In this paper political theory is regarded as properly serving an instrumental function. This view is elaborated, then defended against the criticisms of Professor Leo Strauss...
Political theory should be a guide to action. The political philosopher should provide those who make policy with principles which will aid them in the attempt to cope with specific sociopolitical problems. Instrumental theories of this type should have two roughly distinguishable components: (1) an ultimate ideal; (2) intermediate ideals in their relation to specific policy recommendations.--Arnold S. Kaufman (1954) "The nature and function of political theory." The journal of philosophy 51.1: 5-22.
This post originates in my interest in finding critical engagements with Leo Strauss within analytic philosophy in the post-WWII era (triggered by (recall here; here; here; especially this one; here; and here) an invite by Sander Verhaegh). The topic intersects with my continuing reflection (recall here; here; here; here; here; here) on Katrina Forrester's In the Shadow of Justice, which convincingly shows that Rawls' Theory of Justice creates a kind of light-cone which does not allow us to discern events behind it. In fact, Forrester mentions Kaufman's work (in the 1960s) on civil disobedience, and treats Kaufman as "the New Left philosopher and intellectual founder of the “ teach-in.” (p. 52; see also p. 56; 61--in her footnotes she also alerts the reader to his views on Black reparations and participatory democracy.)
Kaufman died, June 6, 1971, aged 44 when his airplane collided with a military jet while traveling. Oddly, his supervisor at Columbia, Charles Frankel, who in the 1960s served the LBJ administration that Kaufman was battling from the left, died a few years later in an armed robbery in his home in Bedford Hills. In fact, while at University of Michigan, Kaufman was at the center of things at the founding of SDS and the Port Huron Statement (as Tom Hayden acknowledges), and was, as Forrester hints, alongside Marshall Sahlins and Rapaport one of the Michigan faculty key to organizing the first teach-in on the Vietnam War. (Sahlins was the supervisor of Graeber, who in some respects, is the heir to Kaufman.) Later, while at UCLA, he was (despite their non-trivial political differences) one of the most outspoken defenders of Angela Davis' appointment at UCLA and freedom to teach.
The (1954) piece I quoted at the top of this post was published before Kaufman completed his dissertation (on Hobhouse). It situates itself between Dewey, who is the advocate of instrumental political theory (but of whom Kaufman is also critical), and Strauss, and also wishes to draw from both. (How Kaufman draws from Strauss I leave aside here.)
One might well wonder why I treat Kaufman as an 'analytic' philosopher. I have two reasons for this: first, the later work from the 1960s is very naturally read as analytic philosophy.* Second, the early work I discuss here bears the imprint of Ernest Nagel (who was then at Columbia) because it anticipates some of the methodological claims of Nagel's 1954 presidential address (while still advocating a more activist stance).
While, in this post I can only leave this second reason as a promissory note, it's worth noting what Kaufman's two main criticisms of Dewey are: first, on Kaufman's view there ought be also "a concern with theory, with logical interrelatedness, with the generality of political principles which would be anathema for Dewey." (21) In particular (and this very much echoes Nagel), Kaufman claims (while drawing on the analogy between natural and social science), "there is considerable evidence that attention to conceptual adequacy, to logical interrelatedness, and to the connections between a verbal structure and the events it was designed to help human beings control, will yield a rich reward." (22) And second, Dewey's political theory is too "programmatic in character. His formulations were extremely abstract and he always shied from the difficult task of linking those views to the "concrete" situations of which he was so fond of talking." (22; Kaufman acknowledges, of course, that Dewey also acted quite nobly in concrete situations of which he talked.)
While an older generation of political theorists and intellectual historians is definitely familiar with Kaufman, and there is some scholarship on him, to the best of my knowledge analytic philosophy has completely forgotten him in the post Rawlsian era. For example, in Jo Wolff's authoritative and fascinating survey, "Analytic Political Philosophy" (in the OUP volume on the History of Analytic Philosophy), Kaufman goes unmentioned (presumably because he made no impact on those collected in the series in Philosophy, Politics and Society. This is a shame because Kaufman quite clearly anticipates and pioneers the revival of advocacy (which is an important theme in Wolff's article).
Kaufman recognizes that Leo Strauss is a fierce critic of the instrumentalist stance.** (He quotes Strauss' Review of Dewey 's German Philosophy and Politics, in Social Research.) And pieces together from scattered remarks in Strauss' writing an argument against the instrumentalist approach. Kaufman writes this before the publication of Natural Right and History (but he is aware that it is about the appear and hopes that in it Strauss will spell out some of the details of the argument that Kaufman attributes to him (see note 17 on p. 19)). Here's Kaufman's reconstruction of Strauss' criticism of instrumentalism:
[Strauss] argues (1) that it is possible and necessary for the philosopher to search for an objective political philosophy; (2) but one cannot be objective unless he escapes the influence of opinion; and, finally, (3) the instrumentalist, because he regards himself as a guide to action instead of as a discoverer of an objective external order, is influenced by opinion. Therefore, the instrumentalist cannot be objective and is unable to embark on that investigation which alone constitutes political philosophy.
This is the skeleton of the argument. (16)
Let's call this reconstruction of Strauss's position the 'contamination argument.' In my view it's quite plausible to attribute something like this position to Strauss. A weakness in the contamination argument is that it's quite possible for somebody to hold an instrumentalist view of theory without oneself engaging in action, and so creates an instrumentalist theory for others to use from the ivory tower arm-chair. And it is not obvious that such a theorist is necessarily influenced by opinion even if, let's grant this for the sake of argument, she must take it into account in how to move from principles to successful policy. (I don't quite return to this below, but see my final paragraph.)
