Free Will, Fortune, and the Soul: Humanist Perspectives on Social Equality and Human Freedom

Jonathan Banda MEHU 6375 - Humanism and the Humanities November 1, 2013

1 Introduction Despite the stark imbalances that exist in contemporary society, the principles of human equality and freedom persist as an ideal of liberal democracy. Hence, President Barack Obama, in his 2013 inaugural speech, declared: We are true to our creed when a little girl born into the bleakest poverty knows that she has the same chance to succeed as anybody else, because she is an American; she is free, and she is equal, not just in the eyes of God but also in our own.1 These notions of freedom and equality reflect a particular view of humanity that judges individual worth on the basis of an internal substantive quality that transcends social class, economic status, and cultural distinctions. The Renaissance humanist movement, in its various iterations, had a profound impact on the field of Western thought, and its tradition continues to influence the contemporary worldview. In reviewing the humanist (and humanist-influenced) works of Erasmus, Montaigne, Machiavelli (The Prince), and Shakespeare (Hamlet), one finds a diverse body of opinions regarding social class and the worth of man. While the humanist endeavor itself was an elite project, its reflections on social class and human freedom reveal an awareness of the untenable nature of the strict social structure that had characterized feudal society. Hence, it is not surprising that in reading humanist works of the 15th and 16th centuries, one finds the seeds of a worldview that resembles todays liberal concepts of human freedom and equality. In analyzing the relationship between the notions of social class, free will, and fortune in these works, however, a complex view of human capacity and freedom emerges. While free will was accepted as a part of the human condition, it was tempered with the recognition that agency is conditioned by external factors and by the very nature of man.

Barack H. Obama, Inaugural Address, Daily Compilation of Presidential Documents 00032 (January 21, 2013), http://www.gpoaccess.gov/presdocs/2010/DCPD-201000061.htm, italics mine.

Social class and the soul By the end of the 15th century, the studia humanitatis, based on the Roman and Greek classics, spread throughout Europe as the ideal curriculum for government officials, nobility, and the growing merchant class.2 As the traditional social hierarchy of medieval culture began to crumble, lateral and vertical social mobility challenged the historical distinction between classes of men. The ontological frame of the Middle Ages could no longer explain the world in which the Renaissance humanists lived. As Bouwsma notes: It had lost touch with reality and became irrelevant; its definitions and boundaries could no longer supply meaning to life. The result was a crisis of confidence in the significance of human knowledge.3 As a movement deeply concerned with the human condition, Renaissance humanism and the works it influenced could not ignore the growing social complexity of the time, which required a lens that could explain the relative fluidity of mans status in the world. Erasmus, the prince of the humanists, employed the classical tradition of rhetoric to maneuver the treacherous social and religious milieu of the Reformation, during which both Catholic and Protestant factions employed violence and force against those who were considered heretics. Erasmuss rhetoric of tolerance and the value it placed on persuasion over force involved a particular view of the human condition centered on an inner quality of the self instead of outward displays of devotion. Hence, he argued: Compulsion is incompatible with sincerity,

Robert E. Proctor, Defining the Humanities: How Rediscovering a Tradition Can Improve Our Schools: With a Curriculum for Todays Students, 2nd ed. (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1998), 126-127. 3 William Bouwsma, Anxiety and the Formation of Early Modern Culture, in After the Reformation: Essays in Honor of J.H. Hexter, ed. Barbara Malament (Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1980), 231.

