Digressions&Impressions

Happy Holidays!

I intended to write an end of year post, but ran out of time due to grading papers.

I want to thank this year's guest post authors, Joel Katzav, Abe Stone, and David A. Haig for sharing their insights on my blog. I also want to thank you, my dear loyal, discerning, and critical reader for your ongoing interest. During the year (my fifth at solo-blogging), the the one thousand Impression was published. (Yeah for ballooners!)

I'll return to digressing in the first week of January.

Happy holidays!

The problem of Arithmetic and True Representation; On Checks and Balances

The founders set themselves apart forever from the naive theorists of democracy. They saw, in Burke's phrase, that the constitution of a state is not a "problem of arithmetic." So they refused to identify the will of the people with the transient plurality of the voters in one constituency. They did not say, for example, that if the whole mass of persons votes once, and if one party has 34 per cent of the votes and the other two have 33 per cent each, the winner in the contest is the true representative of the people. They thought of "the people" as having many dimensions in space, in time, in weight, in quality. They thought, as Burke did, that a society is "a partnership in all science  a partnership in all arts a partnership in every virtue, and in all perfection," and "as the ends of such a partnership cannot be obtained in many generations," a civil society is "a partnership not only between those who are living, but between those who are living, those who are dead, and those who are to be born." The American founders sought to represent this many-sided people and they thought of the people's will as an equilibrium of its many elements. And so in their practical arrangement they sought to make the government as nearly representative as possible of the many facets of the popular will, of the people acting as citizens of local communities, acting as citizens of regions, of states, of the nation, acting with remembrance of the past, acting as they felt at the moment, acting as they would feel after fuller consideration. For they gave no credence to the idea that one periodic count of heads could elicit the real will of a large population. The founders sought to approximate a true representation of the people by providing many different ways of counting heads. For the national government, itself a federation of states with complex forms of representation, they provided a House elected for two years from fairly small constituencies of equal size; a Senate in which one third only was elected every two years from the states that is, from constituencies of varying size; a President, chosen, as they conceived it, by electors from the separate states, and for a term of four years, which did not correspond with that of any one group of the legislators; a judiciary appointed for life after confirmation by the Senate. Thus no two branches of the government were chosen by the same constituency or for the same term of office. They provided that for ordinary laws a majority of both Houses and the President must concur, that a two-thirds majority may prevail over the President, that for treaties two thirds of the Senate must concur with the President. They then provided that all the powers exercised by the legislative and the executive branch were subject to the supreme law of the land, and that their specific acts would be invalid if contrary to the Constitution. They provided that the supreme law of the Constitution could be amended only by a complex vote which would ensure as nearly as possible that the decision had been fully considered, that all men had had a chance to hear the issues debated, and that many more than a mere majority had been convinced. Walter Lippmann (1938) The Good Society, 253-5

Last week, I attended a lecture by the eminent political theorist, Elizabeth Cohen, on her book The Political Value of Time. It made me alert to the passage from Lippmann whom (recall) I was reflecting on. (So today's Digression is a hommage to her work.) We ordinarily think, I think, of checks and balances in terms of separation of powers with the aim to prevent one power from dominating the others. Lippmann is not unaware of that argument and I'll presuppose familiarity with that strain of thinking here. But it's notable that this is not Lippmann's focus in the passage quoted. 

Rather, he introduces the topic, while mentioning Madison, in terms of what he calls "the refinement of the popular will" on which "a progressive society must depend." (260; see also 250). This is an allusion to Madison's claim in Federalist 10, in which Madison explains the difference between a republic and a democracy.* The way Lippmann (re-)interprets Madison the refinement of the popular will is not, primarily, an epistemic discovery procedure (a la Condorcet), but rather a means toward developing a proper (democratic) character. (If you are a Marxist feel free to add that he is defending the interests of the landed, propertied classes.) So that the intentions of the masses/mob are turned into a proper popular will of citizens. To be sure, there is also an epistemic element ("true representation"), but that's not the main emphasis.**

Lippmann's key insight is that this requires not just the slowing down of the process -- to make time for deliberation, and second thoughts, but also, and more important, a means to allow the many dimensions of our lives and interests to be voiced differently (in different districts and in different kinds of representation) and at different times.

I don't think this is Lippmann's most important insight in the book, or that the US constitution is especially good at (generating an "equilibrium" out of) this decomposition designed to generate as many facets of citizens's personality as possible. (Lippmann, too, emphasizes the constitution's imperfections.) But even so, i think there is something important in the idea that a true democracy is one in which the complex, even in some sense paradoxical features of social reality are manifested. 

The previous paragraph may sound highfalutin, but I mean to note that Lippmann helps us convey the nature of true democracy in which the very same citizen can vote for, say, Obama, Trump, and Klobuchar (etc.). And that in so doing, democratic life cannot be reduced to the expression of counting heads at a particular moment, but becomes something extended indefinitely in the future. To be part of democratic process is not to arrive at a final decision, but to make future perspectives on decisions possible.+

I did not put the last point in especially charming matter, and also I came close to turning it into a philosophical exercise. But rather, the underlying (somewhat Protestant) sensibility allows that sometimes the partnership is criminal; but the partnership is meant to exhibit delayed gratification, the welcoming of divergent views and reversals of opinion, and of manifesting (to echo the Platonists on democracy) the wonderful and often chaotic appearing tapestry of peoples and experiences that are characteristic of democracy at its best. 

The Possible, the Prefigurative, and the Impossible in Graeber's Debt

The demise of ancient slavery was not limited to Europe. Remarkably, right around the same time — in the years around 600 ad — we find almost exactly the same thing happening in India and China, where, over the course of centuries, amidst much unrest and confusion, chattel slavery largely ceased to exist. What all this suggests is that moments of historical opportunity — moments when meaningful change is possible — follow a distinct, even a cyclical pattern, one that has long been far more coordinated across geographical space than we would ever have imagined. There is a shape to the past, and it is only by understanding it that we can begin to have a sense of the historical opportunities that exist in the present.--David Graeber, Debt: The First 5000 Years, p. 212.

