As regular readers may be aware, every Thanksgiving here at APLV we compile a list of music, paintings, et cetera, we are especially grateful for. Last year the theme was Sacred Music. That was six months ago. Now as you might well imagine, in a sense that list generates its antithesis and it seems fitting that the antithetical list make its appearance now.
Henceforth and forthwith the "Anathema List" will appear this time of year and serve as a foil for our Thanksgiving list.
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The theme of this list, then, is still sacred music. This music, though, is thought to be poorly written regarding competent composition, written without attention to style, or without attention to the ideas they are attempting to express.
Some are indecorous, undignified, or simply ugly. Some are clearly in the wrong style altogether, but they are also simply bad. The words and music are, at times, incomprehensible. Jingly-jangly, sing-songy, insipid. . . you get the idea.
Elsewhere we have praised music which perfectly complemented the ideas or even created the idea and hence the relative poverty of the forthcoming songs which either poorly express or are at odds with the ideas.
Of course I am not condemning any of the performers. Too, I realize many will have sentimental attachments to some of these songs.
Anathema, 2011
10. I Am the Bread of Life, by Suzanne Toolan [YouTube]
Phil Grabsky's In Seach of Mozart is probably a satisfactory movie. I offer such oblique praise because while I cannot say I enjoyed the film, In Search of Mozart clearly has something to offer. (What that is and for what audience. . .) There are numerous interviews with today's foremost scholars of Mozart, talented musicians passionate about Mozart's music, copious clips of performances, and a grand tour through Mozart's world and life. Yet the experience of watching In Seach of Mozart left me surprisingly unmoved. No, nothing feels out of place and nothing is essentially wrong with the film but I grew bored not too long in. Why? I think it is because the film feels so much like a summary. Now such is not the worst that can happen to a documentary: describing something. The problem is that the essence of Mozart never jumped out at me. In Search of Mozart feels more like a tour or report rather than an experience of Mozart. Let me try to explain why this is so.
The main problem is in fact two intertwined: they keep interrupting the music with so-so discussions about the music. In writing Amadeus, which of course receives a few broadsides in this documentary, Peter Shaffer remarked how you could only use so much music before people would grow to loathe the return to the talking bits. The observation applies to film documentaries as well. Regarding the second half of the film's problem, I was quite surprised at the middling quality of musical discussions. The discussions of the music in the film fall into two distinct categories: the outright shallow and the merely mediocre. Discussions with the performers fall almost exclusively into the former category. We hear that this piece has energy, that one has depth, opera is about the human condition. Yikes. Only pianists Imogen Cooper and Ronald Brautigam shed any light on Mozart's style. Lang Lang makes the classic point about the essentially dramatic nature of all Mozart's work.
Of the mediocre one might admit that they are in fact explanations, but never the explanations. They are never articulated finely enough to be memorable or specifically enough to be meaningful. On occasion they are confusing. One might consider them, at best, "truthful but unenlightening" and this feels a particular weakness given the wealth of illuminating writing on Mozart. Pick up any random sentence of Tovey on Mozart to see the poverty of these explanations. Cliff Eisen, probably the foremost Mozart authority today, and Volkmar Braunbehrens alternate between myth-busting and what feels like answering review questions from the end of a text book chapter. Only opera director Jonathan Miller and Stanley Sadie, interviewed shortly before his untimely 2005 death amidst a massive scholarly project, manage to speak both intelligently and extemporaneously as they elevate the discussion to more interesting issues of style and philosophy.
The chronological framework of the film suffices, following the standard breakdown into 1) the early travels, 2) the return to Salzburg, 3) the Paris and Vienna trips, 4) the return to Salzburg, Idomeneo, and the break with the archbishop, and 5) the Vienna years. Present are the usual quotes, letters, anecdotes, people, pictures (including spurious and inauthentic portraits of the composer), and pieces. The pacing is good but one never feels like anything is actually happening before you. Rather one feels told over and over "he wrote this in this place, here is sample, this is why its good." Such, coupled with the fact that the interviews are often shot in extreme close up, makes the film seem a sequence of talking heads. To be fair the heads are interspersed with pans over the same few photos and footage of random people walking through modern European cities. There is certainly not enough focus on the places Mozart lived and visited. While the beginning of the film explores the place of his birth and they certainly seem to have been driving somewhere, most of the outdoor footage consists of wide-shots of cities and medium-range shots of random people walking around.
It is hard to recommend In Search of Mozart without considering its audience. It is of insufficient depth and polish to please a scholar or aficionado. It might, by exposing to Mozart's music, spur someone who likes classical music but not Mozart to listen, but it's not electrifying enough to snare someone opposed or indifferent.
The film has a strong cast of experts, few of whom are at their best here. One would benefit from seeking them elsewhere in their scholarship and performances. Overall, In Search of Mozart feels like a so-so academic paper whose author, because he did a lot of research and was writing about an important person, didn't think he needed to make any particular point.
With a hat tip to Jeffrey Tucker at Chant Café for video no. 1, I point to the videos below and observe that
You can turn a slight, even silly, theme into something interesting or at least entertaining when you actually develop it. (Video 1) Indeed, without a glitzy video to accompany it, actual musical development is required.
A pop theme sounds far more natural, somehow more "human-friendly," when played on traditional, non-synthesized instruments. (Video 2)
Theory can be entertaining as well as informative. (Video 3)
Bill McGurn has a noteworthy piece in yesterday's Wall Street Journal in which he treads into a thorny thicket of issues all centering on how colleges deal with sex crimes. He concedes that a collapse of traditional morality has a part to play but his argument is this:
[the] real threat to civility and common decency is this: the substitution of codes and committees for responsible adults exercising humanity and judgment.
Now this observation may sound wise and true enough, perhaps even self-evident, but it seems to me to raise a challenging political science question when applied to life outside a university campus. First, a little backtracking:
We must back track a little and ask, "What is a law for?" There are to this question two common answers: A) to punish criminals and achieve justice, B) to deter a particular act. We then may ask "How does it come about" to which we can reply that a law comes about when a group of people perceive some wrong and seize the moral authority to rectify the wrong by punishing the offender.
Now we must distinguish in a society between laws and customs, the former being compulsory and the violation of which is punishable, and the latter which is preferred and rewarded but not mandated. We could sensibly propose a hierarchy between the two, laws being thought to preserve more important (or at least more pragmatically important) values than customs.
In a free society, though, those two categories are always going to be in some tension. What ought to be a law and what ought to be left to the freedom of the individual? Clearly the more that is mandated the less liberal the society. Similarly, people have different ideas as to what the government ought to do, though but that is not my concern in this post. Nor is my question here whether universities or societies ought to legislate morality. My questions is this: when customs pass out of tradition and into obscurity can a minority of people rejuvenate the customs by enforcing them upon the people, i.e. by turning the customs into laws?
