Random quote
The so-called good society accepts all kinds of merits, except intellectual ones; these, in fact, are contraband.

Arthur Schopenhauer (1788-1860)

On responsibility

The cast receiving the applause after the Dutch premiere of Mieczysław
 Weinberg’s opera The Passenger,  17 April 2026 in Amsterdam

You admire the leader of your country, a charismatic person, and you want to support him as much as you can. You vote for him or his party in elections, but actually you want to do more. Happily, you work for the government. Even more, you hold a high position there, so your contribution counts. Moreover, you know that your leader takes the right decisions, so you are happy that you can help execute them. Then you get a task and you absolutely find you cannot do that. It will backfire on what you do or will backfire on what your leader intends, but okay, it’s your leader’s responsibility, or so you think. But what will you do if it’s against your moral values? If you see that by what you do you’ll hurt other people a lot and bring a lot of misery to them? What would I do?
I had to think of it when I went to the Dutch premiere of Mieczysław Weinberg’s opera The Passenger recently. The main theme of the opera was the question of responsibility and guilt when you are part of a system that doesn’t only oppress people, but kills, no destroys them. The opera was about a guard of the concentration camp of Auschwitz and one of her victims. Auschwitz was an extreme and exceptional case. People often think it belongs to the past. However, in view of what is happening in the world today, I am afraid that it was not so exceptional as many people tend to think. Apart from that, aren’t extreme cases often a strengthened reflection of what happens in daily life in a less extreme way? Don’t they point to perfidious characteristics of life that are less extreme and often tolerated in daily life? They make us aware of what often remains unnoticed. Let me clarify, guided by the article by Alette Smeulders in the programme booklet of the opera.
People want to belong and to become part of a group. Sometimes they join a group without really knowing the direction it is taking, though. A charismatic leader, large and enthusiastic crowds, joining an elite corps: It can feel right and often there seems to be no reason to stay aside. You think that this group will bring you where you want to go. And aren’t you part of the future by joining? Some don’t care if such a group uses violent means, or that it sometimes does. Others would not choose them, and certainly not extreme violence, oppression, and genocide but accept it when the leader does, for they want to support him and his movement that gives them hope, and they are prepared to fight for it, even if it is at the expense of others. Being a member of an elite corps means adhering to certain rules, standards and values. In extreme cases it involves strict obedience, conformity and loyalty, if not an oath to the leader. And why not? You have chosen the group voluntarily and you are prepared to dedicate your whole person to it, and not shirk from the ‘dirty work’. Maybe, you can refuse tasks you don’t like and finally leave the group, but the pressure to stay is immense and you don’t want to let the others down. And what if you would leave the group? You are afraid of the void you would feel. Of course, you’ll feel uncomfortable when you do something you don’t like for the first time, but gradually you’ll get used to it; acting against your gut will become routine, and soon it doesn’t feel any longer like that.
This description is based on Auschwitz, but as Smeulders says, such things happen everywhere: “Perpetrators subordinate themselves to a leader, a group or an ideology. They are aiming to create a better world and think that the end justifies the means. They try to repress anything that raises doubts: they do their utmost to assuage their consciences and maintain the notion that they are the good ones and the others embody evil. That lets them create their own reality and cast themselves as the heroes in their own narrative. The moment any empathy arises, it is suppressed and superseded by tunnel vision. They have a mission, a task that must be accomplished.”
However, and that’s important, although what perpetrators of extremist acts do is extremist, indeed, the perpetrators are seldom extremists as such. As such they are people like you and I; they are normal people who have become extremist; or in the words of Smeulders: “Time and time again, it becomes clear that the perpetrators who did terrible things were not born as perpetrators. Other than the occasional sadist or psychopath, it is frightening just how normal they were. They were ordinary people who got swept along and suddenly found themselves in extreme situations that they felt they could no longer escape from. It is possible to break loose, but it comes at a price: you have to disengage from the group, perhaps at the risk of your own life, and face up to where you went wrong.”
This brings me where I want to go in this blog. Extremist situations are extremist, indeed, but in a sense they are a continuation of daily practice. They are daily practice pushed to the extreme by all kinds of factors that I cannot discuss here now. Extreme behaviour is the end point of normal behaviour on a sliding scale. It’s not that there is good behaviour and there is bad behaviour and that’s it. There is a lot in between. This makes it so difficult. In daily life there is pressure from others and there are practical restrictions of what is possible (socially and physically). So we must choose, and choices can be disadvantageous to others. Sometimes we cannot help, but often we can but still see no reason to adapt our choices. It can be (but need not be) a first step to the extreme. We must realize that, but we seldom do and seldom take the time to consider. But as an agent, and so as a perpetrator, you have a choice. Choices are not always easy, but choices they are. And aren’t you responsible for your own choices?

Source
Alette Smeulders, “On perpetrators and perpetration”, in the programme booklet of Mieczysław Weinberg’s opera The Passenger.

Random quote
If the enemy be rich, [the Romans] are rapacious; if he be poor, they lust for dominion; neither the east nor the west has been able to satisfy them. Alone among men they covet with equal eagerness poverty and riches. To robbery, slaughter, plunder, they give the lying name of empire; they make a solitude and call it peace.

Words spoken in AD 83 or 84 by the Caledonian chieftain Calgacus according to the Roman historian Publius Cornelius Tacitus (c. 56 – c. 117)

Moving the goalposts

Suppose, you are the president of a mighty democratic country. You see that in a country with a very repressive regime on the other side of the world, the people rise in revolt and want to topple their regime. The revolt fails and the regime kills many of the rebels. You think: “My country is mighty and I can help them. If I kill their president, the people will rise again and now they’ll succeed and the country will become democratic.” So, you tell the whole world “I’ll bring a regime change over there.” And on your orders your secret service kills the president, but the people have become afraid and don’t have the courage to rise again and the new president chosen by the repressive regime is even harder in his actions against the opposition than his predecessor.
Now, you, the president of that mighty country, have a problem: In fact, the repressive regime hasn’t changed, except that the president has been replaced. The country is still as repressive as before and the country hasn’t become democratic, which was your goal by killing its president. However, if you would admit this, you, the mighty president, will have lost your face, so you tell the world: “Because of my action, a regime change has taken place in that country over there, for it has a new president.”

The case just described is an example of the fallacy “Moving the goal posts” (or MG, for short). Originally, the goal of the president of the mighty country was to make the country with the repressive regime democratic by killing its president. However, the anticipated scenario did not work. Therefore, now he told the world that his goal had always been to have the repressive president removed. He gave his goal “regime change” a new interpretation, of course, without admitting that he did. And such a thing is what we do when we move the goal posts. Wikipedia says it this way: “Moving the goal posts (or shifting the goal posts) … means to change the rule or criterion (‘goal’) of a process or competition while it is still in progress, in such a way that the new goal offers one side an advantage or disadvantage”. The advantage for the mighty president was that he saved his face (or so he thought). MG is a trick that is often used by this mighty president, but not only by this president but by many other politicians as well, mighty or not mighty, in both democratic and repressive countries. It’s a means for saving face and concealing mistakes.