Part of Graeber's project is to expand our historical imagination. This is intended to combat a noxious form of status quo bias: namely that we assume that our present institutions are necessary in some sense (because lacking in viable alternatives).  But Graeber's is not claiming that any alternative is possible at any given time (recall this post on the significance of modality Graeber). Rather, it seems, one must judge if one is at the moment of (revolutionary) opportunity in a historical process (or cycle). Before I get to that sense of opportunity, a few preliminary observations.

At high degree of granularity,* these processes are world-wide phenomena. To avoid possible confusion about Graeber's position, the processes are largely uncoordinated by agents (he offers examples of co-development or co-invention [coinage] without any historical causal chain), even if the resulting processes produce coordinated patterns. From the agents' perspectives the patterns may often be hard to discern ("confusion"). And those agents that lack -- say due to technological or communicative limitations -- a perspective on the coordinated patterns, may never discern them. That is to say, and this is not a criticism, Graeber's position which entails a possibility to discern the coordinated pattern may itself be historically exceptional. In fact, Graeber is extremely unusual (recall) in his willingness to acknowledge that violence is constitutive of, and makes possible his situated global perspective. He is writing from within empire, and he knows he benefits from it.

Now, because Graeber is quite polemical in various places, one may miss, perhaps, that Graeber clearly wishes to be in some sense to be the prophet of possibility distinct from the status quo. (And, yes, unlike many intellectuals he has been famously involved in attempts at mobilization.) But he is also -- and this is something I find admirable -- quite clear that not all circumstances are right and that sometimes an overt act of rebellion is silly. While commenting on the escapist nature of some religions, he puts the point as follows. 

There is something to be said for escapism. Popular uprisings in the ancient world usually ended in the massacre of the rebels. As I've already observed, physical escape, such as via exodus or defection, has always been the most effective response to oppressive conditions since the earliest times we know about. Where physical escape is not possible, what, exactly, is an oppressed peasant supposed to do? Sit and contemplate her misery? At the very least, otherworldly religions provided glimpses of radical alternatives. Often they allowed people to create other worlds within this one, liberated spaces of one sort or another. It is surely significant that the only people who succeeded in abolishing slavery in the ancient world were religious sects, such as the Essenes — who did so, effectively, by defecting from the larger social order and forming their own Utopian communities. (p. 250).

Graeber here is describing the possibilities inherent in the religious imagination (recall also yesterday's post). Even when faced with overwhelming power, the religious imagination can,  when combined with various forms of social exit, produce local (so-called; recall) prefigurations of lager systematic transformations. 

As an aside, while Graeber's own political sensibilities are far more anarchist (he calls this 'communist') than my own, he identifies here an important role for religious intermediaries. As regular readers know, (recall here and here) I have come to think that the domestication of religion, and increasingly self-domestication of so-called mainline religions, has gone too far. Recently, I have been trying to articulate this in terms of the ways in which religious groups can prevent the collapse of value space (but rather enrich it), but I had missed the ways in which religion can combat status quo bias.** To be sure, liberated spaces of one sort or another do not merely have instrumental value,+ they can be proper ends. A liberalism worth having (recall) recognizes this because play and other meaningful choices presuppose such liberated spaces. 

Okay, let me return to the main argument. Graeber is clear that his historical analysis is not being offered as disinterested explanation. Rather his is a kind of action-guiding genealogy -- Foucault is absent for a reason --, that is designed to give people a sense that we are living at a potential turning point in a cycle, and so, thereby, a prophetical call (see my work on philosophic prophecy). Given that he started the book during the financial meltdown of 2008 and finished up his book during the Arab Spring and in the year of Occupy, this is understandable. Global contagions of revolutionary moments -- even if they may well have different local meaning -- are by now familiar enough. 

In the 2014 "Afterword," Graeber writes about these themes as follows: "there has been...a certain collapse of our collective imaginations. It's almost as if people had been led to believe that the era's technological advances and its greater overall social complexity had had the effect of reducing our political, social, and economic possibilities, rather than expanding them." Graeber hopes that by revealing "how many different ways humans had found to arrange their political and economic lives in the past, and, in doing so, help open up our sense of the future." (394) Graeber is a willing vector in the spread of such contagions. Now, because I often write about reflexivity, you may suspect that I will claim this is self-undermining. But I do not believe this is so. Writing about the historical pattern that largely goes on behind our backs need not undermine it. 

My title promises a word on the impossible in Graeber, but I have gone long enough today. So, let me close with a suspicion. The problem is that Graeber does not take seriously enough the fact that in the vast majority of examples of fascinating alternative institutional arrangements he offers, violence seems to be ever-present and inescapable and is often constitutive of the rather striking anthropological examples he offers. (Graeber is frank about this.) By contrast our present social arrangements succeed in so far as that "violence has been largely pushed out of sight" (210) or, when violence is widely shared on social media, involve, in some sense, imagined others. In fact, as the indifferent response to (say) Black Lives Matters shows, our civilization involves a kind of conditioning or mutual understanding such that to be subject of violence involves some kind of dessert. 

My point is that if our choice is among violent societies and only one kind succeeds somehow in suppressing this fact (not the violence) in various successful ways (and predictably produces folk who claim that violence has been reduced), then the choice for a less sincere and more hypocritical life, and one with more possibilities of consumption, may well be fairly robust.++  For, when violence is pushed out of sight, one can imagine being in a liberated space, and call it freedom.***

 

The PSR, Due Diligence, Plutarch, and Debt (HT Graeber)

§ 1  Plato in his Laws permits not any one to go and draw water from his neighbor's well, who has not first digged and sunk a pit in his own ground till he is come to a vein of clay, and has by his sounding experimented that the place will not yield a spring. For the clay or potter's earth, being of its own nature fatty, solid, and strong, retains the moisture it receives, and will not let it soak or pierce through. But it must be lawful for them to take water from another's ground, when there is no way or means for them to find any in their own; for the law ought to provide for men's necessity, but not favor their laziness. Should there not be the like ordinance also concerning money; that none should be allowed to borrow upon usury, nor to go and dive into other men's purses, — as it were into their wells and fountains, — before they have first searched at home and sounded every means for the obtaining it; having collected (as it were) and gathered together all the gutters and springs, to try if they can draw from them what may suffice to supply their most necessary occasions? But on the contrary, many there are who, to defray their idle expenses and to satisfy their extravagant and superfluous delights, make not use of their own, but have recourse to others, running themselves deeply into debt without any necessity. Now this may easily be judged, if one does but consider that usurers do not ordinarily lend to those which are in distress, but only to such as desire to obtain somewhat that is superfluous and of which they stand not in need. So that the credit given by the lender is a testimony sufficiently proving that the borrower has of his own; whereas on the contrary, since he has of his own, he ought to keep himself from borrowing...

