The Bourgeois Virtues: Ethics for an Age of Commerce

the anxieties of bourgeois virtues 501thought—which itself, though, comes from the Augustinian part of theequation. 9 Other liberals claim, with Lockeans (if not with Locke), and quitecontrary to the first group, that the trading of rights under contract will suffice:no need to get entangled in the ethical tradition of the West. ThusDavid Strauss asserts that “importing a full Aristotelian vocabulary is notonly unnecessary but incompatible with liberal premises.” 10 He is correct if“full” means such things as having a free male Greek aristocrat’s attitudetoward institutions such as slavery, or placing at the head of all of them avirtue such as “great-souledness.” But Strauss doesn’t really show that thetwo virtues he identifies as necessary for liberalism—toleration of the viewsof others and a flexibility in life plans—“have nothing particularly Aristotelian”about them. He admits, for example, that flexibility in life is “a kindof moral courage, a willingness to face one’s life without having its mostimportant contours already determined.” 11 And toleration can be viewed—and was in the debates over it in Holland in the 1620s, for example—as aspecies of humility, which is in turn composed, noted Aquinas, of temperanceand justice, which were pagan, not only Christian, virtues.The bourgeois vices reflect commonly the anxieties of the middleman, asin the many bourgeois characters of Molière straining for respectability.Le bourgeois gentilhomme is a joke in its very title, I have noted, since inFrench as in English in 1670 such a phrase was an absurdity, meaning “theburgher m’lord.” 12Yet consider the bourgeois virtues contrasted with the earlier alternatives.The aristocratic virtues elevate an I. The Christian/peasant virtues elevatea Thou. The priestly virtues elevate an It. The bourgeois virtues speakinstead of We, negotiating between I and Thou with reference to It, as civilizedpeople must. Abram is renamed Abraham, the father of a multitude,when he enters into a covenant with the Lord, literally a property deal. LaterAbraham bargains like a rug merchant to stay the Lord’s hand over the cityof Sodom: “Wilt thou also destroy the righteous with the wicked? Peradventurethere may be fifty righteous within the city. ...Peradventure thereshall lack five of the fifty righteous: wilt thou destroy all the city for lack offive?” And so by mathematical induction to a mere ten. God at that juncturestays his hand. From the beginning Abraham shows the bourgeois virtues.A peasant prostrates himself before the gods; an aristocrat curses them;a priest organizes their worship. The bourgeois argues with his God andmakes a little deal. I can get it for you wholesale.