A common complaint today laments the “shamelessness” of politicians. Until recently, the argument goes, more elected officials had a sense of shame to hold them back from ugly words and deeds, at least in public. Many in the current crop, however, seem to have no fear of disgrace; they revel in contempt for the niceties of old – unwritten rules against cursing, slander or lying, but also written rules against abuse of power.
The problem isn’t so much a question of bad manners or even of corruption. It’s really about leadership.
I study the history of political thought and work on the psychology of lawfulness: the character traits citizens need for the rule of law to work. One such trait is each person’s ability to limit herself – to revere some larger principle that she would be ashamed to betray.
That’s all the more true for good leaders, even in a constitutional republic defined by checks and balances. Sometimes decisions need to be made over the objections of partisan opposition or of another branch of government. But the public can trust decision-makers only if those leaders check themselves.
Like many problems, political shamelessness may seem new, but thinkers stretching back to the ancient Greeks have warned of its perils, which they described as “irreverence” – the failure to respect something bigger than ourselves. If today’s politics seem threatened by some such menace, it may be because we are neglecting this ancient wisdom.
Awaken to our ignorance
Perhaps the most searching account of this problem and what to do about it can be found in a work by the Greek philosopher Plato, who died in 347 B.C.E. The text is known simply as the “Laws.”
Like his better-known “Republic,” the “Laws” envisions a “city in speech”: a utopia, a place that exists only in theory. But whereas the city of the “Republic” is ruled autocratically by “philosopher kings,” the “Laws” explores the possibilities and limitations of what is now called constitutional government.
All of Plato’s writings suggest that the most significant political fact is the scarcity of wisdom: the dearth of knowledge needed to live a flourishing human life. What’s more, he taught, most of us don’t recognize our own ignorance – indeed, we powerfully resist recognizing it.
Plato’s “Laws” examines the rule of law in light of this fact. It teaches that the function of law is to awaken citizens and politicians to their own ignorance and then to point them to a wise, ethical authority.
At its best, law wouldn’t just protect security or individual rights. It would provoke people to recognize their profound need of a standard of good and bad beyond their own judgment.
Otherwise, human nature being what it is, Plato saw that each person would corruptly “honor his own” – himself and everything connected to him – “more than the truth.” He would rationalize his own prejudices and justify his own selfishness.
Reverence as a virtue
In the “Laws,” the antidote to this problem is what Plato calls “aidos,” or reverence: the virtue governing shame, as well as awe. Taken by themselves, shame and awe are neither laudable nor blameworthy. But to have reverence, Plato suggests, is to feel these emotions for the right reasons.
Shame and awe go together for Plato because they both involve a feeling of diminishment: a sense of our own limits. With shame, this feeling is social, connected to the fear of someone else’s disapproving gaze. With awe, the feeling of smallness is inspired by something that makes our own concerns and capacities seem trivial – something like God or the divine.
It might seem as though a virtuous person would not feel shame; she would simply never do or say anything shameful. But in Plato’s eyes, precious few achieve so pure a virtue. For most, fear of shame is a necessary backstop to push people away from what wrongly tempts them. Likewise, awe prevents people from underestimating difficult tasks or from overestimating themselves.
According to the “Laws,” the proper object of reverence is wisdom, represented as God: “the measure of all things.” The text stresses the awesome nature of the wisdom needed to judge things well – the need to look for truth outside ourselves. It teaches that we should be ashamed to “measure” things by reference only to our own fallible judgment.
Awesome responsibility
Reverence might seem irrelevant to modern politics. In liberal democracies, public life is devoted to securing liberty, not to learning virtue. Shaming people for disregarding the awesome nature of wisdom might appear a gross violation of their freedom of conscience. Modern societies can scarcely agree on what is shameful to begin with.
Reverence might also seem to involve a piety that is out of place in a diverse democracy. Many people believe in God, but political decisions are judged by secular standards like their popularity, or by whether they benefit the public interest.
Nevertheless, I would argue that modern politics continue to depend on something akin to reverence. Liberal democracies might not use government to teach virtue directly, but they do need citizens and statesmen who appreciate the limits of their own judgment and their need of higher principles to guide their decisions.
It helps that awe need not be inspired by gods – or wisdom, which was what Plato truly revered. Citizens might feel awe, for example, at the enormous responsibility of self-government. As philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau wrote in the 18th century, democracy is more suited to gods than men: rightly understood, it is demanding in the highest degree.
Modern liberty is especially demanding; it isn’t only a matter of having a right to vote or speak our minds, as important as such rights may be. It is also a matter of having to choose between myriad ethical, religious and cultural traditions, or to choose none at all.
Such freedom is both a boon and a burden. In today’s democracies, citizens are responsible for their own ethical lives: for determining what should count as right and wrong, good and bad.
But it is precisely because we are free to waste our freedom, Plato might say, that we need reverence all the more: feeling awe for the responsibility of using that freedom well, and shame when we do not. As for political leaders, until they cease to find an approving audience for their contempt of principled behavior, the shamelessness that many observers find so disturbing will likely continue.
This article is republished from The Conversation, a nonprofit, independent news organization bringing you facts and trustworthy analysis to help you make sense of our complex world. It was written by: Robert A. Ballingall, University of Maine
Read more:
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Robert A. Ballingall does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
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