Digressions&Impressions

Omelas' Social Contract Reconsidered.

I incline to think that people from towns up and down the coast have been coming in to Omelas during the last days before the Festival on very fast little trains and double-decked trams, and that the train station of Omelas is actually the handsomest building in town, though plainer than the magnificent Farmers' Market. Ursula Le Guin, The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas.

Unlike More's Utopia, or Bacon's Bensalem, Le Guine's Omelas is not (relatively) isolated from the rest of the world. In fact it is clearly welcoming of visitors. The train station is a very important building, after all. And while Omelas reject finance (they don't have a stock-market) they do trade (cf. the "magnificent Farmer's Market.").In many ways Omelas, which is a port-city, resembles a commercial trading republic; they explicitly do "without monarchy." 

I have noted before (recall) that the practices, which structure social life in Omelas, are ground in a social contract. I have analyzed the contract before (recall). I had claimed the contract has three clear terms:  (a) a miserable child; (b) no talking to the child; (c) "the happiness" of the citizens of Omelas.  I had claimed there were two ways to honor the contract: (i) stay in Omelas as a citizen; (ii) walk away of Omelas; by contrast, one way to break the contract (iii) would be to free the child and thereby destroy Omelas's perfected happiness. So far summary.

I want to add three key point: first, one becomes an accountable party of the social contract by learning about the terms. Children between the ages of "eight and twelve" learn the basic facts. And often these also come to see the imprisoned child. The ones that walk away from Omelas are sensitive souls who avoid getting their hands dirty, but leave the status quo as is. Third, the social contract of Omelas constitutes the "terrible justice of reality." Knowledge of the terms of the social contract transform the meaning, by a kind of philosophical chemistry (familiar from Hobbes and Hume), of very same facts what looks like manifest "injustice"" into justice.  This means that by Omelas' lights would-be-destroyers of the social contract are not just rebels, but (if unsuccessful) unjust.

So, it means that one can be governed by the contract without being full party to it. That's clear in the case of (iv) the miserable child (who is so dehumanized to be barely human). The other (v) children of Omelas benefit from the contract without being aware of who is paying the price for it. My students pointed out to me that these children are like (vi) the visitors to, and those that trade, with Omelas. That is to say, those that benefit from Omelas' social contract, and indirectly, perhaps, enhance it, may not all know the horrible social conditions that structure their reality. 

As an aside, I tend to assume that Omelas' social contract is somewhat Hobbesian in character--that it is a contract among all the adults who thereby constitute a certain social regime. But it is not impossible that (vii) a hidden God is the counter-party to the contract. So that the contract of Omelas is more akin to a Biblical covenant; say the one promised in Jeremiah 31-4. There is religion in Omelas, but not one with clergy. This is not entirely silly because the innocent child is piacular, that is, a kind of purifying sacrifice, who thereby gives meaning to the lives of the citizens of Omelas and "makes possible the nobility of their architecture, the poignancy of their music, the profundity of their science."

Okay, with that in place, let me get to the main point. In discussion with my students I realized that, in fact, there is another party to the social contract of Omelas: (viii) the readers of the story. For, we are actively and repeatedly invited by the narrator to co-constitute Omelas: "it would be best if you imagined it as your own fancy bids;" "As you like it;" "I fear that Omelas so far strikes some of you as goody-goody. Smiles, bells, parades, horses, bleh. If so, please add an orgy" and or two more such suggestions. We are like the visitors to Omelas, but unlike them, we do know the terms of the contract. 

If we, the readers, benefit from Omelas, in full awareness of the terms of the contract, and we may be fairly said to have co-constituted elements of Omelas, then we are complicit in evil.* Now, some sympathetic readers may wish to put on the breaks here, and say, that the miserable child in Omelas is, after all, purely fictional, so no harm done. We may say then, that a certain species of philosophical realism urges on us the idea that one can turn one's back on Omelas without consequence.

But the miserable child is also an intentional object. We carry it with us after co-constituting the city that harms it. And in virtue of that, we cannot walk away from Omelas because wherever we go that suffering intentional object goes. And so while we are guiltless, we are stained, too. 

The Flying Spaghetti Monster, Byzantium, and the PSR

One interesting feature of recent debates about God’s existence is the use of the Flying Spaghetti Monster to deride the rationality of theistic belief (a colorful spin on Russell’s teapot case). What I’m interested in is why anyone was ever impressed with it.

Lately I’ve been studying the history of the Byzantine Empire: its military history, its religion and theology, its philosophy, art, and architecture. It’s amazing to me that there’s an entire empire, lasting one thousand years, that is wholly absent from popular Western culture. When was the last time you saw the Byzantine Empire mentioned in a movie, a television show, or a recent novel? And so what happened? Why did one thousand years of Greek Christian history go down the memory hole?

....

For many neoplatonic thinkers (Christian or no), the existence of some sort of deity is philosophically obvious. God/master deity often served as the explanatory ground of almost everything: concepts, knowledge, morality, human purpose, the soul, freedom, and the basis of political order. This isn’t a coincidence. They believed they had arguments beginning from their philosophical commitments and extending to the existence of some kind of chief deity. Some kind of God served a central explanatory role in these philosophical and theological systems.

For neoplatonists, the Flying Spaghetti Monster (FSM) would have seemed a ridiculous analogy with the divine. The power of the FSM is to generate the intuition that God’s existence is random, unnecessary, and absurd. And just as no one should believe in FSM, no one should believe in God. But, again, the finest minds for over a thousand years, and really fifteen hundred years, would have been utterly unmoved because God’s existence was in no way random. In fact, God’s existence was the least random thing imaginable.

The truth is that a single, original deity isn’t going to seem random on any view that prioritizes the conceptual and the mental as ontologically fundamental. Deity just doesn’t look weird on such views. And, importantly, these views aren’t insane, since it is hard to see how the conceptual and the mental as we know them could even in principle originate in the material world. So there must be some mental point of origin or explanation, and that suggests at least one deity, and perhaps only one master deity. I take no stand here on whether those systems must lead to some kind of theism, just that it is entirely reasonable for these philosophical systems to yield arguments for some kind of theism.

So when did FSM start seeming like an interesting analogy? Not the 19th century, since idealism was dominant in many places, and idealists frequently affirmed the existence of either an immanent deity or a transcendent one.

No, it is the dominance of physicalism that gives the FSM its rhetorical power. But this suggests that all the FSM can do is convince people with tacit physicalist commitments that God’s existence is as random and unexplained as the FSM. For again, for centuries upon centuries, almost no reflective person with philosophical training would have been impressed. Instead, the only people who are impressed are those who have absorbed physicalist assumptions. And, while physicalism is influential, it is not only reasonably contestable, but it is probably in some trouble in the philosophy of mind and metaethics. It’s just hard to jam mental and moral properties into the physical world.

...

So that’s why I think the FSM impresses some people. It impresses express or tacit physicalists, but other reasonable philosophical systems won’t see a single God as an arbitrary and laughably random postulate. And the philosophical systems that do see God in this way are subject to various difficulties. Now, the Christian God may indeed seem random as a specification of the master deity, but even Christians admit that we only know about God’s Trinitarian structure through revelation. So if you want to impugn the Christian God with the FSM, you have to already think you have a good argument against the idea that the master deity can and has revealed itself as having a Trinitarian form. And that requires a bit more than ridicule, if the existence of a master deity is already on the table.--Kevin Vallier "Why Was Anyone Ever Impressed by the Flying Spaghetti Monster?"

