Happy Bastille Day!

Noblesse Oblige

In premodern Europe, being a member of the Second Estate (see my foundational post for my explanation of the three estates and the terms of reference for this blog) wasn't just a privileged status but carried with it certain responsibilities, often referred to as the noblesse oblige.  The true economic wealth of the period was recognised as residing in the land, and so society itself was built around the land.  While it was the role of the Third Estate to make the wealth of the land available to society, it was the role of the Second Estate to be the custodians of the land itself.  In fact, it was normal during this period that the names of Second Estate families were derived from the land itself.

In their role as custodians, the nobility were allocated a generous share of the wealth that was obtained from the land.  However, this wealth was entrusted to them on the understanding that they would use it to perform their role adequately, not just for their personal use.  The large amounts of resentment directed towards the nobility at the beginning of the French Revolution came about as a result of a breakdown of this understanding.  For a time before the Revolution, the nobility had used their position to milk society of its wealth in order to fund their own luxurious lifestyles, as well as to wage foreign wars that were of no concern to the people.  They had neglected their duties, as was properly understood by the noblesse oblige, and were abusing their trust to their own advantage.  This situation was the consequence of many factors, but it provoked the revolutionary cry of "liberté, égalité, fraternité".

So, what is noblesse oblige?  It appears that its contemporary meaning has subtly shifted from its historic meaning.  In contemporary society it is used to support the idea that with a privileged place in society comes the responsibility to give something back.  Most notably, it is attributed to the great philanthropists (such as Bill Gates) who see it as their duty to give something back of what they have.  This is, actually, different from the premodern understanding.  Firstly, it wasn't used to describe a heartfelt movement but an obligation enshrined in customary law.  Secondly, the precedence of events was seen differently: the modern understanding is that if a person is privileged, whether born or self made, they ought to give something back; the premodern understanding was that the obligation to serve the community comes first and privilege is given in order that this might occur.  In other words, being born into the Second Estate didn't mean that you were born into privilage and had an obligation to use the excess of your wealth to serve the community, but rather that you were born into an obligation to serve the community with what you had.  That there might be a little bit left over as a reward for the added strain this work added to life might be deemed appropriate, but the idea that there might be enough left over for more than reasonable comfort was an abuse, even though no one might complain about it.  That much of early modern nobility lived in decadent luxury while the majority lived in poverty was clear provocation for resentment.

What does this mean to us today?  To answer that question we first need to ask: was it inevitable that the Second Estate fall into institutional corruption?  If not, we can then afford to ask: is the new system of representative government and a capitalist elite an adequite replacement for the old regieme?  What does it mean that we don't have a social estate that serves the same role that the Second Estate served?

To answer the first question, I don't believe it was inevitable, and to answer the second, no I don't believe that the new establishment is an adequate replacement for the old.  These are topics I can address in more detail in the future, after I've discussed the decay of the First Estate.  I'll leave the answer to the third question open, however, if you've got comments on any of these question, please feel free to drop them.

The primacy of materialism

The misplaced desire to accumulate endless material possessions is as old as sin itself, but during most of the Christian era it was acknowledged to be a bad thing, even if people often gave into it.  That was all changed on a large scale during the course of the French Revolution. A French Catholic Priest called Emmanuel Joseph Sièyes, more commonly known as Abbé Sièyes, was one of the leaders and great mediocre thinkers during the Revolution and, along with Bernard Mandeville, lays claim to the title of "Father of Modern Materialism".  Unlike Mandeville, however, who caused great scandal among his peers, Sièyes' opinion was highly influential because he didn't come out and say "materialism is good".  He was much more subtle in his presentation, presenting his position as part of a greater political struggle and indirectly allowing it to influence society around him.  It is questionable, in fact, if he was intentionally materialistic in his outlook, or simply that he just didn't consider the consequences.  In any case, the impact of his pamphlet Qu'est-ce que le tiers-état? (What is the Third Estate?) was felt quickly.
In Qu'est-ce que le tiers-état?, Sièyes puts forth a political vision in which the social contribution of the Third Estate, that is, material wealth, is the only contribution that matters to a nation.  (For an explanation of the three estates, please see my previous post).  The Third Estate, he argues, is an nation complete in itself, and the First and Second Estates are just parasites that prevent this nation from reaching greatness.
Now it's important, when reading any political thinker, to properly regard them as products of their time and, certainly, in Sièyes time, there was a lot of good reason to be angry with both Church and aristocracy.  But the difference between an ordinary political thinker and a great one is that the former attempts reform of the political institution simply as it appears in the here and now, and strives for the benefit of their own constituents; whereas the latter sees political institutions as they've changed through history, not for the sake of mere tradition, but in order to understand the good and the bad of those institutions properly, and the great thinker is not just concerned about the immediate welfare of his constituents but looks to how the good of all social sectors can flourish to the benefit of all.
Sièyes was very much a product of his time and very much an ordinary thinker.  He had no great vision of a national flourishing, but was just able to dress up his ideas to look good.  He didn't really think through the consequences of what he was proposing.
It is certainly true that, at the time, the First and Second Estates were not contributing to society according to their respective charters, and in that sense they were parasitic, but Sièyes, instead of seeing the other estates as they ought to be and as they had been in the past, and challenging them to return to their original charters, he only saw them as they directly manifested in the now and, subsequently, considered them to be redundant.
The saddest thing about his vision for society was its utter lack of imagination.  All he was able to see was what was before his eyes and this led him to conclude that the material wealth of the Third Estate was useful, so the Third Estate was the entirety of the nation, while the others made no direct contribution and, therefore, needed to be abolished.  As a result, the society that emerged from the Revolution was one in which the spiritual nourishment of the Church was not a consideration, and the broad justice and tradition of the old aristocracy were replaced by a more expedient form of justice.  Because of the shortcomings of the First and Second Estates, an entire generation was living in a world where the goodness of a spiritual and broadly just society were not experienced, and, not being experienced, were not given consideration in the new society the Revolution was building.
Sièyes' betrayal of the faith he had promised to preserve, and his wild attack on the status quo of his day, challenges us today to consider political reform with a greater sense of prudence.  We often see injustice in the society in which we live, and our knee-jerk reaction is to try to fix it without consideration of the wider consequences.  Rather than just settling on the first solution we can think of, we need to ask: how did we get to this position in the first place?  What are the original goods that were intended by the existing institutions?  Is there a way of fixing the problem without forfeiting the intended good?
The social reforms Sièyes introduced are a key factor in the materialistic nature of contemporary secular society.  Why is it that we take for granted that secular society must necessarily be materialistic and expedient, while spiritual and moral concerns are relegated to the private sphere? This is a question I'll explore further in future posts, but if you've got an answer you'd like to share in the comments I'd love to hear from you.

