Digressions&Impressions

On Civilization (Coetzee style)

Is that what civilization is: an unwhispered agreement that no one, no matter how insignificant, should be allowed lose face?--J.M. Coetzee, Youth, p. 157.

There are three important characteristics of civilization mentioned here: (a) a tacit agreement or norm; (b) fundamental (even if minimal) equality; (c) a taboo against causing or facilitating others to lose face. Losing face produces both (d) loss of respect for the person principally concerned among others and (d) embarrassment or (or depending on the culture) shame in the person principally concerned. (In context, Coetzee's narrator, who is 'Coetzee,' accepts Japan as an obvious site for such a norm, but recognizes that England may have it, too.)

As an aside, this understanding of civilization is one of the transformative by-products of the youthful's Coetzee struggle with loneliness,  his inability to produce art and sexual coldness, and his recognition of his own misanthropy, not to say, being a bastard (especially to women). Earlier in the (auto-biographical) novel, Coetzee had accepted other understandings of civilization including (i) an elitist "Anglo-French" conception centered on rare, particular literary cultural products exemplified by Athens, Rome, the "Germany of Walther von der Vogelweide, Provence of Arnaut Daniel, the Florence of Dante and Guido Caculcanti, to say nothing of Tang China and Moghul India and Almoravid Spain" (pp. 24-26) on the authority of the philanthropic Pound T.S. Eliot; (ii) a political conception centered on Christian values and history of colonial settlement in Southern Africa (p. 38-9) on the authority of self-interested and partial politicians.

It would be reductive to see in Coetzee's tripartite understanding of civilization merely a coordination problem among unequal members of a society --- England's classes, South Africa's racial and linguistic communities, etc. -- who struggle to find a thin, abstract layer of mutual, equal respect. For, preventing the loss in face in others requires judgment and tact. General rules can guide us in preventing us from generating circumstances in which these may be necessary and can, even, (Adam Smith is very good on this) help us feel what we ought to feel absent any feeling at all (or correct against self-deception). But general rules cannot teach us the skills and tenor of character needed to navigate social nuance. (Perhaps, deep learning will solve this problem, but I am skeptical.) Coetzee's narrative suggests that individuals, even whole cultures, can achieve adulthood without ever mastering the skill.

I often Digress about civility (see here) and civilization (see here). At one point (here) I had suggested that civilization is no more than the art of keeping conversation going; and that philosophy's role in civilization is to teach the skills and develop the concepts that allow conversations to be continued or, alternatively, the state of war to be held at bay.  At first sight Coetzee's and my approach have little overlap. But it's not too difficult to see that Coetzee's analysis of civilization can be treated as a means to achieving what I have been calling civilization. This, then, results in civilization being, (a) a tacit agreement or norm; which presupposes (b) a fundamental (even if minimal) equality among members of a society;* in which there is (c) a taboo against causing or facilitating others to lose face in order (d) to keep the conversation, including silences and long-stutters, going.

Professional philosophy today is pretty good at fleshing out and analyzing (a-b). And I believe it is even capable of teaching the skills and concepts necessary for these. As I often document (and as Eric Schwitzgebel, Michael Rea, and Amy Olberding have also emphasized in various ways), professional philosophy today is horrid at (c-d)--that is we often instantiate uncivilized behavior (in the sense discussed here) and we probably lack the skills to teach it to others. That is to say, we may, in fact, at the margin contribute to the decline of society's inability to keep conversation going.

On Public Philosophy

Today, an invited guest post on Political Transformative Experience that I authored appeared at Daily Nous (thank you Justin and Helen--recall this post (when I called it Transformative Political Experience; do I have to settle on a stable name?); go check it out and explore the whole discussion.

By public philosophy one can mean three things:  first, interventions or participation in public debates by professional philosophers and those trained in professional philosophy. The previous sentence is still vague, but I am relying on a distinction between philosophy withdrawn from the public and geared toward fellow philosophers and would-be-philosophers (e.g., journal articles and seminar discussion are not 'public' in the relevant sense), and those philosophical utterances oriented toward a non-philosophical audience (a newspaper editorial, a television appearance, etc.). There are some tricky cases: a (taped) lecture to a university-wide audience may well drift into such public participation; expert advice to technocrats is not really public in the relevant sense, but may well influence the public. Second, a genre of writing and speaking by intellectuals, who are not professional philosophers -- and do not engage in the debates/discussions among professionals --, yet engage public(s) on philosophical topics. (Sometimes these are topics that are not much discussed by recent professional philosophy.) Both species of direct public philosophy can draw on the results/insights or distinctions of professional philosophy, but need not do so.

