Having looked at what justice is, we now must ask “how does justice, or virtue more broadly, relate to politics?” This question gains weight as RealPolitik grows in popularity, and RealPolitik grows in popularity in direct proportion to political struggle resembling warfare and espionage more than meritocratic competition. Why fight fair when your adversaries are trying to scrub any positive mention of you from the history books? When the survival of your civilization appears to be on the line, is fighting fair even praiseworthy? Or is it a self-indulgent moralism that sacrifices what our ancestors entrusted to us? Sometimes this “self-indulgent moralism” consists of showing restraint against one’s enemies, giving them due process before the law, and administering justice. Other times the issue is not vengeance vs justice, but popularity vs truth. Up against a political adversary that has mastered the art of propaganda, and with the firm conviction that your political front represents all that is good and holy, is it prudent to speak the truth, when many might not listen, or would it be better to win over the masses, and thus ensuring your political front what it needs to prevail in a conflict?
It would be an overstatement, though only slightly, to say that central to the dissident-right is a belief in the necessity of eschewing virtue for the sake of political victory. As group pattern recognition separated the Alt-Right from “equalitarian cucks”, the willingness to sacrifice truth and virtue separates the dissident-right from “principled conservatives”…a phrase uttered with contempt. Mapping the trajectory of the right’s embrace of principled use of force, spurred mainly by Hans Hermann Hoppe’ Democracy the God that Failed, and Ivan Ilyin’s On the Resistance to Evil by Force, to the political amoralism ignited by a rediscovery of Machiavelli and his successors in elite theory, would be an interesting project, but would constitute a separate article.
Asking this question assumes an understanding of virtue, because only if we acknowledge that there is such a thing as virtue, can it be suggested that virtue may need to be abandoned. We are not dealing with a moral relativism or perspectivism here, as neither would have a strong enough account of virtue to assert its necessary suppression. Yet, to advocate virtue’s temporary suppression for some goal is to still have an insufficient, not robust enough, account of virtue. Last post, we saw Plato gave an account of virtue sufficient enough,
“Then, if someone maintains that injustice profits this human being and that doing just things brings no advantage, let’s tell him that he is simply saying that it is beneficial for him, first, to feed the multiform beast well and make it strong, and also the lion and all that pertains to him; second, to starve and weaken the human being within, so that he is dragged along wherever either the other two leads; and, third, to leave the parts to bite and kill one another rather than accustoming them to each other and making them friendly.
Yes, that’s absolutely what someone who praises injustice is saying.
But, on the other hand, wouldn’t someone who maintains that just things are profitable be saying, first, that all our words and deeds should insure that the human being within this human being has the most control; second, that he should take care of the many-headed beast as a farmer does his animals, feeding and domesticating the gentle heads and preventing the savage ones from growing; and, third, that he should make the lion’s nature his ally, care for the community of all his parts, and bring them up in such a way that they will be friends with each other and with himself?
Yes, that’s exactly what someone who praises justice is saying.”1
Injustice cannot be profitable, just as a man allowing himself to be at the mercy of a many-headed beast, allied with a lion, and being completely at the subject of their appetites, cannot profit. Talking about whether injustice is profitable or not by way of analogy, when the question, to many on the right, appears to have existential weight, might be perceived as not taking the question seriously. We must then look at something “more real”, and for this we turn to Boethius’s The Consolation of Philosophy.
Boethius
Next to Augustine and Thomas Aquinas, Boethius was one of the greatest medieval philosophers, and his influence was second only to Augustine. Having written treatises on Christian doctrine, and being involved in the political affairs of his time, when he penned The Consolation of Philosophy, Boethius was in prison, awaiting execution, and likely expected his family to be executed soon after. What we read is a dialogue between lady Sophia, Lady Philosophy, and the despondent Boethius, with the main theme being whether Providence or the designs of evil political powers are more powerful. What arguments we will be reading shortly are borne out of the real sufferings of a man who was at the wrong end of political power, and was asking the same question we are, “whether virtue relates to politics, if at all?” Back when I was heavily involved in activism, a few of my organization’s comrades were in prison, and, at my initiative, we sent them copies of Boethius. This I don’t say to brag (I’ve buried most of my more hardline past), but to speak to Boethius’ ability to speak to the question at hand in the context of real political oppression. I organized the effort because I thought that one political dissident of old could speak to those of today, and that the counsel of Boethius was strong enough to preserve my friends’ faith in Providence.
