Digressions&Impressions

On Crooked Timber.

The last two months have been challenging for me, hence my lack of blogging. They aren’t limited to losing my advisor. But what I have seen running throughout many of these challenges is a kind of a deep psychological that I will call wounds of the heart.

A wound of the heart is an emotional hurt that generates intense, seemingly unbearable psychic stress and that can create long-term damage to one’s personality due to overpowering negative moral emotions, like resentment and hatred, and that may last for the rest of one’s life. They are typically caused by some act by one’s close friends, family, or community. The wounded person believes the act signals that the offending group bears him or her bad will, and that the group does not love or support the wounded person in the way he or she had counted upon in the past. It can overwhelm the wounded person’s agency, leading them to lash out and creating a new harm, and perhaps wounding the hearts of others. When multiple parties to a relationship have wounds of the heart, that can spell the death of the relationship, even if the relationship continues pro forma.--Kevin Vallier The Wounds of the Heart

Because one of my entries into the history of philosophy was by way of Isaiah Berlin, I have always associated his quotation from Kant that "Out of the crooked timber of humanity no straight thing was ever made" with an important truth. To this day the core idea informs my own skeptical liberalism.

But as always the story has wrinkles.

So for years I shared Ingrid Robeyns' sense, appropriately shared at the mother of all philosophical blogs, CT, that Berlin's translation improved on the original, Aus so krummem Holze, als woraus der Mensch gemacht ist, kann nichts ganz Gerades gezimmert werden. I still do. However, it is not often remarked that Kant added a footnote, to this very sentence; and it is worth noting it, too:

The role of man is very artificial. How it may be with the dwellers on other planets and their nature we do not know. If, however, we carry out well the mandate given us by Nature, we can perhaps flatter ourselves that we may claim among our neighbors in the cosmos no mean rank. Maybe among them each individual can perfectly attain his destiny in his own life. Among us, it is different; only the [human] race can hope to attain it."*

There are really two fine issues here: first, that we may be part of a larger family of planetary denizens. This is an idea that excited Huygens and Newton. And from Kant's pre-critical writings we know (recall) that Kant was much impressed by Newton's ideas on this point. And Kant assumes that, once we get into the habit of  this, we will adopt a perspective in which we are judged by such aliens. Maria Pia Paganelli has suggested -- in commenting on a similar idea in Adam Smith -- that this can be traced by to Fontenelle's Conversations on the Plurality of Worlds. It's plausible this also influenced Kant because Kant's earlier Universal Natural History is clearly shaped as I argued (based on a suggestion by Martin Schönfeld) by Fontenelle's work. So, Kant's cosmopolitanism here is truly cosmopolitan. I assume this is known among Kant experts, but the thought always delights me. 

Second, in the note Kant articulates the thought that that any attainable future worth having is a collaborative or shared project. I can think no better way of characterizing the liberal project in that it simultaneously holds that we should assume the unreformable weakness of individuals and that as humanity we're in it together. This is why, the more I reflect on it, the more I recognize that global, maybe cosmic (yeah for Star Trek!) federation is the liberal political destiny. 

This morning, in a wistful, apprehensive mood,  I returned to Seneca Letter 50. The letter is really about the comic-from- without-maddening-from-within realization that the more we run away from our problems, and disown them, the more we find them not just sneaking up on us, but defining us:

For what else are you busied with except improving yourself every day, laying aside some error, and coming to understand that the faults which you attribute to circumstances are in yourself? We are indeed apt to ascribe certain faults to the place or to the time; but those faults will follow us, no matter how we change our place.

And yet, I was in no mood to be preached to by Seneca that the way forward is a regimen of self-improvement. My mind drifted back toward's Vallier's post quoted above. As the reach of life has shrunk during this pandemic, and in my solitude, I more easily and directly encounter evidence of how my past wounds create new harms; I re-read, and I recognize myself in the self-portrait he draws. Kevin writes of 'soldiering on.' I wince at the bellicose nature of the phrase, despite seeing the tenderness in the rest of Kevin's words. The soldiering on reminds me of the bit of the part of Seneca -- preparing for death -- I like least.    

