Digressions&Impressions

On a Peaceful Global Order for (Ordo/neo)-Liberalism

It was no coincidence that the century during which this international order of states continuously existed was also the century of capitalism's most vigorous expansion. For the stability and security of foreign relations created the basis of trust for the commerce of international capital, and made it possible for a network of long-term trade treated to be developed that hindered the sudden interreuption of international trade, and so eased the intensification of the international division of labor.  (62-3)

To begin with, the idea of peace itself is completely abandoned: the idea of a clear separation between war and peace, and using a peace agreement to eliminate all elements of the war. Quite the contrary, today's peace treaties are used by the victors to perpetuate the favourable military situation they find themselves in at the end of the war; instead of re-imposing a state order, they seek to shackle a defeated opponent, creating the strongest tensions, making a liquidation of war* through the work of the treaties impossible. (63)--Walter Eucken "Structural Transformations of the State and Crisis of Capitalism," translated by Keith Tribe [with minor corrections] in The Birth of Austerity: Germand Ordoliberalism and contemporary neoliberalism, edited by Thomas Biebricher and Frieder Vogelmann. 62-3.

As I argued in the Summer of 2017 a few years ago (recall here; here and here), a salutary effect of returning to the roots of the twentieth century liberalism we have inherited, is to discover its internationalist dimensions. The other salutary effect is that they are good company in the midst of our challenges because they did not succumb to despair under worse conditions. The internationalist feature of neoliberalism guides a fascinating (2018)  book, The Globalists, by Quinn Slobodian that has been garnering a lot of much-deserved attention (and that I am sure to mention again these digressions). But his book has a tendency to treat the neoliberal turn to global affairs as tactical or instrumental in the service of the defense of markets. I would not deny that such a narrative is grounded in evidence. But not unlike others who are critical of neoliberalism there is also a tendency to overlook other, more noble motives. I mention this not in the interest of historical justice, but rather because it means that some of the more interesting arguments get ignored altogether.

Eucken's general argument is (which anticipates my own useful myth recall) that in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, mercantilism created capitalism and that liberalism was a response to it (65). Through the Enlightenment and especially the nineteenth century, Liberalism succeeded in separating to some degree the state from the economic sphere while not undermining the state as a political agent distinct and autonomous from (and so capable of impartiality toward) the economic forces that it had once guided. To what degree such a state really existed is worth questioning. But it is a useful analytic fiction. 

And a key feature that contributed to the liberal success in the nineteenth century was a characteristic of the state system that Eucken highlights in the quoted passage above. (Eucken's dad, a once famous philosopher, won the Nobel literature prize in 1908.)++Rather than treating the state as a global Hobbesian anarchy with states constantly signaling war preparedness (and so fitting Hobbes' account of the state of nature), Eucken presents the state system as an order capable of distinguishing sharply between peace and war. While undoubtedly, the idea has deeper roots, Kant's Perpetual Peace had made it clear that if you take the Hobbesian argument for the existence of a state seriously, then one's conduct in war must be oriented toward peace (or be self-undermining). Eucken himself treats "the development of the "principles of peace" as an eighteenth century (re-)discovery (61). 

Now, it is true, and important to Eucken's argument, that the very possibility of demarcating peace and war, and generating a set of practices that facilitate the demarcation and that would allow states and their citizens to plan for peace, has very important economic effects. Uncertainty is dramatically reduced, and communication and mobility (of people, capital, goods) greatly facilitated, and so the division of labor enhanced (etc.). 

What makes this possibility of demarcation possible, according to Eucken (an economist important to the development of social market economy and neoliberalism), are two features of the global order: first, the existence of states that (i) are rights bearers and (ii) accept that other states have equal rights; second, the willingness to treat the state system as operating by a balance of power (recall also this post), where the balancing role is exercised by the great powers (especially, but not solely, England). Rather than treating balance of power politics as an invitation to open-ended war, Eucken sees in it the means to securing a lasting demarcation between war and peace.** We may add with Hume, that this is only possible when commitment to preserving a balance of power has "an authority...among those who govern the world." 

Some other time, I discuss Eucken's analysis of why this authority disappeared alongside the collapse of the nineteenth century world order into the first world war.  But while peace is instrumentally useful, there is no reason to doubt that Eucken thinks that acting in accord with the "principle of peace" as a ground of order is a desirable end for its own sake.  The (Thomas Biebricher and Frieder Vogelmann) reader from which I quote does not list 'peace' as a distinct entry in the index.

The pursuits of peace is a key motive for neoliberals.+ The attack on the mercantile spirit is (recall), since the time of Adam Smith, an attack on principles that justify war and conquest. From this vantage point, the revival of fortune after the second world war also reflects a partial failure. Rather than helping to re-create a world in which principle of peace was anchored, neoliberal ideas got subsumed into a hegemonic, imperial power structure on one side of a cold war. That this hegemonic structure encouraged, perhaps made possible, a European experiment (recall) that is grounded in the principle of peace now nearly forgotten is not the least of history's ironies.

 

 

On Unwritten Constitutions and their implosions

Boris Johnson has detonated a bomb under the constitutional apparatus of the United Kingdom. The prime minister’s request to the Queen to suspend parliament for up to five weeks, ostensibly to prepare a new legislative programme, is without modern precedent. It is an intolerable attempt to silence parliament until it can no longer halt a disastrous crash-out by the UK from the EU on October 31. The seat of British democracy, long admired worldwide, is being denied a say on the most consequential decision facing the country in more than four decades. So, too, are the British people — in whose name Mr Johnson claims to be acting. It is time for parliamentarians to bring down his government in a no-confidence vote, paving the way for an election in which the people can express their will.

Britain’s representative government is an exercise in deliberative democracy which involves discussion, negotiation and inevitable compromises. It vests the power to take decisions on behalf of voters in MPs, and allows them to deliberate on matters of detail — and in the case of Brexit, the most complex demerger in postwar history, detail matters. As John Stuart Mill wrote of representative democracy: “Their part is to indicate wants, to be an organ for popular demands, and a place of adverse discussion for all opinions relating to public matters . . . and, to check by criticism, and eventually by withdrawing their support, those high public officers who really conduct the public business.”

History has shown that charlatans, demagogues and would-be dictators have little time for representative government. They seek ways around parliament before concluding it is an inconvenience. Mr Johnson may not be a tyrant, but he has set a dangerous precedent. He and the cabal around him who have chosen this revolutionary path should be careful what they wish for. The prime minister’s protestations that he is doing nothing abnormal are as disingenuous as the claims plastered across the bus from which he fronted the Leave campaign in 2016. Proroguing parliament ahead of a Queen’s Speech is established procedure, but for one or two weeks, not five. A temporary recess during September’s party conferences is normal — though some parliamentary business continues even then. A brief prorogation could have been timed to coincide with conference season. There is no legal or administrative justification for a complete five-week cessation of parliament’s activities ahead of a Queen’s Speech. Mr Johnson is using constitutional chicanery to thwart a parliament that he knows has a majority against his chosen policy...

