We might then start unrancorously to disdain certain others as much as they disdain us, planting our feet in a misanthropic stance for which the history of philosophy is replete with the most fortifying models.
4.
“We will gradually become indifferent to what goes on in the minds of other people when we acquire an adequate knowledge of the superficial and futile nature of their thoughts, of the narrowness of their views, of the paltriness of their sentiments, of the perversity of their opinions, and of the number of their errors … We shall then see that whoever attaches a lot of value to the opinions of others pays them too much honour,” argued Arthur Schopenhauer, a leading model of philosophical misanthropy.
In Parerga and Paralipomena (1851), the philosopher proposed that nothing could more quickly correct the desire to be liked by others than a brief investigation into those others’ true characters, which were, he asserted, for the most part excessively brutish and stupid. “In every country the principal entertainment of society has become card playing,” he remarked with scorn. “It is a measure of the worth of society and the declared bankruptcy of all ideas and thoughts.” The card players themselves, moreover, were usually sly and immoraclass="underline" “The term coquin méprisable[‘contemptible rogue’] is alas applicable to an unholy number of people in this world.” And even worse, when people were not evil, they tended to be plain dull. Schopenhauer summed up the state of affairs by quoting Voltaire: “La terre est couverte de gens qui ne méritent pas qu’on leur parle” (“the earth swarms with people who are not worth talking to”).
Ought we really to take the opinions of such people so seriously? asked Schopenhauer. Must we continue to let their verdicts govern what we make of ourselves? May our self-esteem sensibly be surrendered to a group of card players? And even if we manage somehow to win their respect, how much will it ever be worth? Or as Schopenhauer put the question, “Would a musician feel flattered by the loud applause of his audience if it were known to him that, with the exception of one or two, it consisted entirely of deaf people?”
5.
The disadvantage of this otherwise usefully clear-eyed view of humanity is that it may leave us with few friends. Schopenhauer’s fellow philosophical misanthrope Chamfort admitted as much when he wrote: “Once we have resolved only to see those who will treat us morally and virtuously, reasonably and truthfully, without treating conventions, vanities and ceremonials as anything other than props of polite society; when we have taken this resolve (and we have to do so or we will end up foolish, weak or villainous), the result is that we will have to live more or less on our own.”
Schopenhauer, for his part, accepted this possibility resignedly, affirming, “There is in the world only the choice between loneliness and vulgarity.” All young people, he believed, should be taught “how to put up with loneliness … because the less a man is compelled to come into contact with others, the better off he is.” Fortunately, after spending some time working and living in society, anyone with any sense must, suggested Schopenhauer, naturally feel “as little inclined to frequent association with others as schoolmasters to join the games of the boisterous and noisy crowds of children who surround them.”
That said, deciding to avoid other people does not necessarily equate with having no desire whatsoever for company; it may simply reflect a dissatisfaction with what—or who— is available. Cynics are, in the end, only idealists with awkwardly high standards. In Chamfort’s words, “It is sometimes said of a man who lives alone that he does not like society. This is like saying of a man that he does not like going for walks because he is not fond of walking at night in the forêt de Bondy.”
6.
Dispensing advice from their isolated studies, philosophers have recommended that we follow the internal markers of our conscience rather than any external signs of approval or condemnation. What matters is not what we seem to be to a random group, but what we ourselves know we are. In Schopenhauer’s words, “Every reproach can hurt only to the extent that it hits the mark. Whoever actually knows that he does not deserve a reproach can and will confidently treat it with contempt.”
To heed the misanthropic philosophical counsel, we must surrender our puerile obsession with policing our own status—an impossible task in any case, and one that would in theory demand that we duel with, and either kill or be killed by, everyone who ever had a negative thought about us—and settle instead for the more solidly grounded satisfactions of a logically based sense of our worth.
II
ART
Introduction
1.
What is art good for? That question was in the air in Britain in the 1860s, and according to many commentators, the answer was, Not much. It was not art, after all, that had built the great industrial towns, laid the railways, dug the canals, expanded the empire and made Britain preeminent among nations. Indeed, art seemed capable of sapping the very qualities that had made such achievements possible, prolonged contact with it appeared to encourage effeminacy, introspection, homosexuality, gout and defeatism. In a speech in 1865, John Bright, member of Parliament for Birmingham, described cultured people as a pretentious cabal whose only claim to distinction was knowing “a smattering of the two dead languages of Greek and Latin.” The Oxford academic Frederic Harrison (who might himself be presumed to boast some competency in the classics) took an equally caustic view of the benefits of prolonged communion with literature, history or painting. “Culture is a desirable quality in a critic of new books, and sits well on a possessor of belles lettres,” he allowed, but “as applied to everyday life or politics, it means simply a turn for small fault-finding, love of selfish ease, and indecision in action. The man of culture is one of the poorest mortals alive. For simple pedantry and want of good sense no man is his equal. No assumption is too unreal, no end is too unpractical for him.”
When these practical-minded disparagers cast their nets for a fitting exemplar of art’s many deficiencies, they could find few more tempting potential trophies on the English literary scene than the poet and critic Matthew Arnold, professor of poetry at Oxford and the author of several slim volumes of melancholic verse that had been well received among a highbrow coterie. Not only was Arnold in the habit of walking the streets of London holding a silver-tipped cane, he also spoke in a quiet, high-pitched voice, sported peculiarly elongated sideburns, parted his hair in the middle and, worst of all, had the impudence to keep hinting, in a variety of newspaper articles and public lectures, that art might just be one of life’s most important pursuits. This in an age when for the first time one could travel from London to Birmingham in a single morning, and Britain had earned itself the title of workshop of the world. The editors of the Daily Telegraph, stout upholder of industry and monarchy, were infuriated. They dubbed Arnold an “elegant Jeremiah” and “the high-priest of the kid-gloved persuasion,” and mockingly accused him of trying to lure England’s hardworking, sensible citizens “to leave their shops and duties behind them in order to recite songs, sing ballads and read essays.”