Let me start by saying that I love Kevin Vallier's attempt to think seriously about the historically conditioned conceptual pre-conditions of shifts in the apparent plausibility of a thought experiment, argument, or intuition. (He is also right to note the oddness of the near invisibility of Byzantine culture.) Contemporary philosophers tend to dislike doing this because it smacks of relativism (of the historicist kind) and it creates a pathway toward systemic methodological doubt about the evidential status of a lot of our techniques. 

As an aside, Vallier does not emphasize that for much of its natural history the Flying Spaghetti Monster (FSM) was intended and understood  as satire (this is exceptionally clear in the Wikipedia article describing its history). It's pretty clear that even if satire is a human universal (I don't know), the content of satire is (ahh) necessarily historically conditioned. But FSM has found its way into philosophical discussion (see for example here).

Now, Vallier suggests that it's the twentieth century rise of physicalism that helps explain the tacit cultural/rhetorical power of FSM. Because it is the embrace of physicalism that allows one to see God’s existence "as random and unexplained as the FSM." But Vallier does not explain why this is so. By this I do not mean that Vallier needs to offer a mechanism that takes us from the philosophy presupposed in the zeitgeist to the cognitive effectiveness of ridicule; although it would be swell. But rather what the conceptual connection is between physicalism and the purported randomness and explanatory vacuity of of God. It can't be because of the commitment to law-governedness in physicalism because God is in no worse position (conceptually) than various (let's say, other) arbitrary initial conditions. It can't be because God can't be explained within physicalism because physicalists can't explain the origin and nature of laws and constants.  And it can't be because God is inconsistent with physicalism. This list is not meant to be exhaustive.

Vallier himself suggests that one some interpretations physicalists leave no room for mental and moral properties at all. But as Vallier hints that version of pysicalism generates much mystery about many of our social practices and the nature of experience. So, the case is by no means straightforward. (I am no property dualist, for the record.)

Rather, the rise of physicalism happens to coincide with the demise of the principle of sufficient reason (PSR; see here). That the PSR was taken to have lost its salience in the twentieth century is taken for granted in, and perhaps best expressed by, Lovejoy's The Great Chain of Being. I think it's the lack of cultural purchase of the PSR that accounts for the historical shift Vallier is trying to put his finger on. For the PSR has no tolerance for (i) arbitrary events; (ii) no tolerance for un-caused events/entities (that is a natural way to interpret the idea that “Nothing comes from nothing”); and (iii) no tolerance for unexplained events/entities (etc.). 

The connection between the rise of phsyicalism and the demise of the PSR is culturally conditioned, but not intrinsic. For, at the start of the twentieth century, for various reasons, and I hasten to add not all of them good reasons, scientific developments (the Big Bang, quantum mechanics, etc.) were interpreted as suggesting that science entails that the cosmos has arbitrary elements ineliminably woven into it (and so incompatible with the PSR).

Ine may think there is now a deeper mystery. If the demise of the PSR created a physicalism wonderfully at ease with randomness, then implying God is really random can't really figure into an argument against the existence of God.

The mystery dissolves if we remember the FSM is not an argument against the existence of God (understood as a designing mind). Rather, it is a demand for "equal time" for other wonderful ideas.

Kant, Neo-Liberalism, and Migration

This a libertarian must believe, for war is the great threat to his kind of society. There is simply no democratic answer to the problem of external defense, save indefinite extension of federalism, first, into a predominantly powerful supranational federation, and then gradually into inclusive world organiza­tion of all nations capable of responsible participation. Here the important next steps must be taken in the field of com­mercial policies; and the next conspicuous institutional innova­tion will be an international court with compulsory jurisdiction, albeit only among some Western democracies at the start. Libertarian democracy can survive without world order but not without secular movement toward such order.--H. Simons (1948) Economic Policy for a Free Society: A Credo, pp. 15-16 

First, a terminological point. Simons' use of 'libertarian' is a bit confusing. It means, for him, in "the English-Continental sense" liberal (given that in the US context 'liberalism' became associated with the New Deal). In contemporary discourse he would be considered a bleeding heart libertarian. Either way, my interest in Simons (recall) is that he helped shape the Chicago school of economics in crucial fashion.  And that he is one of the founding thinkers of the constitutive schools of twentieth century neo-liberalism, which was at the heart of what I call the second wave of liberalism (roughly 1945-2008).

So, I was a bit surprised to see such a clear statement of the  Kantian program (recall) for perpetual peace. Kant thought that growing regional federated commercial liberal democracies (which he called 'republics' because the term 'democracy' was still reserved for direct rule by the people) were the key to world peace. (The idea that liberal democracies don't fight with each other can also be traced back to Kant and Addison.) 

Simons is clear that such supranational federations -- the idea anticipates the EU -- would be committed to internal free-trade and, ideally, to external free trade. A free trade regime will generate international policy coordination and international laws. That is to say, Simons thinks that international institutions will develop functionally out of a joint commitment to free trade among like-minded peoples. I put it like this to do help explain his relativizing the scheme to 'Western Democracies.'

The point is not that Simons thinks non Western peoples are incapable of democratic federation. Rather, Simons thinks any such democratic, liberal and commercial supranational federation presuppose a"moral consensus." So, shared values are presupposed in any stable government. (This idea has a powerful afterlife in the ideas of his students, Milton Friedman and George Stigler.) While tacitly drawing on Max Weber (Simons' Chicago colleague (recall) Frank Knight had introduced Weber to US readers), he puts it as follows: 

The basic function of central government is to sustain domestic peace. Internal order is prerequisite to external defense and, of course, is the essence of world federation. The good central government will represent a monopoly of violence; it must sustain that monopoly against both its constituent political units and all extra-governmental bodies. It must promote all kinds of peaceful intercourse, intellectual and commercial. It must articulate the prevailing moral consensus and promote enlargement of that consensus by organized, free discussion and legislative-judicial experimentation. (16)*

That is to say, one of the goals of the liberal state (itself ideally a federated state) is to promote moral consensus by being the site of reasoned debate, and by engaging like-minded states to create the international infrastructure that will facilitate more trade and more moral consensus, including a legal regime.

Now, Simons is clear that these are ideal types. The real world is messy and imperfect. And he explicitly acknowledges that liberalism must be possible without it existing everywhere. But he does think movement toward such a Kantian order is required to keep faith in liberal progress. The EU has internalized this idea in its ordinary self-conception. The fact that Brexit has become truly thinkable will be an interesting test case for the survival of this idea (and the EU).

That liberalism must be possible without it existing everywhere is not obvious. Because Simons is clear that the very possibility of war is a threat to a liberal state. For it requires considerable preparedness; and such preparedness involves planning and subordinating individual freedoms to collective survival. The idea is worked out at greater length in an earlier text by Von Mises (1927; unmentioned by Simons), who is clearly indebted to Kant (whom he cites in relevant context a few times in the text):

One would think that after the experience of the [first] World War the realization of the necessity of perpetual peace would have become increasingly common. However, it is still not appreciated that everlasting peace can be achieved only by putting the liberal program into effect generally and holding to it constantly and consistently. "Liberal Foreign Policy" in Liberalism: in the Classical tradition (110-111)

This would be a natural place to end. 