Kaufman recognizes that (1) is connected to Strauss' criticism of relativism (historicism, positivism, etc.) and the Weberian fact-value distinction. He treats (1) as common ground between him and Strauss, and even Dewey by claiming that "Dewey does believe we can discover moral truths, these truths are relative to specific conditions." (17) It's left unclear if Kaufman actually agrees with Dewey's style of relativism. (Strauss would reject Dewey's position as stable.)
Most of Kaufman's criticism focuses on (2) & (3), which he treats jointly. A key issue is what is meant by 'objective' and why it's impossible to attain for the instrumentalist theorist. And Kaufman settles on the view that according to Strauss "no one engaged in political activity is in a position, no matter how carefully he attempts to make his investigations impartial, to acquire an understanding or a knowledge of political fundamentals, to determine the nature of the best regime." (18) In Strauss' platonic terminology in the 'cave' no real knowledge is possible.+
At this point, Kaufman goes on the offensive because rather than trying to figure out what would make the contamination argument stick (if that's possible), he starts criticizing (not unfairly) the lack of specificity in Strauss' position who leaves underexplained how 'understanding or knowledge of political fundamentals [is] acquired.' And Kaufman concludes his argument that it is very unlikely that Strauss' method "is continuous with that of the empirical sciences. This constitutes a decisive objection to his underlying theory." (19: emphasis added. Along the way, Kaufman implies that Strauss has no adequate response to Mill's criticism of relying on nature as a standard of adequacy.)
Kaufman here instantiates what I call "Newton's Challenge to Philosophy," that is to argue from the authority of science to some criticism of an opponent. But this begs the question against Strauss who does not recognize that authority in political philosophy.
In fact, Kaufman has many astute and telling criticism of the details of Strauss' philosophy (including on Strauss' better known criticism of the distinction between facts and values). Kaufman is at his best, in fact, when he channels Hume to point that nature sometimes is itself a source of ungrounded action (this is the argument that eludes Oppenheim when he discerns that Strauss is relying on the PSR (recall here; here)). It is a shame (if you were to care about such matters that) for the reception of Strauss, that to the best of my knowledge no sober debate about these criticism ensued subsequently because unlike many criticism of Strauss they go to the heart of Strauss' project. And unlike a later generation of analytic critics, there is no lazy dismissal.
As should be clear from my comments, I do not view Kaufman's response to the contamination argument as fully adequate. He basically claims not to understand some of its key terms (and does show that Strauss has not clarified them properly), and so ultimately sets it aside. This is unfortunate because Strauss' criticism of the instrumentalist position has been echoed in recent times by analytic philosophers who claim that, say, feminist philosophy (and other 'activist' philosophies) is not really philosophy. (In fact, many of Strauss' apparently substantive positions have been quietly adopted by analytic philosophers in later generations.) Such claims against the instrumentalist conception have been met by vigorous rebuttal from (say amongst others) Dotson and in a number of papers, Srinivasan. But the recent analytic critics rarely dare to put their criticism explicitly in the elitist terms of Strauss (and generally fail to reflect on the nature of political philosophy). This matters not because one must agree with Strauss' return to natural right (and the ancients), or his elitism, but rather because the most realistic interpretations (and justification) of our imperfect liberal democracies (as one can find in the writings of, say, Hume, Smith, Madison, Kant, and, say, more recently, Arendt) crucially suppose that political life is indeed ruled by opinion and so, if the argument isn't met, that such contamination appears to be inevitable for democratic theorists (broadly conceived).
Kaufman himself falls in the wide gap between Marxism and Rawlsianism (even its leftist incarnation). With the demise of the New Left and the lack of students to take up his program it is no surprise that he left little mark on post Rawlsian philosophy. Yet, many of his papers from the 1960s have, given that they are the product of immersion in political activism, a sense of freshness and immediacy that I hope to share with you in later digressions. While I do not share in his politics or even his philosophic sensibility, one cannot help but be saddened that his life and career were interrupted just as he was developing his own systematic conception of what a liberal philosophy might be. To be continued.
*This was, in fact, also Steve Darwall's judgment (personal communication) on a 1963 paper on Ability (published in JPhil). This paper features an acknowledgment of Donald Davidson. His 1962 paper in Mind, critical of Isaiah Berlin, acknowledges Frankena.
**To the best of my knowledge, Quentin Skinner is the only that has noted Kaufman as critic of Strauss in print. See his famous (1969) article "Meaning and Understanding in the History of Ideas" footnote 49 on p. 13.
+As Kaufman notes, attributing this to Strauss is by no means entirely straightforward because Strauss also claims that "the historical setting of one particular philosophy [might be] the ideal condition for the discovery of the political truth." (quoted on p. 18) This is from Strauss' (1949) "Political Philosophy and History" (JHI) p. 41. In context, Strauss is criticizing the historicist for not being able to rule out this possibility. Since it echoes Socrates' position in the Republic, Kaufman's hesitation is astute. Having said that, and this is a more general problem in reading Strauss, in criticizing some position X, he is rarely straightforwardly endorsing the negation of X.
The reason I mention this is because one of the most telling criticisms by Kaufman of Strauss is this:
Strauss fails to realize that though one may have a conception of the best political order, yet, because of the uneliminable [sic] affective element implicit in the commitment to any political theory, there may be disagreements which rational mediation will not, on the psychological level, resolve, and to which rational considerations have not, on the logical level, any relevance. (21; emphasis in original)
My own view is that this, is in fact, Strauss' all things considered position and one of his grounds to claim that all such conceptions bottom out in faith or a decision, or at least that the question of what the best political order is, is not settled decisively yet (hence my treatment of him as a skeptic). Rather than arguing this here, I cite Steven Smith (2009) here. I have some sympathy for Strauss' zetetic skepticism, but not other features of his stance.
Comments