It is in Book III, Chapter V of The Politics where we
find Aristotle making the distinction between the good man and the good citizen.
There he asks whether "the excellence of a good man and a good citizen
is the same or not." Aristotle will tell us that the one needs to be distinguished
from the other. He explains this, elaborating on the various functions individuals
fulfill within society.
"Now, sailors have different functions, for one of them is a rower, another
a pilot, and a third a look-out man.... One citizen differs from another, but
the salvation of the community is the common business of them all. This community
is the constitution; the excellence of the citizen must therefore be relative
to the constitution of which he is a member. If, then, there are many forms
of government, it is evident that there is not one single excellence of
the good citizen which is perfect excellence." [emphasis added]
In the last two sentences, Aristotle is telling us that what makes the good
citizen ‘good' is specific to the society he is in. In the next statement,
Aristotle indicates that by contrast, the good man is that person whose moral
compass is grounded in something which transcends the arbitrary nature of social
and political life.
"But we say that the good man is he who has one single excellence
which is perfect excellence. Hence it is evident that the good citizen need
not of necessity possess the excellence which makes a good man." [emphasis
added]
To say that the good citizen need not possess the excellence which makes for a good man is to say that the former does not adhere to the same kind of standard as the latter.
The distinction between the good citizen and the good man has been a rich source for much thought about morality and politics throughout the history of Western philosophy. It has been particularly helpful for me in clarifying a question I have long been interested in, namely: What is the source of goodness in society? This question is perhaps better asked for us today as: "What is the source of deep moral goodness for individuals in a society in which moral goodness is fully "privatized"?" By way of immediate contrast, this question brings to my mind Jesus' telling us that we are to be the ‘salt of the earth'. For when the good is fully privatized, I think we are consistently undermined from being "salt of the earth" to each other. I understand ‘salt of the earth' as a metaphor for a moral quality which is essential to living deeply good lives, a quality which is conferred on individuals when two or more of them relate to each other with a certain kind of intentional stance. Individuals live as ‘salt of the earth' when in their actions, predicated on a serious intention to do good by loving others as they love their self. In the transformed kind of reciprocal relating which comes out of this, each person involved in the relating moves closer to a deep moral good while simultaneously contributing to the good of society as a whole. In terms of my discussion of the good man and good citizen, the good man in this case acts also as the good citizen.
For a single individual to attain to a deeper way of living, they must be open to true religious experience. Modern Western civilization in general and American in particular is suspicious of true religion, partly because it sees religious experience to be in conflict with the basic order of society as a whole. The worry is that if the individual begins to respond to a call of true religion, he will come into conflict with his capacity as a member of society; as a citizen. This theme shows up most commonly in the image of the rebellious teenager who does not want to conform to his parents ideals. It can also be seen in the image of one who enters a monastery. When one enters a monastery, they are no longer contributing to the external well being of society, and in a very real sense cease to be a citizen. What I mean to stress here is the difference in the claims about what is good and bad. Clearly, the monastic sees his way of life as bringing him closer to a deep moral good than he could have attained by remaining an active member of society. But from society's perspective, to suggest that one can be a good person and yet not be a good citizen is at the very least strange and at worst treasonous. Any person who thoughtfully considers Aristotle's distinction is confronted with the need to ask questions he had most likely presumed, as a modern Westerner, had been adequately dealt with and disposed of. If he takes the distinction seriously, he must make a decision as to whether he will ultimately be a good person first and foremost or live on the basis of the socially defined 'good citizen'. My point in discussing this distinction is not to argue that when one chooses to define himself in terms of the socially defined 'good citizen' they are less good. Rather, the point is simply that there is a tension, or conflict, between the two kinds of lives, and that it is part of our nature as modern citizens to seek to gloss this tension over. Alisdair MacIntyre alludes to this tension in Christianity when he says: "The paradox of Christian ethics is precisely that it has always tried to devise a code for society as a whole from pronouncements which were addressed to individuals in small communities to separate themselves off from the rest of society." (MacIntyre,1966, p. 115) By considering this tension, I argue, we can help both ourselves as well as society as a whole move more closely to a deeper good.
