Digressions&Impressions

On Herzl's Critique of Liberalism; the enduring Jewish Problem

A little despair is indispensable to the formation of a great undertaking [weil man zu grossen Unternehmungen ein bischen Verzweiflung in sich haben muss.]--Herzl (1896) The Jewish State.

It is a common trope among friends, and even some enemies, of Zionism that the illiberal features of Israel's political order are either a consequence of post-1967 occupation of a hostile population or, more fundamentally, the failure of Zionists to find an empty land without natives to displace.  Both are connected to the first two of  Zionism's three enduring strategic failures (recall here and here), that is, (i) its failure to establish permanent borders for the state of Israel; (ii) to settle what kind of political entity Israel should be (so that it can end its near-permanent war-footing and occupation of hostile populations); (iii) (the perception of) Israel's dependence on America's political, military , and cultural support, which ties Israel to America's strategic interests and electoral politics. I have already noted that Herzl is non-committal on the exact location (Palestine or Argentine), but more important, perhaps, is his decision that, at least during the transformative phase of the Zionist project, Herzl opts for the idea the people is the formal foundation, while land is the material foundation [roughly translating: Das Volk ist die persönliche, das Land die dingliche Grundlage des Staates] and -- with a nod to Papal authority -- the formal is more important.

Even so, the common tropes imply, and it is a thought one also finds on the secular side of Zionism and her friends, that if Israel could only get its politics toward the Palestinians and its borders and its attitude toward religion aright then it would fall in line with normal Liberal values. (This recurs in the debate over the "Jewish Character" of Israel.) I am not the first to demur from this consensus not because there is an incompatibility between the Jewish (enshrined in the Law of Return) and  Liberal elements of the state, but rather on the grounds that Zionism is the product of and a systemic response to (a persistent) Liberal failure. I identify (recall) two features of that failure: first, liberal states have not secured free movement of people(s) (immigration and emigration); increasingly even recognized refugees are treated worse than prisoners. Second, there are ongoing pressures within liberal democracies that generate enduring threats to the survival and dignity of minority groups; some of these pressures are a consequence of democracy and the intolerance or prejudices of electoral majorities. I had thought that the pressures consequent democracy can be greatly mitigated by the rule of law, constitutional rights, and education (etc.), despite the tragic conflicts within liberalism pitting, say, impartiality and pluralism against each other. Herzl's writings contain a more radical version of this second feature.

Herzl's critique of Liberalism is, in part, more thoroughgoing than my interpretation of the nature of Zionism because he thinks that the causes of modern (nineteenth century) anti-semitism are the unintentional by-product of the proper functioning of paradigmatic, Liberal institutions and norms (political empancipation, impartial rule of law, market freedom, etc.) On his view the "emancipation of the Jews" generated economic conflict with "with the [non-Jewish] middle classes." This non-Jewish middle class was (and is) the pillar of stability and political order, and would have expected to benefit from the post-1848 Liberal order. This middle class resents the rise of the Jews. It is important for Herzl's analysis that this class embraces modernity and that its anti-semitism is not merely the product of un-Enlightened thought. (No doubt he was thinking, in part, of the Dreyfus affaire.) But because of the proper functioning of the (Liberal) rule of law, the Jews became un-touchable, legally and politically, and this turns resentment and loathing in something worse (with the violence of the mob a permanent feature).*

The key insight here can be stated abstractly as follows: market economies generate permanent competition, and the pattern of outcomes of this competition can generate group conflicts among populations that are not homogenous for historical reasons. In particular, Herzl suggests that this becomes problematic when the group that expects to benefit from the Liberal state is frustrated in its reasonable, and thus 'just', expectations. (This distinguishes Herzl from more standard class conflict accounts.) It's this frustrated expectation of the would-be-benificiary of the political status quo that generates the enduring problems within Liberalism and that grows toxic if it can be mapped onto some us/them distinction that allows some us to be the authentic people -- even a moral community -- that excludes would be (inauthentic) members of the people.** Let's call that the 'enduring Jewish problem,' which need not involve Jews at all, or if Jews are involved they need not be them. (See also my recent reflections on meritocracy.) Herzl's position entails that reforming Liberal instutions in order to become more Liberal and Enlightened will not solve the enduring Jewish problem, but will only make it worse. For Herzl this is not a desirable outcome (note his despair), but it requires a political (and economic) response.

Even if one does not shares Herzl's pessimism about the possibility of tackling anti-semitism within Liberal polities (and we need to remind ourselves that the twentieth century was far worse than his pessimistic imagination), the general character of the (enduring Jewish) problem may well be endemic to Liberalism (that is not merely resolved by a cosmopolitan world government). Even if one is unwilling to grant that much, what I hoped to have made clear is that both conceptually and historically Zionism is at odds with the Liberal project. (This is, for example, obscured in the hands of say, Isaiah Berlin, who tends to treat Zionism as analogous to the nationalistic, Liberal projects of the nineteenth century.) Given that Zionism arises out of a fundamental critique of the conceptual commitments of and the historical trajectory of successful Liberalism (leaving aside Herzl's Corporatism, various socialist projects, the messianic strains, etc.), it is unsurprising that there are serious tensions between the Zionist and Liberal elements in the Israeli political order.***

