When I read people from the early 20th century...discussing their reluctance to issue normative pronouncements I frequently get something like the following impression....Our forbearers were very keen to avoid any suggestion that others should defer to their pronouncements on moral matters, they really did not think they should be deferred to as if they were some kind of intelligentsia secular-priesthood. They wanted to avoid it being possible to illegitimately translate the epistemic authority and bully-pulpit one gains as a professor into an ability to command or sway others with especial [sic] authority, since they thought that we have not earned that or for other reasons should not be granted it. Of course one gets involved in moral and political life as a private citizen; but one does so there as an equal, one voice among many. Where one is in some sense speaking or acting with professional authority one must avoid treating one's lectern as a bully pulpit, since one has no right to that bully pulpit.
Standing behind this... is some kind of egalitarian ideal of non-imposition, and a vision of the proper role of intellectuals in public life. I find that people launching the Berlin-esque critique frequently just brush this aside, and treat these people like they are shallow technocrats with no interest in public life....But it seems to me that it's at least plausible that the early analytics were on to something important here, that is worthy of serious reflection in metaphilosophy, and it wasn't just a refusal to engage but a bit of principled egalitarian politics that guided their decisions. As it stands I don't think this non-imposition ideal is quite viable in our present social circumstances -- this because I think that if we none of us say explicitly say ``I think you should adopt these ends'' but it just so happens that all of the professoriate only treat certain goals as worth taking seriously, we have collectively violated the spirit of this egalitarian ideal of non-imposition, even if no-one of us did individually. But those social circumstances are potentially subject to change, and in any case perhaps the ideal could be refined to account for that.
Plenty of my colleagues in philosophy are responding to recent events by saying that we should, as a profession, be more involved in public life. I quite agree, and as noted I think Berlin was on to something in his critique of the more limited or technocratic mode of political engagement. But I also do sometimes get the impression that some ... of those who launch critiques of technocratic political philosophy really do have designs on operating as a kind secular-priesthood, and have authoritarian ideas of how `layfolk' should relate to the moral-expert professoriate. The early analytic reluctance, when under the guise of a moral professor, to issue normative pronouncements about the proper ends of social life can start to seem very sympathetic to me when I am struck by this. So I hope that not only do we start to engage more with the world of practical affairs, but that as we do so we are self-conscious and reflective about the way in which we relate to our fellow citizens.--Liam Kofi Bright "Defending Technocrats" @The Sooty Empiric.
Liam's very interesting remarks are a response to one of my older post that I recently recirculated again. For the record: I edited his remarks a bit, and so removed some of his careful hedging/clarifications. For the purpose of clarification, let me offer some working definitions of different kinds of philosophers:
- the philosopher as secular-priest: somebody that deploys publicly the epistemic authority and normative bully-pulpit one gains from being a professor in order to pronounce in normative fashion on current affairs from a superior-in-some-sense perspective
- the philosopher as technocrat: somebody that takes (shared) normative ends as given and works out the implications of these akin to an engineer.
The first thing to recognize is that the philosopher qua secular-priest and qua technocrat need not be in tension with each other. One can be a secular-priest philosopher in one's public utterances and be a technocrat in one's (more esoteric) professional publications. The philosopher qua secular-priest and qua technocrat only may seem to oppose each other if the technocrat wishes to pursue her craft in public. These comments do not exhaust the possibilities, of course. But here I shall remain focused on public philosophy (which recall I distinguish conceptually from punditry and advocacy). I distinguish among three kinds of public philosophy (recall). I associate the 'public' in public philosophy with a shared life or common good. That is, public philosophy so understood is committed to a form of minimal political unity--a unity that is constituted by (educational) practices, narratives, and public understandings that facilitate some dispositions conducive to minimal, political union. (In a community of angels or philosophers there would be no need of public philosophy.)
First I list two species of direct public philosophy, which can draw on the results/insights or distinctions of professional philosophy, but need not do so. Then I mention a third indirect species:
- Normative interventions or participation in public debates by professional philosophers and those trained in professional philosophy.
- A genre of writing and speaking by intellectuals, who are not professional philosophers -- and do not engage in the debates/discussions among professionals --, yet engage public(s) on philosophical topics. (Sometimes these are topics that are not much discussed by recent professional philosophy.)