3 and nothing is pleasing to Christ unless it is voluntary.4 This focus on interior motivation over appearance is integral to understanding how later humanists, like Montaigne, could propose that wealth and social standing were inconsequential to ones value as a human. However, Erasmus did not advocate for social equality of all men, and his tolerance did not call for religious liberty. Continuing the tradition of Cicero, who reserved the capacity for rational deliberation for the philosophers or wise men, Erasmus limited discussion of uncertain doctrines (such as free will) to the educated class, with appropriate decorum. Hence, his deployment of rhetoric in some ways reinforced social divisions. Deliberative rhetoric and appeals to emotion were reserved for preaching to the masses, which, in his view, were composed of the mixture of children, old men, maidens, and harlots, sailors, drivers, and cobblers, among whom are those who are not far removed from beasts as far as ability to learn is concerned.5 Appealing to emotions, he declared, is almost a necessity for the one who is speaking to the crude and unskilled multitude . . . because you can inflame the thick and sluggish crowd sooner than you can teach them, and you can drag them sooner than you can lead them.6 This view of the mostly illiterate, uneducated commoners represented a more traditional understanding of the lower classes rooted in the strict social boundaries of the feudal era. Other humanists, however, had very different perspectives of the common man. In the latter part of the 16th century, another privileged humanist, Michel de Montaigne, retired to his family castle near Bordeaux at the age of 38 to write what would become three

Gary Remer, Humanism and the Rhetoric of Toleration (University Park, PA: Penn State University Press, 2008), 48. 5 Ibid., 73. 6 Ibid.

4 volumes of essays; bestsellers for his time, it is reported that even Shakespeare bought a copy.7 Montaignes Essays cover much thematic ground, not only reflecting his personal dialogue with the classics, but also his interest in the affairs of the dynamic world around him. His stance on social issues, such as inequality and cultural relativism, seem distinctly modern in comparison to earlier humanists, yet they stem from the tradition of toleration exemplified by Erasmus. In reevaluating the status of man in the social order, Montaigne, like Erasmus, emphasized the value of mans inner essence over outward appearance or status. Therefore, when he advised a noblewoman on the education of children, he argued that if the pupil was not disposed to erudition, I see no other remedy, but that he be bound prentice in some good town to learn to make minced pies, though he were the son of a duke; according to Plato's precept, that children are to be placed out and disposed of, not according to the wealth, qualities, or condition of the father, but according to the faculties and the capacity of their own souls.8 The emphasis on the capacity of the soul over ones noble blood would have been revolutionary in the previous era, when titles alone determined ones place in society. Yet, in the late 16th century, social mobility and the rise of the mercantile class challenged the preeminence of noble blood in determining social worth; what is more, the exploration of the New World and increased dialogue with distant cultures necessitated a reevaluation of the manner in which individuals and populations were recognized and valued as humans. For many, these encounters with alien societies served to reinforce European cultural superiority over the savage others. Montaigne, however, used the cultural other to critique the injustices and illogical structures of European society. His essay

Jane Kramer, Me, Myself, and I, The New Yorker, September 7, 2009, accessed October 31, 2013, http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2009/09/07/090907fa_fact_kramer. 8 Michel de Montaigne, On the Education of Children, in The Essays of Montaigne, Complete, trans. Charles Cotton (1877; Project Gutenberg, 2006), book 1, chap. 25, accessed October 30, 2013, http://www.gutenberg.org/files/3600/3600-h/3600-h.htm.

5 On Cannibals sharply criticizes the human tendency to regard foreign customs and beliefs as barbaric and inferior, simply because, as he puts it, they wear no breeches.9 Montaigne used the perspective of his Brazilian visitors as a lens to condemn injustices in European society, noting their bewilderment that there were men with great wealth, whilst, in the meantime, their halves were begging at their doors, lean and half-starved with hunger and poverty.10 The gross inequality that concerned the visitors was accepted as part of every day life by European standards. Yet, Montaigne suggests that the visitors astonishment was also due to their cultural view of their fellow man as the half of one another.11 The individualism of European society, therefore, is also the subject of his critique. This individualism contributed to the normalization of inequality, as it reinforced social fragmentation. In this essay Of the Inequality Amongst Us, Montaigne explicitly asks how a mans worth should be valued. His response gets to the heart of the argument for human equality that would be taken up in future centuries: that all men are potentially equal by nature of a shared human quality that resides within. This view is reflected in later humanist-influenced work, such as Shakespeares Hamlet. In a more comical scene, Hamlet advises his uncle: Your fat king and your lean beggar is but variable servicetwo dishes, but to one table. Thats the end (IV.iii.2223). Perplexed, Claudius asks Hamlet what he means, and Hamlet responds: Nothing but to show you how a king may go a progress through the guts of a beggar (IV.iii.28-29). By unifying both king and beggar, Shakespeare presents death as the great equalizer, yet Hamlets words also imply a shared vulnerability that renders all humans equal. Similarly, Montaigne contends that

