Digressions&Impressions

On hearing without listening (prompted Mouffe's The Political and Politics)

By "the political," I refer to the dimension of antagonism that is inherent in all human society, antagonism that can take many different forms and can emerge in diverse social relations. "Politics," on the other hand, refers to the ensemble of practices, discourses and institutions that seek to establish a certain order and to organize human coexistence in conditions that are always potentially conflictual because they are affected by the dimension of "the political."

It is only when we acknowledge this dimension of "the political" and understand that "politics" consists in domesticating hostility, only in trying to defuse the potential antagonism that exists in human relations, that we can pose the fundamental question for democratic politics....Politics aims at the creation of unity in a context of conflict and diversity; it is always concerned with the creation of an "us" by the determination of a "them." The novelty of democratic politics is not the overcoming of this us/them distinction - which is what a consensus without exclusion pretends to achieve - but the different way in which is established. What is at stake is how to establish the us/them discrimination in a way that is compatible with pluralist democracy.--Chantal Mouffe (1999) Deliberative Democracy or Agonistic Pluralism? Social Research, 754-755.

Mouffe offers here two definitions. Her definition of the 'political' is refreshingly universal ("inherent in all human society"); it does not (unlike many Liberal definitions) presuppose democratic norms or institutions and is applicable to all societies. It does not claim that all societies are characterized by antagonism, but it is committed to the idea that is always present as a latent disposition ("potential antagonism...exists in human relations.) So, let's call Mouffe's definition of the 'political' Mouffe's First Law. Mouffe's First Law entails that antagonism is not (pace Rousseau) a consequence of social relations/institutions, but (conceptually) precedes it. (We may say jokingly that the conception of human nature is robustly Augustinian.)

The definition of 'politics' also does not presuppose democratic norms or institutions. But unlike the First Law, which one might be tempted to understand as a kind of neutral generalization (or a conceptual a priori), Mouffe's definition of politics is is an invitation to think beyond Liberalism: politics is the means (mechanisms & practices) of producing a kind of outcome/effect, that is, "a certain order and to organize human coexistence," that is, a minimal unity, and, thereby/simultaneously a domestication of antagonism. Anything that facilitates -- e.g., education, [civic] religion, propaganda, economic organization, habits of thought, etc. -- such outcomes is, by definition, an element of politics. This understanding of politics echoes Spinoza's and Hume's (recall), and so is not necessarily at odds with elements of the Liberal tradition (but can also be found in Hobbes and, going back [recall] to the Roman, Republican historian, Sallust), but it is not how Liberalism ended up being characterized in its more laissez faire strands.

To be clear: this unity is constituted by an "us/them" distinction. Politics both presupposes and generates as well as transforms and helps maintain such a distinction such that 'us' are within the shared unity, and them without. There is no unity without an outsider. 

So, as Mouffe explains, given the First Law, the task of politics is to move from one kind of antagonist to a less virulent kind: she "is no longer seen as an enemy to be destroyed, but as an "adversary," i.e., somebody with whose ideas we are going to struggle but whose right to defend those ideas we will not put into question. This category of the adversary does not eliminate antagonism." (755) 

Here my interest is not in distinguishing her view from (or tracing it back to) Schmitt's. Rather, I call attention to the fact her understanding of an "adversary," is actually quite demanding. There are two elements: first, it is "somebody with whose ideas we are going to struggle" and, second, "whose right to defend those ideas we will not put into question." While there is some ambiguity in what counts as struggling with another's ideas, I take it she means that with an adversary one tries to engage with the content of the ideas and try to refute/discredit them through a variety of (rhetorical, educational, argumentative, framing, etc.) techniques. The first element presupposes some interest in the adversary's views. (It need not entail trying to be fair to them or getting them wholly right.) It is easy to miss this. The second element is, in fact, quite clearly a democratic norm. It is no surprise then that "the aim of democratic politics is to transform an "antagonism" [of enemies] into an "agonism" [of adversaries]." (755)

There is, thus, quite a bit of conceptual space between an enemy and an adversary. There are going to be political cultures in which there is some unity, and in which (say) citizens (tacitly) relate to each other as an us, but in which they do not understand each other as adversaries. For, as my colleague Enzo Rossi reminded, there is a kind of (let's call it) hearing without listening: an unwillingness or incapability of struggling with each others ideas (and an unwillingness to really grant each other the right to defend those ideas) without resorting to overt violence. I am unsure if there is a term for this, but it deserves one (and I look forward to learning from my readers).

The previous paragraph is not a hypothetical scenario. Once passions are mobilized (and perhaps not only then), a certain form of mutual non-engagement (that is no struggle with the ideas of others) with fellow nationals can be normalized (through media echo-chambers, social segregation, etc.). I believe this is increasingly the the status quo in contemporary, purportedly Liberal Democracies .

 

 

On the Mission of the Real University

I’m going to start with a strange kind of claim that freedom of speech is not a value of universities. Just as such. When I say universities, I’m not today going to be talking about the distinction that exists in American law between public and private universities. It is the case that American constitutional law treats public universities as being bound by the bill of rights as if they were government agencies and treats private universities with the amount of deference very near to what the Church gets that it is able to make its own rules. I don’t think that division makes complete sense and can’t support the weight that its being asked to bare and moreover it has the consequence if you think internationally or comparatively that outside of the US there aren’t any “real” universities left in the world because the US is the only country left that has a very substantial private university system.

But because I think real universities are really, rightfully, self-governing associations I think that it can’t be the case that the gradual change from public to private universities in the rest of the world has meant that there aren’t really any universities left, and I take that thought back to the US and say probably public universities here also shouldn’t be treated as if they’re just the DMV. They are meaningfully public, but they are also meaningfully self-governing institutions. So when I say that freedom of speech isn’t a value of universities, I’m not making a claim about the details of the first amendment, I’m making a claim about how universities ought to be able to govern themselves.

[The] kind of misrepresentation which is fair game as a matter of freedom of speech is not fair game in terms of the structure of community of inquiry and discourse that is part of a college or university. It is one of the very worst offenses in a college or university...None of which is to say that the heart of the academic enterprise doesn’t have some questions about free debate or free inquiry in it. But they are not well captured by the norms that we associate with freedom of speech or freedom of the press out there in the wider society or in the legal system of a constitutional democracy. In this I believe, universities are typical of association and associational life....

