Digressions&Impressions

A note on Hume, Kant and Spinoza on Socratic Political Theory (or on the roots of Public Choice Theory)

All absolute governments must very much depend on the administration; and this is one of the great inconveniences attending that form of government. But a republican and free government would be an obvious absurdity, if the particular checks and controuls, provided by the constitution, had really no influence, and made it not the interest, even of bad men, to act for the public good. Such is the intention of these forms of government, and such is their real effect, where they are wisely constituted: As on the other hand, they are the source of all disorder, and of the blackest crimes, where either skill or honesty has been wanting in their original frame and institution.

I.III.4

So great is the force of laws, and of particular forms of government, and so little dependence have they on the humours° and tempers of men, that consequences almost as general and certain may sometimes be deduced from them, as any which the mathematical sciences afford us.--David Hume "That Politics May be Reduced to a Science."

At first glance, Hume is defending here a species of republicanism. But Hume's lines here were also taken to be the founding text of a normative, research program of institutional design ('wise constitution'), which takes itself to create institutions in which the incentives are such that it is in the self-interest of even bad people to promote the "public good" including ones distinct from Hume's republican commitments. This project is historically associated with a careful reader of Hume, Madison, who wrote that "if men were angels, no government would be necessary" (which echoes Spinoza's Political Treatise 6.3: "if human nature were so constituted, that men most desired what is most useful, no art would be needed to produce concord")+ and philosophically with a range of thinkers from Kant's race of "devils" all the way to Buchanan and Tullock's public choice theory. As Kant puts it in Perpetual Peace:

The problem of organizing a state, however hard it may seem, can be solved even for a race of devils, if only they are intelligent. The problem is: "Given a multitude of rational beings requiring universal laws for their preservation, but each of whom is secretly inclined to exempt himself from them, to establish a constitution in such a way that, although their private intentions conflict, they check each other, with the result that their public conduct is the same as if they had no such intentions."

A problem like this must be capable of solution; it does not require that we know how to attain the moral improvement of men but only that we should know the mechanism of nature in order to use it on men, organizing the conflict of the hostile intentions present in a people in such a way that they must compel themselves to submit to coercive laws. Thus a state of peace is established in which laws have force.

In fact, Hume need not be taken to be defending republicanism. All he is saying that republicanism would be an absurdity, in the sense of an internal practical contradiction, if one assumed that "the particular checks and controuls, provided by the constitution, had really no influence." That is, Hume is saying that even republicanism -- a normative program -- presupposes that it is empirically true that humans are responsive to systematic incentives and interests. (I leave aside here, to what degree and in what way Hume actually embraced a normative/empirical distinction.)

In the right contexts this empirical fact, that humans are responsive to systematic incentives and interests, allows one to deduce "consequences almost as general and certain" as "any which the mathematical sciences afford us." Here Hume connects his program for political science to his great program for the "science of Man" in the Introduction of the Treatise:

We must therefore glean up our experiments in this science from a cautious observation of human life, and take them as they appear in the common course of the world, by men’s behaviour in company, in affairs, and in their pleasures. Where experiments of this kind are judiciously collected and compared, we may hope to establish on them a science, which will not be inferior in certainty, and will be much superior in utility to any other of human comprehension.

Throughout Hume's philosophy he argues that his science is foundational to and more useful than the other (mathematical-empirical) sciences and just as (epistemically) secure.* So, given the tight fit between Hume's "That Politics May be Reduced to a Science" and Hume's Treatise, it stands to reason that this essay gives us a glimpse of "the examination of...politics...which will compleat" his Treatise (as the Advertisement to the Treatise promised.).

So far so good. Now consider the opening passage from Spinoza's (posthumous) Political Treatise (in the old Gosset translation with minor corrections):

3. And, certainly, I am fully persuaded that experience has revealed all conceivable sorts of commonwealth, which are consistent with men's living in concord [homines concorditer vivant], and likewise the means by which the multitude may be directed [multitudo dirigi] or kept within fixed bounds. So that I do not believe that we can by meditation discover in this matter anything not yet tried and ascertained, which shall be consistent with experience or practice. For men are so situated, that they cannot live without some general law. But general laws and public affairs are ordained and managed by men of the utmost acuteness, or, if you like, of great cunning or craft. And so it is hardly credible, that we should be able to conceive of anything serviceable to a general society, that occasion or chance has not offered, or that men, intent upon their common affairs, and seeking their own safety, have not seen for themselves.

4. Therefore, on applying my mind to politics, I used certain and undoubted reason to offer demonstratios [certa et indubitata ratione demonstrare,], or to deduce from the very condition of human nature, not what is new and unheard of, but only such things as agree best with practice. And that I might investigate the subject-matter of this science with the same free spirit [animi libertate] as we generally use in mathematics, I have laboured carefully, not to mock, lament, or execrate, but to understand human actions; and to this end I have looked upon passions, such as love, hatred, anger, envy, ambition, pity, and the other perturbations of the mind, not in the light of vices of human nature, but as properties, just as pertinent to it, as are heat, cold, storm, thunder, and the like to the nature of the atmosphere, which phenomena, though inconvenient, are yet necessary, and have fixed causes, by means of which we endeavour to understand their nature, and the mind has just as much pleasure in viewing them aright, as in knowing such things as flatter the senses.

(Reversing Spinoza order of presentation we may say that) Spinoza self-consciously sets out to offer a pleasing science of man. In this causal science there is no room for moralizing about original sin and other purported defects of human nature. Rather, Spinoza treats the passions as (hidden causal) properties of human nature from which effects can be deduced. Spinoza denies that his conclusions are original; rather they conform to existing practice. While Spinoza does not explicitly say his conclusions are as secure as other natural sciences, his choice of contrast class (meteorology) suggests he is not setting the bar beyond reach.

In fact, (moving to the third paragraph) Spinoza is explicit that he is merely conforming to, and perhaps systematizing, practical know-how [praxi -- a term that he repeats through the passage] available to (use Mandeville's term) the crafty politician,  who according to Spinoza knows how to direct the multitude. (Unlike Adam Smith, who distrusted such craftsmanship, Hume praises it--recall his high praise of De Witt's ability to "manage" the Dutch and maintain a "spirit of union" or concord.] Spinoza explicitly draws on comparative institutional practices found in [historical] experience [experientiam omnia civitatum genera]. I have labeled such comparative  institutional analysis, Socratic Political Theory (recall; but see, especially, this post on Ursula Le Guin and this one on Thomas More.) Such analysis is rooted in empirical experience, but itself normative (because focused on the "public good" -- Spinoza puts it in terms of "living in concord" -- and developed around, what Weber later called, ideal types of particular institution frameworks).