If Mr Johnson’s prorogation ploy succeeds, Britain will forfeit any right to lecture other countries on their democratic shortcomings. The UK’s constitutional arrangements have long relied on conventions. The danger existed that an unscrupulous leader could trample on such conventions. That has not happened, in the modern era, until now.

Parliamentarians must seize their opportunity next week to assert the will of the Commons against that of the prime minister....The overriding priority, however, must be to safeguard British democracy.

Mr Johnson might seek to ignore such a vote and try to hang on until after Brexit. This would be an even greater constitutional affront than his actions this week. It would confirm that Britain has a despot in Downing Street. The standard path for governments facing parliaments that prevent them from implementing their policies is to take the matter to the country. The prime minister might then stand on a “no deal” platform, potentially in a pact with the Brexit party. If he won, Britain would have to respect the result and live with the consequences. Opposition parties would have to use their own strenuous campaigning and electoral pacts to prevent such an outcome. Mr Johnson is framing the current battle as one between parliament and the people. If he is confident of the people’s backing, he should be ready to test this with voters in an election — rather than making a cavalier attempt to frustrate the parliamentary democracy that has been the foundation of Britain’s prosperity and stability. Editorial Board, The Financial Times.

There are people who would welcome an end of lecturing of others by Britain. For example, I have friends who think Britain has never come to terms with its history of conquest and colonialism and who support Brexit on the grounds that it would reduce its role in the world and become a normal mid-sized country stripped of any pretense of grandeur and significance.* My fear is that such people underestimate how nasty life in a mid-sized country can be when there are few means to stabilize its democracy and stabilize its (low growth) political economy. The Pax Americana during the cold war and the EU since were means toward such (relative) stability.+ The UK's economy is a boom-bust one (driven by real estate, finance, and oil); Brexit will only enhance that.

I had to chuckle when I saw the quote from J.S. Mill. There were times when Mill would be thought too socialist for the Financial Times. The quoted passage is from a Considerations on Representative Government (and, perhaps this is mere coincidence, is highlighted on Wikipedia). I have blogged (recall) about and taught that book (and recall this prescient post), and, while Mill is deservedly a patron saint of modern liberalism, I think of Mill's defense of parliamentary democracy as rather qualified (and (recall, alas, rather) unfortunate) in two senses, to simplify: (i) he thinks (recall) that smart people should be over-represented in parliament (and some nations as of yet ill-suited to such experiments): (ii) he sees the role of parliament primarily as a debating body.  The chapter from which the Financial Times quotes is, in fact, dedicated to defending (ii). This is not to deny that he also claims (iii) a watch-dog role such that when "the men who compose the government abuse their trust" they should be expelled "from office." But he also claims that parliament should let those chosen to govern, govern. 

For, while I agree with the unease, if not outrage (although not some of its language),++ expressed by the FT, part of the debate is indeed to what degree Johnson's cabinet can govern while parliament does not trust its direction. And, while undoubtedly there are exceptions to the following claim: the British parliament does not, in general, set the agenda for the government. There have been periods before when it has not been uncommon to claim that the UK facilitates parliamentary dictatorship. We are discovering that by making it more difficult to dissolve parliament and to get rid of a cabinet, the fixed term act has strengthened those tendencies.  

The prime minister is surely right that he cannot govern when a parliamentary majority exerts itself against his agenda. And he is surely right that the only way the impasse surrounding Brexit can be broken is when MPs and the country come to believe that only two options are likely. For the present impasse is caused by the fact that all sides (hard Brexit, pure remain, and Brexit primarily in name while giving up power in the EU) believe they can play to win instead of playing to reduce downside risk. His current gambit will force people's hands before long. The prime minister is often compared to President Trump. But the better comparison is with the (more recent) President Bush who rolled the dice with a touch of recklessness (and deception), but in so doing tried to shape destiny. (In addition, both men were greatly underestimated.) Bush's decisions have not turned out so well.

The more important problem in the FT's argument is that Johnson's actions are the effect of the implosion of the British constitutional apparatus not its cause nor trigger. For, the cause of the implosion was the (reckless) referendum called to silence a (then) minority within the ruling party (which has generated a set of consequences such that we are now in a position that the Editorial Board of the Financial Times accusing a one-time-business-friendly Tory Prime Minister for endangering British democracy and for taking steps down the path toward tyranny!) The constitution could have been saved if the two main parties had offered the voters a clear contrast in the subsequent (hubristic, but necessary) election called by then prime minister May. But while the referendum was won on a pack of lies, the 2017 election was a conspiracy of silence and strategic ambiguity. 

The old British constitution relied on a set of myths in full display in the FT editorial. One of these is that the British parliament is a great deliberative chamber "which involves discussion, negotiation and inevitable compromises." Anybody who has watched the former Prime Minister May's clumsy inability to forge a majority for her withdrawal agreement, or who is watching Labour, Lib Dem, and SNP being focused on undermining each other right now [despite purportedly agreeing that hard Brexit must be prevented], will realize that the British political system is populated by folk who have little first hand knowledge of a culture of compromise. This is no surprise in a winner takes all political culture in which MPs are increasingly thought of as party functionaries (recall).

I have been saying since 2016 that we are witnessing the implosion of the British political system.. I have had a tendency to attribute this to the quality British political elites; I  have been slow to grasp that this is a side-effect of the implosion of the British constitution. Because the parliamentary Tories risk electoral annihilation if they undermine their prime minister, and so will not fight to preserve even nominal parliamentary sovereignty, the odds are now high that British political life will be very turbulent the coming years. Because the British political elites and intelligentsia are so complacent about the robustness of their democracy, I fear that they are unprepared for a leader who is willing to cross the Rubicon and sideline the significance of parliament. 

 

 

Chiang on metahumans (and the great chain of being)

The question is, are these worthwhile undertakings for scientists? Some call them a waste of time, likening them to a Native American research effort into bronze smelting when steel tools of European manufacture are readily available. This comparison might be more apt if humans were in competition with metahumans, but in today's economy of abundance there is no evidence of such competition. In fact, it is important to recognize that — unlike most previous low-technology cultures confronted with a high-technology one — humans are in no danger of assimilation or extinction.

There is still no way to augment a human brain into a metahuman one; the Sugimoto gene therapy must be performed before the embryo begins neurogenesis in order for a brain to be compatible with DNT. This lack of an assimilation mechanism means that human parents of a metahuman child face a difficult choice: to allow their child DNT interaction with metahuman culture, and watch him or her grow incomprehensible to them; or else restrict access to DNT during the child's formative years, which to a metahuman is deprivation like that suffered by Kaspar Hauser. It is not surprising that the percentage of human parents choosing the Sugimoto gene therapy for their children has dropped almost to zero in recent years.

As a result, human culture is likely to survive well into the future, and the scientific tradition is a vital part of that culture. Hermeneutics is a legitimate method of scientific inquiry and increases the body of human knowledge just as original research did. Moreover, human researchers may discern applications overlooked by metahumans, whose advantages tend to make them unaware of our concerns.

For example, imagine if research offered hope of a different intelligence-enhancing therapy, one that would allow individuals to gradually ‘upgrade’ their minds to a level equivalent to that of a metahuman. Such a therapy would offer a bridge across what has become the greatest cultural divide in our species' history, yet it might not even occur to metahumans to explore it; that possibility alone justifies the continuation of human research.

