The moral lessons of La Rochefoucauld

PalmaAt the same time as Pascal, Duke François de La Rochefoucauld wrote his moral reflections or maxims, but with a very different character, since while Pascal's thoughts dealt with religion and theology, La Rochefoucauld's maxims expressed a disbelieving view of human nature with a strong moral charge, but without any didactic intention.

The Girona edition of La Rochefoucauld's moral maxims includes the 504 maxims from the original 1678 edition, but also the maxims suppressed after the first four editions, and other maxims that the author discarded for some unknown reason, in addition to a final appendix with the warning to the reader from the first 1665 edition, reflections on conversation, a portrait of the author written by Cardinal de Retz, and a chronology.

The words of Cardinal de Retz, one of his enemies, serve to introduce La Rochefoucauld's profile. Retz portrays the philosopher as an indecisive, sociable, likeable, and seductive person, with a vivid imagination, shy and timid in civil life, but an apologist in business. He specifies his indecisiveness biographically, with these words: “He was never a warrior, although he was always very much a soldier; he was never a good courtier, although he always intended to be one; he was never a good man of party, despite being involved in politics all his life.”

Ironic and skeptical view

Be that as it may, the fact is that La Rochefoucauld chooses to express himself literarily through maxims, defined as simple and brief, witty, lapidary and cutting phrases, and often antithetical, with a more or less poignant content, with a tone of mockery and playfulness. The themes he deals with are moral, especially human passions and customs, which are discussed and commented on in the aristocratic salons of the time. The vision he offers is ironic and skeptical. Of passions, he says that they do not depend on us, that they govern character and make men persuasive and eloquent, that they are always noticeable, that they are almost irresistible, and that they often generate contrary ones. He distinguishes between violent passions, such as love, ambition, and vanity, and those that are not, such as laziness. And he argues that we must let them appear.

In relation to philosophers and philosophy, he says that present evils triumph over it and that the attitude of philosophers towards life depends on their self-love. He also says that philosophers despise riches to protect the merits of the whims of fortune, which is a justification that sounds like an excuse for the inability to achieve them. He contradicts Aristotle's Nicomachean ethical conception that defines virtue as the mean between an excess and a defect through a reflection on courage and cowardice, two extremes that are very far apart with an intermediate space containing a great diversity of humanly embodied courage. He considers the relationship of the spirit with the body from a materialistic point of view similar to that of Julien Offray de la Mettrie.

Love is the passion that most interests him. Hence he dedicates at least 70 maxims to it, followed at a great distance by reflections on friendship, with 33. Of love he says that it is difficult to define, but that it is related to sympathy and the desire to possess what one loves, that true love is difficult to achieve, that loving brings pleasure and happiness. He thinks that women confuse love and coquetry, but that love cures her. He argues that the step from love to hate is short. He does not believe that love can re-emerge from lovelessness. He speaks of its qualities, such as inconstancy, of its capacity to awaken jealousy, and believes that loving facilitates forgiveness and “makes one doubt what one believes most”. In maxim 441, he relates love and friendship through ignorance: “In friendship as in love, one is often happier for the things one does not know than for the things one knows”. He had previously said that friendship is a community of interests conditioned by self-love. He also dedicates aphorisms to virtue and merits, vices and defects, vanity, truth, wisdom, happiness, and pride, among others.

He is convinced that there is a natural inclination towards virtues and vices. He links authentic virtues with disinterestedness, although, according to maxim 253, “self-interest moves all sorts of virtues and vices”. He believes that we often confuse vices with virtues, because behind a virtuous conduct certain vices are hidden and vice versa. This confusion allows us to say that “there are heroes of evil as well as good” (maxim 185), and it is exemplified, for instance, by the fact that clemency practiced out of vanity, laziness, or fear is a vice and not a virtue. And jealousy, which may seem like a vice, he qualifies as “just and reasonable”, because it contributes to preserving a good we possess (saying 28). At the same time, he says that sincerity is a scarce virtue that is false when used “to gain the trust of others” (saying 62). On the other hand, he acknowledges that prudence is good, but useless for protecting us from events, and observes that vices hide under the mask of virtue through hypocrisy, although he attributes to prudence the virtue of tempering vices that are mixed with virtues. Furthermore, he does not consider perseverance a praiseworthy virtue, because “it only consists in the duration of tastes and feelings” (maxim 177). He says that the deserved desire for praise strengthens virtue and that perfect courage, which is rarely achieved, is that which is put into practice without witnesses. Humility is a Christian virtue. Friendship is another virtue closely linked to self-love. He defines gratitude as the ability not to boast of being grateful, and the virtue of courtesy, as the ability to “think honest and delicate thoughts” (maxim 99).

Weakness has no remedy

Regarding vices, he believes we often have quite a few. He distrusts that experience is useful for avoiding them. He seems to say that we cannot escape vices voluntarily, and that defects, moreover, are incurable evils, because they leave scars that can reopen at any moment. Therefore, weakness has no remedy and is the cause of betrayals. Likewise, he does not believe that reason can correct all our defects, and that where reason does not reach, fortune intervenes. He refers to laziness as a vice that destroys virtue. Other passions identified by the author as vices, defects, or evils are weakness, vanity, envy, although, according to the French philosopher, vanity is inseparable from virtue. Precisely, honest people are those capable of publicly confessing their defects, and they "wish to always be exposed to the view of honest people" (maxim 206). Curiously, he says that there are defects that are pleasing. This is an idea expressed paradoxically in maxim 90, when he says that "we are more often pleasing for our defects than for our good qualities." In accordance with this inversion of values, he believes that society rewards appearances more than merits, and that "there are certain defects that, well managed, shine more than virtue" (maxim 354).

La Rochefoucauld's moralism is skeptical and fatalistic, descriptive, ambiguous, and not at all moralizing, and can be summarized by quoting maxim 110, where he says that "nothing is given as freely as advice." And his moral maxims cannot be confined to a specific century, because they resonate in Nietzsche's aphoristic style and in the transvaluation of inherited values, and have attracted the attention of contemporary authors, such as Roland Barthes.