P H I L O S O P H Y P A T H W A Y S ISSN 2043-0728
http://www.philosophypathways.com/newsletter/
Issue number 148
4th December 2009
CONTENTS
I. 'Lou Salome and Nietzsche' by Matthew Del Nevo
II. 'Coluccio Salutati and the Tyrant' by Marco Cirillo
III. [Article by Xiaoqiang Han temporarily removed pending revision]
IV. 'The Philo Officer' by Michael Levy
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EDITOR'S NOTE
Lou Salome, friend of Nietzsche and author of the first book on his
philosophy, understood Nietzsche far better than many subsequent
commentators. Matthew Del Nevo's article, originally read to the
Sydney Philosophy Cafe, gives us Salome's view of Nietzsche as
engaged in a unique spiritual quest to make his life and his
philosophy one and the same.
The subject of 'the tyrant' seems rather quaint to modern ears, yet
this was a topic of earnest debate during the Renaissance. Marco
Cirillo offers an interesting exposition of the book The Tyrant by
Coluccio Salutati who was appointed Chancellor of Florence in 1375,
putting the case that Coluccio's ideas were in fact ahead of his time.
Xiaoqiang Han's second article for Philosophy Pathways is on the
topic of John Searle's theory of collective intentionality. When, if
ever, is it true to say that a group of persons or a society, acts or
consents to an action with a single unified intention? This question
becomes especially problematic when we consider the behaviour of
people living under dictatorial regimes, who toe the line only
because of the threat of force.
Michael Levy is an inspirational speaker who takes a refreshingly
optimistic view of life. I was touched by his poem, 'The Philo
Officer' which speaks volumes about those aspects of reality forever
beyond the investigating philosopher's words and logic.
Geoffrey Klempner
-=-
I. 'LOU SALOME AND NIETZSCHE' BY MATTHEW DEL NEVO
Lou Salome (1861-1937)
Nietzsche (1844-1900)
The noble soul has reverence for itself.
Nietzsche (BGE, 287)[1]
I presume you know a little about Nietzsche. The son of a Lutheran
clergyman. His father died when Nietzsche was a boy and thereafter he
was brought up in household of women: his mother, his sister, his
aunt. At 24, a very young age, he was appointed professor of
philology at Basel University. He hero-worshipped Wagner who was like
a Father figure to him, and who treated Nietzsche quite like a son.
Nietzsche left his position at Basel, at the end of the 1870s,
suffering from ill health. His first academic publication, The Birth
of Tragedy (1872) had been very poorly received and not the sort of
book expected in Professorial circles, at least in the Philology
department. The book was more philosophical than philological. While
Nietzsche was being quietly side-lined by his University peers, more
dramatically, he fell out with Wagner.
By the end of the 1870s his prodigious early success in academia had
turned sour. By 1879 Nietzsche was living in boarding houses on the
North coast of Italy for health reasons. And yet he regarded himself
as a philosopher, and not only that, a great one, with a
world-shaking message. But he hardly had any friends and no
conventional relationships, let alone a readership. He had written a
couple of other short eccentric philosophical works which were
disregarded, and unbeknownst to him he had 10 years left to work. In
1889 he would collapse into total insanity from which he would never
recover. But in his last decade, the 1880s, living in pensiones,
completely isolated and ill, Nietzsche wrote a series of stunning
works that changed the face of philosophy. The Gay Science (1882/7),
where the death of God is proclaimed; Thus Spoke Zarathustra (1883/4)
a Scripture for a world in which God is rather an absent presence,
than a Supreme Being; Beyond Good and Evil (1886), a moral
exhortation to the future of philosophy; The Genealogy of Morals
(1887); The Twilight of Idols (1889); Ecce Homo (written in 1888,
published 1908), largely about himself; and lastly, The AntiChrist
(1888, withheld and published 1895).
Before he went mad Nietzsche was still doing battle with his
surrogate father, Wagner, in The Wagner case (1888) and another short
work published as Nietzsche contra Wagner (1895). After his death,
many of Nietzsche's notes from the 1880s were collected into a volume
by his sister, and published under the title, The Will to Power (1901,
1905 2nd enlarged edn.). Nietzsche's philosophy which always has a
moral bent or at the very least a moralistic ring, is constellated
around attack: on God, on Wagner, on every other worthwhile
philosopher and philosophy he can lay his hands on, and an elevation
and glorification of his own philosophical prowess. The Sections of
Ecce Homo are entitled: Why I Am So Wise; Why I Am So Clever; Why I
Write Such Good Books. Even the title of this book Ecce Homo, meaning
'Behold the man!' the words of Pontius Pilate, the man Nietzsche
admired most in the New Testament, are words said of Jesus Christ
that Nietzsche applied to himself.
