick Henry from the pulpit each Lord's Day.

On a friend's Facebook page today, I found these words from Pastor Davies which everyone who is serious about the truth, wisdom, and the life of the mind will take to heart.

I have a peaceful study as a refuge from the hurries and noise of the world around me, the venerable dead are waiting in my library to entertain me and relieve me from the nonsense of surviving mortals.*

C. S. Lewis had the same sentiment when, in his introduction to Athanasius On The Incarnation, he recommended the reading of old books, or at least balancing our diet of new books with healthy servings of the old.

It is a good rule, after reading a new book, never to allow yourself another new one till you have read an old one in between. If that is too much for you, you should at least read one old one to every three new ones.

Machiavelli shares the pleasure he takes in communing with geniuses across the centuries through the books they have left us:

On the coming of evening, I return to my house and enter my study; and at the door I take off the day's clothing, covered with mud and dust, and put on garments regal and courtly; and reclothed appropriately, I enter the ancient courts of ancient men, where, received by them with affection, I feed on that food which only is mine and which I was born for, where I am not ashamed to speak with them and to ask them the reason for their actions; and they in their kindness answer me; and for four hours of time I do not feel boredom, I forget every trouble, I do not dread poverty, I am not frightened by death; entirely I give myself over to them. ("Letter to Francesco Vettori")

Further down on the right you can find a list of spiritual classics whose authors you will surely find justly venerable.

*Of course, he is using the word "entertain" in an older sense. It appears to be the ninth definition offered by Oxford English Dictionary: "To engage, keep occupied the attention, thoughts, or time of (a person): also with attention, etc. as obj. Hence to discourse to (a person) of something. ... 1692 Br. Ely Answ. Touchstone A v, I hope I shall neither tire the Reader, nor entertain him unprofitably. 1748 Chesterf. Lett. II clxxiii. I have so often entertained you upon these important subjects." The Compact Edition of the Oxford English Dictionary (1971), vol. I, p. 876.

Memorabilia and Happiness

Harold has drawn our attention in the post below ("Time Stands Still") to a profoundly important fact of life.

Everyone seeks happiness.

We do it in wholesome as well as in perverse ways (marriage as well as adultery; a good meal, but also overindulgence). A fundamental difficulty in this pursuit, however, is that the things in which we try to anchor our happiness are continuously slipping away in the tide of time. And, as the saying goes, time waits for no man, neither for the rich and powerful nor for the poor and obscure. With every passing moment, it carries off our possessions and treasures. And the heart aches to see them go. A pair of socks that have served you well are becoming thread bear in the toe and heel. An affectionate cat who has always been happy to sit in your lap on cold evenings is approaching the end of her days. Your little children are growing up. Your youth is slipping away. You can't run the way you once did, and you're forgetting things. And your church? Your community? Your country? How the gold has become dim. Jesus warns us, "Store up not your treasures on earth where moth and rust corrupt and where thieves break in and steal." Time is the universal thief.

Life is carpeted and canopied and hedged all around with innocent enjoyments, but they are like the manna in the desert that Israel received from the Lord. They can only be enjoyed for the moment, not stored up and preserved for the future. Though each day has its own trouble, Jesus tells us in his great sermon, it also has its own delights that are for that day and for no other.

We reach out our hands to clutch these blessings and secure them permanently, but they are ever--and by the very nature of things--elusive. This is why we collect things, no? People are hoarding Obama memorabilia (magazine covers are my preference) because even as they are enjoying the historical moment, they know at the same time it is slipping away and will soon be only a memory. Whether it's a wedding, an athletic victory, or friendships from our schooldays, we want somehow to preserve the moment in time and carry it into the future as best we can. So it is no surprise that what people carry out of their burning houses, besides their children and pets, is their photographs.

Victory Plate - "We own a piece of history."

"Bob Dylan's Dream" (from Freewheelin', 1963; listen here) captures the cry of that aching heart that sees it's happiness locked irretrievably in the past.

I wish, I wish, I wish in vain,

That we could sit simply in that room again.

Ten thousand dollars at the drop of a hat,

I'd give it all gladly if our lives could be like that.

Heraclitus observed that you cannot step in the same river twice. Even as you step, the river is gone, racing downstream, and has become a different river with different water. But we can no more hold back the river and enjoy the sweet waters of the moment than King Canute could hold back the ocean tide.

So within every pleasure is the pain of knowing that it is slipping away. But there is a way of milking the moment for all that it was intended to give, and simply enjoying it for what it is. Enjoy life's pleasures, as Israel did the manna, as gifts from God to be enjoyed for as long as they are given, and enjoy them thankfully. That is, the genuine enjoyment of these goods (that come into being and pass away) entails enjoying above all the God who gave them, the God who is in himself perfectly delightful, who never changes, and who promises his people that he will never leave them nor forsake them. When we enjoy the good things of life as tokens of his goodness and reflections of his glory, and thus enjoy them worshipfully, we can enjoy God's world the way he gives it to be enjoyed, not as something always slipping tragically into the past, but as something that anticipates the infinitely greater blessedness of the future.

Harold adds:

Nicely explicated, Reverend Doctor.