Flattery vs. Freedom
On the Character of a Free People
Related to my post Aristotle on Freedom last year, here is a timely quote from Book V of Aristotle’s Politics on the free person’s innate resistance to tyranny, founded in that illustrious but elusive character trait known as greatness of soul:
[A] valued person in both [tyrannies and democracies] is the flatterer: in popular governments this is the demagogue, since a demagogue is a flatterer of the populace, and with tyrants it is those who hang around them in a self-abasing manner, which is how flattery works. And it is for this reason that tyranny is friendly to corrupt people, since tyrants enjoy being flattered, and this is something no one who thinks like a free person would do. Decent people are friends; in other words, they do not flatter. And corrupt people are useful for corrupt employments - a nail hammered at a nail, as the proverb has it. And it is characteristic of a tyrant to take no pleasure in anyone dignified or free [ἐλευθέρος]. For the tyrant considers himself to be the only person of that sort, and anyone who matches him in dignity and carries himself like a free person robs tyranny of what is exceptional and masterful about it....
These things and their like are the characteristic of tyranny and are safeguards of its rule, and there is no sort of vileness they leave out. One may say that they are all encompassed within three forms, for tyranny aims at three things. One is for its subjects to think small, since a small-souled person [μικρόψυχος] would not plot against anyone. A second is for them to distrust one another completely, since a tyranny cannot be overthrown until some people have trust among themselves. And this is the reason tyrants make war on decent people as detrimental to their rule - not just because such people do not think they deserve to be ruled like slaves by a master, but also because they are trusted, among themselves and by others, and do not inform on their own kind or anyone else. And the third aim is a lack of power for action, since no one attempts impossible things, and hence no one overthrows a tyranny if the power to do so is not there. So the ultimate terms into which the intentions of tyrants are reducible are just these three, since one may trace every tyrannical measure back to these three underlying purposes: making the people not trust each other, making them have no power, and making them think small. (1313b29-1314a29, translated by Joe Sachs)
Or, as Thomas Jefferson once put it: “I have sworn upon the altar of god eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man.”
Excellent, as always. I am going to add micropsychos to my list of epithets. But the question of snitching or misprision is one I would love to hear your thoughts on. When there was an incident at UVa, Jefferson was outraged that the students would not inform on the perpetrators (IIRC). And the service academies maintain that standard. Roger