Digressions&Impressions

Popper, Foucault, The Art of Leadership, the Liberalism of Fear, and the Birth of Biopolitics

[I] f we approach political theory from a different angle, then we find that far from solving any fundamental problems, we have merely skipped over them, by assuming that the question ‘Who should rule?’ is fundamental. For even those who share this assumption of Plato’s admit that political rulers are not always sufficiently ‘good’ or ‘wise’ (we need not worry about the precise meaning of these terms), and that it is not at all easy to get a government on whose goodness and wisdom one can implicitly rely. If that is granted, then we must ask whether political thought should not face from the beginning the possibility of bad government; whether we should not prepare for the worst leaders, and hope for the best. But this leads to a new approach to the problem of politics, for it forces us to replace the question: Who should rule? by the new 2 question: How can we so organize political institutions that bad or incompetent rulers can be prevented from doing too much damage?--Popper, The Open Society and Its Enemies, chapter 7, p. 115 (emphasis in original)

One of the oddities of Foucault's Birth of Biopolitics, is the near-total absence of Popper. It's odd for three reasons: first, Popper's Open Society is explicitly framed as a response to Lippmann's The Good Society. Since Foucault takes the (1938 Paris) Colloquium on the book as a foundational moment for neo-liberalism, the Open Society is part of the larger sweep of events Foucault is interrogating. Second, it is quite clear that for Popper Plato treats medicine as a political art in order to shape and enhance the population (p. 131ff, chapter 8); so lodged in the Open Society is itself a series of critical reflections on biopolitics and its history. Third, as the passage above reveals, Popper explicitly discusses, in a sense, the art of government, which as we have seen is one of the main themes of the The Birth of Biopolitics.

If we go to the (rather long) footnote attached on the new question, we read the following (in part):

Similar ideas have been expressed by J. S. Mill; thus he writes in his Logic (1st edn, p. 557 f.): ‘Although the actions of rulers are by no means wholly determined by their selfish interests, it is as security against those selfish interests that constitutional checks are required.’ Similarly he writes in The Subjection of Women (p. 251 of the Everyman edition; italics mine): ‘Who doubts that there may be great goodness, and great happiness and great affection, under the absolute government of a good man? Meanwhile laws and institutions require to be adapted, not to good men, but to bad.’ Much as I agree with the sentence in italics, I feel that the admission contained in the first part of the sentence is not really called for. (Cp. especially note 25 (3) to this chapter.) A similar admission may be found in an excellent passage of his Representative Government (1861; see especially p. 49) where Mill combats the Platonic ideal of the philosopher king because, especially if his rule should be a benevolent one , it will involve the ‘abdication’ of the ordinary citizen’s will, and ability, to judge a policy.--Open Society, 579-580

I was pleased to see Popper pick up (recall here; and here) on Mill's argument in Representative Government, but surprised he calls it 'new.' For, it seems to me central (recall) to Hume's (and Montesquieu's) argument against (what Quentin Skinner calls) neoroman liberty and the physiocratic tendency toward benevolent despotism. And while I think in Mill's and Hume's hands the intentions is to further a liberal political life, the underlying ideas can be traced back to Livy and Polybius (and, perhaps, the Hebrew Bible (as Mill suggests).

It strikes me there are two insights coupled in this art of government of (to nod ahead (recall) to Shklar [and here; here]) the liberalism of fear. First, this is emphasized by Hume, to ensure there are sufficient countervailing forces against the executive such that the executive can never hope to dominate society, while remaining effective enough to do her job (defend against foreign enemies and govern the state bureaucracy, faithfully execute the laws). It  is insufficiently appreciated how important this element is. From this perspective, the American fondness -- despite regurgitating at nauseam separation of powers in civics classes --  for an imperial presidency simply feeds the potential of tyranny. The whole tenor of twentieth century practice has been, in this sense, generating the conditions for the success of the eventual rise of illiberal governance.

