Digressions&Impressions

Five Comments on Jonathan Wolff's List of Five Books

The eminent political philosopher Jonathan Wolff is interviewed here. [HT Jacob Levy; Jason Stanley.] After an autobiographical introduction he is invited to discuss five books "by thinkers who have shaped the field." Wolff mentions Hobbes's Leviathan, Marx's Early Writings, Rawls's A Theory of Justice, Nozick's Anarchy, State, and Utopia, and Cohen's If You’re an Egalitarian, How Come You’re So Rich? The interview is a lovely mixture of autobiography, biography (especially of Cohen), and enthusiasm for the issues. I thought it was especially good on what makes Nozick's Anarchy so memorable. Even so, I offer critical observations because Wolff's comments reveal non-trivial systematic problems with political philosophy (as practiced by some of the very best in the field).

1. In discussing Leviathan, Wolff exhibits an absurd pride in not having really read parts 3-4. This is connected to a remarkable oversight: the lack of mention of religion (and political theology) as a key/central issue for Hobbes's project. (Leviathan is oddly relevant!) I am not picking on his lack of scholarly literacy or his lack of shame -- so common among certain kind of analytical philosophers of his generation, including the silly idea that Hobbes "is an analytical philosopher," [it's silly because Hobbes takes rhetoric very seriously whereas analytical philosophers, a few noble ones excepted, tend not to]* -- in not having read fully a book he discusses at length (not exactly the model of virtue in a Dean of Humanities)! Rather, it reveals how narrow his conception of political philosophy really is and almost certainly reveals a tacit commitment, once popular, to the idea that religion is a thing of the past. I am not saying that one should only focus on religion within political philosophy, but the more modern books mentioned (by Rawls, Nozick, Cohen) that 'shaped' the field are not very profound on the challenges and opportunities posed by religion to political philosophy.  This lacuna -- and it is a considerable given the events of, say, the last thirty years --, suggests something has gone very wrong in the field. [This is not to deny that "Rawls took religion very seriously," but in Wolff's hands Rawls's significance is explicitly not on political theology.]
2. Wolff is reported as saying (while commenting on Leviathan's famous cover) "I can’t think of another political philosopher who’s chosen an illustration themselves for their position." I found this an odd lapse in his memory because several of JJ Rousseau's books have (complex) illustrutations/engravings  as book covers that comment or even guide the reader's interpretations and are mentioned in the text (see here [see also this paper on the Emile [HT Michael Kochin]).
3. Wolff writes about Marx: "Marx finds, in the Wealth of Nations, a whole range of criticisms of capitalism that sound just like Marx. So, for example, Adam Smith argues that the natural rate of wages is the minimum wage — what it costs to keep the worker and his family alive for the day." I think Wolff misremembers his Marx here (and confuses some key concepts in Smith). To be clear it's true that Smith anticipates much of Marx's criticisms of capitalism (see this excellent book by Spencer Pack). But it is not true that for Smith the natural rate is (generally) the minimum wage nor does Marx say this (I am not a Marx expert, so maybe he says it somewhere); rather for Smith wages will only fall to subsistence wages if there is little economic/production growth alongside population growth--something that Marx recognizes (but Wolff not). By contrast, the natural rate is the counterfactual price of a good absent barriers to trade in factors--something that Marx recognizes (and Wolff not). For Smith this price is not a subsistence wage, but rather one that prevails when there is no famine. Marx understands this about Smith, but disagrees; he argues that within an extensive division of labor the worker lacks the bargaining power to (a) benefit from when the market prices are above the natural price (something extremely common) because (b) the capitalist can redirect capital far more easily than the worker can. (Both (a-b) are compatible with Smith's analysis, by the way.) Moreover, Marx thinks that (c) wages are very sticky. (This is not really Smith's position.) Where Marx and Smith differ in Marx's analysis is (to simplify) that Smith thinks wages can be kept above subsistence rates during times of economic growth whereas Marx thinks this is rarely the case (and even if it can be done only at the expensive of the worker relative to capital interests).
4. On reading Rawls Theory of Justice. "You can read a page and not think very much of it and then ten years later come back to it, having thought about the issue yourself, and see Rawls has completely understood the issue, set out all the possibilities, and shown why only one of them is right." I think this is almost right, but it also misses a key feature of Rawls. For, Rawls does not explicitly set out all the possibilities, although he has undoubtedly discerned all of them. He sets out important possibilities and these turn out to have set the agenda for subsequent readers. But to recognize that he is aware he does not set out all the possibities you have to read Rawls's footnotes. For a notable example, see p. 314 n 16 of TJ. In the note Rawls cites both Arrow and Knight, focusing on their (limited) agreement and ignoring the deeper disagreement. As Rawls adds (in his own footnote): “in both cases see the footnotes!” That is to say, Rawls knows the possibility space is broader than he presents and he allows the diligent reader to recover that. (I leave aside here what purpose this may serve.)
5. Finally, It is striking that Wolff mentions no women, no non-white person, and no pre-early modern person. Perhaps, he is right sociologically that "the three leading political philosophers of the contemporary era are Rawls, Nozick, and Cohen," but that is really an artifact of the cold war. I love Hobbes and Rawls, but if we think of issues that ought to dominate political philosophy (religion, gender equality, global and racial injustices, mass human extinction, toleration, technology, military-prison industrial complex, ideology, etc.), I can think of more important political philosophers (in the contemporary era, say, MacKinnon, Fanon, Arendt, Foucault),+ not the least of which are Plato (and Aristotle) or Al-Farabi.

