Digressions&Impressions

Philosophers on Rawls' project; Forrester's In the Shadow of Justice, pt 2

If one understands political philosophy as an enterprise whose goal is to guide political action, then I think Forrester is absolutely correct that the abstractions and idealizations need to go...

But not all political philosophy need be understood as intending to guide our action in this very direct sense. Importantly, I do not think Rawls understood his project like this, though his acolytes seemed to have, as Forrester demonstrates in detail. Instead, Rawls understood the goals of political philosophy very differently, and how he understood the nature of his project may render some of Forrester’s criticisms inert. To this end, it is worth exploring this in more detail. 

In the introduction to the paperback version of Political Liberalism, Rawls concludes by discussing what the overarching point or goal of his project is. He writes:

Philosophy may study political questions at many different levels of generality and abstractness, all valuable and significant. It may ask why it is wrong to attack civilians in war either from the air by ordinary bombs or atomic weapons. More generally, it may ask about just forms of constitutional arrangements and which kinds of questions properly belong to constitutional politics. More generally still, it may ask whether a just and well-ordered constitutional democracy is possible and what makes it so. I don’t say that the more general questions are the most philosophical, nor that they are more important. All these questions and their answers, so far as we can find them, bear on one another and work together to add to the knowledge of philosophy.[2] 

Though he clearly thinks that all sorts of philosophical questions and projects have value, it is the latter inquiry—political philosophy at its most general and abstract—that Rawls takes as his focus in Political Liberalism. In particular, the guiding question is whether a just and well-ordered constitutional democracy is possible, and what makes it so.

Notice how political philosophy in its most general and abstract form seems to be quite different from the underlying account of political philosophy that Forrester presumes, where the goal of the philosopher of public affairs is to offer concrete advice to remedy pressing problems such as global inequality or overpopulation. Instead, the task is to construct a sort of possibility proof of the kind mathematicians or theoretical economists might pursue. Just as a mathematician tries to show that a certain mathematical object with interesting properties exists, or a theoretical economist might try to show that there exists a certain kind of equilibrium solution for a particular class of games, Rawls is trying to show that a certain kind of society—a just and well-ordered constitutional democracy—can, in fact, exist. As Burton Dreben, one of Rawls’s friends and a great interpreter of his work describes the project: “What Rawls has primarily been doing for the last twenty years is engage in a certain kind of very complex conceptual analysis, namely, he has been investigating the question, Is the notion of a constitutional liberal democracy internally consistent or coherent? Is it conceptually and logically possible to have as an ideal—it’s not even a question of how to bring it about.”--Brian Kogelmann reviewing In the Shadow of Justice: Postwar Liberalism and the Remaking of Political Philosophy (2019), by Katrina Forrester in The New Rambler [HT Matt Lister]

Yesterday (see here) Matt Lister nudged me toward Kogelmann's fascinating review of Forrester. Unlike Freeman's review, Kogelmann's provide a sufficiently accurate and helpful summary so that the reader can decide whether they ought to read the book. In addition, without actually stating the book's official aim, recall [I] "the book is about the politics of political philosophy and the political implications of conceptual choices," (xxi), Kogelmann's review actually says quite a bit about the book such that the second half of that aim comes into clear view such that the reader of Kogelmann's essay has a sence of what Forrester is up to. Below I return to discuss the substance of that.

Despite appearances to contrary, it's not my life's mission to 'score' philosophy book reviews. But I do find it interesting that a book that states prominently and early that it is about the "politics of political philosophy" fails to elicit discussion among philosophers about her analysis of the politics of political philosophy. I have now read five reviews by philosophers of the book, and of these only Lea Ypi mentions it (here) in her very interesting review without really exploring Forrester's views on the politics of political philosophy. Whereas non-philosophers (political theorists and intellectual historians, etc) have no trouble engaging with this theme. Feel free to call my attention to reviews by philosophers that I have missed that do engage with what she has to say about the politics of political philosophy.

As an aside, I find this state of affairs baffling. Philosophers of science (Liam Kofi Bright, Cailin O'Connor, etc) and feminists (e.g., Dotson) have brought different kinds of versions and models of (what we may call) the sociology of knowledge to bear on philosophy itself in journals and even in widely read blogs. And even those who don't write or read these works, are familiar enough in thinking about philosophy in Kuhnian terms. And given that many political philosophers teach in PPE programs, it is odd that they would be so unwilling to engage with scholarship that suggests that a philosophical status quo is itself the effect of the complex interaction between arguments and social environment (recall my treatment of p. 257 in yesterday's post), and what we might call the attractor effects of an established paradigm, as Forrester suggests.

In fact -- and now back to Forrester -- Forrester explicitly and repeatedly treats Rawlsianism as a philosophical paradigm (xx, 150, 174--I am sure I have missed a few (she also uses 'framework' sometimes); she also very often talks of a "distributive paradigm."). And she suggests that the uptake of Rawls' book was facilitated by the network he was in and their efforts. In fact she suggests her book will show two distinct further theses:

Just as often, rival political visions or arguments were not rejected outright, but domesticated and accommodated within the liberal egalitarian paradigm—often in a way that diffused their force. As subsequent generations built on the arguments of their forebears, a philosophical paradigm took on a political shape that none of its discrete theorists might have intended. (xx)

That is, first, once Rawlsianism become hegemonic it was capable of diffusing challenges by incorporating some of their insights (on domestication, see also p. 207 & 230). In a different context I have claimed (recall here; here) this sponge-like quality is not just a feature of the liberal egalitarian paradigm, but of analytic philosophy as such once it was safely ensconced in philosophy departments without serious rivals. The politics of analytic philosophy rarely figure in the book (except when she is discussing Wittgensteinian influence on early Rawls) under that guise, but Forrester alerts the reader in a few footnotes to work by Joel Isaac that she is aware of its significant to her story (but see also p. 131; 244). My own view is that Rawlsianism became hegemonic has a lot to do with the character of analytic philosophy in the 1960s. (About that soon.)

And second she claims in rather deflationary fashion that even if Rawls were a self-conscious philosophical legislator (something she is really rather mum about--she does not discuss the significance of his lectures and his PhD training to the formation of a Rawlsian 'school'), most of what became Rawslianism is the unintended effect of philosophical debates with critics and alternative approaches in light of shifting contexts. This (I almost called it a 'Hayekian') theory of the intellectual market place helps explain why after she has discussed  the period leading up to the 1971 of Theory of Justice,  in her treatment Rawls himself often disappears in his own shadow.  

Okay let me now turn back to Kogelmann. He notes perceptively that whatever the aims of Forrester's approach to Rawls are, and like all readers he has picked up on important strains of criticism, she may not be doing justice to Rawls' own views. To put it in terms of the historian's craft, if she were writing about Rawls' aims then she has violated the injunction to use actor's categories. (I think that's neat aspect of his criticism quoted above.) But Forrester is not very interested in Rawls' intentions, but in the construction of a Rawlsian paradigm by a community of scholars. And Kogelmann charitably reads her as claiming to be following norms of that paradigm (namely that political philosophy shouldn't merely clarify political problems but also "bring them to a resolution."*) The first sentence of his review I quoted above comes after a paragraph in which he grants that "this general vision of what the philosopher should do is widely adopted among the discipline’s practitioners." 

Kogelmann is a bit too charitable here. I really wish Forrester had added a chapter in which she had come more clean on her own (normative) framework in evaluating the success or failure of Rawlsianism. Because it is not entirely clear what the rules of the game are here. After all, as she demonstrates in all kinds of ways, Rawlsianism was a resounding success within the politics of political philosophy: as she shows, even philosophers that rejected the content and methods of Rawls' project did end up using his vocabulary (and vice versa). As I joked yesterday, as she shows, Rawls' achievement is akin to the claim that in economics Koopmans, Marschak, Arrow, or Debreu got economists to use convex analysis; and it is no doubt that this acted as a formal constraint on what kind of economy could be imagined, or at least the vocabulary in which one must speak in order to advance in professional economics. (I return to this below.) So, it's not entirely transparent how her empirical work in (say) the sociology knowledge connects to her critical strain. 

The purported political failure of Rawls according to her is that -- to simplify -- after Theory of Justice appeared, political life increasingly shifted away from Rawls' moral (and political) vision (chapter 7 is really a masterful treatment of this theme). Now, this is a very interesting general fact. This is one reason, for example, why I am myself much more interested in liberal programs that did sometimes manage to shape in some ways political outcomes (ordoliberalism, chicago school, public choice, law and economics, third way, etc.) But for all my great admiration for her book, Forrester really has not earned this conclusion because she has not really studied how Rawlsians tried to shape health care (e.g., Norman Daniels), the law (Nussbaum barely registers), and other areas of public policy. (She acknowledges this in response to critics here.) If the two parts of [I], "the politics of political philosophy" and "the political implications of conceptual choices," are connected it is not obvious from her book how. To make a (Schumpeterian) joke: winning the philosophical argument may be the worst possible predictor of the capacity to shape politics. And if Plato, Madison, and Smith are right one should not expect that at all (okay, sorry that was advertisement for my book).

It's also not clear why she thinks political philosophy can shape political outcomes given that she generally seems to think and argue it's the social environment that shapes and even partially determines political philosophy (and so makes it un-dangerous to the status quo), especially at the "elite institutions" (xvii) she is primarily interested in (again this exchange is very good about this).** And, to be fair, we don't criticize Hobbes for not preventing the messy mixed constitution of the Glorious Revolution (be grateful for small mercies, I say) nor do we criticize Olympe de Gouges for not preventing that mass democracy was gendered male for centuries (we praise her for her prescience and courage!).

Okay, let me wrap up with a three comments on Kogelmann's Rawlsian counter proposal from the paperback version of Political Liberalism, and then one on the significance of this to Forrester's argument. (Only the third will be critical.) Now, at first sight it seems Kogelmann is begging the question against Forrester's approach; for Rawls' own views have no special standing here (see above). Yet, I have come to think it is actually a fair response to Forrester's argument, but not convincing. For, it's fair because it actually presupposes something important about how in [I] "the politics of political philosophy" and "the political implications of conceptual choices," could be connected. (And as we will see I don't think Forrester herself has a compelling story.) For, one can reformulate Kogelmann's position in light of Forrester's book as follows: winning the politics of political philosophy, and by building on A Theory of Justice and Political Liberalism, allows a community to establish with its tools that it is "possible in a world of reasonable yet nonetheless insurmountable and irreconcilable disagreement for a just and well-ordered constitutional democracy to exist[.]" And, for Kogelmann (and Rawls) this will have beneficial political implications.