Second, how to organize institutions such that the downside risk of incompetent, self-interested, or malicious rulers is minimized. It is one of the more amazing, even perverse features of twentieth century intellectual life that the very idea of an open society has become synonymous with risk taking entrepreneurship. Underneath it is an enormous aversion to certain forms of political risk, the possibility of awful government.

What is new, and I think this is, in fact, Popper's seminal contribution (although there are plenty of Schumpeterian premonitions), is to argue that this second point not just from risk aversion, but to argue it also from an analysis of why all the mechanisms designed to prevent bad leadership from arising, for the purposes of a society capable of adapting to changing needs,* are incapable of being sufficiently failure proof. It is this part of the Open Society that is capable of irritating the instructors of mankind and the peddlers of technologies of management. Because he points out that their whole program of meritocratic leadership education is self-contradictory; it leads to mediocrity and is incapable of generating "the spirit of criticism... intellectual independence" (127; this connects up to the heart of Popper's philosophy of science). 

It is an open question how successful Popper's particular argument is against political programs of leadership selection that are illiberal but not meritocratic. But I return to that some other time. Let me wrap up with three observations. First, the two elements of the art of government of the liberalism of fear are not its whole art (see here for a lot more). As Foucault recognizes when he is discussing the ORDOs, one of  their key political arguments of embracing market based competition as a permanent process is to help prevent the rise of overbearing powers. So, here markets are designed to secure the existence of such countervailing powers. (There is a thought like this in Milton Friedman, too.) Obviously, this gives rise to new challenges of preventing monopoly and rent-seeking behavior which may require an executive that opens the door toward more malice (and so the cycle continues). 

Second, within neoliberalism there is an internal dynamic (which is the theme of Foucault's Birth of Biopolitics) such that a focus on the market and the technologies of generating the right sort of agents (with human capital, entrepreneurial, productive etc.) in it start to predominate over other streams of thought that focus on how to develop such adaptive institutions that simultaneously give us the fruits of decent enough government and do not open the door to the generation of tyranny. Once the market is viewed as the antonym of the state in neoliberal thought, this disastrous forgetting of Popper's key insight seems almost inevitable.

Third, and in some sense entirely unrelated, and in another sense absolutely central, Popper concludes his argument on this point with what he calls a "result of some importance:"

Institutions for the selection of the outstanding can hardly be devised. Institutional selection may work quite well for such purposes as Plato had in mind, namely for arresting change. But it will never work well if we demand more than that, for it will always tend to eliminate initiative and originality, and, more generally, qualities which are unusual and unexpected. This is not a criticism of political institutionalism. It only reaffirms what has been said before, that we should always prepare for the worst leaders, although we should try, of course, to get the best. But it is a criticism of the tendency to burden institutions, especially educational institutions, with the impossible task of selecting the best. This should never be made their task. This tendency transforms our educational system into a race-course, and turns a course of studies into a hurdle-race. Instead of encouraging the student to devote himself to his studies for the sake of studying, instead of encouraging in him a real love for his subject and for inquiry, he is encouraged to study for the sake of his personal career; he is led to acquire only such knowledge as is serviceable in getting him over the hurdles which he must clear for the sake of his advancement. In other words, even in the field of science, our methods of selection are based upon an appeal to personal ambition of a somewhat crude form. (It is a natural reaction to this appeal if the eager student is looked upon with suspicion by his colleagues.) The impossible demand for an institutional selection of intellectual leaders endangers the very life not only of science, but of intelligence. Open Society, 128

For those who followed my recent exchange with Zena Hitz (see here for her fascinating twitter response), it will not surprised that I point out that Hitz's concerns are themselves not new. Even if we wince, perhaps, at Popper's gendered way of expressing the point that the very institutions of education are corrupted by worldly advancement (and Popper argues this goes back to Plato). 

On Hitz's Lost in Thought

For intellectual life to deliver the human benefit it provides, it must be in fact withdrawn from considerations of economic benefit or of social and political efficacy. This is the case in part because, as the little human things testify, a human being is more than an instrument of personal or public benefit. Intellectual life is a source of human dignity exactly because it is something beyond politics and social life. But withdrawal from the world is also necessary because intellectual life is, as I have said, an ascetic practice.