As an aside, I have intimated here (and elsewhere) that Hume that Spinoza would have read Spinoza's Political Treatise. This does not preclude the reality that  Hume and Spinoza read the same sources (Machiavelli, especially, but also More and Bacon).

Let me wrap up. In the title of this post, and above I noted that Buchanan (a student of Knight) and Tullock's public choice theory is one of the modern heirs of this (Spinoza-Humean) Socratic political theory.** This fact is less surprising if we remember that as late as 1964 the reality of Socratic political theory kind was explicitly presupposed -- in the context of cold war rivalry -- by the Chicago economist (and also a student of Knight), George Stigler, and made conceptually possible the proper competence of the economist as such; "consists in understanding how an economic system works under alternative institutional frameworks." (Presidential Address to the American Economics Association; recall this post.) Needless to say, the contemporary mainstream economist lacks such competence nor wishes for it. If Stigler is correct, then in our life-time, a Kuhn-loss has taken place in front of our eyes. That is to say, public choice represents a vision for political economy that is rooted in older intellectual traditions. How to sort the traditional elements from the modern innovations is the topic for a series of future posts.

 

 

 

On Doing the Noble for the Wrong Reason(s)?

The greater ability for experiencing abstract and general feelings, that is feelings that are only the consciousness of what several individual feelings have in common, like the greater ability for forming abstract and general ideas is the greatest distinction of hearts and minds. Only those hearts capable of such feelings are truly just, for it is only them that are capable of being ruled by immutable principles. Only on the sensibility of such hearts can we rely, as they are always susceptible to being moved by general motives. Their conscience is silenced with difficulty – and it is always active. Remorse is in them less fallible and more efficacious, all the ideas of its duties more complete. Such people especially know to fulfill these delicate duties of honesty that morality alone imposes and recognizes, and which always bring regret and the loss of feelings of happiness when they are forgotten, and which display those disinterested virtues, the fruit of a sublime need to have always the greatest and most satisfying idea of oneself.--Sophie de Grouchy (1798) Letters on Sympathy, translated by Sandrine Berges, Letter 5.

ln the quoted passage, De Grouchy embraces the idea that various exalted cognitive and intellectual abilities are prerequisites to, let's call it, exemplary moral behavior (in which she includes acting from principle in light of conscience and the right sort of feelings and impartial motives). Having an 'active' conscience means it can motivate action. Now, I think that with 'honesty,' De Grouchy is evoking Cicero's honestum (from De Officiis), or that what is honorable or noble.

Unfortunately, it is not entirely obvious how early moderns understood Cicero's honestum. In a classic article, James Moore, has canvassed eighteenth century (primarily British) attempts to articulate it in a modern context. On Moore's reading, by the time of Hume, honestum is grounded in the sentiment of humanity. De Grouchy is not a critic of the sentiment of humanity; she treats it, for example, as the "first cause" of sympathy (in Letter 1). But in the quoted passage she suggests that morally exemplary behavior is psychologically grounded ultimately in a peculiar form of self-love: "the fruit of a sublime need to have always the greatest and most satisfying idea of oneself."

De Grouchy seems here to be offering the wrong sort of reason to explain exemplary acts of honor, and to be swerving uncomfortably close to those unmasking masters of morality -- Mandeville, Nietzsche, etc. -- who suggest that moral behavior is just another species of self-love or vanity. Now, to be sure, De Grouchy is clearly not suggesting that we act good because we desire praise or to be thought well by others. So, she is not charging the moralist with hypocrisy or a certain form outer-directed dissembling. And, in addition, she is suggesting that moral actions are done for properly moral reasons (i.e., principles).

Yet, the psychological cause of exemplary moral behavior is the desire to have the best possible and most gratifying self-image and to live up to it. It's this need that is called 'sublime' by De Grouchy. I think on this point De Grouchy echoes two famous predecessors--one of which she certainly read. First, she evokes Spinoza's idea from the preface of Ethics 4, that "because we desire to form an idea of man, as a model of human nature which we may look to...I shall understand by good what we know certainly is a means by which we may approach nearer and nearer to the model of human nature that we set before ourselves." As Andrew Youpa has suggested, this exemplary idea is both adequate and inadequate in Spinoza.  In its adequate manifestation it is an expression of God and this connects up to the De Grouchy's sublime.

Undoubtedly, the previous paragraph is rather too speculative for most. Not only because De Grouchy does not often hint of Spinozistic influence, but also because she is herself rather allergic of talk of even Spinoza's God. So, it is more likely that she is articulating an idea she found in The Theory of Moral Sentiments (hereafter TMS, which she translated and to which her Letters are an appendix). There Smith denies that our morally exemplary behavior is caused by "the love of our neighbour," as the Christian hopes (and Hutcheson thought) nor is it "the love of mankind," (which the defenders of humanity had promoted), rather it is a stronger love, a more powerful affection, which generally takes place upon such occasions; the love of what is honourable and noble, of the grandeur, and dignity, and superiority of our own characters" (TMS 3.3.4).

It is not entirely clear if Smith here offers two distinct strong motives that can explain (most) exemplary moral behavior: one is love of the noble (that is, a desire to be Cicero's honestum) and the other is very close to De Grouchy's posited desire to live up to the best possible and most gratifying (exalted) self-image, or that these amount to the same thing. Either way, both De Grouchy and Smith assume (with the Stoics) that what we think of ourselves will influence our behavior and that we better have access to rather inflated ideas (of the right sort) of ourselves in order to act nobly when needed such that the inflated idea becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.

A Note to Adam Smith on Natural Equality (with a note on the PSR & Simplicity)

The difference of natural talents in different men is, in reality, much less than we are aware of; and the very different genius which appears to distinguish men of different professions, when grown up to maturity, is not upon many occasions so much the cause, as the effect of the division of labour. The difference between the most dissimilar characters, between a philosopher and a common street porter, for example, seems to arise not so much from nature, as from habit, custom, and education.

When they came into the world, and for the first six or eight years of their existence, they were a, perhaps, a very much alike, and neither their parents nor play-fellows could perceive any remarkable difference. About that age, or soon after, they come to be employed in very different occupations. The difference of talents comes then to be taken notice of, and widens by degrees, till at last the vanity of the philosopher is willing to acknowledge scarce any resemblance. But without the disposition to truck, barter, and exchange, every man must have procured to himself every necessary and conveniency of life which he wanted. All must have had the same duties to perform, and the same work to do, and there could have been no such difference of employment as could alone give occasion to any great difference of talents.--Adam Smith Wealth of Nations,  1.2.4-5.