Both kinds of public philosophy require special skills that are distinct from those that allow one to flourish in professional context(s). These special skills involve an ability to combine communicative, accessibility (note, not clarity or simplicity) and public agenda. Much public philosophy ignores intellectual specialization within the profession in order to offer a broader narrative, even a corrective to the public speech of specialist experts, in order to promote some (or a) common good. Such public philosophy can be done by way of public unmasking of practices, by the introduction of distinctions, by clarifying conceptual entailment, and by deploying systematic narratives, etc. There are contemporary examples of philosophers who are very good at public and professional philosophy (and here I ignore the divisions between analytical and continental styles).  There are also interesting issues associated with cases of professional philosopher leveraging status (gained from the professional credit economy) within the profession in order to participate in and benefit from public philosophy (and vice versa).

I am a friend of public philosophy (although do not think it should be expected from professional philosophers) because it enriches public life, even though (a) it can be dangerous to the public and, thereby, to philosophers, and (b) give the public a false image of what philosophy is (public philosophy gets to be taken to be philosophy as such) or what the consensus of all (professional) philosophers might be.  Both (a-b) involve tough questions on both the nature of responsible, public speech that I tend to explore under the heading "Socratic Problem" (which also involves the public role of experts) as well as what I have been calling philosophical integrity, that is, the way(s) in which one's professional arguments, professional credit, and public utterances and comportment cohere.

Before I turn to the third indirect species of public philosophy, I would like to distinguish public philosophy from two closely-related activities: i) punditry and ii) advocacy by professional philosophy. Professional philosophers can be pundits (from the Hindi pandit)--opinion-makers informed by learning. I don't think professional philosophers have any special expertise as pundits (and on the whole I try to avoid it, although last week with less success). A lot of would-be-public-philosophy is really  service to a cause or a political agenda and often certain cosmopolitan preferences are taken to constitute rationality. To be sure, such partisan or service philosophy -- be it in the seminar room or in public -- is real philosophy (recall that according to Dotson this just is philosophy.) But such service does not tend to presuppose a common good--if anything it is often legitimately suspicious of the common good; it recognizes that the status quo is zero-sum and, it nobly, wishes to redress a political (economic, etc.) imbalance in the name of justice, truth, morality, etc. There is also a species of (naive) philosophy that fails to understand how its public utterances predictably facilitate the rise of injustice (we may call it disservice philosophy).

Thus, I associate the 'public' in public philosophy with a shared life or common good. That is, public philosophy so understood is committed to a form of minimal political unity--a unity that is constituted by (educational) practices, narratives, and public understandings that facilitate some dispositions conducive to minimal, political union. (In a community of angels or philosophers there would be no need of public philosophy.) Public philosophy plays (as Platonizing philosophers have long recognized) a role in the would-be-civic religion of society.

I have no doubt that many of my peers think that what I have called philosophy as 'advocacy' (or Dotson's service) just is public philosophy and that civic religion just is a bunch of lies and (if they were to comment on this post) will accuse me of a lack of warmth (if not worse) toward justice. Some of these (my closest intellectual friends), accepting as an article of faith the priority of the right over the good, are convinced that it is the duty of (public) philosophy to promote public justice and cosmopolitan morality. Allowing that there exists some such duty, I demur from accepting that is the main or only duty of philosophical speech.

So far, I have emphasized the role of individuals as public philosophers. But facilitating or enhancing social norms, public practices, and political institutions conducive to a common good can also be an indirect species of public philosophy (that is the third kind of public philosophy). For such practices can instantiate rational arrangements that make possible, perhaps, constitute a common good which I will provisionally define (recall) as mutual accommodation and modest forms of mutual receptivity such that public conversation -- not war or domination -- can be continued.

A Further note On the Trigger Warnings Controversy

[T]hey bewitch our souls...so that I myself, Menexenus, when thus praised by them feel mightily ennobled, and every time I listen fascinated I am exalted and imagine myself to have become all at once taller and nobler and more handsome. And as I am generally accompanied by some strangers, who listen along with me, I become in their eyes also all at once more majestic; for they also manifestly share in my feelings with regard both to me and to the rest of our City, believing it to be more marvellous than before, owing to the persuasive eloquence of the speaker. And this majestic feeling remains with me for over three days: so persistently does the speech and voice of the orator ring in my ears that it is scarcely on the fourth or fifth day that I recover myself and remember that I really am here on earth, whereas till then I almost imagined myself to be living in the Islands of the Blessed,—so expert are our orators.--Plato, Menexenus, 235a-c*

It is odd to read about the scorn ('new infantilism') heaped by self-described friends of a humanistic or classical education -- professors and commentators alike -- on the request for trigger warnings by college students encountering poetic and graphic scenes of rape in their required courses (recall this post to which the current one is a footnote). For in their ridicule, these cosmopolitan, mature types suggest that they do not really believe the once common rhetoric of the transformative potential of literature and the other arts. From their public utterances we may  infer that these false shepherds of culture appear to practice a detached, ironic stance toward the texts and material they teach and study; they seem literally unable to imagine to be swept away by poetry and rhetoric, to be un-moored from one's own identity by film,  and to be captivated by another's train of thought in a work of fiction. They understand themselves as stewards of traditional learning, but they reveal that they read with detached minds and closed hearts who are unable, it seems, to learn from their students' searching questioning.   

