"Principlesofgovernaaance"Gene Wolfe's Politics

Jerry Friedman · 02 Apr 2009, 22:15 · from 2009-April.txt.gz

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From: jerry_friedman at yahoo.com (Jerry Friedman)
Date: Thu, 2 Apr 2009 15:15:00 -0700 (PDT)
Subject: (urth) "Principlesofgovernaaance"Gene Wolfe's Politics
In-Reply-To: <W9272031606160211238693399@webmail11>
Message-ID: <294271.89133.qm at web50705.mail.re2.yahoo.com>

--- On Thu, 4/2/09, Son of Witz <sonofwitz at butcherbaker.org> wrote:
...

> ok, is the last one meant to be a joke about our current
> situation?  Abstraction, largely ideal.

Yes, only not necessarily a joke.  (At least, I didn't
laugh.)  I think the majority of Americans who think about
such things are attached to our form of government, not
because of specific leaders or laws, but because of
abstract qualities such as popular voting, representation
rather than deciding everything by referendum, checks and
balances, rule of law, protection of individual freedoms,
and maybe others.
...

> So, would anyone
> toss away democracy in favor of a monarch?

Of course some would.  Not me.

> How can this
> notion not be "largely ideal"  when it hinges upon
> the character of a single person?  

I take "ideal" to mean "existing in the realm of ideas".

> I'm not sure if I'm making this clear. I'm
> trying to understand how this can be considered the highest
> state of governance in a practical, non-ideal world.

Because it allows for personal attachment, a praiseworthy
trait in humans and dogs (as Master Malrubius's questions
are designed to point out) and possibly a more reliable
kind of loyalty than an abstract system can claim.

I think we're supposed to take the classification
Severian learned as naive and Master Malrubius as showing
what's wrong with it.  At the least, we and Severian are
supposed to consider that there's as much to be said for
monarchy as against it, as in the quotations from Aquinas
and the ancients that Stanislaus kindly posted (so I could
pretend I knew all along about those opinions).  And we
may even be supposed to think that Severian's list is
completely backwards, contrary to what he and we were taught.
Placing monarchy "highest" would be relative--not
necessarily good, but least evil.

In "The Best Introduction to the Mountains", Wolfe praises
the societies of a time and place where democracy was
known, but hereditary rulers and conquerors were more
common (I think).

Anyway, Severian is destined to be the sole ruler (except
for some internal colleagues), so he needs to appreciate
the advantages of sole rule.

The Commonwealth shows no sign of democracy that I remember,
a fact compatible with the classification of principles of
governance from low to high, not bad to good.  It's striking
that nonetheless Severian was taught that our kind of
democracy is the highest form.  Condition of Primitivity?
Or just a way of putting the reader's likely preconceptions
on the table in order to subvert them?

Jerry Friedman

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