Nietzsche's reception has been firstly to reach a much broader
readership than any other philosopher of his century or even of
several centuries before him, and secondly to divide and confuse all
those who have read him. To this day there is no consensus as to what
Nietzsche's philosophy is, or what any of his basic doctrines such as
'will to power' or 'the revaluation of all values' or 'the eternal
return' even mean, at best there are 'schools of thought' on it -- so
it has been hard for evaluation to be anything more than a personal
appreciation or deprecation (as the case may be). One thing people do
agree on however is that Nietzsche was a great literary stylist of the
highest order.
Ironically, and oddly, it is precisely Nietzsche's style that has
allowed so many professional academic writers of books and articles
on him to completely ignore things that Nietzsche makes a big point
of saying and to make him say whatever it is they are saying, or at
least to line up with it, as if Nietzsche were somehow, their
'precursor'; but I think this is very far from the case. They do this
by attributing ideas of Nietzsche which are completely contrary to
their own as 'stylistic' rather than substantial. The Nazis did it by
having collections of his sayings that edited out the ones they didn't
like. The method is still in vogue. Not that we have edited
collections, but our contemporaries instead gloss over, whatever
doesn't fit their prejudices, as if it wasn't there. There are some
incredible examples of this genre, but here is not the place to go
into them.
Lou Salome was born in St. Petersburg of French Huguenot and German
descent.[2] She spoke and read in French, German and Russian and had
a smattering of other languages, eventually when she was to marry, it
was to Carl Andreas a German professor of Oriental languages. These
propensities would not be lost on Nietzsche, who had been Professor
of Philology at Basle University during the previous decade.
Nietzsche met Lou in Rome in May 1882. She was there with her mother,
and Nietzsche's best friend Paul Ree who had become infatuated with
her. She would have been 21, he would have been 17 years her senior.
When she was only 17 years old her private tutor, the local married
priest, a man old enough to be her father, fell so madly in love with
her that he promised to leave his wife and children. Lou coolly
refused him; when eventually she did marry in 1887, she had that same
pastor officiate the service. In 1880 Lou's mother took her out of
harm's way to Zurich, where the University was the first to open its
doors to women. However, the completion of her studies was cut short
by signs of tuberculosis and it was this, among other reasons, that
led mother and daughter south to Rome, where in May 1882 she was to
meet Nietzsche.
First Lou met Paul Ree in literary and intellectual circles in which
they moved and Ree urgently beckoned his friend Nietzsche, who was in
Italy to come up to Rome, which eventually he did. He had huge
moustaches and a Saxony accent. He read aloud to them from The Gay
Science, which he was writing. She probably would have heard him read
aphorism 125, The Madman, in which the event of the death of God is
dramatically proclaimed. For the first time in his life, Nietzsche
fell in love. Now both men were in love with the girl! Ree wanted to
marry Lou -- Lou said she didn't believe in marriage; Nietzsche would
propose to her at least twice, but she would refuse both of them and
want just to be intellectual companions. Salome advocated a three-way
relationship between them.
By May Mrs Salome was finding Rome too hot and wanted them to wend
their way back via Switzerland and Germany to Russia. The two men
followed. En route, Nietzsche found perfect romantic moments to
propose to Lou, but to no avail. The meanderings of the three of
them, occasionally altogether, often all apart, often just two of
them, either Nietzsche or Ree, continued until October in Leipzig.
The famous photo of the so-called 'Holy Trinity', Lou holding the
whip, was taken in Lucerne. Leipzig was the last time Nietzsche saw
Lou. She and Ree started living together, her mother went on to
Russia by herself and Lou moved in with Ree to a flat in Berlin. In
1886 Carl Andreas came on the scene and stole Lou away from Ree.
Against her principles Lou married Carl Andreas, but she never
consented to have sex with him. They had a childless marriage and
carried on sexual affairs outside the marriage, at least Lou did, one
only assumes Carl did, but he may not have done. Ree became a doctor
eventually, but was depressive and died tragically on a mountain hike
in 1901.
We have Nietzsche's word, one of the greatest European intellectuals
of the nineteenth century, that he considered Lou his equal. Rilke
and Freud, two other men of genius, will say much the same when their
turn comes to enter her life.
In her lifetime, Lou wrote about 15 books, some novels, some on the
more academic side. Her book on Nietzsche is probably the first book
about him. She wrote it before The AntiChrist or Ecce Homo or The
Will to Power were published. But she had known him and he had loved
her. Her book was published in 1894. In her memoirs, written in her
70s, in the 1930s she admits to not fully understanding Nietzsche
until after their break-up 50 years previously, and the subsequent
study of his works,[3] which she was among the first to read. She
says in her memoir, looking back on Nietzsche and that time, 'The
will of the times transformed the exactitude of logic into a
psychology with its own exactitude.'[4]
The 'exactitude of logic' would have been that of Kant and the
Kantians, and of Hegel and the Hegelians, those of the left and those
of the right, each with their version of the Wissenschaft der Logik
and its ruthless dialectic. Lou speaks of the will of the times
transforming such logic 'into a psychology' with its own exactitude;
and this is how, in a nutshell she places Nietzsche. For Nietzsche,
the life of the philosopher parallels his philosophy,[5] and when you
put the two side by side (the philosopher and the philosophy),
Nietzsche doesn't think a powerful philosophy can be produced by an
insipid life; for this reason Nietzsche doesn't think philosophy
produced by professional paid academic philosophers is even worth
mentioning or reading for the most part. He only mentions the very
greatest names, and then will not read their philosophy in
abstraction from their biography.
