The Liberation

Jean Delville, The Liberation (1936) 

The Ideas

Jean Delville, The Ideas (1934) 

Owls 17

IMAGE by Mick Thompson 

Cicero, Stoic Paradoxes 4.1

Paradox 4: That Every Fool Is a Madman
 
[Translator's note: This paradox takes for its illustration the life of Publius Clodius, a Roman soldier of noble birth, but infamous for the corruption of his morals. He was ultimately slain by the retinue of Milo, in an encouter which took place between the two as Milo was journeying toward Lanuvium, his native place, and Clodius was on his way to Rome.]
 
I will now convict you, by infallible considerations, not as a fool, as I have often done, nor as a villain, as I always do, but as insane and mad. 
 
Could the mind of the wise man, fortified as with walls by depth of counsel, by patient endurance of human ills, by contempt of fortune; in short, by all the virtues—a mind that could not be expelled out of this community—shall such a mind be overpowered and taken by storm? 
 
For what do we call a community? Surely, not every assembly of thieves and ruffians? Is it then the entire rabble of outlaws and robbers assembled in one place? No; you will doubtless reply. Then this was no community when its laws had no force; when its courts of justice were prostrated; when the custom of the country had fallen into contempt; when, the magistrates having been driven away by the sword, there was not even the name of a senate in the state. 
 
Could that gang of ruffians, that assembly of villains which you head in the forum, could those remains of Catiline’s frantic conspiracy, diverted to your mad and guilty schemes, be termed a community? 

 
I could not therefore be expelled from a community, because no such then existed. I was summoned back to a community when there was a consul in the state, which at the former time there was not; when there was a senate, which then had ceased to exist; when the voice of the people was free; and when laws and equity, those bonds of a community, had been restored. 

—from Cicero, Stoic Paradoxes 4 
 
Once again, reading Cicero has me going down the rabbit hole of Roman history. The elaborate schemes, the daring coups, and the brutal reprisals leave my head reeling, reminding me why a study of the past, like any art or science, can only be built upon the foundation of philosophy. Without a standard of true and false, and of right and wrong, there would be no way to distinguish up from down. 
 
I work with many historians, and I even call some of them my friends, but so many of them refuse to look beyond the measures of of wealth, power, and fame. Even when condemning acts as “monstrous” or “deplorable”, they are still buying into the madness of the vices, a view of the world driven solely by greed, lust, and vanity. Such an insanity goes deeper than any colloquial or clinical connotations, because it abandons the rule of reason itself, and can therefore no longer distinguish between good and evil. 
 
Where there is no understanding, there can be no goodwill, and where there is no goodwill, there can be no community. The life of Publius Clodius is a tragic example of what will happen when conscience gives way to concupiscence, which can sadly emerge in any time or place. Virtue springs from wisdom, which is sanity. Vice springs from ignorance, which is insanity. Everything hinges upon the order or the disorder within the mind. 
 
I do not doubt that Cicero had his prejudices, as we all do, but I will not assume malice on his part when he rebukes his opponents. He looks beyond his frustrations to the deeper values of human nature, in which a good man cannot be exiled from society, since a society is formed by sound judgment and free consent. Solidarity is impossible in the presence of lunacy. 
 
While the language may sound harsh, how else are we to describe all the misdeeds that go so contrary to reason? And, in the face of such folly, what could be more sane than the man who knows why his self-awareness is the key to his self-mastery? In the end, the tyrant, whether big or small, has renounced his intellect, so he is the worst sort of madman. 

—Reflection written in 5/1999 

IMAGE: Pasko Vucetic and Viktor Kovacic, Hatred and Madness (c. 1898) 

The Almightier

Carl Hassmann, The Almightier (1907) 

The Last Idols

Jean Delville, The Last Idols (1931) 

From Darkness to Light

Jean Delville, From Darkness to Light (1929) 

The Mother Road 14

Cicero, Stoic Paradoxes 3.5

But in life we are not to consider what should be the punishment of each offense, but what is the rule of right to each individual. We are to consider everything that is not becoming as wicked, and everything which is unlawful as heinous. 
 
What! Even in the most trifling matters? To be sure; for if we are unable to regulate the course of events, yet we may place a bound to our passions. If a player dances ever so little out of time, if a verse is pronounced by him longer or shorter by a single syllable than it ought to be, he is hooted and hissed off the stage. 
 
