Courageous Specialization

by Madeline Johnson
Plato and the Republic
by Garrett West
Plain Jane Glory
by Matthew Wylie

M a y 2015

V o l u me III | I s s u e 8

E d i t o r -I n -C h i e f | Chris McCaffery
H e a d C o p y E d i t o r | Chelsey Schmid
Content Editors
Matthew OSullivan
Andrew Egger
Featured Essayists
Michael Lucchese
Megan Polston
Garrett West
Madeline Johnson
Matthew Wylie
Kirby Hartley
John Taylor
H e a d D e s i g n e r | Meg Prom
Design Assistants
Grace DeSandro
Zane Miller
Photographer
Elena Creed
W e b E d i t o r | Emily Lehman
B u s i n e s s M a n a g e r | Luke Adams
F a c u l t y A d v i s o r | Dr. John Somerville
S p ec i a l T h a n k s t o
Intercollegiate Studies Institutes
Collegiate Network

Mission Statement

The Hillsdale Forum is an independent,

student-run conservative magazine
at Hillsdale College. The Forum, in
support of the mission statement of
the college, exists to foster a campus
environment open to true liberal
education and human flourishing.
We publish opinions, interviews,
papers, and campus news. The Forum
is a vehicle to bring the discussion
and thought of the students and
professors at the heart of our school
beyond the classroom, because if a
practical end must be assigned to a
University course, it is that of training
good members of society. The Forum
brings the learning of the classroom
into the political reality of campus. F

05

Courageous Specialization | by Madeline Johnson

06

The Forgotten Transcendental:

Pursuing Beauty with Ferocity | by Michael Lucchese

08

Fifty Shades of Grey: Not Everything I Thought it

Would Be | by Megan Polston

10

Dont fear academic arcana. All of our studies should be directed at

other people, not abstract details.

We talk a lot about the Good and the True, but what about the
Beautiful? Do we lose sight of it during our political battles?

Many pop culture plots are driven by sexwhat makes Fifty Shades of
Grey different?

Plato and the Republic | by Garrett West

Platos greatest dialogue isnt a politics textbook, its an introduction to
the Good and the pursuit of wisdom.

14

Plain Jane Glory | by Matthew Wylie

Folk musician Gregory Alan Isakovs multi-album project is aimed at

17

Book Review:
Malcolm Muggeridge: A Biography | by Kirby Hartley

19

seeing the beauty in everyday things.

Gregory Wolfes biography of the influential journalist and

media personality traces his development from restless communist
sympathiser to fulfilled Roman Catholic.

Adam Smith and Karl Marx: Diagnosing the

Disadvantages of the Proletariat | by John Taylor

Do the champion of the free market and the founder of communism

have more in common than we thought?

check us out online

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letter from the

editor

n 2003, Hans Zeiger founded a small newspaper

at Hillsdale College To facilitate a forum for
Conservative issues in order to stimulate thinking
on various aspects of political life. That newspaper,
the Hillsdale Conservative, hoped to combat liberalism
across America, and worked with the Hillsdale College
Republicans to pursue that goal. When that relationship
proved rocky, Zeiger ceded the role of editor-in-chief to
Stephani Deichmann.
From 2005 to 2006, Deichmann published eight issues
of the Hillsdale Conservative, recruiting staff, improving
the design, and struggling to develop a strong base of
donors. The paper was hampered by its dual purposes,
writing for subscribers across the country and appealing
to readers on campus.
Stephanie Francl took over as editor-in-chief for the
2006 to 2007 academic year, publishing six issues. She
ended the papers relationship with College Republicans
and changed its name to The Hillsdale Forum, giving a
nod to the papers mission statement. The change in name
also came with a change in scope: to appeal to Hillsdale
students, the paper should write for them, not for a
national audience it did not and will not have.
Emilia Huneke-Bergquist and Julie Robison served as
editors-in-chief of the paper for the next two years. During
their tenure The Forum expanded onto the internet,
producing a Twitter account and a rather garish blog.
Logistical issuesparticularly Hilldales rigor and volume
of worklimited Bergquist and Robison to producing
three issues a year.
The next pair of editors-in-chief was Matt Cole and
Anna Smith, who worked to make The Forum stable
and reliable. During the 20102011 academic year, they
increased the number of issues printed to four, printing
on time and with a reliable group of staff writers.
In 2011, Rachael Wierenga became editor-in-chief.
Under her leadership, The Forum changed its format from
a 12-page newspaper to a 24-page, color magazine. In an
effort to promote stability, she established a consistent

structure for Forum content and published five issues. The

Forum won a design award for the work of Design Editor
Lauren Wierenga 14 during that year.
Weston Wright 15 served as editor-in-chief from 2012
to 2013. He maintained Wierengas emphasis on stability
in format and structure while working to improve the
magazines quality and reputation. He published four
issues of The Hillsdale Forum.
Christopher McCaffery became editor after Wright,
and published eight issues of the magazine. He re-wrote
the mission statement of the publication to refocus more
strongly on the liberal arts and the political life of campus,
reestablished the web presence of the magazine, and
expanded the number and length of essays in each issue.
The Forum won a design award for the work of Design
Editor Megan Prom during that year. He has greatly
enjoyed his tenure with the magazine he lovesmay he
leave it in a better place than he found it.
Next year, Sarah Reinsel and Madeline Johnson will
take over as co-editors-in-chief, and theyre sure to do a
great job. Current Web Editor Emily Lehman will serve as
managing editor. Special thanks should go to the current
Forum staff and everyone who contributed essays this
year, and especially our graduating senior staff: most of
all Chelsey Schmid, who has thanklessly dedicated a truly
heroic amount of time to the magazine; Matthew OSullivan
for his excellent editing the past two years; former editorin-chief Wes Wright; long time tardy columnist Andy
Reuss; and self-motivated social media man John Taylor.
Thank you also to graduating seniors who have regularly
contribute writing, including Devin Creed, Ian Atherton,
John Taylor, Garrett West, and Nathan Brand. F

Essays

E ssays

www.hillsdaleforum.com

Courageous Specialization
by | madeline johnson

our work is to keep cranking the flywheel that turns

the gears that spin the belt in the engine of belief that
keeps you and your desk in midair, Annie Dillard
says of writing; reading often has a similar self-propelling
precarity to it. Page 271 of the Phenomenology of Perception
was one of those diminutive daily passions. Two hundred
and seventy pages in, my eyes were crossing as, ironically,
they tried to follow a description of depth perception. I
could almost see the teeth of my minds word-recognition
gears as they ground past one another, catching for choppy
instants before the tense grip of my gaze would again tremble
and the whole mechanism shoot apart with a screech and
the description disintegrate once more into something like
a very long fridge-magnet poem. There had been more
difficult passages in the bookmore abstract ones, certainly,
which propose their own particular sort of headachebut
what brought me to crisis now was the level of detail to
which Merleau-Ponty was daring me to descend. Having
hitherto followed him down into minute crevices of the mine
of experience, I was already unsure that my brain would
squeeze back up to the ordinary world without permanent
deformation. Was it unreasonable to suspect that the next
turn might be an irreversible passage into psychosis?
Yet dark and narrow as they were, the mines were
churning up silver. Merleau-Ponty put glinting words to
things that Id only ever yet glimpsed as shadows in the
corner of my mind. Potential damage to my synapses aside,
I really wanted to be here. In fact, part of the terror was that
I felt so at home. This left the fear that then both I and my
chosen field of study merited the contempt or indifference
of the billions of sensible and charming people who would
never encounter the word phenomenology in their lives. I
dreaded dedicating my life to something someone was going
to call my Emperors bluff on. Yet what was I to do? Abandon
all trains of inquiry that generated specialized vocabularies?
Cultivate only a superficial acquaintance with every field for
the sake of keeping my hands clean of servile knowledge?
Its obvious that excellence in the hard sciences or in music
or art or athletics is unattainable without careful attention
to the most minute details, yet the results are anything but