The Consolation of Philosophy
The Consolation begins with Boethius lamenting, describing how the good suffer and the wicked thrive,
“I seem to see the wicked haunts of criminals overflowing with happiness and joy; I seem to see all the most desperate of men threatening new false denunciations; I seem to see good men lying prostrate with fear at the danger I am in while all abandoned villains are encouraged to attempt every crime in the expectation of impunity or even in the hope of reward for its accomplishment; and I seem to see the innocent deprived of peace and safety and even of all chance of self-defense.”2
If wickedness is encouraged, given impunity, while the righteous are persecuted, denounced, and lie prostrate with fear, then what use is virtue? This is not a rejection of morality, because without a strong sense of morality these laments would be meaningless, but a question of what benefit virtue has. If wickedness leads to power, then virtue, at least when applied to politics, results in the wicked gaining power, and when the wicked have power, and the righteous and innocent are suffering, then the question becomes, “is it moral to wed virtue with political struggle? Would it not be better, for the sake of the righteous and innocent, to grasp power by any means necessary, if for no other reason than to prevent the wicked from establishing tyranny?” Are lies and cruelty sometimes justified if it would prevent a Bolshevik dictatorship? We are not, to repeat, asking if force is sometimes necessary to stop evil, as Ilyin and Hoppe argue, but if virtue needs to be abandoned for the sake of power, if vice, if evil, needs to be actively embraced for the sake of hegemony.3
Lady Philosophy does not dispute the situation, but repeatedly affirms Boethius’ description. From a few pages prior to the above quote,
“But even if you do not know the stories of the foreign philosophers, how Anaxagoras was banished from Athens, how Socrates was put to death by poisoning, and how Zeno was tortured, you do know of Romans like Canius, Seneca and Soranus, whose memory is still fresh and celebrated. The sole cause of their tragic suffering was their obvious and complete contempt of the pursuits of immoral men which my teaching had instilled in them.”4
Philosophy’s teachings instilled in these great men a contempt of immorality and a love of wisdom, and living out philosophy’s teachings led to their death, death at the hands of the wicked. Are we to say that Socrates and Zeno, Canius, Seneca and Soranus died in vain? That their principles led to their demise, and that their death opened up a space for the wicked to wield power unopposed? Lady Sophia speaks thus,
“Now I know the other cause, or rather the major cause of your illness: you have forgotten your true nature. And so I have found out in full the reason for your sickness and the way to approach the task of restoring you to health. It is because you are confused by loss of memory that you wept and claimed you had been banished and robbed of all your possessions. And it is because you don’t know the end and purpose of things that you think the wicked and the criminal have power and happiness. And because you have forgotten the means by which the world is governed you believe these ups and downs of fortune happen haphazardly. These are grave causes and they lead not only to illness but even to death. Thanks, however, to the Author of all health, nature has not quite abandoned you. In your true belief about the world’s government—that it is subject to divine reason and not the haphazards of chance—there lies our greatest hope of rekindling your health.”5
Our anxieties about virtue’s relation to politics, the same shared by Boethius, is, says the Lady, a confusion about a) our nature and b) Providence.
Why our nature? Nature is most commonly used today to talk about everything that is not human, or not made by humans. Trees, foxes, birds, mountains, and rivers, etc. these all belong to the category of nature. In philosophy the word is used to describe what makes a thing what it is, and what that thing is for. It is, for example, the nature of an acorn to grow into a tree. An acorn will not always grow into an oak, even though this is its nature, because it can be stepped on, find poor soil, or be dug up by a critter. It is important when discussing natures to keep in mind that a thing can act contrary to its nature, because if we do not keep this in mind then we might assume something to be natural, which means “according to a thing’s nature” in this context, that is not. There are examples of humans living in solitude, but to conclude from those observations that humans are asocial would be mistaken. Though there are times when solitude is necessary, to decompress or to get closer to God, this necessary break is, in the philosophical sense, unnatural because humans are by their nature social beings; we deeply desire love, and our thoughts are modeled on language, which is communicative and thus social. I am not calling decompressive or prayerful solitude bad by saying they are unnatural, but simply saying that we cannot judge human nature to be asocial on account of momentary, necessary, breaks from a fallen world.
