Fragmenta Philosophica

Stop the presses

His Royal Highness, Mswati III, Plenary Potentate of Swaziland, takes 11th wife.

Question for the Sages (and The Ages)

What's the deal with Oliver?

Richard Burton

No, not the Welsh actor and paramour of Elizabeth Taylor, but the 19th century English Scholar-Adventurer: Captain Sir Richard Francis Burton.

I've been rereading Edward Rice's Biography of Burton, and am thoroughly enjoying it. I think I'd still give the nod to Fawn Brodie's The Devil Drives as the "definitive" telling of Burton's story, but Rice is a close, if idiosyncratic, second. In my book, only Burton fanatics should bother with the psycho-babbling Snow upon the Desert by Frank McLynn, to whom I'd be glad to put the old anti-Freudian quip: "But did Oedipus have an 'Oedipus Complex'?"!

Hardly any book, and certainly no summary here, could do justice to the spectacle that was Burton's life, but perhaps a few tidbits could inspire one to learn a bit about this singular, polymathic man.

Burton was born in 1821, and raised by a family headed by an itinerant, restless father, who dragged the Burtons around Europe, sowing the seeds for Richard's linguistic achievements (he allegedly mastered 29 languages, plus many dialects, in the course of his life) and his wanderlust.

After a rebellious childhood and dissolute adolescence, Burton was kicked out of Oxford, and managed to weedle dear old dad into buying him a commission in the service of that mercantilist monstrosity which is the bogeyman of any self-respecting Marxist, "John Company," a.k.a. the East India Company (yep, a company with its own military!).

Quickly excelling at, and finishing first in stringent government examinations for, Eastern tongues - Hindustani, Gujarati, Persian, et al. - Burton put his polyglot powers, derring-do, and swarthy complexion to good effect by impersonating natives in and around modern Pakistan (viz., Sindh, Baluchistan, etc.) as a conniver and intriguer in the "Great Game" which pitted the English against the Russians for domination of Central Asia.

Along the way, countless esoteric religions and cults are penetrated and "tried on," and innumerable members of the fairer sex are persuaded as to Burton's charms.

He apparently underwent the knife, so as to perfect at least his disguise - and possibly his genuine identity - as a Muslim, from the waist down (ouch); a modification that was useful in Burton's making the pilgrimage to Mecca and Medina under the guise of an Eastern Muslim (yet flirting with a young lady at a key moment, instead of observing religious austerities).

Other "highlights" include an arduous expedition, accompanied by a rival (John Hanning Speke), seeking the source of the Nile throughout regions of Africa never seen or survived by white wayfarers - often being carried by retainers for weeks at a time, under the incapaciting influence of malaria, blindness, etc. Yet, all the while, Burton is a superb observer and recorder of minutiae, putting most ethnographers and anthropologists to shame with his keen, empathic eye.

Burton even made it over to the States, having an audience with Brigham Young in Salt Lake City, and panned for gold in Sacramento and bivouacked in San Francisco for a week or so.

And he married a nice Catholic Girl (well, a Catholic Girl!) ...

I think that biography is a great, engaging way to learn some history, and the backdrop of Burton's incredible life - the glory and the shame that was the British Empire - provides the exciting scene for his nearly unrivalled adventures. Amazing.

Question for the ears

Is "euphonious" euphonious?

Good Line

I heard a song recently with the refrain, "I want to be someone -- someone that someone would want to be."

Bad and Worse; moral ambiguity

A common attitude to the sadism of American troops in Abu Ghraib, understandable enough, was to note the aroused outrage's disproportionate quality when contemplated in light of the prosaic predations in state-run prisons across the Middle East.

That response had merit insofar as it didn't seek to exculpate the behavior, but rather rested on the commonplace that there's bad and there's worse. And it helped to magnify the selective anger - sc., hypocrisy - of many.

Something I thought at the time, and think of frequently when observing the scandalized reactions to every new alleged misdeed and misstep in the occupation of Iraq, is how it seems to be almost an article of faith that allied actions in World War II - "The Good War" - didn't involve any gross misconduct.

To deal adequately with such an enormous question would exceed the humble scope of a blog entry here. Aside from such deeply disturbing actions as firebombing cities (including, of course, the use of atomic bombs) and acceding to/facilitating the mass transfer of populations, even a Pyrrhic victory such as the D-Day landing at Normandy is not, alas, free from stain. As a recent article by Kevin Myers in the Torygraph notes (login required),

"Nor were casualties in any way confined to military personnel. At least 20,000 Norman civilians were killed and over 100,000 injured by Allied bombing. Thousands died in the course of a single night raid by the RAF on Le Havre, and thousands more in a comparable attack by the USAAF on St Lo during market day. About 120,000 buildings in Normandy, including vast numbers of precious medieval structures, were totally destroyed during the invasion, and many towns and villages rendered uninhabitable for years. War caused a vast army of refugees to flee across France, and when they returned, their homes were gone.

"Moreover, rape by Allied soldiers was rather more common than is comfortable to admit. Young men at war can be dangerous creatures, no matter how honourable their cause. So Normandy did not savour liberation so much as pay an almost unbearable price for it, one that left the region deeply traumatised for decades to come. Military acts of liberation invariably involve dreadful moral compromises, and can come at a terrible personal price for the liberated, as events in Iraq in the past year have testified."

My point isn't any simplistic "revisionist" one, arguing for some kind of (crude) moral equivalence between the Allies and the Axis Powers; there's bad, and there's (far, far) worse. But it has to be acknowledged that a cause which was broadly "just" was besmirched by actions of, to say the least, very questionable moral character. Yet "we" still revere the war, and are rightly glad that our side prevailed.

What I mean to say is this: it's a basic principle of explanation that what is common to two things cannot explain what is different about one of them. If both an in-the-main just(ified) war, such as World War II, and a more controversial one such as the one at present in Iraq can exhibit shameful behavior by its participants, then - to the extent that there's an isomorphism between the misdeeds in both cases - that behavior cannot render one unjust yet not shake our esteem of the other. (Incessant argument might be set off here in comparing what was at stake in the two conflicts, and how the greater desperation of World War II counter-balanced its misdeeds in a way which is lacking in Iraq). To make the matter simpler, and more stark: that civilians have been killed in the recent war doesn't eo ipso entail that the war is unjust; because, regrettably, non-combatants have always been killed in war, the putatively just and unjust ones alike. Those who try to reason from such facts and behavior to the injustice of the war in/for Iraq are riding a bike with training wheels: they're making the task far too easy for themselves.

But still we're left, I'd say, with the troubling moral ambiguity of war and its conduct, even by the "good guys." The truth might be closer to Augustine's view in Civitas Dei, in which the gulf between the earthly city and its divine counterpart can never really be closed. Or, as a secular writer once put it, "war usually doesn't involve a clash of right with wrong, but of wrong with greater wrong." To my mind, this insight is the proverbial thin end of the wedge which undoes Chomsky-style Leftism - a creed which has no feel for the apparently tragic character of existence, in which even the most admirable moral agents can hardly avoid incurring guilt.