we easily overstep our legitimate places, and place wrongheaded expectations upon other people
Published in Practical Rationality
2 days ago (Medium.com)
Great thinkers set out many insights that can prove quite useful for us. From time to time, I produce short podcast episodes mining and refining those insights. Here’s one from the early philosopher Blaise Pascal that I’ve found quite helpful in my work and life!
Blaise Pascal writes in Pensées, section 332:
Tyranny consists in the desire of universal power beyond its scope. There are different assemblies of the strong, the fair, the sensible, the pious, in which each man rules at home, not elsewhere. And sometimes they meet, and the strong and the fair foolishly fight as to who shall be master, for their mastery is of different kinds. They do not understand one another, and their fault is the desire to rule everywhere. Nothing can effect this, not even might, which is of no use in the kingdom of the wise, and is only mistress of external actions.
So these expressions are false and tyrannical: “I am fair, therefore I must be feared. I am strong, therefore I must be loved.”
Tyranny is the wish to have in one way what can only be had in another. We render different duties to different merits; the duty of love to the pleasant; the duty of fear to the strong; the duty of belief to the learned.
We must render these duties. It is unjust to refuse them, and unjust to ask others. And so it is false and tyrannical to say: “He is not strong. therefore I will not esteem him. He is not able, therefore I will not fear him.
What Pascal is calling “tyranny” here can be understood in a political sense — he has the examples of different people clashing over who should rule — but I think we can extend this to the entire realm of relationships. And we can talk about other places besides that of royal chambers, or the law courts. We could talk about the marketplace. We can talk about workplaces.
We can talk about the attention-economy: who gets listened to, who gets paid homage as a a celebrity, and therefore also treated as an expert on all sorts of things that they’re not experts on. To have a certain kind of value, and to expect other people to recognize your value in other ways that you don’t actually have value in. So for example, to be a celebrity because of your good looks, and to think that people should listen to your book recommendations is, from what Pascal is saying, tyranny.
We can say that this infects and affects many relationships. It poisons things when people want to be heard and heeded, beyond the scope of where that is appropriate. And you notice that there is a diversity here that Pascal is signaling. None of us have all of the attributes. We all are lesser. We all are deficient in some, and at the same time we have something to bring to the table. And we should expect treatment according to what it is that we actually have.
The Tyrant is one who demands more than is really owed to them, more in a mode that is not appropriate to them. What do they do? Sometimes they get what they want if it is like fear, or affection, or getting their name chiseled on some marble at some monument.
But do they really get what they want from others? No. Generally they’re actually pushing them away. Being identified as a tyrant is, in some respect, a way of isolating and insulating the person who behaves tyrannically
If you’d like to year more useful insights, you can check out the other Sadler’s Shorts podcast episodes here.
Sadler’s Shorts — The Podcastbits of wisdom to help you build a better life
Gregory Sadler is the president of ReasonIO, a speaker, writer, and producer of highly popular YouTube videos on classic and contemporary philosophy. He is co-host of the radio show Wisdom for Life, and producer of the Sadler’s Lectures podcast. If you’d like to support his ongoing work, bringing philosophy to the broader public, he has a Patreon site where you can donate. You can also donate at Buy Me A Coffee.
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president ReasonIO | editor Stoicism Today | speaker philosophical counselor & consultant | YouTube philosophy guy | co-host Wisdom for Life | teaches at MIAD