We need not be intimidated by the accomplishments of metahuman science. We should always remember that the technologies that made metahumans possible were originally invented by humans, and they were no smarter than we. Ted Chiang (2000) "Catching crumbs from the table," in Nature.*

The existence of metahumans (or enhanced, human cyborgs) reminds us that developments in technologies generate violations of Descartes' causal principle: what is more perfect can arise from what is less perfect. Technologies change how we conceive of what is humanly possible.+ In addition, technology helps generate violations of the great chain of being; there are  in-commensurable gaps between humans and metahumans.

Whether any technology can remove scarcity may well be doubted unless the metahumans can practice moral checks on themselves and nudge the humans into breeding at a replacement rate. Of course, if the metahumans did so, it's possible the humans would not know about it ([recall] in the way the machines/artificial intelligence nudge humans in Iain Banks' The Culture series).

The narration assumes that scarcity is the main motive for genocide. It also implies that being capable of developing science and technology, including presumably meta weapons of meta mass destruction, would generate an ethics of their proper use. Since metahumans were initially invented by humans no smarter than us, this is to be doubted. Perhaps the thought is that the ability to dominate nature (abundance, etc.) removes the desire to dominate (destroy/exploit, etc.) lesser beings. But let's leave that aside.

When I was reflecting on the story, I was initially unsure parents would indeed choose to be able to communicate with their children, and so continue their traditions even form of life, rather than choosing for their kids to be among the cognitive elite (the metahumans). Often today, it seems, designer babies represent not just the desire for healthy kids, but parents' status and economic aspirations for their children. Such parents appear to act for their childrens' good. 

But, upon second thought, Chiang's moral psychology seems persuasive. Because despite the emphasis on 'choice' in selling human enhancement technologies, our contemporary parents of designer babies are not really showing much respect for the (let's call it) autonomy of their children. Rather what they de facto do is lengthen the odds that the structure of their (parental/social) values/traditions are passed on and reproduced. 

Part of the joke of the story -- which first appeared in Nature -- is that academic journals have stopped being the vehicle for publishing original research. They are now mostly in the business of hermeneutics trying and trailing to understand metahuman science. For us the joke may be less funny because with the opacity of machine learning this possibility may well be shading into reality. Even so, it would indeed be funny if the success of an all-knowing data science would regenerate the felt need for a kind of science of interpretation that could help decode the revelations of a hidden intelligence. When computer science departments start hiring big-data-hermeneuticists, the heirs of Gadamer or Davidson can laugh at our analytic philosophers.++ Of course, with machine algorithms, there may simply be no there, there. And so this hermeneutics may well have to rely on an intentional stance.

Not unlike AL-Farabi's God (at least this is Al-Ghazali's charge), the metahumans may be t uninterested in the physical going-ons of mere mortals. One's position reflects one's choices of research topic. Chiang suggests that faced with the existence of scientifically superior metahumans, scientific humans would embrace if not standpoint epistemology, then the argument from epistemic diversity, from self-interest. If these human scientists are right, then the great chain of being would be restored.

 

On James Buchanan (yeah that one!), European Greatness and the fate of Good Ideas

How can the opportunity that is opened up for Europe, both intellectually and politically, be seized before the historical moment has passed? How can the competitive federalism that is surely Europe's potential avenue toward twenty-first century greatness be constitutionally emplaced? As the premature project for a single currency and a monolithic central bank fails, perhaps Europe's political leaders will shift their attention to the specific constitutional structure recommended by Frank Vibert.
As analysts-philosophers, we must stick to our lasts. We dare not enter the political lists directly, but we must hold onto the faith that, somehow, ideas do have consequences, and that good ideas must triumph over bad ones. James Buchanan (1996) "Europe as social reality" 255.

The quoted paragraphs are the final of a short article that is accompanied by the following note: "This essay is stimulated by Frank Vibert (1995) Europe: A Constitution for the Millennium. I take my title from John Searle (1995) The Construction of Social Reality." Buchanan (who won a Nobel 1986) is the kind of economist that did not disguise he read and engaged with philosophers (especially Rawls) throughout his life. 

Speaking as an economist, Buchanan predicts the failure of the single currency and the ECB. This is remarkable because he starts the essay with a firm nod to Shackle's arguments about an "unknowable future." (254)* While few would call the EURO a great success after the past decade of near permanent crisis, it is worth noting that the Eurozone has held together despite considerable cost (to, say, the population of Greece). And it is undeniable that the political influence and role of ECB has been strengthened in virtue of the crisis.

And while it is not impossible, of course, that the Euro and ECB will collapse under the weight of crises, one may say that from Buchanan's perspective (ca 1996) the crisis moment was wasted. No effective path toward a European constitution, let alone greatness, was pursued during the crisis. To put the point a bit as a serious joke, from Buchanan's perspective the Constitutional Treaty (and subsequent Treaty of Lisbon) were also pursued prematurely (because it was attempted ahead of schedule in good times). Buchanan, who disliked technocratic and permanent elites, was  at times open-minded about (at least the strategic use of) a popular referendum,  would not have been surprised by the referendums that rejected the Constitutional Treaty.

So, Buchanan clearly thought crises presented opportunities for significant constitutional change. It is important to emphasize here -- because Buchanan's name has been linked to the development of disaster capitalism -- that in context Buchanan is proposing the possibility of peaceful statecraft. And, in fact, the path that Buchanan advocates in his essay is not here some major policy change (austerity or what have you not), but the discussion of a framework that can guide, without stipulating an endpoint (254), the development of a constitution that can turn a European "confederation" (253) into something more federal. I don't mean to deny that Buchanan's favored "competitive federalism" rules out other kinds of European models. But it is compatible with Buchanan's thought that European leaders opt for a path that does not advance greatness.

Now, there is a lot more to be said about how Buchanan conceives of this reflexive process. Buchanan has his sights on the "potential feedbacks between predicted patterns of outcomes" and the rules that help shape those patterns. That's the bit of the essay that is clear critical dialogue with Searle's project.  

But I got distracted by the presence of "greatness" in the first quoted paragraph above.** For it suggests that Buchanan recognizes that not all politicians will always be motivated by narrow conceptions of self-interest or rent-seeking.+ Here Buchanan is appealing explicitly to what we may call the vanity of the elite (!) politician no less than Machiavelli does at the end of the Prince (or, more consciously in Buchanan's mind, Smith at the end of Wealth of Nations and his plan for an Atlantic parliament [recall] or Kant's project of Perpetual Peace [recall also the connection between Buchanan and Kant]). 

That is to say, the final paragraph of the article (which I have quoted, too) may make one believe that Buchanan is committed ("faith") to a kind of magical, efficient market in ideas (modeled on Say's law): where the supply of good ideas will somehow produce the demand for them, given sufficient time and, simultaneously, that the market for ideas will reward the better ones in competition with the normatively undesirable ("bad") ones. But that's not so. Buchanan understands better than anybody (google rent-seeking; public choice) that good normative ideas are not automatically implemented (recall this post on the challenges to a liberal theory of politics).

