LONDON: I once met the English philosopher Bernard Williams, whose work I admired. We got on to Aristotle — as one does — and I expressed my interest in the concept of the ‘Aristotelian Middle’ or ‘Golden Mean’.‘How boring!’ said the great man, proceeding to show more interest in my wife.
The classic example of the Aristotelian Mean is courage. At one extreme there is cowardice, at the other foolhardiness. Courage is the ideal — the boring ideal in Professor Williams’ case.
The memory of this brief conversation came back to me as I was reading my good friend Gordon Brown’s new book Courage — Eight Portraits. Following hot on the heels of Gordon Brown — Speeches 1997-2006, the new book gives the impression of a politician who is as hyperactive as Nicolas Sarkozy, about whom Kenneth Clarke, Brown’s predecessor as chancellor (finance minister), and who admires the new French president, says: “Half an hour with him is quite exhausting.”
Whereas Brown’s biography of Clydeside, Glasgow, Member of Parliament James Maxton was some 20 years (on and off) in the writing, his book on courage has been produced since
the tragic death of the Browns’ baby daughter Jennifer, and is part of an effort to raise money for the Jennifer Brown Research Fund.
At a time when few Brownian speeches are complete without a reference to ‘Britishness’, it is interesting that most of the chancellor’s heroes are not British — unless there is something about the nationality of Martin Luther King, Robert Kennedy and Nelson Mandela we don’t know about. The only Brits among the examples of people whose courage our prospective prime minister includes are two heroines: Cicely Saunders, who devoted her life to providing the best medical attention for the incurable, and Edith Cavell, the First World War nurse.
Winston Churchill is quoted: “Courage is the first of human qualities because it is the quality that guarantees all others.” The chancellor likes this quotation so much that he cites it twice.
Now this is not a formal review (though I found the book interesting and moving). But students of our virtual prime minister — and suddenly the world seems full of people who say they know nothing about the man who has been chancellor for 10 years — may find clues to his character in the distinction he draws between three types of courage: ‘Career heroes’ (armed forces, emergency workers, etc); ‘Situational heroes’ (people who suddenly sprint into action); and ‘Sustained altruists’, who ‘devote long periods, sometimes their entire lives, to principled causes’.
Although Aristotle (very briefly) and Plato figure in the book, it is an American writer, Frank Farley, to whom the chancellor attributes these three categorical distinctions. I am not up on Farley myself, but perhaps Brown came across him during those far-off days in opposition, when a close colleague said of him: “Gordon’s idea of a summer holiday is to spend a fortnight in Harvard University Library.”
No prizes for guessing to which category of courage the chancellor probably aspires: it has to be that of the sustained altruist devoted to principled causes. And what an exquisite coincidence that his study of courageous lives should appear when, as he realises his ambition, and faces the greatest challenge of his career, there should be a rash of scurrilous accusations that, so far from being courageous himself, he has displayed a Macavity-like pattern of absence when the going gets tough.
Cowardice or politics? At any rate the chancellor has emerged triumphantly from potential career-death by 1,000 leaks (the Blairites tried almost everything) and the tests of his courage will now be on full public display.
As chancellor, he has taken principled stands on the alleviation of poverty (within the UK and abroad) and on the national interest generally. Notwithstanding the bizarre suggestions of some commentators, his position on the euro was never a bargaining counter with Tony Blair about the succession. He saw it as in our national economic interest not to join.
But that is all water through the channel. Nobody is pressing the prime minister-in-waiting to join the eurozone now — although, let it be said, the eurozone seems to have got though the worst and to be faring better economically than it has done for some time.
No, the pressure on Brown comes from those who either want him to sign up to what is now regarded as the ‘simplified treaty’ and those who argue that he should not do so without the referendum that Blair so rashly promised for the now-defunct original treaty. In the case of the latter camp, the motive is usually, but not always, the hope that the British, in their Britishness, will vote ‘No’.
Since the main reason for the simplified treaty is the need to streamline an EU ‘broadened’ in line with the policies of successive British governments, the motivation of the referendum camp is highly suspect. The chancellor/future prime minister would do well to avoid the embarrassment. It was Blair’s commitment, not his.
But as to the simplified treaty itself, Europe needs it and, as Ed Balls, a politician close to Brown, makes clear in a lucid new pamphlet (Britain and Europe: A City Minister’s Perspective), Britain needs Europe.
Brown knows that the big decisions and movements in Europe take place when the big hitters get together. Sarkozy has rather cheekily called upon him to make clear in his actions that “he understands that Europe is not outmoded”. I think we are in for some interesting exchanges between La France and perfidious Albion. Let’s hope that historic courage is on display.—Dawn/The Observer News Service