But Mises also complicates the situation. One may well wonder, and critics of Liberalism have wondered, why if Liberalism promotes peace the first wave of liberalism ended in the disaster of first world war.+ Mises himself suggests that it is the rise of nationalism and zero-sum colonial competition that is to blame.+ Mises is quite capable of divorcing colonial/imperial projects from liberalism. But the situation is not so easy when it comes to liberalism's relationship to nationalism:

As long as nations were ruled by monarchical despots, the idea of adjusting the boundaries of the state to coincide with the boundaries between nationalities could not find acceptance. If a potentate desired to incorporate a province into his realm, he cared little whether the inhabitants—the subjects—agreed to a change of rulers or not. The only consideration that was regarded as relevant was whether the available military forces were sufficient to conquer and hold the territory in question. One justified one's conduct publicly by the more or less artificial construction of a legal claim. The nationality of the inhabitants of the area concerned was not taken into account at all.
It was with the rise of liberalism that the question of how the boundaries of states are to be drawn first became a problem independent of military, historical, and legal considerations. Liberalism, which founds the state on the will of the majority of the people living in a certain territory, disallows all military considerations that were formerly decisive in defining the boundaries of the state. It rejects the right of conquest. It cannot understand how people can speak of "strategic frontiers" and finds entirely incomprehensible the demand that a piece of land be incorporated into one's own state in order to possess a glacis. Liberalism does not acknowledge the historical right of a prince to inherit a province.

To simplify: while nations pre-exist liberalism, liberalism makes nationalism politically feasible. (It is worth comparing (recall) Mises with Herzl.) As Mises points out (on the next page) the key mechanism is the plebescite or referendum. Moreover, where national identities must co-exist, and mutual trust is low, the democratic impulse of liberalism also makes nationalism a permanent political problem. Mises is quite frank about this. For Mises cultural and ethnic pluralism is a source of tension. 

Mises' solution to the problems of a multi-national democracy is to double-down and to suggest minimizing government functions to bare (liberal) necessities (rule of law, defense of property rights, and some coordination functions, etc.) such that gaining power becomes of little value to people of ill will. As regular readers know I don't think Mises, nor any of his modern libertarian heirs, can explain how in the eternal presence of rent-seeking, one can attain such a nightwatchman state without a massive change of popular opinion (and the political dis-empowerment of those that benefit from spoils and rents who are by definition very well organized politically). So I view this as unstable. 

But, where liberalism generates homogeneous nation states, and has what Simons will call moral consensus, Mises allows that public provision of public goods (like education) need not cause internal strife. I think this helps predict and explain why in relatively homogeneous liberal democracies welfare states are less controversial (than in the more pluralistic ones). In homogeneous states the moral consensus can be broader. But if they engage in free trade and maintain a liberal economy, these tend to be wealthy and growing and so become, as Mises emphasizes, very attractive to immigrants and, thereby, become multicultural/national. So, by Mises' own lights -- he is for open borders [Simons is more reserved about this]-- this is a recipe for more internal tension and so turns out not to be stable either.**

I have gone on long enough. But the problem is that the early neo-liberals did not develop a genuinely pluralist conception of moral and political life; and so their commitment to open borders and democratic liberalism are a source of tension.     

 

On Locke, the Representative and Double Trust, even Triple Trust

The reason why men enter into society, is the preservation of their property; and the end why they chuse and authorize a legislative, is, that there may be laws made, and rules set, as guards and fences to the properties of all the members of the society, to limit the power, and moderate the dominion, of every part and member of the society: for since it can never be supposed to be the will of the society, that the legislative should have a power to destroy that which every one designs to secure, by entering into society, and for which the people submitted themselves to legislators of their own making; whenever the legislators endeavour to take away, and destroy the property of the people, or to reduce them to slavery under arbitrary power, they put themselves into a state of war with the people, who are thereupon absolved from any farther obedience, and are left to the common refuge, which God hath provided for all men, against force and violence. Whensoever therefore the legislative shall transgress this fundamental rule of society; and either by ambition, fear, folly or corruption, endeavour to grasp themselves, or put into the hands of any other, an absolute power over the lives, liberties, and estates of the people; by this breach of trust they forfeitthe power the people had put into their hands for quite contrary ends, and it devolves to the people, who have a right to resume their original liberty, and, by the establishment of a new legislative, (such as they shall think fit) provide for their own safety and security, which is the end for which they are in society. What I have said here, concerning the legislative in general, holds true also concerning the supreme executor, who having a double trust put in him, both to have a part in the legislative, and the supreme execution of the law, acts against both, when he goes about to set up his own arbitrary will as the law of the society. He acts also contrary to his trust, when he either employs the force, treasure, and offices of the society, to corrupt the representatives, and gain them to his purposes; or openly pre-engages the electors, and prescribes to their choice, such, whom he has, by sollicitations, threats, promises, or otherwise, won to his designs; and employs them to bring in such, who have promised before-hand what to vote, and what to enact. Thus to regulate candidates and electors, and new-model the ways of election, what is it but to cut up the government by the roots, and poison the very fountain of public security? for the people having reserved to themselves the choice of their representatives, as the fence to their properties, could do it for no other end, but that they might always be freely chosen, and so chosen, freely act, and advise, as the necessity of the common-wealth, and the public good should, upon examination, and mature debate, be judged to require. This, those who give their votes before they hear the debate, and have weighed the reasons on all sides, are not capable of doing. To prepare such an assembly as this, and endeavour to set up the declared abettors of his own will, for the true representatives of the people, and the law-makers of the society, is certainly as great a breach of trust, and as perfect a declaration of a design to subvert the government, as is possible to be met with. To which, if one shall add rewards and punishments visibly employed to the same end, and all the arts of perverted law made use of, to take off and destroy all that stand in the way of such a design, and will not comply and consent to betray the liberties of their country, it will be past doubt what is doing. What power they ought to have in the society, who thus employ it contrary to the trust went along with it in its first institution, is easy to determine; and one cannot but see, that he, who has once attempted any such thing as this, cannot any longer be trusted.--John Locke Second Treatise, §. 222 [emphasis in original.]

A natural way to read Locke's political philosophy is to see him as advocating an account of authority in terms of accountability. When leaders violate the citizens' trust, they forfeit their authority. This forfeiture has, what I'll call an 'objective' and 'subjective' element. The subjective element concerns the populace's view(s) to what degree they have, in fact, consented, explicitly or tacitly, to a particular policy or end. The objective element concerns  the function, even intelligibility, of authority such that some decisions (e.g., ones that "take away, and destroy the property of the people, or to reduce them to slavery under arbitrary power,") are, as it were de jure, self-undermining of any authority (even if people or some sub-set of the people de facto acquiesces in them for various reasons). Obviously a lot of interesting issues arise from the possible discrepancy between these objective and subjective elements and from dissension among the people. But let's grant that this is a stable position.

Now, in a very interesting article on "Locke and Trust," Thomas Simpson calls attention to the paragraph quoted above. In particular, he notes the significance of the "double trust" a phrase I had -- despite the allusion to a famous passage in Macbeth -- never noted before. Now, Locke clearly implies there are is "also" a third kind of trust, namely that, within a division of powers, the executive allows the legislative representatives of the people to do their job independently from the executive's untoward influence (violence, bribes, and promises of jobs for the representatives, ["the force, treasure, and offices of the society"] etc. The ability to exercise such untoward influence is (to recall Stasevage's important point) the difference between a parliament that can exercise oversight (Holland), and so preserve freedoms, and one that ends up facilitating absolutist government (Spain).

Now, in calling for the significance of this third kind of trust. Locke is not casting aspersion on legislative horse-trading, where the government promises financial goodies to a representative's district in return for votes, etc. But obviously the dividing line between horse-trading and violations of trust can be a fine one. This is so, even when 'corruption' is defined/understood strictly in terms of the financial gain(s) of the particular representative.

To see why, note that the 'trust' of the legislative member is akin to what we would call a 'trusteeship.' I want to distinguish such trusteeship-trust from the two standard forms of trust (what follows is indebted to Simpson, but I am not doing justice to  his subtlety): first, one can understand trust as a (defeasible) moral relationship such that violations of trust generate anger/resentment. Second, one can understand trust as a pragmatic relationship to help solve coordination or signaling problems such that violations of trust lead to surprise (expectations are violated) or (risk adjusted) loss. The two understandings are compatible, of course, but, to simplify, the former is beloved by philosophers and the latter by economists.  Perhaps, the philosophers like trust for its moral benefits/relationships it engenders, and the economists for its epistemic (or economic) benefits, but this may be a simplification too far.

