François Fénelon on Surviving Failure and Success
More wisdom from an unsung hero of civility in history.
Gracious reader,
Happy Labor Day to all who celebrate!
In this issue of Civic Renaissance, we explore:
Civic Renaissance Retreat: Would You Join Us?
Why we shouldn't be quick to criticize others
The proper use of life's challenges
French philosopher and Christian thinker François Fénelon (1651-1715) is one of my favorite intellectuals. In an earlier post, we explored him as an unsung hero of civility and a model for how to “unbundle” people. Although hugely influential during his time and on many great thinkers we’ve likely encountered, he is largely forgotten today. Yet, I believe he’s worth remembering.
Fénelon offers valuable lessons on navigating the challenges of both failure and success, and his wisdom from the past can still guide us today. As we discussed, Fénelon achieved remarkable success early in life. His accomplishments included:
Serving as the private tutor to Louis XIV’s grandson, the heir to the throne—arguably the most significant educational position in France, and perhaps all of Europe
Being elected to the Académie Française, the prestigious body dedicated to preserving the French language
Being appointed by the King as the Archbishop of Cambrai, a position that brought both immense wealth and prestige
These successes secured him a place at the court of Louis XIV, where he mingled with the most influential people in Europe. However, as is often the case with individuals of integrity who attain prominence and power, his success was not destined to last.
Fénelon’s first offense was defending a friend who had fallen out of favor with the religious authorities of his time. He “unbundled” her (link), urging his readers to see both her errors and virtues in balance.
His second offense was even more scandalous in an age of political absolutism: he asserted that kings exist to serve their citizens.
As the private tutor to Louis XIV’s grandson, the Duke of Burgundy, Fénelon wrote The Adventures of Telemachus, a book that tells the story of Odysseus’s son, Telemachus, on his journey to find his father, guided by the wise Mentor. The purpose of the book was to teach his young pupil about the responsibilities and privileges of kingship. The most controversial claim was that kings exist for the benefit of a nation’s citizens—not the other way around.
When The Adventures of Telemachus was published without Fénelon’s permission, it caused a great stir, particularly with Europe’s foremost absolutist monarch, Louis XIV, who enjoyed being called "The Sun King." Just as the solar system revolves around the sun, so too did Versailles, France, and indeed all of Europe, revolve around Louis XIV.
Although Fénelon intended the book to educate the future King of France, its pro-republican sentiments—such as the idea that governments and monarchs exist to serve the people—were seen as a direct challenge to the monarchy. Louis XIV, taking this as a personal affront, dismissed Fénelon from his position as the tutor to his grandson.
Louis XIV effectively placed Fénelon under house arrest in Cambrai for the remainder of his life. Interestingly, while The Adventures of Telemachus was the work that sealed Fénelon’s downfall, it is also the work for which he is most remembered today. The book went on to influence the ideas of Montesquieu, the prose of Voltaire and Rousseau, and even the operas of Mozart. Thomas Jefferson, the architect of American liberty, also drew upon Fénelon’s Adventures of Telemachus to nurture his own republican ideals.
A side note: Fénelon was classically educated, and his love of books and ideas was deeply intertwined with his Christian faith. Before his dismissal, he spent ten years as the tutor to Louis XIV’s grandson, transforming the young, future king from an unruly and petulant child into a duty-bound and wise young man. Unfortunately, the young heir died before he could take the throne.
It’s a fascinating moment of alternative history: what might have happened if a kind and wisdom-loving ruler had become King of France instead of Louis XIV’s spoiled great-grandson, who ultimately ascended the throne as Louis XV? Might democratic reforms have occurred earlier, perhaps pre-empting the violent fury of the French Revolution?
Enduring Failure and Success
It’s easy to see why failure is challenging, but success? Yes, staying humble and maintaining integrity amid success is a challenge of its own. Fénelon exemplifies how his love for the Great Conversation and the wisdom of the past kept him grounded during both his greatest successes and his most resounding failures.
When Fénelon was at the pinnacle of religious power in France, he didn’t let it go to his head. We know this because he defended his friend—at great personal cost—when he didn’t have to. There’s much we can learn from Fénelon about navigating success: his example reminds us to maintain our integrity and not allow success to corrupt us.
Fénelon also teaches us how to endure failure. When he lost all his earthly possessions due to the whims of the French king, he didn’t complain or become bitter. Instead, he found consolation in his faith and in the world of ideas. After his fall from grace, Fénelon didn’t act as though his life was over. He spent his years in isolation at Cambrai writing letters of guidance and solace to the many people who continued to seek his advice. He understood that life’s true worth isn’t found in material possessions or prestige.