Walter Kaufmann in his landmark study of Nietzsche calls him
'psychologist', but in a special sense, as what he might call a
'moral' psychologist. Today we think of psychology as a 'science' or
as 'therapy', but if we can capture something worth saying by calling
Nietzsche a moral psychologist, what we refer to is his ability to
'diagnose' philosophy and philosophers; much of Nietzsche's thought
is not Kritik, but diagnostics; he teases out what makes the soul
sick, what makes philosophy sick therefore, and what makes culture
and society sick as a result. The sicknesses Nietzsche diagnoses are
all to do, in one way or another, with a lack of integrity.[6] And
the measure of integrity for Nietzsche is life in the fullest
possible sense where all our creative juices are running and all our
creative capacities at full flight. If we think of Nietzsche like
this (and this is just my own view) then we can legitimately say, I
think, that his writing is in line with his life, because of the
extraordinary creativity in his work.
I want to now turn to Lou's Nietzsche book. We can't discuss the
whole book, so I'm going to make 3 main points. These points, or
headings, frame Lou's view of Nietzsche. But I believe these three
points are good orientations into reading Nietzsche, especially
given, as I've said, that confusion about his philosophy reigns.
1. The thinker and the thought (biography and philosophy)
Lou Salome:
If the task of the biographer is to explicate the thinker
through his person, it applies in an unusual degree to
Nietzsche because external intellectual work and a picture
of his inner life coalesce completely. What he says in the
'prefatory' letter [Lou used a letter to her from Nietzsche
as her Preface] about philosophers is pertinent to himself;
one should test their systems against their personal
actions. Later, he expressed the same concept: 'Gradually,
it has become clear to me that every great philosophy up to
the present has been the personal confession of its author
and a form of involuntary and unperceived memoir'
(BGE, 6; N.p.4 [my emphasis added]).
She says,
And so we must direct our attention to the human being and
not the theorist in order to find a way in Nietzsche's
works. In that sense, our contemplation will not gain a new
theoretical world picture [as in Kant or Hegel I would add]
but the picture of the human soul in all its greatness and
sickliness (N. p.29 [my emphasis added]).
So with Nietzsche's philosophy we don't get a new theory or world
picture, but a picture of the human soul -- a diagnosis.
The optimum philosophical picture of a man's health is spelt out in
Nietzsche's idea of eternal recurrence. The idea of the eternal
recurrence stated by Zarathustra in Nietzsche's book of that title is
the idea that everything we do, right down to me giving this talk
tonight, eternally recurs. People have always wondered what this
could mean. Is it meant in a cosmological sense? Is it some kind of
hypothesis? No, I think it is a fable that speaks of the absolute
coalescence of personal character and destiny in one truth. Let me
explain. When my personal character perfectly expresses the truth
that all my creativity can allow me to become, then it is logical
that I would will the eternal recurrence of the same. When all the
possibilities and potentialities of my being have become actual and
real, then, nothing greater can I do; except, at that point to will
the eternal recurrence of the same, thereby validating forever all
that I have become and should be. This is what Nietzsche means.
Everyone who in their deepest heart doesn't or can't will the eternal
recurrence is, in effect, a creative abortion; they fall short of a
complete unification of personal character and their destiny. This
situation is typical of herd man, the rabble, that Nietzsche
despised, just as he despised democracy and populism and public media
that promote a herd mentality and a rabble. Were Nietzsche alive in
our day, I believe he would see globalization as nothing more than
the triumph of the rabble, evidence of those he called, in
Zarathustra, 'the last men'. These are the pathetic creatures who are
happy with mediocrity and call their mediocrity happiness and want
everyone to have it. Their complacency and fatuousness is mocked by
Zarathustra.
The point I'm trying to make about the eternal recurrence is given
again by Nietzsche in BGE where he writes: 'If one has character, one
also has one's typical experience which always recurs.' (BGE, 70 [my
emphasis]). What Nietzsche calls noble or virtuous character and
recurrence go together. And the more distinguished the character, the
more absolute the recurrence. The law of eternal recurrence is the
terminal point of this idea of the philosopher and his biography, or,
more properly of the thinker and his thought.
