The Western Tradition - Epsidoe 32 - Absolutism and the Social Contract (1989)

Added: 2026-05-09

[00:00:01]it was a crude age violent rebellious disorderly but slowly it was trained to order to discipline and self-discipline and reason all in the interests of the crown which became the center of the state or even the state itself the age of absolutism this time on the western tradition [Music] [Applause] and now ucla professor eugene weber's continuing journey through the history of western civilization the 17th century europe was the age of absolutism the doctrine and practice of centralized authority and absolute sovereign power represented by the king political absolutism was nothing new of course but the modern model was a reaction to the disorder of the declining feudal state and the divisions of religious conflict it was thought that order peace tranquility prosperity could best be ensured by a central authority against whose will neither the church nor few lords nor local traditions could prevail the simplest argument for monarchic absolutism was that kings derived their authority from god now in this version the divine right of kings to rule permitted them to control not only their subjects but also the church and so the medieval conflict between secular and spiritual powers was pretty much settled in the 17th century in favor of the secular power even in catholic countries but there were more pragmatic arguments for absolutism which were all about what today we would call law and order if you wanted law and order you had to obey a single will like that of louis xiv if you didn't do that you were condemned to chaos civil war foreign war religious war social war the theme of civil peace dominated the political thought of the 17th century and most people looked to the monarch to keep the peace and you can see why this was so important from the example of france france had a strong efficient king in henry iv but he was murdered in 1610 this left the country in the hands of his widow marie de medicis who acted as regent for the nine-year-old heir louis xiii marie was fat and foolish although she got rubens to paint her as plump and grand and the result of her regency was a period in which the country went to the dogs and the power of the crown was threatened when louis xiii grew up he found as his first minister a man of iron and genius cardinal richelieu with richelieu at the helm the nobles were gradually humbled order was restored the french protestants the huguenots who had been acting up were put in their place and the prestige of the crown was greater than ever before you can see this quite well in alexander dumas novel the three musketeers which is about four noble gentlemen in a royal guards regiment atos portos aramis and dartanya all of them were likely to pull out their swords and start fighting at the slightest provocation and even without provocation [Music] the villain of the story is cardinal richelieu because he is a man of order he doesn't appreciate all this mayhem and he punishes breaches of the peace now if we look at this in context we find that although louis xiii and richelieu appreciated a fine swordsman they felt they had to repress dueling just as they had to repress private warfare and castle raiding so in the novel they lightly punish darth tania for fighting in public and in real life they cut off the head of a royal duke for disobeying royal edicts against fighting on the other hand they encouraged hunting as an outlet for excess energy they wanted the nobles to amuse themselves without burning villages and without killing other nobles who could be useful serving in the king's armies [Music] eventually royal policies and socio-economic forces would turn the noble from a dinosaur into a peacock but not at once in the 1640s after both louis and richelieu died there was another young heir louis xiv who wasn't even five years old and another regent his mother and of austria and another cardinal minister cardinal mazar and there was another series of civil wars called the france in which the nobles and the great court of law the parliament of paris tried again to assert their rights against the encroaching power of the crown [Music] that was the last desperate struggle of the nobility to save itself from subordination and decay they were specialized fighting animals and the new age had no more use for them the new age wanted producers businessmen lawyers administrators and bureaucrats [Music] it wanted soldiers too of course and the real life model of dhartanya was going to end his career as commander of the king's musketeers but it wanted disciplined soldiers not rambo types so the nobles were doomed as rivals to the crown although they put up a desperate fight louis xiv was never going to forget the thrones the rioting in paris got so bad that on one occasion the 10 year old king and his mother had to be smuggled out of the city and they spent the night on little bales of straw because there was no other bedding and louie never trusted paris again he never trusted the nobles either he found a lot of his ministers among the middle classes he avoided paris where he risked being trapped and intimidated he kept the nobles in their place which was on a kind of golden leash splendid idle and useless louis didn't want to destroy the nobles he only wanted to domesticate them and cut their claws once this was done the nobility was going to be preserved a lap dog aristocracy