For, second, and in fact, by 'possibility' Kogelmann interprets Rawls to mean something like what the economist means by an 'existence proof.'+ (I return to that below.) And then he glosses this as follows: "it is possible generally speaking for a just and well-ordered constitutional democracy to exist, regardless of the particularities of a county’s circumstances and history. But proving the general claim requires we abstract away from current political realities, contra Forrester...Rawls’s project is not to show that a just and well-ordered constitutional democracy is possible for a society populated by knaves. Rather, he wants to show that such a political order is consistent with human nature when at its best...[without] to idealize away all our blemishes." And this possibility, when established by the Rawlsian paradigm, can influence people: "citizens will be influenced by the arguments of political philosophers, and this will have a down-the-road and very distant impact on the kinds of policies and laws that are eventually implemented."++ It's not entirely clear if we are supposed to believe that citizens will be expected to be influenced by reading Rawls (like the citizens of a Hobbesian commonwealth must read Leviathan, etc.) or, perhaps more likely, if the influence is supposed to trickle down through mediators.

Third, what is odd about Kogelmann's position is that nobody alive thinks that the economists' existence proofs or their arguments will convince citizens of anything. And since the analogy to existence proofs in game theory is so important to Kogelmann, let me quote a pre-eminent game-theorist on why he avoids using Rawls' framework; when confronted by Theory of Justice, even economists noted that as a model of political life it left out something very important. Aumann (who I usually do not cite approvingly) writes:

Criteria of equity that do not take power considerations into account have a pleasing air of symmetry and abstract perfection; they appeal to our philosophical, ethical senses. But what would make society adopt such criteria? And even if adopted, what chance do they have of surviving the attacks of pressure groups, large and small? For better or for worse, economic realities are dictated not by ethical considerations, but by the exercise of economic power. (Robert J. Aumann (1976) "Values of Markets with a Continuum of Traders," 621; notice that this does not require that everyone is a knave, but that the rich and other rent-seekers may well be.)++

Notice that I am not treating Aumann  as an authority on philosophy. Rather, to put this in jargon: I take what Aumann is suggesting is that while it is true that "belief in what is possible or impossible affects [citizens'] thoughts and attitudes," the transmission mechanism that Kogelman assumes from Rawls' arguments to citizen influence goes in the face of everything we know about political life. So, rather than inspiring political hope, Rawls' can only be appreciated aesthetically, as it were, for the artistry of the proof. Again, to put it as a serious joke: Kogelman's Rawls assumes a kind of invisible hand mechanism such that right arguments magically or mysteriously will win out in political life. I actually mention this because I also suspect this criticism can be lodged against Forrester's own views.

In a way, the remark by Dreben quoted by Kogelmannactually suggests the same. Rawls' possibility proofs are disassociated from "how to bring it about."  Quite right. (I should note that a natural reading of Political Liberalism suggests that Rawls is highly aware that local political traditions  can matter greatly to the conceptual engineer. But this does not fit Kogelmann's proposal.)

Third, Kogelmann recognizes something like this objection. And he has an implied response by way of a quote from Rawls on the fall of Weimar: "A cause of the fall of Weimar’s constitutional regime was that none of the traditional elites of Germany supported its constitution or were willing to cooperate to make it work. They no longer believed a decent liberal parliamentary regime was possible." Friends have repeatedly quoted this to me, too. And I can see why people find it beautiful and tragic (as Kogelmann does). But while something like this may have been true of German Marxists -- they thought that the fall of Weimar was demonstrated by science --, this claim is not true of the 'traditional elites' in the sense required for Rawls and Kogelmann. In so far as German traditional elites then ever believed a decent liberal parliamentary regime was possible (and it's not obvious many did), these gave up on it for reasons having nothing to do with philosophy but everything to do with the state of the economy, the street violence, the intimidation (including assassination), reparations required by Versailles' treaty, and a host of other issues not least that it was unclear to them how democracy could defend itself against its enemies while staying democratic. (Popper, of all people, gets this right.) 

So, finally, while Kogelmann has a serious response to Forrester's position, and even thereby finds a way of showing how the elements of [I] might be connected, I don't think anyone ought to be persuaded by it, especially if one takes Forrester's approach seriously. But this leaves as an open question what, if one takes her historical arguments seriously, the lessons of her argument are for a political philosophy worth having in light of the necessity of the politics of political philosophy and an interest in having these conclusions shape political life. To be continued. 

 

Orwell, Pynchon, Spinoza, and the stability of texts and records (Pt III)

[46] We lack, not only all these things, but also and especially, a phraseology of this language. For time, the devourer, has obliterated from the memory of men almost all the idioms and manners of speaking peculiar to the Hebrew nation. Therefore, we will not always be able, as we desire, to find out, with respect to each utterance, all the meanings it can admit according to linguistic usage. Many utterances will occur whose meaning will be very obscure, indeed, completely incomprehensible, even though they are expressed in well- known terms.
[47] In addition to the fact that we cannot have a complete history of the Hebrew language, there is the very nature and constitution of this language. So many ambiguities arise from this that it is impossible to devise a method which will teach you how to find out with certainty the true meaning of all the utterances of Scripture. For besides the causes of ambiguity common to all languages there are certain others in this language from which a great many ambiguities are born....

[65] These are all the difficulties I had undertaken to recount arising from this method of interpreting Scripture according to the history available to us. I consider them so great that I don’t hesitate to say this: in a great many places either we don’t know what Scripture really means or we’re just guessing about its meaning without any certainty.-- Spinoza, Theological Political, Treatise Chapter VII, translated by E. Curley.

This is the third and final post in a series on Orwell's 1984 inspired by Thomas Pynchon's (2003) "Introduction" to it (here is pt 1; pt 2). After this week's controversy (recall), it might seem cheeky that this piece is mediated via Spinoza. But careful readers of the second in the series will not be surprised (I hope). Okay, with that in place, let me turn to Orwell.

After Winston has been tortured, he comes arrives at three slogans, the third of which is: "GOD IS POWER." Now, on the face of it, this is an odd slogan in the context of 1984. For, first it seems religion and theology are altogether outlawed in Oceania, and this in fact only the second mention of 'God' in the book. What mysticism exists is itself (recall) funneled through the creation of Newspeak. Much earlier, God had been mentioned in the context of the Party's rewriting the poems of Kipling, in which 'God' could not be eliminated as a rhyme (with 'rod'--the subject matter is serious, but the scene is hilarious). Shortly after, writing "GOD IS POWER," Winston insists he is no believer.

The slogan itself echoes one of the claims of his torturer, who says, 'We are the priests of power... God is power.' And, in fact, he goes on to claim in one of the more philosophical passages in the book.

Reality exists in the human mind, and nowhere else. Not in the individual mind, which can make mistakes, and in any case soon perishes: only in the mind of the Party, which is collective and immortal. Whatever the Party holds to be the truth, is truth. It is impossible to see reality except by looking through the eyes of the Party.

And in fact, Winston echoes this argument in the context of writing down the "GOD IS POWER" slogan. 

Now, that God is power is a feature of Spinoza's a priori demonstration of God's existence (see, especially, E1P11S). And there is, in fact, more than a kind of superficial similarity between the de-individualized Party and Spinoza's conception of eternality. I don't mean to press the analogy too far because Spinoza's idealism (yes, I know very controversial) is not of the subjective kind.  And while Spinoza's philosophy certainly risks turning the state into a new idol, he would reject many of the Party's techniques and positions. 

This may all be a bit anachronistic, but it is worth recalling that Orwell certainly thought Swift the first great critic of totalitarianism (see his essay Orwell (1946) "Politics vs. Literature — An examination of Gulliver's travels.") And in a World-War II BBC program, Orwell treats Hobbes "and other 17th century writers" as original predictors of totalitarianisms. So, the connection is not entirely far-fetched.

In particular, in the Appendix to 1984, we are told by a narrator of the distant future that in Oceania, "What was required in a Party member was an outlook similar to that of the ancient Hebrew who knew, without knowing much else, that all nations other than his own worshipped 'false gods'. And, in contrast to Pynchon, I claimed that key features of life in Oceania are modelled on a certain interpretation of the Old Testament. But this is also a problem.

For, from the first, famous sentence of 1984, we are also reminded that we have entered a universal with a certain kind of instability at its core. That the clocks strike "thirteen" is distinctly odd.* Odder still is that when Winston starts his diary, he quickly writes, ‘To begin with he did not know with any certainty that this was 1984. It must be round about that date, since he was fairly sure that his age was thirty-nine, and he believed that he had been born in 1944 or 1945, but it was never possible nowadays to pin down any date within a year or two." The theme is repeated throughout the novel.** This uncertainty about the date is especially odd because in his work, at the Ministry of Truth, which involves fabricating and retouching news-stories in the Times, he encounters the official date on the newspaper every day.

But, of course, that calendric reform coincides with a major political revolution is no surprise. It's happened before. So, the Party could have changed dates for convenience sake. And the fact that Winston is part of the process of permanent falsification (in the ordinary not Popperian sense) means he knows nothing he reads can be trusted. The "terrible" book by the traitor Emmanuel Goldstein ("The Theory and Practice of Oligarchical Collectivism") turns out to be circulated and written by the Party so Winston's torturer claims. Can he be trusted, who knows?

In fact, and I hate to go meta-textual, but textual instability is even part of the title of Orwell's book, which is often spelled just '1984'; 'nineteen eighty-four' and 'Nineteen Eighty-Four.' And as Pynchon notes, the American edition was almost published without its appendix.

Now, first, Orwell's important political insight, anticipating (recall) Arendt, is that in true totalitarianism the center and near-center is often not just paranoid, but also has no better access to the truth of its own affairs than ordinary citizens or foreigners. In a system like that it cannot develop a true shadow book-keeping. And, as Orwell notes, this also makes collective planning so difficult and self-defeating.

Second, (recall) as Walter Lippmann (building on, as Nick Cowen reminded me, J.S. Mill) emphasized, reliable record-keeping by the state (of birth, death, property deeds, etc.) is one of the bedrocks of many species of modern liberty. Yes, anarchists everywhere and some Foucaultians will see in such legibility an immanent, would-be panopticon. (Pynchon's own writings are worth re-reading for reflection on this.) Even so, reliable record-keeping is the foundation of removing many forms of uncertainty and generating reliable expectations. And when there is little reason for doubt and suspicion about these records, the politics tends to be more temperate. Blessed are the times in which such record keeping can be taken for granted, and is available to all! 

Third, I put the passages of Spinoza at the top of the post because in many ways we readers of 1984 are in the position that Spinoza attributes to the would-be-interpreter of Scriptures. In a way, the Appendix reinforces this point. For, it provides us with an interpretation of the rules of Newspeak that, while compelling, is clearly also post facto and may, in fact, serve it's own political ends. As I noted last week, Pynchon is surprisingly optimist in reading the Appendix as a sign of a restoration of sorts, whereas my two previous posts argue that this need not be so. And because Orwell deliberately does not inform us of the author of the Appendix and his/her intentions, we are pretty much in the same position as Spinoza implies about Scriptures, "we are completely ignorant of the authors (or, if you prefer, Writers) of many of the books, or else we have doubts about them." (TTP VII [58]).

Let me close. I do not mean to suggest that the severe textual and referential instability of and in 1984 reduces it to a kind of meaningless white noise. Spinoza address an objection like this in Chapter X, too:

[42] But perhaps someone will say that in this way I overthrow Scripture completely—for in this way everyone can suspect that it is faulty everywhere. But that would be wrong. 