That works of art, including many thought canonical, can be dangerous to their readers and the society that permits them is an un-cool thought--one that gets suppressed by the banality that pases for a literary education. For, too many of our teachers assume that by branding a work 'fiction' we have created a convention by which it is treated as harmless speech a mere diversion without anything at stake (recall my exchange with the Dutch novelist Grunberg). But dictators and censorious religions (not to mention Plato) know better--imaginative works can inflame the soul and worse--some of them known to incite killing (cf. Charlie Hebdo).

One belittles our civic religion, which embraces a hard-won freedom of speech protected by law and people's hearts, by failing to recognize what is at stake in it: it is not just intended to protect "the language and imagery" of beautiful and harm-free speech. We do not get the (for lack of a more lovely term) freedom-enhancing effects of texts without risking incurring some of the dangerous effects; this is both why free speech is nowhere absolute and the limits of it are constantly contested as well as why the nature of responsible speech is of recurring significance in philosophy and the arts. A true educator recognizes the fragility of the experiment in living that occurs when student and teacher are receptive to (well) the demonic.

The above is not meant to deny the legitimate concern over the spread of trigger warnings if, as is likely, these become yet another instrument of the rent-seeking technocrats that run the modern university by which they curtail and intimidate professors and instructors (see here).** But if one treats the Liberal Arts as merely about lovely language and escapist fantasy, one should not be surprised if the rest of society decides one is dispensable.

 

On Casual Cruelty in Philosophy

I have sat in philosophy seminars where it was asserted that I should be left to die on a desert island if the choice was between saving me and saving an arbitrary non-disabled person. I have been told it would be wrong for me to have my biological children because of my disability. I have been told that, while it isn’t bad for me to exist, it would’ve been better if my mother could’ve had a non-disabled child instead. I’ve even been told that it would’ve been better, had she known, for my mother to have an abortion and try again in hopes of conceiving a non-disabled child. I have been told that it is obvious that my life is less valuable when compared to the lives of arbitrary non-disabled people. And these things weren’t said as the conclusions of careful, extended argument. They were casual assertions. They were the kind of thing you skip over without pause because it’s the uncontroversial part of your talk.

Now, of course, no one has said these things to me specifically. They haven’t said “Hey, Elizabeth Barnes, this is what we think about you!” But they’ve said them about disabled people in general, and I’m a disabled person. Even just thinking about statements like these, as I write this, I feel so much – sadness, rage, and more than a little shame. It’s an odd thing, a hard thing, to try to take these emotions and turn them into interesting philosophy and careful arguments.—Elizabeth Barnes, writing at Philosoph-her [HT Meena Krishnamurthy]

I sometimes fall into despair and think that my professional community, analytical philosophy, -- in which I have invested so much of my life and identity -- cannot be redeemed. It’s one thing to note, echoing Ruth Chang (recall and here), that our intellectual reflexes and moral sentiments are deformed by our disciplinary education; it’s another thing to note that as professionals in a zero-sum institutional environment we often lionize bullies (recall and here & here) and exhibit a party-line attitude toward those that approach philosophy from alternative viewpoints and with different sensibilities. But Barnes, who is one of my favorite metaphysicians, reports something far worse: our “casual assertions” exhibit much cruelty, even inhumanity, qua philosophers.

For, in analytical philosophy, “talks” are carefully prepared because we know that audiences are unforgiving—and that our intended discussion can easily be derailed by zealous scrutiny of details, even our throw-away remarks. (This explains how common it still is to encounter fully read papers.) We pride ourselves on our clarity, rigor, and care, after all, and we prepare focused talks. So, according to the self-image we embrace, we don’t let anything into these talks without some reflection and scrutiny. Barnes’s report reminds us that in the intellectual air we breathe, in the uncontroversial-background-assumptions that we collectively take for granted, there are noxious, even poisonous humors that are fully compatible with civility, politeness, and embracing S5 as the true modal logic.

I saw Barnes’s post widely shared with approval and admiration at blogs and facebook; even so, I puzzle over the lack of sympathetic shame, even embarrassment over our practices. For, Barnes’s experience(s) qua disabled person are not isolated. The history of philosophy is one long record of casually expressed norms of superiority (e.g., recall and here), and there is little reason to think that we do better than earlier generations (because our training is not geared toward preventing it).