[Oakeshott] distinguishes what he calls enterprise associations from civil associations. Enterprise associations don’t mean businesses, it’s not a narrow definition. Enterprise associations are associations with a purpose. We come together for the sake of some common enterprise....these are distinguished says Oakeshott form the civil association. The civil association has no purposes...Does the university have purposes like a church, or is the university open ended and purposeless like the government? And I want to suggest that it’s genuinely an enterprise association, though it is a complex association, that has rule of law elements in it. That is, it has moments of purposelessness but the moments of purposelessness are all structured toward the end that is the overall purpose of the institution....The purpose of the university is organized, structured, teaching, and research. It’s organized into specified domains of knowledge.... it was students of professors or both; creating a shared institution for the transmission of knowledge through teaching (research came later). The norms that eventually developed about how that proceeds, go under a specialized label that has meaning only really within an academic context, and that specialized label is “academic freedom”. It’s not the freedom of speech, it’s not the freedom to lie, to commit research fraud, to submit plagiarized work. It’s more than that though. Jacob T. Levy "Safe spaces, academic freedom, and the university as a complex association" at Bleedingheartlibertarians.

I shared Levy's essay enthusiastically on Facebook, and I am pleased it has received a wider audience. The essay develops the intellectual foundations to discuss (as it does through the lecture) the ongoing controversies about safe-spaces, coddled students, and protests over commencement speakers in a way that does genuine justice to the mission of the university. (I had also addressed these issues from a vantage point not too dissimilar from Levy's while criticizing one of his fellow BHL bloggers, but I lack Levy's neo-Burkean/Tocquevillian sensibility.) But here I want to make two observations on Levy's general argument. The second is presented as a disagreement, but I would not be surprised if Levy were to agree with me.

First, not all degree granting institutions of higher learning (that often call themselves 'university') are real universities by Levy's lights because "real universities are really, rightfully, self-governing associations." This ontological sounding claim has a normative consequence. What I am about to say is extremely context specific, but in many places 'the university' has become an arm of the neo-Weberian, technocratic state* where, if there is still a semblance of self-governance, it is often farmed out to professional managers (sometimes with an academic background, but not always) who are imposed by the state or are hired because they fit the larger vision of national, bureaucratic governance of purportedly self-governing bodies. (The previous sentence is true for quite a few English and Dutch universities--but certainly not all.) It does not follow that such un-real universities do a bad job at 'research' -- after all, Bell Labs and the French Académie des Sciences are not universities, -- or education/training, but they are not really universities.

That such 'neo-Weberian, techno-universities" are not really universities (in Levy's normative sense) is also clear from the fact that they tend to lack something. What they often lack is a shared purpose. And this allows me to offer my second observation. Levy writes that "the purpose of the university is organized, structured, teaching, and research. It’s organized into specified domains of knowledge." I think this is right (as a necessary condition), but falls short in some way. To be sure, this purpose is non-trivial because it allows Levy to point to  the fact that teaching and research is oriented toward truth in some way such that there are strong norms against deception and "research fraud." And as Levy hints at, these norms are sometimes hard to explain to outsiders (and insiders): the punishment for academic deception is often far worse than for transgressions that from the perspective of interpersonal morality are clearly worse (harassment, rape, theft, etc.). (Undoubtedly this has also facilitated too much tolerance for some of these non-trivial moral transgressions.) Coetzee's Disgrace explores these issues in troubling ways.

What's lacking in Levy's analysis of the 'purpose' is the universal in university, that is, that can be traced back to the "Medieval Latin universitatem (nominative universitas), "the whole, aggregate."" Levy's analysis is compatible in which a really, real self-governing university ends up being a hyper-specialized research and educational institute--this is meant to be a reductio. This reductio can occur because of shared intellectual inquiry, but, more likely, it is driven in that direction because of budgeting/enrollment constraints. Of course, time, money, and talent are scarce, but once one gives up the drive toward the whole something is lost from the mission. Again, one can point to curricular and staffing decisions that are driven by administrative processes that facilitate a complete undervaluing of the pull of the whole.

So, it follows then that real universities are really, rightfully, self-governing associations in which organized, structured, teaching about, and research in the whole aggregate of things (events, being(s), etc.) is the main aim. Obviously, this is compatible with lots of other very important (humanitarian and social) aims. I hope you agree.

 

 

*I use neo-Weberian here to contrast it with the Weberian spirit that animates Levy's lecture.

Atheism (& nationalism) as (historical) Anomaly

Undoubtedly closer to truth is the claim made in the fifth book of his Nature of the Gods by Posidonius, whose friendship we all share: that Epicurus does not believe in any gods, and that the statements which he made affirming the immortal gods were made to avert popular odium.--Cicero De Natura Deorum 1.123

 

Atheism, we are so often told, is a modern invention, a product of the European Enlightenment: it would be inconceivable without the twin ideas of a secular state and of science as a rival to religious truth. This is a myth nurtured by both sides of the "new atheism" debate: adherents wish to present skepticism toward the supernatural as the result of science's progressive eclipse of religion, and the religious wish to see it as a pathological symptom of a decadent Western world consumed by capitalism. Both are guilty of modernist vanity. Disbelief in the supernatural is as old as the hills...There have been many throughout history and across all cultures who have resisted belief in the divine...It is of course undeniable that religion has dominated human culture as far back as we can trace it....Too often religious practices is imagined to be the regular state of affairs, needing no explanation, whereas any kind of deviation is seen as weird and remarkable. This view underpins the modernist mythology: the Post-Enlightenment West is seen as exceptional, completely unlike anything else that has preceded it and unlike anything elsewhere in the world.  This is a dangerous misprision. To the religious, it can suggest that belief is somehow universal, essential too the human condition, and that creeping secularism is an unnatural state. Atheists...can be seduced into delusional self-congratulation, as if twenty-first century middle-class westerners have been the only people  throughout history capable of finding problems with religion. Religious universalism--the idea that belief in gods is the default setting for human beings--is everywhere in the modern world. There is a growing trend toward speaking of religion as "ingrained," or even "hardwired" into the human subject.--Tim Whitmarsh Battling the Gods: Atheism in the Ancient World, 4-5.

I am sometimes told, by historically sophisticated acquaintances, that atheism and nationalism are nineteenth century inventions. While there are solid reasons to accept both of these claims (the 'modern' nation state is indeed, well, 'modern'), an attentive reader will encounter nationalist themes and atheists (see the quote by Cicero above) in earlier writings. (Of course, one will have to be careful not to be misled by modernizing translations.) When, in discussion, I marshal evidence to cast doubt on the 'it started during the nineteenth century,' I am told that I use anachronistic concepts or interpret the evidence anachronistically. I have already noted, inspired by work by my former colleague Daniel Schneider, that the ban on anachronism and the preference for so-called actors' categories is methodologically not as innocent as its proponents belief--by adopting actors' categories we also (often tacitly) take sides in historical debates because (a) the concepts are contested and/or (b) we efface other possibilities (that were taboo or not-popular).

