Dreams and possibilities
SHIRLEY ROBIN LETWIN
If one asks what is a perfect man, a com- plete, flawless, and unchanging man, the answer can only be: a flawless man is not a man, for all men change and die. Any dis- cussion of how to make human beings per- fect must therefore conclude either that they can become other than human or that per- fection is not a relevant standard for manag- ing human life. Once perfection is disposed of, the field is opened for an infinite variety of questions about how men shape their lives, choose aspirations, use standards of conduct, understand choice and responsibility, reach moral agreement and tolerate variety.
But these are not the questions that con- cern Professor Passmore in his enterprising study* of reflection on human excellence during three thousand years beginning with the Greeks and ending with Hair and Mc- Luhan. About each of the writers, Passmore asks: What was his image of a perfect being? Did he think that men could achieve perfection and how? The story he tells. though highly readable and full of interest, is constrained by his questions.
Men have been beguiled since the Greeks. Passmore finds, by an ideal of human per- fection that is in fact inhuman, metaphysical. and pertinent only to a god. This he calls the 'classical ideal' because he attributes its first complete statement to Plato and Aristotle. Despite its persistence, the 'classical ideal' met some opposition even in the ancient world from the Roman Stoics. who offered a less taxing sort of godlike perfection by em- phasising 'rationality rather than absolute self-sufficiency', 'civic responsibility, impar- tiality and justice', rather than 'absolute de- tachment'. But active resistance was left for Christianity which was saved from succumb- ing to the neo-Platonic temptation of de- humanised perfection by three talismans. Their Hebraic heritage led Christians to be- lieve in a personal God, infinitely distant from man, whose divinity was not to he absorbed by the human mind as Plato's Forms could be. Because of their antipathy to Gnosticism. which promised that men could break the bonds of the flesh with the help of a higher knowledge, Christians de- nied that men could escape the flesh alto- gether. And third, some Christians were immunised to the lure of perfection by the belief that man is so guilty and sinful that not even Christ's sacrifice could save him. Despite all this there existed a tradition of Christian perfectibilism, but Christians were mainly absorbed by the problem of discover- ing how men could believe both that they were utterly dependent on God and that they should endeavour to be good. The revival of the classical temptation by modern perfectibilism begins, according to Passmore, from the Renaissance return to the ideal of the city-state, which suggested *The Perfectibility of Man John Passmore {Duckworth 84s)
that the perfection of mankind mattered more than the perfection of individuals.
Again another highly reasonable alternative. that emphasised moral perfection rather than the absurd notion of absolute perfection, was proposed by Charron, Shaftesbury, and Hume. But they were succeeded by schemers bent on perfecting men by social action, whether of an economic or genetic sort, and such schemes grew more and more fantastical until we arrive at the end of the story, at the mystical perfectibilist's attack on humanity. Its most recent incarnation is in the writings of Norman Brown and McLuhan as well as in Hair, which would immure men in a degenerate world of mindless 'allatonceness' where all distinctions, whether of time, space, or sex disappear, where there is no distracting individuality and no care, only a cosy feeling of womblike comfort wrongly called 'love'. Though this latest perfectibilism prefers to escape the human by moving down to the subhuman rather than up to divinity, it is the same temptation luring men into a condition that 'knows nothing of love, or science, or art, or craft, of family and friends, of dis- covery, of pride in work', and promises in- stead 'eternity', `order', or 'unalloyed enjoy- ment'.
It is refreshing and encouraging to read Passmore's painstaking plea for civilisation and his shrewd insights into some of its con- temporary enemies. But he has diagnosed the disease wrongly. In the first place he has neg- lected the difference between a principle and a blueprint, a rule and a command, a con- sideration and a goal. How this leads him astray, both as an intellectual historian and as a defender of human excellence, can he seen most easily in his discussion of his arch- villain, Aristotle, though others as well, heroes along with villains, fare no better when faced by the two questions he sets them.
That perfection involves completion but that a human life is completed only by death, Aristotle made plain as emphatically and pro- foundly as anyone ever has. Perfection. he would agree with Passmore, is a metaphysical idea, but Aristotle distinguished it sharply from ethical ideas even though the two were not for him unconnected. When considering ethics. Aristotle asked quite another question from the one imposed by Passmore: what considerations should enter into the choices made by men wanting to live a good human life? Makers of blueprints for a perfect man deny precisely what Aristotle emphasised— that a great variety of purposes and activities may enter into a good human life, that they can be combined in many different ways, that the human problem cannot be solved by one simple recipe for the right life but only by discovering coherent and balanced ways of arranging these purposes and activities.
Passmore ignores the whole of Aristotle's Ethics except for a few passages in Book x, on contemplation, which he misinterprets. What contemplation meant to Aristotle is not, as Passmore has it, an absence of activity but a kind of activity, parallel to practical and intellectual activities. It differs from the others in that it is pursued for the sake of engaging in it. not for any benefits that it might bring. It requires men to abandon or neglect social life and to take no thought for consequences. This is difficult to do even partially and impossible to do absolutely as Aristotle says explicitly. That is why he calls contemplation 'godlike', meaning that it is beyond the powers of men.
By assimilating all discussions of what con- stitutes a good human life to the manufac- ture of blueprints for a perfect man (which some of his writers were truly doing) Pass- more accedes to a dangerous confusion. Cur- rent dread of conformity assumes that every standard or principle or tradition of moral behaviour imposes a moral straitjacket. Morality rightly understood, however, does not oblige us to reach a particular goal. imitate a given pattern, obey a set of com- mands. These all involve concrete decisions. of which a great variety are not only com- patible with but must follow from applying moral principles in different circumstances. Moral principles leave every sort of room for the development of a unique personality. After all, the Polls about which Aristotle was reflecting prided itself on the variety of per- sonality within it. Those who feel that the only way to express their personalities is to emigrate into the wilderness of barbaric iconoclasm are mistaking principles for com- mands and confusing considerations in choices with recipes for perfection. It was just such a disposition to confuse morality with patterns for virtue, rather than `perfect- ibilism', that Hume opposed.
Nor is it true, as Passmore appears to assume, that commending any aspiration be- yond human reach, such as Aristotle's con- templative activity, is a mark of 'perfectibil- ism'. The great source of the 'care' that Passmore rightly takes to be the energy of human life is the tension between dreams and possibilities, the struggle to find an adequate aspiration without succumbing to martyrdom or lunacy. And beyond the con- siderations that enter into ordinary decisions about how to live, there is a sort of aspira- tion that only some men can dare even to entertain, which must come into conflict with all other human considerations. Between decency and perfection lie various degrees of grandeur and it is of the essence of grandeur to attempt what cannot be achieved, to know that it is so. and to attempt nevertheless. Such attempts require unusual fortitude. If an unwillingness to bear any anxiety is coupled with a yearning to escape the dull- ness of ordinary practical life, then the only alternative left is the subhuman world of Hair, Brown and McLuhan. which offers a retreat from the practical and ordinary—in comfort.
Our democratic demonology forbids us to recognise that while grand. 'godlike' aspira- tions are the best aspirations, they are not fit for all men. The weak and the tame had better keep to small dreams. But this does not oblige them to condemn all bolder dreaming. Although heroes and saints make trouble, without them ordinary life would become drab and base. This is what we are told by some of the reflections on godlike men that Passmore dismisses as perfect- ibilism. But whatever one's aspirations, this engaging book is especially welcome at a time when so much intellectual effort is dir- ected at destroying all aspirations.
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