 

Isaiah Berlin's Criticism of Cassirer

[Due to technical problems this post appears a few days late--ES]

With this special sensitivity to concealed connections and affinities, for transitions and cross currents, went [A] a rooted distaste for sharp delineation and the drawing of firm distinctions between ideas and thinkers. Cassirer's tendency was [B] to conciliate and appease, [C] to see  the past in the future and the future in the past, to represent the philosophy of the Renaissance....in such a fashion that later developments - those of the eighteenth and nineteenth, and even of the twentieth centuries were all too visible, almost fully formed, in these early beginnings. He liked to think of Leibniz as a kind of early Kant and of Kant (whom he all but worshiped) as almost a modern physicist; of Descartes or Lessing or Hegel as all, in their various ways, seeking to express one large single truth; all thinkers were to him loyal fellow-workers, engaged in a vast, common enterprise; the differences between them in Cassirer's pages became relatively blurred; the harmony between them covered a multitude of ephemeral disagreements, progressively less significant as the horizon widened...like all  efforts at conciliation, it can only be achieved at some sacrifice of the critical faculty.--Isaiah Berlin Reviewing Cassirer's The Philosophy of the Enlightenment, in English Historical Review 68 (1953), 617-19.

Joshua Cherniss called my attention to Berlin's review during facebook discussion after yesterday's post; I am grateful to him for making a copy of it available to me. In the quoted passage, Berlin's "appeasement" -- a word that had become toxic in 1953 -- reveals something of the intensity of Berlin's critical attitude that follows the quoted passage. In particular, the core criticisms of Cassirer (1874-1945), who was already dead at the time of the review, are political and philosophical. So,  for example, Berlin call's Cassirer's book "politically timid," and it is by no  means clear that in granting that "the book as a whole remains lucid, civilized and agreeable," Berlin means to be offering a compliment.

That even the lucidity is not a compliment is clear from the closing lines of the review, where Berlin calls for more "business-like...that is, ice-cutting" approach. In fact, Berlin distinguishes between different kinds of clarity in the review, and he embraces the values of the then surging, analytical movement with which he was very familiar (and of which he would become a fierce critic); Berlin wants the clarity that is subsequent to fine-grained and "firm distinctions" and the pulling apart of atomic concepts from what might have seemed like an organic whole.

One need not be a friend of political timidity, or even Cassirer's "supremely innocent" philosophy, to be weary of Berlin's rejection of conciliation. For, it entails open-ended warfare (and the desire for total victory); that is, in his criticism of Cassirer, Berlin here comes awfully close to embracing the philosophy of Carl Schmitt and shares with it a disdain for harmony. To embrace such open-ended warfare is uncivilized; if by civilization we mean the art of keeping conversation going, then even appeasement can play a tactical role in advancing civilization and conciliation. This art is not very demanding and requires all our "critical faculties," including the self-command not to investigate, say, 'ephemeral disagreements' in the middle of a crisis; it also requires the ability to make careful distinctions in order to find tenuous common ground, especially when confronted with "mysticism and fanaticism" in others.

This is not the place to discuss what it meant for the philosophical interpretations of the unfolding cold war that Cassirer's philosophical project was unfairly coupled with Chaimberlain's disgraced politics.* Michael Friedman has already eloquently argued (in a different context) that by reducing the philosophical option-space to the more radical approaches represented by Carnap vs Heidegger, philosophy has been diminished.

It is, in fact, it is by no means obvious that Cassirer gets the thinkers of the Enlightenment wrong in thinking that (to quote Berlin again) that they were engaged in a joint project of building "the great cathedral of human culture and learning" with few "really profound differences of principle." As one of Berlin's intellectual lodestones, Benjamin Constant, argued, it is not wrong in so far as this seems to have been a guiding aspiration of many of the leading figures themselves nor unfair in light of the judgment of posterity, which they eagerly hoped would vindicate them. Even Jonathan Israel has to acknowledge that for much of the eighteenth century the so-called moderate and radical Enlighteners appeared as part of a united effort, despite huge disagreements over tactics and philosophies (for some qualification see here).

So, while my own commitments tend to be not far removed from Berlin's, I reject Berlin's linking of his political criticisms of Cassirer with his disagreement over philosophical method captured by [A-C] in the quoted passage at the top of this post. In fact, while I am no friend of Cassirer's historical epistemology nor his dynamics of reason (nor a worshiper of Kant), I do defend the legitimacy of [C], that is, to see the past in the future and the future in the past. Now in Cassirer the point is to articulate the ways in which "one large single truth" may be expressed.

