Why Moralize Upon It?

Franklin Delano Roosevelt famously declared that, “the greatest duty of a statesman is to educate.”[1] The central claim of this book is that it is not only statesmen who can (and should) educate a democratic citizenry, but also novelists and filmmakers. This book’s title is drawn from Melville’s “Benito Cereno.” Near the end of this novella, after putting down a rebellion of enslaved Africans at sea, the American captain Amasa Delano suggests that “the past is passed,” and thus there is no need to “moralize upon it.”[2]  Melville suggests, though, that it is crucial for Americans to critically examine American history and American political institutions. Americans must “moralize” – they must, that is, lead what Socrates called the examined life; otherwise, they may be blind to the existence of injustices and self-destructive practices which will ultimately undermine democracy.[3] To put it another way, without “moralizing” upon the past and the present, Americans will be blind to the ways in which they have fallen short of their own highest ideals. Novels and films, I argue, can play a crucial role in helping citizens undertake the kind of moral reflection that democratic citizens must engage in if they are to not only preserve their political community, but also render it “forever worthy of the saving,” as Lincoln put it.[4]

While novelists and filmmakers can serve as democratic educators, the best of them usually do so not by offering didactic tales with straightforward messages, but rather by providing more ambiguous and tragic stories that encourage readers to think for themselves, just as citizens need to do when they grapple with thorny political questions.  Not unlike Socratic dialogues, the works of fiction examined in this book proceed by exploring difficult questions rather than by providing any easy answers. Because these works have an ambiguous, nuanced, and tragic outlook, they can help train the citizen-reader to think through the moral complexities of the political issues on which a democratic citizenry must render judgment.

In addition to arguing that novels and films can help educate citizen-readers by encouraging them to explore – that is, to “moralize upon” – political questions that resist any simple answers, I also argue that some of the most profound American thinking about the nature of democratic leadership has come not through treatises or essays, but rather through novels. The novels that I examine explore important questions about the role of leaders in a democratic regime, including: How can democratic leaders best promote political freedom, such that their followers are active citizens rather than passive subjects? Can politicians win power and accomplish their goals if they appeal to what Lincoln called “the better angels of our nature” rather than to potentially dangerous passions?[5] Is C.S. Lewis correct that those leaders who have “stepped outside traditional morality” in order to gain “power” are unlikely to wield “that power benevolently”?[6] Or, is it inevitable that even the best democratic leaders will have “dirty hands” insofar as important political ends sometimes cannot be achieved without the use of morally questionable means? While these questions have been raised by political philosophers, I argue that American novelists have also been able to help citizen-readers explore these crucial questions in profound and engaging ways.

Chapter One of this book provides a comparative analysis of Melville’s “Benito Cereno” and the film Captain Phillips. Both the novella and the film were based on true stories in which black Africans seized command of a ship that had been led by a white captain. In both cases, Americans eventually used force to suppress the Africans and to restore (a sort of) order. Both Melville and the makers of Captain Phillips used as source material a memoir written by an American captain – respectively, the real Amasa Delano and the real Captain Phillips. Whereas the original memoirs both present the Americans solely as heroes and the Africans as unalloyed villains, both Melville and the makers of Captain Phillips reshape the source material into a more multi-faceted narrative in order to raise critical questions about race, globalization, and American power. Instead of offering the reader and the viewer a story that simply celebrates the triumph and the virtue of American power, both Melville and the makers of Captain Phillips offer a far more tragic and complex tale. Ultimately, both works suggest that if American power is deployed in a way that restores the status quo but ignores underlying injustices, then more trouble will always loom on the horizon.

In Chapter Two, I turn to another novel which explores questions about racial justice: namely, Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man. I argue that the novel explores the questions: What does it mean to be free? Can one be free if one withdraws from the world, or does freedom require political engagement? And, how can democratic leaders best promote freedom? I argue that one can discern in the novel a highly valuable theory of democratic leadership that consists of the following three parts. First, because they are cognizant of the political capacities of ordinary people, democratic leaders try to foster political freedom by helping their followers become visible political actors with an equal voice. Second, rather than pursue their own predetermined goals, democratic leaders seek to advance goals that they share with their fellow citizens. Third, democratic leaders strive to reaffirm and reapply what Ellison called “the principle on which the country was built” in order to move the citizenry further toward “the democratic ideal.”[7]