As a sociological aside, Barnes notes that she had deferred her work on "social and feminist philosophy – especially philosophical issues related to disability" until after "having established a certain amount of professional security." That Barnes has achieved such security is a great achievement. But her frank admission suggests how deplorable the state of the profession is given that her calculation about deferring such work is -- given existing norms and incentive/reward structures -- eminently rational. We have, as a discipline, undoubtedly missed out on more voices that have never achieved the kind of security Barnes has and, thereby, have missed out on lots of arguments. This suggests that the intellectual status quo is probably more fragile than folk realize because its commitments have not been stress-tested against the best possible arguments. 

Some other time I hope to return to a key theme in Barnes's post, which is about the bind she found herself in because she can't express her justified anger ("you are angry and sad about what is being said about your disability or how you are being treated because of your disability") without further professional cost or more engagements that generate anger and sadness (etc.). But here I want to focus on a feature of the passage quoted at the top of this post. 

Barnes allows, perhaps for rhetorical purposes, that some cruel thoughts are less reprehensible if they would be “conclusions of careful, extended argument.” I am less sure. Arguments are tools at the service of practical reasoning, theoretical rationality, and perhaps, even the path toward truth; they are not, even the "careful, analytically rigorous" ones, self-vindicating in virtue of being “careful arguments.”[1] (Barnes does not suggest this, so we may agree here.) There may be nothing more comical within professional philosophy than witnessing purported hyper-caution about one’s premises and inferential steps that are conjoined with an utter lack of judgment about, say, the nature of the issue at hand. Odds are that if cruelty is the consequence of a careful, extended argument then something has gone wrong somewhere; the lack of reserve in sharing the argument is a further sign that something is amiss.*

Now, most folk don't knowingly exhibit cruelty (one assumes, although sometimes I wonder). But it is not uncommon that when somebody is confronted with the impact of his/her casual cruelty (or carefully argued for cruelty) one often does not encounter a dispassionate attempt at exploring previously accepted norms of superiority, but one receives eloquent statements on the evils of 'political correctness,' the importance of 'freedom of speech,' or the deplorable state of 'call out culture' (or unwillingness to tolerate satire, hypersensitivity, etc.). To be called to account for the unintended, perhaps, consequence of one's (casual) remarks (or careful argument) is no fun, especially if it happens somewhat publicly, and so some defensiveness is to be expected. But it is noteworthy that such a response entails a further lack of recognition of the victim, of the harm(s) done, and even of one's own role as an agent within a variety of moral communities. There is an additional source of shame lurking here; for while Plato and Aristotle restricted the origin of philosophy to wonder, as Barnes more correctly notes, other painful emotions, including "sadness, rage, and more than a little shame," as well as, perhaps, despair, can also be the starting place for true philosophy.

Locke's Redefinition of Religion (Or on the Origin of Libertarianism)

Pure and rational religion, free from every mixture of absurdity, imposture, or fanaticism, such as wise men have in all ages of the world wished to see established"--Adam Smith, Wealth of Nations.

 

Since you are pleased to inquire what are my thoughts about the mutual toleration of Christians in their different professions of religion, I must needs answer you freely that I esteem that toleration to be the chief characteristic mark of the true Church. For whatsoever some people boast of the antiquity of places and names, or of the pomp of their outward worship; others, of the reformation of their discipline; all, of the orthodoxy of their faith — for everyone is orthodox to himself — these things, and all others of this nature, are much rather marks of men striving for power and empire over one another than of the Church of Christ. Let anyone have never so true a claim to all these things, yet if he be destitute of charity, meekness, and good-will in general towards all mankind, even to those that are not Christians, he is certainly yet short of being a true Christian himself. "The kings of the Gentiles exercise leadership over them," said our Saviour to his disciples, "but ye shall not be so." The business of true religion is quite another thing. It is not instituted in order to the erecting of an external pomp, nor to the obtaining of ecclesiastical dominion, nor to the exercising of compulsive force, but to the regulating of men's lives, according to the rules of virtue and piety.--John Locke, A Letter Concerning Toleration.

The first paragraph of Locke's Letter (recall), announces two themes: (i) the mutual toleration of Christians, and (ii) a re-definition of religion, including, but not limited to, Christianity. The first theme is developed at length in the unfolding of the argument of the Letter. This argument is treated with such detail that one might miss the second one altogether.* The second, which will be my focus here, is announced by Locke's repetitive use of "true" and calls attention to a set of implied definitions of a "true church," a "true Christian," a "true religion," and, glancing ahead "true piety." Let's take these in turn.

All churches are voluntary associations that, crucially, allow their members a right of free entry and exit and that aim at public worship of God in order to save their souls. ("A church...I take to be a voluntary society of men, joining themselves together of their own accord in order to the public worshipping of God in such manner as they judge acceptable to Him, and effectual to the salvation of their souls.") A church is, then, a "spontaneous society" (in the sense that Hayek made famous).

