Monday, July 16, 2012
Saddam and Siena
I have just spent a week in Tuscany: I spare you the terrible details of 30 degree sunny weather, boar sausage and Brunello tastings. My visit here concurred during the worst phase of fighting in Syria and with Berlusconis announcement that he will run for office again. So it was with considerable interest that I paid a visit to the museum in the “Palazzo Publico” to look at Lorenzettis “Allegory of Good and Bad Government”. These large frescoes in the main hall of this building are considered the first and most impressive secular representations at the beginning of the Renaissance, which is why I was surrounded by Dutch, German, American and even Italian tourist running through these rooms before going on to look at the medieval Duomo and then travelling on to Florence.
The allegory shows two thrones, and on each of them a ruler: tyranny is a two-horned creature, good government looks like a regal ruler, serene and majestic. The creatures surrounding these rulers are not humans, but vices and virtues respectively, such as avarice, envy and injustice or magnanimity, justice and charity. The message is clear, painted right in the meeting hall of the council of Nine, the most powerful oligarchs of Siena at the time: it is a blessing to be ruled wisely and the fruits of such government are visible for and enjoyed by all. And such good government is not dependent on wealth or commerce, but on the possession and exercise of virtue. What a strange idea!
When we follow current European or Middle Eastern politics a very different discourse prevails: Italy is in trouble not because it’s previous prime minister was a proven adulterer and used his governmental immunity to avoid prosecution, but because he did not keep his eye on the economy and failed to modernize the state apparatus; Syria is a cause of concern because it lacks “democratic structures” and so the West should potentially use military force to depose the evil ruler and eventually hoist somebody else into power, like as Mr. Karzai in Afghanistan. But the question whether or not upright men can be found and convinced to take up office does not get raised anywhere.
The West has lost its way, both Lorenzetti and Alistair McIntyre would say. The latter is a philosopher who, 30 years ago, argued for the need to rediscover the virtues (After Virtue- Bloomsbury Academic and University of Notre Dame Press 1981) as a framework according which to evaluate the good life, society and government. But this requires a very different emphasis in education, the media, political selection and the legal system. A German court recently argued that it is immoral to circumcise your child because of the pain you inflict on him; yet those same courts force nurses to assist in aborting children, who seemingly don’t experience any pain? Apart from the lack of logic of this argument, it proves that people who hold any kind of moral or religious convictions are increasingly forced to act in contradiction with those values; the only creed still acceptable in the West is economic liberalism. But when nothing holds back the vices, then the polis suffers. Saddam was evil, everybody agrees; but very little moral scrutiny is exercised when looking at their successors, as if Mr. Romney, Mr. Berlusconi or Mr. Dominique Strauss-Kahn were necessarily any better.
So maybe the next G8 meeting should take place in Siena, with a visit to the Palazzo Publico?