'The Passion' as an account of the best human type in the person of Jesus portrays the tension between the good citizen and the good man par excellence. I argue in this paper that this tension also shows up within the context of the particular criticisms made of Gibson's film. How this in turn might tell us something about our own culture and way of living in relation to moral goodness is the subject of the rest of the paper.
Observations on Gibson's 'The Passion'
There has been much criticism of Gibson's 'Passion' for being overly focused on the death of Jesus. Such a critic presumably thinks Gibson should have focused more on Jesus' living or at least also on his free acceptance of his own death. There has also been criticism of the violence in the film. However, this critique cannot be merely in reaction to the fact of violence in the film, given that the violence takes place in the context it does. More specific even than the criticism of the violence in the film is the claim that Gibson over-focuses on the violence entailed in Jesus' crucifixion. It is this criticism that calls for a response.
I believe the real criticism made when critics claim that 'The
Passion' is too focused on violence is more generally of the quality of extremism.
The reader may well ask what this issue of extremism has to do with Aristotle's
distinction between the good man and the good citizen? They might also be
asking why I would argue that extremism as a trait of an art form should not
be a sufficient reason for rejecting it. We should question critiques of art
forms which make the quality of extremism their central focus for the simple
reason that American culture has a strong animosity towards extremism built
into it. Much energy expended on critiquing Gibson's film is not directed
against violence per se, but more fundamentally against extremism.
The instinctual dislike of extremism built into American culture has as its
anthropological purpose a political end: maintaining peace in civil
society. This antipathy is not, however, in the service of a deep moral good.
Stated in terms of Aristotle's distinction between the good man and the good
citizen, it is solely in the service of creating the good citizen defined
here generally as one who does not contribute to disorder and as one who does
his job well. But if we take Aristotle's distinction seriously, we must avoid
assuming that those who abide by the opinions and rules of their society,
e.g. the good citizen, are also living a deeply good life. We must also
carefully keep in mind that avoiding something bad is not the same thing as
pursuing something good. In other words, we must be wary that we are not simply
motivated to reject Gibson's film out of hand for the reason that aspects
of it but more importantly his own merely imagined or real intentions
fail to conform to human nature's tendency to privilege the good citizen
over the good man. We must be wary of this, because our own deepest ethical
value as Americans and Christians tells us to value the single good man over
the good citizen as one who lives according to the opinions of the group as
his highest ethical standard.
The discomfort with extremism becomes questionable as a basis for criticism
as it transitions from animating charges against activities and ideas which
are expressly political, and animates the same arguments which are directed
against representations of human types, ideas, actions which are expressly
moral. For the simple fact is that the events which make up those lives which
we take to be representative of the good man as the best human type as well
as the worst types, have as a key trait the presence in the extreme of both
moral goodness and immoral, or evil, qualities. If we make extremism the criterion
for judging an artful representation of a peak human life, which I am arguing
many critics of Gibson's 'Passion' are doing, we end up applying criteria
of judgment which are properly limited to judging the citizen, e.g the person
as a member of the group. But if we do this, we apply a standard which is
not meant to be applied to the situation being represented by the art. In
doing so, we not only risk failing to live up to our highest ideals but actually
present socially defined opinions about the just and the good as if they
were the best human beings are capable of. We betray our own committment
to the idea that there is an objective good which transcends the opinion of
the group; which is not subject to the whim of a numerical majority. When
we do this, we betray our own highest moral ideals. We do this when we treat
a "second best" - e.g. the maintenance of social and political order
and material well being by excoriating any artful representation of a human
type for the reason that it has the quality of extremism within it.
When we Americans in particular react viscerally to a provocative representation
of Jesus' passion, we have to be careful to consider whether our reaction
is not primarily grounded in the dominant opinions of our society. We
need to keep in mind that the aims of the film are not the same as the founders
of our society: the aims of the film are not to maintain social order, increase
wealth, or avoid chaos, but to represent a peak human type. The
point is not to say that the maintenance of social order and the avoidance
of chaos are unworthy ends, but that they are not enough to make our good
in any deep sense. We need more than these. If we apply the litmus test
of moderation to Gibson's representation of Jesus' passion as the only
standard which counts, we risk diminishing the possibility that our souls
will be opened by that representation to a consciousness of a standard which
transcends the relativity of our own socially and politically mediated ideals.