If we do not know what we are, or what we were made for, then questions like the relation of virtue to politics can get squirrelly. Should man be made for earthly happiness, and have no hope of future reward, then Boethius’ laments would be justified. Why not take power by any means necessary? Power confers security, and security confers peace of mind, which is so closely linked with happiness. If there is no future reward or punishment, what advantage does the oppressed just man have? Furthermore, if the world is governed by chance, and not Providence, then the administration of justice falls solely on the shoulders of men, and for justice to be administered by men, men have to obtain power, and thus the fight for power must be won before any talk of justice. Without a proper understating of human nature and Providence, the tyrannical appear happy, and a Hobbesian struggle for power becomes a prerequisite for justice, assuming the struggle is ever won. An excellent production that works under this assumption is Christopher Cantwell’s new podcast, and you can listen to the first episode here.
Lady Philosophy begins with the classic assumption in philosophy, dating back well before Aristotle, that all humans desire, and are made for, happiness. Happiness, in the philosophical sense, is not a momentary emotion, but a state, what is commonly described as “being truly happy”, or “being fulfilled.” What this kind of happiness looks like has been subject to debate since the dawn of philosophy, but all sides agree that we desire happiness because we are made for happiness. Put differently, and to avoid potential confusions, humans are truly happy when they are living how they are made to be. You might have known someone who has told you how unhappy he is, and as he confides in you he mentions how “this job is not where I am meant to be, I am not doing what I am supposed to.” This taps into the kind of happiness Lady Philosophy will be speaking of shortly, the happiness that is about being fulfilled, rather than smiling and laughing all the time. Addressing Boethius’ concern that happiness is in the hands of fortune, in the hands of chance, rather than Providence, Philosophy says,
“When then do you mortal men seek after happiness outside yourselves, when it lies within you? You are led astray by error and ignorance. I will briefly show you what complete happiness hinges upon. If I ask you whether there is anything more precious to you than your own self, you will say no. So if you are in possession of yourself you will possess something you would never wish to lose and something Fortune could never take away. In order to see that happiness can’t consist in things governed by chance, look at it this way. If happiness is the highest good of rational nature, and anything that can be taken away is not the highest good—since it is surpassed by what can’t be taken away—Fortune by her very mutability can’t hope to lead to happiness.
Again, the man who is borne along by happiness which can at any time fail, either knows or does not know its unreliability. If he does not know it, what kind of happiness can there be in the blindness of ignorance? And if he does know it, he can’t avoid being afraid of losing that which he knows can be lost. And so a continuous fear prevents him being happy. And if he thinks the possibility of losing it a matter of indifference, then the good whose loss can be borne with such equanimity must be small indeed.
Furthermore, since you are a man I know to have been fully convinced by innumerable proofs that the human mind cannot die, and since it is clear that happiness which depends on chance comes to an end with the death of the body, it seems beyond doubt that if this happiness dependent on chance can bring pleasure, then the whole human race falls at death into misery. Yet we know that many men have sought the enjoyment of happiness through death and even through suffering and torment. It seems that the happiness which cannot make men unhappy by its cessation, cannot either make them happy by its presence.”6
Behind Boethius’ lament is the worry that fortune, not justice, rules the cosmos. If this is true, if happiness is dependent upon fortune, then the cosmos favors those who make their own fortune, and even those who do so at the expense of justice. Philosophy offers consolation in two parts. First, if happiness is the result of fortune, then happiness cannot be the highest good for man, for then happiness, at the slightest provocation, can be washed away like tears in the rain. Happiness brought by fortune is subject to something higher than happiness, making this other thing a higher good, and makes this type of happiness a very low form of happiness. Second, if it is true that the mind lives after the body passes away, and if bodily happiness is indeed linked to fortune, then the happiness of the mind, by not being the body, is not linked to fortune, for it does not depend on physical pleasure. Many have died happy, though going through tremendous bodily pain, because their mind, their soul, received a higher pleasure. Here we can think of Socrates, or the great cloud of Martyr saints, who received a higher reward in heaven for their fidelity to Truth. Happiness cannot be dependent upon fortune, then.