Without realizing it I had read on in Seneca. And there, I was surprised to read (in  Richard Gummere's 1917 translation), There is nothing that will not surrender to persistent treatment, to concentrated and careful attention; however much the timber may be bent, you can make it straight again.  [Nihil est, quod non expugnet pertinax opera et intenta ac diligens cura; robora in rectum quamvis flexa revocabis. Curvatas trabes calor explicat et aliter natae in id finguntur, quod usus noster exigit; quanto facilius animus accipit formam, flexibilis et.]

    Of course, Seneca must believe that self-improvement is possible, I think.

But, as I re-read I realize that Seneca thinks this, too, is a collaborative project: "we begin to mold and reconstruct our souls before they are hardened by crookedness" ["ante animum nostrum formare incipimus et recorrigere quam indurescat pravitas eius]. In Kevin's vocabulary, we soldier on in a platoon. Of course, the larger context of the Letter suggests that Seneca thinks we do this under the guidance of a mentor. 

I then remembered Kant. And now looking at what I have written, I am struck by the thought that I have been eavesdropping on a great debate between the two wings of cosmopolitanism: disagreeing about the means, but both claiming that we're in this together. My gloom dissipates. 

 

 

What Causes Revolutions? Vallier on Piketty

Piketty is right that there exists a margin of wealth and/or income inequality that will produce a social revolution of some sort. If, for instance, the top 1% owned 99% of all wealth, then we’d almost certainly see some violence. However, what Piketty never seems to see is that whatever forms of social revolution or instability might be exacerbated by inequality, revolution is also a function of the absolute well-being of the groups in revolt. If, for instance, the income and wealth held by the least-advantaged largely provides them with a decent form of life, then they will be much less likely to revolt or use violence than if they were impoverished. So, social revolution is a function of both wealth inequality and absolute levels of wealth (among many other factors). Piketty never acknowledges this.--Kevin Vallier, Bleeding Heart Libertarians.

Vallier -- whose blog posts I read religiously - is an up-and-coming political philosopher. I am eager to learn from his detailed criticism(s) of the normative underpinnings of Piketty's Capital (cf. my ongoing series). But Vallier's post poses the following question:

What causes revolution?

That is, in some sense, an empirical question (although I argue below that it is not wholly an empirical question). It's not obvious that a given economist, Piketty, or given philosopher, Vallier, has a comparative advantage on this issue. Even so, a lot turns on it.  Vallier offers us a proto-theory of revolution:

• [A] there exists a margin of wealth and/or income inequality that will produce a social revolution of some sort.
• [B] revolution is also a function of the absolute well-being of the groups in revolt.
• [C] If...income and wealth held by the least-advantaged largely provides them with a decent form of life, then they will be much less likely to revolt or use violence than if they were impoverished.
• [D] Social revolution is a function of both wealth inequality and absolute levels of wealth (among many other factors).

We can recognize in [B-C] a watered-down version of an application of the difference principle. (I say 'watered down' because [B-C] do not require that boats are being lifted along the way, only that a level of decency is maintained.)*

Now, as we learn from 18th century political economy, 'decent' is culture/society relative. So, how people and theorists understand what is decent will be influenced not just by the 'facts,' but als by people's beliefs about what counts as 'decent.' Once one reflects on this, one recognizes that what really matters is how would-be-revolutionaries interpret their circumstances: this interpretation can, in fact, include considerations of fairness and equity borrowed from moral theory. It will also include expectations about trends. In fact:

Piketty, Ray, and Economic Explanation

Inequality has been rising, and to see it well, one should study “top incomes,”: those of the top 1% or even, in a variant which we might call SuperOccupy, the top 0.1% or 0.01%. This is an extremely important observation. There are lots of people in the top 1% (more in India, for instance, than in a good-sized European country), and they cast a long and enviable shadow...Even a large sample survey will often fail to pick these people up, so Piketty’s meticulous examination of tax records (along with co-authors) in different countries is to be applauded. This is data work at its best, with a well-defined reason for doing it, and when I read the papers with Emmanuel Saez and Tony Atkinson that put these findings together, I felt I had learnt something.--D. Ray, on Piketty's Capital. [HT Hülya Eraslan]