The quoted passage, which occurs early in Wealth of Nations in the context of the treatment of the division of labor, is at the core of so-called analytical egalitarian interpretations of Adam Smith (and methodological analytical egalitarianism [MAE], more generally, see this book by David Levy and Sandra Peart); in the passage Smith seems to side with nurture. Human cognitive differences are primarily explained by individual "habit," social "custom," and "education,"  as well as employment ("division of labor"). (It is methodological because when there are observed differences, Smith encourages the would be researcher to explore the social causes -- e.g., "habit, custom, and "education," as well as employment ("division of labor" etc.. --  that can account for them.) The role of employment is subtly emphasized by Smith's reference to the "first six or eight years" of a child's life; he is writing in an age of child labor, and so that labor influences the development of the child to "maturity."

Part of the point of the passage is to warn against expert overconfidence (the vanity of the philosopher) and hubris (unwillingness to acknowledge similarity). Another point is (recall) to challenge the classical conception (familiar from Plato and Aristotle) that the division of labor is the product of natural cognitive hierarchy--a position still popular (Berkeley and, as is well known, Hume flirts with it, and after Kant it gets a new lease on live in the imperialist nineteenth century). [I return to this below.] This much is familiar enough. Smith does not deny some natural, cognitive difference, but he minimizes is.

Smith pretty much asserts the position, almost like an axiom.

Smith does offer an explanation. It is peculiar and that's why, perhaps, it has escaped notice. He writes, "without the disposition to truck, barter, and exchange, every man must have procured to himself every necessary and conveniency of life which he wanted. All must have had the same duties to perform, and the same work to do, and there could have been no such difference of employment as could alone give occasion to any great difference of talents."* Smith had introduced the disposition to truck (etc.) a bit before in the first paragraph of the chapter:

THIS division of labour, from which so many advantages are derived, is not originally the effect of any human wisdom, which foresees and intends that general opulence to which it gives occasion. It is the necessary, though very slow and gradual consequence of a certain propensity in human nature which has in view no such extensive utility; the propensity to one thing for another. Whether this propensity be one of those original principles in human nature of which no further account can be given; or whether, as seems more probable, it be the necessary consequence of the faculties of reason and speech, it belongs not to our present subject to inquire. Wealth of Nations 1.2.1

Smith alludes here to a conceptual-historical distinction between (i) dispositions that are original principles of human nature, and (ii) dispositions that are acquired principles of human nature. (In the 18th century, a 'principle' is a causal explanatory ground or a fundamental (causal) property.) Smith strongly implies that 'reason and speech' belong to the original principles of human nature, and that the propensity to truck, barter, and exchange is a late, historical acquisition (a consequence of reason and speech). That in turn is one of the historical causes for the existence of the division of labor. So, without language and reason there would be no development of the disposition to trade and without this disposition there would be no division of labor. Elsewhere I have explained how Smith is developing here a form of historical explanation that, itself is a species of unintended consequence explanation indebted to Mandeville, that I have dubbed Smithian Social Explanation. This has three core elements:

1. It is causal (“necessary consequence”). So, regardless of the status of propensities, the persistent triggering of these and their expression can lead to nomological outcomes such that the outcome could not be otherwise.
2. It is a historical explanation. By “historical” I mean to capture three features: (a) that the stable consequence would not have been in “view” (or predictable) to observers of human nature at an early time (and, so not even capable of being intended); (b) that to be a cause here does not require temporal contiguity between the cause and the effect. c) The explanandum takes place over a very long period of time ("very slow and gradual consequence").
3. Smith’s account requires that after certain consequences become visible to observer-participants they become self-reinforcing. Presumably this self-reinforcement is due to the fact that those that benefit from the cumulative consequences will help prevent backsliding from new social arrangements.  (It may also be aided by the fact that those that do not so benefit will be deprived of various resources to prevent further change.) So, in the long run and in the aggregate, human propensities will produce initially unpredictable, albeit definite and determined outcomes.

Okay, now we can return to Smith's explanation of the lack of intellectual, cognitive hierarchy: “without the disposition to truck, barter, and exchange, every man must have procured to himself every necessary and conveniency of life which he wanted. All must have had the same duties to perform, and the same work to do, and there could have been no such difference of employment as could alone give occasion to any great difference of talents.” That is, absent the disposition to truck and barter -- which Smith just stipulated would likely be the case in human pre-history -- all humans must have had to do pretty much same work (as Smith considers the case in savage circumstances, WN Intro. 4, 10).

That is, Smith claims that in a counterfactual situation in which humans lack the disposition to truck (etc.), a great difference of talents would have been pointless and so absent. Given that according to Smith there are in his day still societies in which a great difference of talents is pointless, natural difference of talents ought to be limited.

It strikes me that Smith is relying on two suppressed premises. First, that humans form a single kind; as noted that was, itself, quite controversial (recall, again, alas, Hume’s “Of National Characters.”) Let's spot him the premise. Second, and more important, Smith here is clearly presupposing some kind of teleological-optimality principle, that there are no (major) natural differences in humans without a purpose. This principle has some affinity with two familiar principles, the PSR ("no effect without a cause") and, even more, the idea (found in Aristotle and Newton) that nothing is done in vain ("no cause without an effect.")** Smith does not seem to feel the need to defend the second premise.

Yet, we can make Smith's position plausible if we see what it entails about, say, Plato's position. For, Plato certainly seems to think that nature is governed by some such teleological-optimality principles. At Timaeus 28C, Plato endorses the PSR (recall "no effect without a casue") and at Timaeus 29a, he endorses some kind of (aesthetic) causal optimality principle. Now, recall that Plato's City of Pigs (or true city) in the Republic has an uncanny similarity to Smith's system of natural liberty. Socrates insists that there is a division of labor in the 'true city' that is grounded in a cognitive and physical hierarchy. From Smith's vantage point, Socrates simply assumes the causal arrow here. Smith's response to Socrates is that there is no reason to think that in the (counterfactual) state of nature prior to the City of Pigs, there would be any reason for a cognitive and physical hierarchy and so the City of Pigs could never get off the ground.

 

Smith and Fortune

How selfish soever man may be supposed, there are evidently some principles in his nature, which interest him in the fortune of others, and render their happiness necessary to him, though he derives nothing from it except the pleasure of seeing it.--Adam Smith The Theory of Moral Sentiments.