[§2] ...Thus we ought in our affairs, as in a besieged town, never to admit or receive the hostile garrison of a usurer, nor to endure before our eyes the delivering up of our goods into perpetual servitude; but rather to cut off from our table what is neither necessary nor profitable, and in like manner from our beds, our couches, and our ordinary expenses, and so to keep ourselves free and at liberty, in hopes to restore again what we shall have retrenched, if Fortune shall hereafter smile upon us...

§ 3 ....The Goddess Artemis in the city of Ephesus gives to such debtors as can fly into her temple freedom and protection against their creditors; but the sanctuary of parsimony and moderation in expenses, into which no usurer can enter to pluck thence and carry away any debtor prisoner, is always open for the prudent, and affords them a long and large space of joyful and honorable repose. For as the prophetess which gave oracles in the temple of the Pythian Apollo, about the time of the Persian wars, answered the Athenians, that God had for their safety given them a wall of wood, upon which, forsaking their lands, their city, their houses, and all their goods, they had recourse to their ships for the preservation of their liberty; so God gives us a table of wood, vessels of earth, and garments of coarse cloth, if we desire to live and continue in freedom. Aim not at gilded coaches, steeds of price, And harness, richly wrought with quaint device; for how swiftly soever they may run, yet will usuries overtake them and outrun them....

§ 4 ... And as King Darius sent to the city of Athens his lieutenants Datis and Artaphernes with chains and cords, to bind the prisoners they should take; so these usurers, bringing into Greece boxes full of schedules, bills, and obligatory contracts, as so many irons and fetters for the shackling of poor criminals, go through the cities, sowing in them, as they pass, not good and profitable seed, — as did heretofore Triptolemus, when he went through all places teaching the people to sow corn, — but roots and grains of debts, that produce infinite labors and intolerable usuries, of which the end can never be found, and which, eating their way and spreading their sprouts round about, do in fine make cities bend under the burden, till they come to be suffocated. They say that hares at the same time suckle one young leveret, are ready to kindle and bring forth another, and conceive a third; but the usuries of these barbarous and wicked usurers bring forth before they conceive. For at the very delivery of their money, they immediately ask it back, taking it up at the same moment they lay it down; and they let out that again to interest which they take for the use of what they have before lent.

§ 5  It is a saying among the Messenians, Pylos before Pylos, and Pylos still you'll find; but it may much better be said against the usurers, Use before use, and use still more you'll find. So that they laugh at those natural philosophers who hold that nothing can be made of nothing and of that which has no existence; but with them usury is made and engendered of that which neither is nor ever was.--Plutarch, Moralia (translated by  William Watson Goodwin) "Against Running In Debt, or Taking Up Money Upon Usury." [ES: I have not checked the Greek, but hopefully this does not undermine the points I wish to make today.]

In Debt: the First 5000 Years (pp 231-2), David Graeber calls attention to the passage quoted from Plutarch. His excerpt is briefer than my version and he uses the passage to quote Plutarch's likening the role of debt to "a foreign invasion."* Here I have different (ahh) interest in the passage. Before I get to that it's only fair to note Plutarch's main argument, which is that debt is the off-spring of the desire for luxury.  Luxury is something one does not need, and so superfluous.+ And so Plutarch's main argument is a prudential plea for moderation.

This commitment helps explain, in part, what would sound strange to us: "that usurers do not ordinarily lend to those which are in distress, but only to such as desire to obtain somewhat that is superfluous and of which they stand not in need." (Hereafter, the maxim of ordinary usury; or, simply, the maxim.) I suspect Plutarch knew (even lacking Graeber's rich account) that there existed plenty of usury (to the distressed) which was 'non-ordinary' in his sense.++ Even  so the passage provides nice evidence for the thought that due diligence into the ability to repay ("the borrower has of his own"), and perhaps character, was part of the "ordinary" practice of usury among the Greek aristocrats (who could be taken or be seen to afford the superfluous) that Plutarch would have known.

Of course, Plutarch's larger argument is a proposal to regulate debts ("that none should be allowed to borrow upon usury, nor to go and dive into other men's purses, — as it were into their wells and fountains, before they have first searched at home and sounded every means for the obtaining it.") This puts a requirement on any would-be-debtor, and any would-be-creditor, to fund any expenses that would (ahh) ordinarily be funded by credit out of assets (or savings). Once such due diligence has been done, there is de facto no proper need for credit/debt. This suggests, however, a more far-reaching implication. If the due diligence shows that the would-be-borrower is short of collateral or funds, then from Plutarch's perspective there is no grounds for a debt. So, the point of the regulation alongside the Maxim is clearly to prevent the creation of credit to the distressed that become debts that cannot be repaid. The underlying (political) rationale is clear enough because a debtor is, for Plutarch, somebody un-free, that is, halfway down the path to slavery.*

So much for the political angle. Plutarch also notes that the very existence of interest makes a mockery of one of the versions of the Principle of Sufficient Reason, nothing can be made of nothing and of that which has no existence. We tend to associate the principle with Parmenides; writing much later, Plutarch treats it as a common principle among the natural philosophers. Interest violates a principle of equality built into the nature of debt (recall this one); because what is returned is more -- sometimes dis-proportionally more -- than the principal.** 

Of course, there are a whole battery of claims and arguments that interest does represent something (cost of borrowing, opportunity costs, inflation expectation, underlying rate of return in a society, etc.) So, the charging of interest can be made intelligible. And, perhaps, that's sufficient to undermine the idea that interest is somehow un-caused. I like that in the version of the PSR quoted by Plutarch, the PSR is committed to the claim that no thing can be produced by nothing in the sense of not existing. (For, of course, it cuts off a natural temptation to say, in response, that social fictions cause interest!) 