incapable of hurting the king anymore but providing an impressive facade for the absolute state an impressive court for the absolute king and an edifying upper crust for the new stability through hierarchy program on which the king based his order and his power the nobility revolved around the king as the planets revolve around the sun which incidentally is not why lui is known as the sun king that is because his eulogists compared him to apollo the sun god but if he was himself the shining sun until his death in 1715 louis above all was the center of the state indeed he was the state hence the famous assertion i am the state which probably was more like letta amwa meaning the state is mine [Music] and just because it had taken a lot of hard work and hard fighting to get to this point the king and the whole apparatus of royal propaganda insisted on hierarchy order social discipline and codes of behavior which you can see reflected in the art architecture and literature of the period as well as in its manners and politics the epitome of this can be found at versailles on the one hand riches and luxury a grandiose facade and a no less grandiose interior on the other hand great discipline in the use and arrangement of these riches [Music] the great halls and corridors of versailles are not at all like the homie hodgepodge of queen victoria's drawing rooms they're more in a style that today we would describe as prussian there's something rigid about their grandeur you can also see it in the gardens of this pretty chateau at vollevikont the builders laid out a vista they laid out the gardens they even laid out a forest to surround a canal all inspired by versailles as a hundred places from portugal to poland were inspired [Music] but the forest has no underbrush the trees stand in straight rows planted like indian corn [Music] but this concern for order was itself the reflection of and the reaction against a very disordered time remember that the court moved to versailles from paris because the king wanted to put some distance between himself and his unruly subjects and this distance was not only one of space but also a symbolic distance of quality a concrete demonstration of grandeur so impressive as to make him unapproachable greatness is only really great if it has about it a quality of the unbelievable of the marvelous in the exact sense of that word arousing wonder causing astonishment the king doesn't want to be feared he wants to be admired and he wants people to be moved by the spectacle of him in his glory to the point of worshiping him the monarchy and its new order had to establish itself on a myth but the myth itself had to be based on a sort of fact on the concrete impression that would make people accept it and this is where versailles came in and where the art of the time came in as vehicles of new values and new illusions on which the new order could be based [Music] the previous generation of french art in the early 17th century had been diverse and lively take the work of jacques carlo the master etcher who left us an unrivaled record of the horrors of the thirty years war or that of philippe de champagne cold but full of restrained passion or the lennar brothers strong realistic pictures of peasants the leaners were so completely pushed aside that no one remembered them until the 19th century or consider the work of georges de la tour austere but rich and dramatic la tour was only rediscovered in 1915 what the king wanted instead was a rigorous reasonable cool style and the ideal was to be found in the paintings of nicholas pusser much admired for their purity or else look at rigor's painting of louis himself they're grand all right but i find them rather stiff and rigid you can also see the same grand design in architecture look at the east front of the louvre or at the churches built by louie's favorite architect nicola [Music] now compare them with the works of bernini in rome roman splendor has fantasy and warmth french splendor is fashioned by bureaucrats it's not really human you can say with kenneth clark that it reflects the triumph of the authoritarian state [Music] it also reflects the logical solutions that lewis finance minister colbert the greatest administrator of the 17th century was trying to impose on every part of public life and especially on the arts but we can also find the counterpart of the spirit in the work of pierre corney a writer whose life from 1605 to 1684 covered most of the period courney's tragedies these are first editions suggest how difficult it must have been to harness the violent disordered passions that threaten the new order and they also suggest the way in which the harnessing was brought about the crucial term in all this is the word passions passions which could threaten institutions like the family or the state which could harm or hamper great interest which could spoil important political plans and which had to be subordinated again and again to a superior duty if you think that in the world of the three musketeers a silly young blade can start a riot just because of a foolish argument or could end conspiracies with a foreign enemy just for the sake of a pair of pretty eyes you can see how important it was to discipline or to downgrade certain kinds of pride or gallantry which were merely thought the satisfactions of the self at the expense of society and this problem which was the problem of richelieu and of mazar was also in slight