Typically the “Moving the goal posts” fallacy is committed if:
1) Person A requests Person B to meet a certain goal (evidential or otherwise)
2) Person B fulfils the goal as stipulated above in step 1
3) Instead of admitting that Person B has met the goals or has discharged the conditions of the contract, Person A stipulates even further goals.
The name of the fallacy derives from football – if the goalposts for one team are moved farther away or closer, this can provide a (dis)advantage to the opposing team.
(from Source)

The example I started with is a special instance of MG in the sense that 1) the fallacy is (intentionally) applied to yourself: The mighty president has changed his own goal (as publicly declared) and 2) he has changed it because it has not been achieved. And that’s what politicians often do, for example, to save face. But in many cases it is so that someone sets a goal for another person, and after the latter has achieved it the former says: That was not what I said what you had to do; my order/request etc was… You can also say then that the rules, criteria or expectations have changed, after they had been set and after the action (or whatever is done to achieve them) has already started. It’s like changing the rules during the game.
The main characteristics of the MG fallacy are this altering of criteria, rules and expectations and persistent shifting; and often both together. For example in debates, a case of MG is challenging someone to prove a point, and when they do, rejecting it and demanding more proof; or instead of accepting the prove, ignoring it and shifting the argument to a new, broader, or irrelevant point. And that’s where you often find this fallacy: In debates, and – what is most visible to everybody – especially in political debates. But you find MG also in politics in general (cf. the case I started with) and in addition at the workplace, for example, when a manager sets a performance task and then changes it. Also the tactics of bullying behaviour include moving the goalposts: Setting objectives which subtly change in ways that cannot be reached. In workplace bullying, MG is a much-used tactic. (Wikipedia) Of course, MG is also a common phenomenon in everyday life. MG is typically used in bad faith to avoid admitting defeat or disadvantage. One solution seems to be setting clear rules and making clear agreements in advance (see Source, p. 187). But isn’t that just begging the question, especially if people who set the rules and must apply them act in bad faith, as so often happens?

Source
- Tuomas W. Manninen, “Moving the Goalposts”, in Bad Arguments, pp. 185-188.

Random quote
Of what use is knowledge to him who has lost his head?

Michel de Montaigne (1533-1592)

Public and Private

When someone holds an office, it often happens that she or he doesn’t see the office only as a function they hold but as a part of their whole personal life. For them it is a function that penetrates everything they do, in public as an office holder and in private life as well. Or even, they see the function as a personal fief, like a mediaeval lord who manages his personal estate. (see also my blog “Three ways to perform an office”) In his essay “Of managing one’s will” (Essays, Book III, 10) Montaigne tells us that it was not his style. There is nothing against performing an office with full dedication. Sometimes it is necessary to do so with your whole personality, he says. However, generally it is better to keep office and private life separate, as Montaigne did himself when he was mayor of Bordeaux. It is not only better for yourself, but if you cannot distance yourself from your office, it can even be harmful to the performance of your duties: “[The] sharpness and violence of [private] desires more hinder than they advance the execution of what we undertake; they fill us with impatience against slow or contrary events, and with heat and suspicion against those with whom we have to do. We never carry on that thing well by which we are prepossessed and led: ‘Impulse manages all things ill’, [as Statius says].” Someone who approaches his office rationally is more at ease and more open to new chances and opportunities and can better take the reins than the one who lets himself be swayed by emotions and passions: “In him who is intoxicated with this violent and tyrannical intention, we discover, of necessity, much imprudence and injustice; the impetuosity of his desire carries him away; these are rash motions, and, if fortune do not very much assist, of very little fruit. … Avarice has no greater impediment than itself; the more bent and vigorous it is, the less it rakes together.” Instead, so Montaigne explains to us, it is better to take things as they are and to adopt a philosophical attitude, and not to expect miracles, but to wait till a new opportunity arises.
Moderate and controlled behaviour finally brings more. And isn’t it so that “most of our business is farce”? That the whole world is a play in which we just play our part? Indeed, so Montaigne, but “as a borrowed personage. We must not make real essence of a mask and outward appearance; nor of a strange person, our own; we don’t know how to tell the skin and the shirt apart.” So the office holder (the shirt) and you as a private person (the skin) are two different beings. But how many office holders don’t see the difference and “cannot … distinguish the salutations made to themselves from those made to their commission, their train, or their mule”, as Montaigne puts it. When you greet Montaigne, the mayor of Bordeaux, it doesn’t need to imply that you greet Montaigne, the writer of the Essays, at the same time. However, many office holders “swell and puff up their souls, and their natural way of speaking, according to the height of their [offices]”, to paraphrase Montaigne. And it is such office holders who see criticizing the holder of the office as criticizing the person who holds the office. They burst into anger when this happens. But, so Montaigne, they who “extend their anger and hatred beyond the dispute in question, as most men do, show that they spring from some other occasion and private cause. … The reason is that they are not concerned in the common cause, because it is wounding to the state and general interest; but [they] are only nettled by reason of their particular concern. This is why they are so especially animated, and to a degree so far beyond justice and public reason…” The public serves the private, and they are considered the same.
Look around what’s happening in this world. Again Montaigne holds up a mirror to us.

Note
Here and there I have adapted the translation of Montaigne’s text.

Random quote
Impulses serve all things badly.

Publius Papinius Statius (ca 40-96)

Queueing

Although humans are animals, some kinds of behaviour are typical of humans and we don’t find them in other animals. It’s not surprising. If every kind of human behaviour were also found in other animals, what then would make humans human? (and similarly, what would make a certain animal that animal?) Okay, it could be the combination of behavioural characteristics, but I doubt whether it’s only this that makes humans human. For example, you are walking in the street and you lose your handkerchief. Then you hear someone behind you calling: “Sir, you have lost something”. Can you imagine that an animal would do something like that? Or have you ever seen a queue of animals waiting their turn? Indeed, sometimes animals are waiting for each other; for example, the great tits and blue tits that eat from the string with peanuts in my garden do. But in the animal world the general rule is “the strongest first”, while in the human world waiting rules are more subtle. Let me have a look at them.
Queueing or lining up can take place in many ways. In my blog “Cultural misunderstanding” I explained that queueing is not necessarily physical. It can also be mental, while it still is queueing: the waiting people simply watch when it is their turn without physically standing behind each other. Another alternative for queueing is giving numbered tickets to people as soon as they enter the waiting space, so that there is no need for people to stand behind each other to know who’s next. In this blog I’ll pay attention only to physical waiting lines and take it for granted that my explanation also applies to other kinds of waiting.
I think that the phenomenon of queueing is so common that it doesn’t need further clarification. Following David Fagundes, four rules for proper queuing are essential:
1) Form a line
2) No cutting
3) First come, first served
4) Wait your turn.
The first rule says that you must stand directly behind the last person who arrived. It is the basic form of queueing. More important is the second rule. It says that it is not allowed to cut the waiting line. You must wait till it is your turn to be served. If you don’t, you are at least frowned upon, or people make remarks about it, maybe they try to stop you, and in the extreme case it can lead to a fight. In other words, everybody in the queue claims the right to be served in the order of their spot in the queue (rule three), and cutting the line is seen as violating this rule. Nonetheless, sometimes rule three is ignored, while this is not seen as a case of line cutting. It can happen that a service person picks you from the line to treat your case before you have arrived first; disabled persons and pregnant women may be allowed to go to the top of the line; people whose case can be handled “within a minute” may ask to be served first; and the like. This is not seen as cutting the line if the other waiting people (or often the next to be served only) and/or the service person consent. Rule four says that you’ll forfeit your place in the line when you leave it. Also to this rule there are exceptions, for example, if you need to go to the toilet or, in a supermarket, if you are waiting to check out and you forgot to take something. Then you ask the person behind you in the queue for permission, which is usually automatically given with an affirmative look.
This briefly about what queueing involves. I’ll ignore the sanctions for not applying the queueing norms (see Fagundes), but such sanctions illustrate that from a sociological point of view queues can be seen as a kind of mini-society or mini-system with their own rules or “laws” in which those waiting are connected by the goal of waiting for the same service or whatever it is that they are waiting for. As in a “real” system or society, violations of the rules or laws may be sanctioned. However, a queue is a very loose society or system. You don’t belong to it anymore as soon as you have left it, and probably you’ll never recall anymore that you were lining up there, or it must be for a special reason. Why should you? Moreover, you must have committed a crime to be held responsible for your behaviour in the queue once you have left it. If someone cuts the line without consent, for instance, it can be very annoying at the moment it happens, and sometimes it leads to comments, reactions and exceptionally even to a row, but in the end it’s indecent behaviour and not a crime. Laws specifying line protocol and imposing penalties for cutting in are exceptional (Wikipedia describes such a case). Anyway, usually queueing people wait orderly and basically they stick to the rules. Queueing seems to be a phenomenon that exists in all cultures, though this doesn’t mean that in all cultures always and everywhere people line up when two or more people are waiting for the same. It depends on the situation. And not in all situations and everywhere people queue physically, and other queuing systems exist as well, as said.
I think that queueing is typically human, although probably it is not an innate but a cultural achievement. Sometimes, like in the animal world, power can give you priority in a waiting line. Authorities often can pass the line and go first, although, this is also a cultural phenomenon. In the Netherlands it is not so that a burgomaster or cabinet minister simply can go first, because he or she is a burgomaster or cabinet minister. There must be a special reason for that (like security measures). In other countries power counts.
Why do people queue in the absence of formal rules or laws? Several investigators have tried to answer this question (see Fagundes pp. 1191 ff). I think there is one main background reason: Human societies are so complicated, compared to animal societies, and waiting together with others is such a common phenomenon that situations of waiting easily would escalate and lead to serious disagreements if not fighting, if no cultural norms would have developed that regulate how to wait. An obvious norm is queuing.