While voluntary conviction is clearly preferable to force for the purpose of establishing order (or anything), is it more or less reliable for preserving what it wants to protect than force (i.e. law and government)? And as a corollary, does forcing something via law makeless likely to be preserved because its care and administration has been taken (or delegated) from the people? (Bill's hypothesis seems to fall squarely in one of these camps.) We might, more radically, ask: to what degree does any law really work, i.e. to what degree is a law itself (and/or its enforcement) the prime cause of a given situation. After passing a law do we often, ever, bother to see if it actually changed anything? Does anyone care whether it does, or is the attempt enough to satisfy people's desire to bring about the good.
For conservatives these political science questions center around two pragmatic political topics. First, we must consider that while we want to "conserve" something that the government should not be the default tool for conserving. The government is not the proper, or perhaps even a possible, tool of conservation. Second, we should be aware that conserving something via government intervention or monopolization might have the opposite effect, even on liberty itself (c.f. Jefferson, "The people are the only safe depositories of their own liberty.") (from a letter to L.W. Tazewell, 1805.)
Perhaps the conservative rule should be simply "to do good" in contrast to the "I want good to be done" (i.e. by the government) attitude of state-centered modern liberalism. People produce a culture and a society, and the society creates the government. Not the other way around.
To pose a final more philosophical question, I would borrow from de Tocqueville and ask: does equality under law beget (or encourage) a desire for total equality? Does then that desire, or the sating of it, make centralization of law easier by 1) shrinking the individual in relation to the state by making all individuals equal and thus equally small and interchangeable relative to it, and 2) making a law easier and more appealing to pass because of the reasoning that, "if it affects everyone it must be fair?" Does (or may), then, Liberalism, somehow contain the seeds of or propensity for illiberalism?
Perhaps either way the best defense against this infantalization, whether from "tyrannical ambition" or "servile temptation" (to borrow a pair of phrases from Paul Rahe's Soft Despotism) is a belief in liberty and not a contentment with servility in the hearts of the American people and a specific, limited body of laws. (Again, it seems always to be the lack of specifics, the lack of limits or finite ends, of the progressives which causes concern amongst conservatives and Classical Liberals.) A return to limits, liberty, and diffusion, not centralization, of responsibility amongst us is needed, lest the growing state slowly, imperceptibly render us as Tacitus said the rule of Augustus left the Romans, "capable neither of complete servitude nor of complete freedom."
Martin Amis has a column in yesterday's Guardian in which he puts contemporary intellectual, author, and famed debated Christopher Hitchens on par with Cicero and Demosthenes. Now first please try to understand how difficult it was for me to write that. It is nearly inconceivable for anyone who has in fact read Demosthenes and Cicero in Greek and Latin to compare anyone to them. Yet in this case I think they are merely invoked as totems of excellence rather than set up as examples for comparison. That this is not a scholarly article and there are, in fact, no meaningful comparisons, or comparisons of any kind, supports this statement. In fact were not for the amiable tone of the piece I would be tempted to borrow a phrase I used last week to describe Terry Eagleton's piece on Marx: embarrassing encomium. Yet this essay, from its prefatory picture of the two boozily unkempt friends to its apostrophe to Mr. Hitchens himself, resists such an evaluation. It does not, however, resist some scrutiny.
Actually I don't so much care to evaluate the accuracy of Amis' assertion than I want like to unpack the implications of his praise. Of course I balk at the comparison itself, more than I would at referring to Patrick Henry as the "Cicero of Virginia" but less than referring to President Obama's speeches as "worthy of marble." Perhaps one day we will examine some of Mr. Hitchen's writing against Demosthenes but right now I'm simply concerned with the analogy Amis uses to describe Hitchen's rhetorical ability, which is to the supercomputer Deep Blue, which defeated several chess grandmasters, both of whom described the encounter thus: It's like a wall coming at you.
In contrast I call to mind the timeless statement about Demosthenes, that he was δεινὸς λέγειν (deinos legein) a phrase which unfortunately requires a little explanation in itself. On the one hand it can simply mean a "clever speaker" and indeed it means this and such is how it is most often translated from Greek. The first word, though, δεινὸς, has more associations, namely with the seemingly contrasting pair of ideas, "terrible" (or fearful, dangerous) and "wondrous" (or marvelous.) Yes, to be called δεινὸς λέγειν might simply mean you were a clever speaker, a speaker clever with your tongue who, like Odysseus, could beguile and outwit an opponent. (It may be of interest to recall Dante in Canto XXVI of the Inferno has Odysseus in in the Eighth Circle (with Diomedes) for his trickery (agguato, arte.)) Too Socrates begins his famous defense by addressing the accusation that he is a clever speaker, asserting that he is not clever unless by clever you mean truthful.
That distinction, I think, is essentially the one Amis is making. (Unless he is making the unexpectedly banal assertion (i.e. not an argument) that Hitchens is a good rhetor "because he makes good arguments quickly.") For while the descriptions of Demosthenes and Amis' of Hitchens share a common theme of power, the Greek is tinged with many subtler ideas. Amis means Mr. Hitchens is a great speaker not because he is artful or clever or because his prose is beautiful, his images vivid or because he uses figurative language and paints a persuasive picture, but because he is truthful. Hitchens' argumentation is a wall of truth coming at you. Thus Amis is essentially saying that truth is persuasive. This statement, put clearly by Aristotle as, "what aims at truth is better than what aims at appearances" (paraphrased, see Rh. I.vii, 1365a) and beautifully by Keats, "Beauty is truth, truth beauty–" poses a serious question: is what is true naturally more appealing or easier to prove? It might seem so today of certain facts, but in many cases "facts" to a great deal of time to be considered so. One could undoubtedly come up with simpler, wrong, explanations of physics than those of quantum mechanics.
To digress once more, it might make an interesting exercise, dear reader, to read a work of fiction, something presenting a complete world view like the works we discussed in reviewing Santayana's "Three Poets" or at least something a clear single concept that is explored. Then consider whether you find it beautiful: is that world a beautiful one. Then, consider whether you find it more or less beautiful and truthful than the world in which you live. Are they the same?
Is there truth in fiction? Is truth the source of beauty in fiction? Aristotle considered fiction (ποίησις, (poieisis)from ποιέω(poieo) to make) more philosophical because it deals in absolutes whereas history, which seemingly is more scientific and truth-seeking because it deals with facts and things which have actually happened, deals only with specific things which have happened and not universal truths about what must happen.
I would call attention to the fact that Amis goes on to praise Hitchens' "crystallizations," i.e. aphorisms. This is odd in contrast to his opening in which he essentially praises Hitchens' rationality as being persuasive, because of course aphorisms are not arguments. Maybe Amis just means that being persuasive can take many forms, both through rigorous argumentation and through indivisible aphorisms. Perhaps, but I'm not sure.
Let us revisit, though, his actual argument for Hitchens as rhetor. Can it really be called an argument?
. . . his judgments are far more instinctive and moral-visceral than they seem, and are animated by a child's eager apprehension of what feels just and true); he writes like a distinguished author; and he speaks like a genius. As a result, Christopher is one of the most terrifying rhetoricians that the world has yet seen.