disguise the essential problem of the tragedies of courney the best known of these tragedies is the seed where love has to be subordinated to honor and duty even at the cost of two lovers happiness don rodrigue is a hero of the spanish wars against the moors and it is the moors who gave him the nickname of sid from el said the leader rodrigue loves she men and the two are about to marry when they are caught in a stupid quarrel between their two fathers rodrigue is forced to kill shemen's father in a duel and after that family honor forces she men to demand the death of the man she loves and she does this in the end however rodrigue is not put to death for very pragmatic reasons because the king wants him to fight the moors the seed is basically an adventure story a glorified western but on top of this west corner has built an epic of honor and love rodrigue is caught between his father and she men his lady love she men is torn between a legitimate and beautiful love for rodrigue and the superior passion of honor and vengeance against rodrigue the man who killed her father although rodriguez and she men love one another honor and duty are stronger than passion or rather the passion for honor is stronger than the passion that we call love if you fail to sympathize with a dilemma that just shows how different the 20th century is from the 17th but remember that cornei's plays were directed to an aristocracy that couldn't be touched by sermons by moralizing by sentimentalism so he touched them by showing the greatness of self-discipline and self-denial of not doing what you want but what you should do and note that karne didn't say as a christian would that doing your duty makes you good he said that doing your duty makes you great when carne presented the struggle between passion and duty it wasn't a new invention what was new in cournet was that he showed one legitimate passion opposed to another passion that was equally legitimate it was important to elevate the debate from a contest between right and wrong to a contest between two rights because a gentleman who got into a fight could not admit that he was wrong but if you started by stipulating that his motives were honorable he would at least stop to consider your argument which is what courtney achieved by raising the debate to a higher play and the 17th century people who loved his adventure stories felt vaguely that they were getting in them something they hadn't quite known before and they were right they hadn't known it before for the simple reason that it had gone out with the greeks roman thought was too legalistic christian thought was too simplistic to tolerate the idea that there could be two rights that there could be two sides to a conflict this is a very sophisticated view and it's fit only for very sophisticated minds and the tiny minority of the 17th century society that read courtney that saw courtney's plays was hardly very sophisticated but it was beginning to try at least where greek tragedy laments the impotence of man in the face of destiny carne's tragedy exalts the freedom to decide men and women can exert their will and rise superior to their destinies [Music] human will had been exalted by the renaissance but it was often will to power to self-assertion cornei respects the will only when it acts in a good cause when it is generous and great-hearted and since duty generosity greatness of heart are very difficult difficulty itself becomes the sign of duty the very essence of duty so that when the characters of cournet see something difficult they immediately decide that it is their duty to do it perhaps it was necessary in this violent and passionate age to propose an ideal of gratuitous self-discipline perhaps only passion could triumph over passion the low or selfish passions mastered by bringing in another the passion of pride but these characters were not only proud they were increasingly rational and that is far more important 17th century tragedy is the rationalistic tragedy per excellence and reason complements pride as an instrument of mastery over the passions cournet presents love as one more passion subject to reason the lovers that you find in corny's place make the same kind of declarations as every other lover does but then they explain very coolly and logically just why it's necessary for the loved one to be loved why the lover must die if he doesn't get what he wants in other words they establish an identity between love and reason they argue that they love whom they love as they love because it is the only reasonable thing to do and if this is so then love is no longer a passion it is subject to all the rules and rationalizations of our minds it can become an element of order rather than a factor of disorder to come full circle then we can see that the parallel of cornelian tragedy with its reasoning approach to greatness or to love lay in the classical architecture of versailles versailles had the same tension towards the heights the same taste for order the same subordination of the baser passion to the higher ones including the discomfort of versailles and its complete lack of any lavatories and it had the same theatrical quality and after mid 17th century versailles was going to become a symbol of all this kind of grand order providing the center and the model and the inspiration of all europe as we shall see in our next program [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] so [Music] you