Random quote
Meaning and sense are not ‘things’ that you can find somewhere. They are made by people.

Pieter Hoexum (1968-)

How to prepare a defeat

French monument for the victory in the First Battle of the Marne (5-12 September 1914) in the First World War. This victory stopped the German invasion and no longer allowed a quick German victory in the war against France.

When Germany invaded Belgium and France in August 1914, it thought that its soldiers would celebrate next Christmas at home, for the war would not last longer. However, the soldiers celebrated Christmas in the trenches, sometimes together with enemy soldiers. This war – the First World War – would last more than four years, and it ruined the German Empire. Also in later wars, it often happened that, before they started fighting, the initiators underestimated the length as well as the possible impact on themselves and their own country, with negative consequences if not outright defeat as the result. Think of the Vietnam War and the wars in Afghanistan. It seems that these mistakes are again made in the wars presently going on in the world. Who would dare to say that the Russian invasion of Ukraine is a success, although on paper Russia should have been able to defeat Ukraine easily? Apparently more is needed to beat a seemingly weak enemy than a stronger army. Again and again we see that, as Monica Duffy Toft says: “Wars are rarely lost first on the battlefield. They are lost in leaders’ minds –when leaders misread what they and their adversaries can do, when their confidence substitutes for comprehension, and when the last war is mistaken for the next one.” But which false decisions if not mistakes can leaders make when they go to war? To gain insight into this, I googled the sentence “how to lose a war”. Below you find a compilation of what I found plus a few factors of my own based on the most recent political developments.

Key factors why a war is lost include:
- Failure of a strategy and lack of clear objectives. Initiating a war without a clear, realistic and achievable goal.
- Strategic miscalculation and overconfidence. Underestimating the opponent and its capability to defend itself and to counterattack. Relying on faulty intelligence or ignoring intelligence. Overestimating one’s own strengths and capabilities. Ignoring the advice of military and political experts and relying too much on the advice of those who are basically on your side. Ignoring dissident opinions. Ignoring warnings of experts of the unintended consequences of your actions, for example for the international markets and economy.
- Prolonged conflict and overreach. Engaging in long, drawn-out struggles that drain military and economic resources and the morale of your own population. Ignoring or underestimating the opposition against the war in your own country.
- Ignoring your allies. Not informing them about your plans, even if you don’t suppose them to participate. Asking them afterwards to correct your mistakes (which they may refuse because “it is not their war”). Not trying to get support from international institutions that might legitimize your actions, or otherwise not informing them about your intentions.
- Attempting to implement “democracy promotion” without local support. Trying to bring a regime change while the local population is mainly on your side but doesn’t have the means or organization to implement such a change and/or doesn’t know what to do for that.
- Alienating the local population and others on your side in or from the enemy country, even if they initially supported you. For example by destroying the infrastructure of the country and its economic capabilities, especially if this destruction will have negative long-term consequences.
- Misunderstanding local dynamics. Failing to appreciate the cultural, historical, and political landscape of the combat zone.
- Too hesitant, too limited use of means to achieve the war objectives. Inconstancy, changeability and capriciousness in the employment of your military and political and economic means.
- Underestimating the enemy’s will to resist.

In short, an initiated war is often lost by underestimating the complexity of the intervention and the enemy’s response. Especially, great powers hold the believe that their abilities will outweigh local complexities. The American senator J. William Fulbright (1905-1995) called it “the arrogance of war”. But even if a war has been well prepared, there still is what Carl von Clausewitz called the “fog of war”: The extreme uncertainty in situational awareness, intelligence, and communication experienced during military operations; the confusion regarding enemy capabilities and intentions. In the fog of war much goes wrong. It often makes a war unpredictable. And even if you have won on the battlefield, it may have made your country so much weaker that we call it a Cadmean victory.

Sources
- When I googled the sentence “how to lose a war”, first I got an AI made compilation of the most important factors that answered my question. However, such an AI survey is dynamic: The next time you google your question, you’ll get a somewhat or completely different reply. In my text I used what I found on 21 March 2026, about 11:00 p.m. This dynamic also made that I cannot refer to the sources this AI survey is based on.
- Amin Saikal, How to Lose a War. The Story of America’s Intervention in Afghanistan.
- Monica Duffy Toft, “How to lose a war”. 

Random quote
Imagination and fantasy are often highly praised, but nothing can compare to the visible and tangible reality.

