Lord Moulton: Law and [the Reformation of] Manners

Caricature of Lord Moulton 

Vanity Fair (4 Oct. 1900)

 

"The great principle of Obedience to the Unenforceable is no mere ideal, 

but in some form or other it is strong in the hearts of all except the most depraved."

 

 

I. 

 

Another key figure associated with the reformation of manners is the one time Cambridge Apostle, John Fletcher Moulton - or Lord Moulton, as he was known by most people. 

 

A brilliant mathematician, Moulton was also a top London barrister, a Fellow of the Royal Society, first chairman of the Medical Research Council, and a Liberal MP. He was even awarded (amongst many other things) the French Legion of Honour for helping to establish an international unit for measuring electricity and regarded (alongside his correspondent Charles Darwin) to be one of the most intelligent men in England.  

 

During the Great War, Moulton served as chairman of a committee to advise on the supply of explosives, eventually becoming Director General of the Explosives Department. He did have qualms about the use of poison gases, however, believing them to be weapons that lay outside the bounds of civilised warfare.

 

After the War, Moulton returned to what was always his passion: the law. He died in 1921, aged 76. But he was destined to live posthumously due to publication in the July 1924 issue of The Atlantic of an impromptu speech entitled 'Law and Manners', which he had made to the Authors' Club a few years prior to his death ...

 

II.

 

In the speech, Moulton divided human action into three domains. First is the domain of Positive Law, "where our actions are prescribed by laws binding upon us which must be obeyed". Second is the domain of Free Choice, "which includes all those actions as to which we claim and enjoy complete freedom" [1]. 

 

Between these two extremes, however, lies a third, much wider domain in which our actions are not determined by law, but in which we are not absolutely free to behave in any way we choose either. It's this domain - which Moulton calls the domain of Obedience to the Unenforceable - wherein the question of manners is most crucial. 

 

In this domain of manners, man voluntarily obeys those rules of conduct which cannot be enforced by any external power. In other words, the individual is left to make his or her own ethical decisions and is not subject to any categorical imperative. It's the land that those who would impose a universal system of morality hate the most. 

 

Moulton says: 

"This country which lies between Law and Free Choice I always think of as the domain of Manners. To me, Manners in this broad sense signifies the doing that which you should do although you are not obliged to do it. I do not wish to call it Duty, for that is too narrow to describe it, nor would I call it Morals for the same reason. It might include both, but it extends beyond them. It covers all cases of right doing where there is no one to make you do it but yourself." 

 

Obviously, there are some who think the domain of law should be prioritised and they would seek to regulate and control every aspect of daily lives; we saw this during the covid pandemic when there were those who openly delighted in lockdowns and mandates. Others, perhaps of a more libertarian bent but often just as fanatic, think the domain of freedom should be radically extended and the state (including the criminal justice system) dissolved.

 

But I suspect that Moulton is right to insist that all three domains are "essential to the properly organized life of the individual, and one must be on one's guard against thinking that any of them can safely be encroached upon" (although, having conceded that, he and I would probably not agree as to what constitutes the properly organized life of the individual - not a phrase that I would in fact ever use). 

 

Personally, its the domain of manners that interests most - for it seems to me this is the land of culture wherein the individual is best able to give style to their existence. As Moulton says, the greatness of a people is probably best judged not by how many (or how harsh) its laws are - nor, on the other hand, by how far the ideal of freedom is extended - but by how they operate within the domain of manners:     

 

"Mere obedience to Law does not measure the greatness of a Nation. It can easily be obtained by a strong executive, and most easily of all from a timorous people. Nor is the licence of behavior which so often accompanies the absence of Law, and which is miscalled Liberty, a proof of greatness. The true test is the extent to which the individuals composing the nation can be trusted to obey self-imposed law."

 

In other words, how well such individuals understand the singular importance of developing techniques of the self and/or an art of existence if they wish to give style to their lives. Ultimately, those philosophers who do their thinking on the catwalk and those who call for a reformation of manners, are on the same side in the war against stupidity, ugliness, and all forms of tyranny (including those masquerading as political correctness and social justice).         

 

Anyway, let's give the last word to his lordship:

 

"Now I can tell you why I chose the title 'Law and Manners.' It must be evident to you that Manners must include all things which a man should impose upon himself, from duty to good taste. I have borne in mind the great motto of William of Wykeham - Manners makyth Man. It is in this sense - loyalty to the rule of Obedience to the Unenforceable, throughout the whole realm of personal action - that we should use the word 'Manners' if we would truly say that 'Manners makyth Man'."