Now, Graeber (recall) has quite interesting things to say about the genealogy of philosophy. He argues that philosophy's origins are grounded in paradoxes of coinage, and that philosophy is the complicit offspring of violent eradication of forms of life. In reflecting on this (and recall this post on the PSR), I had the following free association.

As Graeber emphasizes, the Greek word for "interest" literally means "offspring." And, from the perspective of the PSR, one may say that interest is, thus, either un-caused offspring or the product of unusually fertile principal. The latter route is (recall) the Piketty-ian world of disproportionate capital growth, perhaps, characteristic of financial capitalism; the former is a miracle of the sort that founds Christianity.   

 

 

 

 

 

 

Status Quo Bias, Classical Liberalism, And the Original Sin of Neo-Liberalism

So what the political economists had conceived in their science was not a picture of the world as it is but a picture of the world as it needs to be remade. They had imagined the kind of human society in which the social problems arising from the division of labor are solved. Thus inadvertently, in the act of trying to simplify the facts in order to understand them, they had been inspired to discover the criterion by which these social problems can be truly defined and the true solutions can be indicated. By making certain assumptions they had described a just society based on the division of labor; then it followed that in the real world of injustice and maladjustment these assumptions were the proper objectives of policy. What they overlooked was that in order to imagine how the division of labor would work with perfect justice, it had been necessary  to assume a reformed society of reformed individuals. It should have followed, then, that, in order to achieve the result in practice, it is necessary to make the reforms in practice.

Instead of the classical economics being an apologetic explanation of the existing order, it is, when properly understood, a searching criticism of that order. It is a theoretical measure which reveals how far short of the promise, how unadjusted to the needs of the division of the labor, is the actual society in which we live. Had the liberal economists realized this implication of their own hypothesis, they would have embarked at once upon the task of exploring the legal, psychological, and social circumstances which obstructed and perverted the actual society. They would not have left the criticism and the reform of society to those who did not understand, or were determined to abolish, the new mode of production. They would have seen  that the mission of liberalism was to develop the principles by which mankind could readapt its habits and institutions to the industrial revolution. They would have carried on the tradition that Adam Smith founded, and, like him, they would have been the critics of the status quo and the intellectual leaders of its necessary reform.

They did not do this. The liberal economists from Ricardo until recent times were obsessed by the deadly confusion that their imaginary world was not a critical introduction to research and reform but the delineation of an order to which the real world conformed approximately, and sufficiently. This error sterilized the scientific advance of liberal thought, paralyzed the practical energies of liberal statesmen, and destroyed the prestige of liberalism. So the economists were properly rebuked by Carlyle, who had his eyes on the real world, as the teachers of a Dismal Science.11--Walter Lippmann The Good Society, 201-2. [HT: David M. Levy]

Lippmann's (1938) The Good Society is the proximate cause of neo-liberalism because the term was caused (recall) at a Paris colloquium in response to his book. It is very much worth re-reading because in the book, Lipmann grapples searchingly and searingly with the failure of (what I have called [recall]) the first wave of liberalism, while aiming to lay the ground-work -- in the midst of a world economic crisis and the ascendancy of Nazism, fascism, and communism -- for liberalism's renewal. I intend to return to it because many of his observations are worth rediscovering. But to do we have to explore first some of Lippmann's failures.

In the quoted passage, Lippmann diagnoses a structural problem with nineteenth century classical (let's call it Ricardian) liberalism. He accuses them of status quo bias in conditions of injustice such that their (normatively desirable) science becomes implicated in serving the needs of the powerful. On his view (one I like), liberalism is a tool to combat status quo bias because reality inevitably falls short of the normative ideal. How it supposed to do that, I won't elaborate (today) beyond his words above (but there is more). 

Here I want to focus, on his claim, "that the mission of liberalism was to develop the principles by which mankind could readapt its habits and institutions to the industrial revolution." Lippmann's underlying idea is that the (ongoing, unfolding) industrial revolution driven by the division of labor is a very disruptive event which turns people's habitats from self-sufficient communities to interdependent communities (part of a great society). Lippmann thinks that both people's habits and institutions needs to be reformed in order to flourish in an industrial society. And this is a process of adjustment that never ends because industrial revolution creates open ended change. Lippmann embraces this conclusion (some other time I return to this in order to discuss his attitudes toward the law).

So, modern society is constantly required to readapt. It follows then that Lippmann would argue for ongoing education not just in job skills, but also social habits. And this is indeed so.  He writes a few pages later, "The economy of the division of labor requires, and the classical economics assumes, a population in which these eugenic and educational problems are effectively dealt with." You may worry that he is describing the classical economists (who he criticizes in the passage I quoted above), but on p. 226 he endorses this in his own words.

Now, I have to admit that Lippmann's interest in eugenics disappointed me, but did not surprise me. My friend, David Levy, had called my attention to the footnote (11), which is a reference to Carlyle's "The Nigger Question." Somehow Lippmann misses (or ignores) that Carlyle is defending slavery and in that famous paper is attacking the (dismal) political economists for their abolitionist criticism of slavery. (Levy has written a terrific book on this.) I kind of suspect that Lippmann's reference to Carlyle is totemic, because Lippmann is certainly not defending slavery. But even so, it raises uncomfortable questions about the nature of Lippmann's eugenics. 

I don't think his eugenics is racialized, but because of the weird Carlyle reference can't be wholly ruled out. But the rationale for Lippmann's defense of eugenics is not to create a superior master race, nor to prevent undesirables from out-breeding the would be master race, or from corrupting the population in the survival of the fittest. Instead it is as quoted above to create what we might call the human capital capable of dealing with adjusting to permanent changing circumstances.  He returns to the topic once more: 

In a wealthy society, there would still remain maldistribution, arising not from injustice, but from the accumulation of more wealth than its possessors need for the then prevailing middle-class standard of life or than they can effectively use in private enterprise. This maldistribution has to be corrected by public investment in the eugenic and educational improvement of the people, in the conservation and basic development of their patrimony in the land and its resources. These public investments would draw upon the excess capital through the levying of taxes and through borrowing at the lowest possible rate of interest. (231-2)

So, Lippmann's eugenics is re-distributive in character: even in a just society, human enhancement of the (not wealthy) "people" will be required. This will be financed by taxes on the capital of the wealthy (there are shades of Piketty here) directly or thought subsidized loans. That's about all he says about the topic in the book. All the (few) mentions of 'eugenics' are coupled with 'education'--and the underlying point is pretty much the same each time. Most humans are not necessarily naturally so adaptable, so in addition to massive education, they will require enhancement to get there. What this involves is left unclear.