So, I was very pleased to read Whitmarsh's book, which explores ancient atheism as itself (eventually) an intellectual tradition in a very accessible fashion. (Philosophers looking for careful analysis of distinct arguments will be more disappointed.) Above, I have quoted from Whitmarsh's (introduction and conclusion which provide his) error theory. This makes clear that the myth of 'atheism started during the nineteenth century,' is itself, in part, dependent on a myth of modern nationalism (as a byproduct of the invention of the 'secular state' in which the nation is the glue - the civic religion [or worse] -- that helps hold it together [or worse]).

More important: what Whitmarsh's error theory suggests is that the reception of the European Enlightenment understands itself as a revolution in human affairs in which major social-conceptual innovations have taken place--post 1800 there is room for atheism, nationalism, and (modern) science. {And, yes, there is also a whole discourse that modern science is a nineteenth century invention with some precursors during the Galilean-Newtonian revolution.) The error theory also suggests that there is a kind of path-dependency for these ideas/concepts such that they require a prior intellectual and social-political revolution before they are possible for creatures like us.

Thus, the error theory tracks a deep commitment of a teleological species of historicism. I mention this not just because Whitmarsh does not mention historicism but also because neither the New Atheists nor the religion is "hardwired" into the human subject folk (backed up with fantastic brain scans when they cognitive religious studies) have much truck with historicism (philosophically both orientations incline toward dogmatic realists). Both presuppose, as Whitmarsh notes, that our epoch is somehow special: in fact, both rely on an image of science in which it is authoritative. (And, of course, historicists religiously guard against anachronism.) I mention historicism, in particular, because historicism facilitates the idea that one's time is special; as Fred Beiser teaches in his magisterial book on the German Historicist Tradition, it is constitutive of this tradition that it opposes universalism and searches for individuality of given culture or era. In addition, these individual cultures/eras become strangers to each other. 

This is not to deny, first, that sometimes the practices and concepts of the past are strange (nor that surface similarity can hide real differences) and second, thus that history can generate novelty or that there are socio-conceptual breaks or deviations from the past. As Whitmars suggests (echoing without acknowledgment the argument of Hume's History of Natural Religion), "The apparent rise of atheism in the last two centuries...is not a historical anomaly; viewed from the longer perspective of ancient history, what is anomalous is the global dominance of monotheistic religions." (242) I have no idea if he is right about this claim because the book does not provide systematic evidence for it. I also do not wish to deny, third, that when we engage with the past little is gained if we merely project -- often without realizing it -- our own preconceptions onto the past. [In my experience this actually happens quite a lot to overconfident historicists.]

I close with an observation. Whitmars spends a lot of time on Epicurean claims about the Gods. He pretty much decides that their views, while clearly inclining toward atheism, are inconsistent because they do affirm the existence of the Gods. Oddly, he misses the idea, uttered in Cicero's dialogue (that he discusses extensively), that "Epicurus does not believe in any gods, and that the statements which he made affirming the immortal gods made to avert popular odium." Obviously that's only an interpretation; but it is one offered by the ancient sources.

 

On Philosophical "Research" and "Public" philosophy--or on a philosophical life post-tenure, or not.

I don’t get much time to do extended, concentrated, article-generating research—see above—though I am slowly realizing that I have exponentially more time for research, broadly-speaking, than I did at my previous position. That’s partly a consequence of not being buried in departmental business and new preps and the TT grind, but more so because I’m older now and I think about research much differently. I read a lot more and write (mostly digitally) a lot more than I used to, I do a lot of collaborative work, and I have more time to engage interests and concerns that are not primarily aimed at turning out peer-reviewed publications. I do some sort of research every day.--Leigh M. Johnson @The Cocooners.[HT Adriel Trott (see also below)]

As regular readers of these Impressions know, I often distinguish between professional philosophy and philosophy. The very same person can do (or be) both. The distinction is intuitive enough -- professional philosophy involves institutional politics, a zero-sum environment (for resources, jobs, status, recognition, etc.), disciplination, etc., while in philosophy there is not just a purer orientation toward truth and wisdom but also a kind of integrity between words and actions --, although not entirely easy to make precise. It can be an unsettling parlor game to imagine which fantastic philosopher would not have made it in contemporary professional philosophy (due to, say, lack of refereed publications or non-standard or slow publication habits).

I treat 'research' (not a word I like, although I sometimes describe others as being on the research-frontier) as belonging to the 'professional' side of philosophy--it's what we do to acquire and keep PhDs, jobs, promotions, salary increases, professional recognition, etc. I understand my Digressions as my attempt (shades of mania of greatness) to do a kind of anti-systematic, systematic philosophy (which includes musings on and intervening in professional philosophy), while escaping the confines of the ordinary means of professional evaluation and writing. They do sometimes draw upon and generate professional research (and I am very pleased when my D&I pieces get cited by others), but I don't think of them as research. For me, research is work -- sometimes intensely satisfying work --, and D&I is not work (although sometimes I cheat and use the measurable 'impact' of my blogging in the narrative of a grant application).

In her piece, Leigh Johnson describes her life post "denial of tenure." Her changed institutional circumstances and professional profile has led to a new way of understanding her research. She does not say much about it, but it involves a devaluing (for her) of peer-reviewed publications and it includes -- inter alia -- a lot more digital writing. (I read her blogs regularly.) Given that the average number of readers of any peer-reviewed philosophical paper is close to zero (I increasingly doubt that even editors read what's published in their own journals) writing peer-reviewed publications is close to irrational if your philosophical aims are not motivated by professional concerns. (This is not to deny that anonymous referees can't improve one's philosophy and that for some genuine philosophical projects the journal article is a very fine medium.)

