Inspired by a recent dinner with the author, I am reading, or rather listening to, my friend Jonathan Powell's second memoir of No 10, The New Machiavelli. Just as he did at Oxford, as a diplomat in Washington, and as Tony Blair's Chief of Staff in Downing Street, Jonathan writes well, and with a light touch.
As often happens, I am worrying away at a tangential issue. What is occupying my mind isn't the account of the epic Tony/Gordon relationship, or the role of 'the third man', or the portrayal of Downing Street as a court, or my disagreement with Jonathan about how to analyse and improve the relationship between advisers and Ministers. I'm not even too fussed about whether the attempt Jonathan makes to test Machiavelli's maxims against the inside experience of The Blair Years is a successful framework, though I think on the whole it is.
No, what's got my attention is the old question of the constancy of human nature. The book takes a pretty classical or enlightenment approach. Jonathan shows how obsessed Machiavelli was with the examples and lessons of the Roman Republic. And he himself has much to say about the lessons of the historian, and also the diplomat and traveller. He also, unsurprisingly, singles out Shakespeare as a guide to the eternal verities of human nature.
It struck me that much modern thinking is ranged against this approach. Hegel, Nietzsche and Heidegger, and their hosts of contemporary interpreters, all in their different ways are profoundly opposed. You can't step in the same river twice, or stand outside the flux of history.
Language makes you and not the other way round. We define ourselves within a public form of life. The author is dead and there is nothing outside the text. And so on. Even Aristotle was a teleological thinker.
Perhaps a more palatably British version of this opposition is to be found in the later works of Bernard Williams. To a Kantian view of morality, Williams opposed a broader ethics, driven by the notions of thick, rich description of social and political situations, and of an ever-changing history which meant that the content of those situations was always shifting, always different.
Although Williams held that this cast doubt on unsophisticated views of unchanging human nature, he didn't at all think that history had no lessons for the present. Indeed, as a formidable classical scholar, he thought that historical awareness was vital for understanding and interpreting the present, and for appreciating the richness and variety in any political or social situation.
As before in these blogs, I pose the question: what on earth has this got to do with the BBFC? Two answers come to mind.
First, as the BBFC starts its year of centenary celebrations...and please look out for the centenary black cards now showing with films on theatrical release...it's well worth revisiting the Report of the Committee on Obscenity and Film Censorship of November 1979. Bernard Williams chaired the Committee and the report certainly bears his stamp. Although some of the specific recommendations now look questionable...I do not, for instance, support taking local authorities out of film classification...the report still contains by far the most penetrating analysis of the principles underlying the BBFCs work that I know.
We will be publishing a centenary book towards the end of the year, which will have much to say from both inside and outside the BBFC about the enduring arguments for age classification and providing rich and nuanced information, even in the age of the Internet. The public overwhelmingly want this, for instance, for film downloads.
Secondly, Williams' argument for the combination of subtle contextualisation and keen awareness of historical change happens to capture very well what we are trying to do at the Board. Through our very large scale and multiform public consultations every 4-5 years, feeding into revision of our classification guidelines, we aim to track and reflect the shifts in public views on the issues which arise under such headings as violence, sex, language and discrimination. This ensures that our child protection work stays relevant, sensitive to context, and focused on giving parents the best information possible, so that they can make informed choices.
None of this is to dismiss the classical approach of Machiavelli or of Jonathan Powell, or to belittle the enduring fascination with traits of human nature which remain recognisable across the ages. I think we need both approaches. The flourishing health of Classical Reception Studies shows that. We are interested in, say, Tacitus not just as the great historian of the early Roman Empire, but for what he has meant for British politics and German nationhood.
And so, I think, does our work at the BBFC. We do see continuities of human responses in film audiences: think of those 'jump' moments in horror films, or of the recurring shock of recognition, or of cinema's timeless themes of love, crime, new frontiers and laughter. Aeschylus, Machiavelli and Jonathan Powell all highlight tragic choices, and Aristotle explained the cathartic effect of tragedy...and, at the Board, we still see them played out in films originating not just from the UK or the US but from all around the world. Yet the present is always imperceptibly changing into history, and our work needs to be alive to that. I don't see big shifts over a five year period, but over thirty it's a different story. And it's not all one way traffic, as increased concern about racist language clearly shows. So it remains vital to us to keep track, in detail and on the broadest front, of changes in public attitudes, however small or subtle. And in doing so we are taking a leaf out of Bernard Williams' books.