This volume gathers together a set of essays which, like its companion volume, Trump and Political Philosophy: Patriotism, Cosmopolitanism, and Civic Virtue, seeks to make sense of contemporary politics through the works of many of the greatest political thinkers. Following a venerable tradition, we have arranged this volume chronologically, and grouped the essays into sections based on whether they discuss premodern, modern or postmodern thinkers. However, the reader has probably come with the primary intention of understanding Trumpâs rise in light of political philosophy, rather than seeking to use Trump to understand the history of political philosophy. This introduction, then, will lay out the philosophical disputes which underlie varying interpretations of Trump, with a focus on the broad theme of what counts as wholesome or pernicious leadership.
This collection discusses the ways that Trump exercises leadership for good or ill, and thus the extent to which he exhibits the qualities of either a statesman or a tyrant. Statesmanship is the way a political leader successfully deals with matters of government. Tyranny is government which abuses its citizens and a perennial human possibility. Its actualization has troubled all the great political thinkers, who have imagined ways to avoid it. Because tyranny and statesmanship are types of leadership, and since political philosophy seeks the objective good, true leadership is the opposite of nihilism. In the best description, a true leader knows the why and wherefore of human actions, and good leadership is thus equivalent to statesmanship. In referring to Trump we are obviously referencing his character as a person and as political leader. We understand rhetoric here very broadly, as referring to his comportment and political style, since his significance stems as much from how he communicates and shapes the political discourse as what he communicates, i.e., his ideology or political views.
The authors of the essays included here do not view Trump and rhetoric through a single theoretical lens. Moreover, they take their bearings from political history as well as from political philosophy. The contemporary political predicament is probed from American, European, Middle Eastern, and Chinese traditions of political thought: The volume is thus wide in scope and ambitious in its approach. The essays, however, can be grouped under two broad categories: on the one hand, Trumpâs rhetoric and his demagogy and, on the other, his character and how it relates to democratic institutions.
A good place to frame the debates here is the typology in Joseph Reisertâs essay, â Knave, Patriot, or Factionist,â which deftly relates the question of Trumpâs character to his political craft. He delineates three possible interpretations of Trump. Roughly, these are (a) a selfish demagogue who seeks political power for personal advantage, (b) a skillful politician who utilizes rhetoric in defense of his country, and (c) a clever demagogue who manipulates the masses in order to impose his ideological agenda. On the first score, some have seen in Trump a man whose main purpose in life is to strengthen his own economic well-being, which includes his immediate family. Not only his rhetoric but also his biography seems to fit this characterization. In office he placed his daughter and her husband as chief advisors, at least temporarily. A self-centered man as a type has certainly been probed and discussed by ancient and modern philosophy. It is what we know today as the bourgeois. On the second score, Trumpâs defenders argue that his rhetoric appeals to that section of the citizenship that has not attended elite schools. It is a language that from the point of view of over-educated elites might seem irrational, but in fact is a bridge that allows underdogs to communicate with the leader. Both Trump and his supporters concur in the fact that the time has come for a national reawakening. On the final score, Trumpâs policies may constitute a kind of ideology. For those who are sanguine about Trump, this ideology takes its bearings from the American political experience. For the time being, Trumpism seems to be a practice in search of a theory.
Character and Leadership
Small-mindedness, willfulness and greed are certainly among the traits which render one unfit for leadership, while a concern for the regimeâs stability, the defense of the masses and seriousness of purpose would define the statesman. George Dunn, Ashok Karra, Yu Jin Ko, and Murray Dry deploy these concepts to critique Trump, utilizing the thought of Confucius, Xenophon, Shakespeare, Hamilton and Lincoln, respectively. In effect, each condemns Trump as lacking the character of a decent political leader, and all conclude that he is driven by egoistic motives, i.e., a Rousseauian knave of one sort of another.
Christopher Colmo on Alfarabi, Gladden Pappin on Machiavelli, Arthur Milikh on the Federalist, and Feisal Mohamed on Carl Schmitt are all more focused on reading the relationship of the leaderâs character to the regime. Pappin and Milikh are more generous to Trump, inclined to see him as a patriot or at least as representing important value for the American people (in Milikhâs case) or that of the working class against the elite (in Pappinâs). They are inclined to view him as a patriot. By contrast, Mohamedâs assessment is more critical; he views Trump as potentially taking advantage of expanded presidential powers to impose dominance by his political base. In short, as a Rousseauian factionist. Colmo is primarily interested in Trumpâs rise as a thought experiment on how Alfarabi would understand a regime totally without religious foundation, and what that would entail for political leadership, leaving the precise question of Trumpâs character open.
The Character of Trump
George Dunnâs essay is the only in this collection devoted to a non-Western thinker (if we regard Alfarabi as Western). The question Dunn asks is simply what Confucius would have thought about Donald Trump. Not surprisingly the answer to this question is complex. Dunn offers a variety of reasons for why Confucius might have supported Trump, but also tells us why the iconic Chinese philosopher would take issue with the 45th president and his behavior. According to Dunn, both Confucius and Trump share conservatism as part of their personal constitution, for both live in times they consider corrupt and look back to a time they deem great. Unlike Trump, however, Confucius put great emphasis on the concept of culture (æ, wĂ©n) as a way to overcome manâs natural state, one of zero-sum conflict that makes all worse off. Culture was very significant for Confucius, as well as his followers Mengzu and Xunzi. According to Dunn, a philosopher in the Chinese tradition is, among other things, an expert of culture, which includes âall the practices that were regarded as the marks of a civilized human being.â Confuciusâ notion of the ideal man or the gentleman (ćć) sets high demands on political leaders. Dunn suggests that Confucius would not have regarded Trump as a gentleman, but rather as a âsmall manâ (ć°äșș, xiÇorĂ©n). It is not fanciful to point out that Dunnâs Confucius would have concurred with the moral judgment of Oscar Wilde, who made Lord Darlington quip that a cynic is âa man who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing.â
The Athenian general, politician and political philosopher, Xenophon, belongs to the same axial age as Confucius, and surprisingly may help us better understand present-day American political figures. Karraâs essay presents three portraits of political personalities by Xenophon: those of Glaucon, Meno, and Hiero. The author shows ignoble characteristics which the reader can use to evaluate contemporary political figures. In Karraâs account, Xenophon shows Glaucon as âan extremely ignorant but ex...