I think there are two ways to understand Johnson's position on 'research:' (i) one asks the profession to find a way to recognize and value non-peer-reviewed philosophical writing as 'research;' (ii) one reminds the profession there is more to research in philosophy (and life) than peer-reviewed publications (and other species of publication that are close to it). My sense is she embraces both (i-ii). Adriel Trott gives us a sense of how our professional peers respond to (i):

Johnson says she does some form of research everyday, but this research is not focused on peer-reviewed publications and it’s mostly digital.  I’m going to go out on a limb and speak for the philosophical community when I say that philosophers generally don’t think that our digital work is research.  Further on the limb, we don’t think this work is research, not only because we tend to think that whatever is meant for public consumption can’t be that good, but also because we tend to think public philosophy is either popularizing philosophical concepts developed in the quiet corners of the ivory tower or applying these concepts same to some relevant area of public life.  Both popularizing and applying tend to be viewed as not as rigorous philosophy, not really philosophy itself but a possible use for philosophy.*  When Johnson says she does some sort of research every day and that this research is not aiming toward peer-review academic publication, she seems to be saying that her public philosophy is itself the production of philosophical ideas, not just the application of those ideas to contemporary issues....The problem is that philosophy as a field tends to think that theorizing out of a moment isn’t really philosophical–it’s sociology, or anthropology, feminist theory or postcolonial theory, or it’s activism...But far too many philosophers throughout the field think you have to do “real” philosophy before you can take it to the street....I don’t mean to say that applying philosophical ideas to public concerns is not important.  But I do want to say that public philosophy can often be the development of theory and not just it’s application.  When Johnson says she does some form of research everyday, but this research is not focused on an academic audience, we philosophers have to reconsider what we think research means in order to affirm this conception of research.--Adriel M. Trott "What is Public Philosophy."

To simplify Trott's position a bit (apologies, but this is a blog, after all): the profession should welcome (i) by understanding it, first, as a species of public philosophy (by which Trott means, in part, philosophy "not focused on an academic audience"), and, second, recognize that public philosophy can be (really real) theoretical philosophy (or at least its "development").

Now, it is not obvious to me that Johnson's ''digital' writings are not (also, if not primarily) focused on an academic audience. (Many of her blogs engage with the academic life in non-trivial fashion.) Even when Johnson describes when she does 'research,' it seems to be part of her ordinary professional, work-life: "On my non-teaching days, I still wake up very early (6am-ish), but I spend my early mornings researching, reading, and writing." Of course, it is entirely possible that Johnson also writes for a non-academic audience. [I expect the vast majority of my blog-readers to be fellow academics (although I mean this in a broad sense to include former professional academics).]

None of this is to deny that professional philosophers can also do public philosophy (in Trott's sense) and may wish to be recognized for it. In fact, European grant agencies increasingly demand such public philosophy, and call it 'impact' or 'valorization.' This can involve uptake of one's ideas, disseminating it in non-professional contexts, aiming to change public policy or perceptions, or engaging with the 'public' in a wider sense (through public service, activism, editorializing, etc.) Devoting oneself to such public philosophy is probably, on balance, easier post-tenure for the professional philosopher because it can involve considerable opportunity costs when balancing other professional (and non-professional) obligations.

But I understand, 'public philosophy' differently; perhaps because it is a distinct genre of philosophical writing in Northwestern Europe. This is philosophy aimed at a non-academic audience by people who call themselves 'philosophers,' and who need not have any affiliation with academic/professional philosophy, and who attempt to make their living doing so. There are, of course a few professional philosophers who also make (some) money as public philosophers. That is to say, from a historical perspective, professional philosophers and public philosophers are just two different kinds of Sophists (that is, 'philosophy' is monetized).

Digital philosophy aimed at other academics and public philosophy (in Trott's sense) and in my (more European) sense can be a means for theoretical innovation and development. I want to offer a suggestion why this could be so (in a way distinct from Trott's interesting claims): changes of genre and audience can be theorized as a change in one's tacit or suppressed (modeling) constraints. An obvious example is that in peer-reviewed philosophical work one (generally and quietly) presupposes a conversation among experts only (think of the role of intuitions), whereas in certain branches of public philosophy that assumption needs to be dropped. Of course, in many branches of public philosophy one cannot make all one's theoretical developments fully transparent or explicit without ruining the experience for non-professional audiences; and even very well trained professional philosophers may, thus, fail to spot one's theoretical developments/innovations.

 

On my non-teaching days, I still wake up very early (6am-ish), but I spend my early mornings researching, reading, and writing. - See more at: http://philosopherscocoon.typepad.com/blog/2016/03/real-jobs-in-philosophy-part-5-leigh-m-johnson-christian-brothers-university.html#more

On Compassion and Nation Building

But to come to those who, by their own ability and not through fortune, have risen to be princes, I say that Moses, Cyrus, Romulus, Theseus, and such like are the most excellent examples. And although one may not discuss Moses, he having been a mere executor of the will of God, yet he ought to be admired, if only for that favour which made him worthy to speak with God--Machiavelli, The Prince

And the daughter of Pharaoh came down to bathe in the river; and her maidens walked along by the river-side; and she saw the ark among the flags, and sent her handmaid to fetch it. And she opened it, and saw it, even the child; and behold a boy that wept. And she had compassion on him, and said: 'This is one of the Hebrews' children.'--Exodus 2: 5-6

While discussing the Hebrew Bible's embrace of civil disobedience to unjust laws and rulers in his God and Politics in Esther, Yoram Hazony calls attention to the quoted passage of Exodus (p.51). The act of saving Moses from the water by the daughter of Pharaoh is indeed an act of disobedience to her father, the Pharaoh, who had ordained (twice) that all Jewish boys must be killed in Exodus 1:16 & 1:22 . Surprisingly, this act of disloyalty (to her father and, thereby, the law) is not punished by the Pharaoh. (Some day I'll discuss the Quran's alternative account of these events.)

Moses grows up as her (adopted) son (presumably) at court. He somehow retains a sense that he is Jewish because he feels connected to the other Jews in Egypt. When adult, Moses flees Egypt after becoming concerned about the Pharaoh's likely response to the consequences of his taking the law in his own hand (he had killed an Egyptian who had been abusing a Jew). Before Moses leads his people out of Egypt he has already been an at-risk-minority and a (criminal) refugee. The Pharaoh eventually dies; the Scriptural narrative do not say what happens to his daughter. But here I wish to dwell a bit longer on her.

Hazony (see his note 15 on 220) goes beyond the biblical text and draws on Talmud Megillah 13a in order to claim that in her act of saving the helpless child, Pharaoh's daughter becomes "a Jew because she renounced her servitude to the idol in order to do what is right." We may call this (acting from conscience against immoral man-made law and rejecting man-made idols) a moral conception of Jewishness one that is not tied to blood or nation. On this moral conception of Jewishness anybody can be Jewish (in this moral sense). After all, the Egyptian princess had not been exposed to revelation. (This idea echoes the treatment of Abraham's true faith in the Quran and Spinoza).* This naturally raises the question: what could generate her exemplary behavior? On this point the otherwise extremely terse biblical narrative of this event is explicit.