On Originality in Philosophy

What seemingly unites commentaries to texts, annotated editions and translations or reviews is that they focus on the presentation of the ideas of others. Thus, my hunch is that we seem to think more highly of people presenting their own ideas than those presenting the ideas of others. In a recent blog post, Peter Adamson notes the following:

“Nowadays we respect the original, innovative thinker more than the careful interpreter. That is rather an anomaly, though. […]

[I]t was understood that commenting is itself a creative activity, which might involve giving improved arguments for a school’s positions, or subtle, previously overlooked readings of the text being commented upon.”

Looking at ancient, medieval and even early modern traditions, the obsession with what counts as originality is an anomaly indeed. I say “obsession” because this trend is quite harmful. Not only does it impoverish our philosophical knowledge and skills, it also destroys a necessary division of labour. Why on earth should every one of us toss out “original claims” by the minute? Why not think hard about what other people wrote for a change? Why not train your philosophical chops by doing a translation? Of course the idea that originality consists in expressing one’s own ideas is fallacious anyway, since thinking is dialogical. If we stop trying to understand and uncover other texts, outside of our paper culture, our thinking will become more and more self-referential and turn into a freely spinning wheel… I’m exaggerating of course, but perhaps only a bit. We don’t even need the medieval commentary traditions to remind ourselves. Just remember that it was, amongst other things, Chomsky’s review of Skinner that changed the field of linguistics. Today, writing reviews, working on editions and translations doesn’t get you a grant, let alone a job. While we desperately need new editions, translations and materials for research and teaching, these works are esteemed more like a pastime or retirement hobby.

Of course, many if not most of us know that this monoculture is problematic. I just don’t know how we got there that quickly. When I began to study, the work on editions and translations still seemed to flourish, at least in Germany. But it quickly died out, history of philosophy was abandoned or ‘integrated’ in positions in theoretical or practical philosophy, and many people who then worked very hard on the texts that are available in shiny editions are now without a job.

If we go on like this, we’ll soon find that no one will be able to read or work on past texts. We should then teach our students that real philosophy didn’t begin to evolve before 1970 anyway. Until it gets that bad I would plead for reintroducing a sensible division of labour, both in research and teaching. If you plan your assignments next time, don’t just offer your students to write an essay. Why not have them choose between an annotated translation, a careful commentary on a difficult passage or a review? Oh, of course, they may write an essay, too. But it’s just one of many philosophical genres, many more than I listed here.--Martin Lenz "Philosophical genres. A response to Peter Adamson"

Of course, quite a few people think little philosophy before 1970, and not much since it and, say, 1990, is worth reading. And, in fact, as long as you are in the grip of contemporary standards of rigor, much of the older work, and even quite a bit of the recent stuff, will seem comically badly argued. The few works to the contrary prove that ceteribus paribus in philosophy rigor is a function of the number of generations that have been permitted to develop a view/paradigm, distinction, position, etc.

Be that as it may, neither Lenz, in his response to Adamson (which is promoting a volume he edited on Averroes/Ibn Rushd--and which, amusingly, wishes to draw attention to his ample talents beyond being a skilled commentator),* nor Adamson, really historicize the shift away from valuing the skilled presentation and (re-)interpretation of other people's works to valuing originality and (somewhat less) individuality. So here goes (in a few hundred words):

It's common to credit Montaigne for introducing individuality/personality into philosophy (at least in the European branch). If you think Socrates and Cicero are hyper-individualized personalities, feel free to rewrite the previous sentence. (If you think Zhuangzi is the first real personality; fine!) But since Montaigne was not a professor nor a monk, it was relatively easy for him to get away to obsess about himself. Most of the major early modern thinkers we still read and teach [Bacon, Descartes, Hobbes, Margaret Cavendish, Locke, Hume, Mandeville, Toland, De Grouchty, etc. ] -- and some of whom present a quite distinct authorial persona and claim non-trivial originality --  stayed outside of the academy. The exception to the rule is Leibniz, who was deeply original and often tried to present it as originating elsewhere. Of course, there were many generations of novatores such that they became, in part, a type or old hat (grin).

Some scholars will claim that the focus of originality and connecting it to genius is a romantic invention. But we see hints of it already when Adam Smith praises "the original and inventive genius of the English has not only discovered itself in natural philosophy, but in morals, metaphysics, and part of the abstract sciences." (This is from an early 1757 piece, Letter to the Edinburgh Review, usually attributed to him.) It's clear that Smith allows different kind of genius, including un-inventive ones; but the focus is already decidedly on the original inventive kind.

I mention Smith, because the division of labor and competitive market mechanisms generate open-ended novelty (an older school may say, generates open ended sources of wonder), including technological novelty. I don't deny that one could say the same thing of the institution of science, which has become an astounding novelty generator (second only to technology). That is to say, professional philosophy's changing mode of presentation and sources of value within have copied the characteristics of the surrounding society. (That's true even if some philosophers have something to do with the popularity of the division of labor and competitive markets.) 

The point I am hinting at is that professional philosophy is, in so far as the universities in which it is embedded are reliant on outside sources of funding. non-autonomous and inevitably takes on characteristics of its surrounding society. To challenge the one-sided focus on novelty is, in part, a demand of a form autonomy that is out of reach (except if you have a great endowment and terrific tenure, etc.) As regular readers know, I fully endorse grasping the impossible, and so hence in these digressions I often adopt the commentary format, Q.E.D.

