Blaise Pascal (1623-1662) could turn a phrase, e.g. Qui veut faire l’ange fait la bête. “Whoever attempts to be an angel becomes a beast.” it’s an apt social warning. Human communities are made up of, well, humans with all their possibilities for good and for ill. James Madison
Madison is here echoing the ancient philosopher Aristotle. In his political writings one theme is
dominant: humans are always humans. That is, they are biological, cultural, historical creatures. There is no hint of an Angelic fantasy, nor of the tripartite pattern that is a regular accompaniment of that fantasy: (i) an idyllic initial condition, (ii) loss of that condition because of a fatal flaw, (iii) the need to remove the flaw and return humans to their angelic state.
For Aristotle, there is no imagined initial idyllic state, nor any fantasy about single flaws, which, once removed, would restore an aboriginal idealized state. Instead, there is an empirical account of what the human situation is like. There is a realization that humans come into existence with a bundle of dispositions, impulses, possibilities. History teaches that those possibilities can be channelled toward good and ill. What makes a difference? The proper identification of goods and ills, along with the work of cultivating habits associated with the better dispositions. Unlike the trinary pattern, there is no sense that a single act, removing the fatal flaw, will restore angelism. Rather the tension among possibilities for good and ill goes on continuously. The process of maximizing good habits is ongoing. There are no shortcuts.
The angelism/trinary pattern is pervasive, showing up even among friends of democracy. (Rousseau comes to mind.) Nonetheless, the model is well suited for autocrats and tyrants. Tyrants claim to hold the key to removing the fatal flaw. This provides justification for draconian measures to hunt down and eradicate whoever would keep the dangerous flaw alive. Remove the king and the aristocrats, said the French revolutionaries, and all shall be well. Rid the world of capitalism, said the communists, and the ideal society will come into being. Do away with the Shah, impose a religion-guided polity, said the Ayatollah Khomeini, and all will be well. Eliminate most of government say the libertarians, and a free, just society will result.
Non-Utopians like Madison prefer the way of republics, the republican model: a political system without a single center; an order in which power is distributed. It’s far from perfect, but it has one advantage: it’s an arrangement for humans, historical humans, neither angels, nor people whose ancestors resided in a paradisiacal initial state. Republicanism, i.e. working to establish successful republics, takes up the challenge of establishing a community that will best
embody desirable political virtues like justice, freedom, harmony, equality, well-being. It will do so as an ongoing project, not as a fait accompli.
What the ‘fatal flaw’ crowd really seeks to circumvent is what Aristotle considered necessary and good: the art of politics. For both Plato and Aristotle the greatest gift-givers to humanity were those who could write good constitutions. First lesson in such constitution writing and the art of politics: remember Madison and keep in mind that humans are neither angels nor beasts. They are bundles of possibilities for good and ill. Good leadership involves maximizing one set of possibilities and minimizing others. It is not simply a matter of releasing the angelic by eliminating a fatal flaw.
This offers a return to a more Aristotelian position, one rooted in the claim that humans are “political animals,” they were by nature meant to live in communities. Conjoint, communal existence is not an unwelcome inconvenience. It does not represent a falling away from some initially idyllic condition. It represents a call to responsibility. The important point: communities may exist by nature, but the proper political organizations do not. They require effort, ongoing effort. In the beginning is a cluster of possibilities. The oversimplifications and short-cuts associated with the trinary fable will always be with us. But simplifications and short-cuts are temptations to be resisted.
