Digressions&Impressions

Again, Foucault, Kuhn, Carnap and Incommensurability

Despite the reassuring pleasure that historians of medicine may feel when they recognise in the great ledgers of confinement what they consider to be the timeless, familiar face of psychotic hallucinations, cognitive deficiencies, organic consequences or paranoid states, it is impossible to draw up a coherent nosological map from the descriptions that were used to confine the insane. The formulations that justify confinement are not presentiments of our diseases, but represent instead an experience of madness that occasionally intersects with our pathological analyses, but which could never coincide with them in any coherent manner. The following are some examples taken at random from entries on confinement registers for those of ‘unsound mind’: ‘obstinate plaintiff’, ‘has obsessive recourse to legal procedures’, ‘wicked cheat’, ‘man who spends days and nights deafening others with his songs and shocking their ears with horrible blasphemy’, ‘bill poster’, ‘great liar’, ‘gruff, sad, unquiet spirit’. There is little sense in wondering if such people were sick or not, and to what degree, and it is for psychiatrists to identify the paranoid in the ‘gruff’, or to diagnose a ‘deranged mind inventing its own devotion’ as a clear case of obsessional neurosis. What these formulae indicate are not so much sicknesses as forms of madness perceived as character faults taken to an extreme degree, as though in confinement the sensibility to madness was not autonomous, but linked to a moral order where it appeared merely as a disturbance. Reading through the descriptions next to the names on the register, one is transported back to the world of Brant and Erasmus, a world where madness leads the round of moral failings, the senseless dance of immoral lives.

And yet the experience is quite different. In 1704, an abbot named Bargedé was confined in Saint-Lazare. He was seventy years old, and he was locked up so that he might be ‘treated like the other insane’. His principal occupation was 

lending money at high interest, beyond the most outrageous, odious usury, for the benefit of the priesthood and the Church. He will neither repent from his excesses nor acknowledge that usury is a sin. He takes pride in his greed. Michel Foucault (1961) [2006] History of Madness, Translated by Jonathan Murphy and Jean Khalfa, pp. 132-133

In larger context, Foucault is describing how during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries (the so-called 'classical age') a great number of people (Foucault suggests a number of 1% of the urban population) were locked up in a system of confinement orthogonal to the juridical system (even though such confinement was often practically indistinguishable from prison--both aimed at moral reform through work and sermons). This 'great confinement' included people with venereal disease, those who engaged in sodomy and libertine practices as well as (inter alia) those who brought dishonor (and financial loss) to their families alongside the mad and frenzied.

To the modern reader the population caught up in the 'great confinement' seems rather heterogeneous in character, but their commonality becomes visible, according to Foucault, when one realizes that it's (moral) disorder that they have in common from the perspective of classical learning. According to Foucault there is "no rigorous distinction between moral failings and madness." (p. 138) Foucault inscribes this (moral disorder of the soul/will) category into a history of 'Western unreason' that helps constitute (by way of negation) the history of early modern rationalism (with special mention of Descartes and Spinoza). Like a true Kantian, Foucault sees (theoretical) reason as shaped by practical decision as constitutive of the whole classical era (see especially p. 139).  My present interest is not to relitigate the great Derrida-Foucault debate over this latter move, or Foucault's tendency to treat -- despite his nominalist sensibilities -- whole cultural eras as de facto organically closed systems (of the kind familiar from nineteenth century historiography).

My interest here is in the first two sentences of the quoted passage. It describes what Thomas Kuhn called 'incommensurability' in The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. Kuhn's Structure appeared in 1962, and initially there seems to have been no mutual influence. I don't want to make Foucault more precise than he is, but we can fruitfully suggest that for Foucault incommensurability involves the general inability to create a coherent mapping between two theoretical systems based on their purported descriptive content. I phrase it like to capture Foucault's emphasis on 'descriptions' and to allow -- mindful of Earman and Fine ca 1977 -- that some isolated terms may well be so mapped. As an aside, I am not enough of a historian of medicine (or philosopher of psychology) to know whether nosological maps can be used for such an exercise. (It seems like a neat idea!) 

So, Foucault is thinking about ruptures between different successive scientific cultures pretty much from the start of his academic writing (recall this post on the later The Order of Things). In fact, reading History of Madness after reading a lot of Foucault's other writings suggests a great deal of continuity in Foucault's thought--pretty much all the major themes of his later work are foreshadowed in it (and it also helps explain that he often didn't have to start researching from scratch in later writings and lectures). 

In fact, reading Foucault with Kuhn lurking in the background helps one see how important a kind of Kantianism is to Foucault's diagnosis of incommensurability. I quote another passage in the vicinity that I found illuminating:

The psychopathology of the nineteenth century (and perhaps our own too, even now) believes that it orients itself and takes its bearings in relation to a homo natura, or a normal man pre-existing all experience of mental illness. Such a man is in fact an invention, and if he is to be situated, it is not in a natural space, but in a system that identifies the socius to the subject of the law. Consequently a madman is not recognised as such because an illness has pushed him to the margins of normality, but because our culture situates him at the meeting point between the social decree of confinement and the juridical knowledge that evaluates the responsibility of individuals before the law. The ‘positive’ science of mental illness and the humanitarian sentiments that brought the mad back into the realm of the human were only possible once that synthesis had been solidly established. They could be said to form the concrete a priori of any psychopathology with scientific pretensions.--pp. 129-130

For Foucault, a concrete a priori is itself the effect of often indirect cultural construction or stabilization. In fact, for Foucault it tends to be an effect of quite large-scale and enduring ('solidly') social institutions (e.g., the law, penal/medical institutions) and material practices/norms. The discontinuity between concrete a priori's track what we may call scientific revolutions in virtue of the fact that systems of knowledge before and after a shift in a concrete a priori cannot possibly be tracking the same system of 'objects' (or 'empirical basis'). 

I don't mean to suggest that for Foucault a system of knowledge cannot be itself a source/cause of what he calls a 'synthesis' that makes a concrete a priori possible. That possibility is explicitly explored in (his discussion of Adam Smith in) his The Order of Things. But on the whole a system of knowledge tends to lag the major cultural shifts that produce a concrete a priori. 

Let me wrap up. A full generation after Structure appeared there was a belated and at the time revisionary realization that Structure could be read as a kind of neo-Kantian text and, as such, was actually not very far removed from Carnap's focus on frameworks and other projects in the vicinity that were committed to various kinds of relativized or constitutive a prioris. This literature started, I think, with Reisch 1991. (My own scholarship has explored [see here; here] the surprising resonances between Kuhn's Structure and the self-conception of economists and the sociology of Talcott Parsons at the start of twentieth century and the peculiar fact that Kuhn's Structure was foreshadowed in Adam Smith's philosophy of science.) I mention Carnap explicitly because not unlike Carnap [see Stone; Sachs, and the literature it inspired], Foucault does not hide his debts to Nietzsche. 

So here's my hypothesis and diagnosis: it would have been much more natural to read Structure as a neo/soft/extended-Kantian text if analytic philosophers had not cut themselves off from developments in Paris. While I do not want to ignore major differences of emphasis on scope between Kuhn and Foucault, their work of 1960 and 1962 has a great deal of family resemblance despite non-trivial differences in intellectual milieus. I actually think this commonality is not an effect of a kind of zeitgeist or the existence of an episteme--as I suggested in this post, it seems to be a natural effect of starting from a broadly domesticated Kantianism. But having said that, that it was so difficult initially to discern the neo-Kantian themes in Kuhn also suggests that not reading the French developments -- by treating 'continental thought' as instances of unreason (which is Foucault's great theme) -- also created a kind of Kuhn loss in the present within analytic philosophy. 

 

 

On Newton's Refutation of the Mechanical Philosophy

In the recent philosophical reception of Newton there is an understandable tendency to focus on the inverse square law of universal gravitation. I don't mean to suggest this is the only such focus; arguably his views on Space have shaped -- through the good works of Stein and Earman -- also debates over spacetime theories. 

The effect of this telescoping has also impacted, I think, the way in which the debate between the mechanical and Newtonian philosophy has been understood. The former is said to posit a contact model in which contact between very small corpuscles explains a lot of observed phenomena. A typical mechanical philosopher creates a hypothetical model, a machine with pulleys and levers (etc.), that can make observed phenomena intelligible. In the mechanical philosophy, which itself was directed against a variety of Aristotelian and Scholastic projects, efficient causation -- once one of four canonical causes (including formal, final, and material) -- has achieved a privileged status.

The scholarly fascination with the status of action at a distance is, thus, readily explicable because it violates the very model of intelligibility taken for granted in the mechanical philosophy. As Newton notes in the General Scholium (first published in the 1713 second edition of the Principia), universal gravity "operates, not according to the quantity of the surfaces of the particles upon which it acts, (as mechanical causes use to do,) but according to the quantity of the solid matter which they contain, and propagates its virtue on all sides, to immense distances, decreasing always in the duplicate proportion of the distances." 

Before I get to the main point of today's post, I offer two asides. First, with its emphasis on hypothetical explanations, the mechanical philosophers (and here I use the term to cover people as diverse as Beeckman, Descartes, Boyle, and Huygens) also exhibit a deep strain of skepticism about the very possibility of truly grasping nature's innards as it were. Spinoza's natura naturans and even Kant's ding-an-sich are the enduring expressions of this strain of skepticism (allowing that Kant is much less a mechanical philosopher). To put this as a serious joke: the PSR is, thus, not an act of intellectual hubris, but a self-limitation of the knower when it comes to fundamental ontology. Second, by showing that there is something wholly unintelligible about the way motion is supposed to be transferred from one body to the other (Essay 2.23.28), Locke, who gets so little credit among contemporary philosophers, had already imploded the pretensions of the mechanical philosophy on conceptual grounds.  Okay, so much for set up.

