Digressions&Impressions

On Olaf Stapledon, Technology induced Extinction Risk, and the Awesome new Atomic and AGI power

 The First Industrial Revolution was almost entirely dependent on coal, oil and falling water, which sources occur only in certain localities. Scientists have been exploring the possibilities of deriving industrial power from the tides, from differences of temperature (which means ultimately from sun-light) and from the disintegration of atoms. It is impossible to say yet what success will be attained in these ventures. But it seems probable that the result will be at least a far wider distribution of the sources of power. It may well be that the perfected production of atomic power will involve a vast and complex enterprise undertaken under a world-wide authority, and the universal distribution of electric current derived from atomic generators. As it is certainly probable that the transmission of power in the form of electricity is going to become very much cheaper and more efficient, ample power will be available everywhere. Each village throughout the world will either tap a high tension grid or generate its own power. As to atomic energy, its frightful dangers are obvious. It is not inconceivable that the belt of minute planets, the Asteroids, between Mars and Jupiter, is the wreckage of a world which its inhabitants accidentally destroyed by the unwise use of atomic energy. It would be a pity to turn our planet into another belt of Asteroids. But atomic energy, though dangerous, promises fabulous source of power in comparison with which coal and oil are quite insignificant. It opens up the possibility of transforming the whole face of the planet according to man's needs. It could , for instance, easily render the Arctic islands and the Antarctic Continent warm and habitable. And atomic power for industrial purposes, we are told, is already “in the offing.” Meanwhile the danger of atomic warfare is increasingly frightful. Short of exploding the planet, atomic energy used as a weapon might do so much damage that the present war, in comparison, would seem an affair of flint arrows and axes. The abolition of war becomes more urgent as man's power increases.--Olaf Stapledon (1946) Youth and Tomorrow, pp. 74-5

Olaf Stapledon (1886 –  1950) is known only to aficionados of science fiction now (Last and First Men and Star Maker are classics that shaped the genre throughout the twentieth century, and arguably kept Spinozistic ideas alive in a positivist age), but in his writings he also helped invent 'futurology' and 'transhumanism.'  I hasten to add, in case you are are of more discerning taste, J.L. Borges was an admirer of Stapledon. Stapledon obtained a PhD in philosophy from University of Liverpool under Alexander Mair (hitherto unknown to me). Stapledon's first book (1929), A Modern Theory of Ethics: A Study of The Relations of Ethics and Psychology, was clearly based on his PhD. Judging by citations, it made no impact on the scholarly world of his day. 

The quoted passage is from a short book written in preparation of a post (second) world war age. In the book, Stapledon is  committed to renewed internationalism (he clearly regrets the failures of the League of Nations) and a form of democratic socialism that can avoid dictatorship (even though Stapledon is clearly very impressed by achievements of the Soviet Union). About his politics some other time more.

The passage caught my attention because it entertains the possibility of technology induced human/species extinction of the species that deploys a new technology. This extinction possibility is in the news again thanks to the (recall) impact of Parfit's writing on longtermism and (the publicity surrounding) rapid developments in AI/AGI. 

Contemplating civilizational collapse or the extinction of species are not new thoughts in the history of philosophical writing or social theory. As I have noted (recall), in book 3 of Plato's Laws, (677a-678a) Plato's Athenian stranger entertains the possibility that the Earth has experienced frequent catastrophic natural events (he explicitly mentions massive floods and pandemics, but it's easy to imagine he also assumes earthquakes and perhaps even meteorite impacts) that have wiped out whole populations of humans and other species of animals, and has set-back the technological capability of civilizations for millennia. (We know from the Hebrew Bible account of the flood and other ancient writings that Plato is not unique in this.)

It's also not new to think that civilizational collapse is endogenous to civilizational life. Arguably this is one of the the natural ways to understand the Hebrew Bible's account of the scattering after the tower of Babel; in (recall) The Great Endarkenment, Elijah Millgram suggests that the linguistic diversification and differentiation (and subsequent cultural implosion and scattering) is itself the effect of the advanced division of labor that makes the building of the tower possible. (This is the great set-piece that opens Millgram's (2015) book.) Social theory going back to Ibn Khaldun is rife with cyclical, civilizational processes in which the key drivers of expansion and success also become self-undermining.

It's also not wholly unusual to recognize the potential civilizational collapse that is endogenous to one's own civilizational life. The writings of a number of elite authors of the final century of the roman republic are pretty clear on the fact that endurance of the roman republic is threatened by its own past history of success (due to conquest imported habits of luxury and/or empowered generals to aim for political power). Of course, often the point of recognizing the potential of civilizational collapse is to create a call to political arms, or a philosophical prophecy, to prevent the collapse from occurring (we can see hints of this in Plato's story of Atlantis). But sometimes the doom is inevitable or fated (as some of the Roman authors clearly came to think).

But, as Parfit de facto notes in Reasons and Persons, there is a non-trivial difference between foreseeing civilizational collapse of one's civilization and the collapse of one's whole species. Now, absent a certain kind of ethical or axiological cosmopolitanism, it seems obvious to me that most authors of the past lamented the possible collapse of their own civilization and showed remarkable indifference to the possible collapse of larger humanity. (This is an option that Parfit does not consider, but if he had he would clearly have suggested that this shows a clear error in their implied axiology.)