Questions to consider:
Which do you find more challenging: success or failure?
Why do you think it’s so difficult to maintain integrity and humility in the face of success?
Why is it so hard to hold on to hope and forgiveness in the wake of failure?
Are there failures in your life that you still harbor resentment over? What about your situation feels unfair or unjust?
Fénelon in His Own Words on Enduring Prolonged Trials
I especially appreciate Fénelon’s insights on the right use of suffering and enduring prolonged trials, which you can savor in his own words. These excerpts are from The Complete Fénelon, translated and edited by Robert J. Edmonson and Hal M. Helms—a book I highly recommend. It has provided me with endless solace and comfort during difficult times.
I hope you find encouragement in his words as well.
On why we shouldn't be quick to criticize others
Fénelon had every reason to be critical of the egotistical and mercurial monarch who had taken everything from him. Yet, in these writings, we find no trace of cynicism or resentment. On the contrary, Fénelon advises us to look deeply within our own souls before passing judgment on others' faults. As he wrote:
Self-love cannot bear to see itself. The sight would overwhelm it within she and irritation, and if it catches an accidental glimpse, it seeks some false light the may soften and condone what is so hideous. Therefore, we always keep up some illusion as long as we retain any self-love. In order to see ourselves perfectly, self love must be rooted up, and the love of God must reign solely in us.
Only after a serious, candid look inward at the selfish and often ugly state of our own souls should we consider addressing the faults of others. Even then, we must proceed with the utmost discernment. Fénelon advises that we spend years in humble reflection and prayer before criticizing someone else’s shortcomings. As he wrote:
“Spiritual guides must imitate God’s own way of dealing with the soul, softening His rebuke so that the person feels it as self-reproach and wounded love, rather than as divine chastisement. All other methods of guidance—correcting impatiently, or out of agitation with another’s flaws—are rooted in earthly judgment, not the correction of grace… Nothing is so offensive to a haughty, sensitive self-conceit as the self-conceit of others.”
We would do well to take these wise words to heart and draw encouragement from Fénelon’s example.
Prolonged Trials
Francois Fenelon (1651-1715), from The Complete Fenelon, Chapter 10, Translated and edited by Robert J. Edmonson and Hal M. Helms
Why do we rebel against our prolonged trials? Because of self-love; and it is that very self-love that God purposes to destroy. As long as we cling to self, his work is not achieved.
What right have we to complain? We suffer from an excessive attachment to the world—above all to self. God orders a series of events that detach us gradually from the world first, and finally from the self also. The operation is painful, but our corruption makes it needful. If the flesh were healthy, the surgeon would not need to probe it. He uses the knife only in proportion to the depth of the wound and the extent of proud flesh. If we feel his operation too keenly, it is because the disease is active. Is it cruelty that makes the surgeon probe us to the quick? No, far otherwise—it is skill and kindness; he would do the same with his only child.
This is how God treats us. He never willingly puts us to any pain. His fatherly heart does not desire to grieve us, but he cuts to the quick so that he may heal the ulcers of our spiritual being. He must tear from us what we love wrongly, unreasonably, or excessively, the thing that hinders his love. In so doing, he causes us to cry out like a child from whom one takes away a knife with which it could injure or kill itself. We cry loudly in our despair, and murmur against God, just as the petulant child murmurs against its mother. But he lets us cry, and saves us nevertheless!
God afflicts us only for our correction. Even when he seems to overwhelm us, it is for our own good, to spare us the greater evil we would do to ourselves. The things for which we weep would have caused us eternal distress. That which we count as loss was then indeed most lost when we fancied that it belonged to us. God has stored it up safely, to be returned to us in eternity. He deprives us of the things we prize only because he wants to teach us to love them purely, truly, and properly in order to enjoy them forever in his presence, and because he wants to do a hundred times better for us than we can even desire for ourselves.
Nothing can happen in the world except by God’s permissive will. He does everything, arranges everything, makes everything to be as it is. He counts the hairs of our head, the leaves of every tree, the sand on the seashore, the drops of water from the mighty ocean. When he made the world, his wisdom weighed and measured every atom. Every moment he renews and sustains the breath of life. He knows the number of our days; he holds the cords of life or death. What seems to us weightiest is as nothing in the eyes of God; a little longer or shorter life becomes an imperceptible difference before him. What does it matter whether this frail vessel, this poor clay, should be thrown aside a little sooner or later? How shortsighted and erring we are!
