The Bourgeois Virtues: Ethics for an Age of Commerce

34dropping the virtues, 1532–1958The system of the virtues developed for two millennia in the West had beenwidely dropped by the end of the eighteenth century, starting earlier withMachiavelli, then Bacon, then Hobbes, then Bernard Mandeville as isolatedbut scandalous precursors of Kant and Bentham, who then rigorously finishedoff the job. It was not dropped because it was found on careful considerationto be mistaken. It was merely set aside with a distractedcasualness, perhaps as old-fashioned, or as unrealistic in an age with a newidea of the Real, or as associated with religious and political systems themselvessuddenly objectionable.Francis Bacon, for example, who in his old age employed the youngHobbes as a secretary, spoke a great deal about ethics in his Essays, on whichHobbes worked. But he spoke with contempt for ethical tradition. A Victorianeditor quoted with approval an apology by one Dean Church, whowrote of the Essays that “they are like chapters in Aristotle’s Ethics andRhetoric on virtues and characters; only Bacon takes Aristotle’s broad markinglines as drawn, and proceeds with the subtler and more refined observationsof a much longer and wider experience.” 1 Ah, yes: such as Bacon’sown “long and wide experience” in betraying his friend and benefactor LordEssex at the behest of Elizabeth; in corrupting judges while a crown officer;and, when at length he became Lord Chancellor of England, in extortingbribes for favors not delivered. Bacon was the last man in England (wroteMacaulay) to use the rack for official purposes. This is our ethical guide.One is reminded of William Bennett.