Hypocrite? That's Cool. Sometimes. I Mean --

David Runciman, author of a new book that's been highly recommended to me called Political Hypocrisy, takes a turn in my new favorite British publication, The Guardian, to make one of my new favorite arguments, the one against Rousseauvian sincerity:

Orwell is an excellent guide to the problem of political hypocrisy, but not in the way he is usually taken to be. He shows us that politics is not about, and should not be reduced to, a choice between sincerity and fakery - seeing it in these terms opens the door to the worst sorts of hypocrisy, or worse still, raw power without the kind of hypocrisy that can keep it in check. The real choice is between different kinds of hypocrisy, and in this context it is democratic hypocrisy, not sincerity, that needs defending.

This is absolutely right. And it feeds well enough into the rousing conclusion of my latest DTO post on the right's problem with American(ist) Heroes:

the reason why, in the West, only America has truly flourished as a truly modern regime: all of us, regardless of our cultural or political position, more or less are stuck with the knowledge that we are really dependent on what we criticize. It’s impossible under such circumstances to really advocate revolution in the way that it’s been advocated (and accomplished) so many awful times in Europe. Americans know in their gut that, as pathological and silly as Americanism can be, it’s knit into the fabric of all our lives, so much so that even staunch critics of America have absolutely no desire to jump out of America’s skin. No American really wants to replace America. They just want a better America, a more truly American America.

Radically authentic sincerity means alienating yourself from all the inherited sufferings, ambiguities, compromises, errors, injustices, and perplexities of the people who share responsibility for your being who you are -- that is, it means alienating yourself from both your tradition and your truly particular individuality. In this respect, all three of Nietzsche, MacIntyre, and Rorty are both deeply opposed to Rousseau. But Nietzsche, MacIntyre, and Rorty all have -- or think they have -- profoundly different concepts of friendship. Hmmm...

Comments

[Matt S.]

Interesting post, James. Might I add that part of my problem in puzzling through your remarks is that I identify friendship with (radical) freedom, as opposed to the contingent ties of family, neighborhood, and other associations we are born into. In this, as you know, I proudly side with Montaigne -- as opposed to Aristotle, as always! -- on the nature and conditions of friendship. To put it too simply, for me friendship very much involves at least the possibility of the alienation you mention. Perhaps not from my individuality, but at least from my tradition.

When delight is the basis of friendship, which I take it to be, the potential for cutting through nearly all contingent attachments seems to exist. You might say that friendship at its height is more poetic than practical, more bound up with the transcendence of tradition than elaboration of it.

At the least, I think there might be a non-Rousseauian conception of friendship that nonetheless is in tension with what you've described. I'm not sure if this is coherent, but I thought I'd push back a bit.

[James]

Matt, this is quite astute. I'd say the key is that the delight of friendship is always a POSSIBILITY for closing the distance of different particular attachments, but it's NOT a duty or a commandment. It's entirely up to us -- and to the extent that we do choose to close that distance, we do so on terms set inevitably by our own negotiated relationship with our personal attachments and inherited conditions. There's wiggle room, but not an infinite amount of wiggle room. And recognizing that, along with the voluntary quality of friendship, leads us to reject doctrines that find us morally defective if we do not exercise the choice of friendship in accord with some universal, foundational ideal. Friendship, then, is preserved as a relationship that neither solidarity, compassion, pity, fraternity, nor anything else can swallow up in radical abstraction. This is important because friendship can then function on its own two legs as a metaphor or model for politics, a contingently realizable bridge between the private pursuit of self-selecting, highly particular, intimate association and the public cultivation of more or less comprehensive citizenship. I'm not sure if this is coherent, but...