The mechanical philosophers were not so naïve to think that models that relied on mere impulse, matter in motion, could create hypothetical models of sufficient complexity to provide hypothetical explanations of the phenomena. This is especially a problem because the mechanical philosophers posited a homogeneous matter. So that in addition to matter and motion, they posited size and shape not merely as effects of motion, but also as key explanatory factors in the hypothetical models of visible phenomena (this can be seen in Descartes, Gassendi, and Boyle, whose "The Origin of Forms and Qualities according to the Corpuscular Philosophy" (1666), I take as a canonical statement of the mechanical philosophy). So that the mechanical philosophy is committed to privileging (to echo a felicitous phrase by Biener and Smeenk [here; and here]) geometric features of bodies.

Even leaving aside the inverse square law and its universal scope, Newton's experimental work on gravity demolished a key feature of the mechanical philosophy: size and shape are irrelevant to understand gravity. I quote from Henry Pemberton's View of Sir Isaac Newton's Philosophy (1728):

It will be proper in this place to observe concerning the power of gravity, that its force upon any body does not at all depend upon the shape of the body; but that it continues constantly the same without any variation in the same body, whatever change be made in the figure of the body: and if the body be divided into any number of pieces, all those pieces shall weigh just the same, as they did, when united together in one body: and if the body be of a uniform contexture, the weight of each piece will be proportional to its bulk. This has given reason to conclude, that the power of gravity acts upon bodies in proportion to the quantity of matter in them. Whence it should follow, that all bodies must fall from equal heights in the same space of time. And as we evidently see the contrary in feathers and such like substances, which fall very slowly in comparison of more solid bodies; it is reasonable to suppose, that some other cause concurs to make so manifest a difference. This cause has been found by particular experiments to be the air. --1.2.24 [emphasis added]

Pemberton (who was the editor of the third, 1726 edition of the Principia) goes on to give Boyle's famous vacuum experiments with falling feathers and stones as evidence for this argument. That is, Pemberton uses Boyle's experimental work to refute Boyle's mechanical philosophy. 

Now, in the Principia, references to Boyle's experiment got added only to the (1713) second edition in two highly prominent places: Cotes added a reference to it in his editor's introduction and Newton added a reference to it in the General Scholium at the end of the book. In both cases Boyle's experiment is used as a kind of illustration for the claim that without air resistance falling bodies are equally accelerated and for the plausibility of positing an interstellar vacuum. That is, if one reads the Principia superficially (by looking at prominent material at the front and end), it seems as if Newton and Boyle have converging natural philosophies.

Of course, neither Pemberton nor Newton rely exclusively on Boyle's vacuum experiment to make the point that shape and size (or geometry) is not a significant causal factor when it comes to gravity. The key work is done by pendulum experiments with different metals. (These can be found in Book II of the Principia, which is often skipped, although he drives the point home in Book III, Prop. 6 of Principia.) These show that quantity of matter is more fundamental than shape. And, crucially, shape & size and quantity of matter need not be proportional to or proxies of each other. This fact was by no means obvious, and at the start of the Principia. even Newton offers, as Biener and Smeenk have highlighted, a kind of geometric conception of quantity of matter in his first definition before suggesting that 'quantity of matter' is proportional to weight (and indicating his pendulum experiments as evidence thereof).

Let me wrap up. What's important here is that even if Newton had been wrong about the universal nature of the inverse square law, he showed that the mechanical philosophy cannot account for the experimentally demonstrated features of terrestrial (and planetary) gravity. (So, that the mechanical philosophy is not a natural way to understand Galilean fall.) And this means that in addition to Locke's conceptual claim, Newton shows that the mechanical philosophy's emphasis on just one kind of efficient causation, by way of contact, is not sufficient to explain the system of nature. 

What I say here is not surprising to students of Newton. But it's also not really much emphasized. To be sure, Newton, too, accepted a kind of homogeneous matter, but rather than its size and figure, he showed that an abstract quantity (mass) is more salient. Of course, how to understand mass in Newton's philosophy opens new questions, for as Ori Belkind has argued it should not be taken as a property of matter, but rather as a measure.

 

 

Hayek, Kukathas, and the Significance and Limitations of Social Theory

Yet agreement between Hayek and the dominant strand of liberal theory may not be quite so easily secured. For a great deal turns on what is understood by a modus vivendi, and thought necessary to secure it. For Gutmann and Larmore, a liberal modus vivendi may well involve the growth of the mechanisms of participatory democracy, and need not compromise egalitarian ideals. A Hayekian conception of the liberal order as a modus vivendi, however, would not be of this nature. The conclusion he draws from his social theory is that a liberal order must be ruled by a limited government whose primary task is to maintain the framework within which individuals and groups may pursue their respective aims, regardless of the shape the resulting society assumes.
Rawls, however...explicitly rejects the idea of a modus vivendi. For him, what is needed is a political conception of justice which will command the allegiance of a diversity of moral viewpoints in a pluralist society. Only such a public philosophy which was able to sustain an 'overlapping consensus' of views would ensure social unity in 'long run equilibrium'. A modus vivendi would amount to little more than a temporary truce, in which time the more powerful interests would be able to marshall their forces, later to impose their own attitudes upon all. This contrasts with Hayek who sees social stability as possible only under political institutions which removed social justice from the agenda of politics.
This lack of agreement does not, however, reduce the interest of Hayek's contribution to liberal theory. Indeed, it suggests one way liberals may approach the problem of dealing with differences that divide them: by returning to issues in social theory. His work deserves examination because he draws attention to the need to consider the nature of society and the way in which this constrains our choice of political principles. For, if Hayek is right, many kinds of principles may be ruled out as unworkable. In other words, the circumstances of justice need much more careful investigation than they have been given.
Hayek's endeavours, while they have not succeeded in establish­ing a coherent liberal philosophy, do push contemporary liberal theory in a promising direction. For they show, first, that the defence of the liberal order need not assume that man is an isolated, asocial, utility maximizer: the defence of liberalism can, and should, be grounded in a more plausible account of man and society. And they suggest, secondly, that, while it will prove difficult to establish philosophical foundations for liberal rights, or a liberal theory of liberty, an understanding of the nature of social processes may offer a surer guide by telling us what kinds of rights and liberties cannot be adopted if the liberal ideal is to survive.-- Chandran Kukathas (1989) Hayek and Modern Liberalism, pp. 227-228. [Emphasis in original]

[If you are impatient you can skip the first four autobiographical paragraphs of today's digression.] Because I never went through a libertarian phase (and where I grew up these barely existed then), I am not quite sure when I first encountered Hayek's name and when I first read him. I do know that when I entered graduate school at age 24, I was aware of some of the features of Hayek's 'knowledge problem' because I briefly tried -- without success -- to get others in my graduate cohort interested in Hayek as an epistemologist in light of Hayek 1945. But I am really unsure how I picked this up. Between college and graduate school I read anything that happened to come my way or encountered in bookstores so I'll leave it to chance. 

Because I ended up writing a PhD on Hume and Smith's philosophy of science, I did end up reading some of Hayek's writings on the Scottish Enlightenment. During my PhD, I also read the Road to Serfdom (which left me unmoved) and The Sensory Order (which was astonishing, and I was shocked nobody else I knew had read). But because I was not especially interested in spontaneous order or a deep dive into libertarianism (beyond Nozick) my knowledge of Hayek was superficial. 

This started to change near the end of my PhD, around 2001, when the historians of economics, David M. Levy and Sandra Peart, started to invite me to their annual workshop on the preservation of the history of economics. Peart was working on her excellent edition of Hayek on Mill. David knew his Hayek and could easily make him philosophically interesting to me. (Recently David has been sharing his excitement about the development of modal logics by nineteenth century economists who moonlight as logicians!) Through them I met Erik Angner who was very interested in Hayek's theory of cultural evolution (a topic I was then very interested in), and I eventually read his wonderful monograph on Hayek and natural law.

I mention all of this because after I did start reading Hayek, I actually thought of Hayek as a weird Kantian or neo-Kantian. When I first mentioned this to people with a philosophical interest in Hayek this was often dismissed (such people treated him as more as a follower of Hume). So, I was quite pleased back when I read Kukathas' book the first time (about two decades ago) that Kukathas argues for Hayek's Kantianism in great detail (alongside Hayek's debts to Hume). And not surprised when decades later I read Foucault (who historically precedes Kukathas by a decade) on the significance of Kant/Kantianism to Hayek and other neoliberals in his biopolitics lectures. 

Anyway, above I quote the final paragraphs of Kukathas' wonderful book, which manages to juggle quite a few balls apparently effortless at once: it is a careful study of Hayek as a systematic thinker; it locates Hayek in debates within liberalism (not the least through a detailed comparison with Rawls) and between liberalism(s) and its/their critics. Along the way, readers also get a judicious account of why it is misleading to treat Hayek as an (indirect) utilitarian. And while Kukathas is respectful of Hayek, as the quoted paragraph suggests, he argues at length that Hayek is incapable of reconciling the Kantian and Humean strands of his own theory.* Okay, so much for set up.

One important contribution of Kukathas' book is to illustrate the value of social theory to political philosophy even among those who think of political philosophy as an 'ethics first' or 'justice first' enterprise. Part of that use is hinted at in the closing paragraphs quoted at the top of this post: first, a social theory provides us with the content in a feasibility or aptness constraint. Let's call this a 'negative use of social theory' in which social theory is used (with a nod to 'ought implies can' perhaps) to rule out or block certain normative theories (or the principles on which they rely) because they are literally impossible for beings like us, once we're more informed about who we are (by social theory). Of course, unrealistic or unfeasible models or theories may still be useful in some way or another -- not the least as paradigms that discipline a field --, so one should not expect to use social theory (which often blends normative and empirical features in complex ways) as a hammer to destroy viewpoints one wishes to reject. 

Second, and this is a positive feature, social theory can provide one with a philosophical anthropology that allows one to recast one's political vision and/or normative theories. In Hayek's case this also (third) means that many typical criticisms of liberalism (familiar, say, from Karl Polanyi (who goes unmentioned), Alisdair MacIntyre, various communitarians and Marxists (etc.) are disarmed in advance because the anthropology supplied by Hayek's social theory actually is not the Robinson Crusoe one -- "isolated, asocial, utility maximizing" -- usually criticized by critics of liberalism; if anything Kukathas' Hayek (and I agree) is not very far from Hegel, although as Kukathas notes with some key differences.