Who was the Fourth Estate? (Supplement)

The États Généraux of 1789 - it's all about representation!

In my previous post I discussed the three estates of the realm, but didn't give much of a satisfactory answer to my original question: "Who was the Fourth Estate?"

The concept of an historical "Fourth Estate" is, like many of the concepts that describe the premodern world, a modern concept, and it is based on the idea of the importance of representation.  The moderns, who looked backwards in time, saw a world where the clergy, nobility and bourgeoisie had representation, but the rest of the population did not, (such as in the Eighteenth Century États Généraux), and this representation was derived from the estates.  Therefore, they understood an estate to be a body that had representation.  So what about all those unrepresented people?  They were conveniently lumped into a "Fourth Estate" by whig historians.

Building on this understanding, the term "Fourth Estate" began to be applied to the media, who had an effective say in public matters by virtue of their purpose.  The media began to see itself as another political instrument, critical in maintaining public transparency.  (More recently, bloggers have started to claim the title!)  This, of course, is all based on the misguided idea that the defining quality of an estate is that it had representation.  The estates long predate the representative bodies they later contributed to, and what defined them are the things they actually contributed to society (other than their opinions).
This is not in any way to undervalue representation, but perhaps it ought to be considered that modern society overvalues suffrage.  Which is more important: to have a say in social matters, or to actually contribute to society?  The entire discussion over "Fourth Estate" is one that values representation above contribution.  Calling the non-bourgeois workers "Fourth Estate" is to undervalue their labour, while the media's own claim to the title somehow suggests that their voice is more important than any economic contribution.

As I previously observed, the First Estate contributed spiritual benefits, social services and knowledge; the Second Estate contributed justice, stability and protection; while the Third Estate contributed material goods, physical labour and real wealth.  (What did the bourgeoisie contribute?).  Each estate served the whole of society, not just itself, and so what it produced was for the benefit of all.  (In future posts I'll discuss more about why the Third Estate, from the time of the Ancien Régime, began to begrudge the other two.)

So, who was the Fourth Estate?  Quite simply, there was no Fourth Estate, nor has there ever been.  My adopting the name is equivalent to taking a name like "The Unicorn Stable" or "The Round Triangle" or "Persona qui non est", but more thematically appropriate.  Anyone who genuinely considers themselves to be members of the mythical Fourth Estate is just being pretentious.

Who was the Fourth Estate?

A line drawing representation of the three estates

Liberalism and conservatism; socialism and capitalism; absolute monarchy and liberal democracy; creation science and natural selection; individualism and nationalism; religious fundamentalism and rationalism.  What do all these things have in common?  They are all modern.

This blog is intended to be a critique of all things modern, so all the above concepts are fair game to dissect and place under the microscope, which, incidentally, is also modern.  Can you put a microscope under a microscope?  If you can, then it's fair game too.

A critique, however, can only be made with reference to a benchmark, and if one wants to critique modernity an external reference is required.  But what reference point is there?  At this time the whole world is modern and the concept of "postmodernity" only exists as a relative term to modernity.  For want of anything better, the benchmark I will use will be an earlier premodern system in which the three estates of the realm lived side by side, not always in harmony but usually in balance.  This is not a defence of the inaccurately named "Ancien Régime", which is itself modern, but refers to a time before absolute monarchy and Protestantism.  I will not be treating this prior time and place as a utopia either (another modern concept), I'll simply be using it as a benchmark from which to critique modernity.