Now, Stapledown's writings suggest he is a cosmic cosmopolitan. And in this respect, he clearly fits in a philosophical tradition tracing back to Fontenelle, Huygens, and Kant.  So, it's no surprise he contemplates the possibility of endogenous technologically induced extinction among aliens as an example worth avoiding in the harnessing of atomic power. There are some hints in Youth and Tomorrow that it was written during wartime, and interestingly enough he does not mention the use of atomic weapons. But just before the passage quoted at the top of this post, he claims that "the manufacture of atomic bombs necessitates organisation of production on a national scale and the danger of the misuse of these terrific weapons forces world-wide organisation upon us." (p. 73; emphasis added)

It's a bit unfortunate that Stapledown does not clarify what he means by 'misuse' of atomic weapons here. (He was a pacifist during World War I, but not during the second world war.) Does he mean their deployment, or does he worry about them falling in the hands of rogue states/actors, or does he worry about nuclear world war? But he clearly thinks that atomic power isn't merely a technological problem, but also a political problem on a global scale. After all, he thinks that a world-wide organization is required to handle it.

In the quoted passage at the top of this post, Stapledon is discussing what we now call the 'Kuiper belt' (or Edgeworth-Kuiper belt') [UPDATED: see Ken McLeod's comment below.] But was only then recently proposed by K.E. Edgeworth in a 1943 paper in the Journal of the British Astronomical Association. It would be worth trying to figure out if Stapledon knew Edgeworth personally. In Edgeworth there is no mention of an alien civilization. I am not claiming that Stapledon is the first to propose the hypothesis that the asteroids are themselves the effect of a technologically induced existential collapse, but given this timeline he has to be among the first.* Clearly the function of Stapledon's hypothesis is to alert us to avoid this fate (not, perhaps, to create a testable hypothesis for planetary explorers of the solar system).*

It is, of course, an open question to what degree global institutional control of atomic power mitigates risk or accelerates existential risk. But since this post is long enough as is, I close with the following observation: the possibility of technology induced (endogenous) extinction is, thus, not new with the possibility of AGI. Our society has lived with the possibility of technology induced (endogenous) extinction of humanity for almost eighty years now. To say that is not to underestimate the existential risk that follows from the introduction of new technology. But it is worth noting that we have a history of living with, and perhaps managing, such risk, and perhaps we can learn from this history. For, while it would be nice if there were a technological fix to the existential extinction risk of AGI, it's more likely than not we'll need institutional and social mitigation of such risk. 

 

Zera Yacob and Intellectual traditions; a note on the origins of Africana Philosophy

What should we make of this similarity? Note that it would be anachronistic to describe Zera Yacob’s argument as “Lockean,” for the Second Treatise of Government was published over two decades after Zera Yacob wrote his Hatäta. This points us toward the limits on the usefulness of viewing Zera Yacob and Locke as sharing an early modern world. Consider Richard Tuck’s Natural Rights Theories: Their Origin and Development (1979), which explores categories of Roman law, locates the birth of natural rights discourse in the late medieval period, and examines figures like Hugo Grotius, John Selden, and Thomas Hobbes before giving Locke attention in the final chapter. Scholarship like this places Locke in a certain lineage of thought, which shaped him just as much as the political context of his times. Zera Yacob does not stand in that lineage. Indeed, when comparing Zera Yacob to Descartes and Locke, we should remember that Locke read and was influenced by Descartes, learning from his approach to philosophy even while rejecting central views of his. There is a sense in which Locke and Descartes share a modernity that Zera Yacob does not, a point that need not lead us to deny that Zera Yacob is a modern philosopher but rather to say that he inhabits a different modernity. (p. 130)

[W]hile Zera Yacob can be seen as similar to Descartes but must be recognized as outside the lineage leading to and branching out from him, Amo, like Locke, did philosophy in the wake of Descartes and critically responded to his work. (p. 132)

 

What I think this means is that, for Cugoano, as for Zera Yacob, the idea of natural rights is not really embedded within a modern European intellectual tradition. Certain formulations of it may be paradigmatically European, but it is ultimately a concept that transcends cultural boundaries, which also means that one can come up with paradigmatically Fanti formulations of it. Cugoano thus does not fit neatly into the framework of modern Africana philosophy as a form of modern European philosophy into which Amo and Haynes fit. But, of course, neither is he disconnected from the European tradition in the way Zera Yacob is. Cugoano, I believe, represents modern Africana philosophy as a convergence of African and European intellectual trajectories, a hybrid case of radicalizing European thought from within, as with Haynes, while also modernizing African thought through comparing indigenous and foreign viewpoints and using reason to decide what makes the most sense, like Zera Yacob.

I take Cugoano to be, in this way, a model for Africana philosophy going forward. The riches of the Western philosophical tradition must be valued but also made sharper and more liberating through the use of a critical philosophy of race lens. At the same time, there must be constant efforts to transcend the Western framework by rooting Africana philosophy in oral and literary traditions from Africa and the diaspora. In many instances, we may come to a conclusion like Cugoano’s about natural rights: that what we thought of as particularly Western is not and that the cross-cultural recognition of a shared concept may strengthen our sense of commitment to the value at stake. (p. 138)

The quoted passages are all from Chike Jeffers' (2017) "Rights, Race, and the Beginnings of Modern Africana Philosophy." The Routledge Companion to Philosophy of Race. This is a text that I assign as required background reading to the session that roughly goes from Las Casas to Cugoano and discusses slavery, mercantile political economy, and rights in my lecture course on the History of Political Theory. This is a required course with enrollments between 500 and 600 students. Jeffers' paper is short and hits the sweet spot because it offers helpful historical context, makes important distinctions, and it explains the ongoing significance of the material discussed. It's also astonishingly brief, and clear. I warmly recommend it. 

 

But as I was preparing my quiz about the text, and so re-reading it, I became uneasy in reflecting on the passages quoted above. To be sure, the underlying idea of what Africana philosophy should be going forward (articulated in final paragraph, but also made available throughout the chapter) strikes me as rather attractive and is not something I am going to challenge here. In fact, in some ways I am going to reinforce Jeffers' main point because I want to suggest that Zera Yacob is much more connected to what Jeffers calls 'the European tradition,' although what I prefer to call the (partially overlapping) 'Abrahamic-Platonic traditions' that also shaped non-trivially Descartes and Locke. What do I have in mind?