Something like this seems true of one's reading of 1984. But once one starts pressing on the details, one has to allow major insecurity about one's own judgments of it. Paradoxically, inducing such an experience into the attentive reader may well be one of its aims. 

The Caliban and the Witch, Hobbes, Trevor-Roper, Bodin, and the age of Geniusses

But it the jurists the magistrates, and the demonologists, often embodied by the same person, who in, contributed to the persecution. They were the ones who systematized the argument answered the critics and perfected a legal machine that, by the end of the 16th century, a standardized, almost bureaucratic format to the trials, accounting for the similarities of the confessions across national boundaries. In their work, the men of the law could count on the cooperation of the most reputed intellectuals of the age, including philosophy and scientists who are still praised as the fathers of modern rationalism. Among them was the English political theorist Thomas Hobbes, who despite his skepticism concerning the reality of witchcraft, approved the persecution as a means of social control. A fierce enemy of witches — obsessive in his hatred for them and in his calls for bloodshed — Jean Bodin, the famous French lawyer and political theorist, whom historian Trevor Roper [sic] calls the Aristotle and Montesquieu of the 16th century. Bodin, who is credited with authoring the first treatise on inflation, participated in many trials, wrote a volume of 'proofs' (Demomania, 1580), in which he insisted that witches should be burned alive instead of being 'mercifully' strangled before being thrown to the flames, that they should be cauterized so that their flesh should rot before death, and that children too be burned.
Bodin was not an isolated case. In this "century of geniuses” — Bacon, Kepler, Galileo, Shakespeare, Pascal, Descartes — a century that saw the triumph of the Copernican Revolution, the birth of modern science, and the development of philosophical and scientific rationalism, witchcraft became one of the favorite subjects of debate for the European intellectual elites. Judges, lawyers, statesmen, philosophers, scientists, theologians all became preoccupied with the "problem," wrote pamphlets and demonologies, agreed that this was the most nefarious crime, and called for its punishment.10---Silvia Federici (2004 [2021]) Caliban and the Witch: Women, the Body, and Primitive Accumulation, pp. 180-181 [p. 168 in the 2004 US edition!]

I turned to Federici after my dissatisfaction (recall) with De Beauvoir's account of the origin of patriarchy, which I think of as a key (illustration of, and) to maintaining all kinds of social hierarchies. Caliban and the Witch is a riveting read and it connects (recall) with one of my other long-standing interests: the Marxist's tendency to impugn the evils of mercantilism to capitalism as such (see also this post on Meiksins Wood; and this one). And while I intend future posts to tease out my reservations about some of the particularly Marxist theses of Federici, I want to be very clear that one of her underlying theses, that is, that centuries of violent persecution of witchcraft created the conditions of modern patriarchy is eminently plausible even in light of what follows. 

But this post is connected to a more general unease about the book that grew out of my initial inability to figure out what the sources of some of her claims were (mostly for future reading on my part), and then noticing all kinds of minor mistakes in the bibliography and omissions in the index (see here for a blogpost that enumerates all kinds of mistakes  [HT Tim Christiaens]). But when she started to discuss material presumably more familiar to me (17th century natural philosophy and political theory), I was really amazed by some of her claims about figures I thought I had studied reasonably carefully in the past. And my first reaction was a kind of panic that my own blinders and prejudices, combined with intellectually inherited ideas of what is significant, had made me miss all kinds of salient, gendered issues (pertaining to witchcraft and persecution). But as I traced out some of Federici's footnotes, I have come to think that she could have benefitted from more careful refereeing and editing.* And while this post illustrates that claim, it is, however, also focused on a strain of argument that runs through the book, even though in some respects it is dispensable to some of her more important theses. 

Take the quoted passage above. Let me start with common ground. Bodin, who routinely gets credited, and now I quote the textbook I use in my own teaching, Alan Ryan's On Politics, for articulating "the modern concept of a sovereign state and theorize its unity in terms of the indivisible sovereignty" (235), was truly a jerk. I was unaware of Bodin's important role in the persecution of witchcraft. (It  goes unmentioned in Ryan's On Politics.) This is no trivial matter because it supports another of Federici's central claims (shortly after the quoted passage above) that the persecution of witchcraft was a key step in the development of modern state: "Thus, it is no exaggeration to claim that the witch-hunt was the first unifying terrain in the politics of the new European nation-states," (p. 182 [p. 169] emphasis in original). That Bodin was of central importance in creating the intellectual framework for (and personally advocating) reviving the persecution of witches is really an unavoidable conclusion from reading Trevor-Roper's fascinating long essay, "The European witch-craze of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries." (See, especially, p. 112)+ 

But the claim about Hobbes surprised me. And this is actually what first let me to read Trevor-Roper's essay, which I took to be the source for her claims in the passage quoted at the top of this post. For, the only note 10 is appended to material quoted from Trevor-Roper's essay. I will quote the note and Trevor-Roper's source material below. But first, Trevor-Roper never mentions Hobbes in the essay! (I double-checked with word-search.) So, he could not be the source of the claim that Hobbes approved the persecution of witches as a means of social control. This had me scratching my head. 

Now, as it happens, a few pages before Federici had claimed the following:

The incompatibility of magic with the capitalist work-discipline and the requirement of social control is one of the reasons why a campaign of terror was launched against it by the state — a terror applauded without reservations by many who are presently considered among the founders of scientific rationalism: Jean Bodin, Mersenne, the mechanical philosopher and member of the Royal Society Richard Boyle, and Newton’s teacher, Isaac Barrow.18 Even the materialist Hobbes, while keeping his distance, gave approval. “As for witches,” he wrote, “I think not that their witchcraft is any real power; but yet that they are justly punished, for the false belief they have that they can do such mischief, joined with their purpose to do it if they can” (Leviathan 1963: 67). He added that if these superstitions were eliminated, “men would be much more fitted than they are for civil obedience” (ibid.).--Caliban and the Witch, p. 154 (p. 143-144 in the American edition)

Now, as regular readers (with a long memory) know, I think the term 'witchcraft' is very important in Hobbes because he uses it to describe the dangers of ambition (Hobbes anticipates (recall) Spinoza Ethics 3, p29, Scholium) of successful demagogues or usurpers who succeed at rebellion. His key example is Julius Caesar. (See Leviathan, chapter 29 and also the final sentence of ch. 36.) By contrast, as is even clear from Federici's quotes (these are from chapter 2 of Leviathian), for Hobbes, the persecuted women taken to be witches are not really witches at all. It is important to recognize how significant this is. For, as Trevor-Roper shows, non of the skeptics and critics of witch-burning had denied the existence of witches or such powers they might possess. Even the greatest of them, Weyer (a student of Erasmus) had granted not just their possibility, but their existence (p. 135). And this meant that the battle was really over the adequacy of the means of establishing witchcraft, especially the use of torture. So, by denying their reality, or at least denying the reality of their power, Hobbes had finally helped create the conditions for the retreat from persecuting witches through juridical mechanisms (which have to involve at least possible facts). 

Now at this point one may claim that the preceding paragraph is irrelevant because Hobbes does claim that "they are justly punished, for the false belief they have that they can do such mischief, joined with their purpose to do it if they can.” (Leviathan, chapter 2.) And while this can be taken to deny the magic power of witches, it does seem to advocate the persecution of those who understand themselves as witches willing to do harm. It's important to recognize that this alone would dramatically reduce the number of witch-trials because even by Federici's lights few would self-ascribe as witch and whatever powers were claimed were usually deployed for healing and service purposes.   

In addition, and Federici never mentions this, Hobbes, who is not exactly known for his concern with civil liberties, is an opponent of the use of torture: "Also Accusations upon Torture, are not to be reputed as Testimonies. For Torture is to be used but as means of conjecture, and light, in the further examination, and search of truth; and what is in that case confessed, tendeth to the ease of him that is Tortured; not to the informing of the Torturers: and therefore ought not to have the credit of a sufficient Testimony: for whether he deliver himselfe by true, or false Accusation, he does it by the Right of preserving his own life." (Leviathan, chapter 14) The partial critique of torture undermines the very mechanism that's used in the vast majority of witch trials which rely on the torture-induced self-incriminating evidence of the accused. In context this is a clear repudiation of the way witches are tried. For, as Trevor-Roper notes most earlier public intellectual critics of the persecution of witches came to their criticism by their sense that torture was thoroughly unreliable (e.g., p. 138). 

And this puts the claim about "justly punished" in a new light. For Hobbes witches are unjustly punished, and this is what frequently happens, if their conviction relies primarily on their torture-induced confession and not on their (intended) actions. 

Okay, but what about the claim that Hobbes promotes the persecution of witchcraft to promote civil obedience? This sounds something like Hobbes might well believe. Here's the full sentence that Federici partially quotes: "If this superstitious fear of Spirits were taken away, and with it, Prognostiques from Dreams, false Prophecies, and many other things depending thereon, by which, crafty ambitious persons abuse the simple people, men would be much more fitted than they are for civill Obedience." (Leviathan, chapter 2.) So, Hobbes' target here is quite clearly the ambitious demagogue who plays on the fear of common people. These ambitious types are dangerous because they exploit (superstitious/fake news) folk opinion to their own ends. 

Now, as it happens this particular sentence is the closing sentence of the paragraph that Federici uses to suggest that Hobbes promotes the persecution of people who think they are witches. What we can now see is that Federici has completely misrepresented Hobbes' point. The real danger is not people who think they are witches and who wish to harm others, the real danger is ambitious political types who exploit such beliefs and the fears they arouse in others for their own ends. And while Hobbes certainly does not take the civil obedience of ordinary people for granted, he thinks the politically ambitious (soldiers, politicians, and clergy) are the real danger. So rather than promoting the prosecution of witchcraft, what he wants is the wide circulation of official views (in particular his own book) that undercut the very idea of the powers of witches. I would not call Hobbes an Enlightenment thinker, but one can see the seeds of it in him.

Okay, so much for Hobbes. Recall the quote above. In note 10 (which is the only source offered) Federici writes, "H. R . Trevor-Roper writes: “[The witch-hunt] was forwarded by the cultivated popes of the Renaissance, by the great Protestant Reformers, by the Saints of the Counter-Reformation, by the scholars, lawyers and churchmen.... If these two centuries were an age of light, we have to admit that in one respect at least the dark ages were more civilized....” (Trevor-Roper 1967: 91)." That's the whole note (p. 310 [p. 211 in the US edition]). This is a very odd note if it is supposed to support most the claims in the paragraph to which it was attached (quoted at the top of this post).