I guess the first thing I'll need to do is to give a brief explanation of what the premodern estates are (or were) and why they deserve discussion.

To begin with, our term of reference is European society.  We can rightly ask the questions:  Why Europe?  What is so special about Europe?  For that matter, what is Europe?  The answer to the third question is beyond the scope of this post, but to give a brief answer to the first two questions: the fundamental social philosophies of today's global system of states and economy originate from Modern Europe.  But Modern Europe didn't spontaneously appear in a vacuum, it originated from somewhere.

In the society we are dealing with, the concept of "Europe" was only a vague imagining - another modern idea loosely derived from a classical idea with a somewhat differing meaning.  The people who lived in the time and place we call "Medieval Europe" didn't identify themselves as "European".  Their common identity was by virtue of membership to a society they called "Christendom", and they just called themselves "Christians".  In brief, Christendom was a collection of realms that weren't "sovereign" in the modern sense.  Each realm was ruled by a secular prince, and all realms shared a common faith that was taught by a universal magisterium.  And society was divided into three estates.  The naming and priority of these varied from realm to realm, but in general they can be identified as follows:

The Three Estates

The First Estate was the Church, and was peopled by the bishops, cardinals, abbots, and abbesses that governed and represented it, as well as parish clergy, canons, monks, nuns, hermits, mendicants, anchorites, preachers, prophets, porters, clerks, lawyers, scholars, et al.  The First Estate was supposed to be the spirit and conscience of Christendom.  Its principle job was to strive for the eternal salvation of all souls by teaching of the faith, administrating the sacraments, and common prayer.  As the First Estate typically included the most educated members of society, it was also charged with preserving culture, studying the sciences, providing clerical administration, and providing critical account to the other estates.  And as it was also, nominally, the most outward looking of the estates, it was responsible for things like social security, charitable works, hospitals, orphanages and education.  The members of the First Estate originated from and often served particular realms, but they were not of those realms.  The institutions they belonged to transcended temporal boundaries and the Church itself was the unifying point of all the realms of Christendom.  To be a member of the First Estate was to be an International citizen.  The First Estate was also the only estate you could not be born into.  (This is not to say that members of this estate never had illegitimate children, but such children were not automatically members of this estate).  It drew its membership from the other estates, and so all members of this estate had family in at least one of the other two.

The Second Estate was the nobility, and was peopled by the princes that governed and represented it, as well as lesser lords, and both landed and landless knights and squires.  The Second Estate was supposed to be the guardian of Christendom.  Its job was to uphold justice by the passing and enforcing of laws, and to defend the territorial integrity of Christendom, which, when it existed, was almost always under siege.  Significantly, it was the only estate permitted to use and depute physical force towards these ends.  To be of the Second Estate usually meant to share a strong family tradition, and its landed members were charged with the protection of justice and faith over a designated inherited territory.  Since these families would also draw their incomes from the territories in their charge they would occasionally come into dispute with each other over territorial claims, but their faith and codes required them to have a sense of responsibility over the territories in their charge.  Members of this estate would typically owe their allegiance to a particular realm, although some of the most powerful families would occasionally claim guardianship over multiple realms.  All, however, belonged to and were bound by a moral code of the same faith.

Some individuals, known variously as prince-bishops, prince-abbots, princess-abbesses, etc. were technically members of both the First and Second Estates, but these were not inherited positions and were governed by strict laws of succession.

Optimally, the First and Second Estates held each other accountable, and it was the conflict and tension between these estates that helped maintain a sense of justice in society.  It was when these estates failed to hold each other to account because of mutual self-interest (i.e. corruption) that injustice entered the system.

The Third Estate consisted of the remainder of society, and its constituents formed the vast majority of the population of Christendom.  Its members were mostly farmers, but also included tradesmen, smiths, masons, labourers, servants, merchants, et al.  Its members included landowners, tenants, boarders, and itinerants.  The Third Estate was the hands of Christendom and was responsible for providing the material needs of society.  Most members of the Third Estate lived frugally.  However, a small number, the burghers (or bourgeoisie) lived quite affluent lives, often significantly better than members of the Second Estate.  The bourgeoisie were also called the "middle class" because they were not technically "working class" i.e. they didn't provide manual labour towards economic production, being more of a managerial class; neither were they nobility.  They were something in the middle.

Modern commentators often talk about a fourth estate.  This is based on the idea that in various representative parliaments throughout late Christendom the representatives of the Third Estate were typically drawn from the bourgeoisie.  As such, they tended to represent bourgeois interests rather than the interests of the entire Third Estate and, resultantly, the non-bourgeois Third Estate members had no representation.  This unrepresented majority were later tagged as "fourth estate".  However, I would argue that they, represented or not, were the true Third Estate because they were the ones who actually provided the economic backbone of society - the responsibility of the Third Estate.  The bourgeoisie were are sub-class that emerged from the Third Estate and politically hijacked the entire estate for their interests.
In future posts I will discuss how they also subverted the First and Second Estates to create the system of modern statehood and the global economy we have today.