But, unless I missed it, Kukathas does not define what he or Hayek means by 'social theory' (something on my mind due to failed efforts to do so while teaching undergrads).  Hayek does give us some material to work on this. For example, in (1967) in "Notes on the Evolution of Systems of Rules of Conduct: The Interplay between Rules of Individual Conduct and the Social Order of Actions," Hayek writes the following:

The whole task of social theory consists in little else but an effort to reconstruct the overall orders which are thus formed, and the reason why that special apparatus of conceptual construction is needed which social theory represents is the complexity of this task. It will also be clear that such a distinct theory of social structures can provide only an explanation of certain general and highly abstract features of the different types of structures (or only of the ‘qualitative aspects’), because these abstract features will be all that all the structures of a certain type will have in common, and therefore all that will be predictable or provide useful guidance for action.--p. 283 in The Market and Other Orders, edited by Bruce Caldwell.

On Hayek's view social theory is, thus, engaged in conceptual construction. And it aims to construct what he calls an 'overall order.' (There are distinct resonances here with the morphological project of the ordoliberal, Eucken.) These overall orders are "systems of rules of conduct" which "will develop as wholes" and on which a certain kind of "selection process...will operate on the order as a whole." Now, clearly this conception of social theory is, while capable of objectivity, itself partial to Hayekian projects (he goes on to claim that "of theories of this type economic theory, the theory of the market order
of free human societies, is so far the only one which has been systematically developed over a long period"), so I don't mean to suggest Hayek's idea of 'social theory' ought to generalize to all social theory.

Now, crucially, Hayekian social theory provides one with functional explanations of social order(s). Hayek is very explicit about this on the following page (p. 284). It may require auxiliary sciences to do so (Hayek is discussing the rule of evolutionary social psychology in context). And one way it offers such a functional explanation is to make clear the "interaction between the regularity of the conduct of the elements [or individuals] and the regularity of the resulting structure." (289)

I call it 'Hayekian' social theory because one of the other "tasks" he ascribes to it is to explain the "unintended patterns and regularities which we find to exist in human society." (from Hayek (1967) "The results of human action but not of human design." p. 294 in The Market and Other Orders.) Obviously, that may be incompatible with a social theory that has a different focus, although Marx is clearly interested in features of such a social theory.

So, why do I mention this? Before I answer that let's stipulate that Hayek's social theory is coherent. I have two reasons. First, even coherent, it is not entirely obvious what the status of the fruits of Hayekian social theory are. What kind of impossibility is proven by social theory if it has a Hayekian cast? This is not obvious. (In part this is not obvious because the empirical basis of social theory is not easily disentangled from its normative commitments.) I don't see how Hayekian social theory can rule out orders constructed on principles very different than Hayekian social theory, even if one can suspect that these will not be functional in the way that (say) spontaneous orders will be. This depends on plasticity of humans but also on the possibility of social structures with different kinds of social rules. I don't think this paragraph undermines Kukathas' particular argument because he shows how much Rawls and Hayek agree in their commitments.

Second, Hayekian social theory inherits from 19th century historicism (and some aspects of the Scottish Enlightenment) the idea of social wholes (that are constituted by their system of rules). Now, Hayek acknowledges that (say) a historian or social scientist may well do his or her job without embracing social wholes. His is not an organicist theory, and since social pluralism is -- as Kukathas reveals -- kind of bedrock in his theory it would be odd to attribute organicism to Hayek. However, it is not obvious why in a world constituted by social pluralism of different sorts -- and with non-trivial barriers that would facilitate differential and distinct selection -- we would find such social wholes even in (say) places that share non-trivial social commonalities. If human law or force is part of the selection process we should in fact expect greater diversity. In fact, I am echoing here Hayek's friend, Eucken, who clearly thought that Hayek's expectation of such social wholes was only so in theory, but that in practice one could find a rich diversity of social orders (based on a limited number of morphological elements).

Let me stop there. I don't mean to suggest these are fatal objections to Hayek's theory. But  if we look forward to Kukathas' Liberal Archipelago it helps explain Kukathas' non-trivial distance from using Hayekian social theory despite Kukathas and Hayek sharing a deep debts to Hume.

Foucault on Enlightenment, and Journalism

It was toward the end of the Age of Enlightenment, in 1784. A Berlin journal asked a few worthy thinkers the question, "What is enlightenment?" Immanuel Kant answered, after Moses Mendels­sohn.

I find the question more noteworthy than the answers. Because enlightenment, at the end of the eighteenth century, was not news, was not an invention, a revolution, or a party. It was something familiar and diffuse, something that was going on-and fading out. The Prussian newspaper was basically asking: "What is it that has happened to us? What is this event that is nothing else but what we have just said, thought, and done-nothing else but ourselves, noth­ing but that something which we have been and still are?"
Should this singular inquiry be placed in the history of joumal­ism or of philosophy? I only know that, since that time, there have not been many philosophies that don't revolve around the question: "What are we now? What is this ever so fragile moment from which we cannot detach our identity and which will carry that identity away with it?" But I believe this question is also the basis of the journalist's occupation.--Michel Foucault (1979) "For an Ethic of Discomfort," [reviewing Jean Daniel], in Power: Essential Works of Foiucault 1954-84: Volume Three, translated by Robert Hurley, p. 443

lt is probably well known that near the end of his life, Foucault got very interested in Kant's essay, "What is Enlightenment?" Foucault engaged with it directly and circled around it on a number of occasions. A subset of these has, in fact, been collected in a volume edited by Sylvère Lotringer (who I long thought an invention of Chris Kraus) What is Truth? It contains a version of the same book review that I quoted above, but there it is translated beautifully by Lysa Hochroth.

My interest here is not to litigate to what degree Foucault's reading or appropriation of Kant does justice to the source material, or even is worth emulating. But I digress on some of Foucault's moves.

First, Foucault redefines the nature of journalism from, say, the reporting of news, to this more ontological or existential question pertaining in tricky ways to identity, 'what are we now?' To be sure, Foucault does not legislate that journalism is not about reporting the news anymore, but we might say that what is thought or taken to be worthy to be reported must pertain to this kind of salience. What's interesting about this claim is that it prefigures, but also reminds us of what we already know, that 'All the News That's Fit to Print' reflects the question of (our potentially fleeting) identity. The expanding lifestyle pages, perhaps, suggest that the oblique mirror that contemporary journalism provides us with to answer this question is more suggestive of our desires and fantasies than anything else.

What journalism is perhaps not, however, is the initial record for law and (historical and social) science that can enter into any truth. It's orthogonal to establishing a public record that enters as facts into, say, a deliberative practice. It is, of course, so conceived not wholly irrelevant to public deliberation because in a non-trivial sense it defines and helps constitute the unity -- the we -- that deliberates and does so in virtue of some non-trivial identity. And while in the previous paragraph I satirized the pretentions of journalism so conceived, in this paragraph I point to the constitutive role of journalism to social life. 

Evidently, this constitutive role to social life is also a task for the philosopher. In fact, Foucault tells us explicitly that nearly all philosophies he is aware of -- and while he has limitations, Foucault is nothing but well-read and he stakes a knowledge claim on it "I only know that"-- try to play this role, at least since Kant tried to answer the question. It's a bit of a shame that he doesn't hint at the exceptions, but Foucault's claim here is a nice way of capturing one way in which analytic philosophy, while conditioned by the ages in which it is produced, does not -- despite our advances in quantified modal logic -- generally (there are exceptions) answer the question, what are we now. 

There is, of course, for all the play (Foucault clearly admires w the author of the book he is reviewing) a dethroning involved here. To speak crassly, philosophy is not in the business of truth as the law and science are, but it is much closer to the world of opinion (that is journalism) and this is a world of near-Hericlitan flux--the oft imperceptible instability of identity, when its self-evidentness cannot be taken for granted anymore, is the great theme of the review. * 

As I have noted before, there is for all his nominalism and disciplined skepticism a historicism lurking in Foucault. Each fleeting now has its singular identity, and it takes occupations devoted to singular inquiry -- journalism, philosophy, and, of course, the arts -- to try to sketch a kind of repetition of that once diffuse identity; for after completion of the task, it turns out already to be "familiar" even if we see it afresh. 

 

 

 

Montesquieu, Spinoza, Federalism, and Political Hebraism

IF a republic be small, it is destroyed by a foreign force; if it be large, it is ruined by an internal imperfection.

To this twofold inconveniency democracies and aristocracies are equally liable, whether they be good or bad. The evil is in the very thing itself, and no form can redress it.

It is therefore very probable that mankind would have been, at length, obliged to live constantly under the government of a single person, had they not contrived a kind of constitution that has all the internal advantages of a republican, together with the external force of a monarchical, government. I mean, a confederate republic.

This form of government is a convention, by which several petty states agree to become members of a larger one, which they intend to establish. It is a kind of assemblage of societies, that constitute a new one, capable of increasing by means of farther associations, till they arrive to such a degree of power, as to be able to provide for the security of the whole body....

From hence it proceeds that Holland, Germany, and the Swiss Cantons, are considered in Europe as perpetual republics.

The associations of cities were formerly more necessary than in our times. A weak defenceless town was exposed to greater danger. By conquest, it was deprived not only of the executive and legislative power, as at present, but moreover of all human property‡.

A republic of this kind, able to withstand an external force, may support itself without any internal corruption; the form of this society prevents all manner of inconveniences.

If a single member should attempt to usurp the supreme power, he could not be supposed to have an equal authority and credit in all the confederate states. Were he to have too great an influence over one, this would alarm the rest; were he to subdue a part, that which would still remain free might oppose him with forces independent of those which he had usurped, and overpower him before he could be settled in his usurpation.

Should a popular insurrection happen in one of the confederate states, the others are able to quell it. Should abuses creep into one part, they are reformed by those that remain sound. The state may be destroyed on one side and not on the other; the confederacy may be dissolved, and the confederates preserve their sovereignty.

