8/14/2003
63
contingent not exclusively or even primarily on wealth or material possessions. Civic engagement remained
for a good two centuries the predominant source of regard and reputation. Thus did (for example) late
nineteenth century ‘captains of industry’ engage in giant philanthropic endeavors. Put simply, they gave
their money to gain fame.
The indicator of the triumph of effeminacy, then – as Faludi’s narrative suggests – is when
masculinity comes to be primarily defined in terms of what you have, not what you do. This is, in sum,
what “ornamental masculinity” is.
12
Critics who find Faludi’s argument unconvincing include Young 2000 and Wolcott 1999. They find her
evidence random and journalistic. Scholars have generally not written about the book, book reviews tend
to follow along predictable lines, given journals’ editorial policies. Willis (1999) criticizes the absence of
attention to class; this argument is discussed below.
13
After Rousseau in the mid eighteenth century, and Adam Ferguson in the late eighteenth century, one
must search far and wide to find a modern thinker who admired Sparta for the virtues it cultivated.
14
Machiavelli seems to assert the opposite view in this passage from The Prince:
The chief foundations of all states, new as well as old or composite, are good laws and good arms;
and as there cannot be good laws where the state is not well armed, it follows that where they are
well armed they have good laws. I shall leave the laws out of the discussion and shall speak of the
arms. (Portable Mac, Chapter XII; 115/116)
Nevertheless, despite this claim, reading the Discourses makes clear that Machiavelli had a more complex
understanding of the relationship of good arms to government, especially in a republic. For a more
subversive reading of this passage, see Dietz 1986.
Convention