In previous blogposts in this series I have discussed the use of fiction for political ends, and the blending of fact and fiction, in Yanis Varoufakis's Another Now (2019) and James Harrington's The Commonwealth of Oceana (1656). One genre in which fact and fiction are often knitted together is the dialogue. Early modern political thinkers made much use of this form, and while Varoufakis's book is not explicitly set out as a conversation it does adopt the essence of that form in its exploration of the views of the three main characters: Iris, Eva and Costa. Moreover, in the Foreword, the narrator Yango Varo admits to the kind of artistic licence or invention that is typical of political dialogues, reporting that:
In an attempt to do full justice to my friends' ideas and points of view, I have found it necessary to recount these debates as if I had been witness to them myself, pretending to inhabit a past from which I was mostly absent, fleshing out conversations I never participated in. (Yanis Varoufakis, Another Now: Dispatches from an Alternative Present, London: The Bodley Head, 2019, p. 6).
There is, of course, an irony here in that Varo is himself a fictional character, but his account of 'fleshing out conversations' describes very accurately what early modern political thinkers were doing when they produced dialogues.
In an article in the Guardian advertising his book, Varoufakis offered some insight into why he chose to examine the views of his characters in this way:
In a bid to incorporate into my socialist blueprint different, often clashing, perspectives I decided to conjure up three complex characters whose dialogues would narrate the story - each representing different parts of my thinking: a Marxist-feminist, a libertarian ex-banker and a maverick technologist. Their disagreements regarding "our" capitalism provide the background against which my socialist blueprint is projected - and assessed. (Yanis Varoufakis, 'Capitalism isn't working. Here's an alternative', The Guardian, 4 September, 2020).
Thus for Varoufakis this form provided him with a means of putting onto paper a dialogue that had been playing out in his own head, and a means of working out some of the conflicts between different commitments and views held by him and other members of society.
Dialogue form was much used by early modern political thinkers and especially by seventeenth-century English advocates of republican government. It could be employed very simply to address and challenge alternative views, or to bring alive a debate between two or more positions, but there are also examples of more sophisticated usage, such as that which is in evidence in a manuscript dialogue written by the seventeenth-century political thinker Algernon Sidney.
Algernon Sidney (1623-1683) is best known for the manner of his death and his posthumous work Discourses Concerning Government, which was published by John Toland and John Darby in 1698. Sidney had fought for parliament during the Civil Wars and had gone into exile on the continent after the return of Charles II to power in 1660. He returned to England in 1677, but was implicated in the Rye House Plot of 1683. An arrest warrant was issued against him on 25 June 1683 and in November of that year he was brought before Lord Chief Justice Jeffreys. Since only one witness would testify against him and two were required for a conviction, the papers confiscated from his desk at the time of his arrest were deployed as a second witness. He was found guilty of treason and was executed on 7 December 1683.
Algernon Sidney by Bernard Picart (Picard) (1724). NPG D30364. Reproduced from the National Portrait Gallery under a Creative Commons licence.
Sidney wrote 'Court Maxims, discussed and refelled' early in 1665. It took the form of a dialogue between two friends Philalethes and Eunomius. Philalethes is a courtier who puts forward the 'court maxims' of the title. These supposedly self-evident propositions are used to argue in favour of monarchical government and the private interests that sustain it. They are challenged by Eunomius, a commonwealthsman, who presents the case for the public or common good and for republican government. While the question of whether Philalethes is ultimately converted by his friend is left open, Eunomius does have the last word insisting that monarchy can rarely be the best form of government. In one sense this is not surprising, since we would expect the author of the Discourses Concerning Government to have favoured the public good over private interests, and republican government over monarchy. Yet the meaning of the names that Sidney gives to his characters complicates the matter.
The name Philalethes literally translates as 'lover of truth', yet Sidney gives this name not to the character with whom his own sympathies lie, but to the advocate of private interest and absolute monarchy. Eunomius, by contrast, was the name of the 4th Century Bishop of Cyzicus, a controversial figure who challenged the conventional understanding of the Trinity, particularly the relationship between God and Christ. Since anti-Trinitarianism was still considered a heresy in the late seventeenth century this choice of name was provocative.
If we read Philalethes's silence at the end of the dialogue as indicating that he has been converted by Eunomius, then Sidney's point is perhaps simply that the love of truth does eventually win out over Philalethes's personal views and prejudices - or rather over the views he has had to 'conform' himself to at court (Algernon Sidney, Court Maxims, discussed and refelled, ed. Hans Blom and Eco Haitsma Mulier, Cambridge University Press, 1996, p. 2). As Philalethes explains at the beginning of the dialogue, there is little time at court to examine the truth of things, so he relies instead on what others tell him (p. 9). Moreover, he acknowledges that those court maxims are often at odds with reason. Yet Sidney is perhaps also being deliberately playful in offering as the explicit aim of his dialogue the refutation of self-evident propositions expressed by a lover of truth. He is perhaps implying that what is presented as 'truth' needs to be handled with care - or perhaps even re-conceived - an argument that Eunomius of Cyzicus and others who shared his views in the early years of the church would also have made. Moreover, writing at a time when rule in England had recently shifted from a commonwealth to a monarchy, Sidney perhaps hoped that his readers might apply that lesson in their own world, and examine for themselves the extent to which the attitudes and principles of the new regime were in accordance with reason.