And shall you, who ought to be better regulated than any gesture, and more regular than any verse shall you be found faulty even in a syllable of conduct? I overlook the trifling faults of a poet; but shall I approve my fellow-citizen’s life while he is counting his misdeeds with his fingers? 
 
If some of these are trifling, how can it be regarded as more venial when whatever wrong is committed, is committed to the violation of reason and order? Now, if reason and order are violated, nothing can be added by which the offense can seem to be aggravated. 

—from Cicero, Stoic Paradoxes 3 
 
I run the risk of only treating some of my vices seriously, worried about the ones that might trigger a harsh reprisal, and willing to ignore the ones where I can weasel my way out. I check the numbers twice on my taxes, because I don’t want to get a hefty fine, but I breeze my way through neglecting a friend, because he’s unlikely to see behind my cheap excuses.
 
Sometimes the consequences are greater, and sometimes they are lesser, but when it comes to the state of my conscience, each instance of wickedness is a corruption of the whole. Where Prudence, fortitude, temperance, and justice are broken, the harmony within the nature of the person is gravely disturbed. 
 
Do the little things count? Just as much as the big things, in the sense that a breakdown at one level is a breakdown at every level, much like a flaw in the tiniest component will upset the workings of the entire machine. I know this to be true when my snarky comments restrict my peace of mind just as much as a full-blown temper tantrum, or that covetous gaze is already a surrender of my self-control. 
 
This does not have to become what Catholics identify as scrupulosity, a distorted anxiety about sinning, if I can remember how my failings can always be opportunities for further improvement, and why they will cease to do me harm once I choose to be accountable for myself. Though it is fitting to seek the perfection of our nature, as much as it is within our power, learning from our mistakes is a necessary part of that process. Be firm with yourself, while also forgiving with yourself. 
 
We will be disappointed with the musician who can’t play in tune, or the actor who fumbles his lines, so why should we not expect at least a competence of character in our daily living? We have something backwards when the performer is booed off a stage for the slightest blunder, and yet we look the other way when the simplest of decencies are abandoned. 
 
What makes all the vices equally severe is that each and every one of them prevents our capacity to understand and to love. Whenever we go contrary to the rule of reason, we also make it impossible to exercise any goodwill. This is why the Stoics further made the radical claim that our vices are as crippling to us as a form of madness. 

—Reflection written in 5/1999 

The School of Silence

Jean Delville, The School of Silence (1929) 

The Forces

Jean Delville, The Forces (1924) 

The Basel Dance of Death 17

Matthäus Merian, The Basel Dance of Death: The Physician (1616) 

"Sir Doctor, observe the anatomy
on me, whether it is well made.
Because you have also dispatched many,
who all do now resemble me." 

"I have with my inspecting the water
helped both men and women.
Who will inspect my water now?
I must now go away with Death." 

Cicero, Stoic Paradoxes 3.4

But someone will say, what then? Does it make no difference, whether a man murders his father or his slave? If you instance these acts abstractedly, it is difficult to decide of what quality they are. 
 
If to deprive a parent of life is in itself a most heinous crime, the Saguntines were then parricides, because they chose that their parents should die as freemen rather than live as slaves. Thus, a case may happen in which there may be no guilt in depriving a parent of life, and very often we cannot without guilt put a slave to death. 
 
The circumstances therefore attending this case, and not the nature of the thing, occasion the distinction: these circumstances as they lean to either case, that case becomes the more favorable; but if they appertain alike to both, the acts are then equal. 
 
There is this difference—that in killing a slave, if wrong is done, it is a single sin that is committed; but many are involved in taking the life of a father. The object of violence is the man who begat you, the man who fed you, the man who brought you up, the man who gave your position in your home, your family, and the state. This offense is greater by reason of the number of sins involved in it, and is deserving of a proportionately greater punishment. 

—from Cicero, Stoic Paradoxes 3 
 
I have a vivid memory of one particular week while I was in high school, which challenged me to look at justice in a whole new light. 
 
When we arrived on Monday morning, all the chatter was about a celebrity who had been murdered over the weekend. Even among my progressive friends, there was much talk about a swift and severe retribution: “We’ve lost someone who touched so many lives! The killer needs to rot in jail for what he did!” 
 
Later that day, I noticed some police cars in an alley down the block. The owner of our local diner explained how a homeless man had been beaten to death during the night. His biggest concern was whether the delivery truck could be unloaded on time, and my schoolmates only shrugged when I mentioned what I felt was a terrible tragedy. 
 