Michel de Montaigne, Of Cannibals, in The Essays of Montaigne, Complete, trans. Charles Cotton (1877; Project Gutenberg, 2006), book 1, chap. 30, accessed October 30, 2013, http://www.gutenberg.org/files/3600/3600-h/3600-h.htm. 10 Ibid. 11 Ibid.

6 at the level of the soul, there may be no difference between a king and a peasant. He argues that men should be evaluated on the basis of their inner qualities, asking: What soul has he? Is she beautiful, capable, and happily provided of all her faculties? Is she rich of what is her own, or of what she has borrowed? Has fortune no hand in the affair? Can she, without winking, stand the lightning of swords? Is she indifferent whether her life expire by the mouth or through the throat? Is she settled, even and content? This is what is to be examined, and by that you are to judge of the vast differences betwixt man and man. Therefore, on its own, noble blood does little to establish ones worth, because mans core essence, his spirit, and his mind, is what truly counts as value. Yet, of what value is a worthy soul if man is unable to control his circumstances, constantly at the whim of chance or predetermined events? Thus, humanist thought was also deeply concerned with the existence of free will. On free will and human agency The consistent treatment of free will in humanist discourse, exemplified by the published debates between Erasmus and Luther, reveals the importance of human agency in an era that appeared both uncertain and yet full of opportunity. As Bouwsma observes, it was a world in which, it now seemed, anything could happen.12 Erasmus took a more ambiguous position regarding free will, a religious concept he saw as adiaphoral. In his debate with Luther, Erasmus argued that free will alone was not enough to attain salvation, since human agency is still subordinate to Gods grace, but that it plays an essential role. As Remer notes: Erasmus finds highly probable (sans probabilis) the opinion of those who attribute most to grace and almost nothing to free will, yet do not deny it altogether, since this view allows man to study and

William Bouwsma, The Waning of the Renaissance, 1550-1640 (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2002), 137.

12

7 strive, but does not permit him to make any claims for his own powers.13 Thus, while affirming the probable existence of free will, Erasmus proposes a human agency that is radically conditioned by external forces, in this case, Gods grace. This concept of free will diverges significantly from its treatment by Pico della Mirandola in Oration on the Dignity of Man (1486), which is often praised as the manifesto of Renaissance humanism. While the Oration appears to extol the limitless possibilities of human agency, later humanist works presented a more tempered view of free will. Montaigne recognized the limitations of human nature. In On Virtue, he declares that while humans are capable of great acts, the human condition is very imperfect and defective in general.14 Yet, he does not subscribe to the doctrine of predestination. Instead, he reiterates the humanist perspective, stating: That which we see happen, does happen; but it might have happened otherwise: and God, in the catalogue of the causes of events which He has in His prescience, has also those which we call accidental and voluntary, depending upon the liberty. He has given our free will, and knows that we do amiss because we would do so."15 Man, therefore, is not a passive entity in the world; yet Montaigne suggests that society should temper its expectations of humanity and recognize its limits. The humanist discourse on free will clearly influenced the works of Shakespeare. In fact, the question of human agency is central to Hamlet. Caught in a complicated web of intrigue and obligations, Shakespeares characters appear paralyzed at times, due to both external restrictions and inner sentiments. From the beginning of the drama, Hamlets will is constrained, and his

Remer, Humanism and the Rhetoric of Toleration, 58. Michel de Montaigne, Of Virtue, in The Essays of Montaigne, Complete, trans. Charles Cotton (1877; Project Gutenberg, 2006), book 2, chap. 29, accessed October 30, 2013, http://www.gutenberg.org/files/3600/3600-h/3600-h.htm. 15 Ibid.
14