As this government is composed of petty republics, it enjoys the internal happiness of each; and, with regard to its external situation, by means of the association, it possesseth all the advantages of large monarchies.

THE Canaanites were destroyed by reason they were petty monarchies, that had no union nor confederacy for their common defence: and, indeed, a confederacy is not agreeable to the nature of petty monarchies.

As the confederate republic of Germany consists of free cities, and of petty states subject to different princes, experience shews us, that it is much more imperfect than that of Holland and Swisserland.

The spirit of monarchy is war and enlargement of dominion: peace and moderation is the spirit of a republic. These two kinds of government cannot naturally subsist in a confederate republic.--Montesquieu, Charles. Complete Works, vol. 1 The Spirit of Laws. T. Evans, 1748, pp. 165-166. Book IX Chapters 1-2

It is fairly well-established that these paragraphs inspired in various ways Madison and Kant's Perpetual Peace. It seems to be less well known that Montesquieu is echoing Spinoza's Political Treatise (3.15-16 [recall here; here]),* where Spinoza explains how one can use conventions by which several small states agree to become members of a larger voluntary confederation. 

That we're in the ambit of Spinoza (and Machiavelli) is clear from Montesquieu's concern with corruption (which is a major theme of Spinoza's political writings, or so I argue here) and also by Montesquieu political reading of the Biblical narrative in the quoted paragraph (which also has Machiavellian roots). For, rather than emphasizing the Caananites' idolatry or Jewish providential election, Montesquieu remarks that the conquest of land of Canaan was due to institutional weakness of the Canaanites and, de facto, institutional strength of the Biblical Jews. Montesquieu echoes here, and offers a gloss, on chapter 17 [paragraphs 44-55] of the Theological Political treatise. There Spinoza had emphasized the confederate nature of the conquering Biblical Jews and compared them explicitly to the Dutch in his own day [III/210]. (Spinoza notes that the Dutch lack a common temple.)

While I don't mean to suggest that Montesquieu is slavishly echoing Spinoza here, there are further hints of Montesquieu's debts to Spinoza's chapter 17 of the TTP. For, in the quoted passage from Montesquieu I read six terse arguments in favor of confederate republics:

1. Common protection against foreign enemies. This is the defensive character of a confederacy.
2. Protection against usurpation by an individual citizen of one of the confederate states.
3. Protection against insurrection by the masses of one of the confederate states.
4. Ability to combat local rent-seeking
5. Ability to reform local institutions.
6. Ability to survive implosion of member units.

Except for the first argument, the other five all involve the capacity to notice problems in a member unit of the confederacy and for the remaining units to act on this diagnosis. And what these five arguments presuppose, thus, is that the confederacy lacks a central power that can over-awe the member units, so that the member units can be self-correcting with each other. And, in fact, near the end of chapter 17 of TTP, Spinoza notes that by turning the confederacy into a  monarchy (which does have such a central power), the first Hebrew state became vulnerable to usurpation [see paragraphs 83-111],  insurrection [107-108], corrupt/rent-seeking [106], and the inability to reform the institutions piecemeal [111].** (See also, the treatment of Benjamin by the other tribes at 17.57. And while Spinoza does not explicitly anticipate the sixth it's logically presupposed in his argument (including the survival of Judah after Israel was destroyed).

 

 

 

 

 

Why is Hume important to foucault?

It is here that knowledge breaks off its old kinship with divinatio. The latter always presupposed signs anterior to it: so that knowledge always resided entirely in the opening up of a discovered, affirmed, or secretly transmitted, sign. Its task was to uncover a language which God had previously distributed across the face of the earth; it is in this sense that it was the divination of an essential implication, and that the object of its divination was divine. From now on, however, it is within knowledge itself that the sign is to perform its signifying function; it is from knowledge that it will borrow its certainty or its probability. And though God still employs signs to speak to us through nature, he is making use of our knowledge, and of the relations that are set up between our impressions, in order to establish in our minds a relation of signification. Such is the role of feeling in Malebranche or of sensation in Berkeley; in natural judgement, in feeling, in visual impressions, and in the perception of the third dimension, what we are dealing with are hasty and confused, but pressing, inevitable, and obligatory kinds of knowledge serving as signs for discursive kinds of knowledge which we humans, because we are not pure intelligences, no longer have the time or the permission to attain to ourselves and by the unaided strength of our own minds. In Malebranche and Berkeley, the sign arranged by God is the cunning and thoughtful superimposition of two kinds of knowledge. There is no longer any divinatio involved - no insertion of knowledge in the enigmatic, open, and sacred area of signs - but a brief and concentrated kind of knowledge: the contraction of a long sequence of judgements into the rapidly assimilated form of the sign. And it will also be seen how, by a reversal of direction, knowledge, having enclosed the signs within its own space, is now able to accommodate probability: between one impression and another the relation will be that of sign to signified, in other words, a relation which, like that of succession, will progress from the weakest probability towards the greatest certainty.

The connection of ideas does not imply the relation of cause and effect, but only of a mark or sign with the thing signified. The fire which I sec is not the cause of the pain I suffer upon my approaching it, but the mark that forewarns me of it.

The knowledge that divined, at random, signs that were absolute and older than itself has been replaced by a network of signs built up step by step in accordance with a knowledge of what is probable. Hume has become possible.--Michel Foucault The Order of Things (1970) {1994, Vintage Books Edition} Translated by Alan Sheridan* (original Les Mots et les Choses, 1966), 59-60 [Emphases in original]

When confronted by Foucault's argument here it is natural to scrutinize each of the steps and try to figure out how they correspond to, say, the underlying material in Malebranche and Berkeley. But here I wan't ask a different question: why does Foucault want to emphasize that [the philosophy of] a certain definite individual has become possible? This is peculiar because the strength of Foucault's general argument does not rest in the analysis of individual philosophers, but rather in showing a kind of higher order similarity, a style of thought, or a set of structural and conceptual constraints on an era's production of knowledge in, and that only becomes visible by the study of, different fields (including a kind of linguistics and a kind of political economy and so on) alongside each other. And these constraints make all the folk in an era possible (in Foucault's sense). This is why, for example, in context, he uses the language of a "single network of necessities" and gives us a string of individuals "Hobbes, Berkeley, Hume, or Condillac." (63; see also, p. 117, where this list returns, and p. 65, where Condillac seems to be key figure in the network, and p. 70, where Hume has equal billing with Condillac. Foucault uses a different list to represent the "Classical age" -- "Locke and Linnaeus, Buffon and Hume" -- at p. 162.)

So, why single out Hume on p. 60? Now part of the answer is clear from one of my posts earlier in the week (here). Hume becomes exemplary, for Foucault, to show that while similitude/resemblance loses its central significance in its characterization of the nature of a sign, resemblance does not disappear but resides, as Foucault puts it in Humean terms, mutely 'below knowledge' acting as a natural relation behind the scenes as it were constraining our mind (see p. 68). In that post, I argued that Foucault ends up misreading Hume (and suggested that Foucault ends up misrepresenting what he calls the classical age.) I don't mean to relitigate that claim. Rather, to restate my question: why is Hume exemplary for this argument (since it is by no means obvious Foucault went back to Hume to analyze him carefully, yet simultaenously offers numerous examples that draw on Hume)? 

Part of the answer is that Hume plays a role in the self-understanding of the philosophical status quo, (Husserlian) phenomenology, that Foucault is reacting to. In this self-understanding Hume's critique is the source of the "transcendental motif" of Kant. In this self-understanding this transcendental motif gets merged with "the Cartesian theme of the cogito," and so produces Husserl's revival of "the deepest vocation of the Western ratio." (325) So, in this narrative Hume is a kind of steppingstone. Familiarity with this narrative and this Hume is often presupposed in Foucault's narrative in The Order of Things (see especially, the role of Hume in representing "radical doubt" (162)).*

It is worth noting that Foucault contests the self-understanding of phenomenology and also how it fits in the West.+  He reinterprets phenomenology as exhibiting the very "great hiatus" that Foucault has diagnosed (in the book) in the "modern episteme at the turn of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries." (325) As it happens Foucault's analysis of Hume's friend, Adam Smith, is central to understanding the nature of that hiatus (see pp. 224-225). In Foucault's account Smith articulates a principle of order that is not reducible to the analysis of representation that Foucault thinks characteristic of the classical era. (225) How to make sense of this is a topic of interest to me, but about that some other time more. 

So, let me sum up. Hume plays a triple role in The Order of Things. First, alongside a number of other familiar philosophers his works are treated as illustrations for Foucault's claims about the nature of representation and knowledge in the classical episteme. In such cases Foucault assumes considerable knowledge about Hume (and these other thinkers) among his implied audience. That Foucault can do so is explained by the second role Hume has, that is, of being a familiar steppingstone in a narrative that undergirds the self-understanding of phenomenology (which is treated as the ruling philosophical status quo by Foucault). This narrative is Foucault's target.

The main argument against this self-understanding of the past does not turn on a single philosopher -- although Adam Smith is central to the argument but on a more general reconfiguration of what the human sciences (and philosophy) were (recall this post that tries to illuminate by comparing Kuhn and Foucault).

However, and this is the third role, in characterizing the distinctive nature of the classical age, Foucault does single out Hume. And this is so because he can both assume familiarity with Hume (given the familiarity of Foucault's audience with Hume as a steppingstone in their standard narrative) as well as render Hume unfamiliar in virtue of his retelling of the story of early modern philosophy. As my post earlier in the week suggests, Foucault's analysis of Hume cannot withstand close scrutiny. This problem, if I am right, raises serious concerns about the status of his whole project [since the leading representative of the classical age by Foucault's lights does not conform to his template), although it goes beyond my remit (even pay-grade) to adjudicate the significance of this to his debate with phenomenology. But as should be clear, when Foucault revisits Hume in his lecture of  28 March 1979 in The Birth of Biopolitics his understanding of Hume is (recall here); and here) much more text-sensitive than it was in the earlier book. 