What does that mean? How does that make him persuasive? The phrase "as a result" implies some kind of causality, some argument, that has not been introduced. Perhaps he is a great rhetor because he thinks in paragraphs and does not get bogged down in "a mess of expletives, subordinate clauses, and finely turned tautologies. . . " What? He is persuasive because he makes good arguments? This is simply, and ironically, not enough of an argument comment on. Perhaps we might say that persuading consists not simply in constructing a rational argument, but making use of all the means of persuasion, as Aristotle says. Such a definition would necessitate a significantly more elaborate argument from Amis. We could belabor the point that the word "rhetorician" implies much not addressed here, in part and separate from "an argument," small-scale and large-scale structure, diction, imagery, figurative language and rhetorical devices, different types of argumentation, moving the emotions, and using the right combination on the particular audience at the particular time you must speak. Yet such would be a mere list against such a lack of formal argument.
In fact this his lack of argument for Hitchens as rhetor, this insistence that he is one, and the thread of "persuasion" throughout the essay, suggest he feels that because he agrees with Hitchens, that Hitchens must be a good rhetor, which is not quite right. Someone has persuaded you if he has changed your mind to agree with his, hence the Greek fear of a clever speaker who could "put a thought in your head."
If I may offer a conjecture, Amis is not confused. He has simply been persuaded by Hitchens the man, in toto. He praises Hitchens as charismatic and highly thought of qua author by other authors. Clearly he has some sense of the Aristotelian definition of rhetoric as utilizing all means of persuasion and he has been persuaded, but Cicero and Demosthenes are the wrong analogues. He has seen and known Hitchens throughout many years and today he sees all of the books deeds amounting to something significant to him, "Christopher's most memorable rejoinders, I have found, linger, and reverberate, and eventually combine, as chess moves combine." Amis being persuaded by Hitchens is not so different from being persuaded by a great rhetor, the essential difference being the means of persuasion are spread out over many times, means, and places, the only common thread being the man himself. Yet all of these talents and occasions are not rolled up into one speech or performance which can be sensibly be compared to a speech by Cicero or Demosthenes in any meaningful way. Too the differences in occasion and debate structure between Demosthenes' and Hitchens' venues make the comparison even more off-the-mark. These things being so, Amis' comment is sincere but little-considered praise.
In all, Amis has not persuaded me Hitchens is a "terrifying orator" or that he is correct (or incorrect) about anything in particular. He has, though, persuaded me that he loves his exceptional friend. Unfortunately the hyperbolic title (probably not Amis' own) is misleading and will probably do more to increase the blind adulation of Hitchens the intellectual than it will to put the reader in the proper frame of mind to appreciate Amis' happy recollection of his life with his dear friend.
J.S. Bach: Cantata BWV.182, Chorus 'Himmelskönig, sei willkommen'
Himmelskönig, sei willkommen, King of heaven, welcome,
Laß auch uns dein Zion sein! let us also be your Zion! Komm herein, Come within,
Du hast uns das Herz genommen. You have taken our hearts from us.
Not nearly as famous as No. 140, "Wachet auf. . ." this cantata too is a glorious and vivid depiction of great multitude of people. Here the scene is the throng greeting Christ as He enters Jerusalem and the chorus is open and airy in G major. The fugal form is a naturally fine fit to depict such a scene, the entrances of the voices providing a perfectly appropriate structure for Christ's procession. Too the counterpoint provides a structure for the busyness, though the fugal subject itself contributes to the sense of liveliness with its shift into semiquavers:
BWV.182, Chorus I, m.1-2
After the theme enters in all of the solo voices it enters in canon in the strings and at last up high in the flute, which proceeds to elaborate on it. Then a shorter fugal subject on "Laß auch uns dein Zion sein!Let us also be your Zion!" enters in the soprano and alto, gently lifting the fervor of the expression and excitement of the scene without it becoming garrulous.
BWV.182, Chorus 1, m.12-14
As the flute continues on over the crowd the rising and falling gestures of its figures now seem to give them a palmy character as the choir repeats, "let us also be your Zion." The flute and violin then treat the first subject in canon as the choir exclaims together "welcome" and is answered by the violas and cellos. They conclude together, "Komm herein, Come within." Bach then treats the second and last lines of the text with a series of four short canons at the octave and only a crotchet apart, all beginning S. A. T. B., a treatment which emphasizes that two lines both ask for unity with Christ.
A joyous, moving piece and a concise example of Bach's profound unity of style, structure, and expression.
It is curious the following pair of articles came across my desk in the same week, Terry Eagleton's encomium for Marx in The Chronicle of Higher Education and Wendy McElroy's reflection on values and economics at Mises Daily. I would certainly wager the authors are not in communication. While Eagleton's essay, a condensed version of his book sans the scholarship, I would assume, embraces more issues, both articles add an uncommon spin to the topic of economics: culture. Now your humble bloggers have discussed leisure and culture as well as economics but I thought this was a novel take. This pair of articles in particular yields a fruitful comparison.
First and foremost they both examine the concept of leisure in the light of economics, albeit from opposing economic camps. Both authors embrace the idea that leisure time is of value and both realize that some excess production is necessary to achieve excess time. Both authors even admit the excess production can be spent on anything at the discretion of the individual: perhaps what pleases you is expensive and you must work more to afford it or perhaps you work less because you would rather have leisure time or what goods please you are inexpensive.
Yet Eagleton's position demands, since inequality is unacceptable, that the excess production be split to achieve equal leisure. While both embrace the value of leisure Eagleton in essence declares it a right. There being no legitimate and acceptable reasons for inequality, either of resources or ability, and because this condition of leisure does not naturally exist since people have to support themselves via work to create food, shelter, and so forth, some people have to provide it for others. He also seizes the moral authority to act and balance the inequality, adding, "We would no longer tolerate a situation in which the minority had leisure because the majority had labor."
Thus it becomes the case that an individual is not free to value and trade his labor, i.e. his finite time and life, since he must support others, others who define what the "minimum standard" of "leisure" is and distribute the resources to achieve it. He may have to work more than he wants to (and achieve less leisure, either of time or goods) because someone else cannot.
Eagleton clearly wants to present the spiritual, "enlightened," side of Marxism, i.e. Marxism as un-economic and essentially unconcerned with material goods. Yet lack of such considerations merely neglects the economic and moral effects of planned economies, it does not eliminate them. He says that people would be free how to spend their leisure without acknowledging the processes used to determine how much leisure he is allowed to keep in the first place (as well as the moral implications and economic ramifications.) His romantic view ignores the fundamental fact that central planning destroys the ability of an individual to ascertain the cost and result of a given activity. That individuals are free to act and act unpredictably further confounds any attempt at centralization. The gross and repeated failures of planned economies to react to change are usually glossed over as failures of implementation rather than of essence. Too critics often attempt to distinguish between planned economies and taxation, the latter being acceptable because merely redistributes and does not interfere with the economy, a false assertion.
