FUNDAMENTALS TO MISUNDERSTANDING POLITICS Chapter 0.2

Fundamentals to Misunderstanding Politics

Chapter 0.2 Why Are Maxims Adyanta
(or “Tent Stakes”) Needed?

(see Chapter 0.1 here)

Oak Boat: So why do we need this crap? Well, according to Dewitt T. Stame’s introduction to the Proverbs or Adages of Erasmus, proverbs and maxims (and maybe adyanta) are useful in four ways:

(1) to promote the understanding of philosophy, (2) to strengthen argument, (3) to add ornament and gracefulness in speech and writing, and (4) to clarify the meaning of some of the best authors.

And Stame also warns: “Erasmus cautions, however, that proverbs serve not as food but as condiments. They are not to be employed to weariness but for gracefulness.” [1]

Newt Monk: The world has too many condiments these days; it’s choice anxiety that will bring us asunder.

Oak Boat: Well, it’s always a good idea to remember that tent stakes are not condiments.

Newt Monk: Welp. And after Erasmus came Montesquieu:

With regard to mores, much is to be gained by keeping the old customs. Since corrupt peoples rarely do great things and have established few societies, founded few towns, and given few laws; and since, on the contrary, those with simple and austere mores have made most establishments, recalling men to the old maxims usually returns them to virtue. [2]

Oak Boat: Welp. And after Montesquieu came Rousseau (echoing ancient Solon):

The more you multiply laws, the more you cause them to be despised: and all the overseers you institute are nothing but new lawbreakers bound either to share [their bounty] with the old ones, or to do their plundering on their own. [3]

Newt Monk: Welp. And before them all was Emperor Aurelius, telling us, and telling himself, that: “You will never be remarkable for quick-wittedness.” [4]

Oak Boat: Welp. And before Aurelius came Confucius, telling us, and telling himself, that: “The superior man wishes to be slow in his speech and earnest in his conduct.”[5]

Newt Monk: Welp. And before Confucius came the end of the Third Age, where in the Red Book of Westmarch readers of this age are told that what we want to call a maxim (but can’t), and that thing that might be something between a catena and an adyanta, might once have been called a riddle. For:

In one thing you have not changed, dear friend,’ said Aragorn: ‘you still speak in riddles.’

‘What? In riddles?’ said Gandalf. ‘No! For I was talking aloud to myself. A habit of the old: they choose the wisest person present to speak to; the long explanations needed by the young are wearying.’ He laughed, but the sound now seemed warm and kindly as a gleam of sunshine.[6]

NOTES

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[1] Dewitt T. Starnes, “Introduction,” Proverbs or Adages by Desiderius Erasmus Gathered Out of the Chiliades and Englished (1569) by Richard Taverner, (Gainesville, FL: Scholars Facsimile & Reprints, 1956), pp. viii, x.

[2] Baron de la Brède et de Montesquieu, De l’esprit des Loix (The Spirit of the Laws) (1748), trans. and eds. Anne Cohler, Basia C. Miller and Harold S. Stone, (Cambridge UP, 1989), (V, 7), p. 49.

[3] Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Discours sur l’oeconomie politique (Discourse on Political Economy) (1755) in Rousseau: The Social Contract and Other Later Political Writings, ed. and trans. Victor Gourevitch, (Cambridge UP, 1997, 2003), p. 14.

[4] Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, trans. Maxwell Staniforth, (New York: Penguin, 1962), (V, v).

[5] 孔子 Kong Fuzi (Confucius), 論語 (Analects) in The Complete Confucius, (ed.) Nicholas Tamblyn, trans. Tamblyn (?), (Melbourne: Golding Books, 2016), (IV), p. 11.

[6] J. R. R. Tolkien, “The White Rider,” The Two Towers in The Lord of the Rings, (New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1954–55; 50th Anniversary Edition, 2004), (III, v), p. 496.