 

 

The Church Mission in Liberalism

The Church’s involvement in spiritual warfare within a temporal order that is fallen is also fundamental to the nature of the Church herself, and has long determined magisterial teaching about that nature. The Church has been given by Christ himself the authority to protect the supreme good of religion. But locked as she is in a spiritual conflict within a fallen world, the Church is under attack both from without and also from within—from her own sinful and often recalcitrant members. So she must be able to protect the good of her community from those attacks. She must be able to discourage wrongdoing by her members that threatens the spiritual good of the Christian community she serves. And she must also be able to prevent spiritually damaging intrusions into that community by opponents from without. So the Church, just as much as the state, must be a potestas or coercive authority. Just as the state must be able to use law to protect the political community, so the Church must be able to use law to protect the ecclesial community. The Church has been given by Christ the sovereign authority to make laws and to enforce those laws within her jurisdiction by legitimate threats of punishment that to be effective must include temporal as well as spiritual sanctions.

Subjection to the Church’s jurisdiction, the magisterium teaches and as the 1983 Code of Canon Law continues to claim, comes with baptism. So at Trent, as we have already seen, and elsewhere, the magisterium has clearly taught that baptism subjects the baptised to a coercive jurisdiction, that of the Church, with obligations to fidelity on the baptised that may be enforced—where breach of those obligations is genuinely culpable, and where enforcement really is necessary to protect the religious good of the Church’s community. Because the state itself needs to be converted, baptismal obligations can take political and public as well as private form. Officials of a state that is publicly Christian can be bound by their baptism to exercise their office so as to support the mission of the Church. In particular the officials of a publicly Christian state can be bound to assist the Church in the exercise of her jurisdiction, as canon 2198 of the 1917 Code of Canon Law still insisted.[6] Baptism obligates the rulers of a Christian state to act as body to the Church’s soul—to form a single Christian community where, in religious matters, the state helps as secular arm (brachium saeculare) to enforce the law of the Church.

This theory of the Church as potestas for the good of religion and of the need for a soul-body union of Church and state is a long-standing part of the Church’s magisterium. At its heart is teaching that baptism has a juridical character fundamental to the nature of the Church herself. It is baptism that provides the Church as potestas with her coercive jurisdiction, and then obligates officials of a publicly Christian state to support that jurisdiction when called on by the Church to do so. Baptism then is the basis for the legitimacy of a soul-body union of the Church with that of the state, where in matters of religion the state may act as agent or secular arm of the Church as potestas for the good of religion.

Vatican II was careful not to contradict this teaching. According to the official relationes that interpreted Dignitatis Humanae to the council fathers at Vatican II, the declaration does not in any way deny the Church’s status as potestas for religion, and addresses only the authority of the state when detached from any union with the Church, and so acting only as on its own authority as potestas for the civil order.[7] The 1983 Code of Canon Law also still clearly presents the Church as a potestas. The Code clearly asserts that the Church has a jurisdiction over the baptised, with the authority to enforce that jurisdiction with threats of temporal as well as spiritual punishment.[8]

Nevertheless the idea of the Church as a potestas is decreasingly taken seriously in official theology. In practice a model prevails of the Church as, in effect, a voluntary society, and with this comes a conception of canonical obligations as really no more than membership rules. All that culpable breach of them really merits is not some genuine form of punishment, but simple loss of membership. With this comes a view of Church-state separation not as a regrettable evil, as Leo XIII viewed it, but as a positive good.

Consider Joseph Ratzinger, who when writing as a cardinal, defended both the idea of the Church as a voluntary society whose authority is purely moral, and the desirability of Church-state separation. Not only is the entry of unbaptised adults into the Church treated by him an entirely voluntary matter—which was always taught—but continued fidelity in the baptised is treated by him as entirely voluntary too, which Trent formally denied. Morever, the use of civil penalties by a Christian state to enforce ecclesial law is condemned by Ratzinger—despite the fact that such use was called for by General Councils such as Lateran IV and Trent. Thomas Pink "Vatican II and Crisis in the Theology of Baptism: Part II" @The Josias.

I have quoted from a three part essay (see part I; Part III), which should be read alongside this critique of John Finnis, by Thomas Pink. These essays are part of an epic struggle over the soul of the church and, crucially for my present purposes, its historical-moral mission. In the passage, Pink rejects what one may call an accommodating stance of the Church toward liberal modernity. This accommodating stance re-invents the Catholic church along Lockean-Kantian lines as (I) a voluntary association that (II) respects Church and State separation and (III) whose source of authority is exclusively moral. While Locke himself had rejected toleration for the Catholic church, the Church's willingness to forego jurisdiction/potestas over its members means that Lockean strictures against the Church have become irrelevant. In what follows I accept Pink's characterization of this re-invention, even though I recognize that he is being polemical and not an impartial bystander.

As an aside, Pink argues that the reinvention occurs not through an explicit rejection of the (infallible) magisterial teachings of the Church, but through the omissions and changed emphasis  of what he calls the 'official theology' of the Church. This mechanism is worth some attention (in part because it may be accompanied by a curious historical re-imagination), but that's for another time.

Now, one may imagine that a general skeptical liberal (including rather skeptical about my own liberalism on many days) like myself would be instinctually on the side of the accommodating stance rejected by Pink. For, one may imagine that the Church's willingness to play by liberalism's rules would be welcome. One may be deluded into thinking that less friction is better than church state antagonism. And one may imagine that some opportunistic (let's call them Enlightenment) liberals will be tempted to say to, say, Islamic fundamentalists, look, if the historically powerful Church has learned to play by our rules, so you, too, can learn to do so!*

But liberalism requires for its moral (aesthetic and political) vitality, and its own historical mission (of human flourishing, individual emancipation, rejection of cruelty, etc.) institutions in its midst that wage spiritual war within a temporal order. And the church can only do so if, from a liberal perspective, it remains tempted to overreach politically and legally. As I argued a few weeks ago, the present crisis of liberalism is precisely a consequence of the (moral and intellectual) implosion of social intermediaries, which are both natural bulwarks of social pluralism as well as promote a rich/multidimensional (what I called) 'value space.' That is, of course, an empirical matter, but my underlying assumption is (to simplify and be, perhaps, too succinct) that the liberal morality, which in its common form is merely secularized Christianity, is feeble without access to rich and varied sources of value.  