"the Spirit of Christ"

For, the act of saving the boy from the water is, in addition to her disobedience, simultaneously, an act of compassion  (וַתַּחְמֹל from חמל to feel mercy) by the daughter of Pharaoh. Before she thinks of adoption -- perhaps she was infertile (and this would explain her disappearance from the Biblical narrative) -- she has to feel some kind of generosity toward the vulnerable (weeping) creature in need. Such compassion to or pity for vulnerable strangers is not a special property of daughters of the Pharaohs, but in principle, available to all of us. It is part of our common humanity.**

Of course, as the daily headlines remind us, in practice such compassion is not abundant; it is an important question in political psychology what set of institutions and  norms could help cultivate and make robust and fruitful such compassion. Because we ordinarily cannot rely on the compassion of others we need reasonably just laws and judges.

Even though the Jews initially reject Moses as their judge/ruler ('Who made thee a ruler and a judge over us? thinkest thou to kill me, as thou didst kill the Egyptian?' Exodus 2:14; this echoes Genesis 37:8), Moses becomes the (godly) vehicle for generating self-government under a moral law and the systematic rejection of idols. (In fact, even such sober thinkers as Machiavelli [recall] and Spinoza (recall) hold him up as en exemplary political founder.) It is easy to see in this a call to (just) political self-determination. It surely is this, too. But the Hebrew Bible is explicit that the whole narrative of Jewish liberation would not have gotten off the ground without the disobedient and compassionate intervention of Pharaoh's daughter. National political success, even when the product of great resourcefulness (as Hazony and Machiavelli both note), may originate not just in fortune or chance events (Pharaoh's daughter does not spend all day her time bathing in the river), but also in acts of basic kindness from strangers.

How to obtain political self-determination with sufficient unity without undermining the very possibility of basic mercy toward strangers, we may label the political question.

 

Philosophy and the Revolution

It would be really nice for philosophers – at least those of us who care about injustice and oppression – if what was needed was better and more careful argumentation in order to rationally persuade ourselves out of bad ideology: if we as analytic philosophers had just the right hammer for the nail. I’m not saying that philosophy has little or no effect on political reality. It’s a very difficult thing to say, after all, just how political change happens, and without knowing that, it’s hard to know what role philosophy might and should play in that change. But I fear that the thought that what we need, politically speaking, is analytic philosophy – and in particular the tools of analytic epistemology and philosophy of language – is one more legitimation myth of which we should be suspicious. After all, it would be convenient for us as professional philosophers not only if our somewhat peculiar skills turned out to be essential for the pursuit of justice, but also if it turned out that the use of those skills could render political revolution, especially violent revolution, unnecessary. For, if the revolution did come, surely many of us here would have much to lose. Amia Srinivasan Commenting on Jason Stanley's How Propaganda Works.

There are three reasons why public reviewing and commenting is important, and why I often blog about these. First, it is a way to maintain quality in a public way. Too much of the profession’s quality control is not transparent: we referee, recommend, and make hiring decisions largely behind closed doors and protected by anonymity. Editors are accountable to nobody. Most of our professional decisions are scrutinized by a handful of folk at most. So, in many ways we run our profession as a closed shop with non-transparent rules of the game. (This is also true of grant agencies.) Second, reviews and authors-meets-critics sessions give us a look under the proverbial hood: we learn about the personal idiosyncrasies, the meta-philosophical sensibilities, and the normative and psychical commitments that animate all our works and judgments. Third, they remind us of the intrinsically social nature of professional philosophy—the reviews reveal our antipathies, comradeship, emulation, friendships, and rivalries. While we are often drawn to the agonistic elements of such exchanges, we are all uplifted by genuine mutual improvement and understanding.

Srinivasan understands Jason Stanley’s book as “an internal critique of American society” that is intended to “be rationally compelling to the privileged elite.” In so doing, Stanley uses the tools of, especially, analytic epistemology and philosophy of language. There is much evidence for this interpretation in the book (and also some of Stanley’s public opinion pieces [recall and here]).

Even so it is not entirely right. (We may say that Srinivasan romanticizes the American elite, but there is no reason to think that Stanley does so.) In fact, Stanley is not really addressing the elites – the 1% -- on their own terms. Given Stanley’s evident interest in Lippmann (an interest he shares with Bruno Latour and Graham Harman) [while recognizing that Stanley has different aims], we may reformulate Srinivasan’s interpretation as follows: Stanley offers an internal critique of American society that is intended to be rationally compelling to the intellectuals (journalists, think tank types, policy advisers, judges, professors, etc.) as well as the children of the 1% and other students that help shape the opinions of the privileged without ever really questioning their more fundamental interests.*

Stanley’s engages this intellectual elite by presupposing a kind of shared commitment to a deliberative and unifying understanding of public life (recall). For example, when he appeals to Madison’s Federalist 10, he claims that "an election campaign is supposed to present candidates seeking to show that they have the common interests of all citizens at heart." Here Stanley emphasizes the ways in which elections are meant to unify, but he does not note that Madison simultaneously insists that the elected are in some sense superior to the electors.

This is not deny that sometimes Stanley is clearly also addressing fellow philosophers when he borrows our jargon to block a possible objection in, for example, his rather technical meta-philosophical use of Tarski [recall]). But in the book the tools of analytical philosophy are used to create a shared space in which, for all its knowingness, democracy becomes idealized as one of the main loci of rationality and reasonableness. That is, Stanley is (to adopt his own terminology) producing supporting propaganda in the service of certain democratic ideals that he thinks he shares with this elite. (Stanley is not secretive about this.)

Srinivasian is too polite to mention (but her presentation has already shown it) that there is no intrinsic connection between justice and the tools of analytic epistemology and philosophy of language. These tools lend themselves as much to sophistry as they do virtue; this is because the tools of analytical philosophy have no substantive commitment to the Good—the ends are given from without which is why analytical philosophy can be found in the service of technocracy as much as it can be found promoting justice. (The more familiar, legitimation myth that developed in the aftermath of the rejection of Heidegger, that analytical philosophy is an Enlightenment philosophy is also hollow—our tools are simply too esoteric.) One can recognize the truth of the previous three sentences without accepting another myth, that is, that our cherished tools are topic neutral. (I owe you a further illustration of this claim when I turn to Stanley’s treatment of concepts some day.)