Pieter Hoexum (1968-)

Jürgen Habermas (1929-2026): A personal homage

Source of the photo (edited)

On 14 March 2026, Jürgen Habermas, one of the greatest German thinkers, died, 96 years old. Habermas was a philosopher and sociologist who had a big influence on philosophical and political discussions in Germany and outside Germany. Only this fact is a sufficient reason to devote a blog to him. But there is also another reason: Habermas was one of those philosophers whose writings have much influenced my philosophical thinking, particularly during the first years of my intellectual development. Habermas has written about 50 books and I have some 20 in my library, especially those written in his earlier years. For it’s true, over the years I lost contact with Habermas’s philosophy. However, without his work, my philosophical development would have been different. In this blog it’s impossible to do justice to Habermas, so I’ll restrict myself to some notes on his influence on my personal road in sociology and philosophy.
Currently Habermas is chiefly known as a political philosopher who stands for the freedom of speech and opinion, for democracy and open discussions and who is an advocate of the European Union, and some in memoriams are mainly devoted to Habermas’s contributions in this field. However, when I went to study sociology at the end of the 1960s, there was a fierce discussion going on in the social sciences about the right method for studying human actions, the so-called “Positivismusstreit” (positivism dispute). The essence of this discussion was whether sociology should use the same method as the natural sciences, the method of explanation, or whether there was a special method typical for the social sciences: the method of Verstehen (understanding). As such this discussion was already rather old. The problem was first formulated by Wilhelm Dithey (1833-1911), who elaborated the philosophical characteristics of the method of Verstehen, while later Max Weber (1964-1920) elaborated Verstehen for the social sciences. Then this discussion faded away but in the 1960s it revived, especially thanks to the writings of Hans Albert and Jürgen Habermas. While Albert defended the view that the method of explanation applies to all sciences, including the social sciences, according to Habermas – and here I must simplify his ideas very much – the natural sciences and the social sciences are led by different “knowledge interests”, and as a consequence they require different methodological approaches: Explanation for the natural sciences and Verstehen for the social sciences. Habermas discussed his ideas about method especially in his On the Logic of the Social Sciences and the ideas about knowledge interests in his Knowledge and Human Interests. I read both books in the original German, and although they have been written in a difficult and often not very clear German (and although my German was yet quite basic then) I read them with interest and they convinced me. It is here that you find the basis of my ideas about the method of Verstehen that I later developed in my PhD thesis. These writings by Habermas didn’t only have a big impact on my intellectual development, but they led me also to Karl-Otto Apel, who soon would have a yet bigger influence on my thinking than Habermas (see this blog). Although I kept reading Habermas’s books, gradually my attention switched to works by Apel, Georg Henrik von Wright, and others.
Habermas’s epistemological thinking didn’t stop. On the contrary, it just had started and in his Theory of Communicative Action (1981) he further elaborated the view – already discussed in On the Logic of the Social Sciences – that no theoretical thinking – so including the theories of the natural sciences – can be objective, independent of what humans value. Moreover, all theoretical thinking is based on the mutual human understanding of what such theories are about. Actually, so Habermas, there are two levels of thinking: theoretical thinking, so scientific understanding, and commonsense thinking, so human understanding in daily life. Habermas called the former level of thinking and understanding level 1, and the commonsense level – the way we understand in daily life – level 0. This distinction plays an essential part in my PhD thesis, and it brought me the idea that there are two levels of meaning related to these levels. I called them respectively meaning 1 and meaning 0. With the former I refer to the meaning a scientist gives to an object, either physical or social in character. It is the scientist’s theoretical interpretation of reality. With meaning 0 I refer to the meaning the people who make up social reality give to the social reality or to parts of it themselves. It is their interpretation of their own lived reality. For me, this distinction between meaning 1 and meaning 0 plus Habermas’s and Apel’s idea of knowledge interests is the basis and with it the reason of the idea that we need a special method in the social sciences to investigate actions: the method of Verstehen.
After the publication of his Theory of Communicative Action, questions in the field of philosophy of science faded into the background in Habermas’s work, and gradually I stopped following him. While Habermas involved himself increasingly in political discussions and defended the ideas of the Enlightenment like freedom of speech and opinion, democracy and open discussions and became also an advocate of the European Union, I went more and more in the direction of the analytical philosophy of mind and action, and I wrote my PhD thesis and articles on themes in that field (see my website). After some time, I stopped reading Habermas’s books, too. It’s only later, especially under the influence of the outbreak of the war in Ukraine and the ideas of philosophers from the 16th and 17th centuries like Montaigne and Spinoza that again I began to give more attention to my political ideas in my writings, ideas that had always, already since my study in sociology and before, guided my political and philosophical choices, sometimes openly, sometimes in the background).
My thesis led me definitively away from Habermas. However, this didn’t happen because I came to disagree with his ideas. Far from that, but my thesis made me take new paths in philosophy and discover new philosophical fields. However, no doubt, without Habermas I would have failed to see the right signposts. Without Habermas my road would have been different. With his death, a philosopher and sociologist has gone who clearly stood for the ideas of the Enlightenment, in the sciences, in the humanities, in politics and in daily life; ideas that have been under attack already since Spinoza formulated them. Today, we must still defend them, but now without Jürgen Habermas.

Random quote
Freedom is realized only in the mutual recognition of free and equal citizens.

Jürgen Habermas (1929-2026)

Three ways to perform an office

The mayor's residence of Bordeaux in the time of Montaigne

Most people, I think, love themselves in some way. For some this means that they want to show, if not showcase, themselves fully in the world. Others want to keep their inner selves private. I think that Montaigne had a bit of both of them. Didn’t he write his Essays as a kind of presentation of himself? A book that he published and republished several times and that he was editing continuously? Pascal (62) called it a “foolish project of describing himself”. On the other hand, as a public servant Montaigne kept his public and his private lives strictly separated, as became clear when he was appointed mayor of Bordeaux in 1581. In his essay “Of managing one’s will” he wrote: “A man should lend himself to others, and only give himself to himself.” So, when Montaigne heard that he had been appointed mayor of his town, he refused. His father had also been mayor of Bordeaux and Montaigne tells us how he “remembered … to have seen him in his old age cruelly tormented with these public affairs, neglecting the soft repose of his own house, to which the declension of his age had reduced him for several years before, the management of his own affairs, and his health; and certainly despising his own life, which was in great danger of being lost, by being engaged in long and painful journeys on their behalf.” It’s not what Montaigne wanted. But he had to accept the function of mayor when the King ordered him to do so. Montaigne performed his office so well that he was reappointed after two years, but he always kept private and public strictly separated, and took care not to get emotionally involved in the city affairs.
I have the impression that such persons who “split up” themselves when in office are exceptional. Many do like Montaigne’s father, who, so Montaigne, thought “that a man must forget himself for his neighbour, and that the particular was of no manner of consideration in comparison with the general.” They give themselves to the fullest. That is, so Montaigne, what is expected of us when we perform a public function, and it is what many people do. However, not so Montaigne. It’s not that one never should immerse oneself wholeheartedly in a public task, but it must be an exception, or as Montaigne says: “It is only borrowed, and accidentally; his mind being always in repose and in health; not without action, but without vexation, without passion.” This is quite possible, as Montaigne has shown himself, but reality is often different, “for how many people hazard themselves every day in war without any concern which way it goes; and thrust themselves into the dangers of battles, the loss of which will not break their next night’s sleep? And such a man may be at home, out of the danger which he durst not have looked upon, who is more passionately concerned for the issue of this war, and whose soul is more anxious about events than the soldier who therein stakes his blood and his life.”

However, there is yet another type of person performing public functions. It is a type not mentioned by Montaigne, although he must have been acquainted with it. Such an official – for in the end such a person is only an official, i.e. someone appointed or elected in a public function to serve the people – sees an office as a personal fief, as in medieval times, with all its consequences for the people he or she must lead or govern and for the tasks to be managed. Such a person performs an office as if it is a personal possession and the people involved in, ruled by or hit by his or her measures are treated that way. It is the way especially authoritarian leaders exert their duties and govern those who have become their subjects. Or rather, these “subordinates” are no longer considered subjects but have become objects in the minds of such functionaries; they have become vassals and people-at-large, and their only right is to obey. Such a person performs his or her function not only to the fullest but also often in a Machiavellian way, and if not, their style is not far from it.
Look around and judge for yourself.