The quoted passage is the first sentence of Smith's (1759) The Theory of Moral Sentiments (TMS). Nearly all informed readers recognize that this is a response to the Hobbes-Mandeville thesis (the 'selfish hypothesis'). David Levy and Sandra Peart have taught me that Smith (who they argue reflected seriously on Stoic logic) takes his modal terms very seriously. Some other time, I'll say more about modality in Smith; here I just note that Smith is making a rather strong claim about the intrinsic properties of human nature ("principles" are causal-explanatory grounds in eighteenth century philosophy); our nature is, in part, disinterested enough in wanting others to be happy. Smith treats this as evident (it is worth comparing Smith's use of evidentness and modality, with the preamble of the U.S. Declaration of Independence.) Smith allows that seeing other people's happiness is pleasurable, and that may be thought to concede too much to the selfish hypothesis. But, while since Griswold 1999 it's very clear that aesthetic considerations are very important in Smith's theory (see Valihora or Chandler), it's clear that when it comes to our wish to see others be happy these are not doing to the motivating work. (What does so motivate? Part of the answer is, as Leon Montes has shown, the desire to sympathize. Another part is a desire to respect ourselves)

But to the best of my knowledge, nobody has paused at Smith's use of 'fortune.' There are a lot ways 'fortune' can be used in the eighteenth century, but here I want to call attention to the ways in which it is treated as something distinct from providence associated with the Stoic-Deistic position and necessity (associated with Spinozism). That is, in the philosophical sense, fortune coincides with what the 'vulgar' call chance. The system of chance is associated with Epicureanism. It is surprising to see it casually introduced in the first sentence of a text that to many readers, reads as a neo-Stoic-providential work (because Smith often frequently also talks of “Nature’s intentions;” “the Author of nature’s plan;” the “wisdom and goodness of God,” etc.). A few paraphraps later, Smith notes that "the general idea of good or bad fortune, therefore, creates some concern for the person who has met with it, but the general idea of provocation excites no sympathy with the anger of the man who has received it." This is a striking claim because here we have a rather abstract idea generating some concern for another person. The significance of this is not limited to the fact that Smith is clearly entailing that (abstract) ideas matter, and, thereby, suggesting that what we teach can influence our readers's and students's  concern for others. (He does not suggest that this concern is especially strong or that this is the only way to generate some such concern.)

Smith sometimes uses 'fortune' to mean 'wealth.' So, for example, a famous sentence in Wealth of Nations reads, "An augmentation of fortune is the means by which the greater part of men propose and wish to better their condition." but here I ignore those occasions. He also often uses 'fortune' and 'misfortune' in the sense of 'flourishing' and 'misery.' But sometimes he is explicit that he is using it as a way to convey something chancy: "The man who, by some sudden revolution of fortune, is lifted up all at once into a condition of life, greatly above what he had formerly lived in, may be assured that the congratulations of his best friends are not all of them perfectly sincere." Our interest in the fortunes of others may not always be a cause of pleasure, after all. (Our sympathy with other people's (sudden) joy is weak according to Smith.)

Given that Smith introduces so many providential sounding passages, readers can be forgiven for assuming that he is some kind of Stoizing Deist. Bit such readers have a tendency to skip lines such as  these: “Fortune, which governs the world” (TMS). The passage occurs in Smith's treatment of moral bad luck (the piacular--see here for more or Hankins's piece), but generalizes far beyond it. This use of 'fortune' is not an isolated occurrence. One of the most important passages in TMS (and it fits the general argument of Wealth of Nations) condemns  Mercantilistic, colonial empires and slavery:

There is not a negro from the coast of Africa who does not, in this respect, possess a degree of magnanimity which the soul of his sordid master is too often scarce capable of conceiving. Fortune never exerted more cruelly her empire over mankind, than when she subjected those nations of heroes to the refuse of the jails of Europe, to wretches who possess the virtues neither of the countries which they come from, nor of those which they go to, and whose levity, brutality, and baseness, so justly expose them to the contempt of the vanquished.

For present purposes, the significance of this passage is not Smith's moral and political condemnation of slavery and imperialism (nor his somewhat surprising appeal to Rousseau's noble-savage-like imagery). Rather, Smith resists in seeing in this world-historical event the working of either providence or historical necessity. There is no unintended consequence here that justifies the suffering of the "vanquished;" there is no hint of a remedy that will fit in some kind theodicy of necessary capitalist development. Bad (and good) things happen to innocent people for no cosmic reason at all. It does not follow that Smith was in all things a modern or revived Epicurean (as Reid kind of suggests). But we may understood Smith' criticisms of Hobbes and Mandeville (and even Hume) as in-house debate.

 

 

 

Mandeville as Proto-Feminist

I thought on the Tricks made use of by the Women that would teach Children to be mannerly. When an aukward Girl, before she can either Speak or Go, begins after many Intreaties to make the first rude Essays of Curt’sying, the Nurse falls in an ecstacy of Praise There’s a delicate Curt’sy! O fine Miss! There’s a pretty Lady! Mama! Miss can make a better Curt’sy than her Sister Molly! The same is echo’d over by the Maids, whilst Mama almost hugs the Child to pieces; only Miss Molly, who being four Years older knows how to make a very handsome Curt’sy, wonders at the Perverseness of their Judgment, and swelling with Indignation, is ready to cry at the Injustice that is done her, till, being whisper’d in the Ear that it is only to please the Baby, and that she is a Woman, she grows proud at being let into the Secret, and rejoicing at the Superiority of her Understanding, repeats what has been said with large Additions, and insults over the Weakness of her Sister, whom all this while she fancies to be the only Bubble among them. These extravagant Praises would by any one, above the Capacity of an Infant, be call’d fulsome Flatteries, and, if you will, abominable Lies, yet Experience teaches us, that by the help of such gross Encomiums, young Misses will be brought to make pretty Curt’sies, and behave themselves womanly much sooner, and with less trouble, than they would without them.-- Mandeville "An Enquiry Into the Origin of Moral Virtue."  Fable of the Bees.