The significance of the idea of a representative is introduced by Locke, in the context of articulating a possible objection by somebody sympathetic to Filmer, that Adam can be thought of as (what we might call) a representative agent ("Adam, but in him, as their representative," First Treatise, §. 45). But it is not explored in the First Treatise, and not mentioned at the start of the Second. But he (re-)introduces the idea in §88 of the Second, where he explains the origin of the legislative power in terms of its function as supplying the representative judgment of a citizen.* That is to say, the legislative has a delegated authority to judge, as it were, the way the citizen would have judged in light of similar circumstances. Obviously, even in relatively narrow cases, this raises very tricky issues the nature of such delegation and judgment. In fact, later, Locke adds features to, and thereby widens, the legislative's tasks: they also supply the delegated consent for the raising of taxes (§140), any "standing laws" (§192), and, in the passage quoted at the top of this post,"the necessity of the common-wealth, and the public good." (In my view Locke's "public good" goes well beyond what Locke's contemporary libertarian admirers tend to have in mind.)

So, in my view, a Lockean representative is often called upon, even required, to articulate judgments (after "mature debate") about matters that go beyond the obvious or known even knowable interests of his/her constituents, but fall squarely within the (contestable) common good of society.  Her role, then, is to act as a trustee for her constituents and to exercise good judgment. Locke makes the analogy with a trustee explicit not far after the passage I have just quoted: "The people shall be judge; for who shall be judge whether his trustee or deputy acts well, and according to the trust reposed in him, but he who deputes him, and must, by having deputed him, have still a power to discard him, when he fails in his trust?" (§240) If the exercise of this judgment is not self-undermining (in the de jure way noted above) it's authoritative.  This is so, even if citizens vote out the representative in the next election.+

For the trustee model of trust to work it requires, in addition to good judgment, good faith on the part of the legislator. The problem is that ordinary horse-trading distorts both. (Incentives matter, after all.) Obviously, sometimes horse-trading actually benefits the representative's particular constituents along one dimension (the one in which he is acting as representative of their economic interests), but by hurting the common good it damages them along another (the one in which he is acting as their trustee for the common good).**  So, horse-trading may well be a source of corruption of judgment (even if the representative never enriches himself). 

Now, to wrap up, violations of a trustee's delegated trust can be moral, epistemic, and signaling violations. But the way to understand them is in terms of violations of responsibility, in particular, a duty of care.  When one is entitled to care, and does not receive it, one is liable to feel unprotected. 

On Confucian Authority

The Confucian conception of the ideal political relationship is one of mutual trust and commitment. Political authority is a kind of relationship or bond between the ruler and the ruled. What makes political leadership truly authoritative is not just the ruler’s ability to protect and promote the people’s well-being, but the willing acceptance of his rule by the people. That is to say, authority to lead is not merely externally justified but also internally constituted by a mutual commitment from both sides—the ruler’s commitment to care for the people and the people’s willing acceptance. Early Confucian masters used words such as min fu (that is, the people sincerely follow) (Confucius 1979:bk 2, sect. 19; hereafter Confucius 1979: bk 2.19), and min yue (that is, the people delight) (Mencius 1970: bk 1B.10) to describe the idea of people’s willing and glad acceptance of political rule. These ideas can often be found in passages from The Analects and Mencius. The authority of political leaders ultimately resides in the ‘hearts of the people’—true authority can only be accepted, recognized, and willingly complied with by the people. External forces such as sheer power will not give a ruler true authority. Even an institutional office of authority cannot guarantee the office-holder true authority.
Precisely because authority is constituted by the attitudes and commitment of the ruler and ruled, early Chinese thinkers thought that political authority is a precarious and fragile relationship. Any one side of this relationship can easily harm or undermine it by withdrawing the attitudes that constitute authoritativeness. These thinkers believed that the ruler rather than the subjects should play an active role in forging and maintaining this relationship—he should care for the people, gain their trust, and win their hearts. Only leaders who have proper virtues and abilities can command the voluntary submission of the people, and only they can develop and sustain the ideal ruler–ruled relationship. In other words, leadership is an important foundation for political order and authority.--Joseph Chan and Elton Chan (2014) "Confucianism" The Oxford Handbook of Political Leadership, p. 58. [HT Amanda Greene]

A nice feature of this Confucian account is that authority can come in degrees along different dimensions based on the intensity and nature of mutual commitment. This allows for the natural thought that the very same authority can be recognized to solve (recall Sabl on Hume) a coordination problem, while being treated as a nuisance in other respects. Authority is not a binary matter. 

Of course, because taking another's authority over oneself on trust seems gullible, or childish, it's easy to  assume mistakenly that this Confucian conception of authority is based on a naive or idealistic conception of politics. To see why this is not so, let's accept the implied contrast (in the quote) between the false authority based on office, function, or mere power and the true authority grounded on mutual commitment. As Joseph Chan notes in his book, Confucian Perfectionism, such a conception of true authority is based on a "service conception" of authority. That is, a ruler's authority is a means toward the flourishing of his (or her) subjects, or ruled. And if these flourish they have reasonably solid (epistemic and psychological) grounds to find the leader authoritative.

Of course, in the background there is a controversial empirical assumption (familiar from other posts on Mencius here and here) that rulers are in a non-trivial sense ultimately causally responsible for social outcomes. By this the Confucians clearly do not mean that rulers should be tyrants. Rather, they are responsible for the proper functioning of laws and for the appointment and oversight of inferior magistrates and rulers. This is less implausible than it sounds because good government for the Confucians is from a practical perspective little more than maintaining impartial justice, keeping taxes low, and facilitating public works conducive to the common good/trade (etc.). 

As an aside, it is a bit peculiar to see Joseph and Elton Chan appeal to Mencius 1B.10. Yes, I know they are doing so to provide a source text for the idea that min yue means the people delight. But at 1B.10 the underlying issue is whether conquest is wise. To be precise, the question is about how to maintain a conquest. And Mencius' answer is that depends on how you treat the occupied. But, of course, what makes the initial conquest possible is "ten thousand chariots" (that is, force).* So, the passage itself is at odds with the overall spirit of the Chans' interpretation of Confucian authority.*

Okay, with that in place let me now turn to a reservation. I do so by noting a virtue of this account of true authority. Such authority is grounded in the care for the people, and their perceptions of it.  This means that social unrest, anger, protest, or social turmoil are all signs that authority is not functioning well. I take this to be a feature, not a bug, of this account. But this account presupposes -- somewhat democratically -- that what serves the people, by the lights of the people, is good.

By this I do not mean to express distrust (familiar from Plato) about the people's ability to embrace true good for themselves. I grant that the service conception presupposes the idea of a moral community. One is not meeting the demands of service merely by preference satisfaction of the people. 

Let me explain. Rather, I worry that the "voluntary submission of the people" to able leaders can come at the expense of those who may not be intended to be served be the leader. Those may be people in places beyond the king's authority, transients within the border, or, perhaps, structural minorities. Now, clearly if the people in places beyond the king's authority or transients/structural minorities within the border can make their displeasure or resentment felt, then the king's lack of service undermines his authority.