Another reason to welcome spiritual warfare by the Church is that it represents a firm rejection of status quo bias because the status quo of the temporal order is in an important sense (as Pink argues), from the perspective of the Church, diabolical.** Now, unlike in most other worldviews, such criticism of status quo bias is always welcome to liberals because it forces us to critically look at ourselves and existing privileges (which liberals ought to resist). Of course, I realize that this spiritual warfare will bring the church into conflict with many liberal pieties (although perhaps push it away of its one-sided focus on sexual morality). But liberals need not fear this because such spiritual warfare will force us to confront the ways in which contemporary society fails the spiritual needs of mankind and prevents human flourishing.+

That is to say,  on my understanding, liberalism needs the Catholic church to believe in its own historical mission of the illiberal, rejectionist sort defended by Pink. This risks, of course, a victory of a world-view inimical towards liberalism and many commitments we hold (ahh) sacred. But the cautious embrace of such uncertainty is our courage, the willingness to have our commitments challenged, our faith.  

A tale of Three indebted Countries (France, CHina, US)

 

The graph is from April's (2018) IMF Fiscal Monitor, chapter 1. It's on p. 7. Argentina is notably absent, and I have not found any obvious warning signals in the monitor alerting the reader to the events of the last few weeks. But here I want to call attention to three striking figures.

First, it's notable that despite an austerity narrative, France -- in the news during the last few days -- has seen its indebtedness creeping up. (That can be caused by low growth or loose fiscal controls--or both.) Since there is clearly little appetite for further taxes in France, the IMF's projection of reduced debt over the next few years seem wishful thinking unless France can grow its way out of trouble. But that seems unlikely; in fact, in 2018 growth has fallen quite strikingly from levels of last year. It's not unusual for the French street to beat the political process or that there is a political battle over who should pay for reducing environmentally sensitive CO2 emissions, but after several decent economic years, France is sailing into political trouble in mediocre fiscal shape.

Second, the United States has a lot of advantages in contemporary political economy. But by historical standards its current indebtedness is very high (it tends to be only higher in the wake of a major war) and that, as the chart reflects, will only get worse due to the Trump tax cuts. The IMF has an interesting analysis of these tax cuts. The short version of the results of their dynamic modeling exercise (which takes into account likely effects on business investment) is that "those in the top quintile of the income distribution would gain the most, followed by those in the lower quintile." (p. 16) While the US fiscal position is deteriorating dramatically, if a recession can be avoided in the next eighteen months, the Trump administration may well fight an election on very favorable economic grounds. But when the reckoning comes it will be ugly with little room for fiscal policy.

Third, the table makes it seem that China's indebtedness is relatively low. But that's deceptive; the first page of the report tells a different story: " The world is now 12 percent of GDP deeper in debt than the previous peak in 2009, with China as a driving force." Chinese debt is not just national debt, but also that of the provinces and local government borrowing vehicles much of it opaque. But it's not just government that is involved: "China alone explains almost three-quarters of the increase in global private debt." (p. 30) Lots of creditors are counting on the chinese economic future. It will be interesting to see how that develops because China is ageing rapidly. It has a budget deficit of 4% into the future, and that does not take into account off-budget spending. Bottom line, once the great unwinding of the debt bubble consequent of a decade worth of quantitative easing will commence, retrenchment will be very very painful.

And, yes, global warming is not slowing down.

 

On The Inability to Feel Happy at Childbirth

Our son was born prematurely in December 2009 after an emergency c-section. At the time, my (then partner, now) wife suffered from HELLP syndrome, which had been overlooked by her GP, her midwife, and her gynecologist. They missed it, in part, for the statistically interesting reason that they were working with average parameters while ignoring that my wife had been extremely fit before she became pregnant (and most of her increased values fell, it was thought, within the acceptable margins). But the bigger reason they missed it was that they refused to listen to her, deciding both that she has low tolerance for pain and that she was a difficult/demanding patient (this was even noted in her medical file).* This was especially galling/infuriating because (a) my wife is incredibly resilient (a mountain climber) and (b) because she is a surgeon and -- unwilling to take advantage of her insider status in the system -- she tried very hard to be undemanding. 

And, in fact, one of the most bewildering features of my wife's situation at the time was that many of her circle (a lot of them prominent physicians) also refused to recognize her (and the baby's) situation for the life-threatening situation it was; this was so for, I think, two reasons: first, they were all self-consciously unwilling to become that difficult colleague who would tell the attending physicians what to do; second, and more, general, a birth is meant to be celebration. (I return to this below.) By the time HELLP syndrome was adequately diagnosed my wife's and our baby's lives were in acute danger. And, in particular, my wife nearly did not survive the surgery. 

This generated a further complication: when people visited us in the hospital they came for a celebration. But it is extremely difficult to be happy when one is terribly weakened, experiencing shock or post traumatic stress and, simultaneously, others, including people one would like to be close to, are incapable to acknowledge this fact in the moment.**

This post was prompted by the ninth birthday of our son earlier this week. But as I look over the previous three paragraphs, I  ask myself why write this now? (For example, I started blogging for NewAPPS in the first year of my son's life; but while I increasingly wrote about fatherhood, I did not discuss this at all.) I suspect it's because I am mourning my dad's death earlier this year. Let me explain. 

The first year of our son's life was difficult for our relationship not just because of ordinary fatigue and stress, but because after a while, and in various ways, I wanted to move on and be happy, join in the socially encouraged celebration of parenthood, whereas my wife wanted, I think, acknowledgment of what had happened to her and our child; rightly so! (She reads this blog sometimes, so I may adjust this!) Crucially, this included not just the near death experiences, pain (etc.), and the lack of recognition described above, but she was also mourning missing out on the childbirth she had imagined.   

One striking feature of the current approach to post natal depression is that it is rarely acknowledged that it can be caused by the kind of experiences I have described above and lack of recognition for them. If one reads the public utterances of medical systems about post natal/partum depression (see here and here), one finds that while it is now treated with utmost seriousness, they treat the cause(s) of post natal depression as a general mystery or they kind of suggests the patients involved may have a history of mental health problems or live unhealthy lifestyles. What one never reads is that it may be induced by the lack of recognition during or after trauma (for parents like us who have just experienced near deaths).