Within the class of churches only those churches that tolerate other churches are true churches. This entails (a) that some organizations that call themselves a "church"are not, in fact, churches according to Locke (because, say, one is forced to join them), and that some churches in Locke's sense are (b) false churches because they are unwilling to be tolerant toward other churches and individuals.

Now, Locke's definition is manifestly directed against religious organizations that encroach on the roles/power/duties of the magistrate/government, that is that seek after worldly power, or a group that wish to enlist government to impose a religious monopoly on its behalf. Locke's "true church" is compatible with some versions of Christianity (but, not, say, Calvinism as practiced in Geneva or the Dutch reformed Church or Roman Catholicism of his own day), but not intrinsically Christian.  Locke makes clear that true churches are compatible with species of paganism, Judaism (but not the Biblical, theocratic kind), and certain forms of Islam (especially Shiites awaiting the 12th Imam).

In order to be a true Christian it is necessary and, it seems, sufficient that one exhibits "charity, meekness, and good-will in general towards all mankind." What's astonishing about this is not just that doctrine is irrelevant, but one does not even require (as Hobbes suggest) faith that Christ is the savior. This is an embrace of Christian pacifism ("meekness) and a doctrine of cosmopolitan humanitarian works ("charity...good will," etc.) It turns Christianity into a purely moral doctrine.+ Interestingly enough, while to be a member of a true church requires one to be committed to a bit of metaphysics -- there are immortal souls that can be saved, this is asserted axiomatically in the Letter --, to be a true Christian requires no such commitment.

True religion also makes no claim to worldly power and is wholly opposed to the "art of ruling." It is a code/ethos of conduct in accord with virtue and piety. This code of virtue is intrinsically pacifistic (it's a "Gospel of peace" and only persuades by offering exemplars in "holiness.") And it is primarily (but not wholly, as I'll argue) directed at "the inward and full persuasion of the mind; and faith is not faith without believing." The proper moral sentiment directed at true religion is love, and it is generated by exemplars in holiness and purity in doctrine.**

As a Straussian aside, Locke does not define a true ruler, but it seems to require something wholly opposite to believing a true religion. That is, Locke does not defend political pacifism and holiness.

I have suggested that true religion is largely a private, inward affair. But it should be noted that even true religion has a social function: it also includes piety. Not, unlike Spinoza, Locke exploits the ambiguity between Christian and Republican piety, but what he has in mind with 'piety' just is obedience to state/law. I cannot prove this conclusively because Locke is very terse on the nature of true piety in the Letter, but it is suggested by this sentence: "A good life, in which consist not the least part of religion and true piety, concerns also the civil government; and in it lies the safety both of men's souls and of the commonwealth." Here piety seems to be linked to the safety of the commonwealth (in the way that religion is devoted to the safety of men's souls).

But there is good independent evidence for the thought of the previous paragraph. The most notorious doctrine of the Letter is the exclusion of those that "deny the being of a God" from the circle of toleration. The reason for this is that such folk lack fear in God, and therefore cannot be entrusted with "Promises, covenants, and oaths, which are the bonds of human society." That is to say, while Hobbes lets the state play the role of a fear-inducing "mortal God," Locke requires a fear-inducing belief in a God(s) that punish(es) in the afterlife to secure the sanctity of tacit and explicit contracts. (Locke clearly does not wish for a fear-inducing state; he also seems to think that desire for good reputation is not sufficient to secure contracts.) 

Note, by the way, that (i) if one can promote sanctity of contracts without God or fear, then Locke's argument in favor of intolerance toward atheists is not required; (ii) that because Locke does not promote religious inquisitions, a quiet (prudent) atheist is to be tolerated. (There are echoes of Plato's Laws here.) This, too, is Spinozist, but -- unlike (Voltaire's) Spinoza who seems to allow a society of atheists (recall) -- it follows Locke is hostile to what one might call a secular, Enlightenment party/movement unless they can promote a civic religion devoted to the sanctity of contracts based on inward faith--one may understand certain species of peace-loving Libertarianism as the optimistic pursuit of this option in which all voluntary contracts take on the characteristics of a Lockean church.

 

On Civilization

"Do you know who . . . I am?'' Tyson asked in disbelief when Ayer urged him to desist: ''I'm the heavyweight champion of the world.'' ''And I am the former Wykeham professor of logic,'' Ayer answered politely. ''We are both pre-eminent in our field. I suggest that we talk about this..."--Quoted in The New York Times.

We, however “we" are constituted, must draw on ourselves through an inward look, of picturing something that we cannot see, of making a composite and being satisfied with a rough outline that allows us to cope and carry on.--M.A. Khan.