But there are going to be cases where those most in need of one's service and protection, are least likely to complain or protest when one is derelict in one's service to them. These are not hypothetical cases, but the very definition of precariousness. It's pretty clear, as Joseph Chan emphasizes, that for (say) Xunzi (7.1) a true king ought to assist the most vulnerable. But here the empirical and normative elements of the theory may well come apart: if "the people" approve of one's leadership (perhaps not in virtue of one's mistreating the very vulnerable, although that cannot be ruled out, but) because one is of true service to the people, then one's subjective authority may well be very robust even if those who are not counted among the people are ignored. But I hesitate to call it 'true' authority. 

 

On Defending the Family/individual: On the Crisis of Liberalism (VI)

Despite their very real differences, then, [social conservative] communitarian and neoliberal legal scholars are united in their aversion to sexual rights discourse. Both are convinced some limit must be  imposed on sexual freedom, differing only on the question of whether these limits should be exceptional (the neoliberals) or foundational (the [social conservative] communitarians).

It is this convergence, no doubt, that explains...why one of the most libertarian of Chicago legal scholars, Richard A. Epstein, is also the most radical in his commitment to the nonnegotiatable nature of family obligations. What Epstein recognizes perhaps more lucidly than any other law and economics scholar is that freedom of contract cannot exist without the ostensibly natural, noncontractual obligations of family. The rules of social welfare should therefore "follow the basic pattern of natural obligation as it is perceived to arrive within families." The task of neoliberal welfare reform is "to transform [this] inclination into duty" and thus to "derive an 'is' from an 'ought'" -- a precise translation of the poor law philosophy of natural charity within the family.--Melinda Cooper (2017) Family Values: Between Neoliberalism and the New Social Conservatism, p. 116-117.

Regular readers know (recall) that I believe the second wave of liberalism has ended and that it may not survive the present darkness. (In brief: first long wave: 1776-1914; second wave: 1945-2009. Some readers will say, good riddance, and to you I say, I hope you do better.) This is the sixth post (recall here (I);  here (II); here (III); here (IV); here (V); ) in an open-ended series (see also here, here, here, and here) on the crisis of liberalism in which I step back from headline politics and scholarship.

Today's post start from the thought that the half-century alliance between neoliberals and social conservatives has led the liberal tradition into an intellectual cul-de-sac (about which below). The political alliance with social conservatives also left the liberal tradition compromised in being slow to recognize the dangers to fundamental liberal values from the authoritarian right. Before one can undo the damage it may be useful to reflect on the intellectual attraction of social conservatives to neoliberalism.  

One natural way, especially if you are a Marxist, to understand the alliance of American neo-liberalism (by which I include, for the sake of shorthand, folks adhering to variants of Chicago economics, law & economics, public choice theory, Austrian economics, and libertarians) with social conservatives during the last half century is (not just as a tactical one) but as a strategic defense of capital. While this is by no means silly (liberals have no suspicion of property and wealth), it misses the thoroughgoing attack on rent-seeking that practically everybody in neo-liberalism shares.  The defense of markets is self-consciously aimed at inherited privilege.

Even so, it is notable that during the last half-century some forms of unearned income -- inheritance, even monopoly rents -- have received a pass from neoliberals due to an evolution of views about estate taxes and antitrust law. So, the Marxist view is not silly. I view the growth of, say, Bleeding Heart Libertarianism as a welcome corrective to the unmistakable tendency of some neoliberals to favor capital as such.  So much for the Marxist analysis.  

The turn to the social conservative right occurred during the 1960s. This was the age of the expansion of the welfare state (Great Society), the Vietnam war, the civil rights movement, the vast expansion of higher education, and the sexual revolution. Some critics have tried hard to link neoliberalism with the racist elements within the Republican coalition developed by Nixon and Reagan. This connection undoubtedly existed (see, e.g., Jacob Levy's excellent pieces here and here), but in so far as any American thought can escape the taint of racism, it is also not characteristic of neoliberalism as a whole. (Unfortunately, we still await clear-headed scholarship on this vexed issue.) Much of the defense of markets by neoliberals is intended as a contrast to Jim Crow (and the ways unions elsewhere excluded African-Americans). In addition, much neoliberal thought was critical of the Vietnam war; in fact, part of Milton Friedman's popularity on college campuses was due to his outspoken criticism of the draft. (His argument also explicitly attacks the racist concerns over a professional army.)

One reason why Family Values (partially quoted above) by Melinda Cooper* is so welcome is that she helps explain why social conservatives and neoliberals were, despite profound differences, able to agree so much on policy. In particular, she shows that the attack on the welfare state and the sexual revolution (and by implication emancipation) amounted to the same thing. A key argument  in her book is the following:

The problem with social welfare, from [the neoliberal] perspective, is that undermines the natural incentive to family altruism and this deprives the poor of their primary support system. Even as they celebrate the freedom of contract in the public marketplace of love and money, neoliberals such as [Gary] Becker just as insistently affirm the necessity of noncontractual obligation in the family and are more than willing to invoke the full power of the state to enforce it. It is here after all that they locate the proper locus of economic security and the ideal alternative to the social welfare state. (p. 107)

To put Cooper's point in terms of a slogan: while social conservatives thought that the family must be protected from the market, neoliberals thought that a proper functioning market both presupposed families and, if the incentives (workfare, familial obligations, etc.) were properly aligned, families could help facilitate market society. The contrast here is (to quote Epstein again) between "the zone of voluntary market exchange" and "the non-price, non-exchange economy of the family." (p. 356 note 93). This helps explain the neoliberal fondness for policies that quite frankly are coercive in nature.

In her very well written book, Cooper makes her argument by taking a careful look at welfare reform, debates over inheritance, the aids crisis, access to credit, and human capital policy.* One fascinating feature of her argument is her diagnosis of the structural equivocation between 'individual' and 'family' in neoliberal arguments.+ Once alerted, one finds such equivocation in many places. For example, here is a passage from Stigler and Becker's famous (1977) "De Gustibus Non Est Disputandum:" "The power of stable preferences and utility maximization in explaining a wide range of behavior has been significantly enhanced by a recent reformulation of consumer theory. This reformulation transforms the family from a passive maximizer of the utility from market purchases into an active maximizer also engaged in extensive production and investment activities." (77) Consumer theory is presented in terms of the utility maximization of (active) families not individuals. (In fact, individuals are not mentioned in the piece, except once in context of the discussion of the role of information.) 

In our imperfect world, when the coercive powers of the state are called upon to fortify the family, to be urged into the private domain, this is usually a call to support patriarchy and to police minority bodies. As regular readers know, (recall) I had become distinctly reserved about the state's privileging of marriage (for more detailed argument see Clare Chambers). Cooper's book helps me see that the liberal tradition needs to recover a more thoroughgoing, emancipatory individualism and needs to be cured from its tendency to wish to police other people's bodies. That's (theoretically) the easy part. The more challenging bit is to confront the idea that markets presupposes families and the exploitation of unpaid labor in it. 

Ibn Khaldun, Prophets, and his Critique of Martyrdom

[E]very mass (political) undertaking by necessity requires group feeling. This is indicated in the aforementioned tradition: "God sent no prophet who did not enjoy the protection of his people."...
To this chapter belong cases of revolutionaries from among the common people and of jurists who undertake to reform evil (practices). Many religious people who follow the ways of religion come to revolt against unjust amirs. They call for a change in, and prohibition of, evil (practices) and for good practices. They hope for a divine reward for what they do. They gain many followers and sympathizers among the great mass of the people, but they risk being killed, and most of them actually do perish in consequence of their activities as sinners and unrewarded, because God had not destined them for such (activities as they undertake). He commands such activities to be undertaken only where there-exists the power to bring them to a successful conclusion....Rulers and dynasties are strongly entrenched. Their foundations can be undermined and destroyed only through strong efforts backed by the group feeling of tribes and families, as we have mentioned before. Similarly, prophets in their religious propaganda depended on groups and families, though they were the ones who could have been supported by God with anything in existence, if He had wished, but in His wisdom He permitted matters to take their customary course.
If someone who is on the right path were to attempt (religious reforms) in this way, (his) isolation would keep him from (gaining the support of) group feeling, and he would perish. If someone merely pretends to (achieve religious reforms) in order to gain (political) leadership, he deserves to be hampered by obstacles and to fall victim to perdition. (Religious reforms) are a divine matter that materializes only with God's pleasure and support, through sincere devotion for Him and in view of good intentions towards the Muslims. ...

