The unpredictable character of contemporary history has become increasingly overwhelming, to the point that, when waking up in the morning, I experience the anxiety of the very real possibility of learning of some shocking event that might have happened while I was sleeping. I even considered stopping reading the news and going about my day in blissful ignorance. However, this might not seem so much of a solution, given that my own life is steeped in digital interconnectedness. I might be influenced indirectly by those events, through the mouths, discourses, or example of some influencers. Ignoring the news as the events happen may not be a good idea after all, since anxiety might still reach me in some way or another.
This feeling of anxiety in the face of the unpredictability of history is not new. If we are to follow the argument of the late J.G.A. Pocock (1924-2023) expressed in his notable The Machiavellian Moment, this anxiety has been at the core of the formation of the American republican culture. It has sometimes even been manifested as a “quarrel between value” (i.e., the republican ideals of the virtuous character of living the American democratic life on an everyday basis) “and history” (which brings forth the contradictory events with which Republican life had to cope while still preserving its predictably virtuous character) (498). As Pocock argues, this tension between value and history has specifically heightened American anxiety in the face of dangers posed by corruption, since, on one hand, it was the corrupted character of the Kingdom of Great Britain’s “parliamentary oligarchy” and monarchy (546) that the founders of the American republic abhorred, and on the other hand it was corruption and the mercantile spirit that underpinned social unrest and historical uncertainty in general.
At the same time, this anxiety about corrupted and corrupting history seemed to have made the citizens of the American republic aware that a mere escape from, or closing of one’s eyes in the face of history would not have solved their political predicament, but would have increased the odds of political instability. That is when, according to Pocock, the newly founded American republic has been faced with what he called the Machiavellian Moment, which he defined as “the moment in conceptualized time in which the republic was seen as confronting its own temporal finitude, as attempting to remain morally and politically stable in a stream of irrational events conceived as essentially destructive of all systems of secular stability” (viii).
Perhaps the appeal to Machiavelli sounds odd in the characterization of this moment affected by the anxiety to preserve the virtuous character of the Republic, since Machiavelli is known to have promoted in The Prince the virtù of the leader struggling against Fortuna, which is a commitment to an amoral, rather than virtuous, attitude of doing politics. Yet, what virtù and public virtue seemed to have in common was the insertion of the political activity of the leader, and by extension of the citizen, into a dynamic engagement with the life of the polis. This engagement is characterized by Pocock as “that vita activa in which the zoon politikon fulfilled his nature” (546, emphasis in original).
As Pocock’s argument goes, a narrow understanding of vita activa remains open to the risk of producing in history precisely what citizens animated by the republican virtue tried to escape from, that is utopian experiments which alienated them from the life of the republic. This happened, Pocock believed, because of the overwhelming popularity of the Lockean heritage, which had inspired the “constant attempt to escape into the wilderness and repeat a Lockean experiment in the foundation of a natural society” (545). Yet, the Machiavellian moment seems to have influenced American culture on a scale larger than that of the sporadic utopian attempts to escape history. The moment’s impact seems to have counterbalanced the narrow understanding of public virtue promoted by the utopian collective experiments, in the sense that it had boosted the American political community’s sense of awareness about both the “fragility of the experiment” and the “ambiguity of the republic’s position in secular time” (545).
Thus, despite the infamous legacy of Machiavellian political theory, the overall Republican awareness that had been, and potentially would be, boosted by any such Machiavellian “moment” would rather lead to a collective choice in favor of a melding of virtue and virtù in the vita activa. This melding has allowed (or would allow in the future) not only for the “escape” from the concrete historical and political space of the republic, but also for the “return” to it with the strengthened attitude of an engaged citizenship (550). This understanding of vita activa would maintain both the standards of the moral basis of political activity that was transparent as the republican heritage of the American democracy and the collective awareness of the challenges of history’s unpredictable events, ruled by Fortuna (the goddess of fortune in Machiavelli’s jargon). In short, the acknowledging of the tension between virtue and history had successfully been met by the members of the newly founded American republic by an anchoring of public virtue in virtù, or the concrete skills of the citizens and their political leaders to deal with the unexpected. Sometimes, these skills were even manifested in the free citizens’ “bearing of arms” to defend the stability of republic, as a way to assert both the individual’s “social power and his [sic] participation in politics as a responsible moral being” (390).
What seemed to motivate this collective solidarity, translated into every citizen’s readiness to bear arms as a way to defend the stability of the republic? Pocock argues that the basis of this solidarity has been the old Puritan notion of covenant, which initially had a theological-political finality, the “struggle against Antichrist,” but which in time became secularized: “millennium became utopia” and “the rule of the saints the perfection of human capacities” (512). This means that, as time went on, and the secular outlook of the collective engagement with history gained more ground, it was not the community of the elected saints, but the republic that came to be perceived as “the true heir of the covenant” (545). Nonetheless, the weakness that I notice in this respect is the ambiguity regarding the reception of a theological covenant by a secular political organization, especially concerning the functioning of the covenant beyond the Puritan context, that is beyond religious and ethnic boundaries. Could the reception of the covenant within the secular boundaries of the republic have led to the broadening of the covenant, too? Could the covenant be extended to people of another religion or race—and with secular values?
