Recently I was explaining to a college man studying history seriously for the first time the facts of the Enlightenment and the rise of what we once called political liberalism.
Medieval political philosophy, I explained, often likened the society to the human body; sometimes it likened subsets of society to a body, which gave rise to the word "corporation" from the Latin word
corpus meaning body. As a member of society (or such a society), your duty was derived from your function as related to the collective: just as the eye's function is to see so that food can be found, and the hand's function to grasp so that food can be obtained, the teeth, stomach, blood, etc., all have individual functions -- but they are all ordered to the common good of the whole. An eye that decided not to perform its function in a way that led to the good of the collective could be said to be diseased (is so said, by Aristotle and the Medievals who followed him). Your duty was thus defined by your function relative to the collective, so that a knight fought by right and duty, and a peasant labored by right and duty; your liberties were defined by your position in the social order, and aligned with the duties you had to fulfill.
Liberalism inverted the idea that the individual was defined by his assigned place in the collective, and instead had a sort-of equality of rights and duties (allowing for individual differences in abilities, etc). Thus the Founders here spoke in the Declaration of Independence as later in the Bill of Rights of the rights of individuals that the collective had no legitimate power to transgress, and indeed existed wholly to ensure. Similarly, the French Revolution sat down and concocted the Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen shortly after defeating the king's attempt to restore his power over them, and to reduce them back from the sort-of equality they had gained into members of his collective with each their assigned place.
Strikingly, I finished this discussion, both of the modern reactions to liberalism -- communism and fascism -- attempt to restore the collective's priority over the individual. Mussolini explained fascism as a sort of 'corporatism,' drawing on the same Latin as above; all the people belonged to all the institutions, but all of the individuals and all of the institutions were to be ordered to the good of the state which was the collective whole. Communism, of course, establishes a collective which claims the sole right to own property -- no individualist ownership is permitted, nor is your work to give rise to any self-improvement of your station because 'from each according to his abilities,' but 'to each according to his needs.'
I was thinking about this the other day when I came across this article on the "Nordic philosophy" of
Jante, which is built around variations of the rule that “You’re not to think you are anything special.” The article praises the concept as helpful in building better workers; i.e., the worth of the concept is judged from its usefulness in adapting individuals into being better servants of the collective.
How different from that earlier "Nordic philosophy" embodied by
Rögnvald Kali Kolsson, Earl of Orkney from 1129 to 1158. You might be inclined to reason that the Viking age was made up of pagans rather than humble Christians, but this is not the case: he was a Christian, and in fact went raiding against the Saracens in Spain and as far as Jerusalem. I own a copy of the book of his poems reviewed there (
Crimsoning the Eagle’s Claw by Ian Crockatt), and it is striking how they are so often built around celebrating exactly how this individual
is special. The review gives two examples that are on point, one a self-description:
Who’ll challenge my nine skills?
I’m champion at chess,
canny recalling runes,
well-read, a red-hot smith –
some say I shoot and ski
and scull skilfully too.
Best of all, I’ve mastered
harp-play and poetry.
The second is praise of another very special person, a lady of beauty and charm.
Who else hoards such yellow
hair, bright lady – fair as
your milk-mind shoulders,
where milled barley-gold falls?
Chuck the cowled hawk, harry
him with sweets. Crimsoner
of eagles’ claws, I covet
cool downpours of silk; yours.
The other two examples -- and most of the poems not sampled in the review -- are of the type. He praises his crew's special prowess; he praises his ship's special sleekness. He praises his extraordinary journey, unique and special, in traveling from Orkney as far as the Holy Land.
These two philosophies are ironically placed: the Medieval Norse poet is celebrating individual specialness in the era of collective politics, whereas the Danish workers are celebrating non-specialness and collectivism in the era of liberalism. Perhaps both are in some sense needed, and the reaction of the individual in the corporatist era matches the desire for a collective in an individualist time.
The workers are said to be 'happier' according to the collective philosophy, but perhaps that is so only in comparison to other 20th century workers to which they are compared. The Viking seems to me to be happier than both.