Here's the corresponding passage in Trevor-Roper:

[The craze] was forwarded by the cultivated popes of the Renaissance, by the great Protestant reformers, by the saints of the Counter-Reformation, by the scholars, lawyers and churchmen of the age of Scaliger and Lipsius, Bacon and Grotius, Bérulle and Pascal. If those two centuries were an age of light, we have to admit that, in one respect at least, the Dark Age was more civilized. (p. 84 in my edition)

What's immediately striking is that Trevor-Roper's list is mostly different from Federici's "century of geniuses.” More important, inclusion in his list is, in fact, not intended to be membership among the advocates of persecuting witchcraft! That's not clear from the passage itself, but it is clear from the larger essay in which Scaliger, Lipsius, Bérulle, and Pascal are never mentioned. He does mention Grotius and Bacon again in a footnote (n.49 primarily on Erasmus), in order to suggest that they avoid the topic and that they probably belonged among the witch skeptics (p. 119)!

In fact, and I'll close with this. Trevor-Roper thinks that the new seventeenth century philosophy (broadly conceived) was one of the main causes of the end of the intellectual obsession with witches:

When we do that, the explanation, I believe, becomes clear. Bacon, Grotius, Selden may have been reticent on witches. So, for that matter, was Descartes. Why should they court trouble on a secondary, peripheral issue? On the central issue they were not reticent, and it is in their central philosophy that we must see the battle that they were fighting: a battle which would cause the world of witches, ultimately, to wither away. (p. 167)

This can't be the whole story, because he recognizes (something Federici passes over entirely in silence) that "no witch was burnt in Holland after 1597 and witch trials ceased in 1610." (p. 158) Trevor-Roper thinks this is primarily due to lay control over the judiciary (and it fits with his larger theme that religious authorities are central to the hunt for witches). 1610 is also the first year of the twelve year armistice (1609-21) of the Dutch war of independence, and presumably peace helped calm things down somewhat. Both 1597/1610 precede the successful uptake of the new sciences by several decades. (1609 is the year of Galileo's The Starry Messenger and Kepler's Astronomia Nova.)

Even so, Trevor-Roper makes a plausible case that it is people influenced by the new science of Descartes, including Queen Christina, and also Thomasius, who shaped the seventeenth century attack on the persecution of witches. One would never get this from Federici, who implies otherwise throughout her argument.**

Finally, of the list "Bacon, Kepler, Galileo, Shakespeare, Pascal, Descartes," the one most intimately connected to witchcraft was probably Kepler. His mother was famously accused of witchcraft when he was at the peak of his fame. (The whole episode is ignored by Federici, but it problematizes a number of her claims.) Kepler defended her personally, and successfully!++ 

 

 

De Beauvoir and The Origins of Patriarchy

Thus, the triumph of patriarchy was neither an accident nor the result of a violent revolution. From the origins of humanity, their biological privilege enabled men to affirm themselves alone as sovereign subjects; they never abdicated this privilege; they alienated part of their existence in Nature and in Woman; but they won it back afterward; condemned to play the role of the Other, woman was thus condemned to possess no more than precarious power: slave or idol, she was never the one who chose her lot. “Men make gods and women worship them,” said Frazer; it is men who decide if their supreme divinities will be females or males; the place of woman in society is always the one they assign her; at no time has she imposed her own law.

Perhaps, however, if productive work had remained at the level of her strength, woman would have achieved the conquest of nature with man; the human species armed itself against the gods through male and female individuals; but she could not obtain the benefits of tools for herself. Engels only incompletely explained her decline: it is insufficient to say that the invention of bronze and iron profoundly modified the balance of productive forces and brought about women’s inferiority; this inferiority is not in itself sufficient to account for the oppression she has suffered. What was harmful for her was that, not becoming a labor partner for the worker, she was excluded from the human Mitsein: that woman is weak and has a lower productive capacity does not explain this exclusion; rather, it is because she did not participate in his way of working and thinking and because she remained enslaved to the mysteries of life that the male did not recognize in her an equal; by not accepting her, once she kept in his eyes the dimension of other, man could only become her oppressor. The male will for expansion and domination transformed feminine incapacity into a curse. Man wanted to exhaust the new possibilities opened up by new technology: he called upon a servile workforce, and he reduced his fellow man to slavery. Slave labor being far more efficient than work that woman could supply, she lost the economic role she played within the tribe.---Simone de Beauvoir (1949) The Second Sex translated by Constance Borde and Sheila Malovany-Chevallier (2009), pp. 88-89.

A few years ago, while reflecting on work by Liam Kofi Bright and Lionel McPherson (recall), it dawned on me that the very steep prestige, economic, and racial hierarchies (recall) within the academy (and sciences) mirrors those of our oligarchic society. And that if I wanted to understand my own life-world, I needed to study systems of thought that take hierarchy and subordination seriously as objects of enquiry. So, I have been studying golden age Islamic political philosophy and the long history of feminism(s) as much for teaching prep as for self-understanding. Because I recently read Manon Garcia's We Are Not Born Submissive and Nancy Bauer's How to Do Things with Pornography (recall), I was moved to pick up The Second Sex (in translation).

In addition to the functioning of systems of hierarchy, there is also the question of their origins and overcoming. And one might reasonably assume that insight into the origin of a system of hierarchy -- which is not without interest if it is as widespread as patriarchy -- might help in devising strategies for its overcoming. And, in fact, because patriarchy is so prevalent geographically and temporally, and compatible with so many different political systems, it is by no means obvious when to locate its establishment or multiple re-establishments and its persistence. 

De Beauvoir's analysis is primarily focused on patrilineal civilizations of paternal right that "have evolved technically and ideologically," (note on p. 87). As she puts it, "By the time humankind reaches the stage of writing its mythology and laws, patriarchy is definitively established: it is males who write the codes," (91; emphasis added) These civilized societies/stages are contrasted with matrilineal and patrilineal societies that have remained in the "primitive stage". Thus, her stadial analysis presupposes a distinction, familiar from European Enlightenment thought, between savage and civilized (recall this post on Hume).

And because of this conceptual contrast, she also assumes (the idea goes back to Locke) that anthropological insight into contemporary primitive societies provide a window into the very distant past stage of primitive life. This, too, is an Enlightenment idea that more recent anthropologists (since Geertz, I guess) have recognized is a highly dubious working assumption. The effect of these dual ideas of progress (discussed in this and previous paragraph) in De Beauvoir, is that really existing matrilineal or matriarchal societies are irrelevant to her project (because backward) and so can be left aside. (A more polemical author than I might discuss some of the racialized issues lurking here.) It also means that from the perspective of the origin of patriarchy, one does not really have to study history (understood as the history of civilization) because it is (almost by definition) everywhere patriarchal.

As an aside, while De Beauvoir herself is super learned in the long history of feminist thought (Poulain de la Barre offers her one of her epigraphs), one can see how these ideas conjoined with scattered remarks about really existing historical patriarchies, might make a reader of De Beauvoir think that there are few feminist resources in the past and so this has, I suspect, contributed to the idea that feminism is a recent phenomenon.

Okay, let's turn to her explanation of the origin of patriarchy. This follows her very compelling refutations of Freud's and Engel's accounts of the origin of patriarchy (in chapters 2-3 of Part 1 of Volume 1). The first sentence of the quoted passage notwithstanding, I don't think De Beauvoir denies that the institution of patriarchy was violent and maintained by (explicit or the threat of) violence--rather, she denies the claim that there was a single violent revolution.

But, more important, it's not merely violence that sustains patriarchy. There is an underlying idea or view that gets it going and these views are rooted in biological facts and essentialist. And to avoid confusion, De Beauvoir famously herself does not endorse the essentialism or the naturalization of these facts, but she kind of implies that the humans who were on the threshold of patriarchal civilization do (or were capable of using violence to enforce assent to them). And because of that, she sometimes sounds here in offering the explanation of the origin of patriarchy like she herself is rather reductive.  

The underlying idea, "the key to the whole mystery," (76) is, in fact, stated most clearly a few pages before:

On a biological level, a species maintains itself only by re-creating itself; but this creation is nothing but a repetition of the same Life in different forms. By transcending Life through Existence, man guarantees the repetition of Life: by this surpassing, he creates values that deny any value to pure repetition. With an animal, the gratuitousness and variety of male activities are useless because no project is involved; what it does is worthless when it is not serving the species; but in serving the species, the human male shapes the face of the earth, creates new instruments, invents and forges the future. Positing himself as sovereign, he encounters the complicity of woman herself: because she herself is also an existent, because transcendence also inhabits her and her project is not repetition but surpassing herself toward another future; she finds the confirmation of masculine claims in the core of her being. She participates with men in festivals that celebrate the success and victories of males. Her misfortune is to have been biologically destined to repeat Life, while in her own eyes Life in itself does not provide her reason for being, and these reasons are more important than life itself. (76)

A few days ago I jokingly tweeted a picture of this passage out with the caption that she backward projects existentialism onto primitive man and so implies that Sartre peddles a patriarchal and dated philosophy.  The ideology that she is describing here is better known as Homo faber--man the maker--"an inventor since the beginning of time" (75); as she puts it shortly before the passage I quoted at the top of this post: "Homo faber is the reign of time that can be conquered like, space, the reign of necessity, project, action and reason." (87) To be sure my view is that in these passages she is merely describing the ideology not endorsing it, but others have read her as accepting these claims.*

The ideology was undoubtedly familiar to her and her readers from Bergson's Creative Evolution, where he writes, "If we could rid ourselves of all pride, if, to define our species, we kept strictly to what the historic and the prehistoric periods show us to be the constant characteristic of man and of intelligence, we should say not Homo sapiens, but Homo faber. In short, intelligence, considered in what seems to be its original feature, is the faculty of manufacturing artificial objects, especially tools to make tools, and of indefinitely varying the manufacture." (139) [I was pleased to find the work by Margaret A. Simons.] De Beauvoir connects these ideas surrounding Homo faber to Heidegger's emphasis on companionship (mit-sein), or a world dense with human values and social practices.

Crucially, the ideology that originates and sustains patriarchy is one in which man the maker is also a maker (there are shades of Nietzsche here) of values, and so daringly embraces novelty that always goes beyond the empirically given. This embrace of excess, and of novelty is sexed male in opposition to the repetition of empirical and biological reality (sexed female). 

A key point in De Beauvoir's explanatory schema, is that ur-woman admires (aesthetically?) the prestige of this Nietzschean Homo faber, who also throws irresponsibly large but splendid festivities to promote his own (military and hunting) achievements, in contrast to her own boring (ahh) rootedness. So crucially -- and this a major theme of Garcia's book I mentioned above -- women become partially complicit in their own subordination from the start and help sustain it in various ways.

Since this is a rather long post, I just want to note that on its own terms this does not fully succeed as an explanation. For the idea that Homo faber is admirable and worth submitting to, and that biology is destiny, is precisely what needs explaining. As MacKinnon notes, the whole explanation presupposes that "patriarchy is already institutionalized." (Toward a Feminist Theory of State, p. 55)

However, whatever one thinks of this as an explanation, it is, in fact, action guiding. Shulamith Firestone and her more recent Xenofeminist followers see in technologies that decouple reproduction (and motherhood) from biology a possible way to overcome patriarchy. That is, and more culturally, one can unsex Homo faber. Or, one can reject the very ideology of Homo faber (which is, I  think, De Beauvoir's own position).