 

 

Note: All lines quoted are from 'Law and Manners, by the Rt. Hon. Lord Moulton, in The Atlantic, (July, 1924), which can be found online as a pdf by those who are interested. 

 

Two other recent posts on the reformation of manners can be easily accessed by clicking here and here. The first adopts a Nietzschean perspective on this question; the second argues in agreement with Lord Chesterfield that it's no laughing matter.    

From the Archives ... A Brief Style Guide for the Nietzschean Woman

"We are the smart set, a world apart set 

We are the neatest, ergo elitist." [1] 

 

As Derrida pointed out, the question of style and the question of woman almost become one and the same question within Nietzsche's philosophy - particularly when thought in relation to the question of Truth [2].   

Perhaps that's what I was thinking of when, in 2004, I wrote this brief style guide for the Nietzschean woman - anticipating my Philosophy on the Catwalk project ...

 

1. Burn all soft-cotton frocks as these invariably suggest Laura Ashley and her ersatz brand of pseudo-traditional fashion. The key point for the Nietzschean woman of today is to look smart and well-groomed; to demonstrate she has both discipline and breeding. 

2. Always wear a hat and gloves when out of doors. It does not matter if you are wearing the most beautiful Chanel outfit, if you lack these things you will look like a member of the herd. 

3. Stockings should also always be worn. Even during the hottest summer days, the Nietzschean woman does not parade around with bare legs; nor on the coldest of cold winter nights does she ever think of pulling on woolly socks. Tights, of course, are utterly infra dig - a sordid remnant of the 1960s. 

 

4. Make-up is a necessity and should be worn with pride and defiance so that one looks striking and dramatic; clearly defined lips, eyes luxuriantly shadowed, brows pencilled with firm, think curves; cheekbones emphasised with rouge. A face without make up looks offensively bare and contrary to what our idealists believe, Truth does not love to go naked. 

 

There is, of course, much more to Nietzschean style than this. But any woman who sticks to the above will already have gone a long way towards a revaluation of values and protecting herself from viral infections: For has a woman who knows herself to be well dressed ever caught a cold? [3] 

 

 

Notes

 

[1] I'm quoting here from an English version of a Berlin cabaret song - Das Gesellschaftlied (1931) - written by Mischa Spoliansky (music) and Marcellus Schiffer (lyrics) and performed by Ute Lemper (Decca, 1996): click here.   

 

[2] See Jacques Derrida, Spurs, trans. Barbara Harlow, (The University of Chicago Press, 1979). And to read my take on this work, click here.  

 

[3] Nietzsche, Twilight of the Idols, 'Maxims and Arrows', 25.

 

 

Three Great Liars 3: Oscar Wilde

Portrait photo of Oscar Wilde 

by W. and D. Downey (1889)

I.

Ultimately, all studies of lying and great liars lead to Wilde and his observational essay published in Intentions (1891): 'The Decay of Lying' - a work many years ahead of its time ...

The essay is structured in the form of a Socratic dialogue between Vivian and Cyril and serves to promote Wilde's view that Aestheticism is superior to Realism. Vivian informs Cyril of an article he is writing which defends the former and blames the decline of modern literature upon the triumph of the latter, with the subsequent decay of lying as an art, a science, and a social pleasure.

According to Vivian, if the monstrous worship of facts is allowed to continue unabated, then all art is done for - and without art, life will have nothing to imitate. It is vital, therefore, that lying - defined as the telling of beautiful untrue things (and the proper aim of art) - be revived as soon as possible.   



II.

The dialogue opens with Cyril attempting to convince Vivian to leave his library and sit outside in order to enjoy the lovely afternoon. The latter is less than enthusiastic however and reveals himself to be the very opposite of a nature lover. For not only is nature imperfect in its design - "her curious crudities, her extraordinary monotony, her absolutely unfinished condition" - but it's also uncomfortable: "Grass is hard and dumpy and damp, and full of dreadful black insects."  

That's amusing, but the merits and disadvantages of nature are not my concern here: I'm interested, rather, in the fine lie as spoken by the true liar; i.e., a statement that requires no proof of any kind but is its own evidence. Such lies transcend the level of misrepresentation and are more than the base falsehoods and half-truths offered by politicians, lawyers, and journalists. Such lies belong to art - particularly to poetry, which, as Plato recognised, is not unconnected to lying:     

"'As one knows the poet by his fine music, so one can recognize the liar by his rich rhythmic utterance, and in neither case will the casual inspiration of the moment suffice. Here, as elsewhere, practice must precede perfection. But in modern days while the fashion of writing poetry has become far too common, and should, if possible, be discouraged, the fashion of lying has almost fallen into disrepute."