13

8 capacity to take any decisive action is debilitated. Ironically, his noble birth does not widen his field of possibility, but only leads to further restriction. In chiding Ophelia for believing that Hamlet might marry her, Laertes explains what is at stake with Hamlets decisions, declaring: His greatness weigh'd, his will is not his own; For he himself is subject to his birth: He may not, as unvalued persons do, Carve for himself; for on his choice depends The safety and health of this whole state; And therefore must his choice be circumscribed Unto the voice and yielding of that body Whereof he is the head.16 Thus, at this point in the play, Hamlet is bound not only by obligations to the state, but also the oath he made to his fathers ghost to avenge his murder. In attempting to liberate himself, however, Hamlet sets into motion events that lead to his own death. Such an outcome troubles the view of liberation and expansive free will as necessarily universal goods. However, perhaps Hamlet was truly free only in death. Bouwsma argues that Renaissance theater had an explicit moralizing purpose: to demonstrate by presenting so many selves . . . the multitude of choices made available by the diverse possibilities of the human condition.17 Therefore, perhaps the diverse crowds that joined in the theater to see Hamlet could read some of the circumstances of their own lives in Hamlets predicament. For in ones lived experience, constraints on free will abound. As Hamlet prepares for the fencing match that will end with his death, Horatio admonishes him to not engage in the match if he has misgivings. In response, Hamlet proclaims:

William Shakespeare, Hamlet, 2nd ed., ed. Cyrus Hoy (New York, NY: Norton, 1992), I.iii.17-24. References are to act, scene, and lines; subsequent references to this work are cited parenthetically in text. 17 Bouwsma, The Waning of the Renaissance, 137.

16

9 Not a whit, we defy augury. Theres a special providence in the fall of a sparrow. If it be now, tis not to come; if it be not to come, it will be now; if it be not now, yet it will come. The readiness is all. Since no man of aught he leaves knows, what ist to leave betimes? Let be (V.ii.194-198). Hamlets statement could be read as privileging predestination over free will; however, his words parallel Montaignes musings on death, which were anything but fatalistic. In That to Study Philosophy is to Learn to Die, Montaigne advocates the acceptance of the inevitability of death, as part of life instead of an object of fear. This acceptance of death, however, does not inhibit free will; instead it fosters a life of action. Thus, he concludes: The utility of living consists not in the length of days, but in the use of time; a man may have lived long, and yet lived but a little. Make use of time while it is present with you. It depends upon your will, and not upon the number of days, to have a sufficient length of life.18 According to Montaigne, therefore, it is life that depends on free will, not death. Thus, despite having myriad constraints, Hamlet exercises his agency in this scene, deciding to prepare himself to face what may come. On fortuna and uncertainty The humanist perspective of the human condition, however, was perhaps equally concerned with the role of fortuna in human affairs. Fortune challenged the roles of providence and free will in determining human action and events. As Bouwsma argues, the uncertainty in the historical conscious that emerged in the Renaissance led to a preoccupation with managing fortune or chance. He notes: Fortune expressed the radical untrustworthiness of the future.19 In one of his essays, Montaigne describes the various ways that fortune appears to act in ways that Michel de Montaigne, That to Study Philosophy is to Learn to Die in The Essays of Montaigne, Complete, trans. Charles Cotton (1877; Project Gutenberg, 2006), book 1, chap. 19, accessed October 30, 2013, http://www.gutenberg.org/files/3600/3600-h/3600-h.htm. 19 Bouwsma, Anxiety and the Formation of Early Modern Culture, 219.
18