If intellectual life is not an elite property but a piece of the human heritage, it belongs first and fundamentally to ordinary human beings. All intellectual life, no matter how ultimately sophisticated, originates in the human questions arising in and behind ordinary life. Scholarship is exciting in its own right, but it means nothing in a world where there is no first-order reflection, no ordinary thinking about human nature or the structure and origins of the world. Higher study is pointless if literature or philosophy or mathematics or the nature of nature has ultimately nothing to do with the human good of ordinary people or with paths of understanding one might follow in daily life. So, too, scholarship is owed back in return to ordinary people, in forms of outreach that respect the role of a free intellect in a good human life.

Anyone seeking a good human life benefits from learning in all of its breadth and depth. Nor need one work in a university or attend one to cultivate the virtue of seriousness. Zeal for the fundamentals in life is fueled by aspiration, by imagining forms of human life that we wish to inhabit or become. Our intellectual culture prizes destruction over edification, a thrill of superiority over deep encouragement, and the reinforcement of factional loyalties over common ground. Yet any thoughtful person, not to speak of a writer, artist, critic, or journalist, can seek out examples, living and dead, historical and fictional, of human beings who have strained every nerve to seek more, better, finer, nobler ways of living.

In this book I have been forced to use mostly examples of high achievers in the realm of the intellect: Einstein, Gramsci, Goethe, Augustine. That is because these are the modes of intellectual life one can easily find in a library—the high achievers are worthy of books. One of the diseases of our spectacle-riddled culture is that we forget that the invisible life has all the human splendor of the visible one, and often more. I have had in mind all along, and have appealed to where possible, the humble bookworm, the amateur naturalist, the contemplative taxi driver. If you, like me, are naturally drawn to achievement, collect examples of ordinary thinkers—human beings whose splendor is known only to a few, their family, their neighbors, their coworkers. Settle back in awe from time to time, as I do, in thinking about the vast treasury of thought and experience that will never be available to us.

Let us remind ourselves of the broad scope of human enterprise as well as the depths available to anyone with a bit of time to think. Let us give free play to the human intellect and the human imagination, in an attempt to ground all that is in our hearts in what matters most.--Zena Hitz (2020) Lost in Thought: The Hidden Pleasures of an Intellectual Life, 202-203

Lost in Thought is that rare book that is manifestly better, more interesting and more compelling, than the essays (recall here; and here) that gave rise to it. It is also a polemical book, polemicizing against the contamination of the intellectual life by the vices of a "spectacle-ridden" culture. As such, it is a book that hopes to restore, even rebirth, a way of life that it is attacked not just from without (which Hitz mostly ignores), but also from within by its ersatz friends. In particular, some of the most bitter, and cogent, polemical attacks are on fellow academics, especially the "elite professors" (200) who, in an imperial context, are seduced by "prestige and status" (10),  who engage in "cruelty," (9) and who justify their wealthy lifestyles in terms of their instrumental value to society (201-202).

This polemic is situated in the interstices of a veritable gallery of intellectual (and sometimes also Catholic) saints, who are the subject of near perfectly executed vignettes. And while the book is very moralistic, the morals are preached lightly and with self-deprecating humor.  Before I engage with her polemic, it is worth noting that part of the fascination of Hitz's argumeny is that it is framed by an autobiographical conversion narrative. It is especially interesting to me because I was a (very) partial witness to a stage of her journey; we overlapped a bit, as PhD students, at The University of Chicago. But that's for another time.

The passage quoted above is from the epilogue of Hitz's book. Her contrast between the false, and fleeting goods of the spectacle-ridden culture, which always are zero-sum and so conflict ridden, and the enduring if not eternal, shareable treasures of inner life re-activates a contrast familiar from the Stoics and Augustine. I mention this not to undermine the diagnosis -- which is wholly on target --, but to caution against the thinly disguised strain of nostalgia that runs through Hitz's argument (this is why she uses the language of 'restoring' (197ff; see also p. 167)). The quest to preserve a site for human dignity and true learning is always with us, part of the human condition.