Hayek, Colonialism, Kantian Perpetual Peace, and a bit of Foucault

It is true that with the formation of such regional federations the possibility of war between the different blocs still remains, and that to reduce this risk as much as possible we must rely on a larger and looser association. My point is that the need for some association of those countries which are more similar in their civilisation, outlook, and standards. While we must aim at preventing future wars as much as possible, we must not believe that we can at one stroke create a permanent organisation which will make all war in any part of the world entirely impossible. We should not only not succeed in such an attempt, but we should thereby probably spoil our chances of achieving success in a more limited sphere. As is true with respect to other great evils, the measures by which war might be made altogether impossible for the future may well be worse than even war itself If we can reduce the risk of friction likely to lead to war, this is probably all we can reasonably hope to achieve.--Hayek (1944 [2001] The Road to Serfdom (Routledge), pp. 243-244

The quoted material are the final paragraph of the final chapter of The Road to Serfdom before Hayek's brief conclusion. It helps explain why, for example, in his account of neoliberalism in The Birth of Biopolitics, Foucault spends so much time on the history of European federalism with special attention  to Kant (recall here; here).

That certain kinds of regional federations can reduce the risk of war among member states and even between federations is a Kantian idea familiar from Perpetual Peace--a book Hayek quotes in (the later) The Constitution of Liberty (but surely familiar from the many allusions and references to it in Mises work). The Kantianism, with its emphasis on gradual growth of commercial republics, is even more explicit in the sentences preceding this final paragraph quoted above:

I believe that these considerations still hold and that a degree of co-operation could be achieved between, say, the British Empire and the nations of Western Europe and probably the United States which would not be possible on a world scale. The comparatively close association which a Federal Union represents will not at first be practicable beyond perhaps even as narrow a region as part of Western Europe, though it may be possible gradually to extend it. (p. 243)

I do not mean to suggest the sources are exclusively Kantian. Lurking in these comments are also the Smithian ideal of a transatlantic federation articulated in the Wealth of Nations, and an ideal revived in the context of (and now I quote Hayek again) "the propaganda for the "Federal Union"" (p. 239) which produced "the flood of federalist publications which in recent years has descended on us" (p. 239 n 1). For an overview of what Hayek may have in mind (and a lot more), I warmly recommend (recall; and here) The Emergence of Globalism: Visions of World Order in Britain and The United States by Or Rosenboim. (I return to this below.)

The Kantianism is not superficial in The Road to Serfdom. There is a huge emphasis on the significance of a Rechtstaat (see, especially, chapter 6) and its Kantian provenance recognized (see p. 85). And, in fact, politically, Hayek defends in The Road to Serfdom what Kant would have called a 'commercial republic.' It is no surprise, then, that in the Birth of Biopolitics, Foucault traces a lineage from Kant to the ordoliberals and Hayek. (The only awkwardness is that Foucault, while not blind to the Scottish sources on Kant, also treats Kant, not unreasonably, as inspired by Rousseau, whereas Hayek has a tendency to treat Rousseau as the source of bad/French rationalism.)

There is also a hint of Mill in these passages because Hayek seems to be presupposing a kind of civilization evolution or development ("more similar in their civilisation, outlook, and standards.") He clearly thinks it would be bad to have a federation that included the Soviet Union, and perhaps much of the former Austrian-Hungarian empire (not all of it foreseeably in the Soviet sphere in 1944). The question is to what degree this also includes Mill's ideas about civilizational superiority.

Now, because of the inclusion of the "British Empire" it is natural to read Hayek  here in light of the his then recent, and recently much discussed, Hayek (1939) "The Economic Conditions of Interstate Federalism." In that essay, Hayek explicitly wishes to keep out socialist countries from the more Atlantic oriented federation. In addition (recall), I have argued that in it (the 1939 essay), Hayek's remarks are naturally read as endorsing continued colonial rule by the federation. So, it is natural to read The Road to Serfdom as echoing this position. And through the founding of the EU, many projects of European federation explicitly or tacitly assumed continued European rule over its colonies (and market access to its dominions).

But there is clear evidence that on the question of colonialism and even (although more ambigiously) racial hierarchy, Hayek's views did evolve non-trivially. This becomes clear in light of two (successive) footnotes earlier in the chapter. I quote and discuss them separately. Both notes are meant to support and illustrate an argument against global planning lead by (an enlightened) Great Britain. There is no doubt that Hayek's main target is global planning (and other forms of 'collectivism'). The first note reads as follows:

The experience in the colonial sphere, of this country as much as of any other, has amply shown that even the mild forms of planning which we know as colonial development involve, whether we wish it or not, the imposition of certain values and ideals on those whom we try to assist. It is, indeed, this experience which has made even the most internationally minded of colonial experts so very sceptical of the practicability of an "international" administration of colonies. (pp. 229-230)

Hayek acknowledges at least two important claims: first, even if a good faith effort is made to assist and develop colonized economies, this is experienced as an "imposition of certain values and ideals on" the colonized by the colonized. Of course, in practice there also was wholescale plunder and unequal privileges. Mises, is (recall) much more outspokenly critical of colonialism. Mises is, not unlike Smith, a fierce critic of the violent extension of liberal society. And Mises has no fondness at all for the idea for the civilizational mission of European colonialism and imperial projects. I mention Mises' (1927) Liberalism 124-125, with its really outspoken critique of colonialism because Mises ends up defending (alas) some kind of role for the league of nations to secure property rights in former colonies (by way of a mandate system).

And, so second, it looks like Hayek now accepts the sceptical position of the practicability of an "international" administration of colonies of the sort that Mises might have favored in a qualified way. So, Hayek goes beyond the position of Mises. And that's not strange because Hayek is a critic of the League of Nations and its expansive ambitions; that is, in fact, the main message of the second to final page of the chapter (p. 243) In 1944 Hayek clearly rejects something like a mandate/trust system. And so, this note both explicitly rejects the settler, colonial enterprise and the trust/mandate enterprise. (I don't mean to suggest that Hayek advocates removal of settlers from places like Australia, New Zealand, Canada, etc.)

The placing of the note also suggests that Hayek thought that colonialism is as bad as what Nazi-Germany tried to impose with their "highly immoral" Grossraumwirtschaft on their European sphere of influence (229). And since that is in line of the main argument of the book, Hayek's note actually hints at an implication of the argument that is not a mere aside. If anything, while Hayek's rhetoric is certainly very cautious about the future of the British empire, I think it's pretty clear he now thinks it's immoral and probably doomed.

In fact, the second note is attached to a claim to an argument that is intended to attack the idea that "idealistic and unselfish" (230) planning by the British on a global scale is a desirable possibility. This note reads as follows:

If anyone should still fail to see the difficulties, or cherish the belief that with a little good will they can all be overcome, it will help if he tries to follow the implications of central direction of economic activity applied on a world scale. Can there be much doubt that this would mean a more or less conscious endeavour to secure the dominance of the white man, and would rightly be so regarded by all other races? Till I find a sane person who seriously believes that the European races will voluntarily submit to their standard of life and rate of progress being determined by a World Parliament, I cannot regard such plans as anything but absurd. But this does unfortunately not preclude that particular measures, which could be justified only if the principle of world direction were a feasible ideal, are seriously advocated. (p. 230)

Hayek clearly recognizes that most attempts to impose an Enlightened plan on others are in bad faith (primarily designed to secure advantages to European industry), and will certainly be regarded as such by the colonized world. 

I don't mean to ignore the fact that Hayek casts his argument here in racial terms such that the majority principle (and non-Europeans will outnumber Europeans), which might well disadvantage Europeans, is rejected on a global scale not just from obvious self-interest, but also from a kind of racial consciousness. I think Hayek's intention here is to call attention to such racial and racist consciousness among European populations not to advocate for it (although I completely grant that others may reject this.)

And so while one may well suspect that Hayek's rejection of a world state with planning powers has racist motives or is at least shaped by awareness of the significance of racist views,  the actual position in the footnote, and the previous one, is inimical to colonialism and imperialism that goes well beyond his earlier view. 

And, if anything, this understates Hayek's position. The broader context of the chapter is a defense of the viability and significance of "small countries" (his favorite examples are Holland and Switzerland). He is explicit that "we shall all be the gainers if we can create a world fit for small states to live in." (242) These two notes suggest that he is at peace with the possibility of a decolonized world of small states.

I do not mean to suggest that Hayek wishes to promote a decolonialization without constraints. For, he foresees a global order shaped by the rule of law as the Western states understand it. In Globalists: The End of Empire and the Birth of Neoliberalism, Quinn Slobodian has shown how Hayek and Mises, and the ordoliberals, embraced the idea of a global legal order to defend markets (recall here; here). That's clearly right. But I think this understates how the market order is itself a bulwark to preserve the rechtstaat (and human rights) for these neoliberals. Either way, and in in fact, lurking in this material is the ideal of a pax Americana, for Hayek writes "the great opportunity we shall have at the end of this war is that the great victorious powers, by themselves first submitting to a system of rules which they have the power to enforce, may at the same time acquire the moral right to impose the same rules upon others." (242, emphasis added) 

Hayek does not spell out if this moral right then implies, say, Hume's position who (I  think) clearly advocates the violent extension of the rule of law (as a civilizational enterprise), or if this moral right should be understood more as a duty that cannot be denied once the victors of the war are called upon by their present imperial subjects to secure the fruits of law's empire into their independent future. Either way, Hayek's turn away from colonial empire is not a turn away from civilizational, that is, law-governed, supremacy.