In her book Lou makes this point and shows the recurrence of
Nietzsche's experience, 'and so, with certainty, [she says] he had to
perish.' (N. p.23) This has nothing to do with determinism, but with
(in Nietzsche's phrase) 'becoming all that you are,' or making an
absolute of oneself, which points to the teaching of the Ubermensch
[overman] in Zarathustra. Goethe was Nietzsche's example of such a
man, one who created beyond himself [cf. Goethe's Faust, but also his
activity, his deeds]. It was Goethe who weighed his words and
expressed exactly what he felt and thought and who said, 'Thus one
also finds in life a mass of people who do not have enough character
to stand alone; they throw themselves at a party, and that makes them
feel stronger and allows them to be somebody.'[7]
2. The mask of the philosopher and the philosopher of masks
Lou Salome:
The companion photos in this book show Nietzsche in the
midst of the last ten years of suffering. And certainly, it
was during this time that his physiognomy, his entire
exterior, appeared to be formed most characteristically. It
was a time in which the total expression of his being was
already permeated by his deeply emotional inner life and
even was significant in that he held back and hid. I may
say that this hidden element, the intimation of a taciturn
solitude, was the first, strong impression through which
Nietzsche's appearance fascinated one (N. p.9).
She speaks about Nietzsche's defective eyesight, which made his eyes
seem to be looking inward even while they looked outward.
The discrepancy between Nietzsche's inner life and his outer life
show that the outer is a mask. Lou says,
I remember when I first spoke with Nietzsche during a day
in the Spring of 1882 in St. Peter's in Rome, his studied,
elegant posture surprised and deceived me. But not for long
was one deceived by this recluse who wore his mask so
awkwardly, like someone who has come out of the wilderness
and mountains and who is dressed conventionally. Very soon
a question surfaces, which he formulated in these words:
'Whenever a person permits something to become visible, one
can ask: 'What does it hide? From what does it wish to
divert someone's gaze? What preconception should it arouse?
And further: to what extreme does the subtlety of this
disguise go? And, does he misperceive himself in all that?''
(D. 523; N.p.10).
With this stance, everything that is objective reality, or taken as
such, or is interpreted as a fact, has to be reevaluated as an
appearance. Nietzsche's revaluation of all values starts here and
revolves around this centre.
Nietzsche, quoted by Lou:
People who think deeply feel themselves to be comedians in
their relationship with others because they first have to
simulate a surface in order to be understood.' (HATH, II,
232; N. p.11).
Lou Salome:
Nietzsche's thoughts... resemble a skin [which in his words]
'reveals something but conceals even more' (BGE, 32 my
emphases) because, he says, 'one either hides one's
opinions or one hides behind them' (HATH, II, 338).
Nietzsche finds a lovely designation for himself when he talks in
this sense about those 'hidden under the cloaks of light' (BGE, 44),
referring to those who cloak themselves in the clarity of their ideas.
Lou Salome:
In every period of his intellectual development, we
therefore find a characterizing masquerade in some form or
fashion: 'Everyone who is deep loves the mask... every
profound spirit needs a mask; moreover, around every deep
spirit there continually grows a mask (BGE, 40). 'Wanderer,
who are you... Rest here... recuperate? What will serve your
recuperation? Oh you inquisitive one, what are you saying!
But, give me only, I beg...' What? What? Say it! -- 'One
more mask! A second mask...' (BGE, 278).
And it is emphatically clear to us that the degree to which
his self-immolation and moody withdrawal becomes more
exclusive, the significance of the periodic masquerade also
becomes deeper, so that the true being retreats ever more
imperceptibly from the forms of expression and appearance.
Already, in The Wanderer and His Shadow (HATH, 175), he
points to 'mediocrity as mask.' 'Mediocrity is the happiest
mask which the reflective person can wear, because the great
mass or mediocre do not think of it as a mask. And yet, he
assumes that mask for their sake, in order not to provoke
them and not seldom out of a sense of pity and goodness.'...
[And in BGE] 'occasionally folly itself is the mask for
an unfortunate unholy all-too-knowing knowledge.'... Only
his idea-masks remain, like symbols and emblems, open to
interpretation, while for us he has already become what he
once signed himself as in a letter to a friend: 'The
eternally lost' (July 8, 1881 in Sils Maria). (N. p.11).
In the light of what Lou has said, I think this aphorism, which I
give complete, says something about both points one and two that we
have looked at so far, (i) the relation of thinker and thought, of
the philosopher and his biography and (ii) philosophy as the love and
wisdom of masks:
One always hears in the writings of a hermit something of
the echo of the desert, something of the whisper and shy
vigilance of solitude; in his strongest words, even in his
cry, there still resounds a new and more dangerous kind of
silence and concealment. He who sat alone with his soul day
and night [Nietzsche is talking autobiographically here I
believe] year in year out, in confidential discord and
discourse, and in his cave -- it may be a labyrinth, but is
may be a gold-mine -- became a cave-bear or treasure-hunter
or a treasure-guardian and dragon, finds that his concepts
themselves at last acquire a characteristic twilight colour,
a smell of the depths and of must, something
incommunicable and reluctant which blows cold on every
passer-by. The hermit does not believe that a philosopher --
supposing that a philosopher has always been first of all
a hermit -- has ever expressed his real and final opinions
in books: does one not write books precisely to conceal
what lies within us? -- indeed, he will doubt whether a
philosopher could have 'final and real' opinions at all,
whether behind each of his caves there does not and must
lie another, deeper cave -- a stranger, more comprehensive
world beyond the surface, an abyss behind every ground,
beneath every 'foundation'. Every philosophy is foreground
philosophy -- that is a hermit's judgement: 'there is
something arbitrary in the fact that he stopped, looked
back, looked around here, that he stopped digging and laid
his spade aside here -- there is also something suspicious
about it.' Every philosophy also conceals a philosophy;
every opinion is also a hiding place, every word also a
mask (BGE 289).