trivial.
On the
surface
of
it,
specificity
may
seem
harder
to
justify
in
the
humanities. Arent
we supposed to be
studying the human
condition, addressing
the big questions,
not
dissolving ourselves into
mere
facts, losing ourselves in the
minutiae
of discs and cubes seen from different angles, scattering
our mental resources across lists of names, arguments, and
literary devices?
Merleau-Ponty, Alasdair MacIntyre, and Aristotle would
be ashamed of me for neglecting the fact that not even
philosophy is a disembodied activity. We slip into the sublime
through the tiniest cracks, catch on to patterns through
particulars, learn Tree from trees. The vital link between
the detail and the scheme of things is at the heart of human
knowing. Naturally, the process is threatened by extremes in
either direction. On the one hand, the intellectual packrattery
of, for example, the Enlightenment Encyclopedists (or FunFact-firing cereal boxes) is worse than a dead-end: its a long,
flat road into a bad infinity. Pure abstraction, on the other
hand, is unsustainable. Besides promising its human host
an early death from lack of exercise, it stultifies without the
fodder of experience and the purifying demands of practice.
Neither, alone, is true human knowing.
Were called to truth, the conformity of thought to thing.
For us, truth is not merely a possession, but a practice, one
at which we can be better or worse. Thus, though exalted
by their subject matter, all our studies are humbled by their
fleshly practitioners. Like a plumber, a violinist, or a biologist,
a philosopher has a craft to master if he is to direct whatever
profound insights he may have toward communicable

continued on 23
5

The Forgotten Transcendental:

Pursuing Beauty with Ferocity
by | michael lucchese

was struck this fall when my high-school aged sister,

on a visit to campus, exclaimed Theres no way Im
going to your nerdy politics school!
Hillsdale does have a bit of a reputation for being a
nerdy politics school, even beyond my little sister. We
are perhaps best known for Imprimis and our rejection of
government money. Our online Constitution 101 course
and the Kirby Center for Constitutional Studies are wellknown in conservative circles.
The nerdy politics vibe is highly apparent when one
walks into the cafeteria on any given night. At at least a
few tables, someone will be debating politics with their
friends.
None of that, of course, is necessarily wrong. I am
proud to say that myself and many of my fellow students
are politically active. I came to Hillsdale precisely because
it was a nerdy politics school.
However, Hillsdale is supposed to be more than a
nerdy politics school, too. We are supposed to be a
nerdy liberal arts school.
As President Larry P. Arnn likes to say, here at Hillsdale,
we are pursuing the Good, the True, and the Beautiful. As
a group of students who are, broadly speaking, politically
and philosophically inclined, we tend to focus on the Good
and the True. Many of us go off to work in Washington,
D.C., or various state capitals because our interpretation of
the Good and the True leads us to political conservatism
and the fight for limited, constitutional government.
However, I fear we focus too much on this limited view
of the transcendentals and, in the process, too often forget
about the Beautiful.
A very good friend of mine is taking Constitution 101
right now. In addition to a paper already assigned to his
class, he went to his professor and asked for a second paper.
It was not out of a lust for extra credithe did not ask for
more points. What my friend wanted was feedback on his
thinking from a man with a Ph.D. in Political Science.
Now, there is nothing wrong with that. A thirst for
wisdom is good and healthy, and I envy the drive of my
good friend. However, I think it is emblematic of a greater

E ssays

problem with Hillsdale: our tendency to focus on the

political far too intensely, to the detriment of our focus
on more artistic pursuits.
In his 1970 Nobel Prize lecture, Russian author and
historian Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn wrote:
So perhaps that ancient trinity of Truth, Goodness and
Beauty is not simply an empty, faded formula as we thought
in the days of our self-confident, materialistic youth? If the
tops of these three trees converge, as the scholars maintained,
but the too blatant, too direct stems of Truth and Goodness
are crushed, cut down, not allowed throughthen perhaps
the fantastic, unpredictable, unexpected stems of Beauty will
push through and soar TO THAT VERY SAME PLACE,
and in so doing will fulfil the work of all three? In that case
Dostoevskys remark, Beauty will save the world, was not a
careless phrase but a prophecy.

Solzhenitsyn knew the horrors of the Soviet Union,

perhaps the most evil regime to ever exist, firsthand. He
knew the wickedness of which mankind is capable, and
he paid dearly in the fight against it. However, he did not
simply resort to political tactics to take down the USSR.
Rather, he wrote fiction.
As Solzhenitsyn said in his lecture, Beauty has a
unique way of breaking through ignorance and confusion
that the other two cannot always replicate. It points us
towards the highest things in a way which cuts to the very
core of our beings. And Beauty does it in a far more gentle
way. Instead of finding Truth or Goodness and beating
ourselves over the head with their absoluteness and
blatantness, Beauty has a certain gracefulness, a subtly
which enables it to arrest some of the most hardened
souls. Think of tough bikers breaking down in tears at the
Grand Canyon, or how a particularly beautiful hymn in
church can move everyone at the service.
Solzhenitsyn, among other great artists, uses Beauty
to combat tyranny in more subversive ways than an
army could. Art can be so effective subversively precisely
because it is so subtle, and, in service of the truly high
things, that subversion can work wonders for the human
soul.

www.hillsdaleforum.com

In a lecture he gave at the beginning of this year

to the freshman class, Provost and Professor of
English David M. Whalen warned the students that
Hillsdale would mess with your minds. He said
that our time here at Hillsdale would cause us to
question many of the things we so fundamentally
believe, but that our quest for knowledge and
wisdom would leave us better than before we began
our studies. In a similar sense, true Beauty messes
with our minds. It subverts and challenges that
which we think we know, and leads us down paths
of thought we could not conceive. In that sense, the
subtly of Beauty is an advantage, as it catches us
off-guard.
Too often, we confuse the gracefulness and
subtly
of
Beauty
for
subjectivity.
We can fall
into the trap
of thinking
that
Truth
and Goodness
are
more
objective than the Beautiful, and that what is
beautiful is too shaky a foundation upon which to
rest.
We can see in ourselves a desire to seek out what
is beautiful and proclaim its beauty. Much like our
desire to know what is true, or to live a good life,
we yearn for the beautiful things of this world. As
Solzhenitsyn pointed out, Beauty soars to that
very same place as the other transcendentals.
Inasmuch as Beauty points to the higher order,
it accomplishes exactly what the more objectiveseeming Truth or Goodness.
C.S. Lewis once wrote, We sit down before the

picture in order to have something done to us, not

that we may do things with it. The first demand
any work of art makes upon us is surrender. Look.
Listen. Receive. Get yourself out of the way.
In my experience, it is far too often that Hillsdale
students fail to get themselves out of the way.
Instead of approaching art with an open mind, we
too often seek to impose our ideology on a work
of art, either to criticize it or hold it up as a thing
worthy of nought but praise.
Instead of approaching literature or music or
other art forms with an ideological perspective, we
ought to come at it from a liberal arts perspective.
Instead of asking for another essay in Constitution
101, sit down and crack open a book of poetry, or
go see a concert
put on by our
wonderful
m u s i c
department.
Go out and
take pictures of
budding trees
and
flowers,
or cook a nice meal for yourself and your friends.
Make it your mission to find Beauty and experience
it.
As students in the liberal arts tradition, we ought
to pursue the Beautiful with the same ferocity with
which we pursue the Good and the True. We are
called not just to seek the higher things, but also to
be graceful in that pursuit, that we may lead others
along with us. Let the Beautiful arrest you, and
become as much a missionary for it as you would
be a missionary for the Good and the True. F

Too often, we confuse the

gracefulness and subtlety of
Beauty for subjectivity.

Michael Lucchese is a freshman planning to

major in American Studies.