 

 

The Virginia School and Carl Schmitt: Wagner's Entangled Political Economy (pt 1)

    The second type of tension points to some challenging issues of dialectical theorizing. Perhaps most significantly, it appears in Buchanan’s distinction between constitutional and post-constitutional politics. This distinction was central both to The Calculus of Consent and The Limits of Liberty, and it was the dominant theme within his body of work. This tension appears clearly in the Calculus of Consent, and continues in his various subsequent efforts to use the playing of parlor games as serving as a useful framework for thinking about problems pertaining to the organization of human affairs. This scheme of thought is closed and deterministic and not open and creative. Yet there can surely be no doubt that despite his flirtations with closed schemes of thought, the Buchanan (1982) who asserted that order could be defined only through some emergent process was someone who necessarily embraced open schemes of thought that is not reducible to a few people deciding what kind of parlor game to play.
   This tension within Buchanan’s scheme of thought points toward a distinction between sentimental and muscular versions of liberalism. Perhaps nowhere is this distinction illustrated in sharper relieve than in comparing John Stuart Mill’s (1859) On Liberty with James Fitzjames Stephen’s (1873) Liberty, Equality, Fraternity. For Mill, a liberal order was easy to achieve and maintain because personal liberty, equality before the law, and humanity were universal values, so human nature provided a bedding ground within which liberalism could flourish. Stephen agreed with Mill about liberty and equality, but not about the fraternal imperative being resident within human nature. Hence, Stephen thought that force would always be part of a well-ordered society, though he recognized that force could be used to subvert a liberal order as well as to support it. For the sentimental version of liberalism conveyed by Mill and later John Rawls (1971), human governance could be reduced to ethics, law, and commerce, leaving no room for the political insertion of force into society. For the muscular version of liberalism, free societies are not self-sustaining, and can degenerate without the proper use of force. While Stephen illustrated the muscular version of liberalism luminously, James Burnham (1943) traced that muscular version back to Machiavelli, and also associated it with such figures from the early 20th century as Vilfredo Pareto, Gaetano Mosca, and Roberto Michels. Burnham could very well have added Carl Schmitt (1932) and his recognition of the autonomy of the political to his menagerie of thinkers in the spirit of muscular liberalism.

    Buchanan’s position relative to the divide between sentimental and muscular liberalism is ambiguous. Much of this thinking reflected an “end of history” style of thinking whereby political force could be abolished through the creation of the proper constitutional rules. Yet, Buchanan never fully embraced this style of thinking. Sentimental liberalism treats liberty as a universal value. If so, people should readily embrace the challenge of living as free persons. But if a good part of the population is thought to be afraid of living freely (Buchanan 2005), either sentimental expressions of liberalism will transform liberty into servility (Belloc 1912) or political power will be
marshaled to lead protesters into accepting the liberal order. --Richard E. Wagner (2017)) James Buchanan’s "Liberal Theory of Political Economy: A Valiant but Failed Effort to Square the Circle" [published in Buchanan's Tensions: Reexamining the Political Economy and Philosophy of James M. Buchanan Edited by Peter J. Boettke and Solomon Stein , 2018.]

There is persistent strain of scholarship that aims to link important theorists of neo-liberalism -- Hayek, Eucken, Buchanan, Milton Friedman, etc. -- to Carl Schmitt's legal theory in order to unmask or show the true character of neo-liberalism. This is often illustrated with some references to their entanglement with Pinochet's dictatorship. While I do not want to dismiss such scholarship out of hand -- in some neoliberals, especially in Hayek, there is a strain of accommodation with temporary benevolent dictatorship --, but it is often not very illuminating. Sometimes, more rarely really, the point of the exercise is self-consciously to rehabilitate Schmitt as a kind of liberal, although one "free from democratic contamination." The quote is from a fascinating (1984) article in the Canadian Journal of Political Science by F.R. Cristi, a philosopher then at Wilfred Laurier.

I became aware of Cristi because I have been recently reading Richard E. ('Dick') Wagner's late works (at the urging of some of his students and admirers). Wagner is James Buchanan's first PhD student (or among the first), and also among his most prominent ones who played an important role in the development of 'Virginia school' public choice (alongside Buchanan, Tullock, and Nutter). More recently, Wagner has been developing an approach within public choice -- entangled political economy -- which draws on network theory, systems theory, polycentrism, and the Italian elite school (especially Pareto, Mosca, Michel, etc.) as well as the left strain of Austrian economics (associated with Wieser). Wagner also has a fondness for the sociologist, Elias. Wagner is widely read in social theory, and unusually for an economist, does not hide it. One reason to be interested in Wagner's entangled political economy is in its sober analysis of political life. For if corrosive rent-seeking by the powerful and connected is one of the Achilles-heels of liberal democracy then liberalism, or at least a realist liberalism (say of the sort defended by Matt Sleat) needs to come to terms with it. 

Much to my surprise, in Wagner's late works, Schmitt repeatedly shows up as an 'authoritarian liberal' and he cites Cristi's work repeatedly as source for this. (To be sure not the 1984 article I quoted above, but Cristi's 1998, book Carl Schmitt and Authoritarian Liberalism. But judging by Wagner's description of the latter the view is close to the 1984 article.) My own view -- which I share with Perry Anderson (no friend of liberalism) is -- that (recall) "Schmitt...never had any truck with liberalism." Leaving aside Cristi's motives and project, the question that I wish to pursue here is to what degree Wagner's position -- with its advocacy for a 'muscular' species of liberalism -- remains broadly liberal. 

The problem is that Wagner inserts his analysis in a historical set of contrasts attached to familiar names in the liberal tradition. On one side are Mill, Rawls, and much of Buchanan. These are sentimental liberals. And they are so called because and now I re-quote Wagner "human governance could be reduced to ethics, law, and commerce, leaving no room for the political insertion of force into society." I suspect that strictly speaking this claim is false about all three purported sentimentalists. But it's also a sufficiently familiar (realist) criticism of the latter two that I will accept something like it for the sake of argument.* In another work, Wagner explains this point (about the reduction of human governance to ethics, law, and commerce) as follows:

To assert the autonomy of the political seems superficially to clash with the traditional or classical notion of a society of free and independent individuals, perhaps still associated most strongly with John Stuart Mill (1863). This notion of liberalism appears to seek to reduce the political to some combination of economics, law, and ethics. The reduction to economics reflects the autonomy of economizing action. The reduction to law reflects the idea of a rule of law as replacing a rule of men, about which Rajagopalan and Wagner (2013) voice skepticism. The reduction to ethics reflects a presumption that humanity can will itself to be governed along the principles of one of those peaceable kingdom paintings where lions are lying with lambs. "The logic of economizing action: Universal form and particular practice" in (2016) Politics as a Peculiar Business: Insights from a Theory of Entangled Political Economy.

Before I get to this, I have to admit I find the way Wagner draws a contrast (in the material quoted at the top of this post) between Mill and Stephen a bit puzzling. While Stephen had many perceptive criticisms of the kind of hypocrisy and ideological blinders required to call Victorian England in any sense 'equal', his own underlying commitment was (as was clear to then contemporary commentators like Morley) un-egalitarian. To quote a key line from Stephen: "Men are fundamentally unequal, and this inequality will show itself arrange society as you like." See Liberty, Equality, Fraternity (LF ed.). Liberty Fund, 1874, pp. 152-153. (This is from the chapter 5, on the 'modern creed' of equality.) I return to Stephen's position below. I also found it odd to see Mill characterized as holding that "a liberal order was easy to achieve and maintain because personal liberty, equality before the law, and humanity were universal values." After all, Mill thought, to simplify, that many societies required English tutelage to be prepared for a liberal order.

Burnham was not confused about these matters during the phase when he was most enamored by Machiavelli and the Italian elite thinkers. In that period he did not think of himself as a liberal (either in the progressive twentieth century sense or the more nineteenth century classical sense that Buchanan ended up identifying himself with). After all, Burnham (a philosophically trained ex-Trotskyite) thought that managerialism would make liberalism (and Marxism) obsolete. One reason why his writings from the 1940s [recall The Managerial Revolution (1941) and The Machiavellians: the Defenders of Freedom (1943)] are so fascinating is that he is extremely insightful on the implosion of early twentieth century liberalism and the contours of the post WWII settlement, while completely missing the possibility of a neo-liberal revival.

I don't mean to suggest that there are no liberal ideas in Burnham. Burnham is explicitly not laissez-faire, and he denies that respect for private property is the end all or be all to defend what he calls 'freedom.' Rather he thinks that what's required for freedom is the possibility to provide criticism of the government, which must be constrained by law. And he thinks (in Madisonian fashion, and certainly this picks up a strain in Machiavelli) that it is competing powers/forces that maintain this freedom (beyond mores/norms). For Burnham the lesson is that concentrated power is dangerous. So, here Burnham is an accord with the ordoliberals of his own age, and trustbusters of the progressive era. But he argues this without much interest in much of what characterizes liberalism. (Burnham's rejection of equality slides into outright racism and sexism in his later work see (e.g. Suicide of the West)).

As an aside, I don't mean to suggest that there is no route into liberalism from Pareto (who was a liberal for most of  his life) and Italian Elite theory (as mediated by Burnham). The French political sociologist, Raymond Aron, read Burnham carefully and did develop a species of liberalism in which responsible elites play an important role.+

If we turn to Wagner's own use of Burnham and Schmitt, we see that what's crucial for him within his development of entangled political economy is what Wagner calls the 'autonomy of the political.' By this he means I think three distinct (but mutually supporting) claims: (i) politics is not reducible to economics or the economy (and so also has a proper form of activity of its own [and that analytically must be captured by its own methods])--sometimes there is an added claim that politics is 'parasitic' on the economy; (ii) the use of force is intrinsic to the political and, ultimately, unavoidable in political life. (The "parlor games" tend to obscure this fact.) Liberals who take liberal values for granted, and democrats who take democratic commitments of the people for granted, ultimately miss this point. (iii) Left to their own devices, the liberal economic order and civil society are not self-sustaining (hence the recurring crises within liberalism). What's needed is political will and force to save the liberal economic order from its own impotence (or crises).

In my view the great significance of Wagner's entangled political economy is its willingness to address the possibility (and dangers accompanying) the fact that liberalism may not be self-sustaining. And I hope to return to it before long. But I do want to register that Wagner's purported realism has slid into illiberalism in two characteristic ways. First, it's bedrock in liberalism, and anachronistically or not, Locke is the godfather of the idea, that force has to be backed by (legitimate) law and that if such law is unavailable, but the survival of individual members of society requires discretion, the use of force can be made accountable after the fact. (I owe this way of formulating it (recall) to Hume and Nomi Claire Lazar's States of Emergency in Liberal Democracies.)