Like Christopher Hitchens' "libertarian" argument for "free" health care, [1](that it makes you more free) the fatal flaw of this very similar article is its lack of attention to the fundamental paradoxes of socialism. As a pair the articles show that anyone can value culture and a leisurely, philosophical life. Too they demonstrate that such leisure comes at a price. The question is "who pays it?" You or someone else? Eagleton's article has value insofar as it spurs the non-socialist to review an author often caricatured and scoffed at rather than studied. Such a love letter, though, however romantic and sincere, does not vindicate the ideology.
N.B. No doubt Eagleton's reference to Ludwig von Mises makes his apparently persuasive article, expertly tailored to appeal to a wide audience, more so by imbuing in it a semblance of equanimity and scholarly rigor. Readers should follow with Mises' "Socialism."
Salomon Rossi was an Italian Jewish composer of the late Renaissance and Baroque. The above is a setting of the Kaddish (sometimes known as the Mourner's Prayer); the text is in Aramaic, not Hebrew as many non-Jews believe.
Speaking at the National Archives in downtown Washington, D.C., esteemed documentary filmmaker Ken Burns commented today on the recent popular criticism of public funded broadcasting. Patrick Gavin reporting for Politico carries parts of the talk which I think would perk the ears of any libertarian, not so much because of any particular policy suggestions from the director but rather because of his choice of words. Let's take a quick look:
People can make arguments about the marketplace, but if your house is on fire at 3 a.m., you don't call the marketplace. When your road needs plowing, you don't call the marketplace. The marketplace doesn't have boots on the ground in Afghanistan. [1]
Any libertarian or advocate of a free market, I think, would be immediately taken aback by how Burns talks about a "marketplace" and what his choice of words seems to indicate. Unusually, he describes it as if it is a monolithic institution, that is, he conceives of it in essentially statist terms. He seems to be thinking, "I can call the government for help because it is a finite entity, but in contrast I cannot call 'the marketplace' because it is not." This suggests a fundamental view of his: that the basic unit of utility or agency in society is the individual but as some larger institution, most particularly the government. This may seem an extraordinary extrapolation but a lack of understanding of what a market is, the free association of people, leaves only a collectivist mindset. His reasoning forgets that all institutions are made of people. Regarding economics, they are people with particular skills: if they didn't work where they did they would work somewhere else with those same skills. Likewise, if there is a demand, someone with the skills to meet it will do so. And if there is no one with the skill, there is nothing the government can do about it. Only individuals can make the choice to invest in a particular skill.
Perhaps, you might say, the government organizes people, meaning it collects the money and pays the plow drivers because citizens, if left to their own choice, would not pay for them. Thus the government in this line of thinking "creates the demand." Well if there was no demand the people didn't really want it now did they? And if there is demand, well then you don't need the government now do you? You're not suggesting people be forced to pay for things they don't want, are you? Of course not.
So what is Burns really suggesting here? Does he think that the government, that central planning, is really the only way people can organize? Is he saying if the government didn't organize fire brigades and plows that we would all sit and freeze or flambé to death? That you can't learn a skill and offer it to people in exchange for something?
Burns' choice of words strongly suggests that to him a "marketplace" is not a market place of people offering their skills to others who need it and who will in turn trade what they have or do in return, but
a vague notion describing how people produce only inessential items. In fact he seems to mock "the marketplace" for not being a specific institution he can call on for help, as if the world isn't filled with people offering their skills to each other without government "guidance." A "free market" in this view is just a sort of foggy, fundamentalist, fantasy.
Referring to both the government and marketplace as institutions that produce things themselves instead of contrasting methods of organization of people, the actual agents and producers of society, suggests a mindset not centered on the individual. No doubt Mr. Burns thinks that "the marketplace" can accomplish certain things, but the way he talks about it, as a failed or faux institution, reflects a fundamentally state-oriented view. At the very least his choice of words reflects someone who has not seriously thought about the economic implications of liberty.
Nowhere is there a more idyllic spot, a vacation home more private and peaceful, than in one's own mind, especially when it is furnished in such a way that the merest inward glance induces ease. . .
–Marcus Aurelius, Meditations. IV.3
To what might one owe peace of mind? To a hard day's work or the satisfaction of a job well done? To feats and victories, heroism and valor? To the forbearance of suffering and endurance throughout the languish of pain? To piety and devotion? As the Epicureans said, might it simply be the avoidance of all such pains and extremes?
Though Aristotle's advice might seem the most obvious it is in fact the most difficult: to do the right thing, in the right measure, at the right time, always. And that one's happiness is ever the balance of pleasure derived from one's present task, received from past deeds, and expected from future ones. Surely anyone who has read what Aristotle expected from a man might see such a task as positively Herculean. To do so one would have to be responsible for ever moment of his life, to have lived each moment at least as best as he was able. Or at least to have redeemed one moment's failure with another's success.
One must of course possess a relentlessly introspective nature. It is not enough merely to do, but one must assess. Worse still, one must do and assess in moderation, not ever yielding to passive torpidity or unguided exuberance.
This virtue of moderation so praised by long gone cultures, cultures who praised the man both musician and astronomer, who tilled the earth and tweaked poetry, is not so much valued today as specialization. Yet how would the main whose intellectual facilities are developed at great disproportion to his mastery of his self react to the temptations of the body, the rights of the condemned, or the uncertainties of philosophy? One need not look far to find brilliant scientists with eggshell philosophy, or lofty, ivory-tower intellectuals who could not arbitrate the case of a lost dog without caucus and a dissertation on metaphysics.
It follows then that one must have a moral code against which to judge one's actions but this guarantees little peace of mind. No one is born with a fully formed moral system and whose does not change, at least a little, over time? Thus at the end of one's life one is bound to see some misdeeds, yet those same misdeeds may have spurred the creation of the new moral view. There is no escaping the function of time on happiness.
At many points in his life a man will find himself at a crossroads considering the man he has become and the man he hopes himself one day to be. At those points he will have much to consider. First and foremost he will be limited by his intellectual ability and desire for self-criticism. Perhaps most integrally of all, should he lack either of these I scarcely imagine he would realize it. Such a man, philosophy's exile, deserves the pity of all other men. Who is deaf to Plato's timeless call to, "γνῶθι σεαυτόν" and the endless questions and conundrums unleashed by Plato's prompt holds never the world in a grain of sand but ever is held within the limits of his myopia.
What might the balance of these innumerable variables look like? Aristotle and Marcus point the way, though not nearly so precisely as we would hope. What is expected of man is nothing less than the reconciliation of past, present, and future. To relish in the contradiction of man's inescapable indignity and his supernal potential. To form in the self the eclectic communion of the dignitaries of humanity and the peerless spark of the individual. To make the man neither rationalistic automaton nor gross id. To relish every grasp of the flesh and every glimpse of the divine. To say to oneself, "far have I come, far must I go, but gladly." To relish the journey, the destination, and the contradiction. To look back on every grace as undeserved and service as unrequired. To be steward, supplicant, and king; brother, friend, son, father, and foe. To be creature of Prometheus and child of God.
