The Bourgeois Virtues: Ethics for an Age of Commerce

the pagan-ethical bourgeois 291At the four corners of the building’s principal roof façades, front andrear, were placed four large bronze statues, whose plaster casts were later putup in De Burgerzaal as well. The statues and casts may still be seen. They donot celebrate greed (is good) or avarice (above all). On the contrary, theycelebrate as was usual in Dutch civic tradition on the front façade justicewith her scales (rechtvaardigheid: “right-skill”) and Prudence with her mirror.The prudence-word is actually voorzichtigheid, foresight, which againreflects the difficulty of rendering prudentia in Germanic languages exceptEnglish. Similar ornaments placed in 1441 on the Ducal Palace at that oldermercantile republic, Venice, are identified in Latin: Justitia preeminent, prudentia,temperantia, and fortitudo, with charitas. 3To get the pagan four entire, the Stadhuis celebrates temperance(matigheid) and vigilance, as was not usual in Holland until then—the originalarchitect intended the fourth virtue to be, as classically, courage, but hissuccessor for some reason made the substitution. Perhaps he thought vigilance(waakzaamheid: watchfulness) less belligerent than martial courage(moed) in a new—though as it turned out brief—time of peace. In anyevent, Amsterdam at the height of its success as a bourgeois republic spokelike Venice insistently of a balanced set of virtues.And in fact it spoke of the pagan four, not merely of gain, gain, andgain—though gain, which is to say prudence, figures, too, with that fourthof the bronze statues, and inside and outside with reliefs and inlays celebratingthe world-girdling commerce of the city. The wily Venetians wereless candid in their celebration of gain.Likewise at one end of De Burgerzaal the entrance to the Magistrate’sCourt is surmounted by Death and Retribution aiding Justice in tramplingthe sins of Greed, personified by King Midas, and Envy. The upper bourgeoisare to eschew greed, and so they are to give to charities, for example,as they did with an open hand. In exchange the lower orders are not toenvy the upper. Earthly possessions represented in the frieze and archare restrained by the harness of Temperance and the sword of Justice, withHercules’ lion skin and club to complete with Courage the three nonprudentialpagan virtues.And on and on. As Blair Hoxby put it, the “decorative scheme [of theStadhuis] was probably the most sustained exposition of mercantileideals in the language of emblems, allegory, and classical allusion extantanywhere in the world.” 4 It all sounds impossibly preachy. Surely “content,”