For, Buchanan explicitly recognizes that good ideas do not rely on faith alone. We may say, then, that Buchanan addresses here obliquely the problem of how ideas that may have powerful constituencies arraigned against them can still shape their own uptake when their vehicles for implementation are properly identified and addressed. To what degree this strategy is compatible with broadly liberal sensitivities about the nature of public discussion, I leave for another occasion. 

 

On Forgotten Public Philosophers-Politicians, Escapism, Willa Cather and Spinoza!

Good afternoon Professor Schliesser,

I hope this finds you well and does not create an inconvenience for you.

I am currently working on an essay on escapism within society and its justifications. Within the research process I found your blog and found your text on philosophy as escapism [here] rather interesting, wich is why I was wondering as to whether you hold an opinion on the value of escapism in our contemporary society.

Any opinions you would like to share are very much appreciated."--[Name withheld], sixthform at a grammar school in England.

A student's question is most capable of exposing my babbling.* My first reaction to reading the email was a discomfort growing into panic that I had no idea what 'escapism' meant, followed by a sense of mortification that I had used it without giving it thought. I went back to my own essay, and saw that I used 'escapism' to signify an activity that displaced discomfiting feelings. (Yes, I noticed the lurking practical regress.) 

 

Online one finds claims that escapism is a modern term (sometimes also used to describe genre) originating during the great depression in the 1930s. Playing around with google.scholar/books I found no use prior to 1800 in English, but tantalizing hints that escaping had migrated into something like escapism in the more recent sense. But it's true that reliable hits for 'escapism' only start to occur in the 1930s. So, for example, one can read in an essay,"His first published novel, One Man's Initiation, appeared a year later. It had evidently been written in the trenches, and was, strangely enough, a quiet, thoughtful book that made no attempt to be harrowing, but sought patiently to understand. In it, however, predominate those twin maladies of escapism and individualism which Dos Passos had acquired at Harvard." It's notable that escapism is treated as a disease here.Willa Cather noticed such pejorative usage of "escapism" (and, I hasten to add, "individualism"), and has a fantastic essay on the subject (1936) that I warmly recommend reading.

 

But it was another early use that caught my attention. In the Monist (1933), I found a transcript of a "A paper read at the tercentenary commemoration of Spinoza sponsored by The Philosophy Club of Chicago and held at The University of Chicago on December 9, 1932." The author is one T.V. Smith about which more below. It's an incredibly critical essay of Spinoza. I start with a long quote:

[T]here is little profit in honoring Spinoza unless it leads us to honor our own opportunities the more. And surely our opportunity is not yet reduced to making the best of the worst; we may still hope to make the worst less bad and the less bad better. The tendency in some quarters to canonize Spinoza leaves me uneasy, though I joy to honor all those who did their part toward fortifying the philosophic mind in adverse days. It leaves me doubly uneasy, however, when reverence for Spinoza is made to ornament a modern escapism. I refer to the tendency to mythologize physics with theological aureoles, to romantize mediaevalism in morals under the guise of good taste founded on uncriticized tradition, to realize Platonism by glorifying contemporary dictators as the long sought philosopher kings. I refer, in a word, to the rationalized romanticism of those who would purge the social sciences of every element that makes them social and present them as logic to be got at dialectically rather than experimentally.
Such attitudes are defeatist, and while they find in Spinoza and in Plato logical prototypes, they wrong the noble dead by accommodating them to a logic of events more pregnant than their ancient logic of discourse. With reference to our social problem and the fruitful attitude toward it I am convinced that Spinoza is a splendid example of the way not to do it in modern times. Passing as a political realist because he built his system on power, Spinoza actually romanticized the distribution of power which prevailed at his time and place. Now power itself is not given to men in a sacred lump with implied anathemas against any who would increase or reallocate it. It waxes and wanes in quantity and migrates here and there in habitat. Our task is, as Spinoza truly said, to understand power, its nature and incidence-not however in order to achieve blessedness under the worst distribution of it but in order to facilitate a more blessed redistribution of power. Spinoza is not our logical leader in the effort through science to increase power; for though engaged in what for his time was a scientific profession-lens grinding-he elected to seek personal salvation through discovering and contemplating the whole of things rather than social amelioration by detailed mastery of his own specialized part. He performed few experiments, wrote only one thing on his scientific pre-occupation, and that without distinction. Nor is Spinoza our logical leader in the task of distributing power more justly to all men; for he could not get along with men well enough to understand, much less to improve, the forms of social relations. Not wholly in his stars but partially also in himself must have lain the cause of his lifelong isolation. (34-35)

After this majestic example of victim blaming it comes as no surprise that Smith was the "editor of the International Journal of Ethics" and soon also turned to politics being elected (as a Democrat) to the Illinois State Senate, then the US House, and briefly the US Senate. (That is consistent with his views in the essay, which promote an embrace of messiness of reality in order to do good.) I have to admit that today -- I have a student to answer! -- I have little interest in fully untangling the nature of modern escapism even though I am interested in the public image/role of Spinoza. But the passage made me wonder: if there is such a thing as "modern escapism" of which Spinoza is the ornament (ca 1930), what is, then, the original (pre-modern) escapism, according to Smith? 

 

It turns out, Spinoza is the source of (original) escapism! Spinoza 

discovered how to make the best of the world at its worst. Now this is an immortal discovery in a world that some of the time for all of us and all of the time for some of us permits little alternative to the worst. All honor, then, to Spinoza for discovering how to snatch one compensation for the withering sterility of cosmic neutrality, i.e., an emotional appreciation of understanding itself. When mind eats mind, mind need never wholly starve, though its resulting life be but a sort of living death (31-32)

Smith, a man of action, is no friend of this kind of escapism. He clearly thinks it risks quietism and deference to inherited status quo. But he does grant it is authentic escapism. I am inclined to agree with Willa Cather ("give the people a new word, and they think they have a new fact") and that Spinoza only managed the not insignificant feat to make it seem as if something new was being said because he tapped into a vital need in a new (linguistic and conceptual) register.

 

It is a tantalizing possibility that an emotional appreciation of understanding itself was discovered after the 1650s and, allow me this play of words, to create, in violation of the principle of sufficient reason (or at least ex nihilo nihil fit) , surplus ("compensation") out of something sterile ("cosmic neutrality"). If I were a Marxist historian of science, I would say that the spirit of capitalism was thus given matter in Holland.

 

But to wrap up. Escapism in this sense -- an intellectual joy in being with [one's] thought** -- is a human need in all places. For, no society will manage to abolish the possibility of people with only lousy options.  And, so, long after the one-time philosophical Senator of Illinois is forgotten, Spinoza keeps being rediscovered. 

 

 

On Demagogues and Democracy

The demagogue is not a romantic fellow who appears now and then, but...he appears whenever government is not effectively representative. Demagoguery is the falsification of representative government, the cultivation of the transient and apparent rather than of the considered and real will of the people...That is why the Constitutional Convention attempted to set up truly representative government; in order to protect the masses from the hypnosis of the moment, they invented devices for balancing the constituencies and delaying their decisions. They sought to make the people safe for democracy. What they meant to do every civilized people has to do, and if the checks and balances of the American Constitution are now antiquated, others will have to be devised to replace them.--Walter Lippmann (1938) The Good Society, 256. (In context, Lippmann is discussing Madison.)