The struggle between the two extremes of good and evil shows up starkly in
the best and worst human types, and we eviscerate such moral content if we
try to conform such lives to our social and political standards whose ends
must always be seen as separate and distinct from the deepest ends of true
religion. The aim of the good citizen is order and material well being, attained
largely by conforming to the dominant opinions of his society. The end of
the good man, on the other hand, goes further and deeper than such socially
defined goods.
The criticism that the film is too extreme given the presence of violence
misses a point, then, if it does not make a prior distinction between events
which are primary political, on the one hand, and those which have moral and
spiritual significance, on the other. In other words, we need to ask whether
a representation of an event in art involves us with the good man or the good
citizen. The suffering, death and resurrection of Jesus is not primarily a
political event. It is primarily a moral-spiritual event of world-historical
significance. Stated in terms of Aristotle's distinction, Jesus is a good
man par excellence. Within the cultural realm of the West in particular, he
is the source of a moral standard by which many profess to live. Whether he
is also judged as a good citizen depends on whether his vision is adopted
as the way of life of a whole society. For only in that case would the individual
as citizen live according to the ideals prescribed as good for the person
as such and not merely for the sake of political and economic well being.
Jesus must be judged as a bad citizen if we make the standards posited by
modern American society the only principles we live by. We risk saying
that these standards are the only standards we live by as soon as
we make the presence of extremism in an artful representation of the life
of Jesus the primary or exclusive issue we focus on. Again, the problem
is that if we make extremism the basis for rejecting the film, we make a political
standard the sole basis of our judgment of a symbolic representation which
is not about politics, but about a peak human life, and for many the
peak life. To say that Jesus' life, death and resurrection point to a standard
which is qualitatively higher than any politically and socially mediated standard
is at the same time in our culture to say that society is in need
of salvation, which it can receive when it attempts to take seriously the
vision of human relations expressed by Jesus' own way of living and dying.
By framing the issue this way, I mean to show how Jesus as an exemplar of
the good man, as well as the standards that come with this, are prior in importance
to those relating to the good citizen.
Christianity did have the effect of causing political revolutions over time,
even if ironically not many single individuals transform their hearts upon
hearing the message. In other words, somewhat ironically, the effect of Christianity
is to redefine the good citizen in Western civilization such that he lives
closer to also being a good man, defined, however, in a new way.
But this new way of living, a way in which the good citizen is so because
he is first and foremost as good citizen as defined by the example of Christ,
is the exception rather than the rule, and many still remain (merely) good
citizens, never attempting to become good men. Many live on the surface, following
rules and being influenced by the opinions of others, never living consistently
deeply moral and spiritual lives. Jesus gets at this contrast
when he points out that many (continue to) live by the law alone. Only
those who live in accordance with the law as well as its spirit become
open to salvation.
When critics were so quick to criticize a film which was notable for the presence
of a quality I believe American culture habituates us to instinctively dislike
- extremism - I am led to believe that our culture-critics are functioning
more like reflectors of our society, rather than as sources of insight into
any possible truth which art might represent to us. In this regard, these
critics reflect the dominant opinions of their own group and fail to live
according to anything more rigorous than opinions which just might help them
get ahead in a their field, a field which everyone knows is antagonistic to
. While I might expect the commentator writing on everyday social and political
events to limit his own discussion by the opinions of the larger society,
which we learn from the classics limits itself to the its understanding of
the bad, namely chaos and poverty, and positively to caring only about the
appearance of goodness and not its reality, I would expect more when they
are dealing with an art form which represents a peak moral type. I would expect
them to demonstrate awareness that they are in the presence of a conscious
representation of a deep moral good.
