The main message of Robert D. Kaplan’s The Tragic Mind is this: that political leaders and decision makers ought to think tragically. They need to be aware that, although there is good and evil in the world, politics is more often about a “battle of good against good.” They also need to be aware that, even though a decision must be made, political outcomes cannot always be win-win or even win-lose. Sometimes, all possible outcomes are lose-lose outcomes, and the decision maker must choose which lose-lose outcome is best.

Notes on The Tragic Mind: Fear, Fate, and the Burden of Power

The Hobbesian Kaplan. — Kaplan is Hobbesian. He almost always prefers order over chaos because, like Hobbes, he seems to believe that the state of nature is a state of war. As Hobbes put it in Leviathan, “There is always war of everyone against everyone. Hereby it is manifest that during the time men live without a common power to keep them all in awe, they are in that condition which is called war; and such a war as is of every man against every man.”¹ Correspondingly, Kaplan writes, “The fact that the state should monopolize the use of violence rescues us from the worst of fates: anarchy.” And “even the worst regime is less dangerous and terrifying than no regime at all.” (Here, however, one must ask: What would the colonized man say? What would someone who has read Fanon’s The Wretched of the Earth say? Is it better to be dehumanized but for there to be order, or is it better to be free but for there to be chaos? Would you rather die free or live without dignity as a slave? These are questions worth asking.)

Crito Inverted. — Kaplan writes that “the state comes before humanity.” And later in the book, with Melville’s Billy Budd given as an example, we see how this also means that the law comes before the individual. Again, Kaplan talks about “the tragic necessity of order above all other concerns.” And repeats Camus’s words on Billy Budd: “In allowing the young sailor, a figure of beauty and innocence whom he dearly loves, to be condemned to death, Captain Vere submits his heart to the law.” In a way, what we have here is Plato’s Crito inverted. In Crito, Socrates says that the law is like a father and the individual is like a child. The individual belongs to the state; therefore, he must obey the law even if unjust. So, when Crito comes to help him escape, Socrates chooses to remain in his cell and, therefore, die. In the first story, then, the punisher proceeds with the punishment even when he doesn’t want to; in the second story, the punished person accepts his punishment even when he gets an opportunity to escape it. Why? Simply because the law is the law.

The Burden of Power. — Most people live in a black-or-white world. Or, at least, they believe they do. For them, there’s the right thing to do and there’s the wrong thing to do. Kaplan says that “it is so much easier to be an intellectual or an artist — or a journalist — than to be a king or political leader.” Why? Because a political leader’s job is far more complex and much more nuanced than the outsider can imagine. “The truths that journalists speak aloud are not just the truths that those in power obscure, but often the truths that the powerful are very much aware of but cannot do or say anything about publicly, for fear of making the situation even worse.”

Quotes from Robert D. Kaplan’s The Tragic Mind

Fate is something we do to ourselves and afterward blame the gods.

– Robert D. Kaplan, The Tragic Mind

To be wise is one thing, but to struggle against impersonal forces of fate when defeat seems certain constitutes true greatness.

– Robert D. Kaplan, The Tragic Mind

History rarely repeats and usually doesn’t even rhyme, despite the line often misattributed to Mark Twain.

– Robert D. Kaplan, The Tragic Mind

To comprehend your own insignificance is neither defeatism nor cowardice but the opposite. Once again, to act, and to act bravely, even in the face of no great result, constitutes the ultimate in human grandeur.

– Robert D. Kaplan, The Tragic Mind

[1] The original text, in Hobbes’ weird-old English, goes like this: “There Is Alwayes Warre Of Every One Against Every One Hereby it is manifest, that during the time men live without a common Power to keep them all in awe, they are in that condition which is called Warre; and such a warre, as is of every man, against every man.”