Of course, the relationship between any philosophical movement and politics is a complex one. As is well known, in a famous passage in the Republic (recall my treatment of 592ab), Socrates commits himself to a very indirect participation in politics; Socrates's private self-governance is intrinsically political because it  engages in ongoing speculative political theory and his own emendation is (as it were) patterned on, and oriented toward, the heavenly political city. But the direct public expression of this politics is curtailed. As Seneca recommends, rather than trying to be philosopher-kings, the philosopher should aim to legislate for the future. Stanley deviates from this template by participating actively in our public debates of the day, while maintaining a professional profile on the edge of the research frontier.

As Srinivasan reminds us forthrightly that, unlike Socrates, contemporary (professional) philosophers have been lured into attachments of property, income, and status. (The fact that Republican, presidential candidates attack philosophy as a proxy for attacking the whole elite culture is evidence for this otherwise surprising last point.) That is to say, she suggests that our class interest aligns us with the other intellectuals that serve the 1%. It does not follow, of course, we all follow our class interest, but it is to be expected that those that deviate too far from it, by undermining it, will face professional obstacles. Of course, her official point in the quoted paragraph is that our tools are impotent to prevent the political harms that may befall us--we may imagine that we are autonomous, but we are, too, leaves that blow along with the forces of history.

An impatient reader may wonder why I am tiptoeing around Srinivasan's almost explicit suggestion that violent revolution may well be necessary in order to promote justice. (It does not follow that she advocates violent revolution because we would need to learn more about her attitude toward necessity and other ultimate ends.)  Srinivasan seems to imply that there are two roads open to us: (A) a (doomed) internal critique that aims to reform what is left of democratic elite intellectual opinion by drawing on a shared fantasy of rational democracy or (B) the acknowledgment that if the internal critique fails, a violent revolution that will shuffle the classes is a live possibility. While routine state violence is bad enough, other forms of politicized violence and rhetorics that condone these are being normalized again. Unless philosophers can develop political alternatives to (A-B), Srinivasan's words may well turn out to be prophetic.**

 

 

RIP: Johan Cruyff: 1947-2016

De waarheid is nooit precies zoals je denkt dat hij zou zijn. [The truth is never exactly like you think he would be.]--Johan Cruyff.

The first professional soccer (voetbal) match I ever saw in person was at old the Olympic Stadium 7 november 1978. It was a good 30 minute walk from my childhood home, and my mom's friend, Max, took me. Max was the son of a sailor; he and his dad introduced me to sambal--an Indonesian hot sauce that I continue to adore. Unfortunately, Max died rather young.

The match, an arranged exhibit, marked the first official 'retirement' of Johan Cruyff and, simultaneously, ended the first golden age of Dutch football: Ajax of Amsterdam got completely outplayed (0-8) by Beckenbauer's Bayern Munchen. I went home in tears. (I was seven years old.) These days my dad lives next to the (renovated) stadium, although it is now more modest in size and not used for football anymore.

It's hard to explain the role of Johan Cruyff during the 1970s in Amsterdam and Barcelona. One year, my own club (AFC) took all the youth teams to the movies to see a special showing of Nummer 14--a 1973 documentary about Cruyff (see here, too). The title of the film was a reference to his shirt number. It caused a major crisis among my friends: would we go in the Ajax club colors, to honor our idol, or go in (the more stylish) AFC club colors. (I believe I opted for a mixed outfit.)

The documentary is a homage to the greatest club squad ever (the 1972 Ajax team). The best scene in the film is the one in which the annoying musical sound track is halted to show how the squad of my heroes is forced to run up the 'mountain' in het Amsterdamse bos (the Amsterdam forest), which was the huge depression era, man-made forest behind my childhood home. I always think of the scene when I bike by the forest or fly over it when I land at Schiphol.

Cruyff eventually resumed his career as a player, including a successful stint at arch-enemy Feyenoord, and, eventually, a manager. In his 30s, when I saw him play regularly, he had lost speed, but he still combined a velvet touch with on-pitch insight. He could make many much fitter and faster professional players look amateurish.

Like many kids of my generation, I was born 'too late.' We mostly missed out on the 60s and 70s in which Amsterdam was the center of the world (or so we were told); and we certainly missed the golden age of Ajax in the late 60s and early 70s; we spent most of our childhood hearing about the great club and national squads from older friends and relatives. This changed when Cruyff returned to Ajax to coach in the mid 1980s. He inherited a very talented, youthful team including a whole new generation of fantastic players (e.g., Menzo, Rijkaard and Van Basten), but he manifestly improved them, and I loved watching them develop in person. The team was uneven, but on its best days it could dazzle (including a memorable goal by Van Basten). Cruyff took them back to the near-elite of European footbal (including the cup winners cup). Even so, his greatest European managing triumph took place in Barcelona when he managed them to their first European Championship (in 1992).

As the years went by Cruyff became known for his oracular aphorisms uttered during TV interviews or commentary. Cruyff, who spoke in a distinctive Amsterdam working class accent that has now largely disappeared from Amsterdam, could compete with any Ancient sage with his philosophical nuggets. My favorite one has always been, Als ik zou willen dat je het begreep, had ik het wel beter uitgelegd, that is, "If I had wanted you to understand it, I would have explained it better." (Another gem is Vaak moet er iets gebeuren voordat er iets gebeurt, "Often something has to happen before something happens.") In Holland, Elk nadeel heb z'n voordeel ("every disadvantage has its advantage") has entered the popular lexicon.

One final thought on the 1974 world cup final (recall also this post). During the last forty years, the Netherlands has fielded astoundingly talented national squads, including four others that had a legitimate shot at winning it all (and here I am leaving aside the most talented one that I saw self-destruct at San Siro in Milan in 1990). Cruyff has loomed so large in the national football imagination, that there has always been an underlying sense that, if Cruyff couldn't do it, it couldn't be done, until, of course, it will be done.  

 

Is it really Spinoza? (Part II)

Yesterday, I articulated some of my reservations about the idea that the "Graat Spinoza" is really depicting, well, you know, the person Spinoza. Today I visited the art-dealer, Mr. Vecht, and had a chance to inspect the painting in person. I also spoke at length with Mr. Vecht and his research assistant about their detailed converging argument for their attribution. He has promised me to send me the dossier he has assembled about the painting and the idea that it is really a painting of Spinoza. As I noted yesterday, if it is, then it would be the only portrait of Spinoza that we have that was made while Spinoza was still alive.