Fifty Shades of Grey:

Not Everything I
Thought It Would Be
by | megan polston

ifty Shades of Greys reputation precedes

it, and passionate critics and defenders rush to
add their voices to the chatter whenever the topic
surfaces. We defame the books as pornographic and
dismisses them as horrendous literature that wreaks havoc
on the intellectual welfare of the general population. I too
originally dismissed the series as a plotless joke, and it was
not until I actually read the series and gave it a chance to
defend itself that I began to realize how wrong I was to
commit to such a strong opinion about a book I had never
read before.
In this essay, I address the critics of Fifty Shades of Grey
and its sequels, Fifty Shades Darker and Fifty Shades Freed. I
do not argue that these wildly popular books are, or should
be considered, good literature. They are not. The writing
is repetitive, and the main character is dull and possesses
little personality. My point is simply this: there is more to
investigate in these books than simple immoral activity,
and perhaps we are failing as readers by prematurely
judging them. While Fifty Shades of Grey is not inherently
valuable, there is more inside than mindless sex, and
we are falling short in our inability to look beyond the
manifest content and see more. We dont have to love the
books, or even like them, but we do need to understand
the content before making final judgements, so we can
see how these books might show the problems with the
lifestyle they depict. We must be better readers and not sit
back and dismiss something before we have even read it.
These books are very widely read and simply dismissing
their content as destructive and unethical blinds us to
what about the books is so successful, and what they can
8

E ssays

tell us about the world that made

them popular.
Perhaps the most popular criticism
of the books is that they should be
considered pornography. But as hard as it
might be to hear, some of the sex is necessary to
understanding the characters. The porn industry
has its own market base. If these books were just porn,
they would not be nearly as publically popular. There
are plenty of other examples in popular culture of oversexualization and sexual depravity. A few examples come
to mind: Game of Thrones, Gossip Girl, Greys Anatomy,
and How I Met Your Mother, all of which are better-crafted
entertainment but still revolve around what many of Fifty
Shades critics would call immoral sexual relationships.
Somehow these series have just as much sexual content, but
are not classified under porn. While they might not be as
graphic (with the exception of Game of Thrones), the same
amount of pre- or extramarital sex remains, often driving
the plot. These shows glorify sexual promiscuity, but
never examine the lives and motives behind it. Christian
Grey has an unhealthy view of sex, a fact acknowledged by
the characters themselves, but there is an active fight to
change his view.
Contrary to popular belief, Fifty Shades of Grey also
has a plotnot a stellar one, but a plot nonetheless.
Beneath all the sex and dirty talk there are real characters
with story lines and motivations. There are two main
characters in the story: Christian Grey and Anastasia
Steele. The more moving of the two, for several reasons,
is the egomaniacal billionaire Grey. Readers of the first
book soon find out that in addition to his public persona,
there is a far darker, more private side of Christian Grey.
He belongs to a subset of the sexual world that partakes in
Dominant and Submissive relationships. In short, women
submit themselves entirely to him for his as well as her
own pleasure. This domination is open to negotiation but
www.hillsdaleforum.com

includes diet, wardrobe, and sexual limitations on the

woman. This is usually where the book, understandably,
loses readers. However, what people fail to realize is that
there is much more to Christian Grey than this, because
of his tragic past.
Christian was born to a crack-addicted prostitute and
lived with her and her abusive pimp in the slums. She died
when he was four years old, and Christian was locked in
a room with her for two days, starving, before she was
eventually found. He was then adopted by the doctors
who helped care for him after her death. Growing up he
acted out, got into fights, and rebelled against the rules of
his perfect family. It seemed that he was headed toward
a route similar to his birth mother until he met a woman
much older than him who became his Dominant for six
years. This was the 15-year-olds first sexual experience.
Eventually set loose, Christian began building his business
empire.
This broken childhood explains why Grey doesnt
engage in ordinary relationships. The only sexual
relationship he has ever known is what his mistress taught
him when he was fifteen. He is entirely sexually broken
and has no idea what real intimacy looks or feels like. This
story is the story of his healing. He finds a woman who
makes him want to change, who makes him want a real
relationship. He starts out as a Dominant and ends up as
a husband. Christian finds healing and an understanding
of what it means to be intimately broken. Anastasia puts
it perfectly when she says, The image of a powerful man
whos really still a little boy, who was horrifically abused
and neglected, who feels unworthy of love from his perfect
family and his much-less-than-perfect girlfriend . . . my
lost boy . . . its heartbreaking (Fifty Shades Darker).
Why doesnt anyone seem to notice or care about these
answers to critics of the books? Simple: its because we
cant get past the sex of it all. We are failing as readers in
that we are quite literally judging a book by its cover. We
miss the broken pieces and the story of healing because
we are obsessed with the scandal of a sexual lifestyle.
There is more beyond what is right in front of us, and I
am often shocked to hear that many of the critics who
are the most passionate about this series have never read
the books. Readers sit on their thrones and arrogantly
condemn that which is different from them and that
which they do not understand. Any claim of redemption
in the novels is simply brushed off as stupid or ridiculous.
Society has become foolish enough to assume that hearing
about something or reading excerpts online is the same as
actually reading it.
Still, these books are not for everyone, and not everyone

should read them. But before condemning something as

satanic or pornographic, people should give it the chance
to defend itself. Opinions about books, good or bad, are
necessary. They are what separate the bad from the good,
and the good from the great. So while I have just laid out
a few of my own personal opinions concerning the books,
I do understand that mine is not the only one that exists.
But we must be better readers. Fifty Shades of Grey, while
not good literature, is more than mindless sex, and we are
falling short in our inability to look beyond the manifest
content and see more. We dont have to love the books, or
even like them, but we do need to understand the content
before writing them off. F
Megan Polston is a senior studying English.

by | garrett west

latos Republic often confuses

students. The convoluted dialogue
leaves many wondering what the
text could possibly mean. The
title and the minutia about flutes,
gymnastics, and poetry tempt students to read
in the Republic a merely political point. Some
might say, for example, that Plato intends to
argue simply that the ideal city is an impossible
utopia, and that good governments should never
try to achieve such utopian madnessone we
might not want anyway. But such a reading
misses the mark. Plato is a deeply philosophical
thinker, and any political position he takes flows
out of his philosophical insights. And here we
have the paradox of the Republic: The subject
matter is obviously political, but to understand
this political subject matter one must see
beyond the political to the philosophical, which
imbues the political with its meaning. In the
Republic, the question of justice propels the
dialogue, but the question of justice serves to
lead the reader to the Good. Only in light of the
Good does the question of justice gain its full
import. vTo attain to something more absolute,
a thinker must always approach it through the
relative and the contingent, paradoxical as it
might be. Because the relative provides a point
of contact with this absolute, it never remains
10

E ssays

merely what it appears to be. A contingency

fulfills its purpose in the moment that it shows
itself to be truly relative to something absolute.
The contingent carries with it more meaning
than it first appears to have, but this excess only
becomes knowable when the relative is known
to be truly and unquestionably dependent.
This dialectic between appearance and being,
opinion and knowledge, and relativity and the
absolute recurs throughout the dialogue. Only
when the reader sees this method working in
the text as a whole can she understand the point
of the Republic.
This essay will attempt to show how the work
as a whole takes on this dialectical form. I hope
to give the reader a framework for reading the
Republic as a cornerstone work of philosophy. In
order to do so, I will first highlight the tensions
already present in the question, What is just?
Then we will turn to the image of the Good. As
the ground of being and intelligibility, the Good
secures more than the possibility of justice. It
secures the possibility of a distinction between
the relative and absolute, or appearance and
reality, that still allows for access to the real
by way of appearances. Therefore, it provides
a ground for knowing, for dialogue, and for a
definition of justice.
www.hillsdaleforum.com