Today, continues Vivian, the young man who would have once developed into a gifted liar (and perhaps a magnificent novelist), now often falls into careless habits of accuracy or develops "a morbid and unhealthy faculty of truthtelling". Literature requires distinction, charm, beauty, and imaginative power; in other words, it rests upon the ability to tell stories; in a word, to lie.

The modern novel - realistic in form and subject matter - is all too horribly true; true to life and true to nature - but false to art and ultimately such works become not only vulgar, but boring. It was not always thus. But, today, facts are not merely dominant within history, but are "usurping the domain of Fancy, and have invaded the kingdom of Romance".

Fortunately, says Vivian, poets - with the exception of Wordsworth - have remained faithful to their high mission and are still "universally recognized as being absolutely unreliable". But, in every other domain and genre, the obsession with truth is dominant. If things are bad enough within European life and letters, they are even worse in the United States:

"The crude commercialism of America, its materialising spirit, its indifference to the poetical side of things, and its lack of imagination and of high unattainable ideals, are entirely due to that country having adopted for its national hero a man, who according to his own confession, was incapable of telling a lie, and it is not too much to say that the story of George Washington and the cherry tree has done more harm, and in a shorter space of time, than any other moral tale in the whole of literature."

Vivian, however, is far from despondent. In fact, he is extremely hopeful for the future and, in a crucial passage that ends with a profoundly Nietzschean remark (that I have italicised for emphasis), he says:

"That some change will take place before this century has drawn to its close we have no doubt whatsoever. Bored by the tedious and improving conversation of those who have neither the wit to exaggerate nor the genius to romance, tired of the intelligent person whose reminiscences are always based upon memory, whose statements are invariably limited by probability, and who is at any time liable to be corroborated by the merest Philistine who happens to be present, Society sooner or later must return to its lost leader, the cultured and fascinating liar. [...] Whatever was his name or race, he certainly was the true founder of social intercourse. For the aim of the liar is simply to charm, to delight, to give pleasure. He is the very basis of civilized society, and without him a dinner party [...] is as dull as a lecture at the Royal Society [...] Nor will he be welcomed by society alone. Art, breaking from the prisonhouse of realism, will run to greet him, and will kiss his false, beautiful lips, knowing that he alone is in possession of the great secret of all her manifestations, the secret that Truth is entirely and absolutely a matter of style [...]" 

Notes

Oscar Wilde, 'The Decay of Lying', Intentions, (1891). Click here to read online, courtesy of Project Gutenberg. This essay was a much revised version of an article that first appeared in a literary periodical in January 1889.

To read the first entry in this series of posts - on Nietzsche - click here.

To read the second entry, on Mark Twain, click here.

O Wonderful Machine: Nihilism and the Question Concerning Technology (Part I)

Charlie Chaplin: Modern Times (1936)

According to Blanchot, Nietzsche is quick to grasp that all the modern world’s seriousness is confined to science and the "prodigious power of technology". Lawrence refers to this (poetically) as the triumph of the machine.

Whilst Nietzsche doesn't entirely deplore this fact, happy, for example, to support the experimental practices of science, he is by no means able to affirm the above development without reservation; not least of all because he identifies modern science as the descendant and heir of Christian moral culture. In other words, it's a machine-embodied unfolding of the ascetic ideal; an expression of mankind's pathological will to truth.

Thus, for Nietzsche, science and technology is fundamentally nihilistic in character, full of thinly veiled metaphysical prejudices and productive of reactive knowledge-forms which may yet prove fatal not only to the Christian moral culture from out of which it has grown, but to the possibility of culture per se as it puts on ice all the illusions which are necessary for the sustaining of culture and, indeed, life itself.

In addition to this fundamental antipathy between vital illusion and the pure knowledge drive, Nietzsche claims that science is incapable of serving as the foundation of culture because, unlike art, it knows nothing of “taste, love, pleasure, displeasure, exaltation, or exhaustion” and so cannot evaluate, cannot command, and cannot create. At best, when coupled to the huge resources of capitalism, science is capable of building a tremendous industrial-technological civilization, such as our own, but, for Nietzsche, this is not a genuine cultural formation because, whilst it is certainly capable of organizing the chaos of existence and constructing a monolithic system or network, it lacks style.