Most men who adopt such ideas will be found to be, either deluded and crazy, or to be swindlers who, with the help of such claims, seek to obtain (political) leadership -which they crave and would be unable to obtain in the natural manner. They believe that such claims will be instrumental in bringing to them the fulfillment of their hopes. They do not consider the disaster that will overtake them in consequence. The trouble they create will speedily cause their death and bring their trickery to a bitter end.---Ibn Khaldun, "Chapter 3, paragraph 6. Religious propaganda cannot materialize without group feeling," The Muqadimmah (translated by F. Rosenthal), p. 88.

Earlier in the week (recall) I claimed that Ibn Khaldun is a proto-political Spinozist. By which I mean that he embraces the idea that revelation is authoritative in social affairs, but that revelation should not be treated as a book that gives us a philosophy of nature. Today I want to spell out a bit more the way revelation's authority is supposed to work. I have noted before (recall) that Ibn Khaldun treats prophecy as a real agent of historical change. But he explicitly rejects (recall) the (Islamic) philosophers' suggestion that prophecy is just a synonym for a true political founder (akin to a Rousseau-ian legislator). So, for him states, even well ordered states are possible without prophecy. This is no to deny that he thinks prophets can be political legislators.

For, to be sure, he treats Muhammad as a genuine prophet. In fact, he attributes two miracles to Muhammad: he "wrought no greater miracle than the Qur'an and the fact that he united the Arabs in his mission." (Sixth prefatory discussion.) The second of these points to the political significance of Muhammad's life; he was capable of unifying Arab tribes. (This is a standard Islamic idea.) 

Now in Ibn Khaldun's philosophy of history, the pre-unity Arabs are treated as Bedouins who live in a kind of anarchic state of nature, of equality and independence. (They also lack wealth because they do not really practice division of labor.) They have a lot of latent power, but ordinary this power is invisible because they are at war with each other or subordinated to some sedentary civilization.  

This latent power can be channeled through royal authority. And royal authority, in turn, (recall) relies on group feeling, or what I call sympathy. In Ibn Khaldun's philosophy of history, genuine change starts in the periphery and, at first, is destructive of civilization life. There is a strain -- I am uncertain if it is the dominant strain --  in Ibn Khaldun that welcomes such purifications because while he has clear fondness for the benefits of civilization, he also thinks it decadent.

True prophets -- as opposed to false, wannabe prophets -- rely on group feeling to survive. As the example of Muhammad shows, they are capable of gaining what Ibn Khaldun calls royal authority.  They do so, in part, because people follow truthful and ethical leadership willingly: good conduct id taken "as proof of Muhammad's truthfulness." (Sixth prefatory Discussion.)

What I find interesting about Ibn Khaldun's analysis is that he grants that some wannabe prophets may well be motivated by sincere and apt outrage at political injustices: they are "on the right path." (He is also adamant that "most" are political opportunists.) Now, you may have thought that he would treat the sincere would be prophet who gets killed as a martyr. But Ibn Khaldun does no such thing. Not only does he barely register the possibility, he is distinctly reserved about treating anybody as a martyr (treating sincere would be prophets who fail as in the grip of a"delusion and stupidity" (Chapter 6, in par. 51)). 

A quick check (this may be misleading) reveals that in his long book, Ibn Khaldun only acknowledges the existence of three martyrs: Al-Husayn (who is revered in Shia Islam)* and Ibn al-Zubayr. Both opposed Yazid, albeit for different reasons.* Ibn-al-Zubayr basically defended what we would call a democratic kingship conception of the Caliphate against turning it into a hereditary institution. What's striking about the treatment of the case of Ibn-al-Zubayr is that Ibn Khaldun both thinks he was mistaken in thinking he had the authority to revolt, and so was killed with lawful authority, AND that he had "(good) intentions and the fact that he chose the truth." It is notable that Ibn Khaldun does not claim that Ibn-Al-Zubayr was mistaken about the political principle at stake.+ But he treats those who opposed him as right. In particular, they were right to see the consequences of revolt, and, thus, civil war, as leading to bloodshed.

What all of this reveals is that Ibn Khaldun both thinks there is a huge political status quo bias in human social life. Anticipating Hobbes, even justified rebellion is frowned upon.++  On my reading he embraces this so much that his whole book is one long argument against any cult of martyrdom. To put it succinctly, Ibn Khaldun's view is that the only prophets worth having are those that succeed in gaining political power.**

On Holbein, Thomas More, The Salvation Army, Barbara Arneil, and Hobbes

Yesterday, Barbara Arneil (UBC) visited us and gave a splendid lecture on colonialism as a distinct ideology developing ideas from her recent book, Domestic Colonies: the turn inward to colonies.  (See the picture just below.) Part of her argument was that Locke developed the ideology of modern colonialism (as distinct from imperialism). During her lecture she remarked that her cover was inspired by  the cover of General William Booth's (1890) In Darkest England and the Way Out. Booth founded the salvation army, and In Darkest England presents a "scheme of social selection and salvation." This scheme "will be governed, not on the principle of counting noses, but on the exactly opposite principle of admitting no noses into the concern that are not willing to be guided by the directing brain. It will be managed on principles which assert that the fittest ought to rule, and it will provide for the fittest being selected, and having got them at the top, will insist on universal and unquestioning obedience from those at the bottom." For good measure, Booth adds, "If anyone does not like to work for his rations and submit to the orders of his superior Officers he can leave. There is no compulsion on him to stay." (I have reproduced the full cover of that below.)

 

As it happens, on Monday (recall) I had posted a piece on Thomas More's Utopia. In it I noted the connection between Locke's and More's ideologies of colonialism, and in it I treated Arneil's earlier book John Locke and America: The Defence of English Colonialism as authority.

So, I was primed to make the following suggestion. Booth's cover seems to me manifestly inspired by, or a re-interpretation of, the cover art for Thomas More's (1516) Utopia. Below two versions of it: first is the original cover. I believe the artist is unknown. Second is a (1518) cover of Froben's edition, published in Basel; this cover is by Ambrosius Holbein (the brother of Hans; Hans Holbein made a very famous surviving portrait of Thomas More and one -- destroyed in fire -- astounding portrait of More's family). Ambrosius Holbein's cover is clearly inspired by, but not identical to, the original cover art. (It's possible, of course, Ambrosius Holbein was the artist of the original cover, but I believe that is unknown.)

As an aside, it seems not much is known about Ambrosius Holbein. But he made one spectacular painting (see here), which tends to be dated to the same year as the cover of the Froben edition.  

In particular, some other time I'll return to the details of the Holbein cover. But here I just want to point to the two bridge-like connections (at eleven and one o' clock)  between the island in the center of the image and two land-masses. It is not entirely clear to me what Holbein is trying to convey, although, as I noted earlier in the week, from their island, the Utopians do dominate the surrounding countryside and plant colonies in them. In my view, More's Utopia is the source of the modern ideology of colonialism (with the gospel of work, with surveillance techniques, and (recall) eugenics). 

