Revisiting Moderation in Polarized Times

Session Submission Type: Virtual Full Paper Panel

Session Description

It is perhaps a truism – though no less true for being so – that contemporary politics is marked by polarization, discontent, factionalism, and incipient (not to mention overt) political violence. Observers as well as partisans attribute such conditions to a variety of factors, but one frequently heard critique blames our current situation on “extremism” of various sorts, and thus (implicitly or explicitly) calls for “moderation” as an antidote for what ails modern societies. This panel proposes to revisit the concept of moderation as both a philosophical concept or virtue and a political practice, from the Greeks through the present day. The papers present nuanced readings of texts from the history of political thought and explore a range of historical episodes to interrogate the idea of moderation, its conceptual structure, its perils and promise, and what it might have to offer contemporary societies dealing with twenty-first century problems.

Geertje Bol (“Mary Astell on Moderation: The Case of Occasional Conformity”) analyses the role of moderation in the early eighteenth-century Occasional Conformity Debate by looking at Mary Astell’s 1704 Moderation truly Stated. It is only recently that scholars, such as Ethan Shagan, have argued that the concept of moderation in early modern England had a dimension of control, coercion and brutality. Centuries earlier, however, we find in Astell’s Moderation truly Stated an original, persuasive critique of this concept of moderation, as it is used by advocates of occasional conformity –– namely, a notion of temperance, equanimity and reasonableness, or, in Astell’s words, “Lukewarmness” ¬–– without rejecting the virtue of moderation altogether.

Noah Eber-Schmid (“American Tragic Democracy: Reconciling Extremism and Moderation Through Tragedy”) moves the conversation about moderation to the American context, exploring the relationship between moderation and extremism in the United States through the lens of tragedy. He begins with the recognition that moments and acts of extremism are constitutive parts of the American democratic tradition and raises a heuristic question: How are we to view a fraught democratic tradition formed both by moderates and extremists, with all the passionate zealotry, violence, and incivility it entails? Eber-Schmid builds on Stephen Johnston’s notion of a “tragic sensibility” as a helpful valence through which to view the development of American popular democracy. Through tragedy, Americans may recognize that their shared political history is a tale populated by intolerant republican zealots and violent democratic extremists in addition to the heroic and august statesmen, moderate leaders that dial-down the hue and cry of “the people out of doors,” and the architects of what Tocqueville famously described as a “new political science” for a “totally new world.”

Andrew Murphy (“Toleration, Moderation, and Revolution: William Penn’s Perswasive to Moderation in Context”) explores the relationship between moderation and liberty of conscience in William Penn’s 1685 A Perswasive to Moderation, which Penn published in support of King James II’s ill-fated attempt to implement toleration in England by royal decree (efforts that ended with the king’s ejection in 1688). Penn’s high-profile intervention in the political debates of his time drew on a broader rhetoric of moderation in late seventeenth-century England, one that aimed to stigmatize Anglican elites as extremists aimed at denying liberty in order to maintain their positions of privilege and power in society. Penn’s rhetorical linkage of moderation and toleration both reflected broader currents in the polemical literature at the time and showed how consensus on such broadly endorsed notions like moderation could continue to elude a deeply divided society, masking the tensions and conflicts that would lead to regime change just a few short years later.

Laura Rabinowitz (“Moderation in Plato’s Republic”) explores moderation in Plato’s Republic. Political theorists often turn to Aristotle’s doctrine of the mean as the most influential classical source for moderation. Rabinowitz argues, however, that Plato provides an equally, if not more, illuminating account of the virtue. The Republic leads readers from a conventional and limited understanding of moderation as mastery (of better over worse) to the compelling ideal of moderation as a harmony within city and soul. Examining moderation in the Republic not only deepens our grasp of Platonic political thought but also enables us to appreciate the potential significance of this ancient virtue for contemporary politics.

Sub Unit

• Division 1: Political Thought and Philosophy

Individual Presentations

• Mary Astell on Moderation: The Case of Occasional Conformity - Geertje Jeanne Bol, University of Oxford

• American Tragic Democracy: Reconciling Extremism and Moderation Through Tragedy - Noah R. Eber-Schmid, Indiana University

• Moderation, Toleration, and Revolution: William Penn’s Perswasive in Context - Andrew R. Murphy, Virginia Commonwealth University

• Moderation in Plato's Republic - Laura Rabinowitz, St. Thomas University

Chair

• Constantine Vassiliou University of Houston

Discussants

• Alin Fumurescu University of Houston

• Constantine Vassiliou University of Houston