 I was about to share with you my joy about my son's development since. But today I won't give in to the temptation of giving you a happy ending to this story. For, the fact is that we (the parents) missed out on a lot of joy at the start of our son's life; we were simply incapable of it. This incapacity at joy reminds me of my war-traumatized dad. And I am left with the strange consciousness of having understood my father better after my son's birth without understanding why, until now.    

 

The European Union's Pivotal Moment: On Brexit and CEU

Following Kant, they see Auschwitz as the ultimate expression of that barbarism, that brutal debasement of humanity, which is national particularism.

From this point of view, the death camps provide the ultimate proof of the evil of permitting nations to decide for themselves how to dispose of the military power in their possession. The obvious conclusion is that it was wrong to give the German nation this power of life and death. 

If such evil is to be prevented from happening again and again, the answer must be in the dismantling of Germany and the other national states of Europe, and the yoking together of all the European peoples under a single international government: Eliminate the national state once and for all, and you have sealed off that dark road to Auschwitz.

Notice that according to this view, it is not Israel that is the answer to Auschwitz, but the European Union. A united Europe will make it impossible for Germany, or any other European nation, to rise up and persecute others once again.

In this sense, it is the European Union that stands as the guarantor of the future peace of the Jews, and indeed, of all humanity.--Yoram Hazony (2018), The Virtue of Nationalism.

The slow-motion, train-wreck of European crises unfolding since 2005, with France's non and the Netherland's nee, is culminating in two events a week (or two) apart: next week the mother of all parliaments will hold a debate and vote on The Withdrawal Agreement between the EU and UK. The other is the Hungarian government's decision to force a departure of Central European University (CEU) alongside the "Hungarian governmentʼs crackdown on academic freedom, including a government ban on gender studies programs, forced suspension of research related to migration, and punitive tax measures." 

I have decided to contextualize these political events with a quote from (my sometime co-author), Yoram Hazony, a fierce critic of the EU. I find it useful to do so because often (not always) critics see the true nature of an institution or change better than a friend of the status quo. In his book, Hazony treats the EU as a (modern) cosmopolitan empire to be contrasted with the nation-state, whose legitimacy and virtues Hazony defends. The particular quoted passage is part of an argument in which Hazony tries to make the case that the same set of facts can be viewed differently depending on the contrasting paradigm (empire vs nation) one embraces/inhabits.* (Obviously, the argument is, in part, in the service of a vindication of Zionism--but that vindication does not concern me here.)

What Hazony gets right is that at bottom the EU is a moral project, even a Kantian one centered on (recall) Kant's liberal faith (not his ethics) and Kant's embrace of (recall) Hobbesian self-limitation.+ It's not only a moral project; it started out as a means to prevent another major war between Germany and France (recall this post on the 1951 Paris Declaration), and it quickly became preoccupied with economic matters. But even so, in the proposed "closer union" of the Treaty of Rome, "peace" is explicitly coupled with "liberty." This is important, because while (as I argued) the EU was grounded in considerable mistrust of national, parliamentary democracy, it's anti-democratic modes of operation are designed to safeguard liberties. Left-wing critics of the EU (recall this post on so-called Lexiters) think the previous sentence is code for an exclusive defense of private property and the advocacy of a neoliberal agenda. I don't think such critics are all wrong about this, but the point of defending private property and markets is to advance an agenda not just of economic growth, but also the flourishing of peoples and individuals, to safe-guard them from harms and cruelty, and to allow each of us creatively to make independent choices that will develop whole new ways of  living.

In his book, Hazony acutely diagnoses the risks of homogenization and imposition that tempts every imperial center. What he misses is that the EU is unlike any other empire in it being grounded in principles of non-violence. These principles were made possible due to the fact that for all of its history so far the EU operates in the context of Pax Americana--most EU member states are protectorates of the US. (That is, as empires go the EU is not quite independent.)  Hazony misses this because he is primarily focused on the way ultimately (Germany led) EU law supersedes domestic law. But during the last few years nobody in the EU has contested the right of the British to leave the EU, except other UK citizens and EU residents living in the UK.

An empire with a true right to exit is a historical novelty. This is only intelligible, I think, because at bottom the EU is committed to non-violence and liberty. (Hazony by contrast, sees the EU as focused on, like all consolidated empires, peace and prosperity.) My claim here is not ad hoc. The UK's long road to Brexit has been paved by innumerable number of opt-outs. Each of these opt-outs represent an acknowledgment of the liberty of the member states (and their inhabitants) to be free to chart their own course(s).**

Of course, there is a limit to such freedom and May's Withdrawal Agreement represents it. It expresses the unequal power between the much stronger EU and the weaker UK (which on paper is still one of the five great powers with a veto in the security council and an independent nuclear arsenal). In return for being able to say 'we have left the EU' (such symbols matter) and to continue to have market access (in goods) to the EU, the UK has agreed to a status that provides it with less political influence in the EU today and not much new freedom to maneuver in the future. Somewhat ironically a project (Brexit) that was intended to deliver freedom, ends up reducing freedoms: to be a rule-taker is to be subject to empire. The debate in the Commons will be fascinating because there are no good choices for the (rather unimpressive) British political class.

Hazony's error about the nature of the EU can be forgiven because it's easy to miss that the EU is a moral enterprise because the EU's political elites fail to defend it; its judges and leading technocrats routinely fail to defend freedom of religion, academic freedoms, the right to asylum, press freedoms, the rule of law in member states, and the rights of (say) Roma. In that light, the departure of CEU from Hungary is not an isolated incident. ++  But it represents a more general lack of belief in the EU as shared, moral enterprise.*** 

Now, one may well think that as long as the EU prevents a new war between France and Germany, such a moral enterprise is dispensable. But we're one or two national elections away such that the all the important EU players will have an instrumental or rejectionist understanding of the EU. The rejectionists take heart from the defeat of CEU and the possibility of a genuine Brexit, which will remove the key guardian of liberal values from the EU. Before you think my alarmism is premature, consider the fact that (recall) unemployment is low and we're nearing the end of a a long economic growth cycle fueled by low interest rates; EU rejectionist and neo-fascist parties are polling between 10-35% across Europe, including in countries with no serious fascist tradition. As Stefan Kolev noted to me recently, who seriously believes those forces will be contained during the next economic crisis?