- Facilitating or enhancing social norms, public practices, and political institutions conducive to a common good is an indirect form of public philosophy. For such practices can instantiate rational arrangements that make possible, perhaps, constitute a common good which I will provisionally define (recall) as mutual accommodation and modest forms of mutual receptivity such that public conversation -- not war or domination -- can be continued.
Now, let's return to Liam Kofi Bright's analysis of the philosopher qua secular-priest and qua technocrat; it should be immediately clear that these two modes of being do not exhaust the way one can be a public philosopher. His account of the practice(s) of early analytical philosophers on these matters is evocative of a species of Weberianism, whose influence of analytical philosophy is not sufficiently appreciated (recall Weber's (1917) Science as Vocation, "the true teacher will beware of imposing from the platform any political position upon the student, whether it is expressed or suggested." By contrast: "When speaking in a political meeting about democracy, one does not hide one's personal standpoint; indeed, to come out clearly and take a stand is one's damned duty. The words one uses in such a meeting are not means of scientific analysis but means of canvassing votes and winning over others." (10)) As an aside, Weber is clear that public philosophy is the realm of opinion not truth.
Bright's early analytical philosopher primarily practices indirect public philosophy. Even her most public interventions tend to be aimed at facilitating more rational public practices and discussions rather than articulating a normative position as such. Often these interventions have firm ground in normative commitments (in early analytical philosophy these are often treated as optative choices beyond rational scrutinity/grounding--a point Bright ignores), but these are, as it were, withheld with great self-command in order to facilitate a better operation of public reason (recall this post on Stebbing; and this one). Surprisingly enough, here early analytical philosophers anticipate the practices of contemporary students of Foucault (and Deleuze)--who often unmask away this or that public practice and offer us maps of local terrains/practices while intimating their own normative stances, but without defending them.
So, there are at least three kinds of philosophers:
- the philosopher as secular-priest: somebody that deploys publicly the epistemic authority and normative bully-pulpit one gains from being a professor in order to pronounce in normative fashion on current affairs from a superior-in-some-sense perspective
- the philosopher as technocrat: somebody that takes (shared) normative ends as given and works out the implications of these akin to an engineer.
- the philosopher as social facilitator: somebody that engages in public philosophy in order to help stabilize or promote social norms, public practices, and political institutions conducive to a common good
Of course, there are more species of philosophy, some of them highly relevant to our practices of public philosophy. (I have written on the philosopher-prophet (recall); the philosopher-quietist, the Socratic political philosopher, the puzzle-solver, etc.) My modest point here today is that one can reject being a philosopher qua secular-priest as much as being a philosopher qua technocrat. While there were secular priests among the early analytical philosophers (Russell comes to mind), they tended to understand these priestly practices as distinct from philosophy as such. In fact, I would suggest that the truly striking fact about the recent public turn in analytical philosophy, is that many of its best practitioners combine elements of the secular-priest and the technocrat, that is, they become priestly technocrats. Our friends combine an unquestionable commitment to a robust species of moral realism, and they assume they have access to the normative implications that follow from it. (I take this to be saying pretty much the same as Bright's they "do have designs on operating as a kind secular-priesthood, and have authoritarian ideas of how `layfolk' should relate to the moral-expert professoriate.")
Bright expressed his reservations about priestly technocrats by appealing to a kind of sympathetic norm of respect toward our "fellow citizens." Unfortunately, Bright here assumes a shared egalitarian ideal. But it is by no means obvious that the (let's stipulate meritocratic) priestly type embraces this ideal in their hearts. More often than not the priestly type pontificates on the cognitive biases of the lay-folk, which undermine their capacities. Even if they do recognize the ideal as binding on themsleves, it is by no means obvious that the incentives under which our priestly-technocrats flourish promote such an ideal of egalitarianism. Rather, our institutional incentives tend to promote imprudent, expert over-confidence and lack of attention to the cognitive biases on the experts' themselves. I am not suggesting here that these facts explain the reticence of some of our forefathers and foremothers (which may have multiple, overlapping sources), although I would not be surprised if they did.
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