Gratitude: An Intellectual History is a very good book (thus far) written by an interesting intellectual. Good books are rare, interesting intellectuals not so common, and good books by interesting intellectuals are like a clean comedienne who is funny: scarce and worth celebrating.
So I celebrate this book and the author Peter Leithart by doing a live reading of his book. In a “live read,” I blog as I read (usually a few pages at a time). As a result, I might change my mind about a section by the end of the chapter. I hope this allows both the author and any fellow readers to see my thoughts about the book unfold in real time. The rules of the format are that there is little editing. These are raw thoughts: pardon the errors.
After an Introduction that will tempt reviewers to just review the Introduction and assume they get the book, it was that sweeping, Leithart gets down to details. He begins, as the West does, with the ancient Greeks: my people if one were allowed to pick their tribe. One wonders if Leithart will love the Greeks or be seduced by their imitators, the Romans, as so many Christians are. Greeks built marble columns: Romans built brick columns and covered them with marble. Virgil is epic, more gloriously on the surface than Homer, but plain statist propaganda keeps showing through the prose.
Or perhaps this is just my prejudice: I have been told that good things happened in the reign of Caesar Augustus (though little to his credit). Leithart wrote an intellectual history of gratitude in the West and because of chronological primacy, it will be the Greeks that set the subject going. Reject them, accept them, or a little of both, but we cannot ignore them because they created us. (I think more about this idea here.)
“Reciprocity was written into the language of ancient Greece.” This is not quite “Call me Ishmael,” but as first sentences go, it sums up the situation (regarding gratitude and the Greeks) perfectly. Leithart’s thesis that gift giving produced more gift giving (grace begats grace) explains the title of the section Circles. If you gave a gift to a person, he had a duty to give a gift to you in a pleasing cycle of gain for all.
The idea that Greeks gave to get and getting meant giving is not unique to Leithart, but I am not sure about it when applied to Greek religion or other “power relationships.” The powerful (especially the gods) got gifts as much to placate and escape their notice as to set up reciprocity. In fact, being overly pious was dangerous: far from setting up a reciprocal relationship with the gods, you might get noticed and become their trading chits in the Olympian power struggles. Hera offers up some of her favorite cities to spoiling in return for the right to see Troy fall. To become the favorite of any god (including Zeus) might draw Olympian attention and this rarely was a good thing.
Leithart uses the example of Thetis asking Zeus to aid Achilles, trading in on a good she once did the Thunderer, as an example of gods valuing paying off a debt of gratitude as trumping other concerns. Of course, nothing could stop the wishes of Zeus (Iliad I): Zeus destroys the city he loves, he allows Greeks who honor him to suffer so that Achilles can win glory, and then allows Achilles to die.
The will of Zeus trumps gratitude and the wise Greek wished to stay out of his plans: not win his favor.
Contrary to Leithart, I do deny that the pattern of Greek religion was reciprocal. Greece (the bad side of Greece) was a slave culture and a slave may (in part) do good to master in the hopes of winning master’s favor, but the wiser slave stays out of master’s way. He does his job well enough and is respectful enough to escape too much attention. The love or hatred of master is very dangerous. Greek religion certainly contained elements of reciprocity, as did all Greek relationships, but it was also about establishing “place.”
Know Thyself outside of Delphi was not a call to self-exploration, an ancient self-help slogan, but a come uppance to the cocky worshiper. You are not like the great god Apollo. Know thyself: he is wise and his Pythia will tell you what you cannot know.
It is true that one view of the gods had them “making the natural world go.” The gods caused everything: rain, sunshine, moonshine, growth, birth. They did this (in part) as a gift and this meant they deserved a gift (Leithart is right about this), but they would have done the same without men at all. It was the nature of Zeus to thunder, of Poseidon to shake, and of Ceres to bloom. You recognize they were Big and Powerful and so knew your place. They wanted something: you gave it to them.
It is a standard theme of the Iliad that a hero doomed, as Troy is doomed, despite all the gifts offered. Troy is rich and can outgive anyone, but Hera and Athena were slighted by Paris in a beauty contest and they will always have Paris regardless of the gifts his city offers. They owe Troy, but they do not care and here is the danger of hanging out with the powerful!
Of course, if you did not ask the Masters for favors, then you might draw their attention through impiety. While the gods often refused to a pay a debt, they seldom failed to punish uppity humans. Ask Prometheus what happened when even an immortal refused to accept the social order. Gift giving reinforced structure as much as it produced gift giving. In fact, I would suggest that only equals had a duty to give gifts when they received gifts. Superiors could take what they wished (Agamemnon makes the mistake of thinking he is superior to Achilles), but enjoyed having it “freely” offered. Of what they could have made their own, did the lesser give to them.
You can charge a god with ingratitude: Greeks did it all the time, but precious little good it did you. Master might be ungrateful for all the slave has done, but then why should master be grateful to his slave? You could get the gods’ love or gratitude (if you wished it) and then you might get a blessing, you might even demand it, but nothing stands before the will of Zeus.