Nietzsche is talking about the personal intimacy of the philosopher
qua philosophy, which means the intrinsic solitariness of the
occupation; and he is talking about the height and depths of
philosophy, saying truth is qua these heights and depths -- not
'foundations', which are always superficial in that respect. 'Every
philosophy conceals a philosophy; every opinion is also a hiding
place, every word also a mask' -- that is any philosophy worthy of
the name, which for Nietzsche, most philosophy, and more particularly
religion, is not. And this saying goes for his philosophy too; for his
philosophy perhaps, above all.
3. The inner substance of Nietzsche's philosophy
Lou Salome:
The mysterious connection between the healthy and the
pathological in Nietzsche brings us to the essential
Nietzsche problem (N. p.24).
This problem she describes as a divided self.
She describes this self:
All of Nietzsche's knowledge arose from a powerful
religious mood and was insolubly knotted: self-sacrifice
and apotheosis, the cruelty of one's own destruction and
the lust for self-deification, sorrowful ailing and
triumphal recovery, incandescent intoxication and cool
consciousness. One senses here the close entwining of
mutual contradictions; one senses the overflowing and
voluntary plunge of over-stimulated and tensed energies
into chaos, darkness, and terror, and then an ascending
urge towards the light and the most tender moments -- the
urges of a will 'that frees him from the distress of
fullness and overfulness and from the affliction of the
contradictions compressed within him' ('Attempts at
Self-Criticism' BT.5) -- a chaos that wants to give birth
to a god, and must give birth to one (N.p.24).
The proclaimed death of God in Nietzsche has nothing to do with
validating unbelief and atheism, it has to do with what Nietzsche saw
as a crisis of creativity in man... in philosophy... in culture... in
the bourgeoisie... in Christianity.... That is why Nietzsche
repeatedly says of God, that 'we have killed him' [his emphasis, see
GS. 125]. His point about the death of God is that our shameful
crisis of creativity does not make us fit for gods. Nietzsche's
Zarathustra points the way beyond the crisis. He is a fictional
prophetic figure. To an extent Nietzsche's philosophy and Nietzsche
as philosopher wears a prophet's mask. He is not a prophet, his mask
is.
Lou Salome:
Through the words of Zarathustra during Nietzsche's last
creative period, he provided himself with an answer to his
outbreak of torture and yearning: 'All gods are dead: now
we want the superior man to live!' (Of the Gift-giving
virtue,' Z, I [my emphasis]) And with these words Nietzsche
expressed the inner substance of his philosophy (N. p.27).
Who is the superior man though? The Nazis thought it was the blonde
beast, the SS man. In Christianity, the Perfect Man, literally, is
Christ. Nietzsche, in a letter to his sister in mid-May 1885, said
that no-one can love him because 'this requires the precondition that
a person knows who I am.' Those last words 'who I am' are underlined
in the letter. He goes on to say in the letter, 'I find the founder
of Christianity superficial in comparison with myself.' (p.lviii) Who
is the superior man? The superior man is the great creator of values
-- which brings us back to Christ again, and for Nietzsche, Goethe,
and, more importantly, himself. 'There are two kinds of genius,'
Nietzsche writes, 'above all, one which begets and another which will
gladly allow itself to become fertile and will give birth' (BGE, 248).
'Undoubtedly', Lou says, 'he belonged to the latter.' (N. p.29) We
would put this by saying Nietzsche's genius is in being a great
fertile source of inspiration. This is why we are still drawn to
Nietzsche and why we still read him.
Lou Salome:
And so we must direct our attention to the human being and
not the theorist in order to find our way in Nietzsche's
works. In that sense, our contemplation will not gain a new
theoretical world picture but the picture of the human soul
in all its greatness and sickliness (N. p.29).
In the Preface to The Genealogy of Morals, a book in which Nietzsche
is reevaluating values, he wrote: 'For cheerfulness -- or in my
language gaya scienza -- is a reward: the reward of long, brave,
industrious and subterranean seriousness, of which, to be sure, not
everyone is capable. But on the day [of the discovery of moral truth]
we can say with all our hearts, 'Onwards! Our old morality too is part
of the comedy!' we shall have discovered a new complication and
possibility for the Dionysian drama of 'The Destiny of the Soul'
[so-called] -- and one can wager that the grand old eternal comic
poet of our existence [God] will be quick to make use of it!'
(Kaufmann Transl. GM.7).