Yet finding solace in the self is not simply an act of moderation between the extremes of opposing philosophical schools. Rather it is the act of moderation between self and other. What is most obviously the great challenge of political life, the balance of individuality and community, is less often seen in the context of developing a character, a character neither ex nihilo nor pastiche, neither alien to other men nor subsumed into group-think. To have knowledge not encyclopedic for the sake of knowing, but catholic for the sake of understanding and living. To make of one's mind not a computer calculating conditionals but a retreat fashioned with the furniture of a lifetime of learning–furniture new and old, sometimes shuffled around, maybe re-finished, and maybe built yourself if you're lucky. To be eclectic not as affectation but as the expression of a curious and uncommon character. What's in your room? Does it clamor with the croaking frogs of Aristophanes and the eternal laughter of Mozart?
Yet happiness is not just being able to close your eyes and watch Achilles fight the Scamander or sit with Bertram Wooster in the garden, but to be content with one's deeds. Not just with heroic feats and discoveries, but in what you have shared with others, with family, coworkers, friends, and acquaintances. Retreat to a room quirky and quiet, but not empty. Retreat, but only to live. Retreat to a mind, as Marcus says, neither "lavish nor crude," neither preoccupied with the machinations of thought nor swept up in the urgencies of whim.
Craft this self not obsessively or relentlessly but with prudence and patience. Craft a self that knows self and other, that is in time and timeless. It's beginning will be its end, so from one philosopher and time to another, know thyself. Remember the rose garden. Through time time conquer, and betwixt past and future, dance. This mind, this presencing self, this world weaving through worlds and time. . .
Nowhere is there a more idyllic spot, a vacation home more private and peaceful. . .
Having discussed already the Overtures to La clemenza did Tito, [24] and Die Zauberflöte [25] we have left to discuss the scene from Act II of The Magic Flute with the "two armed men" and Tamino's trial and the Requiem.
37. Die Zauberflöte, KV.620. Act II, Finale: Der, welcher wandert diese Strasse voll Beschwerden
The laws of counterpoint in the era before "Classical" or "Rococo" taste took over were not simply musical rules. Perhaps one might say with greater accuracy that musical rules were not simply rules for composition. In 1739 Johann Heinrich Dedler's encyclopedia the Grosses Universal Lexicon music defined music as, "everything that creates harmony, that is, order. And in this sense it is used by those who assert that the whole universe is music." [Wolff, 2000. 335] Musical rules were then identical or proportional to the "musica universalis" or the "music of the spheres," i.e. the proportions and relationships of the movements of heavenly bodies. The origins of this thinking lie with Pythagoras' theories that, as related by Aristotle, "the principles of mathematics are the principles of all things."[Metaphysics I.v] In the 17th century this view took on additional relationship to God's creation and ordering of the universe and his eternal reign. There were, of course, variations on these views as well as disputes about their academic and theological implications. [26] I only mean to suggest that in many respects to many composers and theoreticians, the laws of musical composition were not artificial but natural and universal, at least to some extent.
Yet times did change. While contrapuntal procedures retained associations with grave, and often sacred, music, and with a "learned" style it was not necessarily on account of a perceived fundamental relationship. Tastes too changed, evidenced by Rousseau's famous distaste for baroque complexity [27] and later, by Koch's distinction that the "Contrapunktist" was more grammarian than poet. [Chapin, 101] Counterpoint of course would endure, as it does to this day, although:
The respect for the principles of strict counterpoint seems to follow pendular swings in history. If in the 1780s musicians began to experiment with counterpoint, in the 1840s they increasingly aimed at historical accuracy, and in the early twentieth century they again sought malleability. In other words, although the strict style always carried symbolic associations of law and order, this law had different implications at different times. [Chapin, 104]
It is the world and weight of this association with immutable law that Mozart invokes with the style and procedures of the choral fantasia of the two armed men. As a slight aside, I do not concur with Chapin (but rather with Hammerstein) that the scene emphasizes a fluidity to the law because it is neither at all clear precisely what the laws are nor whether exceptions to it are made for Tamino and Pamina.
The scene of course works as a scene of cinema and drama. Too, as Abert notes, the words to the song are inspired by those sung in Masonic lodges at the time and the melody is the old chorale "Ach Gott vom Himmel, sieh darein, which Mozart likely saw the theoretical work, Die Kunst des reinen Satzes in der Musik, "The Art of Strict Composition in Music" by Johann Kirnberger, composer, theorist, and student of J. S. Bach. Abert also traces the dotted (first appearing piano in the second violins) to the Kyrie from Heinrich Biber's Missa S. Henrici of 1701, and suggests, correctly I would say, that Mozart intended by it to give the scene an "ecclesiastical coloring." [Abert, 1291]
Mozart draws on all of these associations for this scene of terrible and perpetual power in which the "ticking of the Kyrietheme" calls forth "demonic restlessness" and the "choral melody moves through the intricate weft of the voices like the voice of implacable fate itself. This whole section attests to the greatest contrapuntal rigor, limiting the interludes to their absolute minimum, so that the course of the chorale is never interrupted. [Abert, 1291]
Too one could not miss the parallel to the aria, "Blute Nur, Du Liebes Herz" from Part I of Bach's St. Matthew Passion[28]
Here Mozart has drawn on counterpoint not just as a musical device but for symbolic purpose by also drawing on the cultural traditions with which it was associated.
What paragraph of summary could serve to introduce Mozart's Requiem? The massive fugues, the harmonic design, the sheer force of the terror it unleashes, the Gothic images. . . not to mention the myths surrounding Mozart's death, its incomplete state, the challenges to its authenticity, the studies of the fragments and, of course the scholarship devoted to all of these facets which has accumulated over the past 200 and some years. One must, I think, approach it with a little modesty. Modesty in the face of what we are unlikely to clear up, before what is lost, and before the greatness and solemnity of the piece. As in the rest of our survey, we will not be performing in-depth investigation or speculation, but rather highlighting this final work of Mozart's counterpoint. In the Requiem we will see that Mozart's use of counterpoint is is so perfectly suited to this unique use, the Requiem Mass, as to seem almost a distinct usage, "the Mozartian conception of the Requiem." For as surely as Mozart had models for opera and far surpassed them, so has he his models for the Requiem Mass. Likewise his use of Handelian subjects and Bachian choral-writing is so subsumed into Mozart's idiom and the unique demands of the Requiem as to be a whole new creation.
He employs counterpoint here not as study, not for humor or whimsy, as "learned style" contrapuntalizing, incidentally, synthetically, or as climax. Nor is it even employed simply as development as part of a larger sonata-form framework, though of course the counterpoint develops the themes. Rather it is employed persistently throughout the work, though in many varieties, as the ideal expression of the musical ideas, musical ideas themselves either inherited from the Catholic tradition of the Mass for the Dead or developed to give musical expression to this particular text. Here is not the standard setting of "Cum sancto spiritu" as a fugue but the creation of precise and unique settings within a large-scale framework for the Requiem Mass. Mozart draws on the natures of the sections of the mass, of the "tuba mirum," "Rex Tremendae" of the flammis acribus," and "lacrymosa" to create unique small-form structures for this unique text, the requiem mass, and unifies them with unique large-scale harmonic and structural symmetry. This is in essence word-painting in "motet style," i.e., deriving the musical ideas from the meaning of the text and the musical structure from the stanza-structure of the text.