Style, insists Nietzsche, always involves the constraint of a single taste. But it is not merely the imposition of universal laws or categorical imperatives; nor does it seek to make all things and all forces familiar, similar, and predictable. The ideal abstractions of science may very effectively allow for the manipulation of the world and the subordination of life to a tyrannical knowledge form - logic - but this is not the same as mastery and the artist of culture is more than a mere systematizer.

Failing to make the distinction, the technocratic man of reason confuses bullying with a display of strength and mistakes force for power. This is perfectly illustrated in  Lawrence's novel Women in Love by the figure of Gerald Crich; a character driven to impose his will and authority over himself and his workers, just as he does over his red Arab mare. Gerald’s world, the world of industrial civilization, has been described earlier by Lawrence in The Rainbow:

“The streets were like visions of pure ugliness ... that began nowhere and ended nowhere. Everything was amorphous, yet everything repeated itself endlessly ...
   The place had the strange desolation of a ruin. ... The rigidity of the blank streets, the homogeneous amorphous sterility of the whole suggested death rather than life. ...
   The place was a moment of chaos perpetuated, persisting, chaos fixed and rigid.” 

If such a mechanical world essentially lacks style, so too does it entirely lack meaning. At best, it retains a strictly functional residue of the latter that allows it to continue to operate. How to give value back to such a world - and a little loveliness - is a concern shared by Nietzsche and Lawrence. They both fear, however, that so long as the nihilistic-scientific perspective retains its authority, there can be no revaluation. For such a perspective has not only made the barbarism of the modern world unavoidable, but it ensures the destruction of all other perspectives and modes of being.

And yet, perhaps there is hope to be found where we might have least expected to encounter it. This is one of the great lessons of encouragement given to us by Heidegger in his essay entitled ‘The Question Concerning Technology’. At the heart of this work are the following lines from Hölderlin: Wo aber Gefahr ist, wächst / Das Rettende auch.

Commenting on these lines, George Steiner writes:

“To realize that false technicity has edged the human race to the brink of ecological devastation and political suicide, is to realize also that salvation is possible ... It is in the very extremity of the modern crisis, in the very time of nihilistic mechanism, that hope lies ready.”

It is important that we avoid misunderstanding here; hope does not lie in the fruits of science and technology themselves and it is not, therefore, a question of accelerating the production and proliferation of ever-more sophisticated machines in the erroneous assumption that only a micro-chip can save us. If, on the one hand, technophobes who rebel naively against technology and curse it as the work of the devil should rightly be challenged, then, on the other hand, technophiles and neo-futurists who argue for an ever-greater technological manipulation of life deserve also to be met with critical resistance.

Heidegger would surely have agreed with Lawrence that “the more we intervene machinery between us and the naked forces, the more we numb and atrophy our own senses”. Thus, if we are to find our way into a new revealing, then we will have to find a way to creatively manifest these forces. And if we are to deepen our questioning of nihilism and technology, then we will need to resist the temptation of easy solutions and the blackmail of being either for or against science.

It is only via such a questioning - one that manages to touch on the essence of technology - that we can find hope. For it is only by daring to think the latter, which is to say, move closer to the very danger that threatens us, that “the ways into the saving power begin to shine” more brightly.


Bibliography

Maurice Blanchot, 'The Limits of Experience: Nihilism', essay in The New Nietzsche, ed. David B. Allison, (The MIT Press, 1992).
Martin Heidegger, 'The Question Concerning Technology', essay in Basic Writings, ed. David Farrell Krell (Routledge, 1994).
D. H. Lawrence, The Rainbow, ed. Mark Kinkead-Weekes, (Cambridge University Press, 1989).
D. H. Lawrence, 'Dana's Two Years before the Mast', essay in Studies in Classic American Literature, ed. Ezra Greenspan, Lindeth Vasey and John Worthen, (Cambridge University Press, 2003).
Nietzsche, 'The Struggle between Science and Wisdom', essay in Philosophy and Truth, ed. and trans. Daniel Breazeale, (Humanities Press International, 1993). 
George Steiner, Heidegger, (Fontana Press, 1989).


Note: Part two of this post can be read by clicking here. 

On the Metaphysics of the Soul Contra the Aesthetics of Existence

In the end, as a philosopher, one has a choice to make: to concern oneself either with inner being, or outer beauty; the metaphysics of the soul, or the aesthetics of existence. 

Of course, it may be that these questions are constantly linked. But there is no necessary relationship; rather, it's contingent and variable. Thus, push comes to shove, one is obliged to think the care of self primarily as a question of ontology, or as a question of style; two very different projects, even if they have a common starting point and common goal (what is known as the good life). 

