Centerfield

Free and Unfree Authors are Very Different

This post is provoked by watching a documentary about Catherine the Great, in which they read aloud a flattering letter by a French philosophe as though it meant something. Well, it really meant something very different and smaller back then.

When you read something by an unfree author, keep in mind that flattery is a basic necessity for that author. If he wishes to stay physically unharmed, he has to strictly limit who he criticizes. Indeed, he is liable to see harm if he doesn't actively flatter powerful people he meets and corresponds with. Keeping his job means regular flattery of his patron. With this in mind, you can understand that flattery is pretty popular among unfree authors, and indeed the perennial popularity of the effluviently praiseful panegyric.

Many say about the very different style that it's just as valid.

I feel that our freedom is a huge advantage because it allows us to spend much more effort on what we're writing about, and allows us to constructively criticise much more readily. Interestingly, many Dark Ages unfree scholars felt the free product came out better, hence their awe of Aristotle and other ancient free Greek and Republican Roman authors.