The Film as Reflective of Gibson's Life Struggle
The second point I wish to make concerning the film is that I believe we can receive more grace from watching it, and do it more justice, by consciously viewing it as the creation of a particular film-maker who has a particular life history - in this case Mel Gibson. I believe we get more moral and spiritual meaning from the film by viewing its creation as an attempt to put into the form of film Gibson's own inner struggle to live a more deeply moral and spiritual life by overcoming his own personal struggles and actively living more in line with his discernment of God's will. Regarding this point, my line of thinking is as follows: We can assume that Gibson has had in his life times when his ego was inflated and perhaps even out of control. All highly successful people have large egos. This is a given. He told us as much on the Diane Sawyer interview. We can also question whether he had been addicted. He hinted at this strongly as well in the same interview.How is Gibson's life relevant to both the distinction between the good man and good citizen as well as to my critique of those who dismiss the film because of the level of violence in it? Our society is known for its puritanism. The tendency to be judgmental which flows from this trait makes it difficult for us to be open to the reality of forgiveness and transformation which occurs when one seeks sincerely to live according to the vision of Christ. Aristotle follows Plato in subtly suggesting that society will be for the most part closed to deeper levels of reality. It is, again, the exception rather than the rule when one seeks sincerely to live spiritually enlightened - to be transformed. St. Augustine is an example of one who experienced inner struggle and transformation in seeking to live more deeply. He speaks of it in his 'Confessions', saying:
".... here was I still postponing the giving up of this world's happiness to devote myself to the search for that of which not the finding only but the mere seeking is better than to find all the treasures and kingdoms of men, better than all the body's pleasures, though they were to be had merely for a not. But I in my great worthlessness - for it was greater thus early - had begged you for chastity, saying "Grant me chastity and continence, but not yet". (Augustine, Confessions, Book 8)
In relation to Gibson as the creator of 'The Passion' we can replace "chastity" in this excerpt with serious problems such as ego, self-will or substance abuse. Any transformative experience Gibson may have experienced would have been properly characterized as extreme in comparison with the daily existence of most people. Such extreme experiences, e.g. such as religious conversions, find their locus within the single individual who at the moment of such experience is in isolation from society. Such a person in the ‘before' and right up to the moment of transformation is at risk of becoming both a bad man as well as a bad citizen. At the time of this experience this individual is at risk of losing his soul. But the other possibility, the one we are interested in here, is that the one who goes through a kind of bottom experience can transform in the direction of a way of living which is qualitatively morally and spiritually good. It is in passing successfully from the ‘before' to the ‘after' of this 'bottom experience' that he can get into a way of living which constituted 'being saved.' This ‘event' can and usually will take a whole lifetime, and it is not a life-changing event if it does not also entail the quality of being extreme. Such a transformative experience is a peak experience, if not the peak experience, of human existence. If and when one goes through this transformation, they will begin to live in a way which is not positively destructive of the conditions of his own life or political life, but which offers to society a deeper standard than that of the "second best" discussed above. In other words, the kind of transformation spoken of by both St. Augustine in his 'Confessions' and St. Paul when he speaks of 'the new man' suggest a possibility of offering society a much deeper standard than that which it lives by for the most part. Moreover, to the extent that it is possible for all persons as citizens to live in light of this new way, it becomes possible for the standard of the good citizen to be raised to the level of the standard of the good citizen. The reconciliation of the conflict between the good for man as a citizen and the good for man as a human person is the holy grail of political philosophy, and we can reasonably say that Christianity offers just such a reconciliation. When someone said that the problem with Christianity is that it has never been tried, he was saying in other words that the possibility for this reconciliation has never been taken up.
However...