Random quote
You can’t eat images, but people will fight to the death for an idea.

Michel Serres (1930-2019)

Moving on

Humans are made for moving. It’s what I always have thought, or, let’s say, since I myself started to move. With the latter, I don’t mean the moment I was thrown on this earth, so my birth, but when I began doing sport. Actually, “began” is not the right word. I didn’t suddenly or within a rather short time begin to practice sport. It was a gradual development. First going to an ice rink, now and then; during the next summer making a few bike tours; next winter more skating; then I became a member of a sports club; etc. My ideas about the body (and its relation with the mind) developed gradually with my sportive activities, until I had the feeling and then also the idea that humans are made to move.
Nowadays, this is a widespread idea. This hasn’t always been so. For a long time it was so that you left physical work to others, if you could. Actually, such work was considered to be beneath you. It was done by people who hadn’t the capabilities to do something else (so it was thought). Better work was office work; or work in leading positions; anyway work for which you didn’t need to use your body. Those people made a stroll at most; or a horse ride; maybe even often. But this was seen as leisure; as relaxing and not so much as physical effort. So, Kant – I don’t know what he thought about physical effort – every day made a walk (and always at exactly the same time).
That moving your body is good for you actually should be no surprise, although for a long time the idea was ignored if not denied. But humans originated in the darkness of the prehistory as bipedal beings. There were no domesticated animals and no carts; nobody would bear you, unless you were a little child. Therefore the only way to go from here to there was by using your own legs. No wonder that your whole body became adapted to this necessity. Your body functions better when you use it, like your blood pressure, organs, energy system and muscles. It degenerates when you don’t use it enough, like an old car that rusts away when it is not used any longer. Your muscles lose power and endurance when they don’t work hard enough. Etc.
Millions of years long humans would move their own bodies without even thinking about it, for there was no alternative. This changed when, with the development of agriculture and with the development of cities and permanent residences, human life became sedentary, and there was less need to move. The social structure became more complicated, and since physical effort came to be seen as an effort you should avoid – this was a rather narrow view, as we now know – physical work was looked down upon. So it remained almost till today. However, many people still needed to move a lot, since fast and efficient means of transport, as we have them today, and machines to relieve physical work did not yet exist (and are not more than two centuries old). When people wanted to move from one place to another, most of the time they used their bodies. Carts and horses were only useful for longer distances and even then you had to use your own body more than in a modern train or car. Moreover, many people couldn’t afford them.
Although the idea that moving your body is good has become widespread, the practice is often different. Although this is changing, cities have often not been built for walkers and cyclists, so that you are forced to take your car or to use public transport. People were not used to walking any longer, while actually by bike they would arrive as fast at their destinations. For how much time isn’t lost in waiting for the bus or train or looking for a parking place? Moreover, society is organized that way that often you have hardly any opportunity to move your body. If you want to, you must do it intentionally in your free time like going to a fitness centre, making a bike ride for pleasure, or in your sports club. Moving has become something extra. The result is that many people don’t do it enough. According to the Irish neuroscientist Shane O’Mara going by foot is better than cycling. I think that he is right, for when walking (or running), you move the rest of your body (besides your legs) more than when you are cycling (which is a little bit one-sided, as you use mainly your legs and less so the rest of your body). Nevertheless, I doubt whether “better” is the right word here, for by cycling you can do by far longer distances, so that you can go to places by bike, where you wouldn’t go by foot (and then you would go by car, bus or train instead). Moreover, when you become older, cycling is a much more pleasant way to move for many people than walking (anyway, it’s my experience).
One of the most remarkable results of scientific research is that moving your body is not only good for your body in a narrow sense but also for your brain, if not for your mind. It helps you postpone if not prevent mental diseases like Alzheimer's disease; it’s good for your memory and learning ability; it works against stress and depressions, makes you more creative and keeps your brain younger. So moving your body is better for the whole person you are; not only for your physical person but also for your mental person. Isn’t it another argument for the idea that body and mind are one; an idea I defended in my last two blogs (and in other blogs as well)?

Random quote
Boastful men are the scorn of wise men, the admiration of fools, the idols of parasites, and the slaves of their own boasts.

Francis Bacon (1561-1626)

Group fallacy

“A fallacy is an error in reasoning whereby someone attempts to put forward an argument whereby a conclusion supposedly has been appropriately inferred from a premise (or premises) when, in fact, the conclusion does not and should not be inferred from the premise(s)” as the book Bad Arguments tells me (p. 19), a book I have used already often in these blogs. Fallacies can be divided into formal and informal fallacies, so it explains. In the former type of fallacies the conclusion doesn’t follow from the premise(s) because of errors in the structure or form of the argument, rather than in the content. In an informal fallacy, the conclusion doesn’t follow from the premise(s) just because of errors in the content of the argument, rather than in its structure or form. Since the content is expressed in language, often we find the false reasoning in the language used, like the misuse of words or grammar, false understanding, vague use of conceptions, and so on. (pp. 18-22) It is not only because fallacies are based on false reasoning (which often happens in good faith), that I treat them sometimes in these blogs, but they are also often used intentionally to manipulate other people. In both cases, fallacies can lead to wrong decisions, prejudice, wrong behaviour etc. Many fallacies leading to prejudices, discrimination and other unwanted social consequences are based on a confusion between group level and individual level, so on the view that what is true for a group should also be true for members of this group, or the other way around.
One fallacy where this confusion occurs is the ecological fallacy, also called population fallacy. It is a deduction error committed when “we try to draw conclusions about individuals based on data collected at the group level.” (Source 1, or (1) for short) Or, alternatively, it is an error “in the interpretation of statistical data … when inferences about the nature of individuals are deduced from inferences about the group to which those individuals belong.” (Source 2, or (2) for short) Since the basis of this fallacy is an error in formal deduction, the ecological fallacy is a formal fallacy. This fallacy often leads to stereotyping, prejudices and discrimination, as this example illustrates: If a specific neighbourhood has a high crime rate, one might assume that any resident living in that area is more likely to commit a crime. However, it needs not to be so that if you take an arbitrary resident of this neighbourhood that he or she ever has committed a crime. Nevertheless, stereotypical thinking often assumes that groups are homogeneous and that every resident of such a neighbourhood has an air of criminality around him or her and that he or she has directly or indirectly something to do with criminality. If for someone this clearly appears not to be the case, that person is seen as atypical.
The ecological fallacy is often seen as a case of misinterpretation of statistical data and so seen as a fallacy typically committed by researchers or others who directly work with statistical data, but actually it is a fallacy that is committed more generally (cf. the example).
The ecological fallacy is a kind of “group fallacy”: Group level and individual level are confused; or otherwise; the group as a whole is incorrectly substituted as a principle of explanation of what individuals in the group do or are. The individual is completely identified with the group, ignoring individual differences. A related fallacy that confuses group and individual is the fallacy of division. It “occurs when one reasons that something that is true for a whole must also be true of all or some of its parts.” (3) The feature of a group is incorrectly also ascribed to the individuals comprising the group (6). It is an informal fallacy based on the content of the reasoning. Here is an example: A) The laws passed by the parliament were radical; B) Jones is a member of the parliament. Therefore from A and B: C) Jones is radical. (4). I think it is clear that this needs anything but true, albeit only because it might be that Jones was the only person who voted against the laws.
The opposite reasoning is also possible, so instead of reasoning from group to individual arguing from individual to group. The fallacy of composition is a case in point. This informal fallacy is the incorrect inference that if something is true for a part, it is also true for the whole (4), or “that the characteristics, attributes, or features of individuals comprising some group will also be found in the group as a whole” (5). For example, the members of parliament Peterson, Smith and Mark are all radicals, therefore the whole parliament is radical. This needs not be true, of course, since maybe the other MPs are all moderates. This fallacy is related to the fallacy of hasty generalization, which I have discussed elsewhere in these blogs.
The way to avoid these mistakes differs a bit from fallacy to fallacy but the general approach is never to suppose that what is true for a higher level is also true for the lower level, and the other way around. Maybe it is, but then this conclusion must always be based on independent data. Otherwise the road is open to stereotyping, prejudices and discrimination.