I close with two observations about this explanation of the origin of patriarchy. First, there is a curious and somewhat subtle rejection of Hobbesian ideas at the root of this explanatory schema. (Yes, Hobbes is never mentioned; but notice patriarchy is a system of sovereignty.) For, in Hobbes submission to authority is found in treating death as the summum malum, and the preservation of life as the minimal baseline (which is bequeathed to liberalism as can be gleaned off 'life, liberty, etc.'). But from the vantage point of the ideology that gives rise to patriarchy, Hobbes' schema turns out to be sexed. For, (to repeat) "in her own eyes Life in itself does not provide her reason for being." And, even more important, "these reasons are more important than life itself."

As is well known, in Hobbes the rejection of a summum malum is thought a mark of unreason or dangerous ambition. That is to say, from the perspective of Hobbes -- which I make here stand in for canonical rationality -- women's self-understanding of her submission to initial patriarchy makes no sense. (This is why above I emphasized aesthetic issues.) Patriarchy as a system of sovereignty is in some ways unintelligible from the perspective of Hobbesian socials science not just because it is founded on the rejection of the summum malum, but also because its appeal to those that do not initially benefit from it is, in fact, a rejection of social reproduction of the same as a fundamental value itself.+ In addition, the patriarchal men are also odd from a Hobbesian perspective because they value property (and its survival over the generations) more "than life itself" (93).

Second, on De Beauvoir's explanation, patriarchy and the existence of slaves or (very) exploited labor are co-extensive. Not because women are the slave population in patriarchy. (De Beauvoir silently glides over those women who are among the slaves.) But because for his  ambitions, which by definition exceed the given (and its constraints), Homo faber always requires a population who can generate a surplus for his projects. Strikingly enough, in this schema, women are not treated as sources of such surplus. That is, by definition, the system of patriarchy always sustains multiple forms of subordination (that can intersect). She doesn't say this, but the explanatory schema also leaves women the role as (unproductive) ornament within patriarchy. 

 

4 April 1979: Foucault on Civil Society (Ferguson vs Smith) (ep XL)

To simplify matters, I will take the most fundamental, almost statutory text regarding the characterization of civil society. This is Ferguson’s famous text, translated into French in 1783 with the title Essais sur l’histoire de la société civile, and which is very close to Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations, the word “nation” in Smith, moreover, having more or less the same meaning as civil society in Ferguson. We have here the political correlate, the correlate in terms of civil society, of what Adam Smith studied in purely economic terms. Ferguson’s civil society is actually the concrete, encompassing element within which the economic men Smith tried to study operate. I would like to pick out three or four essential characteristics of this civil society in Ferguson: first, civil society understood as an historical-natural constant; second, civil society as principle of spontaneous synthesis; third, civil society as permanent matrix of political power; and fourth, civil society as the motor element of history.--Michel Foucault, 4 April, 1979,  translated by Graham Burchell, Lecture 12, The Birth of Biopolitics, 298

Foucault had coupled Ferguson and Smith before in lecture 11. There they jointly illustrate the claim that according to eighteenth century doctrine, "not only must government not obstruct the interests of each, but it is impossible for the sovereign to have a point of view on the economic mechanism which totalizes every element and enables them to be combined artificially or voluntarily." (280)* Foucault then uses Ferguson's analysis of the relative success of the English colonies over the French in North America, to support the claim that independent citizens entrusted with their own interests (the English) can outcompete colonies that come with big designs (the French).

In lecture 12, Foucault reminds his audience that eighteenth century social theory (to simplify: prior to, say, Bentham) can't really combine homo oeconomicus with the age's moral-theological-juridical views of criminal (and political) subjects. These are incommensurable paradigms -- Foucault puts it like this: "that homo oeconomicus and the subject of right were therefore not superposable" (292) --, until Benthamite reformers (anticipated by Beccaria and Grouchy) thin out the criminal subject so he conforms to the utilitarian image of man.

Faced with the incommensurability (and some other assumptions about the limits of government knowledge), and prior to that radical move, there are three options: first, "the sovereign will be able to intervene everywhere except in the market." (293). Foucault does not associate any theorist or group with this position. Second, which looks like it, the sovereign remains in control of the market, in particular the preconditions necessary to its functioning, but rather than supervise it actively, it controls it theoretically or passively. It is said to be 'theoretical' because it needs data and evidence on the market's functioning and process in order to get its preconditions (taxes, tariffs, laws, etc.) right. This second position is associated with physiocrats, who are treated as kind of quasi-Ordo-liberals avant la lettre. 

As Foucault notes neither of these first two options is very attractive to the sovereign and so do not really ever get tried out. (It's notable Foucault skips Turgot's moment near power in 1774-1776). That's because neither option solves the problem of incommensurability. To the best of my knowledge Foucault's thesis is original. Instead, a different, third option is used, one that does allow the sovereign the exercise, as I noted before, a governmental technology (296), even if, or perhaps because, that technology (civil society) also helps constitute a new kind of sovereignty.

The way civil society solves this incommensurability is by being a the site of an enlarged interest or what came to be known as (enlightened) self-interest properly understood. Here self-interest is not egoism. (The underlying idea being that egoism is always selfish, but that there are forms of self-interest, like prudence, which may be moral.) Foucault, in summarizing Ferguson puts it like this: "there is a distinct set of non-egoist interests, a distinct interplay of non-egoist, disinterested interests which is much wider than egoism itself." (301) I'd have to check Ferguson, but this seems right.

For Smith, this disinterested interest is an effect of our nature. As he puts in the famous first sentence of TMS, "How selfish soever man may be supposed, there are evidently some principles in his nature, which interest him in the fortune of others, and render their happiness necessary to him, though he derives nothing from it except the pleasure of seeing it.” That is, for Smith civil society is itself a site of  important, aesthetic experiences (assuming that 'the pleasure of seeing it' falls under aesthetics). The principle in our nature is sympathy, which makes the sight and mutual recognition of other people's passions pleasurable to us. Importantly, for Smith, as Levy and Peart have argued, sympathy is also a means toward seeing each other as equals. 

Crucially then, on Foucault's interpretation of Ferguson and Smith, civil society can accommodate, even be the grounds of existence of, economic agents without reducing their interests to a profit motive only. (301) The other crucial feature of civil society is that it grounds what we may call tribalism, faction, or community. It does so because in it there is free play of both sympathy and antipathy, which makes us form distinct groups sometimes based on shared interests or repugnancies other times based on shared language, values, religion, heritage, etc. As Foucault writes:

Civil society, Ferguson says, leads the individual to enlist “on the side of one tribe or community.” Civil society is not humanitarian but communitarian. And in fact we see civil society appear in the family, village, and corporation, and, of course, at higher levels, reaching that of the nation in Adam Smith’s sense, [in the sense given to it] at more or less the same time in France. The nation is precisely one of the major forms, [but] only one of the possible forms, of civil society. (302)

What's attractive about Foucault's interpretive framework is that community and political differentiation are a natural by-product of what we may call, 'Scottish social theory.'+ This is so, even though within Scottish social theory, humanity becomes (as Hanley, Debes, Taylor, and Abramson have argued) a key moral ideal.

But I think Foucault's framework is too attractive. For, I suspect Foucault is projecting backward a recently popular idea that the nations of nationalism are themselves a fruit of modernity. Let me explain my unease.

To the best of my knowledge Foucault is the first to suggest that a Smithian 'nation' just is what Ferguson calls 'civil society.' But for Smith 'nations' and 'society' are two distinct analytical categories. And within a nation there can be multiple societies, including different kinds of societies (this is especially so in Scotland with its contrast between Highlands and Lowlands.) And, as I have argued elsewhere, throughout WN when Smith focuses primarily on economic analysis, he writes about “society;” when he focuses on mores or political matters, he will speak of “civilized society” (e.g., WN 1.8.39, 97) or “political society” (1.8.36, 96). And 'civilized' is contrasted with 'savage' or 'barbarous.' (To be sure: for Smith progress to being civilized is good, but unlike many others in the age, he does not treat the civilized as morally superior to the barbarous.) 

Now, despite having 'nations' in the title of WN, Smith is not very interested in characterizing a nation. But it is pretty clear that for Smith nations can both transcend different ages (including the birth of civil society), and come to an end. With previous paragraphs in mind, I now treat the first two characteristics of civil society mentioned above, in turn. (The next two characteristics shall be treated in a follow up post.)

That civil society is a historical constant means (and now Foucault is paraphrasing Ferguson) that "the social bond has no pre-history...it is permanent and indispensable." (299) Following the critics of Hobbes, mankind is by nature a social animal embedded, we would say, in culture. By contrast, while it is true that, in general, Smith treats humans as social animals, it should be clear that on my reading of Smith on society, Smith does not think that civil society is a historical constant.

And, in fact, it is worth noting that right at the start of Wealth of Nations, Smith hints, when commenting on the propensity to "truck, barter, and exchange" that may not be an "original" principle "in human nature of which no further account can be given;" but, rather, and more "probable" is it the historical "consequence of the faculties of reason and speech." And in another work, on the origin of language, Smith offers an account of the development of the cognitive and linguistic building blocks of culture. So, this is an important difference between Ferguson and Smith.

This, and other details recounted in this post, make me suspect that Foucault did not read Smith as carefully as he read Ferguson (at least when preparing lectures 11-12). See also my note * below. (That Foucault treats Smith's analysis of the equivalent of civil society as being offered 'in purely economic terms' suggests that Foucault is drawing on a caricature.) Ironically, Smith's position anticipates Foucault's own: civil society is itself a product of development. And whereas Smith kind of anticipates Marx with a focus on material conditions, Foucault kind of echoes Hayek with his focus (as we have seen last times) on transactions (although relative to Hayek, Foucault wishes to denaturalize the spontaneous order).++

Second, "spontaneous synthesis means there is no explicit contract, no voluntary union, no renunciation of rights, and no delegation of natural rights to someone else; in short, there is no constitution of sovereignty by a sort of pact of subjection." (300) This characteristic is the shared debt of Ferguson and Smith to Hume. In addition, 'spontaneous synthesis' means that the happiness of the whole is constituted by the happiness of its parts understood as individuals and vice versa. This is indeed Ferguson's view. And it is important that even for a republican like Ferguson this is achieved by focusing on the "happiness of individuals" which "is the great end of civil society." (302, Foucault quoting Ferguson). It is also a plausible reading of Smith's position for whom the happiness of common labourers will ensure the flourishing of society. However, in some ways, Ferguson's version of this position is closer to Smith's teacher, Hutcheson (who is the common source), than Smith here. Because Smith sometimes implies that if one is in good health and knows that one is beloved, we will be happy regardless of the circumstances of larger society.**

 

 

 

 

On Quentin Skinner's neo-roman criticism of classical liberalism; or Hume vs Skinner (IV)

I...concentrate...on the other and more knock-down objection commonly levelled against the theory I have been laying out. According to a number of eminent critics, the analysis of the concept of liberty underlying the claim that it is only possible to live freely in a free state is itself misleading and confused. Those who have raised this objection commonly mount their attack in two waves. First they reaffirm the Hobbesian principle that the extent of your individual liberty depends on the extent to which the performance of actions within your powers is or is not physically or legally constrained. As Paley, for example, puts it, 'the degree of actual liberty' will always bear 'a reversed proportion to the number and severity of the restrictions' placed on your ability to pursue your chosen ends. But the neo-roman theorists, according to Paley, are not talking about this situation. They are talking about the extent to which the performance of such actions may or may not be free from the possible danger of being constrained. But this, Paley goes on, is to confuse the idea of liberty with a wholly different value, that of enjoying security for your liberty and the exercise of your rights. So the neo-roman writers 'do not so much describe liberty itself, as the safeguards and preservatives of liberty: for example, a man's being governed by no laws, but those to which he has given his consent, were it practicable, is no otherwise necessary to the enjoyment of civil liberty, than as it affords a probable security against the dictation of laws, imposing arbitrary and superfluous restrictions upon his private will'
The second wave of the attack then follows at once. As soon as this confusion is uncovered, we can see that the basic claim made by the neo-roman theorists to the effect that you can only be free in a free state is simply a mistake. The extent of your freedom as a citizen depends on the extent to which you are left unconstrained by the coercive apparatus of the law from exercising your powers at will. But this means that what matters for civic liberty is not who makes the laws, but simply how many laws are made, and thus how many of your actions are in fact constrained. This in turn shows that there is no necessary connection between the preservation of individual liberty and the maintenance of any particular form of government. As Paley concludes, there is no reason in principle why 'an absolute form of government' might not leave you no less free than the purest democracy'.