 

First, Yacob (1599 – 1692) is, in part, polemicizing against the Jesuits and, now I quote Jeffers, "as “Franğ,” a Ge’ez word that literally means “foreigner.” But note that he uses that word in a way that is interchangeable with “Catholic.”" (p. 131) And, in fact, if you read Zera Yacob’s Hatäta "or “inquiry,” commonly called his Treatise" (p. 128) it's very clear that Yacob was rather acquainted with their teachings (which he largely rejects).+ Now, Descartes was taught by Jesuits at La Flèche. (Descartes was there between 1607-1614.) So, there is a non-trivial sense in which they were exposed to largely the same views. (The Jesuits standardized their curriculum.) Obviously, I am not claiming that they had the same teachers (although Jesuits did move around so it's not wholly impossible they encountered the same people--how cool would that be?), but I would be amazed if the Iberian Jesuits who are his targets did not bring with them ideas shaped by, say, Francisco Suárez's metaphysics and moral/political theory, including his theory of rights. (Suárez was an intellectual celebrity of the age.) Suárez is rather important to Descartes and, as I have noted (here), Suárez also shaped the social contract tradition (including Hobbes and perhaps -- I will not make the case today -- Locke).

 

Second, Yacob is quite clearly evoking Augustine's Confessions at various points. This is not just in virtue of the auto-biographical style, but also in particular details of the narrative (not the least the early sinful behavior and the attraction to various alternative intellectual traditions). One important commonality is the significance of David's Psalms to both. I don't think either can do without an explicit or implicit allusion to Psalms on a single page! (I suspect one can write a PhD about this.) I return to this below. Either way, Descartes' debts to Augustine, and Augustine's Confessions has itself generated a huge scholarly enterprise. In saying this, I don't mean to suggest there are no differences between Descartes or Yacob, but just to point to the fact that they share in an overlapping tradition even if they may be mediated by different sources and contexts. (I don't mean to suggest that Descartes himself was especially shaped by Psalms--I leave that aside, although intrigued to reflect on it.)

 

Third, a good chunk of (what we might call) the philosophy in the Hatäta draws on the Book of Wisdom (which Yacob, as is common, attributes to Salomon). I don't want to make this claim more precise here. But while Yacob is plenty critical of the particularity and some of the laws of Judaism, the Hebraic sources in his text are abundant. This he does share with Hobbes and Locke. I don't mean to suggest that the sources are exclusively Jewish; I would love to know, for example, if Al-Ghazali's Deliverance of Error (with with the Hatäta and the Meditations share non-trivial commonalities) was circulating among the Muslim scholars he encountered and debated. 

 

But it's only if one denies that the Book of Wisdom (which itself is shaped by Hellenistic philosophy) is philosophy or insists that the Hebrew Bible is non-philosophy (as some who are in the grip of  the opposition between Jerusalem and Athens might claim) that this is not part of the overlapping tradition(s). (I have argued against this claim in many digressions, but start here.) In addition, it's quite clear that Yacob identifies with David's enforced exile from court, and perhaps (I put this more tentatively) even the Israelites in the dessert. 

 

So, while it is undoubtedly true that Yacob and Descartes and/or Locke did not share the exact same modernity, I also suspect that in some non-trivial respects they did. It is striking that both politically and religiously the question of religious pluralism and the role of using state authority to impose a single religion dominate France and Ethiopia (and England) in their life-times, including rather dramatic reversals of fortune. I am not especially fond of 'modernity' because it is often inscribed in complex conceptual hierarchies (involving 'feudalism,' civilization vs barbarism, etc.), but it can be useful to point to the symmetry of conditions that these thinkers faced.

 

Does anything hinge on this? Well, I am certainly not the first to note debts of Africana philosophy to Hebraic and Abrahamic sources more broadly. But when in 2019 Peter Adamson (who has collaborated with Jeffers) writes, in the context of Zera Yacob that the "Ethiopian philosophical tradition simultaneously belongs to at least two larger stories: that of philosophy within various Christian traditions of the East, and that of African philosophy," that is factually true, but it effaces the Hebraic contribution to at least the former (and, perhaps the latter--in so far as Hebraic philosophy itself was developed, in part, under African skies). A similar claim can be made "about ancient Egyptian philosophy" (which Adamson goes on to mention) in so far as Philo is a rather signicant presence in it. 

I don't think this is merely a matter of geographic score-keeping. It has important contemporary political salience when 'philosophy' plays a role in identity formation and articulation (as it seems to do within Africana philosophy--that is not a criticism!). That there is also a very clear Hebraic root in Yacob [!] and all the figures discussed in the Beginnings of Modern Africana Philosophy (with perhaps partial exception of Amo) is, thus, non-trivial (if only because the bondage and exodus of Israel resonate within it). It also may facilitate discussion today among Africana philosophers and those philosophers that takes Hebraic sources seriously. This is no small matter given the polarizing effects of Zionism and Palestinian nationalism in our world.

 

Including the Hebraic tradition(s) into the narrative may also be epistemically useful if Yacob is right. Because he thinks that when different traditions agree, we are more likely to find truth, whereas their differences reveal their errors--and in religious conflict we de facto always defend error. It's probably more natural to read him as saying that this is so because when traditions agree they latch onto the truth (a thought like this can be found in Montaigne, too). But I'd like to read him Spinozistically as suggesting, and I'd like to argue for this at some point that this is his view, that through dialogue when we find ways to agree, and so live in peace with each other, we instantiate or generate the truth.*

 

On Surveys of the History of Political Philosophy/Theory

After  the death of Mohammed in 632, Islam began a triumphant century of conquests. These victories, which left Islam the dominant force in the wealthy Eastern Mediterranean, destroyed what was left of the urban cultural base of the Roman Empire.--Dick Howard (2010) The Primacy of the Political: A History of Political Thought from the Greeks to the French & American Revolutions (Columbia UP), 140.