An unpublished paper on Mandeville and Emilie Du Châtelet by Jacky Taylor and Emilio Mazza raised the issue of Mandeville's feminism. (I heard a version of it in Helsinki two years ago and last week at Duke.) Marguerite Deslauriers expressed some reservations about attributing a feminist stance to Mandeville (especially because his views on chastity seem to affirm traditional gender roles). As it happens, I am in agreement with Taylor and Mazza that there are significant feminist (or proto-feminist) strains in Mandeville. Above I call attention to one such strain in the Fable of the Bees--a work that has a disreputable reputation, which is a shame because, regardless of the doctrines it settles on,  it has considerable moral animus behind it. The passage quoted is offered in the context of Sir Richard Steele, the moving spirit behind the Tattler. While my interpretation does not rely on this fact, it is worth emphasizing (as Taylor and Mazza do) that Steele's Tattler defends traditional gender roles (and is not free from misogyny).*

First, Mandeville has no doubt that gender-stereotypical behavior is the product, primarily, of social conditioning. His analysis is not just about girls; in the sentence following the quoted passage, Mandeville goes on to claim that it is "the same with boys." (I return to the significance of this below.) Second, Mandeville leaves no doubt that this conditioning is not -- as traditionalists would claim -- the cultivation of natural tendencies in accord with 'womanly' nature -- rather it is based on lies and flattery. Thus, third, Mandeville diagnoses the social conditioning of a a form of false consciousness on the part of women.

Mandeville's position is not ad hoc but are an application of important elements of his thought. (I am not claiming these elements are original with Mandeville; he is clearly indebted to Hobbes and French Augustinians.) Recall the following three theoretical positions on human nature:

1. Differentiated human nature; the differences also reflect axiological hierarchy. This seems to be Aristotle's position (say on natural slavery) in Book 1 of The Politics, and is revived regularly by modern Eugenicists and has a new instantiation by contemporary epistemocrats (e.g. Jason Brennan).
2. Differentiated human nature, but without (axiological) hierarchy among the differences. This seems to be Socrates's position in the true city (or 'city of pigs') of Book 2 of the Republic [recall] and Elizabeth Anderson's position in (1995) "Knowledge, Human Interests, and Objectivity in Feminist Epistemology." [recall]
3. Methodological Analytic Egalitarianism (MAE): the positing of homogeneous human nature such that we're equal for theoretical (including moral) purposes. Observed differences are due to cultural, educational, institutional factors.*

Throughout the Fable, Mandeville adopts a version of 3: Methodological Analytical Egalitarianism (MEA). MEA can be characterized by the following commitments:

• [1] Naturally all people are (motivationally) equal, and most salient differences are the product of institutions (law, education, culture, etc.).
• [A] This includes the philosophical/economist-expert.
• [B] Even if [1] is not quite literally true, (nearly) all people consider themselves to be (at least as) equal when it matters to them. As Mandeville writes, “as well as we think of our selves, so ill we often think of our Neighbour with equal Injustice;”—Fable 1 (remark N). He asserts this while allowing that it is possible that our inward ‘constitution’ is different and influenced by sex-differences (Fable 1, Remark R).
• [2] From [1A] it follows that the expert should be put inside the model or conceptual framework. As I have noted elsewhere, Mandeville treats experts from within his analysis (recall here and here).
• [3] From [1B] we learn that human affairs are (at least) in part intentional systems. (That is, we can't have a fully extensional model.) That is, beliefs and language matter.

Mandeville's commitment to 1A is clear in the following passage:

That the most Knowing are not the most Religious, will be evident if we make a Trial between People of different Abilities even in this Juncture, where going to Church is not made such an Obligation on the Poor and Illiterate, as it might be. Let us pitch upon a hundred Poor Men, the first we can light on, that are above forty, and were brought up to hard Labour from their Infancy, such as never went to School at all, and always lived remote from Knowledge and great Towns: Let us compare to these an equal number of very good Scholars, that shall all have had University Education; and be, if you will, half of them Divines, well versed in Philology and Polemick Learning; then let us impartially examine into the Lives and Conversations of both, and I dare engage that among the first who can neither Read nor Write, we shall meet with more Union and Neighbourly Love, less Wickedness and Attachment to the World, more Content of Mind, more Innocence, Sincerity, and other good Qualities that conduce to the Publick Peace and real Felicity, than we shall find among the latter, where on the contrary, [354]we may be assured of the height of Pride and Insolence, eternal Quarrels and Dissensions, Irreconcilable Hatreds, Strife, Envy, Calumny and other Vices destructive to mutual Concord, which the illiterate labouring Poor are hardly ever tainted with to any considerable Degree. (“Essay on Charity Schools”)

Here Mandeville proposes a natural experiment in which the attitudes of two populations (one expert and one folk) are compared. His proposed experiment only makes sense if one can assume that observed differences are entirely due to differences in education, geographical factors, incentives, and institutional environment. I am not asserting here that Mandeville is entitled to such commitment; I am just diagnosing it.

So, in conclusion, because of Mandeville's commitment to some version of MEA, he is committed to explaining, in the first instance, observed differences among boys and girls to their conditioning. Of course, Mandeville was not ignorant of biological differences between boys and girls -- he was a practicing physician, who exhibited great commitment to women's intelligence in his medical works --, but his methodological stance leads him to downplay those.

On Elizabeth Anderson's Challenge to Analytic Egalitarianism

Consider, in this light, two of the theoretical virtues that Longino identifies as among those that may properly guide theory choice for feminists. One is "ontological heterogeneity." This is a preference for "splitting" over "lumping"-for emphasizing the qualitative diversity and individuality of subjects of study and the distinctions among properties commonly classified together. One purely cognitive motivation for this is to seek fine-grained descriptive accuracy. Barbara McClintock's revolutionary discovery of genetic transposition, which was based on close observation of the cytological differences among individual seeds on com cobs, demonstrates that such a focus can yield huge theoretical advances. But there are political reasons for emphasizing heterogeneity as well. Ideologies that purport to scientifically demonstrate the inevitability of male dominance often appeal to theories that assimilate disparate phenomena under vague, global classifications.--Elizabeth Anderson (1995) "Knowledge, Human Interests, and Objectivity in Feminist Epistemology."

Upon re-reading the quoted passage in Anderson's classic article, I had a mild panic attack: is my commitment to analytic egalitarianism an instance of an "ideology" that ends up demonstrating "the inevitability of male dominance"? After all, analytic egalitarianism is committed to the theoretical homogeneity of agents. Before I answer this pressing question, let's distinguish among three theoretical positions:

1. Differentiated human nature; the differences also reflect axiological hierarchy. This seems to be Aristotle's position (say on natural slavery) in Book 1 of The Politics, and is revived regularly by modern Eugenicists and has a new instantiation by contemporary (smart/dumb obsessed) epistemocrats (e.g. Jason Brennan).
2. Differentiated human nature, but without (axiological) hierarchy among the differences. This seems to be Socrates's position in the true city (or 'city of pigs') of Book 2 of the Republic. [Recall.]
3. Analytic Egalitarianism (AE): homogeneous human nature such that we're equal for theoretical (including moral) purposes. Observed differences are due to cultural, educational, institutional factors.*

More positions are possible, of course, but these tend to be unstable. As I noted last week, Thrasymachus, for example, is an inconsistent analytic egalitarian because he does not include himself (and others 'in the know') inside his model (and so is unable to argue his case fully). Hobbes, by contrast, is consistent in this way. At first glance, Anderson's position is like Socrates' in Book 2 of the Republic (option 2). She insists there is human difference, but these differences (in one's theorizing) serve a kind of moral (and political) equality.

