The Bourgeois Virtues: Ethics for an Age of Commerce

the good of courage 211for example, any present-day ethical responsibility toward the survivors ofSrebrenica. They view the slaughters as an unhappy event caused mainly by theother Westerners implicated, such as the homeward-bound Canadians or theperfidious French, an event from which the Dutch, fortunately, extractedthemselves. A bad business deal. Let bygones be bygones. The Dutch historianshave found a balanced, prudent view, perhaps an outcome of the Ja, maar ...,the “Yes, but . . .” style of consultation in Holland. It is a bourgeois rhetoricapplied to war.There is a time for aristocratic courage. Courage, not prudence or love orfaith, is sometimes what is called for. François Jullien wrote in 1996 aremarkable book in praise of the ancient (and modern) Chinese notion ofachieving success in war or other imperium by “upstream” manipulation ofthe incipient—not waiting until heroic virtue is necessary, downstream,with events tumbling by then with unstoppable force. He notes that such away of life is prudent, effective—but unheroic. 31Western businessmen are fascinated by Sun Tzu’s The Art of War, busilyreading it on airplanes. It does not elevate to the chief virtue of a general/CEOheroic Courage but rather a bourgeois Prudence:11. What the ancients called a clever fighter is one who not only wins, but excelsin winning with ease.12. Hence his victories bring him neither reputation for wisdom nor credit forcourage.13. He wins his battles by making no mistakes. 32This is not about heroic gestures but, as Jullien puts it, “efficacy.”For this lack of heroism, however, “there is a price to pay. ...To confrontthe world [in the Greek and Western style] is a way to free oneselffrom it....[It provides] the substance of heroic stories and jubilation[and, he notes elsewhere, tragedy, absent from Chinese tradition.] . . .[T]hrough resistance, we can make our way to liberty.” 33 Jullien arguesthat the Chinese sages on the art of war were explaining, in more detailthan Machiavelli, how to be a successful tyrant. From this point of view itis no accident that the culture providing stories of Prometheus, Achilles,Antigone also gave us an idea, if an imperfect practice, of freedom.Tragedy, hopeless courage, Roland at the pass of Rencesvals, the Dutch ifonly they had acted so at Srebrenica, is the choice of the free man.