The
Courage to Be Alone
February 10, 1998
We are social creatures; we define
ourselves by the groups in which we claim membership. Indeed, how much of the
stress of losing one's job arises from the ejection from one's social group
rather than from the economic consequences? Membership in a group is a
fundamental prop of identity.
Such group membership
provides many benefits: protection, assistance, support in time of need,
emotional backstopping. Surely the social structure of our distant hominid
ancestors, with their troop organization of a few dozen individuals, continues
to exert a profound influence on our psyches today.
But group membership has its
costs, costs that can be especially painful to one's conscience. What German
today can feel patriotism uncompromised by embarrassment for Hitler? What
Catholic can take pride in his religious affiliation without some small twinge
of conscience about the Inquisition? Republicans have Nixon, baseball
aficionados have Pete Rose, scientists have Lysenko, and lawyers -- well,
lawyers have themselves.
Every group makes mistakes,
and we are often least civilized when we run in packs. Otherwise upright
individuals find their moral standards compromised in the complexities of group
politics. The taint of a group's moral infractions applies to all its members.
Erasmus recognized the moral
risks of group membership, and resolved at an early age never to permit himself
to be so compromised. Perhaps it was his experience at the monastery at Steyn,
when he was barely 20, that taught him the lesson. He was disillusioned by the
easy lives of pleasure they led, and the spiritual vacuousness of their
religious rituals. Life as an Augustinian canon was not what he wanted, and he
certainly didn't want to identify himself with the corruption of monastery
life.
Whatever the causes, Erasmus
learned the lesson thorougly and applied it consistently through his life. He
dissociated himself from all factions, parties, groups, and organizations. He
went so far as to obtain a papal dispensation to refrain from wearing his
priestly garb, on the excuse that in some countries it could be confused with
the attire of a doctor. I believe that his true goal in seeking the
dispensation was to free himself from even a symbolic tie to any group.
The obsessiveness with which
Erasmus pursued his freedom from group entanglements is difficult to appreciate
today; back then, group membership played a crucial role in everyone's
existence. Yet Erasmus eschewed his native language, Dutch, for Latin, the one
truly non-national language. Although legally a subject of the Holy Roman
Empire, he moved freely between kingdoms, dealt freely with other sovereigns,
and never betrayed the slightest preference for any polity. Whether or not he
coined the phrase "citizen of the world", he certainly used it often
in his writings and lived the role in his life. At one time or another, he was
solicited by just about every major sovereign to come to court, enjoy a pension
and a life of leisure merely for adorning the court with his presence.
Recognizing the inherant affiliations implicit in such a course, he rejected
all such offers.
His professional
affiliations did involve some compromises. He taught at Cambridge for a few
years, and later held a position at the university at Louvain, but travelled
away often, and never participated in the social life of the college
communities. As soon as he achieved financial independence, he left Louvain,
never to return.
But the acid test of
Erasmus' moral courage came with the Lutheran upheaval. Everybody was choosing
up sides, for or against Rome, and the pressure on Erasmus to declare his
affiliation was enormous. By refusing to do so, he earned the enmity of both
sides. The Catholics called him disloyal, a secret supporter of Luther. The Lutherans
called him a coward, unwilling to publicly declare himself in favor of the side
he knew to be right. Erasmus himself continued to insist, to both sides, that
Luther had some worthy points to make, but that he was unnecessarily
confrontational and abusive. In 1525 he finally yielded to the pressures by
publishing De Libero Arbitrio (On the Freedom of the Will), which challenged
the very core of Luther's thinking. But he quickly followed it up with a number
of works criticizing faults in the Catholic Church. In his letters, he declared
his loyalty to the true Church -- but always qualified it in some way. He would
obediently defer to the Church's "proper" decisions, but he always
left wiggle room in his definition of propriety. Erasmus insisted on attacking
each issue separately, on its own merits. The hardliners in the Church saw it
as a simple matter of loyalty to the team. Either Erasmus was with the Church
or against it. And Erasmus just as stubbornly refused to accept that kind of
thinking.
Erasmus' courageous
self-isolation is difficult to appreciate in these days of fairly honest law.
Back then, there were many authorities capable of imposing severe penalties,
including capital punishment: kings, parlaiments, ecclesiastical bodies, local
magistrates. Ofttimes mobs implemented their own concept of vigilante justice.
A man's best protection in such uncivilized times is membership in a powerful
group capable of exacting terrible revenge on those who would injure him. The
Sorbonne burned Berquin at the stake for the crime of translating some of
Erasmus' books into French -- imagine what they would have done to Erasmus
himself. Despite the very real danger, Erasmus eschewed all the protective
entanglements of group affiliation. To the very end, he remained his own man,
utterly alone and utterly himself. "There is nothing I congratulate myself
on more heartily than on never having joined a sect."