Footnotes
1. Titles of Nietzsche's works are abbreviated e.g. BGE, Beyond Good
and Evil. The abbreviation N is used for Salome's Nietzsche book,
referenced below.
2. The source for details of Lou Salome's life is mostly
http://www.lou-andreas-salome.de
3. Salome. Looking Back, Memoirs. Transl. Breon Mitchell (New York:
Marlowe & Co. 1995) 51.
4. Looking Back, 53 my emphasis.
5. See the letter of Nietzsche to Salome published in the front of
the English edition of her book on him. Salome. Nietzsche, Transl.
Siegfried Mandel (Urbana. Chicago: University of Illinois Press,
2001) 3.
6. This is my own thought, but I find it iterated in Rosenzweig, The
Star of Redemption. Transl. W. Hallo (New York: Holt, Rinehart and
Winston, 1971) 9, 106.
7. Quoted in Walter Kaufmann, Discovering the Mind. Volume 1: Goethe,
Kant, Hegel (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1980) 16.
(c) Matthew Del Nevo 2009
E-mail: mdelnevo@cis.catholic.edu.au
Web site: http://cis.catholic.edu.au/delnevo.htm
Senior Lecturer in Philosophy
Catholic Institute of Sydney
99 Albert Rd
Strathfield NSW 2135
Australia
-=-
II. 'COLUCCIO SALUTATI AND THE TYRANT' BY MARCO CIRILLO
The Italian political situation was very complicated in the 14th
century. The absence of a central Authority, such as the empire or
the Papacy, allowed anyone to conquer another state through
subterfuge or force. This anomaly stimulated humanists to study and
debate this strange situation. It is important to remember that the
Italian Communes weren't independent from the emperor or the Pope,
and public offices were imposed by Authority; however, the Communes
usually chose their governors and the Authority simply accepted their
decision. This procedure encouraged the ambitious to take the power
and they often became tyrants.
At the end of the 14th century, the Empire was slowly subdividing
into small independent states, and the intellectuals felt the
necessity to discuss and revise political theories. In the Middle
Ages new forms of government and new kind of governors were born, so
it can be affirmed that in the Middle Ages new typologies of tyrants
were also born.
These years represent a period of revision of political language,
Jean Dunbabin writes:
The first difficult question that faces a modern reader of
medieval political literature is the absence of a precise
abstract noun to convey 'state', an indispensable concept to
all modern political thinking. It was not until the end of the
fifteenth century that status was first used with its
modern connotation. Before that, authors had the choice of
res publica (necessarily vaguer and a less rich concept
than in the time of Cicero), regnum (easily manageable, but
with several different connotations) or civitas (derived from
Aristotle but liable to confuse in a world in which city
government was usually a subordinate part of political
whole). All could, but need not, denote that combination of
a precise territorial area with a form of political
organisation which 'state' implies for us.
In these years, the political commitment of the intellectuals of the
14th century and their discussions about the political questions
induced them to review current historical and philosophical opinions.
The De Tyranno is an interesting treatise about tyranny written by
Coluccio Salutati, (1331-1406) in 1400, which describes the ways of
being a 'tyrant' in the 14th century.
Bartolo da Sassoferrato (1314-1357) also wrote about this topic in
his De Tyranno. The jurist wanted to understand when, by law, a
territory was reigned by a tyrant, so he described the difference
between tyrant ex parte exercitii and tiranno ex defectu tituli. The
tyrant ex parte exercitii used violence to govern his country, he
didn't show consideration for the common good of people but his power
was legally recognized by Authority. The tyrant ex defectu tituli
could rule for the common good of people but his power wasn't
recognized by Authority.
These ways of being a tyrant represent a new way to conceive of
tyranny. Philosophically, from Plato to St. Thomas, tyranny could
only be the negative form of government by monarchy; the tyrant
represented a moral distortion rather than a political distortion,
because the reigning person, whether good or bad, always represented
a legal power.
Bartolo da Sassoferrato studied this topic from the point of view of
jurisprudence. Coluccio Salutati, instead, took into consideration
the historical and philosophical sphere. It's interesting to note
that Coluccio didn't know Bartolo's theories. In fact, Bethold
Ullman's studies on the manuscripts of the Salutati's library and his
letters seem to demonstrate that these two writers didn't know each
other.
Moreover, the treatises by Coluccio Salutati and Bartolo da
Sassoferrato had a limited distribution; we have to consider a
difference which distinguishes their readers: the De Tyranno by
Bartolo has often been enclosed to treatises by other jurists whereas
the De Tyranno by Coluccio is thought as an answer to the questions
asked by Antonio Dell'Aquila, a student of Padua, regarding tyranny.
The poor distribution would seem to demonstrate that the new concept
of 'tyrant' was used as a rule in the 14th century with the two
meanings ex parte exercitii and ex defectu tituli and this fact could
explain why Coluccio and Bartolo came to the same conclusion following
different paths.