It is by no means obvious that Wagner embraces this bedrock idea because his repeated invocations of Schmitt are meant to convey the idea "that the autonomy of the political within society is bound up in the ability of those who hold political power to act on and grant exceptions to rules and to act on and reinforce distinctions between friends and enemies." (from "Parasitical political calculation" in (2016) Politics as a Peculiar Business.) And accountability is never paired with this principle. 

Second, I have a sneaky suspicion that Wagner agrees with Stephen's rejection of egalitarianism. This is clear from another passage in Politics as a Peculiar Business that I will quote at length:

The autonomy of the political reflects recognition that power is ever present in society, along with recognition that people differ among themselves in both abilities and interests as these pertain to the relative attractiveness of comparatively introversive and extroversive lines of activity. In this respect, participation in political activity seems likely to hold generally stronger appeal for relatively extroversive types who find public interaction to be a source of energy rather than draining it away. While the autonomy of the political appears in the surface impression that a small number of rulers dominate large masses of citizens, that surface impression hides the sub-surface recognition that power is latent in human nature, and which manifests itself in numerous particular ways historically. That latency and its particular manifestation starts from recognition that humans could potentially be studied within the rubric of ethology as the study of the higher mammals, as against being studied as an independent species....While there may be little difference between a street porter and a philosopher (Levy and Peart, eds. 2008) when operating alone in Crusoe-like fashion, differences arise in societal settings, increasingly so as societal complexity increases as represented by an increasingly stratified division of labor, and with those differences both promoting hierarchy and intensifying the autonomy of the political.
To refer to human sociality is not necessarily to refer to something pleasant. Sociality might be pleasant, but often it is not. Sociality refers simply to orientations and activities that involve a multiple of people, and so are not phenomena recognizable to a Robinson Crusoe. The social mammals mostly exist in cooperative packs. A pack of wolves can bring down a moose even though the aggregate weight of those wolves is less than that of the moose. From time to time, quarrels will arise among the wolves in a pack, and with one of the quarreling wolves emerging as the leader of the pack. The social mammals display cooperation, conflict, and hierarchy as inseparable or entangled qualities, and human societies are no different in this regard.

It is possible that Wagner here is merely making a descriptive claim about the inevitability of social hierarchy in societies characterized by an advanced division of labor. But it is notable that he does so while stipulating that Levy & Peart's analytic egalitarianism only holds in small societies. For it is central to their analytic egalitarianism (which I tend to defend) -- which treats humans as broadly equal [in the way that Hobbes does] -- that any observed differences are due to social causes (not necessarily reducible to innate human differences). And so it looks like Wagner wishes to emphasize those features of elite theory that emphasize innate differences and social hierarchies and so implies that the elite that rules (with calibrated force), does so by nature (not law).

 

Liberalism after Ukraine, Part 1: two kinds of nationalism and a new cold war

Don’t turn a blind eye on this...Come out and support Ukraine as much as you can...

If we fall, you will fall,...

And if we win, and I’m sure we’ll win, this will be the victory of the whole democratic world, this will be the victory of our freedom, this will be the victory of light over darkness, of freedom over slavery...

And if we win we will become as blossoming as Europe and Europe will be flourishing more than ever.--Volodymyr Oleksandrovych Zelenskyy (March 4, 2022)

I am writing this in a protectorate under the umbrella of Pax Americana, which I understand as empire with liberal characteristics. It is imperial because it fundamentally relies on a hegemon who holds the strings of military and economic power, and benefits from having the world's reserve currency. Some of its protectorates fall under NATO or AUKUS umbrella, others have more direct effective security guarantees (Japan, South Korea, Israel, Taiwan, Singapore, etc.) In some cases it's not entirely clear how wide the freedom of independent movement in foreign policy is for countries under Pax Americana. But anyone who has followed the development of a new sanctions regime on Russia during the last two weeks would have noticed that this empire is capable of rapid coordination and consensus building even when non trivial economics interests are at stake.

I use 'liberal characteristics' because within the empire it is broadly governed by public rules, by mutual consultation, and commitment to free-ish markets in goods and capital, and Pax Americana functions most smoothly when the protectorates themselves approximate liberal democracy. It is not wholly liberal (as restrictions on movements of peoples testify), and it lacks a federative structure (although some sub-units have it) among other obvious shortcomings (including non-trivial rights violations of populations in non-trivial number of places). It is also not wholly liberal in its approach to the world, especially when it comes to energy supply, Islamic rejectionists of Pax Americana, and revolutions that are taken to be anti-capitalist in character. 

One interesting feature of Pax Americana since 1989 is its ability to accommodate a modus vivendi with would-be-competitors (China, Russia, and even to some degree India) who reject liberalism or American hegemony (or both). The motives for this accommodation have, as in most statecraft, been varied: ranging from nuclear deterrence and from economic opportunism (including legalized graft with American and European elites being bought by foreign interests), to a liberal faith that drawing states into win-win rule-governed trade and cultural/scientific relations will transform would be competitors into would be collaborators. This has also meant ignoring and soft-pedalling, even appeasing, all kinds of military aggression and local/regional rights violations. More insidiously, it has meant that the red lines of Pax Americana became fuzzy to its enemies and, more dangerously yet, to its own rulers (with former President Trump going so far as repeatedly signaling acquiescence in the dissolution of Nato and its network of treaties). 

By contrast, I understand China and Russia, for all their differences, as mercantilist, nationalist dictatorships (hereafter MNDs). By 'Mercantile' I mean an approach to trade designed primarily to increase state power and to serve the economic interest of relatively narrow ruling elites. Under mercantilism war is profitable to the elites and the state, and so always a live option. By putting it like this I don't mean to ignore wholly the fascist elements in contemporary Russia (not the least the willingness to use thugs to enforce obedience), or the ways in which Christianity (in its orthodox variety) has become an instrument of state, and the significance of one-party nominally Marxist rule in China. I also don't mean to deny that war is quite profitable for some elites in liberal empire.

I don't mean to suggest only China and Russia (etc.) are nationalist. It's fair to say that neither nationalism nor war has been banished from Europe. That's sad, but not unexpected. But the reactions to the (2022) Russian invasion of Ukraine also reveal that there really are two kinds of nationalisms competing for influence at the moment, and surprisingly hostile to each other. The first kind is a nationalism that instinctively leans toward authoritarianism & strongmen. It may well be democratic (as in majoritarian rule), but it dominates local minorities, and has a distrust of pluralism and open borders. If given the opportunity such nationalism may well grow into imperialism. These authoritarian nationalists are cheering on Putin (or are quiet now).

The second kind of nationalism is stimulated by a foreign enemy, and need not be authoritarian at all. The nation is a means toward independence and freedom that's compatible with cosmopolitan desire to join up with other independent nations while protecting minority rights. The second kind of nationalism can be found in folk cheering on Ukrainian nationalism (which, in practice, may not always be so pluralist). The ideal type of this kind of nationalism is Scottish civic nationalism. And when President Zelenskyy addresses European crowds and heads of state he is very much drawing on a shared understanding of this more cosmopolitan nationalism centered on a common idea of a free and peaceful Europe. If one wishes to avoid confusion one can call the second kind of nationalism -- with a nod to Kant [8:291] -- 'patriotic.'

Historically, during the nineteenth century especially, liberalism has made common cause with nationalism of both varieties. (Roughly: before 1871 the second kind; after 1871 the first kind.)  The escalated attack on Ukraine, which is being attacked in part because it wishes to participate in and taste the fruits of Pax Americana and join the EU, has clarified for many that they do not wish to be fellow travelers of the first kind of nationalism. And even for those that often naturally embrace the first kind of nationalism (e.g., the leadership of Poland, Hungary, and, perhaps, Turkey), see in Pax Americana a lesser evil than Russian expansion.

A lot of friends of cosmopolitanism and pluralism have a natural distrust of intense nationalism, especially because its loudest advocates are natural authoritarians. So, the revival of a more civic and cosmopolitan nationalism to balance it is not altogether unwelcome even to those who keep a distance of patriotism and national identity. And Ukrainian heroisms will strengthen the prestige of patriotic nationalism. For, Putin's recent escalation of his eight year war on Ukraine and patriotic Ukrainian heroism has  induced re-armament of European liberal democracy, has increased its willingness to arm Ukraine, and has ended European appeasement of Putin. 

By focusing on Putin's regime's mercantile-nationalistic character (and downplaying its Christian-fascist tendencies), I want to facilitate a sober discussion of its escalating aggression, especially amongst those liberals (of classical free market and egalitarian types), who naturally and quite humanely recoil from the current sanctions regime which falls asymmetrically on innocents and the less well connected in Russia, and is likely to entrench the existing regime because now its elites have more opportunity for rents, bribery, and smuggling. It is foreseeable that the sanctions and policy of isolation strengthen the repressive apparatus and reduce the likelihood of regime change in the short run because they undermine the (relatively weak, alas) opposition in Russia. The war and sanctions also hurt poor people the world over, especially because it is to be expected that food and energy prices will increase. 

MNDs are not easy to defeat; often the best one can hope for is gradual mitigation and internal evolution. And while this is not heroic, it is always to be wished for. And, if in its foreign policy, China remains as cautious as it presently is it will remain a viable competitor to Pax Americana while simultaneously being enriched and enriching (economically, scientifically, and culturally) those that fall under Pax Americana.* And, perhaps, in its rivalry it will even occasion further renewal of liberalism. (As regular readers know, during last decade or so, I have come to believe that the survival of liberalism in its traditional Anglo and European heartlands cannot be taken for granted and that it exhibits malaise and drift through financial recession, pandemic, Brexit, and a 'war' on terror that jointly have made authoritarian, nationalist-mercantilist leadership increasingly seem more attractive to non-trivial parts of electorates.)

But MNDs can be defeated. Liberalism both grew out of mercantilism and, where joined to nationalism, has defeated some MNDs before. And it has done so by bankrupting them while maintaining military supremacy. The most notable example is, of course, the implosion and bankruptcy of the French monarchy over a thirty year period after the Seven Year's war.

