From the NAWM
“SOULCRAFTING”
James Hankins, a prominent Italian Renaissance historian at Harvard University, wrote an excellent book published in 2019 called, Virtue Politics: Soulcraft and Statecraft in Renaissance Italy.
Addressing the difficult civil crisis that was crippling Italy’s rampant and distressing corrupt culture, Hankins tells the story of how Italian leaders, recognizing the diminution of civility among its people, decided that instead of revamping Italy’s laws and political institutions, and finding appropriate political leaders, they needed to put greater focus on recrafting its citizenry.
To quote one synopsis of Hankins’ work, “[i]f character mattered more than constitutions, it would have to be nurtured through a new program of education they called the studia humanitatis: the humanities. We owe liberal arts education…to the bold experiment of these passionate and principled thinkers.” The questions they asked—“should a good man serve a corrupt regime; what virtues are necessary in a leader; what is the source of political legitimacy” and countless other weighty issues that demanded soul-searching—continue to vex us today.
I have been thinking about the challenges our country and world have had to deal with in this extraordinary year: a pandemic, racial scars, presidential leadership in an election year, and more. These issues churn, begging us to ask harder questions about who we were, who we are, and who we want to be.
These matters now require us to mine the depths of soul-searching in order to find answers to questions we hadn’t considered, we were too fearful to ask, or we turned a blind eye toward for too long.
Hundreds of thousands of our fellow Americans have died at the hands of COVID-19. Too many didn’t heed the warnings of our scientific experts. Some of our political leadership responded too slowly and not fulsomely enough. And the result has been a situation that likely brought more death and economic destruction than was necessary.
As if the pandemic wasn’t enough to deal with, law enforcement in Minnesota killed George Floyd, seemingly without proper legal justification. This, not surprisingly, touched off a storm of mostly peaceful protests (although there have been too many instances of hooliganism, using the protests for their own nefarious purposes). For the African American community, the incident followed in too long a line of police brutality by some corrupt officers that has spanned decades. For the non-Black community, the video of the officer killing Floyd seemed to give pictures to the voices of the Black community about how they have been the victim of abuse by those sworn to protect them.
The Floyd protests spawned more questions about race—such as whether we as a society have been idolizing and venerating Civil War and segregationist “icons.” Some claim it is long past time to banish these “relics” to the dustbin of history. Others claim the banishment erases our history, even if that history is negative. Still others claim the monuments should be moved to museums in order to be given proper historical and educational context.
The overarching theme for this issue of Wabash Magazine is “Bemasked.” In so many ways, it captures the complexities of the issues we as a society have been dealing with or hiding from. For, on one hand, we must mask ourselves for our own survival, but on the other hand, we must unmask ourselves to uncover the depth of soulcrafting the moment calls us to meet. It is a beautiful way to frame the many issues we are talking about here.
Scientific experts have been educating the citizenry by telling us that wearing face masks is the best way to stop or slow down the spread of COVID-19, and the best way to preserve our health and the lives of others during the pandemic. But like too much of our society, the question about the science of masks and the wearing of one has become enmeshed in politics. When we cannot even agree on doing the things that will protect us, or that will strengthen that protection for our fellow citizens, we have indeed lost touch.
The question of whether to wear a mask has itself become a mask. The questions of masks, and of monuments, and of racial strife have become illustrative of the issue the Renaissance Italians were trying to overcome. They came to realize that to outstrip the corruption of our laws, our institutions, and our political leadership in order to return us to our common humanity would require the (re)education of their citizenry on what it meant to be humane, what it meant in the context of our many studia humanitatis.
The one thing these crises have certainly raised is the indisputable need for leaders who have wrestled with and learned what it means to live humanely—like those Wabash produces—now more than ever.
MARC NICHOLS ’92
President, National Association of Wabash Men
marc.nichols@saabusa.com