Coluccio, in his De Tyranno, starting from a question asked by
Antonio Dell'Aquila, concerning an analysis about the XXXIV Canto of
The Divine Comedy where Dante punishes Brutus and Cassius for the
murder of Caesar, demonstrated that Caesar wasn't in fact a tyrant.
This treatise contains all the topics of the humanistic thought:
there is Caesar who represents the ancient values; Dante and the use
of Florentine language and what he represents for the Florentine
Republic as a man of culture, and the political connections between
the ancients and the moderns and the consequent search of a logical
thread in the history of philosophy.
It must be stated beforehand that Caesar in the 14th century,
especially in the republican spheres, was indeed seen as a tyrant. We
could affirm that this subject is born in Dante's thought but it is
still alive in Machiavelli's theories. This subject is not only a way
to judge the historical problems and the History of Rome but also
raises a question regarding the way in which one takes part in
politics; when the humanists talk about Caesar they talk about
politics.
The structure of the De Tyranno analysed the figure of the tyrant
from a philosophical point of view. Coluccio used the definitions of
famous authors, such as St. Gregory and John of Salisbury. He rebuilt
the history of the Roman Republic and especially Caesar's period. Only
then, the reader knowing the history of Rome and philosophical
theories about the tyranny, was Coluccio able to judge Dante's verses.
Coluccio cited passages of the Moralia in Job of St. Gregory the
Great, where the Pope explained that anyone could be a tyrant if he
didn't respect the law: one could be a tyrant in the government, one
could be a tyrant in his city, one could be a tyrant at home, or even
in his own mind, so only God could judge these men because only God
really knows them.
This position reflected medieval thought, where politics was not an
important factor in understanding who was 'the tyrant'. The
Aristotelian vision of the actions of government was less apparent,
as ethics and politics intermingled; in fact, for St. Gregory the
Great social role isn't decisive for the question.
Now that the treatise has explained who is the tyrant, the second
question is: could people kill the tyrant? The law must protect
citizens from injustice; the tyrant surely represents an unjust form
of governor. There is, now, an ethical problem: when do the citizens
rebel against the tyrant to defend themselves and to bring the law
into force again?
The History of Rome -- which represented the best model of
civilization for the humanists -- is full of examples which Coluccio
uses in his treatise, but in it there is also an original conclusion
because the Chancellor emphasizes the differences among tyrants,
using the political point of view of his century, so he can affirm
that every citizen must defend his country from a tyrant, if the
tyrant is a tyrant ex defectu tituli.
This qualification is very important in order to understand the
treatise because it explains Salutati's thought; from this point on
Coluccio's account of Roman History is filtered through the medieval
vision of the 14th century. This viewpoint belongs to Coluccio and to
Bartolo not to the ancients. It allows Coluccio to affirm that only
the Emperor could authorize someone to rule a state, so the popular
election of a leader who could guide the country is not valid,
otherwise the new leader will be a tyrant ex defectu tituli, even if
he rules for the common good of the country, because his power is not
legal!
Another question regards the rebellion that is not good when a tyrant
replaces a tyrant (History demonstrates it), because who is accustomed
'to the passivity in serving' risks that the revolt's followed by a
period of repression. Instead, in the case of a tyrant ex parte
exercitii, only the Authority could depose him, and only the
Authority could decide to kill him and not the people, who can never
be superior to the law.
The law limits violent acts, Coluccio, in fact, condemns the
'fortunate murder considered virtue', when someone kills the tyrant
and becomes an hero for the people. On the contrary, Coluccio
explains that no-one can kill the tyrant, because only the Authority
can decide what is right and what is wrong; besides, there are
decisions that people can't understand: some time the one who rules,
acts for the common good, even if his decisions can appear wrong.
Coluccio set out to establish if Caesar was or was not a tyrant. To
understand Caesar's position in the Roman Republic, Coluccio thought
it was necessary to explain what had happened after the civil war
between Caesar and Pompey.
Coluccio quoted Cicero's words, 'We saw your victory and the end of
the (civil) war, and we did not see a sword without the sheath',
after he cited Floro in affirming the popular enthusiasm for Caesar's
victory. These sources demonstrated that Caesar wasn't a tyrant ex
defectu tituli because he was acclaimed by the crowd (the Authority
of the Republic of Rome), and he wasn't a tyrant ex parte exercitii
because he was magnanimous and generous with his enemies. But, if
Caesar wasn't a tyrant, Brutus and Cassius were wrong. The History of
Rome confirms these suspicious, in fact Coluccio remember that, after
Caesar's death, Brutus and Cassius didn't have a political strategy
to govern Rome and there were disorders until the accession of
Octavian.
For Salutati, the question now becomes: what is the right law? The
law could be the law of the empire, where it exists, or the people's
law, where it doesn't exist, in any case a human law. The law could
be Moral, the Divine Law. The Divine Law forbids anyone to kill the
tyrant ex parte exercitii but it permits one to kill the tyrant ex
parte tituli because he violates the law of God.