I argued last week that while sanctions and isolation are lousy policies, the alternatives are worse. In my view the justification of the present sanctions and policy of isolation and disinvestment toward Russia is to reduce its war-making capability, to increase its internal coordination costs, and to end the enrichment that has made its aggression toward its neighbors so easy. The present plans to accelerate decoupling from Russian hydrocarbon sources fit this strategy, too. The asset freeze on the Russian central bank has induced a financial implosion and will, I suspect, end ruble convertibility. And while I worry that Ukraine is being armed and financed just sufficiently and cynically to maintain itself in a war of attrition with Russia without any hope of acquiring the kind of arms that could see it reverse Russian gains, such a war of attrition will also bankrupt Russia (and/or make it a client state of China which, I argued last week, is probably the best to be hoped for by outsiders in present circumstances).+

But while it is unlikely that Putin will change his policies or be unseated by sanctions and isolation, these also make it unlikely that his regime can survive his demise (he is almost 70 now). Maintaining the unity of the Russian federation with its ageing population will be a herculean task once foreign cash is absent. More important the battle-field in Ukraine and the more visible economic stagnation and relentless propaganda will sap its slogans from whatever vitality they might once possess; its military victories, if any, will take on an increasingly pyrrhic character. And he has gifted Europe's liberal democracies the greatest gift of all: a population re-alerted to what is at stake in political life, and nearly united, patriots and cosmopolitans alike, in rejecting Putin's poisoned chalice.   (To be continued.)

 

 

Hume, Lazar, Locke, and the State of Exception, revisited

The protector, the two secretaries, the council of state, with any five or more that the senate appoints, are possessed, on extraordinary emergencies, of dictatorial power for six months.--David Hume, Idea Of a Perfect Commonwealth

Seven years ago (recall) I discussed the quoted passage on this blog, and then eventually published a paper on the material (here). Today, I revisit it because of an extraordinarily fertile book (published in 2009), States of Emergency in Liberal Democracies by Nomi Claire Lazar, which I recently read and had overlooked before. Lazar offers what she calls a 'Lockean' approach to states of emergency amply documented in Locke's Second Treatise, but developed and elaborated by her in very creative ways.

Now, the key move of Lazar's Lockean approach is to insist that states of emergency need not abolish accountability (of the sovereign, the executive, the dictator). In the right sort of political order, accountability is "an ever-present possibility." (p. 149) And one of the neatest chapters in her book shows that this is even so in the case of the institution of Roman dictatorship (made famous (recall) by Livy in his treatment of Cincinnatus). Such accountability can be formal in a political and juridical sense. Or it can be more informal by way of the political restraints of countervailing powers and forces, including public opinion.

That during states of emergencies accountability need not be abolished builds on another key insight of hers: that there is no sharp division between states of emergency and the ordinary rule of law. In particular, first, in both instances rights derogation occur, but the manner in which this happens is different. In fact, her book reminds the reader that even in the most noble liberal democracies, many of our rights can be derogated within the ordinary rule of law (as rights clash or in instances of ordinary punishment). This is recognized in treaties and constitutions that set an explicit limit on which rights can be derogated (see p. 145). Second, these rights derogations reflect the ordinary pluralism, even "pervasive" conflict of values in ordinary political life (p. 89).

And, third, office holders have considerable discretion not just in cases understood as emergencies, but also in ordinary political life. As Locke notes in his "Of Prerogative," which, as noted, is important to Lazar's overall argument, "many things there are, which the law can by no means provide for; and those must necessarily be left to the discretion of him that has the executive power in his hands, to be ordered by him as the public good and advantage shall require." (Second Treatise, Chapter 14, sect 159; quoted by Lazar on p. 116). The cumulative effect of these three points is that states of emergency are part and parcel of what Locke (and Foucault) call the 'art of government.' If Lazar is right -- and she is -- then states of emergency also belong to a distinctly liberal art of government.

However, there is also a complication. And I introduce it by way of Locke. Locke goes on to claim that this discretion is in the service of "public good and advantage" in the context of circumstances "that as much as may be, all the members of the society are to be preserved...for the end of government being the preservation of all." It is notable that Locke puts this not in terms of the survival of society (the effect of, or instituted by, the social contract), but rather in terms of the preservation of  "all" the individuals (the "members") that compose society. On Locke's view, the prerogative, thus, really is in the service of the preservation of (individual) life rather than, say, the preservation of the state.  (This makes sense because for Locke, unlike Hobbes, we can survive just fine outside society and the state.)

The claim in the previous paragraph nicely illustrates Lazar's point that "emergency powers take on the moral character of the end they serve." (p. 138) In Locke, then, the prerogative and the powers it licenses are means toward serving the interests of individuals. Admittedly, Locke often treats this in terms of serving the "public good" -- which is more expansive than mere individual survival --, so I don't mean to suggest that for Locke emergency powers ought only focus on preservation of bare life. But for Locke the proper functioning prerogative is in the service of the same values as those that justify the social contract. And in so far as we can treat these as liberal -- some will object here to my anachronism here -- for Locke emergency powers can be liberal.

The point of my last two paragraphs is to note that Lazar goes beyond Locke in an important way . To be sure, Locke anticipates, as she notes, her claim that public opinion is an important check on the use of prerogative. But rather (and this gets me to the complication), for Lazar, emergency powers are invoked when "the state order through which norms and laws are normally enforced is threatened, the order itself is threatened." (p. 103) As she recognizes the preservation of such order is not self-evidently a liberal value. In her account this is not a bug, but a feature. Because for her, 'extra-liberal values' are also "pervasive" in "the moral life of liberal democracies." (P. 93) She includes "security, order, desert, group cohesion, cultural pluralism, and the preservation and expression of cultural heritage" among the list of pervasive non liberal values, and the source of pervasive pluralism and conflict of values in liberal democracies. 

And the way Lazar handles this conflict -- and this puts her in the camp of political realists -- is to distinguish between the "quotidian ethics animating the day-to-day functions of political order" which are constituted by "liberal values" and the "existential ethics" that govern the foundation and preservation of the liberal democratic order (p. 88; see also p. 12). And such existential ethics "are characterized by their relative uniformity across regime types." (24) So, for Lazar, the ordinary liberal art of government always involves navigating extra liberal values. And this is, we might say, intensified and more noticeable during states of emergency where the existential ethics that guide the preservation of order may be more important.

In a way, Lazar meets contemporary critics of liberalism, often inspired by Schmitt on their own ground (recall this post on Agamben). These tend to insist that the state of emergency is always (and hypocritically) lurking in liberal practice. And such critics have had ample ammunition during the last (say) fifteen years with the ways in which central banks operated during the great financial recession, the ways in which France (and other countries) have tackled Islamic terrorism, and the ways in which the Pandemic has been governed. Lazar shows that the critics are not wholly wrong in calling attention to the phenomenon, but they misunderstand the significance of it. 

As an aside, I take the positing of two such ethics as characteristic of what is now known as political realism, which insists that political life has norms of its own and, if the state is worth having, ought to be governed by them. (For a an important recent paper on this, see Matt Sleat here, which nicely refutes the idea that such political norms must be non-moral a view he associates with my colleague Enzo Rossi.) And Lazar's slender work (but fertile in ideas) ought to have a place in the developing canon of recent political realism.*

Be that as may, as should be clear from what I said above I do not think Locke is committed to such bifurcation between quotidian ethics and existential ethics. Because for Locke the state of nature is livable, the preservation of order is always instrumental to the grounds of (entering) civil society.

Having said that,  Lazar's view does characterize Hume's position nicely. (For recent work on Hume as such a political realist, see Andrew Sabl's book (here), and my paper.) As the quoted passage above makes clear, in his ideal constitutional order, Hume made place for provisions of states of emergency. That order -- it is a federation -- is modeled (and Hume is explicit on this) on Dutch political arrangements improved in light of experience. And, in fact, Hume's construction quite clearly addresses a weakness in the Dutch political order that Hume has diagnosed in his History. That in foreign policy affairs its decision-making process could be too slow and so too vulnerable to foreign influence: 

The articles of this confederacy [viz. the defensive alliance between England Holland negotiated by Temple and De Witt] were soon adjusted by such candid and able negotiators: But the greatest difficulty still remained. By the constitution of the republic, all the towns in all the provinces must give their consent to every alliance; and besides that this formality could not be dispatched in less than two months, it was justly to be dreaded, that the influence of France would obstruct the passing of the treaty in some of the smaller cities. D’Estrades, the French ambassador, a man of abilities, hearing of the league, which was on the carpet, treated it lightly; “Six weeks hence,” said he, “we shall speak to it.” To obviate this difficulty, de Wit had the courage, for the public good, to break through the laws in so fundamental an article; and by his authority, he prevailed with the States General at once to sign and ratify the league: Though they acknowledged,13th Jan. that, if that measure should displease their constituents, they risqued their heads by this irregularity. [Emphasis added]

The emphasized part in the quoted passage nicely illustrates one of Lazar's key points that even in an emergency, a political leader is aware of the reality of accountability and acts accordingly.+

In larger context, Hume presents De Witt as acting for the survival of the Dutch republic which is threatened by (their former ally) France which has just overrun Flanders. And so the alliance with England is negotiated (while England and Holland are still at war with each other!) in order to save "the remaining provinces of the Low Countries could be thereby saved from the danger, with which they were at present threatened." And it is clear that for Hume the survival of the state, the continued existence of order (and property), "the public good" justifies the means. While Hume rejects the social contract, he is in this respect closer to Hobbes than to Locke (as I have argued in a paper with Spencer Pack here).

That, for Hume, non-liberal values can guide the art of government is illustrated by Hume's praise for the De Witt (earlier in the 1665 war with England) "by his management a spirit of union was preserved in all the provinces." This shows that for Hume the conditions that maintain the survival of the state -- this includes among them such a public spirit -- are, indeed, part of the non-liberal art of government. So, I'd like to suggest that Hume (who I am here treating as a key thinker in the liberal tradition) is the historical figure that anticipates Lazar's position.