The quoted passage is just about the only mention of Islam in Howard's book. The passage represents Islam as a powerful military force. It also treats it -- I will grant that this is unintentional -- as destructive of civilization. The contributions to political theory by Islamic thinkers go unmentioned. Howard's book is a survey. It claims to be a History of Political Thought, but outside of Europe and North Atlantic, it fails to cover the other traditions of political theory inspired by Plato. Of course, Islamic-Platonic political theory was also practiced in Europe (e.g., Spain), so the previous sentence is far too generous. This is not the only oversight. While Howard mentions the significance of women and family relations throughout the book, he fails to discuss any female thinkers let alone treat any of them (or a group of them) as worthy of a chapter.+

Alan Ryan's (much larger and) more sophisticated On Politics, mentions some of the leading Islamic philosophers in chapter 6, titled "Between Augustine and Aquinas." But it treats them as metaphysicians and contrasts them with the (somewhat later) Ibn Khaldun, who is considered as the first Islamic political theorist. Now as regular readers know, I am a huge fan of Ibn Khaldun (recall here and here), but this is ignorance about Al-Farabi and those he inspired as well as the roots of key moves in later history of political thought.** (It's not that Ryan ignores their role as transmitter of the Ancients.) Ryan does better on more recent, anti-colonial, twentieth century Islamic  thought; he is clearly fascinated by Sayyid Qutb. And it is not impossible that Sayyid Qutb's  polemical rejection of the Islamic philosophical tradition as somehow not really "true Muslim philosophy", may have encouraged Ryan to treat it as a topic that can be safely ignored. (That can't be the whole story because Ryan also recognizes that Qutb himself is being extremely inventive about the history of Islam.)

On women's role in the history of political theory, Ryan does somewhat better than Howard. While no woman gets her own chapter, the text is at least sprinkled with references to female thinkers and De Pizan gets serious attention. Peculiarly, feminist manifestos are seen as responding to foolishness and lacking political implications. (Because Ryan is unaware of Ibn Rushd's political theory and Platonic feminism (recall), he also suggests that other than Plato nobody drew the conclusion that political capacity and authority had nothing to do with birth and sex)*

Okay, so much for my polemic and brief survey of the field of historical surveys of political theory. Some other time I'll reflect on the presuppositions that make this kind of practice normal. This post was prompted by my search for a decent textbook to use in a rather massive (300-400 students) first year, Intro to History of Political Theory lecture course (from Plato to Marx) that I have been asked to teach. Our teaching coordinators frown on teaching such first year courses from primary texts alone and -- because an exam is given -- encourage the use of a text-book. 

As an aside, most of my scholarly friends in the profession prefer to teach through primary sources. (This has as nice side-effect that our teaching is both research-led and can lead to fruitful research.) And, having  gone through The University of Chicago, I, too, share the prejudice. But even for us  -- text snobs -- surveys are not trivial; they provide the narrative arc that, if they are written by somebody influential and creative, hovers in the back of our minds and quietly seeps into our teaching and research. In addition, these surveys are also the face of our discipline to many students and wider public. 

So, right now, I am still looking for a survey of the history of political philosophy/theory that, in addition to ordinary requirements (competence and nicely written), has three more, moderate desiderata:

    (i) some coverage of political theory outside of Europe/North America, and coverage of Islam (within Europe).

• We are constantly being told about globalization and clash of civilizations, but we allow ourselves to be ignorant of the theories that inspire alternative forms of political reflection.

    (ii) no ignoring of demography, imperialism, racism, eugenics, and slavery (and theoretical debates about these)

• With the rise of concern of global warming and trans-humanism, there is renewed interest in demography and eugenics; these are perennial topics in the history of political theory (and so are questions over  social hierarchy). 

    (iii) some interest in history of feminism female and male -- (and the theoretical debates about it)

• Feminism has a long history. We flatter ourselves and our students by pretending its novel; such flattery only promotes conformism.

So, this gets me to my question: anybody have suggestions for a history of political theory from a cosmopolitan perspective?* I need a text rather urgently.:)

If non exists, who will step up to write it and which publisher will commission it? 

 

 

On Eternity and Chance in Borges on Eid al-Fitr

We inevitably desire eternity; and dreams of eternity can only fail, condemned as we are to temporality.--William Egginton "Borges on Eternity," (in Eternity: A History, 277)

Today, Eternity: A History edited by Y. Melamed arrived in the mail. I don't know why I received the volume (I have edited a volume on Sympathy in the same series, but I have not been sent other gratis copies in the series), but I am pleased with the anonymous gift. Because I sometimes muse about Borges, I was drawn to Egginton's elegant "Reflection" on Borges (quoted above). Oddly, when I looked up Egginton in the list of Contributors, I found his name missing. At first I wondered if Melamed had played a practical, Borgesian joke and invented a fictional character to write the entry on Borges. But from Wikipedia I learn William Egginton was born in Syracuse in 1969.*

In Averroës's Search,-- sadly unmentioned by Egginton --, the great philosopher, Ibn Rushd, is explicitly located in "the land of Spain, where there were not a great many things, yet where each thing seemed to exist materially and eternally." It's important for Borges' politics that this philosopher is also a Spanish philosopher and, thus, somehow in the cultural ancestry of the 'West.' And Spain gets presented as (to adapt a Quine-ean phrase) a desert landscape, where the lack of ''entity' density is compensated, as it were by a cosmic, metaphysical harmony, by eternal, material existence of the relatively rare entities found there. Of course, this only seems so because we assume that no material thing -- we can ignore spirits here -- exists eternally in Spain.