...It seems to me, however, that Paley's line of criticism fails to come to terms with the most basic and distinctive claim that the neo-roman theorists are labouring to make about the concept of civil liberty. The claim is implicit in the analysis I have already given, but it is now time to spell it out.
The neo-roman writers fully accept that the extent of your freedom as a citizen should be measured by the extent to which you are or are not constrained from acting at will in pursuit of your chosen ends. They have no quarrel, that is, with the liberal tenet that, as Jeremy Bentham was later to formulate it, the concept of liberty 'is merely a negative one' in the sense that its presence is always marked by the absence of something, and specifically by the absence of some measure of restraint or constraint. Nor have they any wish to deny that the exercise of force or the coercive threat of it must be listed among the forms of constraint that interfere with individual liberty. Despite what a number of recent commentators have implied, they are far from merely wishing to put forward an alternative account of unfreedom according to which it is held to be the product not of coercion but only of dependence.

What, then, divides the neo-roman from the liberal understanding of freedom? What the neoroman writers repudiate avant la lettre is the key assumption of classical liberalism to the effect that force or the coercive threat of it constitute the only forms of constraint that interfere with individual liberty. The neo-roman writers insist, by contrast, that to live in a condition of dependence is in itself a source and a form of constraint. As soon as you recognise that you are living in such a condition, this will serve in itself to constrain you from exercising a number of your civil rights. This is why they insist, pace Paley, that to live in such a condition is to suffer a diminution not merely of security for your liberty but of liberty itself.

The issue, in short, is how to interpret the underlying idea of constraint...

If you are a subject of the sultan, you will be less free than a citizen of Lucca, simply because your freedom in Constantinople, however great in extent, will remain wholly dependent on the sultan's goodwill. But this means that in Constantinople you will suffer from a form of constraint unknown even to the humblest citizen of Lucca. You will find yourself constrained in what you can say and do by the reflection that, as Harrington brutally puts it, even the greatest bashaw in Constantinople is merely a tenant of his head, liable to lose it as soon as he speaks or acts in such a way as to cause the sultan offence. The very fact, in other words, that the law and the will of the sultan are one and the same has the effect of limiting your liberty. Whether the commonwealth be monarchical or popular, the freedom is not still the same...
...

By the end of the nineteenth century, Henry Sidgwick felt able to declare in his great summation of classical liberalism that the errors underlying the neoroman theory of liberty are beyond dispute. To speak of individual liberty, Sidgwick first reminds us in his Elements of Politics, is to speak of an absence of external impediments to action, either in the form of 'physical coercion or confinement', or else of coercive threats that inhibit us by 'the fear of painful consequences'. Once this is understood, we can see that to think of the freedom of citizens as possible only within free states is simply to fall into 'the confusion which the common use of the word "Freedom" is apt to cause'. The truth is that individual freedom has no necessary connection with forms of government, since it is perfectly possible for a representative legislature to 'interfere with the free action of individuals more than an absolute monarch With this reiteration of the classical utilitarian case, Sidgwick dearly felt that the neoroman theory had finally been laid to rest.--Quentin Skinner, Liberty before Liberalism, 79-99.

This is the concluding post ((recall here; here; here; here; here) in my series on Skinner's Liberty before Liberalism , and the one in which I disagree with him. One important feature of Skinner's treatment of the debate between the "neoroman theory" and the "liberal," even "classical liberal" response to it is that the main representatives of the latter he discusses, from Paley to Sidgwick, are all utilitarians. And of these, Mill goes entirely unmentioned (except for in Skinner's "preface"). This subtly skews the terms of the debate. 

For in Skinner's hands the neoroman litmus test for freedom is the ability to speak one's mind at court by those"devoted to public service by acting as advisers and counsellors to the rulers and governments." (87ff) Since utilitarians often conceive of their own science in terms of such (philanthropic) service -- they model their own activity in terms of social planner or philanthropy -- this is entirely fair. And, indeed, in their public service, in so far as policy-advisors become dependent on the whims of the prince, and, as Machiavelli (recall) already noted, incentivized to flatter the prince and disagree among themselves, the neoromans are right to regard it as a mistake to treat them as paradigmatically free in such an unstable political environment. 

Why then do I say that the debate is skewed? First that there is nothing distinctively liberal about these utilitarian responses to the neoromans. By this I do not mean to imply that the utilitarians are hostile to liberalism. I agree with, say, Foucault (recall) that they constitute the epitome of the "radical" tradition within liberalism. But it doesn't mean that in all things utilitarians are constitutive of liberalism or especially liberal in their sensibility. When in  Considerations on Representative Government, Chapter 3. Mill, who himself has a tendency toward paternalism, warns against the attractions of "good despotism" he is attacking the fondness for Enlightened dictatorship to be found in (other) utilitarians (and earlier the physiocrats). Again, I do not mean to deny that within otherwise eminently liberal thinkers there is a recurring lapse toward the attractions of the wise legislator who resolves political problems by fiat.

My point is that so-called negative liberty by itself is not especially liberal. For, one thing notably missing in the presentation of the liberal response to the neoroman account of freedom, as presented by Skinner, is the significance of the rule of law.+ The classical liberals granted the neoromans that one was not free under despots. For, example the sultan's mastery "of the life and fortune of any individual" is treated as a danger to and restriction of freedom by Hume. This despite the fact that the sultan was, according to Hume, constrained in his ability to impose taxes. 

But informed by Machiavelli on the significance of mechanism design, the classical liberals also claimed that the rule of law was compatible with a variety of constitutional and political formats. What's needed, in addition to the rule of law, is a separation of powers capable of resisting the executive so that impartial and general rule of law is secured. As Hume, who is by no means the greatest friend of liberty among the classical liberals, writes in remarking on the "struggle" between "authority and liberty:"

The government, which, in common appellation, receives the appellation of free, is that which admits of a partition of power among several members, whose united authority is no less, or is commonly greater than that of any monarch; but who, in the usual course of administration, must act by general and equal laws, that are previously known to all the members and to all their subjects. In this sense, it must be owned, that liberty is the perfection of civil society;

Notice that in the quoted passage, Hume accepts the neoroman claim that you can only be free in a free state. The problem with the neoroman position for Hume is not that the neoromans confuse freedom with constraints on freedom (and should adopt the Hobbesian, negative conception of freedom). Skinner is entirely right that this line of argument that is ground in the idea that "individual liberty is basically a matter of non-interference" (116, in context this is a criticism of Isaiah Berlin) begs the question against the neoroman account of liberty. Hume does not beg the question in that way.*

Rather, the neoroman theorists call the wrong kind of states free. This needs to be corrected. For Hume, the problem with the neoroman account is that, as (recall Constant) any reader of Rousseau's Social Contract will have recognized, the neoroman theory facilitates what one may call democratic despotism. (This was noted in Berlin's Two Concepts.") And in so far as republican theorists recognize this, and introduce  institutional safeguards against it, they move toward the liberal position articulated by Hume (and Montesquieu, etc.), and, indeed, Livy.++

I do not mean to deny that lurking here is an important disagreement over the best form of life. Classical liberals do not sign up for the neoroman idea that devoted public servant is the paradigmatic citizen,  although Hume and Smith felt the pull of it. And from a neoroman perspective this is indeed troubling. But the liberal rejoinder is that in their kind of free state, which is compatible with a whole range of constitutional forms (but not despotism/tyranny, etc.), the public servant is no more dependent or unfree on the ruler than any other citizen is. But that's because the liberal espouses the idea when, in a free state (in the corrected sense), the citizen exercises her judgment in order to make meaningful choices, she can express her personal freedom in a diversity of ways in the pursuit of many valuable ends.

 

 

Spinoza's Critique of Moses; On Luxury

Scripture itself also establishes that ceremonies contribute nothing to blessedness, but only concern the temporal prosperity of the state [imperii temporaneam foelicitatem]. For it promises nothing in return for ceremonies except the comforts of the body and its promised delights [corporis commoda, et delicias promittit,], and promises blessedness only in return for following the universal divine law. For in the five books commonly attributed to Moses nothing else is promised (as we have said above) than this temporal prosperity [foelicitas], i.e., honors or reputation, victories, wealth [divitiae], delights and health.---Spinoza, Theological Political Treatise [hereafter TTP], chapter V.6, [p. 139-140; translated by Curley with modest changes. Page-numbers refer to Collected Works.]

Lurking in the quoted passage is the controversy over the identity of the author of the Hebrew Bible, which is one of the main themes of the TTP. But here I want to focus on Spinoza's analysis. Not unlike Al-Farabi (recall), Spinoza treats what we would call religion in sociological, that is, functional terms. In particular, he ascribes to the elaborate rituals of the Hebrew Bible a this worldly-end. In particular, it supports the prosperity, to use Hobbes' phrase, the commodious living of and within the state. As Spinoza puts it a few lines below: "the whole law of Moses, was
concerned with nothing but the Hebrew state, and consequently, with nothing but corporeal advantages," (V.31, p. 146; this point is repeated throughout chapter V.)