A Brief Detour
To Boethius’ readers, it would be obvious that the mind, or the soul, lived on after the death of the body. Though there were some in the ancient world that disputed this, such as the Atomists, most disagreements regarding the soul were about if it had natural immortality, if it only lived on by the Grace of God, if it was aware after separation from the body, and so on. For readers in the 21st century, this is not likely an obvious truth. Maybe my gremlins will take it as obvious, or at least believe it necessary to suspend disbelief, but given the centrality of the soul to Philosophy’s argument, I would like to pause and argue the position.
My argument, which is a very old one, is as follows:
1.) If the soul is not the same as the body, then the soul is not subject to the death of the body.
2.) The soul is not the same as the body.
3). Therefore, the soul is not subject to the death of the body (from 1 and 2)
4.) If the soul is not subject to the death of the body, then the soul will live after the body reposes.
5.) The soul will live after the body reposes (from 4 and 3).
This argument does not assume a strict division between soul and body, but simply their difference. As a Christian, neither Boethius, nor I, could assume a strict division, because when Christ rose from the dead, it was really Christ Himself, and not only His body. Christ was crucified, not His body, Christ rose from the dead, not merely a vessel for His soul, and most importantly, we partake of eternal life when we eat the flesh and blood of Christ during the Eucharist. A mind-body dualism, to which almost all objections would be targeted at, borders on Platonism, and thus heresy. To mention that a hammer to the skull will impair the intellect, is not to disprove the difference between soul and body, but only to show their cooperation. Since we are taking a slight detour from Boethius, I will permit myself to use some recent scholarship, and base premise two upon Thomas Nagel’s essay What Is It Like to Be A Bat? Nagel is an atheist, which prevents possible bias in favor of Boethius’ Christianity, and contextualizes the discussion in terms of consciousness, which might be more familiar to the unbelieving audience than any talk of “the soul.”
Premises one and four should not be controversial, three and five both follow via modus ponens7, which means that only premise two needs to be argued.
Nagel’s argument that consciousness cannot be reduced to purely material phenomena rests on the phenomenon of conscious experience.
“We may call this the subjective character of experience. It is not captured by any of the familiar, recently devised reductive analyses of the mental, for all of them are logically compatible with its absence. It is not analyzable in terms of any explanatory system of functional states, or intentional states, since these could be ascribed to robots or automata that behaved like people though they experienced nothing. It is not analyzable in terms of the causal role of experiences in relation to typical human behavior-for similar reasons do not deny that conscious mental states and events cause behavior, nor that they may be given functional. characterizations. I deny only that this kind of thing exhausts their analysis. Any reductionist program has to be based on an analysis of what is to be reduced. If the analysis leaves something out, the problem will be falsely posed. It is useless to base the defense of materialism on any analysis of mental phenomena that fails to deal explicitly with their subjective character. For there is no reason to suppose that a reduction which seems plausible when no attempt is made to account for consciousness can be extended to include consciousness. Without some idea, therefore of what the subjective character of experience is, we cannot know what is required of a physicalist theory.”8
For subjective experience, for conscious experience, to be reducible to material explanation, then they would have to be reduced to a) functional states9 b) intentional states10, or c) causal relations11, or some other reduction. Furthermore, subjective experience would have to be wholly reducible to one or more of these phenomena if it were purely material, because material phenomena are reducible in these ways. Taking an IBM machine, to use Nagel's example, we could isolate any given analogue to a mental state, and totally describe it in terms of its function, intentionality, and causality. Put differently, for a phenomenon to be material, it needs to be objectively accessible, it needs to be analyzable from the outside, it needs to be possible to treat it as an object of investigation. Yet, conscious experience is subjective, and thus irreducible to the categories of material phenomenon, for "every subjective phenomenon is essentially connected with a single point of view, and it seems inevitable that an objective, physical theory will abandon that point of view."12 My conscious experience is different from yours, and it is possible for us to have a radically different conscious experience of a phenomenon, yet demonstrate the same functional states, intentional states, and casual relationship. I cannot know what it is like to be you, even if I can map the three previous material descriptions of your mental states, and this "being you-ness" is what we mean by the mind, or the soul. Nagel uses the example of a bat to make this clear, because the example of a bat frees him from the metaphors so often deployed when talking about the mind, metaphors that quickly become the subject of discussion, rather than illumine the actual subject.