For, the idea that one's philosophical efforts are, in part, realized or even more richly captured in later work guides nearly all our scholarly efforts; it's a regulative ideal that is presupposed in lots of academic activity--from publishing in learned journals, to citation practices, to archiving, to giving of honors and prizes, etc. (There are, of course, more narcissist philosophical projects that do not require the participation of others; some of these may, in fact, be beautiful to behold by outsiders.) The ideal follows from the realization that philosophy is very difficult and our time on earth relatively brief. While we engage in our puzzles and are fully absorbed in various programs, we need some to step back and figure out how all of these belong to the larger whole that we aim to capture.** From the vantage point of that larger whole much of what we do is foreshadowed by those born before us. It does not follow, of course, that one should always look for prior developments and only stress agreement, but, uncharacteristically, Berlin fails to recognize that widening one's horizons is a species of courage and that a steadfast resistance to a rising tide of pessimism is a species of magnanimity. 

On the Dangers of Philosophy: a Note on Constant's Two Liberties

[W]e can no longer enjoy the liberty of the ancients, which consisted in an active and constant participation in collective power. Our freedom must consist of peaceful enjoyment and private independence.--B. Constant

The main point of Benjamin Constant's (1819) essay-lecture (recall pre-history), "The Liberty of Ancients Compared with that of Moderns," is a criticism of the earlier "noble and generous" generation of French revolutionaries (of 1789); the criticism is not that they were violent, sacrilegious, or failed to obey tradition. Rather, his criticism is two-fold: the more obvious first criticism is that they did not understand the "spirit" of their own times and thereby misapplied the wrong political philosophy to their own situation. They thereby aimed at a form of freedom that is incompatible with the kind of society French was becoming in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century. For, Constant is a certain kind of historicist about freedom. The less obvious obvious -- and largely ignored -- second criticism is that these revolutionaries, due to a faulty (but "necessary") education, relied on theories developed by philosophers (Rousseau and Mably) that failed to grasp properly the relationship between their own theories and the social world they inhabited. The two points are connected: because of such mismatch these disinterested and humane philosophers unintentionally made "fashionable" lapsed ideas and thereby "furnished deadly pretexts for more than one kind of tyranny." A better philosophy could have helped design beter social institutions: "Free institutions, resting upon the knowledge of the spirit of the age, could have survived."

The second point is notable because Constant is willing to criticize Rousseau for consequences of his theorizing that were not intended (see my musings on the "Socratic Problem"). It is as if Constant applies to Rousseau a rhetorical precautionary principle: do not promote ideas that can be a pretext for tyranny.  That is to say, Constant takes seriously the possible influence of philosophy on society and views it as legitimate criterion for judging another philosopher. I think Constant is right about this. But, in this essay, Constant  does not wrestle with the question if such a pretext is only a consequence of flawed theorizing or also a consequence of theorizing that tracks social reality; he also does not ask to what degree we ought to be held accountable for the social consequences of our philosophical activity even if we made no error.+

On the first point, it is worth asking, what is a "spirit of the age" and what would be knowledge of it? Constant thinks that security from attack (due to relative geographic proximity, population-size) is a key factor in a society's organization. According to Constant the (Greek and Roman) Ancients were focused on permanent warfare (due to lack of security). This focus on war entailed a fundamental division of labor: a free and leisurely warrior class and enslaved working class.  (Constant allows that there are exceptions to the generalization.) If war defined the "spirit" of Greeks and Romans , then this "spirit" gives raise both to (i) a fundamental, spirit-relative human need (including a variety of liberty), and (ii) influences even the "customs, habits, [and] way of trading with others," that is "their commerce was itself impregnated by the spirit of the age, by the atmosphere of war and hostility which surrounded it." The two (i-ii) are connected as follows:

the liberty we need is different from that of the ancients, it needs a different organization from the one which would suit ancient liberty...in the kind of liberty of which we are capable, the more the exercise of political rights leaves us the time for our private interests, the more precious will liberty be to us.

Two Concepts of Liberty, and the forgotten Sophie de Grouchy

The standard source of the distinction between two senses of “liberty” is a speech in 1819 by the great political theorist Benjamin Constant. The first, “the liberty of the ancients,” consists in having a voice into the policies and representatives that govern us. The second, “the liberty of the moderns,” is the right to pursue our private interests free from state oversight or control. "Is the United States a ‘Racial Democracy’?" (New York Times, Opinionator),  JASON STANLEY and VESLA WEAVER.

Stanley and Weaver, treat these as "two different aspects of the conception of liberty at the heart of American democracy, rather than distinct concepts."So, throughout their piece (recall my comment), they rely on the distinction between, on the one hand, two "senses" or "notions" or "aspects" of liberty, and, on the other hand, the one "conception" of liberty. In their hands, liberty as such can be removed; and a system of laws can be unworthy of liberty.

I started reflecting on Stanley and Weaver's tacit distinction because I was surprised that while mentioning Constant they did not mention Isaiah Berlin, the twentieth century thinker  responsible for revival of interest in Constant and his distinction. When I turned to Berlin's famous essay, Two Concepts of Liberty, and looked for the famous passage on Constant, the distance between Stanley and Weaver and Berlin (and Constant) become transparent at once. Berlin writes, "No one saw the conflict between the two types of liberty better, or expressed it more clearly than Benjamin Constant" For Berlin (and Constant), if liberty were one it would be in constant tension with itself. Stanley and Weaver are liberty-monists, while Berlin is a Liberty-dualist (or -- if we read him as allowing even more concepts -- even a Liberty-pluralist).