One of the most important economists today that you probably have never heard of, Debraj Ray,* wrote a careful, amusing, and -- as one ought to expect -- very insightful response to Piketty's Capital. Ray matters in economics: he is the co-editor of the leading journal. Ray is one of the intellectual leaders of the new generation of 'theorists' that combine mathematical sophistication and data with a focus on policy relevance.* Ray is also an important figure in development economics, which he has helped move to the center of the discipline. You might think such sociology is irrelevant, but as Ray notes, Piketty's Capital has a self-presentation and narrative which is a form of "positioning" that appeals to his once-inside now purported outside-status in the profession. Part of Piketty's rhetoric is to rail against "simplistic mathematical models" (16; 574, and, especially, the autobiography on p. 31-2 culminating in an indictment against "petty mathematical problems.") This is not just a matter of mere positioning within economics; for, -- and Ray does not comment on this -- at crucial junctures, Piketty relies on a contrast between the esoteric mathematical models of the experts and democratic decision-making under conditions of transparency (e.g., 480, 513; recall also this post; Vallier also picks up on this [3E/3P] and will blog about in the future). But it is also a matter of positioning oneself as being the privileged expert with the public. Even if Ray's irritation were wholly self-interested, he has put his finger on on a non-trivial feature of Piketty's rhetorical strategy. (Don't get me wrong lots of economists become such privileged experts with worse strategies: i.e., they are bought by some interested party, or they get chosen by a politician who likes what s/he hears, etc.)

That Piketty's is, in part, a rhetorical strategy is clear from two facts: first, when it suits him he, too, relies on fairly simple mathematical models (often he is disarmingly upfront about this, e.g. 364). Second, he relies in non-trivial ways on existing economics. I had pointed to this in my second post on Piketty, but I am really an amateur and Ray's post adds a lot more detail, insight, and depth to what I had said. In particular, what becomes clear is that in some non-trivial respects Piketty is working with commitments that are found in the old economics work-horses (that is, the descendants of the "models of Harrod and Domar") and some so-called "dynamic efficiency" assumptions (see Ray's slightly more technical appendix here.)  Piketty is a world-class economist, so this should not surprise. But as I pointed out before, it is unclear what constraints are driving his partial appropriation of existing economic theory.

Now, the core of Ray's piece is actually applied philosophy of science:

On Obama and the Libertarians

It's probably because I was raised in Europe that I find Libertarianism so fascinating; there is -- despite some shared roots in anarchism -- really nothing like it in Europe. So, I have been a faithful reader of Bleedingheartlibertarians since March 2011. Kevin Vallier is among my favorite BHLers, and I never miss his contributions.  

The government isn’t us because it’s not a plausible expression of the viable and attractive ideal of a general will. We don’t need to do away with Rousseau’s fundamental political concepts to avoid the Rousseau-Obama conclusion.--Kevin Vallier, at BleedingheartLibertarians.com.

Unlike most Libertarians I know, Vallier accepts a subtle version of the idea of a general will. This deserves more reflection. But here I focus on Vallier's effort to link Obama to features of Rosseau. For, Vallier's post is response to a claim by President Obama:

Well, the government is us. These officials are elected by you. They are elected by you. I am elected by you. I am constrained, as they are constrained, by a system that our Founders put in place. It’s a government of and by and for the people.

Of course, Obama is not quoting Rousseau at the Denver Policy Academy; Obama is quoting, in part, the closing sentence of Lincoln's Gettysburg Address (recall):

It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us -- that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion -- that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain -- that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom -- and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.*

Moreover, in the passage quoted by Vallier, Obama mentions "the founders" not Rousseau. What he has in mind is undoubtedly the first sentence of the US Constitution: 

We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America. 

So, Obama is invoking an authentic, American political tradition going back to the Founders as mediated by Lincoln that has a tendency to blur the distinction between the people, the union, and the government. Let's call this the "Founders-Lincoln-Obama strand." While I am open to the idea that Lincoln re-imagined the nature of the union ("new birth of freedom") and the founders, by contrast, envisioned a more limited government, their emphasis on 'general welfare' goes beyond the minimalist conceptions they were familiar with during the eighteenth century.