For, in what follows, I am going to assume the painting really was by Graat, and was really made in 1666; I have no expertise in that area, although it would be nice to rule out a later date of composition. One general oddity about this particular painting is that it surfaces in France in 1982 without earlier traces in the historical records. (The painter is not obscure.) Thus far, no evidence of prior possession or re-sale has materialized. If the painting is authentic, this entails it probably was in the possession of a single family for a very long stretch.

In fact, in person, when you look at the 'Graat Spinoza' painting, it's difficult not to think, this is Spinoza.

So, my heart is fully convinced, but my head not.

Yesterday, I already noted several reasons for thinking that the iconography of the painting is un-Spinozistic, and I have not changed my mind about that. The Italianite background is quite clearly meant to portray the Pantheon in Rome. Its familiar dome and the fries are both clearly and separately visible. The somewhat clumsily drawn little village on the hill (in front of the mountain) also seems to be Rome--Egyptian style Roman obelisks are clearly visible. Now, while it's possible to associate Spinoza with ancient Republicanism (albeit not in 1666), the Pantheon is no such symbol. It is an imperial monument. And there is little reason to associate Spinoza with Rome or the idea of classical learning. Of course, Spinoza may not have controlled the painter's or the commissioning person's decisions about how to portray him.

Anyway, I owe you an evaluation of the positive evidence and argument in favor of the painting's attribution, and I look forward to sharing that with you. But here I want to offer one further reason why, if this is Spinoza, it is a departure from what one would have expected a painting of him to look like. To see why, let me remind you of an iconic painting, Hals's (1649) Descartes:

To the best of my knowledge there is no controversy that this is really Descartes. It is a sober painting, especially by Hals's standards. (Again, I am no art historian, but many of Hals's other portrait paintings make me think that he anticipates impressionism--and, on the whole, the accouterments of wealth and luxury are not disguised in them.) Now, this image of Descartes sets the tone for two other iconic images of early modern philosophers. Here's John Michael Wright’s portrait of Thomas Hobbes, which hangs in the National Portrait Gallery in London:

There was, of course, little love lost between Descartes and Hobbes, but it is striking that their portraits share some characteristics: the dark background that allows the face to be illuminated, the sober style of dress, the uncovered head, and the visible, foregrounded hand. In fact, Wright's Hobbes (unlike Cooper's Hobbes in the Cleveland museum)  is a fitting rival to Hals's Descartes. (There are  more portraits of Hobbes, but most of them have a family resemblance to the Wright Hobbes in composition and temperament.) And, this is how I always understood the Wolfenbüttel-Spinoza:

The Wolfenbüttel-Spinoza, which is a bit idealized, is almost certainly intended to evoke and rival Hals's Descartes. (It lacks the visible hand.)

Obviously, there are problems with thinking of these three images as the way one ought to conceive a seventeenth century philosopher; it reinforces gender-stereotypes. So, here's Jan Lievens' Anna Maria van Schurman (ca 1649):

Here Van Schuurman's literacy and learning is emphasized in a way that is absent in the paintings above. In part, this also represents a feature of their celebrity--the novatores were not proud of their learning (although Hobbes certainly was an excellent classicist, and Descartes probably had undergone the best classical education available in his day). By contrast, Van Schuurman was noted for her learning, and her philosophical writings are expressed in the older, Scholastic idiom.  (To be sure, I am not claiming there is any relationship between Lievens's Van Schuurman and Hals's Descartes from the same year.)

By contrast, while the Graat Spinoza (below) has an undeniable resemblance to the Wolfenbüttel-Spinoza, it evokes a very different atmosphere. We are, in fact, far removed from Descartes's Hals. To put it simply, while the portrait fits what we would expect Spinoza to look like, it does not fit what one would expect from a portrait of Spinoza the philosopher alongside Hobbes and Descartes.

 

 

 

 

 

 

It may look like Spinoza, but it's (probably) not.

The portrait is attributed to Barend Graat (and dated to 1666). It was exhibited at a prestigious Dutch art fair (TEFAF in Maastricht) by the dealer A. Vecht. The dealer, Dutch media (see here NIW) and blogs have all discerned Spinoza in this portrait. (HT Wim Klever on facebook.) This is no surprise because the portrait has an uncanny resemblance to the iconic portrait of Spinoza found on the old 1000 Guilders note (beloved by drug dealers and tax evaders):

The portrait on the 1000 Gulden note was almost certainly inspired by the famous (posthumous) 'Wolfenbütteler- portrait (HT Stan Verdult):

It is not impossible that the 'Wolfenbütteler portrait' was inspired by the painting now attributed to Barend Graat. And I am inclined to believe that the same person is portrayed in the 'Wolfenbütteler portrait,' the Graat-Spinoza, and 1000 Gulden note.

There is another posthumous portrait of Spinoza (dating from ca 1680) which was attached to some editions of his posthumous works, presumably by people who knew Spinoza. In my subjective view this is not obviously the same portrayed person as Wolfenbütteler portrait'/'Graat-Spinoza,' but decide for yourself thanks to a nicely edited image by Stan Verdult:

However, it is reported that in the judgment of the Het Nationaal Forensisch Onderzoeksbureau (NFO), it is more probable that these are all the same person than not. (One wonders if they think the probabilities are the same for each of the three portraits.) I have contacted the Institute, and when I hear back from them I'll report on my findings.

Be that as it may, the 'Graat Spinoza' has the advantage of being produced in Spinoza's life-time, and for all I know we will find documentary evidence (a sales contract, an estate catalogue, etc.) linking the portrait more directly to Spinoza. But for now it is worth being skeptical, and I would like to offer some reasons for this.

First, as Julie Cooper has argued Spinoza was against intellectual celebrities and cults of personality, which he identified with Descartes. This is not to claim that Spinoza thought biographical details were wholly irrelevant to the interpretation of his texts (as they are, say, in the interpretation of Euclid). But the biographical details that he and his friends thought that mattered are the ones that we learn primarily from his correspondence and terse autobiographical comments scattered through his texts. These letters were carefully selected/culled and generate a textual, composite portrait published alongside his other writings.

Second, except for the apparent likeness to what we think Spinoza looked like, the Graat-Spinoza portrait fails to connect Spinoza's personal or intellectual biography. The portrait does not include lenses or signs of lens-crafting; nor does the painting connect to Spinoza's then most important claim to fame: the 1663 Principia philosophiae cartesianae. The man portrayed is neither very learned nor obviously one of the philosophical Cartesian novatores (as, say, Leibniz saw him before he read Spinoza's Theological Political Treatise).