Justice

n Book I, Socrates takes up a series of plausible but ultimately

faulty definitions of justice. This propaedeutic already
suggests Socrates method of exposing the relativity to show
forth the absolute. Each definition aspires to hold true in all
cases (i.e., absolutely) but Socrates shows that the accounts only
hold true in certain cases. As such, the relative perspectives
masquerade as true definitions, but Socrates unmasks them.
In giving one of the earliest definitions, Polemarchus quotes
the poet Simonides: It is just to give to each what is owed to
him (331e). Socrates famously asks whether it would be just
to return a sword to a man out of his mind. The criticism turns
on the question of which standard should be used to determine
what is owed. Though we accept this formulation of justice in
most circumstances, we also recognize that some instances
seem to be exceptions. So the standard of debt begs the
questiondebt according to whom? Polemarchus revised
account attempts to set justice in relationship to friendship:
If we are to follow the previous answers, Socrates, it gives
benefits to friends and does harm to enemies (332d).1 He
pegs the debt to ones friends and enemies. The just man
owes benefits to friends and harm to enemies. But again, the
standard depends upon who ones friends are. Importantly,
though, these early failures take up again the same question
in a more robust way. The definitions fail, but in a way more
and more attuned to their own contingency.
Then Thrasymachus rejects the dialectical approach.
He interrupts, The just is the same everywhere, namely,
the advantage of the stronger (339a). Thrasymachus
position represents the absolutization of relativity. The other
definitions eventually show themselves to be relative, but only
after an attempt at some absolute measure. When exposed, the
interlocutors admit their relativity and reapproach the question.
But Thrasymachus subordinates the absolute standard of justice
(which is the same everywhere) to power (which belongs to
the strong). He inverts the relationship between the absolute
and the relative that Socrates interlocutors assumed. In effect,
Thrasymachus definition is a rejection not only of the earlier
definitions, but the entire model of dialectical truth-attaining.
Thus Thrasymachus becomes an anti-Socrates. Instead of
seeking an absolute measure, he absolutizes the relative and
insists upon its priority. When Socrates tries to reason with
him, Thrasymachus refuses: Im not satisfied with what youre
now saying. I could make a speech about it, but, if I did, I know
that youd accuse me of engaging in oratory. So either allow me
to speak, or, if you want to ask questions, go ahead, and Ill say,
Here it should also be noted that Socrates here introduces a distinction between appearance and being in regard to friendship:
Speaking of friends, do you mean those a person believes to be
good and useful to him or those who actually are good and useful, even if he doesnt think they are, and similarly with enemies
(334b). The implicit issue in this clarificationfriends according
to whom.
1

All right, and nod yes and no, as one does to old wives tales
(350de). His very act of argumentation makes it impossible
to participate in reasonto find an account that explains from
the right perspective.
Socrates calls this failed elenchus the prelude to the
real discussion in which Glaucon asks Socrates to show that
it is always better to live the just lifenot just because of
the consequences, but because of its goodness in itself. He
recapitulates the discussion of the first book:
I seem to have behaved like a glutton, snatching at every dish
that passes and tasting it before properly savoring its predecessor.
Before finding the answer to our first inquiry about what justice
is, I let that go and turned to investigate whether it is a kind
of vice and ignorance or a kind of wisdom. Then an argument

the

relationship
between politics and
philosophy mirrors
the most important
feature of P lato s
work dialectic .
came up about injustice being more profitable than justice,
and I couldnt refrain from abandoning the previous one and
following up on that. Hence the result of the discussion, as far
as Im concerned, is that I know nothing, for when I dont know
what justice is, Ill hardly know whether it is a kind of virtue
or not, or whether a person who has it is happy or unhappy.
(354b-c)

If no perspective can be found from which an absolute account

of justice can be given, then the meaning of justice for the
human person becomes unknowable. So Socrates prepares us
to ask again the original question: what is justice? But after the
first book, the stakes are higher. Socrates insists that each prior
definition failed on account of its relativity. Thrasymachus
then asserts that all we have is relativity. Therefore, if Socrates
fails to give a definition that meets his own standards, then
Thrasymachuss positions wins by default. If Socrates claims to
give an account of justice that holds in all cases, and he fails,
the Thrasymachus absolutization of relativity wins. That is,
the standard for justice becomes strength or power, which is
really no standard at all.
With the stakes thus raised, Socrates imaginatively
constructs the ideal citythe soul writ large. The guardians
rule it, and most of the text describes the education regimen
11

that will prepare them for rule. But after the painstaking
description of the first five books, Socrates suggests that it
is ridiculous to strain for exactness in details of little value
without considering the Good itself: Is there anything even
more important than justice and the other virtues discussed?
There is something more important . . . Its ridiculous, isnt it,
to strain every nerve to attain the utmost exactness and clarity
about other things of little value and not to consider the most
important things worthy of the greatest exactness? (504d).
The central issue of the Republic, then, is that of the Good.
If the education of the guardians ensures the possibility of
justice in the ideal city, then by extension an education turned
towards the Good gives the only perspective which cnan give
an account of Justice.
The Good

ocrates will eventually give three images of the Good: the

sun analogy, the divided line, and the cave. We will focus

on the first. Importantly, the analogy remains a paradoxical

image, and this paradox must remain because of the nature
of the Good. To explain something fully, one must grasp it
entirely, going beyond it considered alone and apprehending
its causes. Thus all explanation depends upon something
beyond the thing being explained. The structure of the sun
analogy follows this pattern. As an explanation of the Good,
it both destroys itself and grants insight: It accounts for an
intelligible structure in the world, and it gives a microcosm
of human knowing as always reflexive, always falling short,
but always revealing Truth anew. Even more so, it presents
an account that makes sense of the way in which an absolute
(the Good) could relate to the relative (intelligible and visible
things). A soul turned toward this Good, too, can give an
account of justice.
The series of analogies begins when Adeimantus asks
Socrates to give an account of the Good itself: You must also
tell us whether you consider the Good to be knowledge or
pleasure or something else altogether. Socrates evades this
particular question, purporting to be ignorant and unwilling
to venture an opinion in the guise of knowledge. He gives
instead an account of the offspring of the goodthe sun. On
a first reading, it can be easy to pass over this introduction
to the sun analogy as nothing more than standard Socratic
self-deprecation, but this original claim to ignorance has
tremendous import in the analogy. Socrates warns us to
be careful that he does not somehow deceive us with an
illegitimate account, and we ought to take his warning
seriously (507a). The analogys origin in ignorance places this
microcosm of human knowing on uncertain foundations.
The analogy begins in earnest with a brief account of the
forms: We say that there are many beautiful things and many
12

E ssays

good things, and so on for each kind, and in this way we

distinguish them in words (507b). The kind is a genus into
which a particular thing happens to fall, and we distinguish
these kinds of things by our words. For Plato, these words
correspond in some way to real distinctions in the things. He
continues to account for the grounds of these distinctions:
And so in the case of all the things that we then set down as
many, we turn about and set down in accord with a single form
of each, believing that there is but one, and call it the being of
each (507b). These real distinctions in the many things, then,
happen on account of the form, and this form is the being,
or the essence, of the thing. Plato claims that there is some
accordance or correspondence between the forms and the
essences of things.2 Thus the first aspect of this analogy is the
presumption of intelligibility in the world. After introducing
this basic structure of intelligibility, Socrates makes clear
the two categories of things within this structure: visible but
not intelligible and intelligible but not visible. The forms are

intelligible, and the things are visible.

The analogy of the sun then clarifies the specifics of one
of these categoriesseeing the visible world. In the visible
world, sight requires a third thing beyond the power to see
and be seen: Sight may be present in the eyes, and the one
who has it may try to use it, and colors may be present in
things, but unless a third kind of thing is present, which is
naturally adapted for this very purpose, you know that sight
will see nothing, and the colors will remain unseen (507c).
The third thing is light, which the sun produces, and therefore
he calls the sun godlike because it connects the powers of
sight and being seen. Here, for the first time in this analogy,
he introduces causality within the relationship between the
seen and the one who sees: The sun is not sight, but isnt it
the cause of sight itself and seen by it? (508b). Up to this
point, Socrates has only laid the groundwork for the central
analogous relationship. To recapitulate, he first promises to give
an account of the offspring of the Good; then he introduces
the forms as the intelligible and the things as visible; then he
introduces the sun as the cause of sight in the visible world.
Having prepared the way, Socrates makes the salient move
of the analogy: He relates the sun to the Good. Just as the sun
causes seeing and is seen, so the Good causes knowing and is
known: Lets say, then, that this is what I called the offspring of
2

Here and elsewhere in this paper I use essence in a loose sense.