Civilization is no more than the art of keeping conversation going. If this much is right, then it should not necessarily be identified with prowess in technology or the sciences or particular social organizations emanating from Europe. Rather it is a skill that promotes mutual accommodation and modest forms of receptivity. It may also involve a species of courage, as when Freddy Ayer confronted Mike Tyson, but in well-ordered societies this courage would be rarely required.

One might think that in the previous paragraph I have just projected my preference for useless talk and transformed it into a fundamental good. If you have a sense of humor, and are familiar with my fondness for quoting Hume, you may quote Hume against me:

The Bramins [sic] assert, that the world arose from an infinite spider, who spun this whole complicated mass from his bowels, and annihilates afterwards the whole or any part of it, by absorbing it again, and resolving it into his own essence. Here is a species of cosmogony, which appears to us ridiculous; because a spider is a little contemptible animal, whose operations we are never likely to take for a model of the whole universe...And were there a planet, wholly inhabited by spiders, (which is very possible) this inference would there appear as natural and irrefragable.--David Hume.*

There is some truth to the charge that like a spider's fondness for spiders, I am merely equating civilization with philosophical activity. Even so, my ilk, professional philosophers, are not really committed to civilization; here I don't have merely those, who seem to care mostly about winning debates, in mind. Rather, I am primarily thinking about the more kindly ones that are committed to the idea that conversation can be halted by truth, knowledge, agreement, or consensus, and, further, that, in fact, our inquiries and activities aim at these. So, while civilization can be philosophical (I return to this below) not all philosophy is, despite the presence of other virtues, civilized.

To be civilized has a bad reputation: first, it stands accused of hypocrisy by those familiar with the conjunction of 'European' (or 'American,' 'Judeo-Christian,' etc.) and 'Civilization,' while noting that the track-record of such societies includes genocide, slavery, colonialism, pillage, and an infinite variety of other forms of oppression, etc. Second, from another side it is presented as accommodationist and naive for its refusal to draw steadfast lines in the sand between them and us. By contrast, even if when forced to recognize the existence of enemies, the civilized insist -- to paraphrase Dayan**--  that if one wants to make peace, one doesn't talk to one's friends. One talks to enemies even if they hold a gun in their hand. That is to say, by understanding civilization as a political and social skill, we recognize that it aims at ending and preventing the state of war; from the vantage point developed here, 'the clash of civilizations' is a contradiction in terms. 

The first charge is based on equivocation. From the vantage point of true civilization, there is no excuse for domination. So, while civilization does not require equality or mutual respect, it requires mutual accommodation. One might worry that this just entrenches unfairness or, worse, status quo biases and so civilization is just an expression of self-interest of the powerful. There is an element of truth to this (third) charge, but it is generally even more in the interest of the weak to be part of the conversation. Either way, a defense of civilization should not be confused with a theory of justice (which may also be in the interest of the powerful).

The previous paragraph reminds us that civility is not an intrinsic part of civilization. To be civil is to conform to norms that govern a community of equals (originally citizens). It is intrinsic to civility that there are insiders and outcasts. This is why even though civility may be a means toward keeping a conversation going, the demand for civility can be so easily abused as a tool of oppression.+

Above I suggested that philosophy and civilization are not necessarily mutually antagonistic. I can now state philosophy's role in civilization: it is to teach the skills and develop the concepts that allow conversations to be continued++ or, alternatively, the state of war to be held at bay.

What words, images, and principles are you willing to die for?

What words, images, and principles are you willing to die for?

That's the question (hereafter 'The Question') after last week's assassination of Charlie Hebdo's editorial staff and cartoonists posed to those of us -- e.g., journalists, academics, cartoonists, publicists, politicians, artists, etc. -- that live by peddling words and images to various audiences. It's not a new question; earlier in the week I called attention to the fate of Socrates, and it has been revived even in the relatively law-abiding, gun-poor environments of Northwestern Europe with the assasinations of politicians (e.g., Olof Palme; Pim Fortuyn), aspiring politicians (Utøya island massacre), and political commentators (Theo Van Gogh).* Such targets -- the victims of let's call them, 'politicized crimes' -- have in common with more ordinary terror attacks that they are 'soft,' that is, that they are relatively unprotected and that the moment of attack is relatively unexpected. But unlike ordinary victims of terror, the victims of politicized crimes draw attention to themselves by their active construction of the public sphere.+ The Question has become ever more acute with the rise of suicide bombers and other politicized killers that are very evidently willing to die for their principles.