Third, the background includes a sculpture, fantasy architecture, a pyramid, and a mountain-landscape. I honestly do not see how this connects to either Cartesian or Spinozist themes of the day; if anything Spinoza's philosophy has warnings against taking the fantasies of the imagination seriously. The sculpture seems to hold a Sun-image in her hand, and maybe one can connect that with light-giving philosophy. But we're far removed from the inner light that Descartes and Spinoza preferred; this sun image is more akin to the imagery one associates with free-masons. I am not denying that there are neo-Platonic elements in Spinoza's thought (I have argued for that myself), but the solar image in this portrait is not associated with knowledge or astronomy, etc. (And again, Spinoza's lenses were also used in astronomy in the period.)

Fourth, even if we allow that despite his known skepticism about paintings being mute and passive (recall), Spinoza was vain enough to commission such a portrait or to agree to have such a portrait commissioned, he was presumably too poor to pay for it himself at the time. So, this must have been commissioned by an admirer. But the known admirers of the period are all folk that were attracted to Spinoza for either his ability to engage with their theological concerns, or to provide them with a guide to life. Again, right now I do not see any reason to connect this painting to such themes. So, until there is new evidence, I remain skeptical of the claim that Spinoza is being portrayed in the "Graat-Spinoza.' [UPDATE: For more on this issue, see here.]

 

Ibn Rushd's Account of the Rise, nature and Fall of Political Virtue

Thus whoever tampers with them, by making an allegorical interpretation not apparent in itself, or [at least] not more apparent to everyone than they are (and that [greater apparency] is something non-existent), is rejecting their wisdom and rejecting their intended effects in procuring human happiness. This is very apparent from [a comparison of] the condition of the first believers with the condition of those who came after them. For the first believers arrived at perfect virtue and fear of God only by using these sayings [of Scripture] without interpreting them allegorically; and anyone of them who did find out an allegorical interpretation did not think fit to express it [to others]. But when those who came after them used allegorical interpretation, their fear of God grew less, their dissensions increased, their love for one another was removed, and they became divided into sects.--Ibn Rushd, The Decisive Treatise (Treatise 3), p. 69, translated by George Fadlou Hourani.

translated by George Fadlou Hourani.

In these lines, in the context of his treatment of the proper stance by experts/learned to sharing their esoteric/allegorical interpretations of Scripture with the non-learned (see the first sentence [and recall]), offers a terse natural history of the rise and fall of political virtue ("perfect virtue and fear of God") that is coextensive with (and historically only coextensive with) the (first) Ummah. The very stylized natural history has three stages which I analyze below. Before I get to that I note that he relies on a distinction between the many and the learned/experts.

In the Decisive Treatise, we learn little about the characterization of the first stage. It's clearly an imperfect polity to some degree. But he does not say what the ingredients are that made it receptive to becoming a better (if not best city). We know he cared about characterizing the political (and demographic) pre-conditions that make such virtue possible elsewhere (for example in his commentary on Plato's Republic). But we do learn they required revelation to reach it. In particular, they relied on a literal interpretation of the sayings. Ibn Rushd does not distinguish here between the "sayings" (or Hadith) of the prophet and the Quranic text (and I will not do so either)--both constitute Sharia for generations of Muslims. (Of course, the members of the first Ummah have more immediate access to the Prophet's sayings than later generations, who had to rely on memory and compilers and for whom the sayings also become textual.) Sometimes, I will 'revelation' to refer to such sayings.

That is to say in virtue of understanding and obeying the dictates of the literal meaning of revelation by the populace of the imperfect polity the community is made more perfect both in the sense of becoming more virtuous and by embracing the fear of God. Obviously, the previous sentence glosses over lots of political and psychological mechanisms that, if known, may be very illuminating on how to move from imperfect to more perfect city. He also suggests (and this echoes, recall, earlier passages in the Decisive Treatise) that those, if there were any, who discerned and understood the allegorical or esoteric bits of revelation keep quiet (recall also this post). (It's not clear if they do so from fear or self-command.)

As an aside, this is a model of human community in which the experts do not communicate with each other or others. As we have seen, elsewhere Ibn Rushd allows the experts to talk to each other, but not the larger community. 

The main thing we learn about the second stage, the community of the first believers, is that it does not reproduce itself.  But in his treatment of the third stage, we also learn that the second stage is characterized by, "fear of God," political and religious unity, and mutual love.* Unfortunately, in this text he does not describe that these qualities entail. The third stage is characterized by less fear of God, political disunity, mutual animosity, and sectarianism.

Now unlike Plato's Republic, here Ibn Rushd does not point to the failure of sexual breeding to explain the cause of decline between the more perfect second and the less perfect third stage(s). (Ibn Rushd discusses this in his commentary on the Republic, although he does not follow Plato slavishly on this point--some other time more about this.) But, rather,  he suggests that the decline is set in due to the fact that revelation invites non-literal interpretations which become familiar to the masses. And he implies that allegorical interpretations are not capable of generating consensus or unity among the (vulgar) masses. As Borges discerned, Ibn Rushd treats allegorical interpretations that are shared with the non-learned as akin to poetry--meanings  multiply over time.** In fact, his treatment entails that in the generations subsequent to the first believers, those attracted to allegorical interpretations do not keep quiet (this is connected to his criticism of Al-Ghazali's willingness to share allegory with the masses elsewhere in the Decisive Treatise, and (recall) his criticism of the "Mutakallimun" elsewhere). In fact, he seems to rely on a distinction between the ethical/political teachings of Scripture(s) which is literally available to all, and the more abstruse metaphysical/scientific teachings of Scripture(s) which can only be discerned by the few expert-learned.

But this entails there are two, related political problems with revelation. First, revelation invites non literal interpretation of some of its verses (see Quran 3:7) and, in so, doing it undermines the possible stability of meaning not just of the allegorical texts, but the rest of texts (it renders more of the text poetic, we might say). Second, the community of the first believers does not have the right educational institutions that educate/cultivate would-be-allegorists or the learned and, thereby, confine esoteric knowledge to the experts. So, from Ibn Rushd's perspective, revelation needs to be supplemented by a proper political science. This entails that Ibn Rushd rejects Al-Ghazali's claim that revelation is sufficient for political life.

"Mutakallimun"