Elster's Criticism of Foucault (and Conceptual art)

It is puzzling and thought-provoking that certain paradoxical instruction appear both on the road to wisdom and as the agency of madness.--Elster, Sour Grapes (66)

Conceptual art may impress as a freak of nature can, or a woman preaching according to Dr. Johnson.--Elster, Sour Grapes (82)

There are some vocal philosophy professors that express contempt for English literature professors (hereafter: ELPs). I have never understood this contempt (and not just because my interest in philosophy was nurtured by a wonderful Miltonist--Michael Fixler [recall]).  Perhaps it's envy because ELPs get to read much better prose on an average work-day. More likely it's professional philosophers's abhorrence of multiplicity of meaning (which we understand as equivocation) (PPAMOM) which makes too many of us recoil from the ELPs's craft.  Anyway, I am always astounded by ELPs's ability to discern meaningful structural features in a text, and especially the telling trope or set of metaphors that help disclose a text's significance or conceptual commitments. One good trick that I apply in my own scholarship I learned from ELPs: it is important to pay attention to the minor seeming discordant words/concepts/paragraphs/chapters that do not seem necessary to the main argument in a text. This is especially useful in influential works that have already accumulated commentary/scholarship. (It's also a survival trick: all the low-hanging scholarly fruit tends to picked already.)

Elster's (1983) Sour Grapes: Studies in the Subversion of Rationality is deservedly a recent classic.* (As I write this it has over 2000 citations.) It is very much a cold-war product and it brilliantly exploits evidence of behavior from differing institutional contexts (culturally and temporally apart) : Imperial Rome (by way of Veyne's Le Pain et le Cirque) and Soviet Russia (by way of Zinoviev's The Yawning Heights, which I have ordered). Its main claim is that "preferences underlying a choice may be shaped by the [given] constraints" (vii). The book elegantly weaves conceptual analysis, decision theory, and political theory; it subtly draws on literature, social psychology, and history in ways that are far too uncommon within analytical philosophy. At its best it reminds me of its great historical contemporary, Dennett's Elbow Room (recall). It also represents an important episode in the history of philosophical Marxism: Elster embraces "methodological individualism" in order to combat the "stagnant state" of "Marxist theory." (142) Elster also non-subtly rejects the marriage of Marxism and Freudianism that was (is?) common. In fact, its rejection of Freudian unconscious as a "theoretical entity" ("a highly desirable goal" (152)) is so dogmatic that Elster ties himself in knots over the phenomenon of self-deception, which he takes to be incoherent (despite "massive clinical, fictional and everyday experience attesting to the reality of the phenomenon." (149)) This aim also helps him produce some of his best insights on wishful thinking.