The whole idea of legally protected freedom of expression is designed to diffuse The Question. If only the very brave or foolish participate in the public sphere then it is likely that all kinds of insights and positions never get articulated with the care and expertise required to guide the life of and constitute the polity. But this open public sphere requires not just a government to live by its own rules, but also capability and willingness to protect its own public sphere by having a monopoly on violence (and arms). While undoubtedly more can be done to secure safe participation in a public sphere, there is in governments a tendency for policing and security-measures overreach, which, paradoxically undermines an open public sphere and, indirectly, Liberal society.

An exclusive focus on security does not address the reasons why people may wish to kill (and die) for their beliefs. Political terrorists are not random natural facts; they are (if we leave aside the children among them) agents that are animated by a whole host of commitments, feelings, aspirations, and ideologies. That is to say, while undoubtedly there are many security-driven ways of preventing political attacks, these do nothing to undermine and may, perhaps, reinforce the experienced intentional world(s)** of would-be-politicized-killers.

This last point is especially important because many of the politicized killers are not strange, undercover invaders from foreign places. Rather they are home-grown; they have turned militant despite (perhaps because of) being quite familiar with the norms, aspirations, and even rewards of an arms-free public sphere. I leave it to the social scientists to help explain various social sources of militancy among a subset of those born in the European West. But part of the issue is also ideology. The nub of the matter is that evidently our Western normative and social commitments are  displaced at the level of individual psychology among part(s) of the population.

It's at this point of the analysis that nearly all commentators focus on the varieties of militant Islam, which quite evidently generates motivational power to some people to kill and die for its principles. As I noted a few days ago, Justin Smith, an eminent philosophical scholar who lives and works in Paris, has been among the most intelligent and interesting philosophical commentators on the assassination of the editorial staff of Charlie Hebdo. He puts his point as follows:

it's a great shame that political Islamism today perceives an equivalence between the symbolic and the real that make an act of vengeance of this scale seem like a fair trade. I recall that one horrible, amateur film ridiculing Mohammed a few years ago; they interviewed some kid in Egypt whose reaction was: 'Well, how would you feel if we made a movie making fun of, say, Abraham Lincoln?' He sincerely didn't understand that no one would care.

Today when the assassins were fleeing toward their getaway car, they shouted: On a vengé le prophète Mohammed. On a tué Charlie Hebdo.++ One cannot help but think: there is a double confusion here. Not just one but two fictional characters have been mistaken for real people. And twelve real people have been killed as a result.--Justin Smith.

Now unlike most commentators, in his blog posts Smith is clear that Charlie Hebdo offered not just a willingness to die (Stéphane Charbonnier has been quite explicit about this), but as Smith explains (here, here, here), an alternative, life-affirming even joyous and raunchy set of commitments that challenged many forms of powers and ideology (including Islamic ones) at the level of affect as much as reason.

Even so, the passage quoted from Smith contains some missteps. Smith's "political Islam" fails to do justice to the Islamic political movements (inside and outside of Europe) that do not promote or condone (even tacitly) the killing of  folk in the European public sphere. Given that there are political movements in Europe that are extremely intolerant/hostile toward all of Islam (and Smith is clearly no fan of these movements), Smith's wording is unfortunate.

More important, there is, in fact, no opposition between the "symbolic and the real." (There is an opposition between the real and the illusory.) In particular, when we are dealing with social reality, the symbolic and the real can coincide, but need not. This connects to another, more serious misstep in Smith's analysis. Muḥammad is not a fictional character. He was a historical figure who (among other social scripts (recall)) played political and religious role(s) in his own life and thereafter. The symbolic is constituted (albeit non-exhaustively) by such roles. (It is not impossible that a fictional Muhammad could also play such symbolic roles, but that's not my concern.) The symbolic matters here because it's what animates or gives meaning to the experienced intentional world of individuals, including the would-be-killers and those that sympathize with them.

So Smith is absolutely right that the "Egyptian kid" in his example fails to understand the symbolic organization and commitments of contemporary Americans. Having said that, plenty of Americans get very upset about flag-burning; so Smith's Egyptian kid could have found a better example for his case.  The point here is not that every society has symbols it is touchy about (although it is not irrelevant); rather it misses the point to say about such a symbol, 'oh well, it's just fictional.'

Furthermore, Smith is right to note (and we can nod to Nietzsche's analysis of Lex Talionis) that in revenge-killing there is an element of trade that restores a balance within a community. Despite the fact that the killers of Charlie Hebdo's editorial staff and cartoonists do not conform to and violently transgress the laws of the land, their words, if accurately quoted, suggests that they, too, recognize, perhaps implicitly, that they belong to a community in which their victims play a symbolic (even sacrificial) role.