In Chapter Three, I discuss in more depth the tripartite theory of democratic leadership that I find in Invisible Man by applying it to Robert Penn Warren’s All the King’s Men. I argue that Willie Stark succeeds in upholding one of the three elements of democratic leadership delineated in the previous chapter, but Stark fails to uphold the other two. More specifically, I argue that Willie Stark does seek to advance goals that he holds in common with his followers; to put it in terms used by Nancy Fraser, Willie seeks to provide both “redistribution” and “recognition” to downtrodden people who are often disparaged as “hicks.”[8] On the other hand, Willie fails to partake of the other two aspects of democratic leadership which I find in Invisible Man, for Willie does little to promote political freedom amongst the citizenry, and he makes little effort to rearticulate and reapply the principles of the American founding. In this chapter, I also discuss how All the King’s Men explores the question of whether a leader’s use of morally troubling means can be justified by noble ends. The novel does not provide a single, definitive answer, but instead provides multiple perspectives on the question. Ultimately, the novel suggests that even though political questions (including questions about ends and means) are often rife with complexity, ambiguity, and uncertainty, citizens still have the responsibility to make political judgments and to engage in political life. Hence, just as the Invisible Man decides to leave behind the “hibernation” of his underground apartment in order to become a responsible political actor, so, too, does Jack Burden of All the King’s Men leave behind what he calls “the Great Sleep” in order to act and to make political judgments in “the convulsion of the world.”[9]

In Chapter Four, I examine another novel in which the protagonist (in this case, Thomas Fowler) moves from passivity to political commitment: namely, The Quiet American. The titular character, Alden Pyle, is “innocent” insofar as he refuses to consider the possibility that American power might be wielded in damaging ways; like Amasa Delano, he refuses to “moralize upon” his actions and thus refuses to acknowledge his complicity in wrongdoing against Vietnamese civilians. When Fowler makes the decision to “eliminate” Pyle, though, the reader is likely to be left unsettled, just as readers of “Benito Cereno” and viewers of Captain Phillips are likely to be left unsettled by the deaths of the Africans in the novella and in the film.[10] I argue that The Quiet American offers the reader both a defense of Fowler’s decision to eliminate Pyle, as well as a critique of Fowler’s decision. The defense of Fowler’s choice jibes with Max Weber’s ideas on the inescapability of violence in political life, whereas the critique of Fowler’s choice resonates with Hannah Arendt’s ideas on the inability of violence to generate genuine political power. Like All the King’s Men, Greene’s novel insists that even though political questions can be almost dizzyingly complex, political judgments must still be made; as Fowler is told near the end of the novel, “one has to take sides. If one is to remain human.”[11]

In the Conclusion to this book, I offer some remarks on how my ideas on political judgment are both similar to, but also different from, ideas found in the writings of Milan Kundera and Benjamin Barber. I also suggest that the conception of democratic leadership that was explored in Chapters Two and Three remains highly relevant in our present political moment.

Notably, most of the works of imaginative fiction that are examined in this book draw on – but in significant ways depart from – real events. As mentioned earlier, both “Benito Cereno” and Captain Phillips are inspired by actual memoirs, but both works differ in significant ways from their source material. Similarly, while All the King’s Men is inspired by the career of Governor Huey Long, “Warren always denied,” as John Burt notes, that the governor of his novel “was based in any very exact way upon Long himself.”[12] In the same vein, while there are clearly many similarities between the Communist Party of the 1930s and “the Brotherhood” in Invisible Man, Ellison denied that “the Brotherhood” was simply identical to the Communists.[13] Finally, while The Quiet American makes reference to the actual General Thé and to a number of real events, Greene insists in his dedication to the novel that, “This is a story and not a piece of history….”[14] In short, the literary (and cinematic) works discussed in this book may draw on historical events, but in each case the author (or filmmaker) re-envisions and molds the historical data into a story that succeeds in probing fundamental political questions in complex and illuminating ways. To put it another way, by departing from the source material, the authors are able to create what Warren calls “tales…shot through with philosophy.”[15]

The way in which all of these authors begin with empirical facts but then re-shape these facts into profound tales can be linked to Sheldon Wolin’s understanding of the “imaginative dimension” of political theory. Wolin notes that, “the picture of society given by most political theorists is not a ‘real’ or literal one.” Rather than simply try to describe empirical reality, the canonical theorists “believed that fancy” can “sometimes permit us to see things that are not otherwise apparent.”  Like Wolin’s political theorist, the novelists examined in this book each use “fancy” in an effort “to illuminate, to help us become wiser about political things.”[16] As I have suggested, the novels discussed in this book aim “to help us become wiser about political things” not by conveying any simple messages to the reader, but rather by helping the reader explore difficult but crucial questions about political life.