Sources
1) “What Is Ecological Fallacy? | Definition & Example”
2) Wikipedia: “Ecological fallacy”
3) Wikipedia: “Fallacy of division”
4) Wikipedia: “Fallacy of composition”
5) Jason Waller, “Composition”, in Bad Arguments, pp. 250-251
6) Jason Waller, “Division”, in Bad Arguments, pp. 259-260

Random quote
The power of population is indefinitely greater than the power in the earth to produce subsistence for man.

Thomas Robert Malthus (1766-1834)

Spinoza and the double-aspect theory

Rubin Vase

If you have read my last blog, you may have noticed that I defend there a view about the relationship between mind and body that is called the double-aspect theory, or also dual-aspect monism. I came to this view long ago when I was working on my PhD thesis and didn’t know yet its name, or that it was, for example, Spinoza’s view on reality. My question then was methodological: What is the difference between the methods of explanation and understanding, especially when we study human behaviour and actions? My answer was that the method of explanation asks for the causes why someone does what he or she does, so for the causes of behaviour, while the method of understanding asks for the reasons why someone does what he or she does, so for the reasons of actions. In other words, the method to be used depends on the kind of questions we want to ask about a human. I’ll not repeat or summarize here my PhD thesis, but in view of my present ideas, we can say that with the method of explanation we study the human body and with the method of understanding we study the human mind. So, if we want to know why someone does what he or she does, we try to explain it if we want to investigate the causes that made someone’s body move in a certain way, and we try to understand it if we want to investigate the mental reasons that made someone perform an action. We can also say that there is one substance “human being” but we can approach it as a physical entity or as a mental entity; as a body or as a mind. Body and mind (or the mental) are the two basic aspects of a human being.
Seen this way, my version of the double-aspect theory is epistemic, and actually it says nothing about the ontic side of humans, but without substantiating this view, I also think that ontologically there is only one substance, and not two substances like a body substance and a mind substance that are mixed in such a complicated way, for instance, that we could investigate them only by seeing them as aspects. As I indicated in my last blog, I see body and mind rather as structures of the one existing substance that basically makes up the world; a bit like that the ink in a book can be structured that way that it is the text of a story at the same time. The text is a manifestation of the substance.

I don’t know whether there are older versions of the double-aspect theory, but this view on reality was central in Spinoza’s philosophy. By developing his version of substance monism, Spinoza criticized Descartes’ mind-body dualism, which says that body and mind are different substances that make up humans and that interact in the brain. According to Spinoza there is only one substance that makes up the world. How should we conceive such a substance? That’s why Spinoza introduced the concept of attribute. As defined by Spinoza it’s a difficult concept, but following Beth Lord in his Spinoza’s Ethics – which is a guide to Spinoza’s Ethics – we can say that “attributes are the different ways in which a substance can be perceived. ... An attribute is the substance itself, as perceived in a certain way” (p. 21; italics Lord). According to Spinoza, two attributes are relevant for humans: extension and thinking. Also for Descartes extension and thinking are relevant for humans, but for him they are separate substances, while for Spinoza extension and thinking are two different attributes of the one substance that exists in this world.
Once we know this the analogy between Spinoza’s world view and the double-aspect theory is clear, especially when we use its alternative name “dual-aspect monism”: Spinoza’s attributes are nothing but what I have called aspects and his attributes extension and thinking are what in dual-aspect monism are called matter and mind. The latter are called body and mind when we talk about humans.
At the end of my last blog I remarked that there may be more aspects than the two aspects matter and mind. This is what Spinoza actually says, too, for according to him the one existing substance has an infinite number of attributes. In my terms this means that the one existing substance has an infinite number of aspects. In fact, Spinoza’s theory is a multi-aspect theory, but because only two attributes are relevant to humans, we can ignore it.

Random quote
Things which have most hold on us, as the concealment of our few possessions, are often a mere nothing. It is a nothing which our imagination magnifies into a mountain. Another turn of the imagination would make us discover this without difficulty.

Blaise Pascal (1623-1662)

What is a book?

Sometimes things pop up in my mind and I feel an urge to write about it. For example, I have many books around here, but what actually is a book? You could say that it is a bundle of paper with a text printed on the paper. I think that this is rather to the point. However, also a magazine, a journal or a newspaper is a bundle of paper with text and nevertheless we don’t call it a book. Actually, this difference is not so important for me. In antiquity books were written on scrolls and still they are called books. Moreover, some magazines and journals are also almost like books. The only difference with a book is that they belong to a series of regularly published bundles of texts. On the other hand, sometimes books are part of a series and nevertheless we call them books.
But I am moving in the wrong direction, for the difference between books, magazines, newspapers etc. is not what really interests me. What I actually find intriguing is that books, magazines, etc. are material objects and texts at the same time. Or rather, a book has a text: blots of ink that have a meaning for us. I’ll ignore for this blog magazines, newspaper, etc. but in fact “book” and “text” are alternative expressions for the same. For there is more in a book than just texts that makes a book a book: There may be pictures, a book has always a cover (true: newspapers don’t have it), and so there are other text-like characteristics that make a book a book. But what is interesting now is that a book is a material thing – mainly paper – and that a book has also a meaning, which is mainly expressed by the text in the strict sense. In a book, material and mind come together.
When you think about it carefully, it is intriguing that material and the immaterial, matter and mind are combined in a book. How is this possible? Seen this way, the question suggests that a book has or consists of two different substances and that they come together in some way: They touch. But how? For Descartes, in humans mind and body interact or “touch” in the pineal gland in the brain. Should there also be such a pineal gland in a book? Maybe the letters? But there are many letters in a book. Where then and how do the two substances of the book, so the paper and the meaning, come together? I can go on and try to answer this question, but I think it is the wrong question. The question “How do the paper (the material) and the meaning (immaterial) in a book ‘touch’” supposes already that there are two substances that touch in a book in some way. What matter is and what mind is are difficult questions, but I think, however, that somehow they are alike. Matter and mind are different ways in which the “stuff” in the world can be organized but basically they are made of the same “stuff”, whatever it is or however we should imagine it. Matter and mind are rather ways of structuring the stuff (= the substance that basically makes up the world) than that they are two different stuffs. (This suggests that other ways to structure stuff, besides matter and mind, are also possible).
What does this mean for my question “what is a book”? We can say now that a book is a bundle of paper to which something (a text in the proper sense) that someone had in mind is added, and that this would suggest that a book consists of two substances (“stuffs”). Nevertheless, for some – like printers, publishers or booksellers – a book is merely a paper object (so mere matter), and for others – like philosophers and their readers, unless when they are moving their bookcases – it is the printed thoughts that make a book. Some see a book as a bundle of paper and others see it as a bundle of thoughts. Since a book consists of one substance, we can also say: Some are interested in other aspects of the substance “book” than others. Some are interested in a book as matter and others are interested in a book as mind. In other words, a book has two aspects, matter and mind, and it depends on your perspective which aspect is interesting to you. And maybe (if there are more ways to structure the bookish stuff) there are other aspects as well. But isn’t the whole mind-body duality – so the mind-body-distinction – not more than a question of different aspects? Doesn’t this distinction simply depend on your perspective so on the kind of questions you ask?