While society will not consciously define the individual who goes through such an experience in order to live a better life as a bad citizen, nor will it acknowledge him outwardly as a good one either. In doing so, it will always also see itself as defining him as a bad person, for its standard is the only one it knows. The one who seeks sincerely to live according to a higher ethical standard than that of material well being and orderliness will be subtly but forcefully marginalized. This social phenomena - the marginalization of those who seek a deeper good as a result of a crisis in their lives - is central to Jesus' entire ministry. It is not so much the fact of marginalization which is significant, but the different stanceof the one who goes through a crisis towards what he experiences after his transformation as shallowness in the larger society's notion of morality, or goodness, on the one hand, and the stance of society towards this same individual. These stances are like mirror images of each other. If the evoloution of the stance of the single individual is limited to a reaction to his perception of the failure of society's definition of the good, he will not advance in his understanding of what makes for a good man, but simply shift around within the parameters of his socially alloted definition of the good citizen. The kind of reaction displayed towards Gibson's film suggests a similar kind of tension at play between one who went through a transformative experience, on the one hand, and society as representative of a desire to not rock the boat, on the other. Because Western society tends to reject as bad anything it views as extreme, we as individuals in that society are at risk of remaining closed to what Eric Voegelin refers to as the "depth dimension of reality". If we use the criterion of ‘extreme' alone as a basis for rejecting artful representations of ways of being in the world and towards reality, we risk shutting ourselves off from possible sources of the "most important things in life", including possibly even salvation itself. This is for the simple reason that anytime one moves towards a deeper moral good, especially in our society which as modern redefines the highest good in mundane, merely wordly terms, they are doing something extreme. (The contrasting ethical value being "Be in the world, but not of it...")
A Spiritual Cost of Our Society
There is, then, a two-fold danger that our present culture presents to us
as human beings first and citizens second: It tends to frame all
human reality in political terms and it strongly inclines us to ignore or
gloss over intense inner experience, including spiritual conversion. Some
have argued that the defacto religion in the United States is properly understood
as a civic religion. The word 'civic' gives us a clue that such a 'religion'
is more about creating good citizens than it is about good men. The unqualified
rejection of extremism discussed above is a significant part of that civic
religion. But such a ‘religion' is not a true religion, and it was never
intended to be. It is not in the service of any deep moral good or what the
tradition refers to as salvation. While order, material well being and a cooperative
spirit are praiseworthy traits for any society, they are not qualities which
by themselves enable us to lead a deeply spiritual life. Order and
material well being are necessary to a deeper good for the most part,
but neither avoiding those conditions destructive of these ends
nor positively seeking them is to be conflated with the deeper good itself.
To risk repetition, being a good citizen does not make one a good man, and
furthermore, the two are often in tension with each other.
Gibson's making of the film entails extremism, both within the content of
the artful representation of Jesus' suffering and dying as well as within
the fact that in making the film he likely experienced himself in the extreme
act of attempting to save his soul. We see such extreme interior experience
over and over again in philosophy and revelation which deals with peak human
experience. Augustine in nearly perfect writing gets across to the reader
the high tension of the conflict in his life, the tension of attempting to
move from the ‘before' - where he is at risk of losing his soul - to
a way of living in accord with God's will:
"For I had to but to will to go, in order not merely to go but to arrive:
I had not only to will to go - but to will powerfully and wholly, not to turn
and twist a will half-wounded this way and that, with the part that would
rise struggling against the part that would keep to the earth." (Augustine,
Confessions, Book 8)
Gibson, along with thousands of others, undergo each day inner
struggle not dissimilar to the one Augustine experienced in his life. Such
experiences are properly characterized as extreme. Here, extreme can mean
"simply and wholeheartedly seeking to live more deeply spiritual and
moral lives". Such a quality does not have to upset the social, political
and economic order in any physically destructive way, but if many adhere to
it, it will upset the order in a non-violent way by transforming the values
by which many individuals live.
Conclusion
The extreme tension between goodness, in the person of Jesus as one who willed
wholly to discern God's will, which entailed his willingly submitting to suffering,
and evil, represented in the violence he was subjected to, can function as
a concrete example to each person to show us how to live within the same tension
in our own lives. Each of us "finds" ourselves always and already
in the 'in-between' of the pull of our fallen nature, on the one hand, and
the intuition that we are called to live in the Light of Truth, on the other.
Christ shows us how to 'navigate', as it were, between these two extreme opposites
- one by which we save our lives, the other by which we die in the wrong
kind of way. While our culture is fearful of anything which is too real,
we who hope to live truly spiritual lives cannot avoid the concreteness and
contingency of our own life situation. Each of our "situations"
calls for a response which is more than being a cooperative member of society.
It calls us to live in the light of the truth, doing so in a way which respects
others and never causes physical harm to the institutions of society.