Re: SCS controversy, etc.

Mark so often seems right that I take his comment on Shagan's Rule of
Moderation book seriously.  It may be that we have different perspectives.
I, like the number of early modern historians who seem to support  Shagan,
appreciate his effort to figure out what "moderation" meant 1500-1650:
which is different from what most of us mean.

Of value to classicists in his book is his frequent mention of classical
influences on English thinking in the era.  I'm particularly interested in
the shades of meaning "moderation" could contain, since in our field too
often scholars ignore those shades, which can convert (as he says) synonyms
into antonyms. ("Toleration" is another example; among classicists, the
complex implications *sophrosune *are  often ignored.)  His argument is
that moderation had to be compulsory, especially for women and the Irish
and the poor (also for kings) -- all those people capable of excess. I've
appended here a 4500 word summary of high points.

On the 16th century that women needed "bridles" because they could not be
controlled, we could map the current efforts of VP Pence et all to restrict
birth control, and the complaints of Roger Kimball et al that The Pill is
bringing the decline of western morality.  The linkage is chilling: women
and their bodies remain a threat.

See below for my quick notes on this book.

Dan

Notes on The Rule of Moderation Violence, Religion and the Politics of
Restraint in Early Modern England Ethan H. Shagan
2011 Cambridge University Press

Summary of select passages.

In early modern England “moderation” was a “profoundly coercive tool of
social, religious and political power”:
Beginning in the reign of Henry VIII, a cluster of Aristotelian ethical
ideals centred on ‘moderation’, the ‘golden mean’ and the ‘middle way’
became a standard moral language by which power in state, Church and
society was justified.

Why?  One reason important for classicists to notice:  “the exponential
growth of public discourse itself.”  Also:

• The “Reformation principle,” “restraint in the world trumps monkish
abnegation of the world”; English moderation “often coded Protestant.”
• The Renaissance principle of the vita activa: in Tudor England,
moderation became the business of government.
• The peculiar institutional configuration of the English Reformation
subsumed ecclesiastical moderation within the politics of the English state.

“Preoccupation with moderation shaped English history in profound but
deeply counterintuitive ways”:  but moderation of others (e.g. women,
Irish) often became “forcible,” hence the recurring metaphor of the
“bridle” in this era.

Part I: Moderate Foundations

 “Why did Tudor-Stuart regime become vicious when trumpeting its
moderation?”
Answers:
• An ethical frame that vilifies extremes.
• Under Protestant emphasis on “sin,” widespread voluntary ethical
moderation seemed unachievable.
• “Coercive force [against citizens] was … an example of government’s
moderation.”

Result: moderns have missed the connotations of coercion and control from
that era.

English Reformation & Church of England were central. The Church defended
the via media: sought both peace and coercion, equipoise and control.
Arguably more than in other countries, “English … moderation … was at heart
an ideology of control,” a   governmental parallel to Norbert Elias’
psychosocial “civilizing process.” Forcible restraint less evident in 18th
c. Early modern English “violence to produce moderation” not sufficiently
recognized by historians, too intent on the “Elizabethan World Picture” and
“establishment Whig” tradition of 1688.  Between Roman Catholicism and
Anabaptism, two chasms of profound error on the right and left, extends the
wide and relatively level plateau of valid Protestantism.

Differs with the “normatively peaceful” consensus that Civil War involved
only “small groups of extremists.”

Henry VIII’s “totalitarian moderation” pivotal.  NB Spenser’s Knight of
Temperance destroyed Bower of Bliss.  Early modern “moderation”: “an entire
system of thought whose contours have never been explored.”

Moderation and temperance, represented by the bridle, had special force for
Protestants since “original sin cast such a long shadow upon human
morality” and virtue was comparatively less attainable.  Aristotle’s Ethics
(poorly translated, 1542) influential: “virtue is gotten … by holding the
mean.”

For these writers, moderation was active not passive.  Cicero et al.
Joshua Scodel’s Excess and the Mean in Early Modern English Literature,
rich in classical references, a key source here. Stoics opposed
“overvehement” affection: “moderation meant suppressing unruly impulses.”

Puritans: moderation available only to the small minority of elect saints …
the vast, reprobate majority were irredeemably immoderate. This rhetoric
reduced those outside the golden circle to the status of habitual objects
of (forcible external) moderation, since moderation of the passions
remained the basis of civil society

And by far the most important agent of external moderation was the state,
locus classicus for this principle: Plato's Republic. “Moderation” imposed
on non- elite: the Irish, the poor, and women – but also the king: Charles
I’s regicide was portrayed as move vs “excess,” toward “moderation.”