I do not mean to refer to the strict usage of essence as it appears
in, for example, scholastic thought. I mean essence in the sense of
any sort of whatness of a thing. That is, the essence of a squirrel
can be squirrelness or greyness or furriness, depending upon
the aspect under which I consider it. I think that this loose meaning accords well with what Plato seems to mean by the being in
this passage.

www.hillsdaleforum.com

the good, which the good begot as its analogue. What the good
itself is in the intelligible realm, in relation to understanding
and intelligible things, the sun is in the visible realm, in relation
to sight and visible things (508b). The analogy appears
complete. Socrates has built up the description of the sun and
presented the structure in which the sun and the Good can be
related. The statement of the analogous relationship appears
hardly more hefty than a simple x:y::q:z.
Yet it is precisely at this moment of apparent clarity that
we must remember the uncertain foundation of this analogy.
We know that Socrates claims the sun to be the offspring of
the Good. As something derivative, our understanding of it
depends upon its source. Thus in order to truly understand
the sun as the cause of sight, we must understand the Good
as the cause of intelligence. Yet the sun analogy is put to
work originally as a way of interpreting the Good, and so the
analogy seems to beg the question. The sun as a useful image is
subverted precisely in the moment that it completes its work.
The image destroys itself, and we recognize the import of
Socrates warning and his hesitance
at the outset. The destruction of the
image here gives us an interpretive
choice. First, we could simply
reject the analogy as meaningless
because it depends upon the
conception that it purports to
explain. Alternatively, we can
attempt a reading that makes
sense of the analogy. The analogy
emulates the reflexivity of human
knowing, and it provides an
absolute ground of intelligibility.
The lesson of the sun analogy
is something like the following:
All knowledge arises through an
image. In order to understand, we produce an image of the
thing that we hope to understand, and we look through the
image towards the thing itself. The sun analogy follows this
process. The image gives insight into the thing we wish to
understandi.e., the sun points beyond itself to the Good.
Once I understand, the image relied upon becomes relativized.
It served its purpose, but in serving it loses its vitality; we
recognize the image as insufficient to the concept precisely
because it fails to capture it.3 At the same time, the original
meaning of the picture becomes clearer to us. The image
had always pointed to the concept, but only after arriving
at the concept do we recognize its depth. Thus, the image
becomes revitalized in the moment of its poverty. Though it is
temporally posterior, the intelligible causes the image because
it always already imbues it with meaning, but a meaning that
must be perpetually and reflexively uncovered. In this way, the
Good causes its offspring the sun, and the analogy becomes

the microcosm of human knowing.

Socrates analogy continues, and the simple microcosm of
human knowing becomes a more fundamental claim about
the structure of intelligible being itself:
Youll be willing to say, I think, that the sun not only
provides visible thing things with the power to be seen but also
with coming to be, growth, and nourishment, although it is
not itself coming to be. . . . Therefore, you should also say that
not only do the objects of knowledge owe their being known
to the good, but their being is also due to it, although the good
is not being, but superior to it in rank and power (509ab).
This further claim alters the analogy and brings all things
under the purview of the Good. If it be the case that, in
knowing, the concept causes the image, then it now appears
that, in an analogous way, the Good causes intelligible things.
The Good is the ground of all intelligibility, and so the only
thing that is truly real is the Good. Yet if the Good causes
intelligible beings, then to the extent that anything is actually
intelligible, it necessarily participates in the Good and therefore
in being. Just as the concept
causes the image by imparting
to it a significance, so too the
Good causes the intelligible by
imparting to it intelligibility.
Now we can see why the
Good might be central to the
question of justice in Book
I. The discussion of justice
has both epistemological and
ethical import. Thrasymachus
anti-Socratic
position
eliminates the possibility of
a definition of justice, and so
undermines the possibility
of a just life at all. If this antiSocratic position drives the text, then the image of the Good
is Socrates response. The Good provides the intelligible end of
human thought as the cause of reality and a reality in itself. The
character of this end is to be never comprehended as beyond
being, but nevertheless approached. As such, it justifies the
method of dialectic and the act of seeking a definition of
justice, even before that definition is reached. The Republic
should be read as both a search for justice and a philosophic
project that vindicates its own search in the act of seeking. F

We must
understand
the Good as
the cause of
intelligence.

Garrett West is a senior studying philosophy.

Of course, no image can ever capture the concept sufficiently;

they are different in kind.
13

Plain Jane Glory

by | matthew wylie

regory Alan Isakov is a folk musician

out of Colorado. He makes his music
not to pursue fame, money, or even
good art, but to stay spiritually alive. As he
says in his online biography, Ive always
had this sense about music and writing
that I sort of have to do it. Like Ill implode
without it. I probably wouldnt do it if I felt
any other way. Making music is something
Isakov does to notice the beauty in everyday
life. Thankfully for us, his personal reasons
have resulted in, arguably, one of the most
ambitious projects in twenty-first century
songwriting. Isakov has conceived a multialbum narrative heavily influenced by
Bruce Springsteen and Leonard Cohen and
executed it to perfection with finely tuned
lyrical and musical techniques, all with the
simple goal of learning to see beauty in
mundane and even painful things.
Although Isakov has released five albums
since his debut in 2003, this essay will focus
on This Empty Northern Hemisphere and
The Weathermen. Released in 2009 and 2013
respectively, these albums are connected by
an exploration of the relationship between
the earth and the universe, a lens for
seeing the varied ways humans treat this
relationship: that of God and us, the infinite
and the temporal, the transcendent and the
transient. Isakov manifests his metaphor

14

E ssays

through a number of lyrical images and

recurrences developed and fulfilled over
the two albums. This is perhaps the most
unique and most satisfying aspect of
Isakovs songwriting. Most novelists cant
compete with the coherent vision Isakov has
created across two albums, much less other
contemporary songwriters. Some of my most
gratifying experiences in listening to music
have resulted from tracing the metaphors
through his songs. A great example is the
cul-de-sac, which Isakov ambiguously
brings up several times over This Empty
Northern Hemisphere and The Weathermen
before revealing in the closing track on The
Weathermen that the road to every truth /
its just a cul-de-sac. Finding the meaning
behind the details he carefully plans into his
lyrics is wholly necessary to understanding
his vision.
The songs of This Empty Northern
Hemisphere, when listened to without its
companion, all deal with an instance of
a very powerful, infinite state of being
(probably love) but ultimately settle on these
experiences being unfulfilled, an empty
northern hemisphere. The album suggests
that the emptiness is a result of creating a
northern hemisphere out of projection
of the ones we love onto the universe.
Throughout the album, Isakov compares

www.hillsdaleforum.com

those he loves to objects in and elements of the universe. In

the chorus of That Moon Song he meditates with a tinny
voice: That full-bellied moon, shes a-shinin on me / yeah,
she pulls on this heart like she pulls on the sea, applying the
god-like power the ones we love have over us to the entire
world. The following track, Evelyn, subtly likens the title
character to the sun: well she pictures up a different day /
driving west to East L.A.. Idaho extends the glorification to
the stars as the singer sees theres lights up in the north / and
I aint wondering where you are, completing the comparison
between loved ones and the universe.
This projection of the ones we love reaches its only possible
conclusion in the last verse of the title track of the album:
While you were sleeping you bet that I might
Walk this empty northern hemisphere wide
And the kingdom it came, well it all fell down
It all fell to dust

Any universe made of our earthly loves is destined to fall

to dust. The mention of dust here lends meaning to other
appearances of dust throughout the album. In the opening
track Dandelion Wine, the singer packed up the dust /
of all that I owned before leaving his home, and in Fire
Escape waits for a train with dust in our pockets. These
lines imply that after the kingdoms fall we look to be taken
somewhere else that might fill the emptiness.
The albums closing track, One of Us Cannot Be Wrong
(a cover of Leonard Cohen), perfectly captures the state of
someone who knows of a northern hemisphere but finds it
empty. After detailing his own mistakes and the sad endings
of others who have loved the woman he does, the singer sees
her stand there so nice, in your blizzard of ice and implores
please let me come into your storm. Isakov ends the album

acknowledging the possibility of love and even the natural

need for it, but also unable to see anything in it but pain and
cold.
The Weathermen (aptly named after those whose duty it
is to discern what the universe is sending us) opens with the
singer in a similar state. The first two-thirds of it are defined
by a sentiment of discontentedness and a search for an eternal
home, best expressed in the opening track, Amsterdam.
Churches and trains / they all look the same to me now,
Isakov sings in the final verse as he unleashes his voice for
one of the first times, they shoot you some place / while we
ache to come home somehow before the song fades into
a quiet piano riff that echoes the melody in the final verse,
resembling the shadow that is the subject of the songs first
three verses. In Second Chances, Isakov expresses a view on
human nature consistent with the ideas of goods that dont
amount to anything, comparing us to some flicker of truth
in the smile of a salesman and buried jewels neath the
grass in the suburbs.
The album, and Isakovs career, changes tone and becomes
audibly hopeful beginning with the audaciously titled The
Universe The son recognizes the wounded state, the seeming
and possibly true importance of ones love, and its undeniable
beauty, before culminating in this career-defining verse:
The Universe, shes dancing now
They got her lit up, lit up on the moon
They got stars doing cartwheels, all the nebulas on tune
And the Universe, shes whispering so softly I can hear all
The croaking insects, all the taxicabs, all the bums spent change
All the boys playing ball in the alleyways
Theyre just folds in her dress

With this verse Isakov brilliantly synchronizes the song the

stars dance to in the universe with its whisper on earth.