10 seem deliberate. Sometimes she appears to play with mankind, sometimes she seems an artist, a physician, or a miracle-worker. Fortune, he concludes, truly, in her conduct surpasses all the rules of human prudence.20 However, if fortune surpasses the capacity of human reason, it is difficult to comprehend how humans can control uncertainty or chance. In The Prince, Machiavelli explores the roles of individual aptitude and fortune to the success of a ruler. In reviewing the failure of recent Italian rulers, Machiavelli contends that one should not blame fortune, but instead the rulers own inaction and lack of foresight. Thus, he appears to confirm the dominance of human capacity and free will over external factors. Yet, in his famous treatise on fortune, Machiavelli notes: Nevertheless, since our free will must not be eliminated, I think it may be true that fortune determines one half of our actions, but that, even so, she leaves us to control the other half, or thereabouts.21 By attributing only half of human action to free will, Machiavelli recognizes the limitations on human control of events. Later, Machiavelli suggests that a ruler can master fortune by changing character according to circumstances; yet he also implies that human nature, in its stubborn constancy, precludes such adaptability. Thus, it appears that the paramount limitation on human action is not fortune, but human nature itself. According to Machiavelli, controlling fortune requires a certain type of disposition. I do think, however, that it is better to be headstrong than cautious, he advises, for fortune is a lady. It is necessary, if you want to master her, to beat her and strike her. And one sees she more often submits to those who act boldly than to those who proceed in a calculating fashion. Moreover, since she is a lady, she smiles on the young, for they are less Michel de Montaigne, That Fortune is Often-Times Observed to Act by the Rule of Reason, in The Essays of Montaigne, Complete, trans. Charles Cotton (1877; Project Gutenberg, 2006), book 1, chap. 33, accessed October 30, 2013, http://www.gutenberg.org/files/3600/3600h/3600-h.htm. 21 Niccol Machiavelli, The Prince, trans. David Wootton (Indianapolis, IN: Hackett Publishing, 1995), 78.
20

11 cautious, more ruthless, and overcome her with their boldness.22 To master fortune, Machiavelli contends, requires impetuous, swift action in order to exploit her to ones advantage. Hamlet exemplifies the danger of caution and introspection when one must take decisive action. The words of his most famous soliloquy demonstrate the nature of the dilemma that plagued Renaissance humanists and their contemporaries: To be, or not to be? That is the question Whether tis nobler in the mind to suffer The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, Or to take arms against a sea of troubles, And, by opposing, end them? (III.i.56-60) The initial topic of Hamlets question, therefore, is whether one should remain passive in the face of fortunes blows, or take action against them. Given the ambiguity of human control over chance, the answer eludes him. Later, Hamlet contemplates death as a possible respite, yet the uncertainty of what comes after death disinclines its acceptance. By the end of the play, fortune appears the victor, with the death of the royal family. In true Machiavellian fashion, Fortinbras, a Norwegian prince, embraces his own fortune and immediately asserts his right to the throne. Therefore, the treatment of fortune in these works is considerably more ambiguous than the treatment of free will; it is not clear to what extent the vicissitudes of chance play in human endeavors, yet it is evident that human will does not completely dictate the future. Conclusion The disintegration of old cultural boundaries during the Renaissance led some to consider it an era of freedom. As Bouwsma notes, Giordano Bruno was compelled to write regarding the universe: There are no ends, boundaries, limits of walls which can defraud or deprive us of the

22

Ibid., 76-77.

12 infinite multitude of things.23 Yet, freedom came at a severe cost; in 1600 Bruno found himself burned at the stake. In the works of Erasmus, Montaigne, and Shakespeare, we find a more circumspect view of human freedom, with a growing conviction in the equality of man, regardless of social status. While Machiavelli did not explicitly address human equality, he was very much concerned with the question of free will in relation to fortune like other Renaissance humanists. These debates would give rise to the Enlightenments liberal conceptions of human equality and rights that were epitomized in documents such as the French Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen and the US Declaration of Independence. Yet, it is clear that even today, not all humans are treated as equal, and the universal assumption of free will has been used to hold certain populations accountable for conditions (e.g., poor health, poverty, etc.) that more accurately stem from structural inequities. If indeed all men (and women) are created equal, perhaps a more circumspect approach to the concept of free will, like those expressed in the humanist works of this analysis, can revitalize the debate regarding how best to promote human equality.

23

Bouwsma, Anxiety and the Formation of Early Modern Culture, 232.