Because I agree with so much in Hitz's book, it's taken me awhile to figure out my sense of unease with it. This post is an attempt to clarify this unease. And I want to note two features of her account that trouble me. First, Hitz is no friend of scholarship. I quote the relevant passage again: "[scholarship] means nothing in a world where there is no first-order reflection, no ordinary thinking about human nature or the structure and origins of the world. Higher study is pointless if literature or philosophy or mathematics or the nature of nature has ultimately nothing to do with the human good of ordinary people or with paths of understanding one might follow in daily life." 

It is important to be clear on what Hitz is not doing here. She is an eloquent critic of the tendency to subordinate education to moral or political ends; she calls this the "false god" of "opionating," (193)/"opionization" that is, "the holding of a viewpoint" or  the "reduction of thinking and perception to simple slogans or prefabricated positions" (p. 167). She is critical of all political and ethical programs that are tempted by this. This is false education. 

So, Hitz's attitude toward scholarship is not that it must serve some direct political or moral end. In addition, we must distinguish what Hitz calls 'learning' from scholarship. She highly values learning for its own sake because "human beings are essentially knowers, or lovers, or both" (112). But scholarship is a form of learning that somehow (we are never told how) dissociated from the original impulse. It is quite clearly a perverted form of learning.

That is, Hitz wants to resist the idea that scholarship, and excellence in scholarship, is self-justifying. It must, in some non-trivial way, be integrated into the life-world of what she calls "ordinary" human lives. This is why she is attracted to agents and representations of agents (ordinary and extraordinary) whose depth consists in part of a rich and dignified intellectual inner life, but who are engaged in what we may call, humane works (e.g. Dorothy Day, Malcolm X, Augustine). And it is to Hitz's credit that what works will count as meaningful can be a wide variety of (possibly conflicting) political and social activities.

It is not entirely clear why Hitz rejects scholarship for its own sake (other than its elitism).  Perhaps her argument is consequentialist-democratic in that she treats it as ultimately selfish ("pointless if...has ultimately nothing to do with the human good of ordinary people"). Yet, we are not told why the joy of the scholars -- they seem like ordinary people, too, up close -- should not count. 

I believe her more fundamental argument is this: she thinks scholarship for its own sake gives rise to a certain disease of the mind, or a vice, that is characterized by the loss of joy in truth, or what the "ancient monks" call acedia (147). She is right to resist the common translation of 'sloth'; I prefer “a lack of care.” Acedia is distinct from the escapism that, say, Adam Smith thinks is a danger of intellectual life, but it is part of the same species as the 'torpor' which Smith thinks is the effect of the repetitive, work in extensive division of labor.  Notably, the only, authoritative mention of Aquinas in the book is on the nature of acedia (147).

Hitz does not explain why scholarship must give rise to acedia. But she clearly thinks that in so doing it generates the conditions that are conducive to "the pursuit of spectacles." (147) Perhaps, she thinks that the behavior of the elite professors, who are purportedly devoted to a life of scholarship, but glory in cruelty (etc.) is sufficient evidence for her case. But I believe this is a selection effect caused by the incentive structure of the academy, and the way our gaze is oriented toward spectacle and so misses the scholars worth emulating sometimes right in front of us.*

I do not deny that scholars recognize the danger of acedia. Second, our tendency to indulge in esoteric, competitive games and puzzles, are part of our response to it. Let me give a historical example. In the early modern period, the republic of letters had a tradition in which major mathematical and scientific breakthroughs were both announced, and partially hinted at, through anagrams and other puzzles. So, for example, when Galileo saw something unusual nearby Saturn in 1610, he sent out letters with an anagram (here's a fun introduction to the story).

What Hitz ignores is that the otherwise lonely scholarly life is itself organized around competitive emulation in which credit is apportioned in virtue of achievement and excellence. And this competition is practiced and structured in a lot of ways. Hitz mistakenly assimilates this economy to the better known spectacle culture. That is no surprise, because the credit economy of the republic of letters is embedded, perhaps always dangerously so, in a wider institutional economy which is organized along the production and maintenance of prestige hierarchies (which, in turn, are a feature of, and support, our olicharchic culture). This wider institutional economy gives rise to spectacle ridden culture Hitz decries. 