Of course, part of the point is a critical one:the ritials contribute nothing to blessedness, which is the only authentic or true form of happiness. So, from Al-Farabi's (and, it seems, Spinoza's) perspective this means it is not a true religion. And indeed, while the Old Testament does teach true religion, it is not located in the Hebraic ceremonies, which, and here Spinoza is explicitly siding with the New Testament (V.14), are dispensable once the Jewish state collapses: "there is no doubt that after their state was dissolved the Jews were no more bound by the law of Moses." (V.15, p. 142) For

Now, Spinoza's account is sociological in another sense. For Spinoza inserts his account into what we may call a stadial theory of history. For, he contextualizes even historicizes* the period in which the Jews accept the Covenant with God and receive their ceremonies as follows:  "they were quite incapable of establishing legislation wisely and keeping the sovereignty in their own hands, as a body. Almost all of them were coursened in their  dispositions [rudis fere ingenii] and weakened by wretched bondage." (V.27; this recalls Thomas More's analysis in Part I of Utopia ( also, here] and here).+ The underlying idea is that after a period of slavery, the Jews were mentally incapable of wise self-government. 

From a political perspective, the significance of this passage is (and this looks forward to Montesquieu) that Spinoza thinks a constitution must fit the material and social circumstances of a people. But for present purposes what matters is that the rituals are, in part, a means toward cultivating better dispositions in order to secure the survival even flourishing of the polity. Let's grant Spinoza this reading of the Hebrew Bible. Here I am interested in the connection between the religion and their economic prosperity. Spinoza explains this in a passage that has, naturally, attracted attention from those (see, for example, Beth Lord's paper, which also makes  the point above context noted above) with an interest in egalitarianism and debt jubilees:

There was something else very unyielding in this state, which must have been the most important factor to prevent its citizens from thinking of defection or wanting to desert their country: the principle of advantage/interest [ratio utilitatis], the mainstay and life of all human actions. That force was exceptionally strong in this state. Nowhere did the citizens possess their property with a greater right than did the subjects of this state, who, with the leader, had an equal share of the lands and fields. Each one was the eternal lord of his own share [suae partis aeternus dominus erat]. If poverty compelled anyone to sell his estate or field, it had to be restored to him once again when the jubilee year came. They instituted other similar practices, so that no one could be alienated from his real property. XVII.84-85, p. 315

Spinoza introduces the claim in this passage as a contrast to opinion [opinione], and the implication is that the mechanism he is describing is a part of solid [solidissimum] knowledge. And the reason for this is that is ground in an enduring feature of human nature that exerts a powerful pull over us, our pursuit of interest [ratio utilitatis]. Spinoza's phrase here is striking because reason of public utility [ratio Publicae Utilitatis] was supposed to govern the state's dealing with its citizens (and with other state authorities). This notion of utility, as public interest, was re-interpreted in the eighteenth century (e.g., in Hume, Beccarria, and Adam Smith). But here Spinoza ascribes a notion of interest to the individuals as the most powerful human motive, and, thereby, secure a public flourishing.

What he is describing involve secure property rights,  where land remained inalienably within a family, that is, a system of entails.** And these lots, in turn, are equal, just as the division of tribes had been equal. It is noticeable that such a system is understood to be unstable. For in addition to the Jubilee, multiple (unnamed) other institutions are required to prevent property from accumulating in some and others losing their family possessions.** Lurking here are claims about the role of debt, the effects of bad harvests, and prudent/imprudent and lucky/unlucky behavior in human affairs.

This setup created a fundamental equality centered on perpetual land-ownership. Obviously, the fact that a jubilee was necessary meant that one could through life without enjoying its fruits. But one could live in hope that one, or one's offspring, would return to it. And because the religion preaches charity to the poor "Nowhere could poverty be more bearable." (XVII.87) Another key feature is that such a system would promote long-term investment in one's family land because one could assume that one's family would reap the rewards. This created an attachment to land and fatherland, which prospered. 

This naturally raises the question why this was not enduring. Lord suggests, not implausibly, that Spinoza thinks the system was undermined when inequality was allowed to enter in, first by the institution of the Levites, a parasitic elite class living of taxes and donation, and then, ultimately, by the institution of a King. But while this is well grounded in the text, I do not think this is the whole story.  (In particular, Spinoza is explicit that the Levites could have been accomodated in this order (17.102, p. 319) In particular, Spinoza suggests that luxury is if not the source of corruption, then a hallmark of its impending arrival:

And that’s what happened, as everyone knows. That’s why there were great changes, and a great license to do anything, and extravagant living, and negligence [magnaque ad omnia licentia, luxus et socordia], with everything going from bad to worse, until, having often been subjugated, they completely broke away from the divine law, and wanted a mortal king. XVII.106, p. 320. 

It's true that Spinoza does not mention luxury [luxus] very much in the context of the first Hebrew state (and it is easy to miss in Curley's translation). But he also attributes the decline of the Canaanites (III.49, p. 123) and Tartars (III.56, p. 125) to the embrace of luxury. And Spinoza presents it as the general source of decline (XVII.14, p. 299). In the latter context it is clear he has the Roman Republic in mind.

So, to sum up: lurking in Spinoza, is a traditional republican suspicion of luxury as a source of corruption and decay. The property arrangements of the Hebrew State were fundamentally unstable not just because people could be (temporarily) indebted, impoverished, and enslaved, but also, and more importantly, because it created the conditions of accumulation and the sort of prosperity that leads to ruin. So, while much of the TTP is naturally read as an attack on the pretensions of theology and dangerous fanaticism, there is a clear warning to the merchants of Holland. Next week (but recall here), I'll explore Spinoza's proposed solutions to the dangers of luxury. 

 

 

On Foucault on 24 January 1979: On Perpetual Peace and Governmental Naturalism (VIII)

Yet another example of this appearance of a governmental rationality that has the entire planet for its horizon is the eighteenth century projects for peace and international organization. If you consider those that existed in the seventeenth century, you will see that these projects for peace were essentially based on European equilibrium, that is to say, on the exact balance of reciprocal forces between different states; between the different powerful states, or between different coalitions of states, or between the powerful states and a coalition of the smaller states, and so on. From the eighteenth century, the idea of perpetual peace and the idea of international organization are, I think, articulated completely differently. It is no longer so much the limitation of internal forces that is called upon to guarantee and found a perpetual peace, but rather the unlimited nature of the external market. The larger the external market, the fewer its borders and limits, the more you will have a guarantee of perpetual peace.

If you take Kant’s text on the project of perpetual peace, for example, which dates from 1795,4 right at the end of the eighteenth century, there is a chapter entitled “On the Guarantee of a Perpetual Peace.” How does Kant conceive of this perpetual peace? He says: What fundamentally is it in history that guarantees this perpetual peace and promises us that one day it really will take shape and form in history? Is it men’s will and their mutual understanding, the political and diplomatic devices that they will have been able to construct, or the organization of rights that they will have been able to install between them? Not at all. It is nature, just as in the physiocrats it was nature that guaranteed the good regulation of the market. And how does nature guarantee perpetual peace? It is very simple, Kant says. Nature after all has done some absolutely marvelous things, since it has managed, for example, to get not only animals, but even peoples to live in lands completely scorched by the Sun or frozen by eternal sheets of ice. There are people who manage to live there in spite of everything, which proves that there is nowhere in the world where human beings cannot live. But for people to be able to live they must be able to feed themselves, to produce their food, have a social organization, and exchange their products between themselves or with people from other regions. Nature intended the entire world, the whole of its surface, to be given over to the economic activity of production and exchange. And on that basis, nature has prescribed a number of obligations that are juridical obligations for man, but which nature has in a way dictated to him secretly, which she has, as it were, marked out in the very arrangement of things, of geography, the climate, and so on. What are these arrangements?
First, that men can have relations of exchange with each other individually, supported by property, etcetera, and this prescription or precept of nature will be taken up in legal obligations and become civil law.

Second, nature determined that men be distributed across the world in distinct regions and that within each of these regions they have privileged relationships with each other that they do not have with the inhabitants of other regions, and men have taken up this precept in legal terms by forming separate states which maintain certain legal relationships between them. This will become international law. But in addition, nature has wished that there are not only juridical relationships between these states, guaranteeing their independence, but also commercial relationships that cross the borders between states and consequently make the juridical independence of each state porous, as it were. Commercial relationships cross the world, just as nature intended and to the same extent as nature intended the whole world to be populated, and this will constitute cosmopolitan law or commercial law. This edifice of civil law, international law, and cosmopolitan law is nothing other than man’s taking up of a precept of nature as obligations. So we can say that law, inasmuch as it resumes the precept of nature, will be able to promise what was in a way already outlined in the first action of nature when it populated the entire world: something like perpetual peace. Perpetual peace is guaranteed by nature and this guarantee is manifested in the population of the entire world and in the commercial relationships stretching across the whole world. The guarantee of perpetual peace is therefore actually commercial globalization. Michel Foucault, 24 January 1979, Lecture 3, The Birth of Biopolitics. 56-58*

Foucault quite correctly inserts Kant's Perpetual Peace into the framework of eighteenth century liberalism.* But  he does so with an unusual, uncharacteristic for him misstep. On his view of the eighteenth century, perpetual peace is derived from the size of the external market, which presupposes few borders, which are, presumably sites of conflict ("the larger the external market, the fewer its borders and limits, the more you will have a guarantee of perpetual peace.") It's very much in the spirit of some such discussions. 

But this is not (recall) Kant's Madisonian position, which relies on the growing size of the internal market without or, perhaps better put, relatively minimal borders. As these internal markets expand they create continental wide spheres of peace within these federations and promote pacific relations among multiple continental-wide federations. In particular, and this draws on Addison), trade is then conducive toward peace in virtue of generating a shared legal framework and facilitating a cosmopolitan outlook.

While he is an important influence on Kant's views on federation, Smith, in turn, deviates from this narrative because he thinks, presciently, that export led growth and international trade increase the possibility of conflict when such trade is conceived in zero-sum terms (see also Paganelli & Schumacher). That is to say, and Kant mentions it explicitly in Perpetual Peace, what's required is that the pacific "spirit of commerce" (as distinct from the warlike mercantile spirit) diffuses itself through a federation. Thus, while Kant and Smith do not agree on all the details, they agree that a peace-conducive ideology or civic religion is one of the building blocks of a peaceful international system.+

Foucault's mistake makes sense because he also wants to help explain a regional consciousness that leads to a particular kind of nineteenth century imperialism. And for that narrative (pp. 54-46) growing markets external to Europe are central part of the story.

I don't mean to suggest that Foucault's interpretation of Kant is mistaken on a more fundamental level. Kant, indeed, echoes the providential literature in which the existence of trade is both explained by the post-tower-of-Babel and post Noah-ite flood spread of humans and animals, and justified by the mutual gains from trade and specialization. (I warmly recommend Joost Hengstmengel's, Divine Providence in Early Modern Economic Thought.) And, quite clearly, God's providence (which can be merely regulative) has been displaced on or is exhibited by nature, or, Nature's Order, which, in turn, becomes the source of a funny kind of normativity (in terms of precepts). Of course, in this sense Kant echoes not just Smith, but the whole strain of natural law thinking in authors as diverse as Hobbes, Vittoria, and Leibniz (Hume being the main outlyer) some of which, indeed, constitutive of international law (Francesco Suarez, Grotius, Pufendorf, etc.). 