The Requiem certainly, as Eisen has said [Eisen, 167], demonstrates the profound "unity of affect" of late Mozart. Too as Eisen said we have unity of affect despite variety of technique. Even the words traditionally set to fugues, those based on some of the oldest words and ideas of Christianity, while Mozart does indeed set them to fugues, the fugues are quite extra ordinary. Yet the unity of affect is so profound that even in its incomplete state the piece looms impossibly large in the memory. So much that one is tempted to consider this requiem the "Mozartian conception of the requiem."
Yet perhaps this is not a satisfactory classification of contrapuntal use. Perhaps we might say then the Requiem represents a synthesis of contrapuntal usage, both technically via use of inversion, imitation, double-counterpoint, fugato, and fugue, and stylistically, through variety of texture and expression of text, all of course infused with Mozart's technique and inspiration.
The D minor key in which we open will in fact dominate the whole work, particularly the Introit-Kyrie, the Sequence (Dies irae through Lacrymosa), the Sanctus, and the Agnus Dei.) Dominate as it does the mood though, with its inherent chromaticism D minor functions as genus chromaticum of the Requiem, the point of departure for the voluminous modulation throughout.The requiem theme, from Handel's Funeral Anthem for Queen Caroline ("The Ways of Zion do Mourn") HWV.246, is introduced in canon between the bassoons and basset horns against staccato quavers in the strings, achieving a disconcerting, but not yet overwhelming mood between the eerie sonority of the winds and the stalwart march of the strings.
m.19-23
The basses enter on D with the theme then rising upward through the voices, the altos joining on D and the others a fifth above. Yet soon the voices come together on "dona eis Domine," ending with a half-cadence on A. Mozart proceeds with homophonic statement of "et lux perpetua luceat eis" followed by "Te decet hymnus in Sion" for the solo soprano, based on the ninth psalm tone (the tonus peregrinus) used only for In exitu Israel de Aegypto[29] but slightly altered to contain a strict inversion of the main theme of the Requiem. [Maunder, 122] This votive is offered over over a new motif (A), which later will set "dona eis requiem." This motif is developed in imitation and inversion in the strings under the solo soprano.
He proceeds with a dense contrapuntal section for all of the strings and the chorus, the strings developing a portentous dotted figure as the chorus cries "Exaudi" and the soprano tutti developing a more lyrical version mostly doubled by the basset horns. The movement ends with a final fugue for which the basses enter with the "requiem theme" followed by the altos a fifth above with the "new" (A) theme that accompanied the soprano.
Requiem in D minor - Introit - m.34-35
What a contrast of textures in such a brief period! Too Mozart varies the instrumental accompaniment: colla parte here, strict obbligato there. The tension builds until arriving at "et lux perpetua luceat eis," first declaimed forte and then pleaded piano over a lamento bass, ending on A and preparing the way for the great double fugue of the Kyrie.
Kyrie
This Kyrie is a tense and twisting ride. Unlike the Kyrie to the C Minor Mass this is one big fugue without a central section on Christe. Too there is no arrival at, or moment of, renewal or respite, only the despair of guilt and the imminence of judgment. The subjects enter and re-enter suddenly, the jarring Kyrie subject always seemingly a moment away. Even the sections in F and B-flat retain the terrible urgency.
Requiem in D minor - Kyrie - subjects
At m.28the Christe subject (B) enters for the first time in stretto, rising from the bass. Here, as Abert points out, "its ascending diatonic line is compressed to he point where it becomes chromatic," [Abert, 1321] yet another harmonic daring which troubled Mozart's contemporaries. The fugue rushes headlong into a rest, cutting off eleison mid-word as if the day Judgment has indeed arrived. In the following, mostly homophonic, movement of the Dies Irae, it has.
Rex Tremendae
In awe and supplication the chorus cries out three times, supported by the basset horns and bassoons and followed immediately by a descending dotted semiquaver figure, suggestive of both kneeling and collapse. Then the upper voices treat the theme of "Rex tremendae maiestatis," unfolding with its octave leap, in canon over the lower voices in canon alternating "qui salvandos salvas gratis," and all of this over the orchestra which treats yet another theme in canon between the upper and lower strings. The choral parts converge in a homophonic section before switching roles, the tenors beginning the canon with the basses as we modulate to D minor. The movement concludes with the plaintive cry "salve me!"
Requiem in D minor - Rex Tremendae - m.9-10
Recordare
This is the longest movement of the Requiem, setting six stanzas of the Sequenz. The notion of "Recordare" permeates this movement, which Abert wisely describes as possessing a "discursive" character due to its rondo-like structure and an "interiority" through the counterpoint. We begin with two themes in counterpoint which perfectly set the tone of "Recordare" and whose dialogue throughout will maintain it. The first [A] enters in canon between the basset horns and its first minim followed by the rising quavers followed by entrance of the other voice is astonishing like something taking shape in the memory. So too is the other figure, [B] which enters along with the first but in the bass, a descending figure with a trilled motif. Mozart maintains the intimacy and "interiority" throughout with only the soloists and strings and contrapuntal development. This scalar theme then enters in canon in the violins against a bass pedal point, again suggestive of things tumbling from the memory to one's attention. The soloists will take up theme A with "Recordare" and theme B will become the main theme between the episodes. There interiority and internalization we associate with the inversion of the themes and canonic entrances of the soloists contrasts the emotional and physical reality suggested by the homophonic declamation of phrases like, "Ingemisco" and "tamquam reus," set off as they are by singultiary pauses.
Confutatis
Where the Recordare ends in hope and assurance the Confutatis begins in terror and tremor with the hellfire in the bass instruments crackling over and over. The basses enter "confutatis maledictis" and the tenors follow in close imitation, as if writing in the flame. (The effect of the close imitation, the relentless elevation of tension, is similar here to that in KV. 497.)Yet at m. 7 the women enter in C with the pure, plaintive cry, "voca me cum benedictis." Modulating through the dark realms of A minor and G minor Mozart concludes in F major, the key not of despair but of the mystic brotherhood in Die Zauberflöte.
This movement, one of Mozart's most glorious, has been brilliantly described by a source I now defer to:
Amadeus, dir. Milos Forman. 1984.
Domine Jesu
Perhaps even beyond the relentless entrances of the Kyrie and the hellfire of the Confutatis the DomineJesu is the most terrifying movement of the Requiem.The piano opening quickly gives way to the forte outburst "Rex Gloriae," the alternating dynamics, startling imagery, and abrupt entrances of "de poenis inferni" and the dark tonality of "et de profundo lacu," and the sudden forte leap of a seventh at "de ore leonis," and the rearing of the lion's hear create a scene of terrible grandeur.
The subsequent fugato on "ne absorbeat eas tartarus ne cadant in obscurum" for the chorus has the rhythm of a dance but is no merry gigue but rather reminiscent the dance of death. The gaping sevenths suggest both distance from God and outcry as the twitching semiquavers in the bass nervously urge the movement on.