The discordant section in Sour Grapes is Elster's long paragraph on art with its jeremiad against conceptual art. Now in part because of PPAMOM and a moralizing impulse, most philosophers look foolish when we talk about art or novels. Elster, by contrast, makes very good use of novels to illustrate many of his best points. Yet, as the second epigraph to this post reveals, when it comes to conceptual art Elster recycles, in passing, Johnson's misogyny--the most embarrassing moment in the book.+ Elster's theory of artistic creation "involves maximazation under constraints, and that good works of art are local maxima of whatever it is that artists are maximizing." (78) For, an artist's activity "can be understood only on the assumption that there is something which they are trying to maximize, by 'getting it right' (78; emphasis added--ES). Perhaps this is true of Leibniz's Divine Artist (and on some readings Goethe), but it is peculiar understanding of much other art (although I grant that it gives Elster a means toward explaining the nature of a 'minor masterpiece' (81)). Given his theory it is no surprise that Elster has no conceptual room for conceptual art.

Elster's official theory of rejecting conceptual art is, however, instructive: it "certainly violates the principle that the aesthetic value of the work of art should not depend on the time at which is offered to the public." (82; emphasis added) This is a manifestly silly claim because it cannot even begin to do justice to the difference in aesthetic value between an original (prior in time) and a copy (subsequently),--a difference which even the most metaphysically robust account of aesthetic value ought to embrace. As Hume notes, knowledge of the context of production and the intended ways of experiencing a work of art, contributes to aesthetic appreciation and is a condition for the possibility of aesthetic value (Of the Standard Taste).

What can account for the oddity of Elster's position? The problem is that his account of aesthetic value is (subtly) modelled on a certain semantics (which is appropriate for eternal nature of truth in, say, mathematics). And it turns out that commitments similar to this semantics operate in the background in his very polemical remarks of Foucault's Discipline and Punish.

Elster (pp. 104ff) dislikes a number of things about Foucault's approach: first, he cannot stand Foucault's rhetoric and "eloquence" (including the use of rhetorical questions, the cascade of verbs, etc.); second he dislikes (without explanation) privileging the question Cui bono? (that is "to whose benefit?"--It is ironic to see a Marxist reject such privilege.) More important, he treats Foucault as offering a consequence-explanation. In fact, Elster treats Foucault (and Bourdieu) as offering especially bad consequence explanations--ones that lack a mechanism, a feedback mechanism, and even an intentional agent. Now, indeed, on a certain conception of social science such oversights may well be devestating. (To be sure, Elster refuses even to interpret Foucault more charitably as sketching the constraints/outlines of an explanation that can subsequent guide a seach for mechanism (etc.) by lesser, worker-bee social scientists. In fact, Foucault offers many how-possible mechanisms throughout his book, so Elster is cherry-picking his evidence.)  

But even Elster explicitly notes that in the passage he focuses on, Foucault does not state a consequence-explanation (or says he wishes to offer one). It is more sensible (and charitable) to interpret Foucault as primarily offering an analysis of the (possible) meaning of certain (historically contingent, but) enduring social phenomena in terms of their functions and benefits (that is also compatible with the explanation-sketch that can guide further research). After all, one key (transcendental) claim that Foucault makes about punishment (prison, etc.) is that it is taxonomic--it makes a certain form of knowledge possible. 