Significantly, the main characters of the novels that I examine cannot simply be labelled “good guys” or “bad guys;” instead, they exhibit a combination of noble and base impulses. This is true, for example, of Babo and Amasa Delano in “Benito Cereno”, of Willie Stark and Jack Burden in All the King’s Men, and of Thomas Fowler and Alden Pyle in The Quiet American. In a 2015 empirical study regarding how Hollywood films “affect an audience’s perceptions of the government,” the political scientist Michelle Pautz suggests that films in which “the ‘good guys’ and ‘bad guys’ are easier to discern” may “have a greater influence” on audience’s political opinions than films in which “good and evil are not as easily distinguishable.”[17] I find plausible Pautz’s claim that political films which present one-dimensional heroes and villains may have a greater impact on audience’s political attitudes than films which offer a multi-faceted moral understanding of the world – at least in the short-term, and at least as measured in a questionnaire. However, if the goal of a filmmaker (or novelist) is not simply to indoctrinate (or simply to entertain), but rather to educate a democratic citizenry, then this can best be accomplished through novels and films which are marked by a great deal of moral complexity.

Moreover, it may very well be especially important in our current age of polarization for readers to encounter novels and movies in which the main characters resist any facile categorization as “good guys” or “bad guys.” Writing after the death of President George H.W. Bush, the columnist Frank Bruni argued that,

we do seem to be getting worse at complexity. At nuance. At allowing for the degree to which virtue and vice commingle in most people, including our leaders, and at understanding that it’s not a sign of softness to summon some respect for someone with a contrary viewpoint and a history of mistakes. It’s a sign of maturity. And it just might be a path back to a better place.[18]

Bruni explains that he was prompted to write his column after the television producer Bryan Behar tweeted that many Twitter users had “unfollowed” Behar after he had tweeted words of praise for Bush. According to Bruni, those who chose to unfollow Behar

demonstrated the transcendent curse of these tribal times: Americans’ diminishing ability to hold two thoughts at once. Bush has indelible stains on his record. He also has points of light. …He showed folly and he showed wisdom, cowardice and courage, aloofness and kindness.  …[T]oo many of us tend to interpret events, political figures and issues in all-or-nothing, allies-or-enemies, black-and-white terms, blind to shades of gray.[19]

Because of their moral complexity, the works of fiction examined in this book can certainly help train citizens to “hold two thoughts at once,” and encountering these works can also help to erode the current tendency to view political life in “black-and-white terms” rather than “shades of gray….” Thus, in at least some small way, a serious engagement with these works may educate the citizen-reader to be less likely to engage in the demonization of political opponents.  Of course, it would be absurd to claim that novels or films can serve as a panacea for all of the political ills of our era. However, it is my claim that works of fiction such as those examined in this book can at least help provide democratic citizens with the kind of education that is necessary to point us towards what Bruni calls “a path back to a better place” – a place that is less polarized, and thus a place where citizens seek common ground in order to solve common problems.

As another example of how Americans should today resist thinking about politics in “black-and-white terms” and should instead remember the importance of “hold[ing] two thoughts at once,” consider the question of how Thomas Jefferson should today be remembered.  I would argue that, on the one hand, we must remember that Jefferson’s record on slavery and race was often terrible; for example, as Rogers Smith has recently noted, Jefferson offered “repulsive speculations” about alleged natural differences between the races in his Notes on Virginia.[20] On issues surrounding race, then, there is much in Jefferson’s record that must be condemned. At the same time, though, we must also remember that the Declaration of Independence which Jefferson drafted helped to inspire Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Frederick Douglass, Martin Luther King, Jr., and many others to fight for the extension of rights and opportunities to groups of Americans who were once excluded from full citizenship. Leaders such as Douglass, Stanton, and King exemplify what I call the third aspect of Ellison’s tripartite theory of democratic leadership – namely, the idea that democratic leaders must strive to reaffirm and reapply “the principle on which the country was built;” in other words, democratic leaders must strive to move the nation further towards the embodiment of the ideals found in the Declaration of Independence.[21]