Broadly speaking, those who choose to be soulful naturally tend towards mysticism and notions of God and immortality. They often allow their asceticism to flourish negatively as a contempt for the body and things belonging to the material world and this is why they frequently end up badly dressed, marginalized from society and prone to violent fundamentalism. Like Jesus or Osama Bin Laden.    

Those who choose to be stylish, on the other hand, tend towards materialism and notions of artifice and superficiality; they have no time for thinking about the soul when there are flowers to look at, wardrobes to furnish, and bodies to penetrate. However, they often allow their cynicism and irony to make them apathetic, which is why they can end up looking good, but devoid of feeling or enthusiasm, and this can make them attracted to cruelty and perversion. Like Sade or Dorian Gray.

There are dangers, therefore, in either affirming the soul as an ontological reality distinct from physical existence, or affirming the latter - bios - as something to be shaped and disciplined according to a set of elaborate procedures. But each attempt to account for the self takes a certain courage; those who choose to live in desert caves are not to be sneered at, but nor are those who prefer to practice their philosophy either in the bedroom or on the catwalk.

Having said that, I obviously prefer the libertine or the dandy and their modality of truth-telling, to the prophet or holy fool who would sacrifice the entire world for the sake of saving his own precious soul.        

         

In Memory of James Garner

James Garner (1928 - 2014) 

as Jim Rockford in The Rockford Files

The Rockford Files is one of those '70s American TV shows that everyone who remembers it, remembers it fondly. Just as I'm sure the lead actor, James Garner, who, sadly, died yesterday, will also be remembered fondly by family, friends, and fans alike. 

The thing with Garner was that he was both very good-looking and a very good actor, capable of playing both comedic roles and more serious parts with the same grace and charm, whether on the small screen or the silver screen (he was one of the first Hollywood stars to move between the two). 

Among his many movie roles, that of Flt. Lt. Robert Hendley, known as the Scrounger, in The Great Escape (1963), is a personal favourite. But, it's primarily as the LA-based private investigator Jim Rockford that Garner most impressed himself upon my young imagination: I liked the way he dressed in sports jackets and open-necked shirts; I liked the equally casual manner in which he approached his work and handled the cops; I liked the fact he lived in a trailer on the beach; and I liked his lawyer and on/off girlfriend Beth Davenport (played by Gretchen Corbett).

Thanks to syndication, DVD, and YouTube, it's easy to still enjoy episodes and to delight in the show's fantastic theme tune (composed by Mike Post and Pete Carpenter), as well as Garner's great performance. The man had style - and that's the highest you can say of anyone. 

 

Supposing Truth to be a Woman ...

The title for this post was to have been the question of style. 

However - it is woman who will be my subject. Still, one might 

wonder whether that doesn't really amount to the same thing ... 

Indeed, like Derrida - who I'm paraphrasing here - we might easily decide there is a strong level of correspondence between women and style and, in turn, between the question of style and that of seduction. All three questions deserve to be thought philosophically; which is to say, in relation to politics, ethics, and notions of what constitutes Truth, developing Nietzsche's supposition concerning the latter along the way (i.e. feminizing what has traditionally been erected as an exclusively masculine concept). 

The first thing to establish is the following: if Truth is supposed to be a woman, then Truth would not love to go naked as Rousseau naively believed. Rather, Truth-as-woman would insist on being veiled: "And only through such a veil which thus falls over it could Truth become truth; profound, indecent, desirable." [59] 

In other words, her being is not a natural pre-given, but something artificially constructed and woman forms an indivisible unity with everything that serves to show off her beauty. Thus she understands not only the need for illusion, but practises the right to lie. It is therefore pointless to speak about the essence of woman, for she "distorts all vestige of essentiality, of identity, of property" [51] and this is why she's the very ruin of philosophy and politics as traditionally conceived in the grandiose and deluded terms of phallic stupidity.

This is not to deny - today of all days - the need for an "organized, patient, laborious" form of feminism, that takes account of "the real conditions in which women's struggles develop" [94]. However, as Derrida rightly points out, whilst these struggles often require the strategic maintenance of metaphysical presuppositions and forms of agency, anyone concerned with effecting radical change must eventually interrogate such ideals precisely because they belong to and uphold the very system one is attempting to deconstruct. 

A constant process of negotiation is therefore required between organized movements and those schizo-nomadic women of style who lay their own singularity on the line and appreciate that their strength relates not to agency, but to seduction, witchcraft, and the art of the dressing table.   

Note: all quotes are from Jacques Derrida, Spurs, trans. Barbara Harlow, The University of Chicago Press, 1979.