“I have said that the essence of the belief that bats have experience is that there is something that it is like to be a bat…Our own experience provides the basic material for our imagination, whose range is therefore limited. It will not help to try to imagine that one has webbing on one's arms, which enables one to fly around at dusk and dawn catching insects in one's mouth; that one has very poor vision, and perceives the surrounding world by a system of reflected high-frequency sound signals; and that one spends the day hanging upside down by one's feet in an attic. In so far as I can imagine this (which is not very far), it tells me only what it would be like for me to behave as a bat behaves. But that is not the question. I want to know what it is like for a bat to be a bat. Yet if I try to imagine this, I am restricted to the resources of my own mind, and those resources are inadequate to the task. I cannot perform it either by imagining additions to my present experience, or by imagining segments gradually subtracted from it, or by imagining some combination of additions, subtractions, and modifications.”13
Even with the greatest imagination available, or with the most advanced simulation software, the most I could know about being a bat, would be what it would be like for me to be a bat, and not what it is like for a bat to be a bat. If this proves impossible for a bat, imagining what it would be like to be another person, whose mind is significantly more complex, deeper, and has weightier thoughts and emotions, would be even more impossible. There is a you-ness, just as there is a bat-ness, and this you-ness, which is irreducibly subjective, because it is not objective, cannot be reduced to matter, and thus not the same as the body.
We must conclude our detour here, lest this post cease to be about Boethius, but let me say two last things. This proof for the existence of soul may not be impressive, but it sound, and valid. It is sound, because the premises are true. To demonstrate that premise two is false, it would have to be shown that conscious experience can be wholly, not simply in part, be reduced to an objective phenomenon, and that it would be possible for me to experience you-ness in the same way that I would be able to experience bat-ness, if that were possible. If this cannot be done, then conscious experience remains irreducibly subjective, and cannot be material, because material states are, definitionally, objective. It is valid, because, unless it can be shown otherwise, it is a conjunction of two modus ponens. Whatever impression it leaves on you, by the laws of formal logic (which is the academic field mathematics is based upon) the conclusion that the mind lives beyond the body’s death follows.
Back to Boethius
Happiness is not subject to fortune, but is related to soul’s everlasting life. What is this happiness? Philosophy, following the logic from pages thirty-one and thirty-two, says,
“It is the universal understanding of the human mind that God, the author of all things, is good. Since nothing can be conceived better than God, everyone agrees that that which has no superior is good. Reason shows that God is so good that we are convinced that His goodness is perfect. Otherwise He couldn’t be the author of creation. There would have to be something else possessing perfect goodness over and above God, which would seem to be superior to Him and of greater antiquity. For all perfect things are obviously superior to those that are imperfect. Therefore, to avoid an unending argument, it must be admitted that the supreme God is to the highest degree filled with supreme goodness. But we have agreed that perfect good is true happiness; so it follows that true happiness is to be found in the supreme God."14
As God is the greatest possible good, and has to be to be God, then possessing Him is the greatest source of happiness. Man, being made for happiness, was made for God, and only with God can Man truly be happy. That true happiness is only with God, and that this happiness is related to the soul living beyond bodily death (though for our purposes the details of this need to be left out, assuming I am even competent to talk about the subject)15, means that happiness cannot be found in the wilds of fortune. Virtue brings us closer to God, for love brings the lover and the beloved together, and love is one of the chief virtues, while vice separates us from God. In the realm of politics, as in any realm of life, our goal is happiness, and thus virtue is the goal of politics.