Before the 14th century St. Thomas 'distinguished the tyrant without
claim (absque titulo) from the tyrant who is tyrannical when he rules
(quoad exercitum)' and he said that the tyrannicide could be
considered against the tyrant absque titulo, because he usurped the
legal title, designed by the divine will. If the tyrant was quoad
exercitum it represented the divine will, that punished human actions.
Salutati prefers human law, against St. Thomas point of view, because
it is stable, in fact, following the Divine Law, who could judge what
is wrong and what is right?
The murder of Caesar is very important in understanding the
difference between human law and the Divine Law. The question is: did
Brutus and Cassius want the common good for people or did they want to
rebel against the tyrant? Could they judge Caesar and what were the
methods of valuation to judge a tyrant?
If there isn't a human law to justify tyrannicide how can a State
avoid political instability? How can that State affirm what is moral
and what is not moral?
The weakness of the Empire enabled the birth of the States and a new
way to concept the law, the law as the king's will. Coluccio didn't
support a new concept of law, he didn't talk about Divine Law or
human law, he couldn't distinguish them but, surely, he understood
the inadequacy of the medieval concept of law and its unbalancing of
moral vision.
In the De Nobilitate Legum et Medicinae, written in 1399, Salutati
demonstrates the value of law that acts for the common good, because
it doesn't care for the single good, it doesn't care about the single
man, on the contrary, the Medicine takes care of everyone, even the
tyrant.
The considerations that we find in the De Tyranno by Coluccio
Salutati don't seem to go back to the medieval thought of monarchy,
his considerations seem to be, philosophically, modern for the 14th
century. Salutati's treatise demonstrates the philosophical
development on the argument of tyranny, a debate that interested the
most important intellectuals of the century, particularly, in the
Italian sphere.
Coluccio submerged himself in the theories of Gregory the Great, John
of Salisbury, St. Thomas; he altered them, he broadened them with his
point of view, with his knowledge.
Salutati's thought, in the De Tyranno, demonstrates the relation
between law and Freedom. In every government, where the law rules
there is Freedom, because the law defends the single man as well as
the community. In a tyrannical government the law doesn't rule, so it
is difficult to find freedom, because the tyrant doesn't defend the
single man or the community, he wants only to defend his own
interests.
At the end of the treatise, when Coluccio greeted Antonio
Dell'Aquila, he wrote 'If I didn't, as I believe, satisfy you, accuse
my ignorance. In fact, I'm readier to learn than to teach.'
Bibliography
Baron Hans, La Crisi del Primo Rinascimento Italiano, G.S. Sansoni
Editore, Firenze 1970.
Bobbio, Matteucci, Pasquino, Il Dizionario di Politica, UTET, Torino
2004.
Canfora Davide, Prima di Machiavelli, Editori Laterza, Bari 2005.
Dunbabin Jean, Government in Medieval Political Thought c. 350 - c.
1450, The Cambridge History of, Cambridge 2005.
Ercole Francesco, 'Sulle fonti e sul contenuto della distinzione tra
tirannia ex defectu tituli e tirannia exercitio', in Contributo alla
storia della pubblicistica e del diritto pubblico italiano del
rinascimento, Firenze 1912.
Fiocchi Claudio, Mala Potestas. La tirannia nel pensiero politico
medievale, Lubrica, Bergamo 2004.
Quaglioni Diego, Politica e Diritto nel Trecento Italiano, il De
Tyranno di Bartolo da Sassoferrato (1314-1357), Leo S. Olschki,
Firenze 1983.
Salutati Coluccio, Il trattato De Tyranno e lettere scelte, a cura di
F. Ercole, Zanichelli Ed., Bologna 1942.
Salutati Coluccio, De Nobilitate Legum et Medicinae a cura di E.
Garin, Vallecchi Editore, Firenze 1947.
Ullman Bethold Louis, The Humanism of Coluccio Salutati, Editore
Antenore, Padova 1963.
Ullman Berthold Luois, The Origin and Development of Humanistic
Script, Edizioni di Storia e Letteratura, Roma 1960.
Witt Ronald, 'The De tyranno and Coluccio Salutati's View of Politics
and Roman History', in Nuova Rivista Storica, fascicolo III-IV, Maggio
Agosto 1969, Societa Editrice Dante Alighieri, Firenze 1969.
(c) Marco Cirillo 2009
E-mail: clmarco2@yahoo.it
-=-
III. [ARTICLE BY XIAOQIANG HAN TEMPORARILY REMOVED PENDING REVISION]
-=-
IV. 'THE PHILO OFFICER' BY MICHAEL LEVY
The philo officer, seeking wisdom,
shook the prickly cactus by the hand;
by determining the painful, silent truth of the matter,
he reaffirmed the most powerful,
intelligent, ingredient of life,
which continues to elude
the smooth, intellectual surface of mortality,
since the birth of time.
(c) Michael Levy 2009
E-mail: MIKMIKL@aol.com
Web site: http://www.pointoflife.com
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