Much to my surprise Smith insists that contemporary Jihadists "are entirely unable to interpret the Charlie Hebdo cartoons." (His ire is also directed at professors at American universities, but I will ignore them here.) This strikes me as confused  about the nature of the symbolic. Images play multiple roles and functions in different symbolic systems/organisations sometimes simultaneously--some philosophers, of course, cannot abide multiplicity of meaning, but if they allow such a possibility cartoons would be on the very short-list. There is no true interpretation of the symbolic. (To avoid confusion: there are symbolic systems, of course, that are governed by truth.) While we can allow that the Jihadists failed to understand all the intended complexities of the Charlie Hebdo cartoons, they discerned in some of these images satire (and worse) of their commitments.+++

Finally, it's possible, of course, that one can die because of a mistaken interpretation of one's words, images, and principles. That's the stuff (with a nod to Oedipus) of tragedy. If one participates in the public sphere with highly affective images and words that mistake is probably not unexpected. It is also possible -- I think this happened to Stéphane Charbonnier -- that one dies both for a principle one embraces and for a hostile interpretation of one's work that is offered from a vantage point one does not share.

(here, here, here), including satire.) a genuine alternative, life-affirming joyous even raunchy set of of commitments one that was as challenging to Islam as it was to many other ideologies and political powers.

On/Against civility in Professional Philosophy

In the corridor or the classroom or the seminar, civility is at least an aspiration – that we speak and listen to each other in a civil manner: it is an aspiration within an existing community – hence the political overtones of the word. Why should we bother? Civility is an attitude displayed in the content of what one says, revealed by tone or linguistic choice, but it is fundamentally an attitude to another person – of taking them seriously, of treating them with respect and care, and without prejudice. This, I take it, matters intrinsically – just because whatever enterprises we are engaged in, we are engaged together. This explains the shock and outrage and the sympathy for its target when civility seems to be cast aside. MM McCabe [at Feministphilosophers]

Among the few great joys of the recent philosophical blogosphere are the contributions by Mary Margaret McCabe, a distinguished philosopher.* Her blog posts are subtle, and she treats her readers like adults; moreover, she practices what she preaches. Even so, I was disappointed by her post because it does not really address known objections to the view that she puts forward. I have in mind, especially, an argument articulated by Johnson and Kazarian in a widely read piece at NewAPPS. In particular, they noted that the  demand for "civility" ("collegiality," etc.) is "the sort of requirement that only works, practically speaking, in very homogeneous communities." Even though I think Johnson and Kazarian overstate the homogeneity required, there is no doubt that civility is only possible when a lot of agreement is presupposed. In the class room this agreement is stipulated, but elsewhere it cannot be taken for granted.

Now, McCabe is not naive; her post is worth reading because she is very  sensitive to the fragility of civility. As she puts it "civility is [always--ES] under construction." This strikes me as the right stance. Even so, she goes on to claim "but it continues to be an aspiration." Yet, as she notes in the quoted post above, civility presupposes "existing community." The problem is that even professional philosophy is not an existing community and has not pretended to be one in living memory. My own group -- analytical philosophy -- has shown itself systematically willing to be unreceptive to, and frequently  dismissive of (etc.) to outsiders (Continental, Feminists, Straussians, cultural theorists, etc.). It would be all wrong to just point to one particular blogger's public persona, and to ignore both the years of complicity of the 'professional haves' in such behavior as well as to overlook the revered role of sneering and putdown in our tradition (and, perhaps, the history of philosophy more generally): from Russell onward (Anscombe, Geach, Carnap, Ernest Nagel, etc.) sneering and the elegant putdown have had a treasured role in the tradition (and others). So, it would be perverse to aspire to something that is probably not possible and, along the way, becomes a club/stick to silence critics and promote (unwanted) conformity without a prior accounting of the role of incivility in the tradition. Indeed, "The future of collaborative discourse is more important than its past," but the very idea that historical trajectory can (largely) be dispensed with is, itself, a move in philosophical history with itself (a problematic) history.

Moreover, a lot of extremely polite and civil folk are not really engaged in "the possibility to speak and to listen together." (In a zero-sum environment [jobs, grants, journal space, etc.] this may be unavoidable.) But civility, as operationalized in certain modes of expression, is not the proper response to polite condescension or the argumentative brush-off nicely formulated. The odd locution of the previous sentence, is partly a consequence of Prof. McCabe's tendency to treat expressions of anger as the contrary to civil behavior.** Sometimes we treat another with respect for their person-hood and care by getting angry at them (ask any parent); we signal that we take their attitudes seriously enough to be willing to signal that they have crossed some line. Finally, sometimes our own person-hood and respect for self demands from  us that we get angry at another. Reactive attitudes are an intrinsic part of one's persoon-hood and one of the means toward expressing respect; recognizing their value may well be intrinsic to establishing community. (This is not to deny that due to power differences, the norms of expressing anger may vary with status.) Rather, given the huge potential for abuse that comes with the civility standard, I would wish that we focused more attention on concrete steps at building community and reducing the existing scope of abuses of power.