Random quote
He who seeks to be eminent amongst able men has a great task, but that is always good for the public; whereas he who plots to be the only figure amongst ciphers is the decay of a whole age.

Francis Bacon (1561-1626)

How to become a great prince

Louis XIV, alias the Sun King: King of France 1643-1715

In my blog about Machiavelli two weeks ago we have seen that basically anything is allowed for a prince to stay in power if not to increase his glory. Cunning and guile and actually also war, special military operations and murder – although Machiavelli doesn’t say it clearly in the passages discussed there – are allowed for these purposes. It is glory that is most important for a prince; not to take care for his subjects. Why should he, for all the people “want is to be free from oppression”. (The Prince, p. 40) Machiavelli says this for a prince who came to power with the support of the people, but I think it is so for every prince. Or rather it was so in Machiavelli’s days, when bringing prosperity for the people was not yet a requirement for a ruler, also not for one supported by the people. This doesn’t mean, of course, that caring for his subjects did not contribute to the glory of a prince. Anyway, for present-day autocrats, and also for some democratically elected leaders, glory and power are still more important than promoting prosperity. Just such a view on politics made that the word “Machiavellism” got such a bad reputation and is seen as synonymous with unscrupulous politics, and that politics in general has got a bad name.
I have nothing against a ruler, who does his job with pleasure and who takes care of maintaining a good reputation for himself, for how else would we find people who are prepared to rule? I think that no one is so altruistic to present himself only because the job must be done. However, for Machiavelli, glory and power are in fact the only criteria to judge the success of a prince, and not, for instance, as it would be today, the state of the economy and the prosperity of the people. So, “if a ruler wants to survive, he’ll have to learn to stop being good, at least when the occasion demands.” (p. 61) Hence Machiavelli discusses such questions as whether a prince should be generous or mean. Answer: Being generous may be better, but “since a ruler can’t be generous and show it without putting himself at risk, if he’s sensible he won’t mind getting a reputation for meanness.” (p. 62) Should a leader wish to be seen as compassionate rather than cruel? Or, which is almost the same, “is it better to be loved rather than feared, or vice versa? The answer is that one would prefer to be both but, since they don’t go together easily, … it’s much safer to be feared than loved.” Although “while a ruler can’t expect to inspire love when making himself feared, he must avoid arousing hatred. Actually, being feared is perfectly compatible with not being hated.” (p. 66) A prince is safe so long as he avoids being hated and held in contempt. (p. 72)
This is the negative side. But glory is not the same as not being hated and being held in contempt. It is a positive reputation. This is a theme that Machiavelli treats in chapter 21 of The Prince. We read the core of the answer how to be honoured already in the first sentence of this chapter: “Nothing wins a ruler respect like great military victories and a display of remarkable personal qualities.” (p. 87). Machiavelli thinks here of military operations but a leader can also “win acclaim by giving impressive demonstrations of character in his handling of domestic affairs… But above all a ruler must make sure that everything he does gives people the impression that he is a great man of remarkable abilities.” (p. 88)
Machiavelli’s book is about power and glory, not in the abstract but for a concrete person: The prince. In modern words we would say “Make the prince great again”, which would also have been a great title for the book. Or maybe better “Make your country great again”, in which, as you’ll have understood, “country” is a metaphor for “prince”.

Random quote
In wartime, truth is whatever hurts the other side most.

Adam Shatz, author (1972-)

The ass in the lion’s skin

Since I had no time to write a blog this week, instead I publish this fable by Jean de La Fontaine. I leave the interpretation to you. To my mind, it is wider than the conclusion in the fable itself.

The ass in the lion’s skin

An ass clad in a lion's skin,
Spread terror all around,
And though he was an ass within,
Each trembled at the sound!
A portion of Jack's ear by chance peeped through,
And the whole trick at once exposed to view.
Ralph with a cudgel did his office quick,
Wild stared the folks who did not know the trick.
They were surprised to see that Ralph, at will,
Could drive a lion to the mill.
Many great people famed in France,
By whom this apologue's familial- grown,
Are chiefly for their courage known
By the bold equipage in which they prance.

Sources
Fables, Jean de La Fontaine, Book V, 21
Source illustration

Letters

When distances still were distances

It is the function of a letter that it preserves the feelings of sympathy that people that are far away from each other feel for each other. It also repairs the damage caused by a long time. It bridges even the greatest distances. It summarizes on a small piece of paper everything we have done in many days, yes, in many years. And with those who are very far away from us, we share all our prosperity and adversity with a confidence and warmth as if they were with us.

From a letter to a friend by the Dutch humanist Rodolphus Agricola, 5 February 1471