15

I sat with an ear close, just listening

His attempt in the album to [notice] the beauty in normal,
I was there when the rain tapped her way down your face
everyday life is realized by it, freeing him to move on to what
You were a miracle I was just holding your space
we all really want settled.
Following The Universe, the songs Suitcase Full of
The singer hears the song from the girl and sees the rain on
Sparks and All Shades of Blue place Isakovs main concern,
her.
love, into the project introduced in The Universe. Suitcase
This describes the experience of knowing the way the
Full of Sparks begins with the singer traveling through the
universe is showing itself through a person but being unable
graveyard with a suitcase full of sparks, depicting a life on
to participate in it. The song ends with a verse that mirrors
earth with the potential to ignite into a beautiful thing. The
the first one:
speaker is just tryin to find my way to you, the person with
whom he could open up this suitcase full of sparks. Isakov
Well you were a magazine, I was a plain jane
has now changed from thinking of the ones we love as the
Just walking the sidewalks all covered in rain
Love to just get into some of your stories
universe to thinking of them as an approximation of the
Just me and all of my plain jane glory
universe on earth. This new framework is explicated in All
Shades of Blue. The singer begins in a similar place where
all of [his] high hopes have all headed south creating, well, The singer now sees how the universes beauty is reflected
an empty northern hemisphere. But the chorus brings the throughout the world (rain). And while the girl in the song
singer to a different place, able to see that broken bottles embodies much of the worlds beauty (a magazine), the
shine just like stars, in all likelihood because just your smile speaker and all of his plain jane glory desire and begin to, in
lit a sixty-watt bulb in my house / that was
darkened for days. This reveals the ones
we love to be the ones who most actualize
the universe within us and enable us to
he singer
see the universe in the rest of the world.
now sees how
The last line of the chorus finally ends the
search for a home, as the singer has been
the universe s
thinking you probably should stay.
After listening to The Weathermen, we
beauty is
can go back and reexamine This Empty
reflected
Northern Hemisphere with the more
hopeful, redemptive vision in mind. This
throughout
shows many moments on This Empty
Northern Hemisphere to actually be
the world
pointing towards The Weathermen. These
are first heard at the ending of Light Year,
as Isakov notes that everything we ever
wanted is here, a statement that seems
resigned on a first listen but becomes indicative of possibility some small way, participate in a more full beauty, the vision
in light of The Weathermen. It occurs beautifully in Idaho of The Weathermen. Isakov in Big Black Car is certainly in
when the singer [sees] your soul / like some picture show / an empty northern hemisphere, but he understands it is not
across Idaho, a verse that works very well with the idea of a kingdom that has fallen to dust but a kingdom he has not
loved ones being the way to see the universe in the world. yet arrived at.
Its worth noting that there is much to these two albums
In Fire Escape, the singer actually hears the whispers
I
havent
even mentioned yet. I hardly discussed his actual
of the universes song as it is expressed in The Universe:
music,
which
perfectly creates individual notes that
Everytime we start starin up / And hear / All the loneliest
somehow feel like parts of a symphony, and left many of the
crickets play their violins.
Despite being one of the most tragic songs on the album lyrical techniques and brilliant moments in these two albums
even with The Weathermen in mind, Big Black Car is the untouched. His third album, That Sea, The Gambler, which
song on This Empty Northern Hemisphere that most fully lays some important foundations for these two, also deserves
participates in the vision of The Weathermen. The first verse some recognition. All the more for you to find, I suppose. F
is as follows:
Matthew Wylie is a freshman.

You were a phonograph, I was a kid

16

E ssays

www.hillsdaleforum.com

The Pilgrim Found: A Review of Gregory

Wolfes Biography, Malcolm Muggeridge
by

| kirby hartley

The Catholic faith is, I believe, a right faith in essentials but it must grow up inside one. Evolve through
suffering to have values. ~Malcolm Muggeridge to Alec Vidler (43)

Malcolm Muggeridge: A Biography by Gregory Wolfe

(1995) ISI Books: Irvington, Delaware.

hen one asks the average modern person

their thoughts on Malcolm Muggeridge, their
response will likely be mild bewilderment. For
all intents and purposes, Muggeridge has been forgotten
by our generation. Given that the man was a prominent
and pioneering journalist, author, radio and television
personality, and satirist for the vast majority of his life, this is
a strange state of affairs.
Malcolm Muggeridge was born in 1903 and died in 1990,
making his life essentially a catalog of the twentieth century.
Gregory Wolfe 80 published his biography of Muggeridge in
1995. It depicts a man who consistently stood at the center
of numerous intersecting paths, much like a real-life Forrest
Gump. This work is as much a biography as it is a vindication
of a man whom Wolfe respects and holds in high esteem.
Muggeridges appeal to Wolfe and his enduring legacy
consists, in part, of his friendship with a wide variety of literary
greats like George Orwell and Graham Greene, his work in
exposing Soviet Communism as a bloody machination, and,
above all, his role in making Mother Teresa famous.
He struggled with Christianity throughout his life, and he
maintained an inexplicable sense of existing as an outsider
and a loner, doomed to spectate without participation. This
sense of existing as an outsider couples with his sense of
irony, humorous paradox, and a hatred of hypocrisy to fuel
his acidic yet apt critiques of society and political regimes.
The man traveled extensively, acting as a British spy, a
lecturer, a reporter, and a teacher at various points in his life.
He resided in locales as diverse as Egypt, India, America,

East Africa, and Russia, among others; according to Wolfe,

he moved at least twenty-two times. Muggeridges physical
restlessness primarily reflected his spiritual restlessness.
His frequent transitions add a particular gravitas to his
statement that the Roman Catholic Church brought him a
sense of homecoming. His search was over. He was found
and no longer an outsider to the 2000-year-old tradition that
permeates Western society.
Ultimately, Malcolm Muggeridges life is a testament to
the fact that all things by faith are delicately interconnected,
a theme that Wolfe emphasizes throughout the book. Wolfe
demonstrates that there is a particular theological dynamism
to Muggeridges life that is inherently connected to historical
events and his extensive scope of personal experience. His
objective is to trace the flow of Muggeridges thought, which
changed enormously throughout his life; Muggeridge went
from being a Fabian socialist and communist sympathiser in
his youth to a Roman Catholic conservative in his twilight.
Throughout the biography, Wolfe traces Muggeridges
faith through his decisions and the works that he read. Wolfe
indicates that Muggeridges favorite religious thinkers were
primarily Christian existentialists, stating that Muggeridges
personal pantheon consisted of individuals like St.
Augustine, Blaise Pascal, William Blake, Sren Kierkegaard,
Leo Tolstoy, and Dietrich Bonhoeffer (382383). Wolfe
suggests that their magnetic appeal was due to the fact that
they were men and women who not only possessed keen
intellects but who also struggled through intense suffering
and even rebellion against God, achieving in the end a
mystical vision. Ultimately, it was a confluence of an entire
lifes worth of multivariable and entangled threads, threads
17