In fact, the original proponents of analytic egalitarianism, the economists David Levy and Sandra Peart, are strongly opposed to positing heterogeneous agents in part because after extensive engagement with the shared history of economics and philosophy, which is full of eugenicists and over confident experts, they are suspicious of models that posit hierarchy and thereby justify a hierarchical social organization.  So, the difference between the second (Anderson's) and third theoretical option (AE) may be understood in two, not necessarily competing ways: (a) which approach allows us to do better modeling?; (b) In terms of inductive risk (see this important paper by Heather Douglas): which approach is more likely to generate (to use an euphemism) 'unpleasant' moral and political consequences? Both are empirical matters.

Note that my (a-b) have a resemblance to (but are not identical with) Anderson's "dual justification" approach to theoretical classification:

They must satisfy some standards of epistemic significance: there must be clear empirical criteria for determining when phenomena fall under a classification, some phenomena must actually meet these criteria, the classification must figure in some explanation or some causal or empirical regularity. Such classifications must also pass scrutiny from the standpoint of contextual interests and values. They must track the underlying contextual values accurately; that is, they must group phenomena together that share a common relation to these interests. And the contextual values themselves must be justified from an ethical point of view. (47)

For while I agree with Anderson's argument for this dual justification approach (although I note that the arguments from under-determination may become rhetorically less effective in this post-Quine-ean, 'knee-jerk' realist age), I also would suggest that we need to look at the inductive risks of a model as a further, third dimension of evaluation.

Here I cannot settle the (implicit) debate between Anderson and Levy/Peart. But it is worth noting that some of the most telling examples in her paper may also be thought to support AE, too. For, advocates of AE agree with the feminist criticism of "gender polarized classification schemes." (48) Analytic egalitarians do so on principled, not ad hoc, grounds because we reject human difference. If there are gender differences  (a) they need to be discovered empirically and, if these are, found then (b) these pose the question what institutions, practices, and research methods generate such differences.  The method is, then, self-critical.+ That is to say, AE method guards, in large part, against inductive risk.

Let me close with a final observation. At one point Anderson comments (on feminist criticisms of "theoretical classifications that presuppose the legitimacy of sexist and androcentric values"):

The changes in conceptual schemes for psychological research into gender that feminist normative criticism has recommended are not just window dressing. They open up opportunities for exploring human potentialities that were foreclosed under more rigid conceptual schemes. (Anderson, 47)

I welcome the feminist successes in advocating changes in conceptual schemes for psychlogical research. But I would claim that the problem here, then, is not rigidity as such (for AE is rigid, too), but the foreclosing of exploring human potentialities. AE is designed, precisely, to explore rigorously human potentiality under different institutional (cultural, educational, etc.) regimes. If it is an ideology, then it is a salutary one until, of course, the empirical evidence suggests otherwise.

 

 

RIP: Nathan Rosenberg 1927-2015

Yesterday, I learned from his former colleague, June Flanders, that the Stanford economist, Nathan Rosenberg, has died. At his passing he was the Fairleigh S. Dickinson, Jr. Professor Emeritus of Public Policy in the Department of Economics. He was an expert in the economics of technology, especially technological change and his work influenced theories about the role of institutions and technological change in economic history  and innovation studies (see, e.g., North's Nobel lecture). Some other time I hope to return to his significance in these areas for philosophy of science and science policy.

Not unlike other economists of his generation, Rosenberg was educated in the history of economics and not above making genuine contributions to scholarship in the area and to integrate such scholarship in his contributions to economics. His papers in the area (the most important of which published during the 1960s in leading journals) were collected in The Emergence of Economic Ideas: Essays in the History of Economics (1994). 

I never met Professor Rosenberg in person, but I had a significant interaction with him. I read his seminal paper (1960) "Some institutional aspects of the Wealth of Nations" (The Journal of Political Economy) while researching my dissertation (recall also this post). Rosenberg's paper was not unknown, but the only full-length study of Smith that had been clearly influenced by it was Jerry Muller's very fine study, Adam Smith in His Time and Ours: Designing the Decent Society (1993); I thought this had not exhuasted Rosenberg's insights. So, the central chapter of my dissertation, an original interpretation of Smith's methodology of the Wealth of Nations (a revised version was published here), was an elaboration of Rosenberg's insights in light of my own reconstruction of Smith's epistemology and philosophy/sociology of science. 

Because even widely read professional philosophers (like the supervisors of my dissertation) were not expected to be fully conversant in scholarship in the history of economics, I approached a bunch of economists to read this chapter (assuming incorrectly at the time, that professional economists would be relevant experts). Rosenberg sent me generous and detailed comments on my chapter (which were gratefully acknowledged) as well as a copy of his own The Emergence of Economic ideas. In particular, his comments helped me formulate my central claim about the nature of natural prices in Wealth of Nations in terms that would be familiar to modern readers. Now that I have a become a busy, over-extended scholar (that routinely fails to meet accepted and self-imposed deadlines), I recognize the true generosity of Rosenberg to draw on his most valuable scholarly resource (his time) in order to read and comment on work by an unknown, junior scholar from a different discipline. Because I was abroad at the time, he also offered to fax me his comments.

Emergence also reprints Rosenberg's elegant paper on Mandeville. This paper was published before Hayek's (more) famous lecture on Mandeville and it clearly anticipates several of Hayek's most important claims (as Hayek acknowledges). When I first read it (after Rosenberg had sent me Emergence), it was a total eye-opener on the significance of Mandeville (on Hume and Smith).

I close with a scholarly observation. In going through my correspondence with him, I noticed that I wrote a letter with my responses to each of the paper's of Emergence. (I hope this amused him!) I quote one of these comments (from December 10, 2001) to give a flavor of his significance to Smith scholarship: "Reading your paper on "Adam Smith, Consumer Tastes, and Economic Growth," finally made me see why Smith devotes so little systematic attention to the service-sector in commercial societies. (Something that has vexed me, as I found the obvious answer, services are not that important in his day, unsatisfying.) He had identified services with the backward (and retrogressive stage of) Feudalism in which there were few opportunities for economic growth (p. 368 & 372)."