The soprano soloist enters with the entrance of the image of St. Michael the Archangel, urging the music though a canon and brighter tonality on "sed signifer sanctus Michael repraesente sanctam," with each successive voice entering a fifth below.
The movement ends with the great "Quam olim" fugue on "quam olim Abraham promisisti," thematically contrasting the terrors of the underworld with the promise of God's covenant with Abraham for his descendants. The fugue is dominated by the one idea and figure, "quam olim Abrahae. . . promisisti" here and there punctuated by "et semini" eius." The absence of a counter-subject and the accompanying motif in the bass make starkly clear the reality that God's promise is all that saves from "de poenis inferni," "de profundo lacu," and "de ore leonis."
"Domine Jesu," "Quam Olim" Fugue, m. 55-57
Benedictus, Sanctus (Hosanna Fugue) & Amen
It would require great length and discursion usefully to discuss these incomplete movements. I would, though, make a few brief points.
While the unusual subject of the Hosanna fugue is certainly by Mozart its working out by Süssmayr is clearly of a rather pedestrian nature. The Amen fugue survives only as a sketch It is unknown whether Mozart intended to repeat the material from the Introit at Lux Aeterna. Abert points out [Abert, 1335] such a repetition was not uncommon at the time and in KV. 220 and KV.317 Mozart himself had made such repeats. Likewise we must wonder whether it was the composer's intent to use the Kyrie fugue for the "cum sanctis tuis in aetarnum" fugue. Clearly the structure of the Requiem demands a fugue at cum sanctis. . . but whether the frightful Kyrie fugue suits "with your saints in heaven" is not obvious.
Final Thoughts
This Requiem, for all of its thematic borrowing from other works, is an astoundingly original work. For all of its drama and imagery, it is grave and dignified. Despite its incomplete state, it is demonstrates extraordinary unity. We see here what we have seen throughout our look at Mozart's counterpoint: technical mastery and erudition, drama and lyricism, variety, and an overall unity of affect which reconciles the myriad details of the work. With this one, incomplete, work Mozart struck such a chord in the hearts of men as to have defined "requiem." Who imagines another when he hears the word? For something he wanted "to try his hand at" [Wolff, 1994. 73] the Requiem was beyond ambitious.
[Mozart's Requiem] is no longer content to stir specific emotions in the most general terms but that seeks to reflect the detailed psychological development of the work. Time and again it is Mozart the dramatist who emerges from the score, not in the sense of an opera composer or man of the theater, but in the way in which Bach in his vocal works and Schubert in his lieder occasionally plays the part of the dramatist. Mozart was right when he said that he was writing his Requiem for himself, but his remark goes far deeper than he himself intended; it is his most individual and personal confession of his thoughts about life and death. . . [Abert, 1336]
Mozart reconciled all, leaving us with the sight of man humbled before God at the breaking of the world.
Bibliography
Abert, Hermann. W. A. Mozart. Yale University Press. New Haven and New York. 2007.
Chapin, Keith. Strict and Free Reversed: The Law of Counterpoint in Koch’s Musikalisches Lexikon and Mozart’s Zauberflöte. Eighteenth-Century Music 3/1, 91–107. Cambridge University Press. 2006.
Eisen, Cliff. Mozart's Chamber Music, essay in The Cambridge Companion to Mozart. Keefe, Simon P. (ed.) Cambridge Companion to Mozart. Cambridge. 2003.
Maunder, Richard. Mozart's Requiem: On Preparing a New Edition. Oxford University Press. New York. 1988.
Wolff, Christoph. Johann Sebastian Bach: The Learned Musician. W. W. Norton and Co. New York, New York. 2000
Wolff, Christoph. (Whittall, Mary. (trans.)) Mozart's Requiem: Historical and Analytical Studies, Documents, Score. University of California Press, Berkeley and Los Angeles. 1994.
A brief inquiry with no answers into some moral and epistemological issues of politics.
Two Definitions
The notion of "moral authority" carries two associations one of which by far predominates. In this common conception someone by his own observance of a particular law or virtue is said to have the "moral authority" to pass judgment on someone else's violation of that principle. For example, a very honest man might have the "moral authority" to pass judgment on someone else's honesty. We see this logic more casually adopted when a man is said to be a hypocrite for accusing others of violating a principle he himself violates. For example most people would balk at the notion of a frequently tardy man chastising someone else for being late. The reasoning of this interpretation of moral authority is that observing a law or exercising a virtue gives you the authority to judge whether or not that law or virtue has been violated. This concept of moral authority is concerned with identifying the moral deed or misdeed.
The second notion of moral authority concerns more complicated matters. This aspect concerns what to do when some principle or virtue has been violated. "Authority" in this sense means someone has the authority to act, either preemptively or punitively, on someone else's actions. Where might this authority come from? We will not here get too bogged down in metaphysics and epistemology so let us merely examine two alternatives. In one conception some authority exists, derived from somewhere. Perhaps it comes from a council of men or a king or a deity or by sheer nature. Most people would fall somewhere in this category since most people believe, I suspect, that it is moral, for example, to incarcerate murderers and offenders of equally serious crimes. Fewer people believe, though, that they have the authority to tell someone what kind of food he can eat.
Now it is not easy to justify telling a man what to eat but it seems rather so to justify incarcerating a murderer. Yet anyone concerned with liberty must ask: where does the authority come from? Even if a given behavior is thought to be wrong, what gives you the authority to right it? The only explanation seems to be that because the world ought to be a certain way that it is naturally moral to make it that way. Corrective action is merely returning nature to its proper state. There are two extremes to this question of moral authority, one in which the individual has the moral authority to order others as he desires and another in which he has no authority whatsoever. It is not hard to imagine the totalitarian world of the first scenario but trying to imagine the second might be fruitful. Could this most liberal society exist?
Let us take an examine the situation of an alleged crime where no one has any moral authority to compel anyone to do anything. Let us say only that a man has a right to his life and his property. Suppose a murder is committed. Whose rights were violated? Only the murdered man's. Where would the authority to jail him come from? How does the authority to arbitrate what happened and to decide how to react to it fall to particular people? How would it fall, say, to me? My rights weren't violated. Do the man's rights somehow get automatically delegated in certain situations? What if I came upon him as he was being attacked? Could I intervene? How would his authority to protect himself get to me (obviously presuming he wasn't aware of my presence)?
Now this example naturally seems ridiculous but it defines more clearly this other sense of "moral authority" because I think most people would justify intervention or incarceration of the offender by saying something like, "Because it is always/naturally wrong to murder someone it is always/naturally right to prevent a murder from occurring." Stated as such this notion of moral authority is essentially the justification for all laws and it is more often and more simply stated that "some things are just wrong." Most people agree about murder, but what about issues of the environment, or poverty, or inequality, or abortion? There is discord about those issues.