Arguably Leithart may miss some of the point of Plato’s purification of Greek religion: His god’s are gratified by holy gifts, because they are holy. Good gifts are good, so good gods are attracted to them. This is the basic principle in Plato’s physics (personal and natural): like is attracted to like.
Religious life did involve exchange. I am not denying this, but I do deny that is mostly the thrust of Greek religion or even of gift giving. It is true that the philosophers, particularly the later Hellenistic schools, purified the gods and so made the gift of a good life appropriate, but this is because only a good life would be pleasing to good gods. It was the duty of an inferior to a superior now superior not only in power and position but in morality. This was certainly an improvement on Homer’s gods: our masters were no longer arbitrary, but they were still our masters.
In the same way, the Iliad is in part about a failure of reciprocity, but it is also about the failure to recognize inequality. Agamemnon is wrong about Achilles. The son of Atreus is king, but the son of Peleus is the greater man. Homer is introducing a bold and subversive idea: the king is not always the greatest. We must honor him as king because kings have power, but the king may not be the most powerful man. Go with power. Give the “lion his meat.”
Leithart should read The Frogs.
The Iliad does contain the theme of reciprocity, but also of power. Gift-giving creates demands, but so does worth. Achilles is the “atom bomb” of the ancient world and so he deserves gifts: enough to placate his rage and recognize his worth. The problem with the gift of Agamemnon is not the grandness of the gift, but the inferiority of the giver. From inferiors, this creates expectations, but not demands. Achilles refuses huge gifts to fight again, but he goes to battle in a moment to revenge the death of his beloved friend Patroclus.
At the beginning of the poem, the King makes two mistakes: he does not see the priest represent the god Apollo (greater than he is) or that Achilles is the greater man. He messes with the true order of a camp that is at war. In peace, Agamemnon may (may!) be the better man, but in war Achilles plainly is. Priam understands what Agamemnon does not: Achilles is the greater man. He brings him gifts and so placates him, but only because an even greater (the will of Zeus) says that it will be so: Hector will not be dishonored.
I can makes little sense of his reading of Thucydides on gratitude. The Athenian Empire was based (as many speeches report) on power: Athens had it, you did not, so you better obey. Athens often used the People as a way to get power: Athenian “democracy” appealed to the free men of cities who were out of power. When faced, however, with a city that refused to yield, the talk was not of ingratitude, but of folly: weak cities had better yield fast.
Leithart is right that Athens introduced the duty to the “common good” of Athens over the responsibility one man owed another. This, however, could also be because the Empire of Athens was greater than any man: it had more power. Alcibiades was exceptional, and Thucydides (though not Plato), had a sneaking admiration for him because Alcibiades was beyond the power of Athens. He was the Achilles of the Peloponnesian War: Athens took away his honor as superior to even the city and so lost the war. They did not “give the lion his meat.”
Again, Leithart is right that Athens made crimes such as bribery possible, but only because Athens tried to make the city greater than any one man. They lost one war because of this error (Alcibiades) and they lost liberty forever when they refused to defeat Alexander. I fear Leithart is seeing his “lessons” from a Christian perspective. He must never forget that Athens lost the war.
Greek thought, including Aristotles, does contain circles of gift giving amongst equals, but also gift giving that is directed to inferiors to demonstrate beyond alll doubt their inferiority.
The great man Aristotle, the man of magnificence, is better than the the sum of the city. He gives to the city appropriately and so makes the city better than the city was. As a result, his greatness demands respect. His gift cannot be equalled by his inferiors: they cannot match his style, but they must bow the knee. All they have is his because he is the better man. This is less about a “circle” than about a pyramid where the magnificent man is at the top. When the virtuous man gives gifts to show his dominance, he is not pulling apart a circle, but establishing the natural pyramid. Rare indeed is friendship for this man because rare indeed is the great man who will meet another great man.
Pity the loneliness of Alexander.
Against Leithart, I see Aristotle as the confirmation of Homer, not the repudiation. We owe the greater gifts. They owe us nothing, though we might hope or demand gifts from them. We whine as slaves whine. Good masters will give out of their magnificence, not because they must, but because they can. They establish their greatness, by their gifts. Aristotle holds out hope, vain usually, that these great men will have equals: friends. These friends will give gifts and receive them; they will form circles.
For this reason Aristotle is not inconsistent. His magnanimous man is not dependent on his friends because his friends are equals. He needs nothing from them and gets nothing he needs. What does he get? He gets friendship. A man does not need a friend, but friendship is good. Imagine though for a moment a man so magnificent that he can contemplate God. Such a man could become God’s friend. Aristotle’s magnificent man withdraws from politics of earth because he is now in the City of Aristotle’s God.
Leithart may, then, be wrong about the Greeks and so simply wrong.
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