 

Why the Canon Fight is Different in Analytical Philosophy; on Heroworship

For a brief spell in the 80’s and 90’s, higher education was consumed by the canon wars. For those too young to remember, the canon wars were some earnest and intense battles among people who couldn’t agree on which authors needed to be taught for students to be considered properly educated.--Inside Higher Education (2013).

A year ago Nathaniel Adam Tobias Coleman succesfully managed to ignite discussion within professional philosophy about the status of the canon (recall my response).* Other humanists might think -- paraphrasing a quip falsely attributed to Heinrich Heine (which doesn't stop the Wall Street Journal from recycling it) -- that philosophy is the Netherlands of higher education, everything happens there three decades later. (Genuine humanists know that debates over the canon are as old as the canon itself.) While there are solid sociological-demographic reasons that help explain why philosophy remained aloof from the canon wars (the short version: professional anglophone philosophy is overwhelmingly white, male, change-averse and unreceptive toward unmasking narratives), there is also a key intellectual reason: within analytical philosophy the (Western) canon is largely irrelevant to disciplinary conversations.+ No command over the details of the text is ever presupposed. This is no surprise because analytical philosophy was founded -- self-consciously mimicking Descartes's dismissiveness toward book-knowledge -- as a revolt against historical approaches to philosophy.

While the days may be gone in which one could count on all literature professors to recite Shakespeare, Milton, Homer, Virgil, Goethe, Dante, and the other mighty dead, especially Middlemarch, from memory, to this day working knowledge of some such books provides a shared, contested frame of reference in literary and cultural studies even if nobody thinks that command of such books is a mark of civilization or even a signal of one's cultural capital. And while close reading persists in college courses, the idea that literature can replace Scripture has long been deconstructed, and De Man unmasked; I would not be surprised if it has had its brief, ironic revival prompted by a Simpsons episode.

By contrast even when I present on David Hume's Treatise to professional historians of philosophy, let alone generalist philosophical audiences, I make sure to prepare detailed excerpts of key passages. Hume is the fourth most admired philosopher in history (according to a recent poll); he is the highest ranked English language philosopher--his Treatise the acknowledged masterpiece.** Even the anti-historical logical empiricists would say nice things about Hume. My excerpts are not merely aids to memory; I know that the passages I am calling attention to are simply unknown. Professional philosophy is not a discipline in which texts from the past are internalized. (Yes, there are a few Hume scholars that have working knowledge of some texts, but even among that lovely crowd -- dominated by professional philosophers -- there are very few people that know Hume's major works really by heart.)

Even when working positions come to be known as Humean or Carnapian (etc.), odds are we are dealing with Hume* or Carnap*. It doesn't matter, really, if Hume is not a Humean. (The relationship between, say, Carnap and contemporary Carnapians is very interesting and illuminating.) While there are a few magisterial clubs within professional philosophy -- Kantians often really try to get Kant right (even at the price of introducing anachronism), Wittgensteinians even have a second-order debate whether it makes sense to get Wittgenstein right, etc. --, philosophical puzzles and controversies do not get settled by authoritative interpretation of major texts. Of course, interest in such puzzles can be started by way of some such interpretation. 

The above is not to deny that there is an image of philosophy prevalent within professional philosophy in which a limited number of historical, canonical figures are very prominent: starting with Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle through Descartes, Leibniz, Hume, and Kant (etc). These folk are often, indeed, implicated in subtle and not-so-subtle forms of ideological domination (or worse). It is worth serious reflection why Gorgias's Helen is unread; why even specialist scholars are unaware of the male feminism of Toland, Mandeville, and John Millar--all eighteenth century figures that were once extremely famous. (Even world class Nietzsche scholars tend to be ignorant on the genealogy of genealogy.) It is shocking that (the first) professional interest in early modern female philosophers only commenced less than a generation ago.  

If we abolish the canon in professional (analytic) philosophy, we just give folk another excuse not to read books. This trend may be unstoppable anyway: the textbook is beloved by university technocrats who hire cheap labor to teach pre-set curriculum with well-defined (achievable) goals.

For, in addition to the image of philosophy, there are classic works, often drawn from those canonical figures that figure in the image of philosophy, which are routinely but not exclusively used to introduce students to philosophy (e.g., an intro to ethics course with Aristotle, Hume, Kant, and Mill--hopefully Sophie de Grouchy before long, too) [recall, recall, and more if you use Google]. Arguably, Nietzsche has become canonical within professional philosophy because teachers could not resist the allure of assigning him in their courses. There could be quite a bit more experimentation and innovation in the pool of such classics. In preparing a course on Islamic philosophy, I encountered Ibn Tufayl (recall) and was certainly not the first to be struck by how easily he could fit in any text-based introductory course in epistemology, philosophy of religion, and political philosophy. 

What does exist in professional philosophy is a kind of hero-worship of living authority figures and the recently deceased.* Manifestly odd views can endure because they are associated with some such hero and, more importantly, because they put (often informal, but no less tight) conceptual and methodological constraints on what is acceptable within professional discussion. Williamson describes the mechanisms involved in a recent essay: he patiently explains the fear factor that surrounded Quine for a while [recall my post]. This is why in the overthrow of such heroes we find more than argument--there is also rhetoric; Williamson describes Lewis's metaphysics as "extreme" (9) and memorably, but unflatteringly, notes that Lewis is "also known as ‘the machine in the ghost’ for his eerie computational power, mechanical diction, faint air of detachment from ordinary life, and beard from another era." (8)

This hero-worship is associated with a lot of the worst features of the discipline; the common cruelty, the lack of respect for viewpoints associated with outsiders, the willful ignorance, and the awful systematic demographic patterns of exclusion. So, if we abolish the canon in professional philosophy without ending the hero-worship not much will change about the professional practice.

When Hypocrisy is Prudence

We hold that there is a succession of causes, which weave our fate [Qualem dicimus seriem esse causarum ex quibus nectitur fatum]—Seneca, Letter 19.

It’s easy to read Seneca’s letter as simply advocating the solid, enduring pleasures of a private life where one finds true friends. On this interpretation Seneca is an anti-political philosopher renouncing worldly riches and power. After all, he encourages his protégé, Lucilius, to give up his further ambitions and withdraw from his rather successful political life as a colonial administrator in the empire. This fits the enduring charge of hypocrisy against Seneca (who became immensely wealthy in politics) [recall Mandeville].