How we arrive at what we think is morally right and wrong, as we said above, varies. Yet inevitably we create some conception of a world with particular "natural" rules. We may justify it in a variety of ways. It may be unique to us or common amongst a few or many. Now we have separated judgment from action in distinguishing two types of "moral authority." If one denies the latter conception, the right to force someone to do something, can there be said to be a political aspect to that type of authority? It would seem not since no action is involved. Of course if you acknowledge the authority to enforce, even in some circumstances, then agreement on the "natural rules" (however many there are) and the methodology of justifying them are unavoidably political matters.
Libertarian Politics
With those observations in mind I wish to examine two ideas: federalism and libertarian politics. The first notion would seem to alleviate the problem of both moral authority and epistemology. The laws the most people agree on apply to everybody and the laws the fewest people agree on apply, at minimum, only to the individuals who believe them. If people geographically arrange themselves then the people with similar ideas can live together and most people won't have to live under laws they disagree with. That a democratic-republican society functions at all might seem to suggest that federalism has met with some success. Yet it does not truly answer any question about morality or necessity of moral authority.
Force a libertarian to do something and you will often get the response "On what authority?" (You'll probably get a few other words too.) Indeed one might say the essence of libertarianism is the principle of not initiating force and to varying degrees a libertarian would deny the moral authority to initiate force. We say initiate because it is consistent with libertarian position for an individual to respond with force to forceful aggression against his fundamental rights. Politically this would translate a lack of laws, a system in which all is legal that does not interfere with the rights of another.
Let us take this position to its extreme, though, and suppose that there are no laws (i.e. rules backed up by the threat of force) of any kind. (More practically this idea would be advocated as "no rules you did not vote for," which would be tantamount to our hypothetical situation if you decided not to assent to any.) We will see this position to be the quite similar to the one in our example above in which we acknowledge no moral authority of any kind. With this position, could you punish a criminal? Since he does not assent to your laws he's not technically a criminal. Suppose you signed a contract with him. You might think you are safe since you have his word. Well what does it mean to "have his word?" Suppose he says you forged his name and denies signing the contract? What if he simply says he changed his mind? By what principle is he bound to the contract and denied the right to change his mind? On what principle do you deny his account of events? As we asked before, what authority would any third parties have in the matter?
Putting aside the question of how to compel someone, what about punishing criminals? Why is such a thing as a "penalty" legitimate? Why is a punitive measure morally acceptable? Does the person wronged decide the penalty? Are there limits? Why or why not?
Any answer to any of these questions would recourse to some principle, and any action on that principle would effectively make it a law, a law founded on the moral authority to enforce it. Even in such an extreme liberal society some laws would exist as common and in their commonality, in their being conceived as "real" or "natural," would be their legitimacy, i.e. the people would believe them axiomatically (whether they are derived by reason or faith or whether they are inherited or newly-fashioned.) Not only some common morality, but some common conception of metaphysics is required for a community. A disagreement over metaphysical issues, at least certain ones, would seem invariably to lead to an impasse. Perhaps it would be more precise to say that to disagree over both certain metaphysical issues and then certain moral ones would lead to an impasse and inevitable conflict. Either you have to agree on laws, i.e. both the concept of law and specific laws, or agree to leave each other alone.
Can you have a society with a multiplicity of essential rules and metaphysical principles, i.e. with a multiplicity of "realities." For example, if a crime is committed can the wronged party determine what happened, arrest the perpetrator, and punish him on his own? It is commonly said that one man cannot be the "judge, jury, and executioner" rather some consensus as to what happened, what is wrong, and what to do about it must be reached. In this line of thinking the wronged party, though his right was the one violated, cannot be left to create his own (potentially erroneous) reality of what happened. Now of course consensus is not at all a guarantee of finding the truth but all alternatives would degenerate into either a situation with no authoritative account of what happened or forcing the unwilling guilty party to accept a particular account anyway. Is it necessarily the case then, that some force, majority, and belief in the truth of your principle, are required for a minimum degree of peaceful coexistence? We might say that the more one must believe by compulsion the less liberal the society. Can a society be too liberal? Can the principles of federalism and libertarianism, which push many moral and philosophical problems out of the political sphere, be taken too far? Is there an ideal (probably very small) body of laws which would provide sufficient common law to allow the remainder of decisions to be reached privately and voluntarily?
The Political Process and Being "Restrained to Reality"
We said earlier that the principle of federalism may be thought to ameliorate some of these problems by avoiding certain issues and creating a hierarchy of ones which at least some people can agree on. Now mind you, they are hierarchical in so far as the ones at the top are universally agreed upon and those at the bottom may be so unique as to vary on an individual basis, but this does not reflect the truthfulness of the principles. In this respect the principle of federalism allows us to evade the need for accord. Yet when people must interact accord is needed and it is in a courtroom that such accord is usually reached. With our observations above in mind we may ask how well our system deals with the problems we have come across. Let us observe the important aspects. 1) The two senses of moral authority have been broken up amongst parties, the jury deciding what happened and the judge deciding what to do about it. 2) The person who acts to enforce the law is another party still. 3) Both the defendant and the plaintiff receive advocates for their cause, i.e. their version of what happened. 4) The judge is bound by laws of precedent and the jury by laws and processes designed to assure their objectivity. 5) The defendant is innocent until proven guilty. 6) There may be an appeal of the verdict. 7) Lastly all parties are sworn to an oath obligating them to restrain their accounts to the "truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth."
Features one and two exist to separate "judge, jury, and executioner," a separation which has the virtues of using an expert to handle the law and a group of peers to determine the course of events but there is in fact a more important result and it is that the separation creates a system and thus a delay. Assuming there is no problem with having one man be judge, jury, and executioner if he were he could simply walk around legitimately pronouncing verdicts. (A slightly improved situation from the one we depicted earlier in which every person was judge, jury, and executioner.) Separating the roles amongst people necessitates a delay between the crime and the verdict/judgment, and a separation between the parties in conflict.
The third feature has two results. First it permits both parties to present their versions of events and wholeheartedly to advocate for themselves. Their attorneys prevent them from damaging their presentations of their cases. Second, it allows the jury to deliberate on the potential versions of the incident in question. By assuming each side is presenting the best case possible for his cause they assume that each version is the best presentation of that interpretation of events, thus the more likely of the two is the closest to the truth. Feature four has the effect of casting the net as far as possible when seeking objective observers. The judge is bound by the verdicts of similar situations in the past and the jury is selected to screen out people who might be biased.
Features five and six are designed to "lean on the side of liberty" rather than on the side of establishing order or even ascertaining the truth.
Lastly, an objective reality is presumed and all parties are sworn to it. You do not have to speak but if you do you are restrained to reality. The system does not concede that the situation must necessarily be knowable but it insists that there is only one legitimate version of it. It is even unacceptable to attempt to undermine this search for reality by omitting facts ("the whole truth") or by disguising facts amongst lies ("nothing but the truth.")
These seven features would seem precautions designed to determine the facts of a situation, pronounce a verdict, and pronounce a judgment while being sensitive to the philosophical issues at play (in this case epistemological and moral issues.) They attempt a fine balance between individual and society, philosophical certainty and doubt, and authority and liberty.
How successful are they? Do they defer too much to one principle? Ought they be less moderate?
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