encompassing the cumulative thought and influence of

Wolfes considerable admiration for Muggeridge does
thousands of persons, places, and events, that figuratively not prevent him from presenting criticism when it is
led Muggeridge to acquiesce and utter, Lord, I believe; due. It does mean, though, that in the course of the piece,
help my unbelief. This cathartic moment brought him a Wolfe downplays certain of Muggeridges questionable
sense of homecoming, of picking up threads of a lost life, decisions. For example, he critiques Muggeridges cavalier
of responding to a bell that had long been ringing, of taking treatment of his first long term relationshipDora Pitman
a place at a table that had long been vacant (408). Wolfe while implicitly sympathizing with Muggeridges desire for
successfully summarizes Muggeridges life and his struggle space to pursue and contemplate his hopes and passions
with the Christian faith, and more specifically, Roman (4243). Additionally, his borderline prurient treatment of
Catholicism.
Muggeridges homosexuality and extramarital affairs, though
Wolfes central accomplishment in this work is his intended to portray the Augustinian battles between flesh and
scholarship documenting Muggeridges spiritual failures spirit, tend more towards speculation on the part of Wolfe
and
successes.
rather than a
Muggeridge
portrayal of
profe s s e d
Muggeridges
olfe s central accomplishment in s p i r i t u a l
essential beliefs of
Christianity,
but
development.
he found that due this work is his scholarship documenting
T
h
e
to his own sins, he
underlying
uggeridge s spiritual failures and
could not commit
structure of the
and partake in the
work is derived
successes
Eucharist and in
from British
the community
novelist
of the Church
Anthony
(382). It took the
Powell,
a
loss of his vitality for Muggeridge to conquer his principle contemporary of Muggeridge. He noted in his memoir, To
sin: adultery. Muggeridge yearned to be a Catholic for most Keep the Ball Rolling, a division in Muggeridges personality
of his life, but ultimately he found that he could not submit that he termed the Muggeridgean Trinity, the inherent
until he had routed his demons one by one.
suggestion being that the man was not only at war with the
Wolfe strains to document this development in world and falsehood, but with himself (xviixviii). Wolfe
Muggeridges life. The vehicle of this development for effectively appropriates Powells extended metaphor to
Muggeridge, in this case, is faith. Faith is necessarily an all- portray Muggeridges internal conflict throughout the work.
encompassing active mode in ones life: it demands time This tension is preserved and is carried through Wolfes
and attention; it shapes the individuals political and social presentation of Muggeridges psychological temperament,
perspective among an active community of fellow believers. sexual mores, and theological, socio-economic, and political
In order for faith to be fully realized, a commitment is beliefs. Wolfe is at times repetitive in his presentation of
required. As Wolfe aptly demonstrates, Muggeridge sought facts, but given the length of the work, this repetition serves
to avoid such a commitment for most of his life.
to remind the reader of his essential purpose of documenting
The frame of the work is twenty chapters of roughly Muggeridges spiritual development from cynicism to
twenty pages apiece, each of which focuses on a period Catholicism. Despite the occasionally inorganic and
of Muggeridges life. Wolfes overall style is excellent and repetitive nature of the presentation, the overall narrative
includes frequent literary allusions that allow for a sense of does not suffer, thus rendering a depiction that is both
relevancy and relatability to Muggeridge. Wolfe occasionally informative and enjoyable. F
presents his own speculations regarding Muggeridges
Kirby Hartley is a senior studying English.
efficacy as a writer. These opinions do not detract from the
work, but instead act as another aspect of his vindication of
the man.

18

E ssays

www.hillsdaleforum.com

ADAM SMITH
AND KARL MARX:
DIAGNOSING THE
DISADVANTAGES
OF THE
PROLETARIAT
there is an important sense in which both capitalists and workers
are victims of capitalism. The laws of the system bind both; both are
carried along by semi-automatic processes, at best half understood
and half controlled. Economic laws appear as laws of nature, the
power of the market appears as an inscrutable chance, and every
feature of life assumes the aspect of a commodity. Here money
reigns and triumphs over capitalist and worker alike. The capitalist
is both better and worse off than the worker. Better in the obvious
and crucial sense that he escapes poverty and insecurity. Worse in
the sense that he has no reason to become dissatisfied and frame the
questions which might reveal to him the less-than-human quality of
his life.
-Alasdair MacIntyre, Freedom and Revolution

This essat was originaly written for Dr. Charles Steeles classes based upon common economic interests and
prospects. Smith identified three such social groups:
ECO 356 History of Economic Thought.
the workers who supply labor in exchange for wages,
dam Smith, the eighteenth-century Scottish the landowners who rent their land, and the owners
moral philosopher, and Karl Marx, the of capital who supply goods. Marx chiefly demarcated
nineteenth-century German social scientist, the economic populace into two classes: the proletariat
contributed landmark theses to the history of economic and the bourgeoisie.1 Lastly, both thinkers invoked the
thought. Despite inhabiting different cultural milieus action of a hidden agent in order to legitimize their
and thus experiencing different instantiations of the cause. Smith furnished his economic theory with a great
market economy, both intellectuals contributed similar trust in the Invisible Hand or Divine Providence,
ideas to the study of political economy. I will enumerate which, free from human manipulation, assists in the
three. First, both adhered to the labor theory of value advance of wealth and prosperity in society. Marx
(that is, the value of something depends at least partially invoked the workings of the objective logic of History,
upon the amount of labor spent in order to produce it).
Second, both thinkers divided society into separate 1 This is not to mention the lumpenproletariat or petit

bourgeoisie, two marginal and insignificant groups for Marx.

19

an intelligible meta-narrative understood through

dialectical materialism, concluding and completing
itself in universal proletarian revolt and the creation
of a harmonious and classless utopia. The ultimate
disagreement between Smith and Marx, however,
concerns whether the market as a whole largely benefits
o r exploits its laboring workers. Smith contended
that the classes work together to stimulate and grow
the economy while benefiting from the system, but
Marx viewed the classes as fundamentally at odds,
progressing towards the inevitable clash
which will culminate in a communist

For Marx
wage
laborers
became
poorer
with each
increase
in their
productivity.
revolution. Smith believed that the market is generally
rewarding to all participants, while Marx, whose
entire philosophy rests upon his materialist reading
of the historic class struggle, denounced the market
as inhumane to and exploitative of the proletariat.
This essay analyzes the agreements and disagreements
between Smith and Marx, particularly focusing upon
the disadvantages faced by the proletariat and the
systemic causes of their plight.
As we have already learned, both Karl Marx and Adam
Smith divided the people of the market into separate
social classes. Smith saw the laborers, landowners, and
capital owners as the important and essential classes
of the market economy. Marx agreed for the most
part, emphasizing the historic separation between
the proletariat, landowner, and bourgeoisie classes.
According to Smith, the division and specialization of
20

E ssays

labor contributes to the growth of the economy as a

whole, for the resulting increases in productivity allows
for a dramatic increase in capital. These advances in the
manufacturing and commerce sections of the economy
bring about a greater distribution of tradable goods.
Since these goods satisfy human needs, more humans can
realize their individual good through their acquisition.
In this way, Smith argued that the economic market
rightfully benefits all classes and members of society. As
he wrote in the Introduction and Plan
of the Work of An Inquiry into
the Nature and Causes of the
Wealth of Nations:
Among civilized and
thriving nations .
. . though a great
number of people
do no labor at all,
many of whom
consume
the
produce of ten
times, frequently
of a hundred times
more labour than
the greater part of
those who work; yet
the produce of the
whole labour of the
society is so great, that
all are often abundantly supplied, and
a workman, even of the lowest and poorest
order, if he is frugal and industrious, may enjoy a
greater share of the necessaries and conveniences of life
than it is possible for any savage to acquire.

Thus Smith considers the laissez-faire economy

beneficial to the whole of the society, for the benefits
granted to the working class vastly outnumber those
received within any non-market system.
Marx vehemently disagreed with this point. After an
analysis of the social classes struggles and consciousness,
he decreed the market economy intrinsically beneficial
to some and grossly detrimental to others. In his essay
Estranged Labour, Marx argued:
The worker becomes all the poorer the more wealth he
produces, the more his production increases in power and
size. The worker becomes an ever cheaper commodity
the more commodities he creates. The devaluation of the
world of men is in direct proportion to the increasing
value of the world of things. Labor produces not only
commodities; it produces itself and the worker as a
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commodity. . .