Yet, how can we trust Providence if the righteous are only rewarded after death? Does God only begin to care about our souls, and not our bodies? Boethius has this same concern, which Philosophy counsels thus,
“Goodness is happiness, and therefore it is obvious that all good men obtain happiness in virtue of their being good…Like good and evil, reward and punishment are opposites. The reward we see due to the good must be balanced by a corresponding punishment of the wicked. Therefore, just as goodness is its own reward, so the punishment of the wicked is their very wickedness. Now, no one who suffers a punishment doubts that he suffers something evil. So, if they are willing to examine themselves, I do not think men can consider themselves immune from punishment when they suffer the worst evil of all: evil is not so much an infliction as a deep set infection.”16
And then,
“So when the wicked receive punishment they receive something good, the punishment itself, which is good, because of its justice; but when they go unpunished they acquire some extra evil in actually going scot free, which you have agreed is because of its injustice.”17
The wicked are punished, even if the punishments are imperceptible to human eyes. First, wickedness is the opposite of goodness, and we have seen that goodness is happiness. To choose wickedness is to actively choose un-happiness, to choose misery. Second, should the wicked be corrected by earthly authorities, perhaps in the way that Ilyin or Hoppe advocate, then they will either a) learn from their mistakes and repent, or b) be prevented from further hurting others. Should the wicked go unpunished, they are deprived of the chance to learn, repent, which in Greek, “metanoia”, means to turn around, and this means they are further separating themselves from God, Who is happiness. Though paradoxically, those who get away with great evils are doing more harm to themselves than if they were caught, for they distance themselves from lasting happiness.
Virtue and Politics
How does virtue relates to politics, if it relates? Politics is a practical science whose subject is ordering the affairs of men. Men are made for happiness, and thus the closer a people is directed towards happiness, the better their politics is. In an ideal world, politics would direct the polity towards God, incentivizing virtue, and discouraging vice. We do not live in an ideal world, and it is increasingly the case that virtue is discouraged and vice encouraged. How are we to see virtue’s relation to politics then? Even in such a situation, like Boethius’, Providence remains the same. Though the government, in collusion with corporations and NGOs, takes aim at white Christians, either those directing initiatives will be held accountable by an earthly authority (maybe the Tavistock institute will be shut down, or BlackRock will be trust-busted), which would allow them to turn from their ways and make right with God, or they will persist in their ways, and further separate themselves from happiness. Thinking that they thrive, going unpunished, is either to think that happiness is subject to fortune, or that life ends at the grave, and is to err as Boethius did. RealPolitik, based upon the faulty assumptions made by Boethius in his despondency, appears clearsighted, but is nearsighted, as it looks only to the immediate future, and is blind to the realities of human nature, the soul, and Providence. Dim vision is treated with cataracts, with the conviction that the patient is seeing more clearly.
Having said all of this, I do not wish to diminish the sufferings of the politically oppressed, or to invalidate the psychological harm done by the current social situation. Sin is real, and it is felt. What I am attempting to provide is a speed run of a liberal education, and central to any good liberal education is the conviction that a) Providence rules all, and b) that happiness, in spite of all appearances, is found in the eternal enjoyment of God.
Plato. Complete Works. Edited by John M. Cooper. Hackett Publishing Company. Indianapolis, Indiana. 1997. 885e-889b
Boethius. The Consolation of Philosophy. Penguin Books. New York, New York. 1999. 15
It should be noted that in both the case of Ilyin and Hoppe, although more strongly emphasized in Ilyin, the argument for force is built explicitly upon the grounds that virtue requires force be used, rather than that despite what virtue requires, force is tactically necessary.
Boethius. The Consolation of Philosophy. Penguin Books. New York, New York. 1999. 8
Boethius. The Consolation of Philosophy. 20
Boethius. 31, 32
The logical form of “If A, then B. A. Therefore, B.”
Nagel, Thomas. What Is It Like to Be a Bat? The Philosophical Review, Vol. 83 No. 4. Pg 437
A description not of the internal constituent of a mental state, but what the mental states does..
The “aboutness of a thought.” I am thinking about writing this post, or I have beliefs about Boethius.
My desire for steak either causes me to satisfy, or suppress, this desire.
Nagel, Thomas. What Is It Like to Be a Bat? The Philosophical Review, Vol. 83 No. 4. Pg 437
Nagel, Thomas. What Is It Like to Be a Bat?
Boethius. 69
A good, and concise explanation, devoid of jargon, can be found here, and I highly recommend all of you gremlins give it a watch.
Boethius. 94
Boethius. 98