We are aghast at the death of one in the flower of his age. “What a sad loss!” we cry out. But to whom is the loss? What does the one who dies lose?—a few years of vanity, delusion, and peril. God takes that person away from the evil and saves that one from his own weakness and the world’s wickedness. What do they lose who love God?—the danger of earthly happiness, a treacherous delight, a snare that caused them to forget God and their own welfare. But in truth they gain the blessing of detachment through the cross. That same blow by which the one who dies is saved prepares those who are left to work out their salvation in hope. Surely, then, it is true that God is very good, very loving, very full of pity with regard to our real needs, even when he seems to overwhelm us and we are most tempted to call him hard.
The sensitiveness of self-love makes us keenly alive to our own condition. The sick person who cannot sleep thinks the night is endless, yet it is no longer than any other night. In our cowardice, we exaggerate all we suffer. Our pain may be severe, but we make it worse by shrinking under it. The real way to get relief is to give ourselves up heartily to God, to accept suffering because God sends it to purify us and make us worthier of him.
The world smiled upon you, and was as a poison to your soul. Would you wish to go on, right up to the hour of death, in ease and pleasure, in the pride of life and soul-destroying luxury, clinging to the world—which is Christ’s enemy, and rejecting the cross—which alone can make you holy? The world will turn away and forget, despise, and ignore you. Are you surprised at that, since the world is worldly, unjust, deceitful, and treacherous? Yet you are not ashamed to love this world, from which God snatches you to deliver you from its bondage and make you free.
You complain of your very deliverance. You are your own enemy when you are so alive to the world’s indifference, and you cannot endure what is for your real good when you so keenly regret the loss of what is fatal to you. This is the source of all your grief and pain.
The right use of crosses
The more we are afraid to bear crosses, the more we need them. Let us not, therefore, fall into hopes discouragement when the hand of God lays crosses heavily upon us. We should be fully aware of the magnitude of our disease by seeing the severity of the remedies that our spiritual Physician sees good to apply.
Truly we must be extremely diseased, and God must be extremely merciful, since despite our opposition, he reaches down to heal us. Surely we should find in our very crosses a supply of love, comfort, and confidence saying with the Apostle, “For our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all.” Happy are those who weep, and who, having sown in tears, will with indescribable joy reap the harvest of eternal life.
“I have been crucified with Christ, says St. Paul. It is with our Savior that we hear abound to the cross, and it is his grace that binds us there. It is for Jesus sake that we would not depart from the cross, since without it we cannot have him.”
Looking ahead:
Our baby boy is set to arrive somewhere around Sept 15th, so I am planning to take some time off—but have no fear. I’ve lined up some excellent writers to help infuse your life with beauty, goodness, and truth—and to help you think more clearly about our day by reviving the wisdom of the past!
October 30- Whithworth University, virtual talk, find out more here!
November 12- Greater Muncie Chamber of Commerce, Muncie, IN
November 14- Berry College, Mt. Berry, GA
November 19- Hillsdale College, Hillsdale, MI
January 23, 2025- I am thrilled to announce that I will be speaking at Yale Law School this coming January, invited by the Crossing Divides Program, part of the Tsai Leadership Program, which is dedicated to building strong bridges across our differences.
Invitation:
Civic Renaissance Retreat: Would You Join Us?
Would you be interested in joining us for a Civic Renaissance retreat and conference on civility in 2025 in Indianapolis?
This retreat and conference is envisioned as a unique opportunity to gather and discuss how we can all flourish despite our differences. We’ll explore ways to bring these ideas back to our own communities to help them thrive amidst division.
During the event, we will:
Gain a deeper understanding of the roots of our current challenges and explore solutions that promote civility.
Develop emotional intelligence and relational skills to enhance conversations and relationships in all areas of life.
Learn practical strategies for creating and sustaining a civility community.
Write to me with your interest and ideas at ahudsonassist@gmail.com
In the news:
America's Hope: Kelly Wright Interviews Alexandra Hudson on Epoch TV
Blue Sky Podcast- Author Alexandra Hudson on Her Book, The Soul of Civility: Timeless Principles to Heal Society and Ourselves
How to Be a Better Human Podcast: I loved talking with Chris Duffy on his excellent TED podcast about How to be civil even if you disagree (w/ Alexandra Hudson)
Interintellect- Watch an inspiring conversation between Lexi and Sean Hughes on the urgent issue of civility in our modern world
TIME Magazine— What Emily Post and Daniel of Beccles Can Teach Us About Civility Today
Civility is our eternal project- review of the soul of civility by the George W. Bush Center
Thanks so much to ABC Channel6, WRTV and ABC for the conversation about how civility and basic respect for personhood are the antidotes to our crisis of division — recorded from my front porch! Click here to watch!
Thank you for being part of our Civic Renaissance community!
Fenelon is one of my favorites. He wrote beautiful letters of spiritual direction
Happy Labor Day to all Canadians, too!