Politics according to Machiavelli

In view of the present world situation, it may be a good idea to pay attention to Machiavelli’s famous book The Prince. Niccolò Machiavelli was an Italian diplomat, philosopher and political scientist. He wrote The Prince as a kind of guide for the princes of his time. Although there are hardly any ruling princes anymore in the present world, I think that this “guide” still gives insight into how politics works. Many commentators consider the idea that immoral acts are sometimes necessary to achieve political glory as one of the main themes of The Prince. And indeed, my feeling is that many political leaders in the present world are guided by the idea to get glory for themselves; if necessary at all costs. Probably, The Prince was already being written in 1513, but it hasn’t been published before 1532, after Machiavelli's death. I bought my copy of the book 40 years ago, read it then, and put it in my bookcase. It stayed there until a few days ago when I took it from its place and began to read interesting passages. The time was too short to read it completely for this blog, but fortunately, the chapters stand more or less on their own. Here are some quotations and comments.
Judging from the contents of The Prince, the first part of the book is about princedoms as such, though certainly not exclusively, while the second part discusses the desired character and behaviour of the prince. The tendency of the whole book is about what the ruler should do to achieve glory. The idea behind the book seems to be that glory is important in life. Anyway for the ruler it is; glory in the present and after his death. That it is allowed to seek this glory at all costs becomes especially clear in chapter 18: “A ruler and his promises”. Machiavelli tells us here that “there are two ways of doing battle: using the law and using force. Typically, humans use laws and animals force. But since playing by the law often proves inadequate, it makes sense to resort to force as well. Hence a ruler must be able to exploit both the man and the beast in himself to the full.” (p. 69) The latter can be done in two ways: by behaving like a fox or like a lion. The lion uses violence and the fox is smart and achieves its purposes through cunning and guile. In other words, so Machiavelli, “a sensible leader cannot and must not keep his word if by doing so he puts the prince himself at risk, and if the reasons that made him give his word in the first place are no longer valid.” The others deceive you, so it’s not a problem to deceive them. “Anyway, a ruler will never be short of good reasons to explain away a broken promise.” If it is useful to you, don’t keep your word. “Those best at playing the fox have done better than the others. But you have to know how to disguise your slyness, how to pretend one thing and cover up another. People are so gullible and so caught up with immediate concerns that a con man will always find someone ready to be conned.” (70)
However, a prince must keep up the appearance that he is a virtuous person, though he must not behave too much like a virtuous person. “[I]f he had those qualities and observed them all the time, he’d be putting himself at risk. It’s seeming to be virtuous that helps... And you can even be [virtuous], so long as you’re always mentally prepared to change as soon as your interests are threatened.” In the end nobody cares if a ruler has used cunning means, once he has won, for “people look at the end result. So if a leader does what it takes to win power and keep it, his methods will always be reckoned honourable and widely praised. The crowd is won over by appearances and final results.” Cunning and guile are praised if you win.
So, a ruler will fail if he wants to be honest and hesitates to deceive. According to Machiavelli, there is also another big mistake a ruler can commit, as he explains in chapter 23: Being open to flattery.
When you are at the top, many people around you will overload you with advice, not for helping you but for their own advantage. Such people will tell you things and give you advice, not because it is correct and useful, but because you’ll like what they say. If you accept what these people tell you, you’ll make mistakes. If you ignore them “you run the risk of having people despise you.” (93)
What to do against it? “[T]he only way to guard against flattery”, so Machiavelli, “is to have people understand that you don’t mind them telling you the truth. But when anyone and everyone can tell you the truth, you lose respect.” Therefore, he says, “the sensible ruler must find a middle way, choosing intelligent men for ministers and giving them and only them the right to tell him the truth, and only on the issues he asks about, not in general. … [Moreover], he should make it clear that the more openly they speak, the more welcome their advice will be. After which, he shouldn’t take advice from anyone else…” (93) After the consultation it is the ruler himself who takes the decisions, and he must stand firm on them. That a ruler sticks to his decisions once taken, is important: “Try a different approach and you’ll either be ruined by flatterers or change your mind so often listening to everyone’s opinions that people will lose their respect for you”, so Machiavelli. (93-94) It’s not difficult to find such rulers, but, as we have seen, if you are whimsy, everyone will come to you, and try to manipulate you by buttering you up. Though you may think that it will bring you greatness, finally it will undermine your glory and bring you down.

Random quote
It is the nature of extreme self-lovers that they will set a house on fire if only to cook their eggs.

Francis Bacon (1561-1626)

Travelling with Bacon

To the trains

Travelling is of all time. Only the means to travel have changed, and even these haven’t changed as much as we might think. Travelling by air is new, indeed, but you can see a car or train as an updated version of a coach. A car, so an automobile, actually is nothing but a cart with a motor, and a train actually is a number of carts coupled together pulled by a cart with a motor. Also the reasons for travelling haven’t fundamentally changed such as business, family visits, tourism, pilgrimage, study and exploration, and nomadic travels. What has changed over the years is the timescale of travelling. Today travelling goes faster. Moreover, it has become cheaper. The result has been mass tourism, a new phenomenon, indeed.
Humans have always travelled, even if the circumstances were difficult and dangerous. I have often been surprised how much, for instance, medieval people have travelled. Erasmus (c. 1467-1536), the great Dutch humanist, was born in Rotterdam and went to school in Deventer. He got his doctorate in Bologna in Italy, after having studied in Paris for some time, and he died in Basel, after having lived in several towns and cities in Western and Southern Europe. Erasmus rarely stayed at the same place for a long time. Also his Dutch predecessor Rodolphus Agricola (1444-1485) is a case in point. He was born in Baflo, a village in the north of the Netherlands near Groningen; he studied in Erfurt and Cologne (Germany), Leuven (Belgium), Pavia and Ferrara (Italy); and over the years he travelled often between these places. After having worked in Groningen for some years, he moved to Heidelberg (Germany), where he died, after having become ill on a trip to Rome. Or take Herodotus (c. 484 – c. 425), Ibn Batutta (1304-1368/9), and Zheng He (1371-1433/5), who were also avid travellers, not to forget all those prehistoric travellers whose names we’ll never know. Travelling is in our genes.
Montaigne (1533-1592) loved travelling, too, though he did it mainly in France. However, once Montaigne made a trip through Switzerland, Southern Germany, Austria and Italy. His travel journal has become famous, although he had written it only for himself; not for publication. Also Francis Bacon (1561-1626) has travelled quite a lot. He has travelled around in France and has been to Italy and Spain as well. He travelled mainly for educational reasons and for performing diplomatic tasks. He was about 20 years old then. In his days the habit arose that young men of good breeding made a “grand tour”, an educational trip through Europe and especially to Italy. We see this reflected in Bacon’s essay “Travel”, an essay full of advice. Just this makes the essay interesting for the modern reader, for many modern tourists travel not only to relax (like lying on the beach) but, if possible, they also want to learn something.
One of the first of Bacon’s advices for travellers is to learn the language of the country to be visited. I think he is right and during many trips I tried to learn a bit of the local language (not counting the fact that I know the main languages of Europe and have a basic knowledge of some other languages). But makes it still sense? How often doesn’t it happen to me now that I begin to speak, say, French or German and I get an answer in English! How annoying if you want to use the local language. Anyway, if you don’t speak the local language (and if the locals don’t speak English, I want to add), it’s good that you are accompanied by a teacher or a servant who does and who also knows what to see there, so Bacon. Nowadays, there is hardly any traveller who can afford this, but in modern terms we can say: Travel in a group with a tour guide or take part in local tours with a guide, and use the internet in order to find out what there is to see where you stay.
What then are the things you must see on your trip, anyway? Bacon gives a list of some fifty “things to be seen and observed”, too many to list here, but – in modern terms – he recommends to go to all those things that, indeed, modern tourists usually visit, too: Churches, monasteries, old buildings, ruins, museums, old cities, libraries, gardens, etc. and he advises us – again translated in modern terms – to go to shows, theatre performances, etc. Actually, it’s nothing new. However, what is quite remarkable for a modern tourist, Bacon tells us also that “… weddings, funerals, capital executions, and such shows … are not to be neglected.” The killing of a human was apparently seen as a show in those days. But would it be different today if there were still public executions? Even more, here and there in the world capital executions taking place in front of a large crowd still happen.
Then a list with travel advice follows. In short:
- keep a diary
- don’t stay too long at the same place; also when you’ll stay in the same city for some time, change your accommodation now and then
- avoid your compatriots, deal with the locals, and go to local restaurants
- take advantage of the advice and recommendations of the locals and others known with the region where you stay
- avoid quarrels and problems during your trip and avoid the company of people who might bring you in trouble

- after your return home, keep contact with some people in the region you visited
- and last but not least: “let [your] travel appear rather in [your] discourse than in [your] apparel or gesture; and in [your] discourse let [you] be advised in [your] answers rather than forward to tell stories; and let it appear that [you do] not change [your] own country’s manners for those of foreign parts, but only plant some flowers of what [you have] learned abroad into the customs of [your] own country.”

But for how many modern travellers is their trip nothing but living in an enclave and how many have stories to tell, anyway, let alone that they can give answers about the trip?