The next time we encounter the eternal in Borges's story of Ibn Rushd, Faraj (an "orthodox" Qur'anist) is reported as saying, "while language and signs and writing are the work of men, the Qur'an itself is irrevocable and eternal.'' (Averroës remains silent in response, although he thinks that Faraj could also have said "that the mother of the Book is similar, in a way, to the Platonic Idea.") Faraj is the host of the dinner-party, and it is impolite and imprudent to draw those unskilled in theology into discussion about it.

As an aside, in his contribution to the Eternity volume (p. 84), Peter Adamson helpfully notes that the idea that the Qu'ran is uncreated becomes an imposed dogma in the mid ninth century by the Abbasid Caliphs, although this remark only gives a hint of what is at stake in Ibn Hanbal's famous defiance on this point.**

It is notable that Borges's Ibn Rushd philosophical translation of Faraj's remark does not contradict it. He is shown capable of an esoteric reading that he does not utter. Here, as is elsewhere, Borges shows that he has grasped Ibn Rushd's political thought because Ibn Rushd is exceptionally clear on the significance to political-theology that the experts that know can keep quiet.

The 'mother of the Book' is itself a Quranic phrase (see 43:2-4) and on the Platonizing reading of Borges's Ibn Rushd it is a kind of eternal template for the Arabic text that Faraj knows how to recite. It is compatible with this idea, but that's unmentioned, that any material Qu'ran could also be produced in a different language (the work of men).***

The idea of a 'mother of the Book' returns under a different name (and with a different content) in The Library of Babel: in the eternally existing and eternally returning library, "There must exist a book that is the cipher and perfect compendium of all other books." There Borges's narrator treats the "belief" in what was termed the Book Man," that is, the "librarian" who "must have examined that book" (and "this librarian is analogous to a god") as a "superstition." (Here the narrator sides with the Islamic critique of Christianity.) I note that Borges's narrator goes on to insist -- and I hasten to add on impeccable, modal metaphysical grounds -- that this perfect compendium of all others books itself, must exist.

Eid Mubarak!

 

 

 

On The Very Idea of Non-Western Philosophy

The vast majority of philosophy departments in the United States offer courses only on philosophy derived from Europe and the English-speaking world. For example, of the 118 doctoral programs in philosophy in the United States and Canada, only 10 percent have a specialist in Chinese philosophy as part of their regular faculty. Most philosophy departments also offer no courses on Africana, Indian, Islamic, Jewish, Latin American, Native American or other non-European traditions.--Jay Garfield & Bryan Van Norden "If Philosophy Won’t Diversify, Let’s Call It What It Really Is" New York Times.

The quoted passage are the first few lines of an editorial that has generated huge discussion. It proposes for professional philosophy departments to embrace "faculty" and "curricular diversity" or failing that to rename their departments, "Anglo-European Philosophical Studies." I dislike and reject Garfield & Van Norden's use of the "Western" (or European) vs "non Western" (non-European) philosophy distinction--I reject not in the name of universal, homogeneous reason. Before I get to the substance of my concerns, I offer two examples to motivate my rejection of this distinction:

First, 'Islamic' philosophy is categorized as non-Western (non-European). But this is geographically odd because so much of the best of it (Ibn Rushd, Ibn Tufayl) was written in what we would now call Spain. They sometimes understood themselves as 'Western' and treated earlier generations of Islamic philosophers as writing in the Orient. (Sometimes they also seem to suggest that they are at the periphery far from the main centers of learning [Baghdad, Damascus, etc.]). To treat 'Islamic' philosophy as non-Western is conceptually odd because it so clearly influenced philosophy we characterize as 'Western' in subsequent ages (for example through Italianate Averroests, and eventually Spinoza.) It is also strange in a more important sense, perhaps, nearly ALL of what counts as 'The Golden age of Islamic philosophy' is explicitly or implicitly a commentary on Plato and Aristotle (or a correction to it). [Something similar can be said about "Jewish" philosophy.]

Second,  Franz Fanon -- try divorcing his stuff from Hegel, existentialism, psycho-analytic theory, etc. -- and Du Bois are both enmeshed in 'Western philosophy' (I am not claiming they are enmeshed in the same bit. Their criticisms are as much immanent to (okay) 'Euro-centric' philosophizing as external to it. And, in virtue of being immanent to the tradition, they also revive it and extend it. The previous sentence gets at some of the more philosophical reservations about the terminology.

Before I get to those, I frankly acknowledge that I have political reasons to dislike the distinction between Western vs non-Western. Because I live and work in an environment in which 'Western' is treated as a term of approbation and superiority over other civilizations and philosophies, especially Islam (and Africa) I think it is dangerous when intellectual contributions are (apologies for the jargon) othered by way of negation as strange or alien. Clearly Van Norden and Garfield don't think Western philosophy is superior  or that non-European traditions are inferior. But they unintentionally reinforce the sense that we're talking about extremely distinct and opposed, perhaps even incommensurable, traditions. This may be true in some respects (as they suggest), but it is not true in all respects for all the traditions lumped as 'non-Western.'

A moment's reflection on the fact that Islamic and Jewish philosophy are lumped in with so-called N0n-Western (and non-European) philosophy suggests that Christian philosophy just is Western philosophy. Leaving aside the fact that traditionally, the Christian element in European philosophy has always been traced back to Jerusalem not Athens, the tacit identification of Christian with Western had been thought awkward after, say, Auschwitz. More subtly, it is notable that whole branches of Christianizing philosophy associated with various strands of Greek/Russian Orthodoxy are unfamiliar to even very competent historians of (okay) western philosophy.