Unlike most liberals who confronted the worldwide collapse of democracy in the 1930s, and who helped shape reflection on the post war revival of liberalism (under the guise of Pax Americana), Lippmann kept faith in the democratic experiment and had a healthy distrust of those that wished to prevent self-government. He also recognizes, correctly, that in modern conditions no account of legitimacy could ignore that "any government, despotic or liberal, is an organization of power drawn out of the reservoir of popular force." (p. 249; he credits Jose Ortega y Gasset!) And, more important for present purposes, unlike much subsequent liberal political philosophy, he confronted the problem that demagogues pose without complacency and the gravity it deserves. Demagogues are always a live possibility in democratic self-government.

By contrast the inability to take demagogues seriously is visible (recall) even in the response to the Trump presidency. The currently popular approaches center on proposals for abolishing the electoral college and to move toward a more straightforward majoritarian system. But while that addresses the feature in the electoral college that has generated minority presidencies and over-representation of rural areas, it is likely to increase the odds of demagogues attaining the presidency. And while partisan friends of the Democratic party or coastal electorates, may welcome such an outcome, it is not obvious why it's good for the country (or the world).* 

The effectiveness of the electoral college as a block to the rise of demagogues has been successfully undermined over time by making party selection of leaders more democratic, while maintaining the effective and [given winner takes all structure of most electoral contests Stateside], natural duopoly of the two parties. (Of course, the existence of a party-system was unwanted when the electoral college was devised.)

As the quote reveals, Lippmann was aware that the intended system of the Founders and American constitutional reality differed. In particular, the system of checks and balances was systematically undermined. As Jacob T. Levy recently has argued (here), the system of checks and balances has been further weakened since. So, while Hamilton (who offers, recall my post, an ingenious cost-benefit, risk-reward analysis) is very explicit that there is a non-negligible risk of a demagogue even under the original system, we must now assume the likelihood is rather high that more demagogues will be elected. 

Now, Lippmann's analysis presupposes a distinction between an apparent, false democratic will and a hidden, true democrat will. The former is transient and passionate while the latter is more reasonable and enduring. The true will tracks people's genuine interests, while the false will tracks people's momentary infatuations. For Lippmann it is obvious, perhaps too obvious, that a demagogue appeals to our false wills and not the authentic ones. Lippmann has a lot to say about the conditions under which such a mature (another term he likes) will is possible, but that will not concern me at present.  

Like all approaches that rely on such a distinction one may well wonder how the true  will can be revealed. (There has been a lively debate over, say, Rousseau's general will.) Lippmann's answer is worth reflecting on. For, Lippmann takes very seriously the temporal features mentioned in the distinction between the true and false democratic will. He thinks an electorate's will can be "refined" ((p. 250; 261), this is Madison's (Humean) terminology). On his view the way to capture the authentic, refined democratic will is to ensure that it is revealed and, then represented, over time.+ He claims the American "founders sought to approximate a true representation of the people by providing many different ways of counting heads" (p. 254) at different times and in different configurations. [Full disclosure: I have learned to pay attention to political time by Elizabeth Cohen (here), especially, and Mathias Thaler (see here).] 

The idea being that the democratic will is neither formed instantaneously nor expressed in a given moment. That is democratic representation is not homogeneous, but, in fact, multi-faceted in time (and geographic space). This strikes me as the sound intuition in Lippmann's analysis. It also expresses the liberal distrust of appeals to the people who are taken to be unified and unidirectional by populists (and much worse) without being distrustful of democracy.

Lippmann thinks this fact requires regular elections (and geographically uneven constituencies) with the possibility to focus on different features of representation. We can be represented as citizens of a local place and, say, larger region and at different given times. And indeed the American way of government has, despite a peculiar fondness for November election days, a tendency to fragment the expression of the popular will. To what degree this way of counting heads truly generates an approximation of a true representation may well be doubted. It can also reveal the fact of heteronomy.**  

True or not, if temporally separated voting were to reduce the power of demagogues it would be a useful check for that reason alone. But, as we know, it obviously cannot prevent a demagogue by itself.  

Now, unlike other political philosophies, democratic liberals are willing to live with some uncertainty. (That's also part of our defense of markets.) So, perhaps one must simply accept that the demagogue is the natural byproduct of democracy--something that cannot be eliminated without undermining democratic self-rule. Regular readers may suspect that this fits my generally skeptical tenor.

As I noted, Lippmann thought part of the answer was changing the nature of how people think about the point of government.+ Something like that attitude is also visible in those with a preference for markets over elections, or a preference for experts over elections (this (recall) tempted Lippmann, too), etc. But it strikes me these do not exhaust the options. One of the problems of the evolution of the American system is that it has (d)evolved into (what used to be called) elective (temporary) kingship ((and it has its defenders recall Al-Farabi; Ibn Rushd); Mozi). But if kingship is the problem, as it was in 1776, then (more) elections alone won't solve it (recall).

What's needed is a more thoroughgoing realization than Lippmann allows that no human should have as much power as an American president. Democracy is the response to human imperfection. If we were truly virtuous and wise we wouldn't need this form of government. But why perpetuate an office that by its nature requires the best instincts of any saint?**

 

 

 

On the Philosophical Attack on Heritable Intellectual Rank

If there is any good in philosophy, it is this, – that it never looks into pedigrees. All men, if traced back to their original source, spring from the gods....[a] noble mind is free to all men; according to this test, we may all gain distinction. Philosophy neither rejects nor selects anyone; its light shines for all. Socrates was no aristocrat. Cleanthes worked at a well and served as a hired man watering a garden. Philosophy did not find Plato already a nobleman; it made him one. Why then should you despair of becoming able to rank with men like these? They are all your ancestors, if you conduct yourself in a manner worthy of them; and you will do so if you convince yourself at the outset that no man outdoes you in real nobility. We have all had the same number of forefathers; there is no man whose first beginning does not transcend memory. Plato says: "Every king springs from a race of slaves, and every slave has had kings among his ancestors." The flight of time, with its vicissitudes, has jumbled all such things together, and Fortune has turned them upside down. Then who is well-born? He who is by nature well fitted for virtue. That is the one point to be considered; otherwise, if you hark back to antiquity, every one traces back to a date before which there is nothing. From the earliest beginnings of the universe to the present time, we have been led forward out of origins that were alternately illustrious and ignoble. A hall full of smoke-begrimed busts does not make the nobleman. No past life has been lived to lend us glory, and that which has existed before us is not ours; the soul alone renders us noble, and it may rise superior to Fortune out of any earlier condition, no matter what that condition has been.

Suppose, then, that you were not a Roman knight, but a freedman, you might nevertheless by your own efforts come to be the only free man amid a throng of gentlemen. "How?" you ask. Simply by distinguishing between good and bad things without patterning your opinion from the populace. You should look, not to the source from which these things come, but to the goal towards which they tend. --Seneca, Letter 44 Translated by Richard Mott Gummere.