The artist of Booth's book-cover, has drawn at least five dotted lines, which represent four kind of colonial emigrations: two to the "colony across the sea;" one emigration pattern for "domestic servants" to "British colonies;" one emigration pattern to "Canada, US, etc" to "foreign lands;" and one emigration pattern to "all parts of the world." (This may be hard to see in the picture above, but if you blow it up it's pretty clear.) While there are differences between Booth's scheme and the Utopian one, the cover arts also reveal non-trivial similarities.

One final thought: I do not mean to suggest that the cover to Booth's is only inspired by the Utopia cover. It is pretty clear that the bottom half of the image represents a kind of state of nature within society. This part of the image evokes Leviathan's famous cover; but the little men that make up  the Leviathan are now drowning in (society's) misery in the cover to In Darkest England and The Way Out 

Ibn Khaldun's Proto-Spinozism

As a rule, man is able only to comprehend the causes that are natural and obvious and that present themselves to our perception in an orderly and well-arranged manner, because nature is encompassed by the soul and on a lower level than it. The range of perceptions, however, is too large for the soul, because they belong to the intellect, which is on a higher level than the soul. The soul, therefore,can scarcely perceive very many of them, let alone all of them. This shows the wisdom of the Lawgiver (Muhammad) when he forbade (us) to speculate about causes and to stop with them. Such speculation is a field in which the mind becomes lost and gets nowhere, nor gains any real insight. "Say: 'God,' and then let them amuse themselves with their idle talk." Man often stops (to speculate about causes) and thereby is prevented from ascending to the next higher stage. His feet slip. He becomes one of those who go astray and perish. We ask God for protection against disappointment and obvious perdition.--Ibn Khaldun, The Muqaddimah  translated by F. Rosenthal. Chapter 6, Paragraph 14. 

Let's make a distinction between metaphysical Spinozism and political Spinozism. Metaphysical Spinozism is committed to necessitarianism and the (sort of pantheist) identification of god with nature. Political Spinozism is committed to the idea that revelation is authoritative in practical philosophy or ethics, but leaves the nature of reality behind the appearances we are familiar with to science and/or natural philosophy (broadly conceived). The two forms of Spinozism are separable because a political Spinozist need not embrace (or can be agnostic about) metaphysical Spinozism and a metaphysical Spinozist may reject political Spinozism.

As it happens, Spinoza is naturally read as a political and metaphysical Spinozist. In particular, Spinoza is clear that revelation teaches the (ethical) path to salvation. If we lacked the "testimony of Scripture, we should doubt of the salvation of nearly" everyone. (TTP, Ch. 15) By contrast, Scriptures do not teach, and is not in competition with, scientific truth.* It does not mean Scriptures is compatible with any metaphysics. In particular, Spinoza is adamant that political Spinozism must, in practice, be supplemented with a popular "universal faith" which has a number of metaphysical commitments that may not be known to be false. (Things are not so simple because some of these more providential commitments, in turn, violate metaphysical Spinozism.)

Okay, Ibn Khaldun is a political Spinozist, even though he rejects metaphysical Spinozism.** The passage quoted above is from his treatment of speculative theology. He understands the existence of that discipline as a contingent mistake. Al-Ghazali had in his debate with the philosophers shown how reason can be used to refute speculative ideas that threaten the articles of faith; this had inspired his followers to develop a whole positive program of speculative theology. I don't mean to suggest that Ibn Khaldun is not perfectly aware that (a) there was earlier speculative theology, and that (b) Ibn Rushd has serious philosophical responses to Al-Ghazali. But for present purposes we can leave that aside. 

There are four clear components to Ibn Khaldun's position. First, he, too, asserts that revelation fundamentally teaches practical matters. (Revelation is the "laws and precepts of the religion...and which their firmly rooted (belief in) the truth of the articles of faith caused them to observe.") It is not a book of science.)Second, revelation also teaches a very limited number of speculative doctrines that need to be accepted on faith. Third, there is, thus, (against those who have misunderstood Al-Ghazali's legacy) no subject matter for speculative theology and seems, anyway, forbidden by Muhammad ("he forbade (us) to speculate about causes and to stop with them.") That is to say, Ibn Khaldun thinks no positive program of speculative theology is possible (due to our limited cognitive capacities and our imperfect epistemic position), and he believes this helps explain the rationality of the injunction against it: "the intellect should not be used to weigh such matters as the oneness of God, the other world, the truth of prophecy, the real character of the divine attributes, or anything else that lies beyond the level of the intellect. That would mean to desire the impossible."

By speculative theology, Ibn Khaldun means that sub-set of metaphysics that presupposes God's design and studies particular existing entities (see also Ch.6, par 14). This science was the invention of Al-Ghazali. Ibn Khaldun treats it as apologetics because the articles of faith are assumed to be true. By contrast, a non-theological metaphysics "studies existence as such and what it requires for its essence." Metaphysics and science are natural by-products of the advanced division of labor and accumulation in sedentary civilizations. 

Now, in Ibn Khaldun's scheme, the articles of faith and the results of metaphysics may conflict just as in Spinoza's approach the "universal faith" and his metaphysics can conflict. Ibn Khaldun treats the conflict as follows: When metaphysicians speak of existence as such their utterances are so general that they are irrelevant. But Ibn Khaldun also thinks that when it comes to particular existing entities metaphysical argument is not demonstrable, and so metaphysicians either become unjustifiable dogmatists when they pontificate on such entities or they are self-aware that exact conformity between the results of thought and concrete/existing individuals may not be assumed ("conformity between the results of thinking - which, as they assume, are produced by rational norms and reasoning - and the outside world, is not unequivocal.") And even if there is such conformity, it still relies on (fallible, non-demonstrable) observation.

So, metaphysicians either understand their own limitations or they overreach. Ibn Khaldun is pretty adamant that the essences of spiritual individuals are unknowable to human intellects. Appealing to the authority of Plato (!) Ibn Khaldun argues that "no certainty can be achieved with regard to the Divine" and to other spiritual essences, and so is a topic for conjectures. Ibn Khaldun is well aware, and explicitly acknowledges, that later metaphysicians  (e.g., "of Aristotle, al-Farabi, and Ibn Sinna") had been more optimistic about reason's capacity. But he asserts, even argues, they are mistaken. So, whatever metaphysics is possible, it is fallible in character. The same is true for any (empirical) science.

Ibn Khaldun does not think metaphysics is wholly useless: "it sharpens the mind in the orderly presentation of proofs and arguments, so that the habit of excellent and correct arguing is obtained." But while the (hubristic) mistakes of metaphysics may well be pernicious, it need not be forbidden as long as it is restricted to those "saturated with the religious law and...the interpretation of the Qur'an and jurisprudence."

So, to sum up: Ibn Khaldun's political Spinozism creates genuine space between revelation and science/metaphysics. In Ibn Khaldun' this is achieved by a polemic against speculative theology and by re-inventing metaphysics in a Platonic tenor. Not unlike Spinoza, there is a middle, grey zone where articles of faith and metaphysics may come to conflict; but by treating one as a matter of faith and the other as a matter of conjecture, the conflict is contained.