As we have seen, Rogers Smith is, on the one hand, highly critical of the exclusionary aspects of Jefferson’s thought; at the same time, Smith insists – correctly, in my view – that “our best American tradition” has as its “core message” the idea that “Americans should see themselves and their political system as dedicated to realizing, over time and in prudent fashion, secure enjoyment of the basic rights of the Declaration of Independence, for all people, of all colors, everywhere.”[22] Smith thus fully acknowledges and sharply criticizes the deeply troubling (and sometimes even “repulsive”) aspects of Jefferson’s thought, but at the same time he suggests that American identity, at its finest, is constituted by a shared “quest to realize the principles of the Declaration in the ways Lincoln stated so powerfully.”[23] If Bruni is correct, though, that many Americans today “do seem to be getting worse at complexity,” then there is a risk today that some Americans may allow their moral outrage over Jefferson’s failings to completely obscure Jefferson’s remarkable achievement in expressing ideas that in the past have bonded Americans together and inspired them to further improve their nation. Moreover, if moral outrage over Jefferson’s flaws renders us unable to honor Jefferson’s accomplishment in drafting the Declaration – or, if we end up viewing the Declaration through a purely cynical lens that finds in its famous words only hypocrisy – then in the future we may be less inspired to continue to collectively pursue what Smith calls “the historic moral project” of seeking to advance the rights of all people.[24]

In recent years, a number of state Democratic Party organizations have chosen to remove not only Andrew Jackson’s name but also Jefferson’s name from their annual “Jefferson-Jackson” dinners.[25] Similarly, the city of Charlottesville recently chose to no longer celebrate Jefferson’s birthday as an official holiday.[26] To be sure, there are some powerful arguments to be made in favor of these changes. At the same time, these changes could also be seen as a sign that some Americans are indeed viewing “political figures and issues in all-or-nothing, allies-or-enemies, black-and-white terms, blind to shades of gray.” The reading of novels can serve as a counter-weight to this tendency, for the best novels portray their characters not in cartoonish terms, but rather in nuanced terms which remind us that “virtue and vice commingle in most people.”

In my view, novels such as those examined in this book can help to counter-act what the authors of a recent report from “The More in Common” initiative called, the “powerful polarization ecosystem” in contemporary America “that thrives off of outrage and division.” The authors of the report argue that “[t]raditional media, social media platforms, friend networks, political candidates and consultants benefit from dividing Americans, exaggerating disagreements and inciting conflict.” [27] Novels, I believe, can help to counter these dangerous tendencies in a number of ways. First, while partisans in our age of polarization often seem to believe that if the opposing party were to be vanquished then all would finally be well in America, novels serves to remind us that the human condition which we all share is an essentially tragic condition, which means that all proposed solutions to political problems come with some cost, and no political platform – and no single leader, whether of the left or of the right – will ever be able to ameliorate all of our social and political problems. Moreover, whereas partisans today are often filled with self-righteousness, novels teach humility and generosity towards others insofar as they remind us that all of us – even the most noble – are inevitably flawed. Finally, whereas partisans are encouraged by the “polarization ecosystem” to think in a one-sided manner and to believe that their own party is in possession of the whole truth about political life, novels remind us of the complexities and the ambiguities inherent in political and moral questions. In short, if the health of democracy in America is today compromised by the prevalence of political “debates” – including those which take place over social media – in which sanctimonious partisans stake out facile positions and demonize and caricature those with opposing views, then the reading of novels such as the ones discussed in this book can serve as a powerful antidote.