To Marx, wage-laborers become poorer with each

increase in their productivity. The workers work
decreases in value, and he becomes alienated from both
it and the market system. He becomes understood by
the capital owners and society generally as a commodity,
a producer instead of a person, wholly and integrally
connected to his work.
Within this understanding, those who receive
human and economic benefit from society do so at the
exploitation of the working classes. Marx insisted that
these are the bourgeoisie capitalists, those who own
sufficient capital (i.e. the means of production) and who
employ the proletariat, exploiting them by buying their
labor at a wage substantially below the actual value of
their work in order to maximize profit. As the bourgeoisie
and landowning classes benefit from the exploitation of
the proletariat, the workers receive unjust wages for the
labor that they must provide in order to survive. Until
the abolition of private property and the Marxist social
revolution, the bourgeoisie remain the ruling class. They
use the mechanisms of the economy for personal gain
at the expense of the proletariats humanity. As Marx
writes in The Manifesto of the Communist Party:
The bourgeoisie, wherever it has got the upper hand, has
put an end to all feudal, patriarchal, idyllic relations.
It . . . has left remaining no other nexus between man
and man than naked self-interest, than callous cash
payment. It has drowned the most heavenly ecstasies of
religious fervour, of chivalrous enthusiasm, of philistine
sentimentalism, in the icy water of egotistical calculation.
It has resolved personal worth into exchange value,
and in place of the numberless indefeasible chartered
freedoms, has set up that single, unconscionable freedom
Free Trade. In one word, for exploitation, veiled by
religious and political illusions, it has substituted naked,
shameless, direct, brutal exploitation.

Here the bourgeoisie have calculated the subjugation

and exploitation of all workers for their own selfaggrandizement, personal benefit, and capital
accumulation, at the inhumane expense of the
proletariat. For Marx, freedom for the proletariat is an
illusion leading to economic slavery.
While Adam Smith and Karl Marx disagree
regarding the overall benefits of the market economy,
they also both address the nature of the inequalities and
disadvantages which arise from the economic system.
Although the thinkers take opposing views on this

subject, Smith nevertheless understands that the lower

classes experience difficulty within the market. In Wealth
of Nations, Smith pens an entire chapter, Of Wages and
Profit in the Different Employments of Labour and
Stock, which considers both the Inequalities arising
from the Nature of the Employments themselves and
Inequalities occasioned by the policy of Europe.
He knows that within the market system laborers
sometimes receive less than optimal wages for their labor,
but he credits this to the variety of employments and to
state policies, not the market system as a whole. While
Marx argues that the entire economy rests upon the
exploitation of the wage earners, Smith subtly explains
the differing natures of inequality and how it occurs.
In Wealth of Nations, Smith analyses circumstances in
which a laborer receives disparaging wages on account
of his employment. He contends that workers receive
differing and unequal wages on account of ease or
hardship, the cleanliness or dirtiness, the honourableness
or dishonourableness of the employment. Wages also
differ due to easiness and cheapness, the difficulty
and expense of learning the business, the constancy
or inconstancy of employment, and the small or great
trust which must be reposed in the workman.
But none of this worries Smith; he views this as
natural common sense and essential to the liberty of the
market. While he believes that some workerssoldiers,
for exampledeserve better pay, Smith finds that
wage inequality due to governmental interference is
the most unfitting and unjust. He spends considerable
time examining how government policies can occasion
inequalities by not leaving things at perfect liberty.
For Smith, governments increase inequality:
First, by restraining the competition in some
employments to a smaller number than would otherwise
be disposed to enter into them; secondly, by increasing
it in others beyond what it naturally would be; and,
thirdly, by obstructing the free circulation of labor and
stock, both from employment to employment and from
place to place.

Smith believed that the main economic disadvantages

arise from government interactions in the market. Thus
he critiques mercantilism and the states restriction of
free, international trade as leading to true economic
inequalities, contra Karl Marx, who held that the entire
economic system, set up by the bourgeoisie capitalists in
order to subjugate the proletariat wage earners, spawns
injustice.
21

Since Smith and Marx had

drastically different views
of how the market treats its
participants, they expressed
the workings of the thing
using different symbols. The
symbolic objects of Smiths
Divine Providence and
Invisible Hand and Marxs
History and class struggle
infuse their theories with
meaning and order. With
Smith, we trust that the
Invisible Hand will tend
to equality and prosperity.
As he writes in A Theory of
Moral Sentiments:
The rich only select from the
heap what is most precious
and agreeable. They consume
little more than the poor,
and in spite of their natural
selfishness and rapacity,
. . . though the sole end . . .
be the gratification of their
own vain and insatiable
desires, they divide with the
poor the produce of all their
improvements. They are led
by an invisible hand to make
nearly the same distribution
of the necessaries of life, which
would have been made, had
the earth been divided into
equal portions among all its
inhabitants, and thus without
intending it, without knowing
it, advance the interest of the
society, and afford means
to the multiplication of the
species. When Providence
divided the earth among a
few lordly masters, it neither
forgot nor abandoned those
who seemed to have been left
out in the partition. These
last too enjoy their share of
all that it produces. In what
constitutes the real happiness
of human life, they are in no

22

E ssays

respect inferior to those who would seem so much above

them. In ease of body and peace of mind, all the different
ranks of life are nearly upon a level, and the beggar, who
suns himself by the side of the highway, possesses that
security which kings are fighting for.

Smith trusts that, although the rich bourgeoisie use

their workers selfishly, they nevertheless make the most
suitable economic decisions for the society. For him,
Providence is always interacting with and allowing
for the best of all possible economies through the
mechanism of its Invisible Hand. This grand vision lies
at the center of Adam Smiths quite optimistic utilitarian
Deism, but its meta-narrative remains fundamentally at
odds with any Marx, who trusted in the culmination
of history as a classless utopia. The laws of dialectical
materialism dictate it as such.
The economic theories of both Smith and Marx
derive meaning and legitimacy from these powerful
stories. But once weve abandoned these and similar
meta-narratives, how can we appropriate what weve
learned from the greatest modern contributors to
political economy? Can we synthesize aspects of their
thought? We must not become ideological capitalist
or communist sympathizers. Instead, the prudential
student of economic history and thought ought to seek
the truth with honesty and integrity among all available
avenues. Perhaps in this way we can find, after a long
and arduous search, a better world. F
John Taylor is a senior studying philosophy.

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conclusions. The point in following along as a student isnt

ultimately an acquisition of the details of so-and-sos account
of reality, but whats been done to our eyes when we turn
to look at the real thing. Cutting corners in Merleau-Pontys
perceptual puzzles isnt only going to cost me the chance to
acquire tour-guide-level acquaintance with the metaphorical
mines; its going to leave my powers of analysis weaker and
my imagination poorer than it might have been.
One fear remains unaddressed. Even if I like it down here,
not many of us can fit. Does excellence come at the price of
isolation?
The panicky scrawls across the text on my page 271 (THIS
IS NOT ME. THIS IS A BOOK IM READING RIGHT
NOW) quiet themselves into a gentler marginal meditation
by the bottom of the page. People say, Ill spare you the
details, I ruminated, not because details in themselves are
worthless, but because they are allotted to each of us in turn.
You take on yours and I take on mine, but we both do so,
in some sense, for the sake of each other. You alone must
change your one-year-olds diaper and no one else really
cares to hear about it, but there, as you embrace your lonely
responsibility, you are most deeply and archetypally Mother.
As we specialize, we do not do so as slaves to details

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nor consider ourselvesany more than Christ didas

too transcendent for material life. You may be human qua
neuroscientist or human qua ethical theorist or human qua
historian, but you and your audience will all always still be
human. Thus any time we address each other we should do
so with an underlying respect for the universally true and
the universally humanly true. Even in the most technically
challenging realms of philosophy that Ive yet encountered,
the writers who stand out are those who, while masters of
their craft, are not so dissolved into the conventions of their
discipline that they forget that they are humans talking to
humans, that their models are models of reality, and that
their thoughts belong to things.
We cant escape the toil of mastering details, and we
shouldnt try. What makes our studies liberal and human
is that we are always holding the contingent details in a
live relationship with the whole, remembering that no
professionalization can strip us of our humanity, and that
ultimately all our pursuits, if theyre worth it, find their
justification in a framework that is broader than any one of
them, but not shallower. F
Madeline Johnson is a freshman planning to study philosophy.

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