 

On Perry Anderson; writing on the Politics of Austerity, discursive power, Greece and the EURO

It was no accident that the first tremors of the earthquake to come originated not in the us but in the eu, with the crisis of bnp Paribas and collapse of Northern Rock in August–September 2007. Entanglement with America to the west; predation in Europe itself to the east, where Tooze shows the extent of the financial appropriation of local assets in the former Communist countries by Dutch, Austrian and Scandinavian capital. Nor, of course, has he anything but scorn for the role of the ecb and the turn to austerity once the crisis broke.
There, in one of the many gripping set-pieces of the book, Tooze delivers a damning verdict on the treatment of Greece by the Commission, the ecb and the imf, and subsequently the European Council, which presided over its fate from 2010 onwards. The crushing of Syriza’s attempt to negotiate less draconian terms for its society and economy is not only vividly portrayed, but set in the wider context of the thwarting of governments of the left in these years by the external imposition of ‘political and financial discipline’ on them. No one could doubt on which side Tooze’s sympathies lie in this exercise of brute power. But just where did this discipline come from, and how far did it extend? At this crux, his account takes leave of absence. At its centre lies the nature of the European Union, and the position of Germany within it. Evasive on the first and inconsistent on the second, Crashed offers no coherent account of the relationship between them, for it is too protective of each.
Decisive in this regard is the book’s abstraction of the decisions taken by policy-makers from the structures in which they were working. What was the matrix of the monetary union created at Maastricht?--Perry Anderson (2019) "Situationism a la Envers," in New Left Review (119), p. 80.

Prompted, apparently, by a review (by Cedric Durand) of Tooze's Crashed: How a Decade of Financial Crises Changed the World, Perry Anderson's widely circulated essay, which ranges widely over Tooze's oeuvre and twentieth century politics, is a stinging rebuke of the "complacency" and brutality of "left liberalism" (a term also used by Tooze to describe himself) or "centrist liberalism" (a term used by Anderson (85)). My interest here is not in defending left liberalism; much of Anderson's (and Tooze's) criticism of it is spot on.

Rather, my interest is in the claim that "governments of the left" within the EU have been thwarted by "external imposition of 'political and financial discipline' on them" by the EU. This claim fits two larger trends of broadly left-wing intellectual British writing about the EU, which has two functions: (i) to combat the politics of austerity in the UK; (ii) to undermine the legitimacy (and its anti-democratic technocracy) of the EU. (Since the Brexit vote not all left-sympathetic intellectuals embrace (ii), of course.) For all their merits, such writings tend to present intra EU debates in ways that fail to do justice to the political agency of the participants in them. 

First, it is undeniable that the EU creates obstacles to certain forms of "governments of the left," especially those that are in the Eurozone. The most important of these are rules against government control of the economy and attempts to pursue industrial policy that end up favoring local producers. That is to say, left-wing governments that would pursue nationalist agendas are indeed severely handicapped by the EU. But redistributionist left-wing governments are, if they are willing and capable of taxing the local rich, not so-handicapped. Yes, the rich have ways of hiding some of their money, but it's not EU rules that prevent member states from finding and taxing it; rather there is a lack of political will. And the lack of political will is a function of the lack of local political power. The absence of political power makes the reliance on debt so tantalizing. But debt-financing is not itself characteristic of governments of the left. (As the next paragraph illustrates.)

Second, it is undeniable that the EU has thwarted the democratic will of some of the citizens of its member states during the crisis. But this is not directed at governments of the left. This becomes transparent if we reflect on the following passage (partially quoting Tooze): "when Papandreou and Berlusconi were ousted as premiers of Greece and Italy in 2011, senior officials in Berlin could be heard boasting: ‘We do regime change better than the Americans’; and to admit that the Fiscal Compact of 2013 was a straightforward imposition of the German ‘debt brake’ on the rest of the Eurozone." (81) Whatever else one may wish to say about Berlusconi, his is in no sense a government of the left.

As an aside, it is notable that Portugal goes unmentioned. In 2015 an anti-austerity would-be-left-wing government was thwarted (briefly). But it was not the EU who did so, but the country's president. Eventually constitutional processes prevailed, and Portugal has had a left-wing government since.

Third, and let me now turn to the heart of the matter: Greece. It is worth mentioning that Syriza was never crushed. After it became the main opposition party, in May 2012, it became the governing party in 2015. It called a snap-election after its defeat in EU elections, and was defeated (in Summer of 2019). But it is now the regular opposition. And if Greek politics has stabilized (that is by no means certain) it can expect to govern again.

It is, of course, true that Syriza failed to undo much of the austerity that was imposed on Greece by the Troika prior to its ascension to power. I have  been quite critical of the EU's policies toward Greece in the midst of the crisis (see for example here in Dutch). These policies were manifestly designed to protect well connected (German, Dutch, and French) bankers and not Greek citizens. But English language critics of Greek austerity tend to ignore four pertinent facts: (1) the annual budget deficit of Greece was, when the crisis started, around 15% of GDP. It remained above 10% for the next few years. While one can argue about the size and speed of budget cuts and the distributional effects of these, austerity in Greece has very different character from the voluntary austerity pursued by, say, Tory/Lib Dem and Tory governments in the UK. Austerity in Greece was real, but claims about it also tend to be exaggerated. Its "size relative to GDP of [was] 4.0% in 2010, 3.1% in 2011, 2.8% in 2012 and 0.8% in 2013."+ In particular, in contrast to the UK, the Greek state lacks the capacity to raise income; this was, in fact, exhibited in the boom period prior to the crisis. 

In addition (2), there was widespread distrust of the Greek ruling elites in the rest of Europe thanks to the decades long fraud by successive Greek governments, statisticians, etc. It is pretty clear that non-Greek banks and officials were (sometimes actively) complicit (and profited) from this. While I think more should have been done to hold those responsible (inside and outside Greece) accountable, and to show more public good-will toward Syriza, politically (1) and (2) made it impossible for any EU politician to advocate for massive transfers from Northern taxpayers to Greek citizens. If Anderson  (recall also this post) cared to advance a reform of the EU, he would argue that some such structural transfers are necessary inside the Eurozone. Of course, he is not interested in doing so.**

Also, (3) a majority of Greek citizens apparently prefer staying inside the Euro.* And when given the option to leave the Euro on favorable terms and staying in, they seem to wish to stay in even if it means austerity. This is by no means irrational because inside the Euro, the purchasing power of Greek citizens is better preserved (at the cost of high unemployment and low growth). Even accounts (correctly) highly critical of German and Dutch politicians, acknowledge that the German government was willing to spend serious money to facilitate a Greek exit from the Euro.

One never hears the intelligentsia critics of austerity talk about (1-3). This is remarkable because such intellectuals use their discursive power to deny Greek political agency (within the constraints that they face). This is also evident in Cedric Durand's review of Tooze: 

Tooze rightly stresses, from the very start it was never a question of economic necessity. The ecb could have bought Greek bonds in 2010 and stabilized the crisis very rapidly, but chose not to because it ‘meant to send a message: austerity or else!’ By using Greece as their exemplum, he argues, ‘right-wing fearmongers, conservative political entrepreneurs and centrist fiscal hawks shifted the political balance’ in the Eurozone. This was the moment when a crisis with its origins in the private financial sector was rebranded as a problem of fiscal and welfare profligacy.

Even if one were to grant that the financial crisis as a whole has its origins (not at least partially in misguided government regulations and policies but) wholly in the private financial sector (and ignore the enormous investment of subprime loans by European, regional state owned banks, etc.), this is manifestly not the case of the Greek crisis (which has a relatively small financial sector).++ In addition, and again this is often ignored by the English speaking intelligentsia writing for each other, the Euro crisis is really caused by the mercantile policies of Germany and the Netherlands.

That is to say, Anderson is right to claim (in his criticism of Tooze) that "The single currency is the ark of a covenant that is not to be questioned." (83) I think there is no doubt that at the height of (the ongoing!) crisis, no government leader wanted to be responsible for the break-up of the Euro on their watch. But the reason for this is pretty clear: (4) there is no evidence to think that ordinary citizens in even the countries that suffer most during the financial crisis wanted to leave the Euro.*** (This, of course, does not play well to British audiences, and is discomfiting to Lexiters, and so one never hears about it.) But if one wants to understand "decisions taken by policy-makers from the structures in which they were working." this is non-trivial omission.