The kind of nuanced democratic education that one gleans from great novels, then, may be particularly necessary at a time when the media-landscape is often dominated by superficial “viral moments,” “sound-bites,” and social media posts. It is, therefore, unfortunate that in recent years there has been a tendency in some American public schools to deemphasize the teaching of novels in order to make more room for the teaching of nonfiction works. In their effort to adhere to “Common Core” standards, some school districts have reportedly decided that sometimes, instead of reading an entire novel, students should simply read excerpts.[28] However, if novels are to succeed in teaching us that political questions are far more rich and multi-faceted than one would realize if one only paid attention to, say, social media, then simply reading portions of novels is woefully insufficient. As I have suggested, novels, at their best, help their readers explore the complexities and the nuances involved in moral and political questions, and this cannot be achieved merely through the use of excerpts. Moreover, while nonfiction works often try to advance a specific argument, novels just as often raise questions and then enable the reader to consider a multiplicity of possible answers, allowing readers to choose for themselves. If I am able to demonstrate in this book how great novels can educate democratic citizens by helping them to think through vital political questions – including questions about the proper place of both responsible citizenship and bold leadership in a democracy – then I will consider this book to be a success.

Notes

[1] Franklin Delano Roosevelt, “Commonwealth Club Address” (September 23, 1932), Teaching American History, http://teachingamericanhistory.org/library/document/commonwealth-club-address/.

[2] Herman Melville, “Benito Cereno,” in Melville’s Short Novels: Authoritative Texts, Contexts, Criticism, ed. Dan McCall (New York: W.W. Norton & Co., [1855] 2002), 101.

[3] At his trial, Socrates declared that, “the unexamined life is not worth living for men.” See Plato, “Apology,” in Five Dialogues: Euthyphro, Apology, Crito, Meno, Phaedo, Second Edition, ed. G.MA. Grube (Indianapolis: Hackett, 2002), 41.

[4] Abraham Lincoln, “Speech on the Kansas-Nebraska Act at Peoria, Illinois” (October 16, 1854), in Lincoln: Speeches and Writings: 1832-1858, ed. Don Fehrenbacher (New York: Library of America, 1989), 340.

[5] Abraham Lincoln, First Inaugural Address (March 4, 1861), in Lincoln: Speeches and Writings: 1859–1865, ed. Don Fehrenbacher (New York: Library of America, 1989), 224.

[6] C.S. Lewis, The Abolition of Man (New York: Simon & Schuster, [1944] 1996), 75.

[7] Ralph Ellison, Invisible Man (New York: Vintage, [1952] 1995), 574; Ralph Ellison, “Introduction to the Thirtieth-Anniversary Edition of Invisible Man,” in The Collected Essays of Ralph Ellison: Revised and Updated, ed. John F. Callahan (New York: The Modern Library, [1982] 2003), 487.

[8] Nancy Fraser, “From Redistribution to Recognition? Dilemmas of Justice in a ‘Post-Socialist’ Age,” New Left Review 212 (July/August 1995): 68-93; Robert Penn Warren, All the King’s Men (New York: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, [1946] 1996), 142.

[9] Ellison, Invisible Man, 13; Warren, All the King’s Men, 284, 661.

[10] Graham Greene, The Quiet American (New York: Penguin, [1955] 2002), 163.

[11] Ibid., 174.

[12] John Burt, “Robert Penn Warren’s All the King’s Men,” in The Oxford Encyclopedia of American Literature, Volume 4, ed. Jay Parini (New York: Oxford University Press, 2004), 305.

[13] For example, in an address at West Point in 1969, Ellison said in regards to the Brotherhood: “I did not want to describe an existing Socialist or Communist or Marxist political group….” See Ralph Ellison, “On Initiation Rites and Power: A Lecture at West Point” (March 26, 1969), in The Collected Essays of Ralph Ellison: Revised and Updated, ed. John F. Callahan (New York: The Modern Library, 2003), 542.

[14] Greene, The Quiet American, Dedication Page.

[15] Robert Penn Warren, “All the King’s Men: The Matrix of Experience,” in Robert Penn Warren: Critical Perspectives, ed. Neil Nakadate (Lexington: The University of Kentucky Press, [1964] 1981), 57.

[16] Sheldon Wolin, Politics and Vision: Continuity and Innovation in Western Political Thought (Princeton: Princeton University Press, [1960] 2016), 18. In an earlier article, I made reference to these passages from Politics and Vision while discussing Franz Kafka’s influence on Hannah Arendt’s understanding of totalitarianism. See Brian Danoff, “Arendt, Kafka, and the Nature of Totalitarianism,” Perspectives on Political Science 29, no. 4 (Fall 2000): 217. In that article, I argued that, perhaps surprisingly, Arendt does not suggest that Kafka’s texts are open to a multiplicity of interpretations. In contrast to the way in which Arendt read Kafka, I argue in this book that the novels which I examine are often rife with ambiguity and often proceed by raising questions rather than by supplying answers.