The charge against Seneca is a bit puzzling for if a seasoned heroin addict tells you to give up your addiction, even though he is incapable of doing so himself, we do not think of the seasoned addict as hypocritical unless, perhaps, we are already addicted to heroin, too, and wish to continue in our addiction. My example is not special pleading: in the letter, Seneca describes financial and political ambitions as generating open-ended, unsatisfying pleasures that generate further such desires that have a very powerful hold on us; according to Seneca it requires a (daring) rupture, if necessary, to break this cycle of addiction. Throughout the letter Seneca treats not just ambitious activities as stormy, but also their consequences (i.e., celebrity, riches and power). It is true that when our actions are at odds with our words something may amiss and, indeed, this reveals a certain lack of integrity. But not all kinds of integrity are alike, and the problem need not be the soundness or the sincerity of the advice given.[1]

Having said that, I doubt that Seneca’s position is best understood as an anti-political theory renouncing worldly riches and power. Recall, first, that true friendship is not anti-political in Seneca (and here). Second, in this letter, his proposal is age-specific: it is apt for those who have spent their lived in the public eye on the turbulent seas, but ought to die in port [in freto viximus, moriamur in portu]. So, in Seneca otium (leisure/ease) does sound like contemporary age-specific ‘retirement’ (as suggested by Gummere’s translation.)

Third, Seneca hints at a more subtle issue. In all regimes, ambitions for success-goods (e.g., relative power, riches, fame, etc.) are insatiable and competitive as well as zero-sum. But in a polity with an emperor they are also very dangerous both to ambitious and able social climbers (such as Lucilius [his humble origins and hard work are stressed]), who are constantly exposed to needs and ambitions of (jealous) others as well as those at the pinnacle(s), including, ultimately, the emperor, which cannot tolerate genuine competitors.  

In particular, he uses Emperor Augustus’s friend and confidante, Maecenas, as a negative exemplar who understands his own fate (as revealed by his poetic treatment of Prometheus).[2] Seneca suggests that Maecenas could have gone down in history as one of the great exemplars of Roman oratory [magnum exemplum Romanae eloquentiae], but instead on his way to the political top he became known for sacrificing his manhood for effeminate pleasures [enervasset felicitas]. Seneca is not merely re-activating Roman Republican suspicion of luxury and anti-homosexual bigotry; he is claiming that Maecenas allowed himself to be corrupted by the demands of his environment (recall the treatment by John Williams, the novelist). In Seneca's hands Maecenas recognizes all of this by the time it's too late.

While Seneca, perhaps, would not want the reader to wholly identify him with the portrait of Maecenas, Seneca is artfully warning against getting too close to power (recall also Seneca on Socrates and Cato). Once you are fully aware of the price to be paid, you recognize, if you are capable of thought that is one's own, you will have buyer's regret even if -- to those looking up -- you seem like a star. While two examples (Maecenas, Seneca) is, perhaps, limited sample-size to generalize from, they are representative of the option-space within a given institutional framework.

Seen from this perspective, Seneca's advice is just prudence. But while I have exhibited how Seneca takes political circumstances into account, I have not offered evidence that in this letter Seneca offers reflections on alternatives. That's true. But I have shown that there are good reasons to think that the details of Seneca's position are responsive to particular political circumstances and causes; he thereby encourages his more reflective reader to contemplate the course of action available in alternative circumstances without introducing the question how these are brought about.

Dennett's Faustian Bargain, revisited

For several years, I have been posing the following choice for my fellow philosophers: if Mephistopheles offered you the following two options, which would you choose?

(A) You solve the major philosophical problem of your choice so conclusively that there is nothing left to say (thanks to you, part of the field closes down forever, and you get a footnote in history).

(B) You write a book of such tantalizing perplexity and controversy that it stays on the required reading list for centuries to come. 

Some philosophers reluctantly admit that they would have to go for option (B). If they had to choose, they would rather be read than right. Like composers, poets, novelists, and other creators in the arts, they tend to want their work to be experienced, over and over, by millions (billions, if possible!). But they are also tugged in the direction of the scientists’ quest. After all, philosophers are supposed to be trying to get at the truth.

When I have presented the same Faustian bargain to scientists they tend to opt for (A) without any hesitation—it’s a no-brainer for them.--Daniel C. Dennett (2013) “A Faustian Bargain” Intuition Pumps And Other Tools for Thinking, p. 411.+

Daniel Dennet was one of my undergraduate teachers, and I am pretty sure I heard him try out versions of the “Faustian Bargain” on visiting scholars. (In his book, Intuition Pumps, he describes further variants.) I mention this because at some point, while I was completing my dissertation, I articulated a descendant of the Bargain that I have tried out on some fellow historians of philosophy. It goes something like this:

(A*) You conclusively settle all interpretive problems about the relationship between the infinite and finite in Spinoza’s metaphysics (like Descartes's Circle a notorious problem) such that there is nothing left to say (thanks to you, Spinoza becomes easy, and you get a footnote in history).

(B*) You generate interest in a previously overlooked text so that it (not you) gets on the required reading list for centuries to come.   

Most scholars happily and promptly settle for (A*); that’s what we are trained to aim at. The spirit of contemporary scholarship in the history of philosophy has its origins (mediated via Quentin Skinner, perhaps) in Germanic Wissenschaft, after all. But a few respondents are, after some hesitation, tempted by (B*). For, ever since some professional philosophical historians of philosophy started to read canonical works in context, it was likely they would stumble across texts that might seem candidates for (B*). And while getting the past right is a non-trivial task, doing justice to the past and thereby shaping a better future is nobler yet.

Moreover, (B*) is also a near-self-less-act; in it one is the nearly anonymous hand-maiden to another's success. Even if it is motivated (one concludes after reading Nietzsche) by a strange kind of desire for revenge or (echoing Walter Benjamin) by a desire to speak for history's losers, it remains the case that one uses one's skill and judgment to make somebody else's previously overlooked views, insights, or arguments available for discussion. Of course, plenty of scholars are motivated by the true and the good, and (B*) might be one way to promote these. Even so, there is also something quixotic about (B*) because it is so unlikely to succeed. After reflecting on canon-formation throughout history, I suspect that enduring novelty is introduced into the curriculum and people's reading habits not by the conjoined efforts of scholars, but by the ideological and curricular needs of history's proverbial winners who write and rewrite the past to give their own commitments an air of inevitability, the so-called (to adopt a fine phrase by Michael Kremer) 'royal road to me' (recall).