To what extent could the life within the secular American democracy lead to the renewal of the covenant, not only with a higher power and towards the preservation of the republic, but also as a way of recognizing the equal dignity and value of all the participants in the covenant itself? The result of the lack of such renewal of the covenant led to the awkward situation of having equal citizens, but not enjoying the same dignity as participants in the covenant. Jim Crow laws, with their infamous principle “separate but equal” seems to me to be the very manifestation of this anomaly in the white population’s reception of the covenant. This “Broken Covenant” actually contributed to invalidating the equal dignity of citizens and their equality before the law. Thus, the lack of a strong covenantal political engagement to back the republican ideals of stability in the face of the unpredictability of history has worked against this desired stability, by retaining the very possibility of disorder at the heart of the secular political community. Contemporary culture wars and the polarization of the American society regarding questions of public interest have shown the very weakness of the collective willingness to engage in the project of a renewed political covenant.
Segregated, sectarian, or elitist communities have yet to extend to those outside their like-minded culturally or ethnically homogeneous community a renewed understanding of the covenant the American republic had inherited. Moreover, weak covenantal politics may be translated into stronger citizen anxiety, given the lack of trust in the one who may have the same citizenship as me, but otherwise seems to me as alien as any other non-member of the republic. Thus, anxiety in front of the unpredictability of history seems to be reinforced by the collective anxiety emerging from a weak, if any, covenantal politics.
For contemporary times, this reinforcing of co-existential anxiety seems to confirm the looming specter of the decay of the republic into anarchy or more authoritarian forms of government. This is a phenomenon which, as Pocock argues, was already known to the Renaissance minds as Polybius’s conception of the cyclical passing of any form of government through “monarchy, tyranny; aristocracy, oligarchy; democracy, ochlocracy (mob-rule or anarchy)” (77). It was against this cyclical movement of the wheel of Fortuna that the founders of the American republic had made the choice, through their Machiavellian moment, to pass on the covenant to the republic and consolidate public virtue by what Machiavelli called virtù. Yet, since neither virtue nor the covenant were strengthened in this process of transfer from the theological-political to the secular realm, the new challenges brought forth in current history by the wheel of Fortuna seem to have triggered the American orientation towards a new Machiavellian moment.
In a time when that which had been conceived as a covenantal mission for the American democracy to set itself as “a light unto the nations” (Isaiah 42:6), has still been kept in the American official discourse, but is more and more collectively understood as “America first,” virtù, or the skill of the political leader to deal with Fortuna expediently and successfully seem to take primacy over the virtue proviso. The collective passion for promoting virtuoso leaders as an attitude of political agency seems to take public virtue more as the goal of liberal democratic activity, rather than a means of achieving a peaceful co-existence of citizens. As such, in the promise to “drain the swamp” made to American citizens, virtue is not a binding requirement in selecting the means of achieving that, but it is rather projected as linked with the promised result. Not making virtue a binding requirement in selecting the means towards social and political ends brings back the temptation of corruption, which had generated the political anxiety of the citizens of the American republic in the first place.
Under the pressure of time and the challenges brought about (sometimes unexpectedly) by the wheel of fortune, appealing to a bit of corruption (or at least disruption) to fight greater corruption may seem, if not something virtuous, then at least brave. Not only the American, but also other western democracies have recently been confronted with the great challenges brought about by events and phenomena, such as the COVID-19 pandemic, global warming, terrorist attacks, increase in migration and refugee arrivals, humanitarian emergencies, economic crises, and the looming threat of a third world war. In the face of these great challenges, it may seem that virtue and greatness is on the side of the player who “has the cards” to respond to these challenges. Yet, the anxiety about maintaining the stability and greatness of a nation throughout the vicissitudes of history may gravely endanger covenantal politics, through which a nation’s citizens aim to converge in just ways in their co-existential issues.
This anxiety also endangers the covenantal approach in international matters, since America’s virtuous investments in programmes such as USAID seem to have been overshadowed by the efforts to reduce spending. Of course, any nation is free to choose how to spend public money and precious resources. The current disruption of the checks and balances both within the American republic and of the international order, needs to awaken not only America’s adversaries to fill the void left by it, but also America’s allies and the beneficiaries of aid programmes. Perhaps they have indeed not been “grateful enough” for what America has done for them; perhaps America is waiting for a stronger covenantal engagement on their part. For sure, it is not gestures of gratefulness that would suffice in these times. True reciprocal gratefulness would imply an honest communication about the limits and challenges related to a nation’s covenantal engagement with their partners and allies, and reaffirming in solidarity the moral base of the values that have made not only America, but also the culture of liberal republican democracy in general, truly a light unto nations.
If you have been touched in any way by this editorial, and would like to suggest a topic for a post, please do not hesitate to contact me.
I also hope that you enjoyed the illustration drawn by N.J., my eight-year-old daughter, specifically for this essay.