So much for terminology. Garfield and Van Norden misrepresent what contemporary professional philosophy is like when they focus on the canon. As I have said before in response to arguments by Nathaniel Coleman, while there is, indeed, a fairly narrow historical canon in professional philosophy, this canon is not central to philosophical education, philosophical method, and professional advancement/success within analytical philosophy. In addition, the way the canonical texts/authors are treated is often extremely a-historical (even by folk who are committed to contextual history of philosophy). That means that, in part, it is not obvious in what sense "broadening the philosophical curriculum" in the way that they suggest really challenges the way philosophy is practiced.

There is a more subtle point lurking here. Some of the texts/authors from these non-Western traditions also express rather sectarian commitments. Some of the Islamic philosophers that I teach use examples that may well be thought racist (whatever their intent) and they call/permit for genocide on certain kind of savages (anticipating some of the worst features of 18th and 19th century European philosophy). It's a bit awkward to promote diversity by removing more tolerant/broad-minded authors in favor of dogmatic types, and this suggests that the underlying vision for their proposals has not been thought out carefully (I extend this point below).

Now you may think I am writing from an ultra-conservative perspective on diversifying the canon. But (as regular readers know) that's not so: as a scholar, I have enthusiastically embraced the recovery of knowledge of and produced by female philosophers in the early modern period and in early analytical philosophy; recovery of forgotten male feminists in the early modern period; and I have started teaching and blogging about Islamic political philosophy. In all cases this has influenced my teaching, my scholarship (and blog posts), and my self-understanding. (I am not suggesting I am a pioneer in any of this.) I do so not just out of curiosity about the unfamiliar. But because I sense that such recovery helps me contribute to the improvement of philosophy today and in the future.

'Philosophy' in the previous sentence stands for the traditions, which are oriented around certain problems and puzzles, and certain non-trivial commitments about the nature of logic and reality (tied together by what I cal 'Tractarian semantics'), as well as some canonical figures/texts and thought experiments, that I have been partially educated in and, perhaps, help extend. It has, as Van Norden & Garfield argue, elements of parochiality and, as I note regularly, as much an elevating as sordid history.* But, as Abe Stone reminded me on Facebook, there is a difference between being a department of (such) philosophy or about that philosophy. When I note the racism or eugenics in certain thought experiments or texts that I teach or admire or use, it calls for a response which, after soul-searching, can generate creative philosophical moves or a reckoning of the problem. It always runs the risk (or joy) of generating a transformative experience of me (and less likely) the tradition (recall). But that's not so when one studies another tradition's philosophy and learns about their commitments. That can be kept at arm's length, undigested, without transforming me or my own traditions.

It does not follow we should not study genuinely other traditions nor should we keep them from our students and ourselves. I agree that even given scarce resources (of time, attention, money), we need to be also outer-oriented. More important, in some parts of the world, where our elite universities are engaged in a peculiarly new form of educational mission -- with host countries paying to have a campus with a liberal arts education that in some ways reflects aspirational values not to mention economic hopes [Garfield teaches at Yale Singapore]+ --, it's quite possible that there a new curriculum and diversity may generate a new form of philosophy that, in turn, will help transform the philosophy practiced in North America, Europe, and many of their former colonies. That's an experiment in the philosophy of education we may see come to fruition in the times of our lives. ** 

 

A Heuristic on How to Read an Opaque Philosophical Text (A Case Study with The New Atlantis)

There are yet hid greater things than these and we have seen but a few of his Works.--Ecclesiasticus 43:32.

And for the country of Bensalem, this man would make no end of commending it, being desirous by tradition among the Jews there to have it believed that the people thereof were of the generations of Abraham, by another son, whom they call Nachoran; and that Moses by a secret cabala ordained the laws of Bensalem which they now use; and that when the Messias should come, and sit in his throne at Hierusalem, the King of Bensalem should sit at his feet, whereas other kings should keep a great distance. But yet setting aside these Jewish dreams, the man was a wise man and learned, and of great policy, and excellently seen in the laws and customs of that nation.--Francis Bacon, The New Atlantis.

Not all philosophical texts come with a handy thesis statement. Some texts that lack a thesis statement do not pose special interpretive problems because the intentions of the author are pretty transparent (e.g. Berkeley's Three Dialogues) because, say, the main argument (or set of arguments) are well marked in the text. But as David Lewis observes, not all philosophy is argument. For, there are some philosophical texts that (a) lack a clear  thesis statement and (b) where the main drift of how the arguments, if any, are supposed to add up is not entirely transparent. I call such texts (that exhibit (a-b)) Opaque Philosophical Texts (or OPT). Some Platonic dialogues, Seneca's Letters, More's Utopia, Bacon's New Atlantis , Nietzsche's Zarathustra are paradigmatic instances of Opaque Philosophical Texts.

Interpreting an Opaque Philosophical Texts sends novice readers and more advanced students to editor’s introductions and authoritative reference sources. But this merely pushes the problem back by putting us at the mercy of the judgment of another. Even when such secondary sources exhibit good judgment, it is often left opaque what really grounds it (an infinite regress looms here), and in reading such resources one is often struck by the flimsiness of the interpretive evidence: an author, say, gets slotted into a pre-existing historical framework (X is an empiricist, therefore Y) or feeble biographical evidence is mined for hints (Z visited the Queen, therefore A), etc. Sometimes an author's life can be very revealing, but, say, More's Utopia only gets more confusing once one knows details of his life.

