On Napoleon

When I was in high school, I went through a period where I was obsessed with Napoleon.  There has never been a historical figure before or since that has captured my imagination in the same way.  I read multiple biographies, did a fairly deep dive into his campaigns, even for a brief period thought I wanted to join the Army and become an artillery officer in emulation of Le Petit Caporal.  And while I would not characterize myself currently as "obsessed," I still retain a weird amount of Napoleon knowledge.  I listen to the (outstanding) Age of Napoleon podcast recreationally and have developed Opinions on various commanders of the period and their relative competencies.  Some guys are Civil War Guys, some guys are World War II Guys; I'm a Napoleon Guy.

Now, some might say that I felt a kinship with Napoleon because he and I are firmly on Team Short King.  And I would be lying if I said that had nothing to do with it.  But that's not really the heart of it.  Napoleon grabbed my attention because he lived his life as if he had no limits or constraints.  High school Mike felt, in a way that seemed unique from his limited perspective but in hindsight certainly was not, that he was shackled and limited and controlled by the structure of the environment and the people around him.  Napoleon offered the tantalizing possibility that if just ignored all of those things that seemed to be limits, you could dictate the terms of reality through the application of your own determination and genius.  It would be a half-dozen years before I encountered this vocabulary, but Napoleon is maybe the closest living exemplar of Nietzsche's idea of the Ubermensch.  Beyond good and evil, beyond the enormous social limitations placed on his grandiose ambitions, Napoleon simply powered through all of that as if it wasn't there.  

I hadn't really thought about this in depth until I saw the poster for the new Ridley Scott and Joaquin Phoenix biopic, copied above.  The tagline hit me like a hurricane--yes, that's exactly the appeal of Napoleon, and why I was obsessed.  Napoleon is the Will to Power made flesh.  For Napoleon, nothing was impossible, and he proved it.  Maybe nothing is impossible for anyone who wants it enough.  Or, perhaps more honestly, maybe nothing was impossible for me.

But, the thing is, I'm not 16 anymore.  I am a different person now.  And if I have to pinpoint the difference between me then and me now, it comes down to a single question that I didn't know to ask then, but am aware of all the time now.

And then what?

From 1793 to 1809, with the possible exception of the Egyptian Campaign Napoleon succeeded in every campaign he attempted.  He beat his three primary opponents, the Austrians, the Prussians, and the Russians, multiple times.  He redrew the map of Europe to his liking.  And then what?  He had no ultimate end state, no ultimate victory condition, not really.  All he could do was more of the same, again and again.  And over time, he taught his enemies how to defeat him.  By the time you get to 1810 and beyond, every army in Europe was copying his tactics, his organizational methods--his genius, essentially.  They were not him, but they were 60% of him, and that was enough.  He could impose his will on the universe, but only so much and for so long.

But it's not just that.  Even prior to things coming apart, what is that he accomplished, really?  Yes, he conquered a bunch of territory and won a bunch of battles.  And then what?  Some might find this question naive or absurd, but I don't--did all of this make him happy?  Because it kinda seems like Napoleon was mostly miserable, even when he was winning.  If there is one thing that I have learned over the last thirty years, it is that there is not a one-to-one correlation between achievement and happiness.  The night I lost my election, I was still very happy, and to the extent I was not fully happy it was from thinking about my Mom being so sick, which complete tangential to success or failure of the campaign.  Likewise, you can win everything and still be miserable.

And to be Napoleon, to do what he did, you have to be something of a sociopath.  Because you have to ignore the oceans of blood and destroyed lives that came in his wake.  And all of that, all of that death and destruction, ultimately accomplished nothing.  There must be a part of you missing in order to truly commit to being the Ubermensch.  Those that see Nietzsche's vision as monstrous are right to recoil in horror.  Just look at what came in the wake of Napoleon.

What changed for me between then, when I saw Napoleon as a font of possibility, and now can be summed up in having discovered Socrates and his disciples, especially Aristotle.  Aristotle is not adverse to achievement--he's not world-denying in the way that Christianity can be.  But he points to the place beyond achievement, toward eudaimonia, to the happiness of being content in yourself and who you are.  So, yes, you are free to achieve and strive and challenge reality, but always question what you want to achieve, where you want your excellence to lie.  Perhaps to borrow from Saint Paul, I think the lesson here is "everything is permissible, but not everything is beneficial."  Being content, being a good person, being able to look at yourself in the mirror honestly and liking what you see, being in affirming relationships with others--this matters.  This is real.  Even more real, at the end of the day, than any campaign or conquest.

Does that mean I'm not going to see the Napoleon movie?  Absolutely not.  I can't wait to see the movie in November.  I am pretty confident I am going to love it, because there is the part of me that still loves Napoleon.  But I am going to enjoy it as a fantasy, not as an aspirational model.  At the end of the day, Napoleon died alone on a miserable isolated island in the South Atlantic.  He is a fantasy and a cautionary tale.

When November comes around, I'm going to be first in line to go see the movie, and I am probably going to love it.  And then I am going to go home to Danielle (to whom I showed the trailer and immediately "noped" out of going to see it) and sit on the couch with her and the cat.  As attractive as the power fantasy of "conquering everything" like Napoleon did is still to me on some level, my life is happier than his was.  And that's enough.   

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