Church of England was regarded as a “middle way” between the Inquisition
and the “libertine permissiveness of the Anabaptists.… By 1689, however,
and the passage of the law misleadingly known as the ‘Toleration Act’, this
consensus had collapsed.”  Locke and William Penn defend religious
toleration, within strict limits that always built on "restraint."  Locke,
Penn et al came as close as possible within the limits of their society.
The moderate case for religious persecution remained, built in part on the
fourth century break from “NT model of pacific Christianity” as theorized
by Augustine.  Coercion was “moderate” when it cared for the sinner.  “Go
out into the highways and hedges, and compel them to come in.” “Augustine
specifically glossed ‘highways and hedges’ as ‘heretics and schisms’.”  [I
pass over complexities of “latitudinarianism” – DPT]

“Toleration” drew the line at ideas that undermined the state.  Civil
authority must act.  No one would argue that it was OK to denounce the
king.
…
Intolerable dangers to the civil state remained: atheism, blasphemy,
idolatry and Catholicism.  The great intellectual transformation which
undoubtedly occurred in this period nonetheless retains its patina of
equanimity and reasonableness. This enforcement of morals = an  ‘innocuous
middle way’.

These exclusions rendered “toleration” “moderate,” …  “a great Negative
Union” in William Penn's ominous words – that gave toleration its shape.


Even the Latitudinarians were unwilling to relax laws restraining dissent.
Seventeenth century toleration “can no longer be unproblematically grafted
onto modern liberalism or described as intrinsically ‘secularising.’”



On Sat, Mar 2, 2019 at 1:16 PM Mark Davidson <[email protected]>
wrote:

> I have no sympathy with Mary Frances Williams or her views whatsoever, but
> that doesn't mean I have to agree with Dan-el Padilla Peralta either.
>
> Padilla Peralta wrote in his Medium article:
>
> "While also well intentioned, compliments for 'grace' and 'composure' under
> fire only serve to underscore the domestication of brown bodies..."
>
> So he's complaining because he was complimented for grace and composure and
> maintaining his dignity.
>
> But what if people had said the opposite? What if they had said that he
> should rather have showed anger and started shouting? Then he would be
> complaining that he was being urged to fit a stereotype because he's black.
>
> What if everyone had studiously avoided saying anything to him? Then he
> would be complaining that his decent behaviour was ignored because of his
> race.
>
> In fact, is there anything whatsoever that people could have said or
> refrained from saying that he wouldn't somehow twist into victimhood? Just
> wondering.
>
> Later in his article he says something that made me do a double-take and
> then a face palm. He says:
>
> "I *should* have been hired because I was black: because my Afro-Latinity
> is the rock-solid foundation upon which the edifice of what I have
> accomplished and everything I hope to accomplish rests; because my black
> body’s vulnerability challenges and chastizes the universalizing
> pretensions of color-blind classics; ... That scholarly merit can, even in
> the minds and hearts of supporters and well-wishers, be decoupled from the
> fact of my Afro-Latinity is why the rage will continue to burn brightly."
>
> Um... so he's angry because he *wasn't* hired because he's black? He says
> he was hired on merit, but he's angry because of this - he *should* have
> been hired merely because he's black.
>
> I have to wonder why, in that case, he found Mary Frances Williams'
> suggestion that he was hired because he was black insulting?
>
> There seems to be an utter lack of logic to what he is saying. But perhaps
> we should all just smile and nod, and give him a pass... because he's
> black...
>
>
> I also wasted my time reading the introduction to the book that Dan
> Tompkins recommended, The Rule of Moderation by Ethan H. Shagan.
>
> Far from being ground-breaking, it seems to me that the author's arguments
> are trivially true.
>
> He says that a certain degree of variation in religion, culture, etc. was
> tolerated, but the state came down hard on anything outside those limits.
>
> So what? Moderation doesn't mean anarchy. All states have laws and limits
> and repress people who act outside those limits.
>
> The moderation of 16th and 17th century England lay in the wide range that
> was tolerated - far wider than practically any other country at the time.
> Any number of examples of the state harshly repressing things outside that
> range go to prove nothing new.
>
> Mark D
>