In Morgenröte, Nietzsche treats the invention of Darwinism as the undoing of heritable grandeur, "This however has now become a forbidden path for the ape stands at its entrance and likewise other fearsome animals grinning knowingly as if to say: no further this way!" But as Seneca reminds us, one does not need Darwinsim to make the argument. There are five  key features of Seneca's argument: first, the argument relies on a distinction between what we may call history and pre-history (or the unreliable past). If you think this distinction is too anachronistic, recall this post, prompted by Adrienne Mayor, on the  nature of deep time in Ancient Greek thought. Because of the existence of pre-history, the origin and hence purity of no lineage is secure. This, second, relies on the idea that a noble-making character of the lineage is essential to the lineage and gets handed down through the lineage. The existence of pre-history makes all lineages epistemically suspect hostage to fortune.* In addition, third, and this is more of an empirical claim, what we know of human nature, all lineages will contain the ignoble. Fourth, he relies on the idea, one we have seen him develop through all the Letters, that there is no property right in the truly noble. While his sages have a certain amount of individuality -- given their differing circumstances -- the noble, which instantiates the infinite, lacks individuality (recall letter 3).

Finally, and fifth, he relies on the idea that superior qualities can be caused by a chain of inferior qualities. This point is notable because it goes against the idea -- familiar to modern readers from Descartes's Meditations (but often associated with a species of Platonism) -- that what is more perfect — that is, contains in itself more reality — cannot arise from what is less perfect. But Seneca clearly thinks this would involve one in a kind of genetic fallacy (You should look, not to the source from which these things come, but to the goal towards which they tend.). While the past is full of excellent exemplars, natural genealogy has no special status 

Seneca here anticipates the Hobbesian and Smithian idea that one is not a philosopher by nature, but that one is made into a philosopher. From this vantage point all are noble [omnes...hoc sumus nobiles] or at least capable of attaining it.+ (This is a core commitment of what I call methodological analytic egalitarianism) Now, as David Levy and Sandra Peart always insist to me, that a Stoic is in some sense a radical egalitarian is no surprise (given the known radical strain of early Stoicism--I warmly recommend René Brouwer's book). But Seneca insists that the point can also be found in Plato. This is a bit more surprising because while Plato is not Aristotle (think natural slaves/rulers), Plato tends to be associated with the idea that there is a hierarchy of human types (and  philosophers can be bred accordingly). Sometimes Plato presents  as thinking that natural hierarchy can be irrelevant politically or morally (see this post for some of these claims). This got me curious about the passage quoted by Seneca. (A helpful note by the translator directed me to the Theatetus): 

Hence it is, my friend, such a man, both in private, when he meets with individuals, and in public, as I said in the beginning, [174c] when he is obliged to speak in court or elsewhere about the things at his feet and before his eyes, is a laughing-stock not only to Thracian girls but to the multitude in general, for he [like Thales] falls into pits and all sorts of perplexities through inexperience, and his awkwardness is terrible, making him seem a fool; for when it comes to abusing people he has no personal abuse to offer against anyone, because he knows no evil of any man, never having cared for such things; so his perplexity makes him appear ridiculous; and as to laudatory speeches [174d] and the boastings of others, it becomes manifest that he is laughing at them—not pretending to laugh, but really laughing—and so he is thought to be a fool. When he hears a panegyric of a despot or a king he fancies he is listening to the praises of some herdsman—a swineherd, a shepherd, or a neatherd, for instance—who gets much milk from his beasts; but he thinks that the ruler tends and milks a more perverse and treacherous creature than the herdsmen, and that he must grow coarse and uncivilized, [174e] no less than they, for he has no leisure and lives surrounded by a wall, as the herdsmen live in their mountain pens. And when he hears that someone is amazingly rich, because he owns ten thousand acres of land or more, to him, accustomed as he is to think of the whole earth, this seems very little. And when people sing the praises of lineage and say someone is of noble birth, because he can show seven wealthy ancestors, he thinks that such praises betray an altogether dull and narrow vision on the part of those who utter them; because of lack of education they cannot keep their eyes fixed upon the whole and are unable to calculate that every man has had countless thousands of ancestors and progenitors, among whom have been in any instance rich and poor, kings and slaves, barbarians and Greeks. And when people pride themselves on a list of twenty-five ancestors and trace their pedigree back to Heracles, the son of Amphitryon, the pettiness of their ideas seems absurd to him; he laughs at them because they cannot free their silly minds of vanity by calculating that [175b] Amphitryon's twenty-fifth ancestor was such as fortune happened to make him, and the fiftieth for that matter. In all these cases the philosopher is derided by the common herd, partly because he seems to be contemptuous, partly because he is ignorant of common things and is always in perplexity. Plato Theaetetus translated by Harold N. Fowler. C 

Regular readers know I have a minor obsession about the representation of Thales at the origin of philosophy (recall here; here; here; here); even in scholarship, and also here). And so re-reading this familiar passage -- which so clearly articulates the tense relationship between philosophy and ordinary opinion/commitments [i call that the Socratic Problem; see here]-- in light of Seneca came as a shock to me. For, indeed, Socrates here ruthlessly attacks the idea of nobility by birth as alien to a truly philosophical mind.+ And Socrates' argument anticipates Seneca's in claiming that all lineages are impure: the products of mixture and extremely long chains themselves the product of fortune.*

Seneca, of course, invokes Socrates and Cleanthes as intellectual exemplars. And he implies that Socrates supports his argument that it is constitutive of philosophy to reject inherited social distinctions, including ones based on ethnicity, as relevant to evaluations of philosophical distinction.** I am inclined to think Seneca is right here. And so while there are original sins in the Platonic tradition of philosophy -- its hostility toward rustic wisdom is one --, its known origins (see what I did there?) also point the way toward some noble commitments. 

 

On Hong Kong, Progress, and the Judgments of Spectators (I)

 

The revolution of a gifted people which we have seen unfolding in our day may succeed or miscarry; it may be filled with misery and atrocities to the point that a right thinking human being, were he boldly to hope to execute it successfully the second time, would never resolve to make the experiment at such cost—this revolution, I say, nonetheless finds in the hearts of all spectators (who are not engaged in this play themselves) a wishful participation that borders closely on enthusiasm, the very expression of which is fraught with danger; this participation, therefore, can have no other cause than a moral disposition of the human race.—Kant "The Contest of the Faculties" (AA 7:85), translated by Nisbet.

Before I get to the famous passage from Kant let me situate it briefly in the overall argument. Kant explicitly frames the Contest of Faculties in terms of contrast between true and false prophecy (recall this); he starts his discussion by offering examples of a priori history: these all involve what we might call self-fulfilling prophecies. The self-fulfilling prophecies Kant discusses all have a distinct character: warning against a bad outcome while sticking to a course of action that necessitates will make the bad  outcome happen.* These are all too common. 