For the next few days, the newspapers were full of moving tributes for a singer. I could not find any mention of the vagrant. I knew neither of them personally, but I had great difficulty believing that the life of the one was so much more valuable than that of the other. We place the dignity in the trappings of a life, and so easily forget what makes the man. 
 
Whatever the degree of the circumstances, the crime is still the same in kind, though it is often difficult to see through the layers of our many attachments and aversions. Why, for example, do we say that it is worse to kill our own kin than it is to kill a stranger? Or why are we more offended at the abuse of children and the elderly? 
 
Behind the impressions of malice or brutality, we are also compounding many different offenses into one, such that mistreating my wife is both a violation of her rights as person and the betrayal of a special bond of fidelity, and thus it should carry with it a harsher penalty. 
 
The wrong, of course, remains a wrong, regardless of the many different ways I may express it, or how many times I may commit it. I notice how the courts like to pile up endless lists of charges in cases where the public is especially outraged, though I sometimes wonder if one count is already more than enough to prove the point, and five or ten life sentences will hardly end up being all that different. 
 
At the very least, I should not say that my lie is less of an injustice because I only told it once, or that my treachery is less severe because it happened so long ago. I ought to feel regret for any of my vices, and not to believe that a greater or lesser penalty somehow changes my fundamental responsibility. 

—Reflection written in 5/1999 

Modern Stoicism?

The Mothers

Jean Delville, The Mothers (1919) 

The Victorious Spirit

Jean Delville, The Victorious Spirit (1914) 

Ellis Walker, Epictetus in Poetical Paraphrase 62

LXII. 

In outward actions to spend to much time, 
Is of stupidity too sure a sign; 
As long to exercise, and long to eat, 
To spend whole days, at least, to cram down meat, 
To try what drink your belly will contain, 
To be disgorg'd, to be piss'd out again, 
Then half an hour, like a dull grinning fool, 
To make wry faces over a close stool; 
Or like a brutish swine, in sensual strife, 
To wallow out whole hours with your dull wife, 
When all this precious time should be assign'd, 
For brave endeavours to improve your mind. 

William Hogarth, Marriage A-la-Mode 6

One of my most thoughtful students had a charming habit of asking herself questions out loud, which she would then answer after a brief pause. While others might find this odd, it impressed upon me the importance of an inner dialogue, even if it did happen to seep out into the open from time to time. 

While we were looking over this final entry in the series, she began to wonder: "Why does Hogarth have to be so over the top, so melodramatic? I understand that these folks are selfish, and lustful, and treacherous, but am I expected to believe that this sort of terrible punishment will befall all the villains of the world? I see all kinds of nasty people who are sitting pretty." 

I knew better than to say anything, because she soon offered her own reply: "But they aren't really sitting pretty, are they? Their vices leave them rotting on the inside, though that would make for sort of a boring painting, so Hogarth takes their internal misery and reflects it in an external story. It's like an allegory about the state of their souls. Their Fortune mirrors their Nature." 

Well, there you have it! Your sins might not drag you into poverty, or burden you with some wasting disease, or leave you completely alone, but they will never permit you a moment of peace. 

Silvertongue has been hanged at Tyburn for the murder of the Earl, and the Countess can only return to her perpetually cash-strapped father. Though she has incurred no legal penalty, her life of status is now definitely over. Not even the needs of her child can overcome her guilt—or is it just shame? She has taken a fatal dose of laudanum. 

Only the old maid seems to show any grief. The father is already removing his daughter's wedding ring, the last vestige of her former glory, in a desperate attempt to feed his avarice. The starving dog proves how far he has now fallen. 

The child gives her mother one last kiss, though the marks on her face and the brace on her leg betray her final fate. The doctor berates the servant for having provided the drug, even as he appears more concerned with his professional pride than with his patient's comfort. 

While I do know of some swindlers, dissemblers, and philanderers who found themselves penniless and friendless, I fear that most of them are living under the illusion of success. Don't let yourself be tricked by the facade. 

William Hogarth, Marriage A-la-Mode VI: The Lady's Death (painting, 1743) 

William Hogarth, Marriage A-la-Mode VI: The Lady's Death (engraving, 1743) 

The God-Man

Jean Delville, The God-Man (1903) 

The Death of Orpheus

Jean Delville, The Death of Orpheus (1893)