Now, while Elster is not really attentive to the transcendental (in the Kantian sense) dimension of Foucault, he, too, recognizes that Foucault is interested in meaning (106).  Yet, because the "search for meaning" (on Elster's account) "dispenses with mechanisms" it "fails dishonourably." Now, it's true that if Foucault were exclusively in the business of offering causal explanations then indeed the absence of mechanism would be pretty serious charge. But, Elster rejects the search for meaning (both in terms of finding of creating meaning); he thinks it is a moral and intellectual fallacy (101ff). It is sort of clear why Elster thinks that a lack of interest in a mechanism is an intellectual fallacy. Why he thinks it is a moral fallacy is less obvious, although he seems to think it (and the embrace of social by-products more generally) instantiates a "misplaced or self-defeating form of instrumental rationality. It is the fallacy of striving, seeking and searching for the things that recede before the hand that reaches out for them. In many cases it takes the form of trying to get something for nothing." (107)** 

In fact, while Elster has quite a bit to say about the moral problems with by-products, we are never really told what's wrong with either the search for meaning as such (so without the aim of offering explanation) or viewing social analysis as an expression or the creation of meaning. That is, if we understand Foucault as understanding himself as part of the world he describes and, in fact, aiming to destabilize it, in part, with the narratives he offers there is nothing mysterious about what's going on. Elster repeatedly insists not just that Foucault's practice and the search for meaning is immoral but also that is dangerous (44). But unless one embraces a very strong status quo bias or has very high risk aversion, that immorality and danger can only be established if we are willing to evaluate Foucault's aims and means on their (foreseeable, consequentialist?) merits (case by case, as it were). 

That is to say, if one is in the grip of a certain positivist understanding of social science and a kind of verificationist theory of meaning, a search for and the creation of meaning is very misguided. It is also misguided if one has a semantics in which social facts are univocal truthmakers of (social) meaning simply waiting out there to be discovered. But if we overcome PPAMOM we can learn from ELPs that often social meaning is, in part, constituted and reconstituted by our utterances and other practices.

That is to say, if we want to understand, say, ideology (including our own) -- one of Elster's main aims, and presumably one of the sources of his book's popularity --, we can't just rely on the reality/fiction distinction alongside a set of psychological mechanisms, we also have to make ourselves feel (by way of sympathetic imagination) the significance of a certain set of commitments and, while this should not be opposed to truth it is, in a way, orthogonal to truth.++ After all, even true statements of present social reality can be instances of ideology ((recall) because of status quo bias or unwillingness to question existing background institutions and norms). 

On Joining the Club

It used, I think, to happen a great deal, when one didn’t get called on however often one’s hand went up in a question period until finally at the end one could say something and it was completely misunderstood and dismissed.--Anne J Jacobson "Am I Dead"

I don’t want to belong to any club that would accept me as one of its members.--G. Marx.

Variants on the phenomenon that Prof. Jacobson describes above have happened to me, too, quite a bit before April 10, 2005. I say this not to deny that there is no sexism (and racism, etc.), but rather to reflect on the fact that among men there are also huge status differences within professional philosophy. As I have recounted elsewhere (here and here), while I have always had privileged jobs (by academic and non-academic standards), I had a slow start publishing and found it hard to land my first tenure track position. In addition to the phenomenon described above, once I left the safety of my own PhD program,  I have been invisible at the so-called APA Smoker (if you don't know what that is, be grateful for small mercies) to my own placement director; I have had graveyard shift sessions (i.e., the last one on the final day) at the APA clear out of the whole audience after the talk ahead of me; I had an audience laugh after I get introduced as an Adam Smith expert at my job-talk (they invited me to laugh at me?), etc. 

This all changed when my then-colleague, Prof. Dennis Des Chene, asked me to give a talk at a fantastic workshop he hosted in St. Louis. I really didn't want to be at his workshop (I was very upset about being passed over for a position), but Dennis gently prevailed on me. As it happens, by the time of the conference, I had two post-doc offers in hand, and a tenure-track offer at a fantastic department at Syracuse (and a few more offers to come). Dennis made a point of mentioning all of this in the introduction to my talk. The effect was uncanny; it was, as if, I was reborn. (Does that count as a transformative experience, Prof. Paul?)