By contrast Kant is interested in forecasting a positive outcome of a special kind, namely open-ended progress. The obstacle here is that one cannot assume human nature -- understood as a collective property [it is allowed  there may be good individuals] -- is naturally good (which may secure the positive outcome). So, what is needed, then, is a particular kind of existence proof that a collective is capable of generating the conditions of self-improvement and acting on them (and so can then figure into a self-fulfilling positive prophecy). Such an event would provide evidence of, a sign, of the possibility of progress. 

Readers knowledgeable with Kant know that he wishes for something stronger: such an event would be the kind of cause that the "inevitable consequence of its operation, that mankind is improving." But as Kant explicitly acknowledged elsewhere when discussing an objection by Mendelssohn ("mankind constantly fluctuates between fixed limits"), this presupposes commitment to divine providence. Our lives are not just the possible amusement to Epicurean Gods or fit for the existentialist's absurd.

It's not that luck does not enter it into it at all; Kant allows that experiencing such an event that would be a sign of the necessity of progress is a matter of probability (we can't all be so lucky to live in interesting times). In addition, Kant is also willing to allow that any particular event that is taken as a sign may itself not be the cause of future progress (and so not necessitate it). 

What is notable about Kant's next move is that he takes Adam Smith's theory of the impartial spectator, which is primarily designed to apply to judgment of characters and individual situations,** and turns it into a social device. (For my musings, first prompted by Sam Fleischacker, on the connection between Kant and Smith see here; cf. here). I quote the passage (which precedes the famous one quoted above):

We are here concerned only with the attitude of the onlookers as it reveals itself in public while me drama of great political changes is taking place: for they openly express universal yet disinterested sympathy for one set of protagonists against their adversaries, even at the risk that their partiality could be of disadvantage to themselves. Their reaction (because of its universality) proves that mankind as a whole share certain character in common, and it also proves (because of its disinterestedness) that man has a moral character, or at least the makings of one. And this does not merely allow us to hope for improvement; it is already a form of improvement in itself.

It is notable that the significance here is not so much the French revolution itself -- Kant was notably (to use an understatement) lukewarm about revolutions --, but the reaction of the impartial spectators. That is, Kant is more interested here in the existence of an international public opinion than in the events in Paris (cf. Mill here and Lippmann here on national public opinion). The existence of a disinterested and what we might call robust and impartial public opinion is for Kant significant evidence that progress has been made and so is possible.+ Importantly impartiality does not entail neutrality; it is also compatible with, after due consideration of all the facts, taking sides in a conflict.

The way public opinion takes sides is by a kind of sympathetic identification which, in the case of French revolution, borders on enthusiasm [eine Theilnehmung dem Wunsche nach, die nahe an Enthusiasm grenzt]. Now, enthusiasm is, as Kant explicitly notes, itself a dangerous emotion. In Smith it always (recall) involves a heightened admiration, but sometimes this is misplaced and so can lead to bad decisions (something Sophie de Grouchy emphasized when discussing the bad political consequences of acting on enthusiasm (recall here; here; here, and here). Kant probably shares in fears over acting enthusiastically. But the consensus and disinterested nature of the spectators's attitudes are a different kind of event. 

I have already noted that the events in Hong Kong occur at a moment when the elected leaders of the world's liberal democracies seem to identify more with the Chinese government than with the brave people of Hong Kong. They can do so in virtue of the absence a countervailing international public opinion. 

Now, the existence of an enthusiastic international public opinion can, at times, be a contributing cause to bad outcomes. When it encourages the weaker side with a kind of implied material support and then does not (or cannot) deliver or deliver less than needed material assistance, it may generate worse outcomes than if it had not existed. [Hungary 1956; Syria more recently] spring to mind as examples. So, political leaders need not be craven if they refuse to go along with or encourage international public opinion.

It is tempting to close with the thought that when one is unlucky enough to live in times when democratic leaders are craven and international public opinion is uninterested and silent, it is hard not to feel, despairingly, that Kant did not give Mendelssohn's position its full due. 

Even so, the actions of the people of Hong Kong are themselves a source of a more slender hope. Their courage, in the face of overwhelming odds, to defend the rule of law and resist the imposition of arbitrary power is a sign that liberty's flame has not been extinguished, yet. And seeing this, no dictatorship can feel secure. 

 

 

 

On Gossip, Celebrity, and Transparency.

1. Do you ask how the news reached me, and who informed me, that you were entertaining this idea, of which you had said nothing to a single soul? It was that most knowing of persons, – rumor [rumor]. "What," you say, "am I such a great personage that I can stir up rumor?" Now there is no reason why you should measure yourself according to this part of the world; have regard only to the place where you are dwelling. 2. Any point which rises above adjacent points is great, at the spot where it rises. For greatness is not absolute; comparison increases it or lessens it. A ship which looms large in the river seems tiny when on the ocean. A rudder which is large for one vessel, is small for another.

3. So you in your province are really of importance, though you scorn yourself. Men are asking what you do, how you dine, and how you sleep, and they find out, too; hence there is all the more reason for your living circumspectly. Do not, however, deem yourself truly happy until you find that you can live before men's eyes, until your walls protect but do not hide you; although we are apt to believe that these walls surround us, not to enable us to live more safely, but that we may sin more secretly. 4. I shall mention a fact by which you may weigh the worth of a man's character: you will scarcely find anyone who can live with his door wide open. It is our conscience, not our pride, that has put doorkeepers at our doors; we live in such a fashion that being suddenly disclosed to view is equivalent to being caught in the act. What profits it, however, to hide ourselves away, and to avoid the eyes and ears of men? 5. A good conscience welcomes the crowd, but a bad conscience, even in solitude, is disturbed and troubled. If your deeds are honourable, let everybody know them; if base, what matters it that no one knows them, as long as you yourself know them? How wretched you are if you despise such a witness!--Letter 43, Seneca Translated by Richard Mott Gummere  [with modest changes]

Letter 43 is a mere 217 words in Latin. Not unlike Socrates, Seneca presents himself interested in rumor surrounding his (would be) pupils. He doesn't use 'fama' here, which he did back in letter 13, but rumor which is etymologically related to shouting/noise even (politically) the voice of (to use a Hobbesianism) the multitude. (Whereas fama, from which our fame is derived, is connected to speaking/talking.)

Because Seneca tends (e.g.,  Letter 32)  to be dismissive in his Letters about that what is esteemed by the crowd (market-place, etc.), often going so far as to advocate (inner) exile or withdrawal from it, it is surprising that here he recommends what we would call, transparency; the crowd can be summoned by a good conscience [Bona conscientia turbam advocat]. More subtly, the desire for (what we would call) privacy is presented as itself a sign of bad conscience.