One more respectable trick scholars often use to guide interpretation is to look at the contextual reception of an OPT. This can be very helpful. Polemical responses can be very illuminating to bring out what is at stake. But polemics have limitations too: (i) they often distort the text they attack and (ii) they tend to focus on a limited aspects of a work. More interestingly, a polemic is made possible by shared, often tacit (religious, political, theological, etc.) commitments that are opaque to later generations. Even when, say, students write to honor their teacher, or to gain authority by their association with the revered memory of their teacher, they have a tendency to reveal more about their own aspirations (relative to, say, other of the master’s students) than the author’s intentions.

But while I reject strict rules in the history of philosophy (recall and here), there are useful heuristics. For example, while sola scriptura is an unreasonable demand for texts written by mortals, there is a heuristic that respect its spirit and that can be applied to an OPT: find an interpretation of (an apparently important theme of) the text proposed by a character within the text. I have not invented this self-referential, presentational heuristic—it’s common among literary and film critics. (In an opaque movie look for a scene in which art represents something or an artist at work tries to represent something.) The heuristic is especially useful to get interpretation started without reliance on other guides—for one lets the text be the guide. What follows is a case-study of such a heuristic. 

Joabin the Jew is called “wise” by the narrator (a European visitor to Bensalem). As it happens he reports an enduring Jewish oral tradition about the legal-political founding of Bensalem: its founder was Moses. Now, the idea that Moses should be seen as a political founder is not unique to New Atlantis, of course. Machiavelli suggests the idea in The Prince, and Spinoza works it out in great detail in the Theological Political Treatise.[1] Given that the tradition reported by Joabin does not report that Moses actually visited Bensalem and there is no reason to think we are to think this, it is more likely that that this suggests that either the Hebrew Bible, or some of its sources, The Book of the Cove­nant or the Book of the Law of God (see Spinoza, Theological Political Treatise, 8:22-24, relying on Exodus 24:4,7 and Joshua 24:25-26), guided the political founding of Bensalem according to Jewish legend.

In fact, we know from other textual details that Hebrew Scripture and works lost to the Christian West are said to be known in Bensalem at the time of its legal re-founding: a civil servant informs the European visitor that “we have some parts of [the biblical King Salomon’s] works which with you are lost; namely, that natural history which he wrote of all plants, from the cedar of Libanus to the moss that groweth out of the wall; and of all things that have life and motion.” This legal re-founding of Bensalem is said to occurred around 1,900 years ago, that is, around 300BC by King (confusingly) Solomana, who is esteemed “the lawgiver” of Bensalem according to the public narrative as repeated by a local public servant, who doubles as a “Christian priest.” (Not all the main public officials are also clerical.)

So, these bits of evidence suggest that the existence of the Jewish community on Bensalem predates the political re-founding by Solomana. This is no surprise because prior to Solomana’s policy of isolation, Bensalem was a thriving commercial (and militaristic) society with trade all over the world and that led to immigrants from (again quoting the publicly sanctioned narrative) “almost all nations of might and fame resorted hither; of whom we have some stirps and little tribes with us at this day.”

Possibly King Solomana was Jewish, but, more likely, he was inspired by Mosaic law. (This is not unprecedented in real history.) After all, among his acts “was the erection and institution of an order, or society, which we call Saloman’s House…in ancient records, this order or society is sometimes called Solomon’s House, and sometimes the College of the Six Days’ Works.” Even the informative local public servant/priest believes the king learned from Hebrew Scripture “that God had created the world and all that therein is within six days: and therefore he instituted that house, for the finding out of the true nature of all things.” The key Biblical text is Ecclesiastes (which itself implies it was written by King Solomon) and, which together with Biblical King Solomon's example, plays a central official, justificatory role in Bacon's Advancement of Learning.

What is the History of Philosophy?

If history of philosophy is about anything, it is about understanding historical texts accurately…The first goal is to understand the texts, which might be an end in itself (as it is for me) or might be a step towards doing something else afterward, like playing around with the ideas on one's own, comparing them to other ideas from history, etc. -Peter Adamson

I believe that the fundamental purpose of the history of philosophy (which is continuous with the fundamental purpose of history more generally) is to accurately capture what philosophers of the past were trying to say. If that's not what the history of philosophy is, then I am ready to be corrected. - Sam Rickless

Rickless, an important scholar, turns the history of philosophy fundamentally into inferring intentions of authors. The published texts are means to this end, but obviously one can also draw on unpublished material and other sources of evidence (biography, letters, etc.). We can't always trust what authors say about this, of course, they may be deluded about their intentions or they may deliberately or playfully mystify. They sometimes may discover their own intentions in the process of writing—texts and arguments take on a life of their own, or -- if one dislikes the anthropomorphism in that -- have an internal logic constrained by form and genre (etc.). For example, I did not set out to write on depression in graduate school last week; rather I think (now after the fact) I wanted to capture a vague sense of disconnect and empathy with younger scholars at a conference and, more romantically, try to convey some long-distance encouragement (etc.). But while writing in a tightly constrained format (a blog with a certain voice, history, and trajectory, etc.) I found a form in which to make some such point while simultaneously being (especially after I settled on a particular headline) about something else. Even if a future historian of philosophy were interested in my writings, they would not be very interested in capturing the canonical intentions of that particular blog, or even the whole as of yet indefinite series of Digressions that I know will follow. This is not to deny I have insanely ambitious ambitions for these blogs—to change our philosophical culture, to touch the hearts of some and draw them into a philosophical life, to promote projects I think noble, to showcase Schliesser's ideas, to redefine how we understand what philosophy can be, to hit the ball out of the philosophical park with an essay a day, etc. But the interest, if any, in these Impressions is not the ways they reveal the self-fashioning of an author, but rather their sporadic effects on others and what they reveal about our profession in my times. (I return to this below.)