[17] Michelle C. Pautz, “Argo and Zero Dark Thirty: Film, Government, and Audiences,” in PS: Political Science 48 (January 2015): 120, 127.

[18] Frank Bruni, “George Bush and the Obituary Wars,” New York Times, December 4, 2018, https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/04/opinion/george-hw-bush-obituary.html.

[19] Ibid.

[20] Rogers Smith, “Lockean Liberalism and American Constitutionalism in the Twenty-First Century: The Declaration of Independence or ‘America First’?”, American Political Thought: A Journal of Ideas, Institutions, and Culture 8, no. 2 (Spring 2019): 287.

[21] When Stanton drafted “The Seneca Falls Declaration of Sentiments and Resolutions,” which called for the right to vote as well as other rights for women, she used the Declaration of Independence as her model. See Elizabeth Cady Stanton, “The Seneca Falls Declaration of Sentiments and Resolutions” (1848), in American Political Thought, eds. Isaac Kramnick and Theodore Lowi (New York: Norton, 2008), 529-533. Four years later, Frederick Douglass declared in a now famous speech that, “for revolting barbarity and shameless hypocrisy, America reigns without a rival,” due to the institution of slavery in America. At the same time, Douglass had nothing but praise for what he called “the great principles of political freedom and of natural justice” found in the Declaration of Independence. Moreover, near the end of the speech, he expressed the “hope” that the “great principles” of the Declaration would help bring about the eradication of slavery. See Frederick Douglass, “What to the Slave Is the Fourth of July?” (July 5, 1852), Teaching American History, http://teachingamericanhistory.org/library/document/what-to-the-slave-is-the-fourth-of-july/. Speaking at the Lincoln Memorial one hundred years after the Emancipation Proclamation, Martin Luther King, Jr. invoked the Declaration of Independence as he called on the nation to strive for racial equality. See Martin Luther King, Jr., “I have a Dream” (1963), in American Political Thought, eds. Isaac Kramnick and Theodore Lowi (New York: Norton, 2008), 1317-21.

[22] Rogers Smith, “Lockean Liberalism and American Constitutionalism,” 284.

[23] Ibid., 288.

[24] Ibid., 293.

[25]See, for example, Ashley Southall, “Jefferson-Jackson Dinner Will Be Renamed,” New York Times, August 8, 2015, https://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/09/us/jefferson-jackson-dinner-will-be-renamed.html.

[26] See Morgan Gstalter, “Charlottesville Swaps Holiday Celebrating Thomas Jefferson’s Birthday for Day Observing Emancipation of Slaves,” The Hill, July 3, 2019, https://thehill.com/homenews/state-watch/451469-charlottesville-swaps-holiday-celebrating-thomas-jeffersons-birthday-for.

[27] See Daniel Yudkin, Stephen Hawkins, and Tom Dixon, “The Perception Gap: How False Impressions are Pulling Americans Apart” (New York: More in Common, 2019). The words that I quote are drawn not from the report itself, but from the webpage on “The Perception Gap” that provides an overview of the report. See: https://perceptiongap.us/. (The full report is also available at this website.)

[28] See Kate Taylor, “English Class in Common Core Era: ‘Tom Sawyer’ and Court Opinions,” New York Times, June 19, 2005, https://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/20/nyregion/english-class-in-common-core-era-nonfiction-joins-the-classics.html; Ariel Sacks, “Why We Shouldn’t Teach Literature With Excerpts,” Education Week, June 26, 2019, https://www.edweek.org/tm/articles/2019/06/26/why-we-shouldnt-teach-literature-with-excerpts.html; Peter Greene, “Common Core Testing and the Fracturing of Literature,” Forbes, November 9, 2018, https://www.forbes.com/sites/petergreene/2018/11/09/common-core-testing-and-the-fracturing-of-literature/#4253c5cf13f1.

This excerpt is from Brian Danoff’s Why Moralize Upon It? Democratic Education Through American Literature and Film (Lexington Books, 2020). The review is available here.

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