And, indeed, we can recognize in the (quasi-Stoic) demand to live in accord to nature's precepts, which are themselves orderly, and increasingly even law-like, a guide both an ideal of peace and an ideal of law-governed-ness. To be without law is to be in the state of permanent war and to be uncivilized. The desirable contrast is a global political order of the civilized.

What Foucault recognizes about the previous paragraph is that alongside the juridical-theological conceptualizations, this is also inscribed, constitutively into science of political economy. For, and here I am drawing on my work on the afterlife of the so-called Posidonian argument (recall here; here; here; here), in this period, it is standard to assume that nature's order, now understood as a global, political order, is constitutive, a condition of possibility, on scientific progress. When this conceptualization is inscribed in the liberal art of government, Foucault calls this "governmental naturalism" (61). 

 

Master Mo on Political Choice During Pandemics

“They object: Is it permissible as a way of selecting officers, but not permissible as a way of selecting rulers?

[Master Mo said:] …Suppose there are two rulers. Let one of them hold partiality and the other universal impartiality. [In context of emergency]: Then the partial ruler would say to himself, how can I take care of the people as I do of myself? This would be quite contrary to common sense. A man's life on earth is of short duration, it is like a galloping horse passing by. Therefore when he finds his people hungry he would not feed them, and when he finds them cold he would not clothe them. When they are sick he would not minister to them, and upon their death he would not bury them. Such is the word and such is the deed of the partial ruler.

[Master Mo continued] The impartial ruler is quite unlike this both in word and in deed. He would say to himself, I have heard that to be an upright ruler of the world one should first attend to his people and then to himself. Therefore when he finds his people hungry he would feed them, and when he finds them cold he would clothe them. In their sickness he would minister to them, and upon their death he would bury them. Such is the word and such is the deed of the universal ruler.

These two rulers, then, are opposed to each other in word and also in deed. Suppose they are sincere in word and decisive in deed so that their word and deed are made to agree like the two parts of a tally, and that there is no word but what is realized in deed, then let us consider further: Suppose, now, that there is a disastrous pestilence, that most people are in misery and privation, and that many lie dead in ditches (Under such circumstances) let us inquire, if a person could choose one of the two rulers, which would he prefer? It seems to me on such occasions there are no fools in the world. Even if he is a person who objects to universal love, he will choose the universal ruler. This is verbal objection to the principle but actual selection by it - this is self-contradiction between one's word and deed. It is incomprehensible, then, why people should object to universal love when they hear it.“ Master Mo, Universal Love, III. (4:3), translated by W.P Wei [HT:Helen de Cruz]*

The thought experiment occurs in the midst of a defense of Master Mo's impartial consequentialism (recall this summary). And in context, he is responding to objections that concede the normative attractiveness of the position, but that think it impractical. The particular objection that selecting for impartiality may be useful in lower ranked officials and not the head of state (the emperor/son of heaven) goes to the heart of the matter because, like many other early Chinese political theorists, Master Mo embraces a normative and practical trickle down theory--where the ruler is a standard setter/unifyer and oversees the implementation and maintenance of impartiality and the benefits (lì 利) it brings from the town down. Among the good benefits the ruler brings are public works, low taxes, fair administration of justice, virtuous mores, and, public health. So, if Master Mo concedes the objection, his project is a non-starter.

Of course, the objection itself presupposes a familiar thought. That when push comes to shove, we prefer family, kin, tribe (etc.) over the unknown and distant (perhaps unborn) stranger. And for some this preference may well be thought moral. Master Mo is vulnerable on his score; let me explain. Because his theory is ground in an empirical claim: that impartiality has the best consequences (in terms of li). But if it can be shown that better consequences result from people promoting their kin (tribe, etc.) then his empirical argument for impartiality fails on consequentialist grounds. 

Okay, with that in place. Master Mo responds to the objection by producing a thought experiment about political choice in the context of a "disastrous pandemic." This is a high stakes decisions for ruler and ruled alike. For the ruled it is high stakes because bad governance entails higher mortality and more famine, perhaps breakdown of public order, during the pandemic. For the ruler it is also high stakes because he may forfeit (recall) the mandate of heaven as a consequence of the pandemic.

As a non-trivial aside, that in the thought experiment Master Mo (430 BCE) adopts the bottom up perspective signals something of his (what we may anachronistically call) democratic sensibility. The thought experiment involves the criteria of ruler selection from the perspective of the people. This is not ad hoc in Master Mo; this strain is also visible (recall here; here and here) in his presentation of the escape from the state of nature by way of a social contract. And part of the persuasiveness of the thought experiment, if any, is this democratic sensibility.

In the thought experiment we are presented with two ideal-types of rulers: one sees the world in zero-sum terms: political power and political hierarchy is zero-sum: there are winners and losers, and his gain is somebody else's loss. And the objection assumes that it is rational to prefer such a ruler. For, while you may not wish to hang out with ruthless friends, a gangster-style leader at a distance, at the top of the political hierarchy, who secures the goods needed to survive an emergency is worth having.+ If there is a distinct -- let's call this a realist political morality -- it assumes something like the (Schmitian) thought expressed in the previous sentence. 

The objection should remind you (recall) of those who think that the rule of law and other impartiality promoting institutions can constrain authoritarian (zero-sum adhering) rulers bending the the rule of law toward their ends. If the normative and political trickle down theory of governance is correct then the objection cannot succeed. I actually think this is a non-trivial part of Master Mo's underlying response to theobection, but that's not how he puts it.

The other kind of ruler finds ways of making state institutions work for to solve the people's people's problems during hard times. In the thought experiment this is expressed in terms of sacrificing the priority of his own desires for those of others. This may seem also a kind of zero-sum logic. But I think Master Mo does not mean to suggest that the ruler should serve the people at his own expense (although there are passages that suggest it). Rather, by taking care of the people in an impartial fashion, he himself, as a consequence, also benefit (stable rule, legitimacy, prosperity, etc.) This is why I treat the impartial ruler as a non-zero sum leader.

So, on my reading of the thought experiment, Master Mo assumes that (1) in high stakes environment people behave differently from low stakes environments; (2) we learn people's -- as it were -- true preferences in high stakes environments; (3) we can infer how they ought to behave in any environment from their true (counterfactual) preferences in high stakes environment. (If you want to deny Master Mo's commitment to (1) & (3) that's fine; he clearly needs (2). In defense of (2) ythere is empirical, political science evidence that when people are afraid—a natural response during a pandemic—they become more politically attentive and seek out high quality information; they also become more willing to cooperate and compromise in order to help each other and get things done.** 

Okay, with that in place, Master Mo's response to the objection is that when reflecting on high stakes environments, it is not just idealistic to prefer the impartial ruler, but straightforwardly rational (the alternative is straightforwardly foolish). Master Mo, thinks this is so obvious he barely explains why.

The main explicit argument one can draw from his presentation of the thought experiment (and one does need some awareness of culturally salient background conditions) is that only rulership that cares for all will address "misery and privation" and help ensure orderly burial of the dead during the pandemic. This presupposes, I think, also the tacit assumption that (and this fits the wider discussion of mandates of heaven) in order to be able to do so, one must have prepared for such challenging circumstances in advance and only an impartial ruler is likely to discount present satisfaction to have the resources and plans and drilling in place to tackle a pandemic.  

Notice that the argument does not require that impartial rulers don't make mistakes during a pandemic. The thought experiment only needs the assumption that we expect impartial rulers to care about the consequences of mistakes that fall on others and learn from those. 

One may grant that the thought experiment shows that, in principle, preferring the impartial ruler can be defended under conditions one may well have thought favor realist political morality. But one may still wonder if, during an pandemic, it is irrational to prefer a zero-sum ruler. After all, during such times vital goods may be very scarce, and a ruler that is willing to throw around his weight on behalf of his people [America First], as opposed to foreigners, may well be thought attractive.

While Master Mo is active during the warring states period, and so the objective is highly salient, this objection does not quite arise in Master Mo's set up because he is assuming (recall) world government: the Son of Heaven rules over an empire (now quoting Ivanhoe's translation, an 'entire world' which is 'so vast" across many "different regions"). Somewhat surprisingly, this reveals the true force of his thought experiment: to prefer the partial ruler is, when given the option, to prefer to be/remain in the state of nature. And this is, indeed, to be a fool.

On Dissolute Mirth and Gaiety during the Pandemic

We are informed by Thucydides, that, during the famous plague of Athens, when death seemed present to every one, a dissolute mirth and gaiety prevailed among the people, who exhorted one another to make the most of life as long as it endured. The same observation is made by Boccace with regard to the plague of Florence. A like principle makes soldiers, during war, be more addicted to riot and expence, than any other race of men. Present pleasure is always of importance; and whatever diminishes the importance of all other objects must bestow on it an additional influence and value.--David Hume "The Sceptic"

The quoted passage is in the service of one of two examples that are intended to show, in concessive and backhanded manner, that philosophical book learning can have an effect on our actions ("in books of philosophy, from which any important effect is to be expected.") I say 'backhanded' because the sceptic thinks that in this instance the philosophical text is merely echoing "common life, and occur upon the most superficial view of human affairs." I use 'concessive' because on the whole Hume's sceptic thinks philosophical texts are, we may say, impotent when it comes to inspiring action.

But Hume's sceptic grants that reading in Thucydides about the mirth and gaiety of the Athenians during the plague, would inspire us to mirth and gaiety during our own, say, epidemic. And in so doing we would, in the face of an epidemic, seize the day, that is to say, philosophically, when imminent death seems likely, we greatly discount the future. It is notable that the sceptic insists on saying the same thing in two registers, viz.,of the so-called vulgar and of the philosophers.

As an aside, 'the sceptic' treats Thucydides and Boccaccio as philosophical authors. This is somewhat amusing because elsewhere Hume, in his own voice, calls the latter an "agreeable libertine" ("Of the Standard of Taste"), not something one can imagine anyone saying about Thucydides (whom Hume always treats with respect and the deference due the first reliable authority).

Be that as it may, the sceptic does not mention the social mechanism emphasized by Thucydides (in Hobbes' translation), "seeing before his eyes such quick revolution, of the rich dying and men worth nothing inheriting their estates. Insomuch as they justified a speedy fruition of their goods even for their pleasure, as men that thought they held their lives but by the day." It isn't just the widespread nearness of death that causes 'licentiousness,' but in particular the undermining effect of death on social hierarchy that causes the dissolution of mores into mirth and gaiety. 

Obviously the sceptic may be right that Thucydides' particular mechanistic explanation may be irrelevant for the claim she wishes to make; and that all that matters to spur us to mirth and gaiety is the description of seizing the day in light of the mortal effects of the plague. Of course, reading such a description is neither necessary nor presumably sufficient to spur on licentiousness during an pandemic. But it may be a triggering cause.

It is peculiar that a predictable side effect of pandemics is dissolute mirth and gaiety. Compared to the panic that seizes the mind in anticipation of invisible, microscopic death creeping up on unsuspecting victims, dissolute mirth and gaiety sounds, even to those that prefer stable social expectations, almost like consolation.