Edward Gibbon and Ayn Rand on the Fall of Rome

The slow decline and eventual fall of the (Western) Roman Empire is a topic that lends itself to philosophic history. Philosophic history is concerned with the causes of long-term change in a society (Burrow, 320). Depending on the philosophic perspective of the historian (and it would be nice if they made their views explicit), the primary cause of historical change can be ascribed to internal or external events, economic development or cultural evolution. For Rome, Edward Gibbon argues that moral and ideological changes were significant. To illustrate his case he uses irony: “It was a mismatch of intention and outcome whose natural treatment in historical writing was as irony” (John Burrow, "A History of Histories," p. 326). The problem is that irony illustrates issues; it does not explain them. Nor does irony explicate why it is that results often conflict with intentions.

 

 

Irony is all very well, as is observing the differences between the Western and Eastern parts of the Empire along with demographic and economic deterioration.  However, these issues hardly qualify as philosophical. The changes in Roman cultural values, which were determined by changes in the Roman people’s philosophical outlook, were what lie beneath the more concrete, and observable, examples of Rome’s increasing decadence. In excerpts from The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire read for this week, Gibbon goes into exhaustive detail about the underlining causes of Roman decadence. But, he does not connect the dots. He does describe the dots of causation in his section on the creation of the Dominate: “Philosophy, her most dangerous enemy [superstition], was now converted into her most useful ally” (Gibbon, Ch. XVI, 62). He further observes that while the later emperors owed their existence to their swords, “they still retained their superstitious prejudices of soldiers and peasants” (Gibbon, 63). The decline of reason in the Roman world—which Christianity benefited from—was conterminous with the growth of statism in the Empire. The greater the Imperial control over the lives of its subjects, the less operative reason became. The more mysticism dominated the Empire, the more both rulers and the people turned to physical force to solve their growing problems.

It has been said that in his basic attitude towards life every man is either Aristotelian or Platonic. The same can be claimed for cultures and societies. We see in the fall of Rome that two philosophical archetypes came to the fore. These are best represented by a metaphor created by Ayn Rand of the social archetypes the Attila and the Witch Doctor. For both of these figures reason is the enemy. The Attila is a thug who lives by looting the productive. The Witch Doctor is a mystic who lives by sponging off Attila in return for providing him with justification for his depredations. To some extent, history can be viewed as a contest for power between these two characters. Rarely, do the men of reason and science come to dominate a culture. The West has managed to do that on a few occasions. Observing the current, rapid decline in both reason and liberty in American society—however instructive –is not edifying.   

The Fall of the Western Roman Empire was the result of a combination of factors, both internal and external. The loss of cultural confidence and the supplanting of paganism with Christianity is one obvious cause. The barbarian invasions that the depleted Legions could no longer stop is the most dramatic reason. Rapid population decrease that was the result of disease and the decrease in economic productivity are difficult to observe in the short-term, but was very real. The rot was deep. The legions had held off the barbarians for centuries. They could not continue to do so for a hollowed out Empire.