Adamson, in responding to my post, offers us a subtly different goal than Rickless's for the history of philosophy: it's about understanding texts. (Neither comments on this difference.) Author's intentions may play a privileged role in Adamson's enterprise, but what matters is capturing meanings. The benefit of this approach is that one need not infer to invisible attitudes, but can resolutely stick with the textual evidence. But the moment you start putting pressure on this idea things start to unravel. What exactly is the textual meaning that needs to be understood, and whose understanding are we to privilege? Now, in a famous (1969) article, Quentin Skinner, tried to settle this with an appeal to a counterfactual, privileged observer. To folk interested in learning from sophisticated explorations of this issue I wholeheartedly recommend the papers by Mogens Lærke, Justin Smith, Julie Klein, Ursula Goldenbaum (in this volume). They all offer ways to avoid Skinner's mysterious counterfactuals while using means to stabilize and fix the meaning of a text in time and over time such that (alas, competing) understanding is possible. For some texts this is a very fruitful enterprise.

But there are philosophical authors (paradigmatically I am thinking of Plato, Nietzsche (recall)), who self-consciously may well want (a) affective responses from their readers and (b) may intend different audiences to discern different things in their texts. (Note that with Nietzsche we are in decent position to get at his intentions, with Plato not so.) The way I like to put it is that they expect different readers' souls to disclose different features of the text. A historian of philosophy setting out to get at the meaning of the text will miss this feature. In fairness, Adamson's approach does not rule out an understanding of these texts that can account for (a) and (b), but by sharply separating the understanding of a text from its effects and from doing something with it, he puts himself in a bad position to grasp all the features of a text. (That is to say, his rules are self-defeating.) For, one need not be a pragmatist to understand that often we only understand all the systematic entailments of a text by applying some or its all ideas to new (or old) problems. It's only after reading Rocknak (proto-Transcendental), Baxter (analytical metaphysics), and Bell's (Deleuzian) Hume that it becomes visible that Hume, for whom the law of non-contradiction does quite a bit of work, is simultaneously willing to bracket, when doing metaphysics, self-identity (or A=A).* Of course, this understanding can be contested (probably by all three just named authors), but the key is that the understanding of a text is a hard-won result by way of application. For a lot of folk the denial of self-identity is itself a sign of philosophical incompetence or lack of intelligibility, etc., so it would never be a starting point.

On Rules for the History of Philosophy...or a defense of methodological anachronism

The distinguished historian of philosophy, Peter Adamson (from "without any gaps" fame; the podcasts are a big hit), has articulated "some guidelines encapsulating what I see as good practice in studying the history of philosophy" (quoted from rule 1) on his blog. He is up to the ninth rule as I write this. The rules themselves are an "open-ended encouragement to strive for an ideal which is not practically reachable" (see rule 4; see also rule 8). I very much like this feature of the rules because it encourages us to think of our practice as an open-ended process (and puts the idea of a gapless history in nice perspective). There is a further worthy feature of the rules that is never stated explicitly, but a kind of animating principle behind them: to treat the authors we are studying as serious thinkers in their own right--a judgment that vindicates, in part, earlier readers; for, "any text that has survived to get into your hands has already been through a process of selection by earlier readers," (rule 2).

Before I get to a more principled qualm about his rules, I want to offer one immanent criticism of the first rule: "It's possible for the same idea to appear independently more than once." Yes, this is possible and undoubtedly occurs, and it might generate interesting questions about the conceptual possibility space available to certain philosophers such that 'forced moves' get rediscovered--I call such forced moves: social-conceptual-necessitation. (Having said that, I thought his example of Al-Ghazali and Hume on causation especially poorly chosen; (a) we know that Malebranche was almost certainly familiar with Al-Ghazali through discussions in Aquinas and Suarez [I apologize for forgetting where I first read this!], and Hume certainly knew his Malebranche; (b) until Dario Perinetti has completed his study of the La Fleche library we don't really know what Hume (and Descartes) might have read in his most formative period.) But while I am no fan of a certain kind of lineage-tracing popular among historians of ideas, this rule also has the likely tendency to discourage inquisitiveness. In particular it is very tempting to assume that 'great' thinkers didn't read or read little--some philosophers (Descartes, Spinoza, Carnap, Lewis, etc.) even play with a recurring Meme along these lines.* But we need/ought not trust their self-presentation in these matters. We miss moves in an author if we are unaware of her interlocutors. My concern is not just a matter of getting the context right (cf. rule 4); we literally do not notice if some options/alternatives are quietly foreclosed. It matters, for example, that Spinoza had More's Utopia in his library (and almost certainly read Bacon's New Atlantis); this means he was almost certainly aware of alternative ways to think about, say, gender relations and ways to organize religious-theological pluralism in society (as well as property relations, Biblical hermeneutics, etc.) even if he never went back to Plato. Aware of this, we might upon re-reading Spinoza notice that he has developed resources to reject those alternatives or we might start to see cracks in his edifice (etc.).  [Below I return to rule 1!]

Even so, the rules are problematic, especially because they come with the weighty authority  of an emiment and popular scholar. Leaving aside the fact that Adamson seems to be ignorant of the methodological discussions among other historians of philosophy of the last few years, Adamson never recognizes that there are alternative ways to study the history of philosophy in which some of the vices he recognizes may well be necessary virtues. I'll pick one example: Adamson is extremely concerned to have the historian avoid anachronism (see rule 4, 7, 8, 9). As it happens I have more tolerance for the kind of un-selfconscious anachronism that trained historians of philosophy are taught to reject; such un-selfconscious anachronistic readings of a text can, but need not, be interesting on their own terms ('what axioms in S4 or S5 would Spinoza or Leibniz reject?' can be hugely illuminating both to our understanding of Spinoza or a time-slice of Leibniz and to the modern student of modal logic). But that's not what I have in mind in defending here.