One way to make sense of Seneca's claim here is that if you are going to attract notice (because locally you stick out), then you should live the kind of live that can withstand mass scrutiny. This is what contemporary friends (e.g., Piketty) of transparency tell us, too.* 

But the situation is more tricky for three reasons. First, Seneca is sometimes explicit that the crowd's judgment is corrupted in an imperfect society  (e.g., Letter 7). Second, this is subtly recognized in the Letter, because he introduces his measure [inspired by aestimes] in terms of a kind of cost-benefit analysis; if you are the kind of person who will attract notice, and who who wishes to benefit/profit  [prodest] from the crowd, then you should live the kind of live that can withstand mass scrutiny.  This may be thought sensible (what we may call) second-best advice that is compatible with the thought that you should live the kind of life that will make you entirely invisible to the crowd. Lucilius, by contrast, is pursuing political advancement.** 

Now, one need not be Adam Smith to note (recall) that the "disposition to admire, and almost to worship, the rich and the powerful, and to despise, or, at least, to neglect persons of poor and mean condition...is...the great and most universal cause of the corruption of our moral sentiments."+ The reason I mention it here -- and this is my third reason -- is that it is by no means obvious the crowd will always admire the virtuous (politician, celebrity, etc.). 

Perhaps, because the crowd is by definition an inconstant and imperfect judge, Seneca's advice to those that wish to benefit from public attention should be taken as a maxim that makes life better worth living even when the public thinks otherwise.

On Total Humanity, The Origins of Human Rights, and Unreasonable Pluralism

[T]he totalitarian rebellion of our time is not only directed against nineteenth-century liberalism and democracy. It attacks the sum total of the tradition of the Western world, its religion, its science, its law, its State, its property, its family, its morality, and its notion of the human person. But I insist on emphasizing especially that this attack threatens a common ruin to all sorts of interests that, until now, were considered separated by irreconcilable differences [oppositions]. Today we are confronted with an extraordinary sight: theologians and scholars, believers and non-believers, Catholics, Protestants, Jews and free-thinkers, monarchists, democrats, managers and workers, in sum all the parties, all the factions, all the sects, all the interests of which the antagonisms have posed problems the two past centuries, are forced to recognize that if they do not find common ground in defense against the will of totalitarian States to dominate, they will all be ruined together.
   That should teach them that the disputes and the divisions they have had for such a long time do not derive from irreconcilable conflicts, but from their intellectual inability to discover the principles of unity that conceal their apparent disagreements. These principles of unity do exist, however, and one will be able to discover them one day: the proof of it lies in the fact that totalitarian philosophy attacks each of these diverse interests in its vital center. In the totalitarian system, there is no more room for the theologian than for the scholar, for private property than for free labor, for aristocracy than for democracy. And if all these diverse interests must today defend themselves together, it follows they must implicitly hold in common many of the things that are worth defending.
   That, I believe, is the great mission of contemporary thinkers: uncover and formulate, make explicit that which civilized men hold in common, that which men, seemingly holding such different biases and opinions, find today necessary to defend together. A great work of analysis of the old conflicts and the old confusions will be necessary so as to build a great synthesis in which all the permanent interests of civilized humanity will find their rightful place and rank. The world that we have known before the war is dying of its confusion and its incoherence. But in the agony that it goes through and has yet to go through, the civilized world can only seek and find a universal philosophy that, by its total humanity, will be able to maintain the tradition of civilization in spite of a totally inhuman enemy.
III
Some among you may deem all of that to be far removed from the immediate political questions confronting [us] in our time. I do not apologize for this, because I am profoundly convinced that this revision of human ideas, that this analysis and this synthesis that we will call the reconstruction of liberalism, is the necessary discipline, the indispensable experience in which the vital energies of the civilized world must unite in order to defend themselves against the danger that threatens them.--Walter Lippmann (1938) in "The Walter Lippmann Colloquium." The Birth of Neo-Liberalism. Edited by Reinhoudt & Audier. (2018), pp. 108-109.

It's not much of a stretch to suggest that the doctrine of 'human rights' became the unity that Lippmann sought for a post-war, reconstructed liberalism. By this I do not mean to suggest that the 1948 Declaration is itself indebted to Lippmann (about that below). Rather, what Lippmann discerned is that humanity,  total humanity, would be the glue with which anti-totalitarianism, now recast as 'inhuman' came to understand itself.

There is a two-fold (modest) irony here in that (for example) the Nazis were more than willing to treat many of their targets as sub-human/Untermenschen. Second, the conceptual and normative connections among 'humanity,' 'civilization,' and 'non-factionalism' (and even 'interests' albeit rightly understood) were forged, as Ryan Hanley shows, by David Hume in the eighteenth century. David Hume the philosopher would remain controversial for many in the 'common ground' ascribed by Lippmann.* (I think that ironic.)

While Lippmann is far more interested in articulating and reconceptualizing the nature of the rule of law (which is crucial to his argument in the book), Lippmann himself recognizes the significance of human rights in The Good Society (the book to which the 1938 colloquium is devoted [recall here; here; here; here]). While his discussion of human rights is brief, I want to note three features: first, he sees them as work in progress (that are "developed" through time). Second, for him the core feature of human rights is the right not to be treated arbitrarily by anyone else (and a concurrent duty not to treat others arbitrarily; p. 348); in particular, it is directed against "arbitrary power." Third, he thinks that human rights express underlying "moral commitments" which support what he calls the "true law" (346). In the colloquium lecture he captures this (a bit further down) with the idea that what must be protected are the "essential elements of human life."  

Of course, that to be attacked in common requires that some (reasonably interesting) principle of unity among those attacked is presupposed can reasonably be doubted. Since Rawls settled for a rather pragmatic, overlapping consensus most liberals do doubt it. Lippmann's hoped "synthesis" that would absolve all political contradictions is remarkably utopian. But what he points toward are two significant features. 

First, and I think this is a somewhat tragic tendency in (mid) twentieth century liberalism -- I have discussed the conceptual roots in scholarly fashion here -- that there must be some hunkering toward a fundamental consensus.  (Lippmann here echoes Lionel Robbins, with whom he corresponded in 1937.) That hankering was, while understandable, a technocratic mistake (that supplied Isaiah Berlin with one of his overarching themes). But in Lippmann it is expressed with a conflicting and more interesting impulse...

Second, and more important, Lippmann recognizes that from a certain vantage point ordinary, rather vehement partisan political opposites within a working (for lack of a better word) system may well share something in common against those that wish to blow up that system. The interesting point here is not when they understand that their foes are antagonists (losing to whom is painful but not disastrous) rather than "inhuman enemies" (losing to whom is a disaster). But rather the insight that the antagonists may well in an important sense be dependent on each other. (Andy Sabl [HT Jacob Levy] made the point very nicely recently in an essay on the possible future character of the ways parties in a party-system might influence each other.)**

This mutual dependence of competing antagonists is, for Lippmann, both practical -- at the level of functioning and surviving -- and spiritual. (It is no coincidence that Lippmann's language echoes Hegel at times.) For Lippmann liberalism is (recall) itself a multi-generational, open-ended spiritual project that aims to be transformative of the human condition (and this is where some of his eugenic sensibilities also enter in). While for Lippmann the content of the ideal is itself left open, it does (and this makes it partially utopian) require conditions under which war is largely banished. 

That is to say, in the moment of its possible defeat, the liberal vision grasps that for a non-totalizing liberalism to survive and thrive it may well require a political structure in which illiberal parties and commitments are present both to maintain liberalism's own vitality and then vitality of the whole. Liberalism then simultaneously comes to endorse its own fundamental commitments and a commitment to a kind of unreasonable pluralism. It is this affirmation that is forgotten in victory.