But competitive emulation among equals is the mechanism by which acedia is held at bay. Hitz's distaste for competitive emulation is clear throughout the book not just because she can't find anything to admire in (say) sporting excellence (all the references to sport or negative). But it is exemplified by her analysis of a comment by 'Lenù" (a character in Elena Ferrante's Neapolitan novels--which receive an extended treatment). Lenù, who has just published her own novel and sees it in the bookstore, is quoted as follows:

But was that what I wanted? To write, to write with purpose, to write better than I had already? And to study the stories of the past and the present to understand how they worked, and to learn, learn everything about the world with the sole purpose of constructing living hearts, which no one would ever do better than me, not even Lila if she had the opportunity? (158; emphasis in Hitz.)

The emphasis is in Hitz, but not in Ferrante's original. And I agree with Hitz that what she emphasizes is very important in the passage. But the effect is that Hitz largely effaces the existence and significance of competitive emulation ("which no one would ever do better than me, not even Lila if she had the opportunity") Yes, Hitz acknowledges the significance and existence of competition on the next page (159), but she can't find a good place for it in her analysis. In fact, in general Hitz qualifies competition with negative adjectives ('brutal,' 'grinding,' ''cutthroat,' etc.) and analyzes it in terms of examples in which it degenerates into harm and spectacle.

So, despite her fondness of exemplars, this is why 'emulate/emulation' are near absent in her vocabulary; the exception proves the rule (viz "should we emulate the pure uselessness of Aristophanes’ Socrates, choosing intellectual projects that will be certain to provide no one with any good whatsoever? (p. 188)--the answer is clearly no. This echoes a nuanced analysis of the Clouds earlier in the book worth re-reading.)

There is no denying that competitive emulation risks the dangers of the spectacle. But even then it can be (although need not) also excellence in action. And sometimes it is both at once (poetry competitions/slams and wimbledon finals, etc.). This hybridity, and the danger of degeneration repels a certain kind of extreme purist. Of course, a lot of competitive emulation is incapable of ever becoming a spectacle because it holds no interest to those unwilling to try to understand it. 

That is to say, I admire Hitz's desire to promote "forms of outreach that respect the role of a free intellect in a good human life." This is our common ground. But while I am happy to agree with her criticism of universities; I do not share her criticism of scholarship even where it is often too complacent about the conditions that give rise to it. True scholarship owes nothing to anybody; its allegiance is to truth and to the standards of excellence (including beauty) that constitute it.

 

Spinoza Against Public Universities and Pro-Markets (in Ideas)?

Academies, that are founded at the public expense, are instituted not so much to cultivate talents [ingenia colenda]  as to constrain them. [ad eadem coercenda instituuntur.] Skills and sciences will flourish best [optime excolentur], in a free republic, if every one who asks permission [is granted] to teach in public, at his own expense, and to their own reputation risk. [si unicuique veniam petenti concedatur publice docere, idque suis sumptibus, suis sumptibus, suaeque famae periculo].--Spinoza Political Treatise, Ch. 8, p. 49,  translated  Robert Harvey Monro Elwes [with most modifications]

Spinoza assumes that a true cultivation of dispositions will generate excellence in the sciences and technology (or technical arts [scientiae et artes]).* He denies that publicly funded universities produce such excellence. Because regardless of what their purported aims are, the true aim of public universities is to mold talents into the assumed or perceived needs of public authority. This generates a species of conformity, and is incompatible with true excellence. As Adam Smith put the same point in the Wealth of Nations, “The discipline of colleges and universities is in general contrived, not for the benefit of the students, but for the interest, or more properly speaking, for the ease of the masters. It's object is to maintain the authority of all masters.”*

A key hidden assumption is that diverse talents must be cultivated in a variety of ways such that sciences and crafts can flourish. And through direct and indirect censorship (i.e., a curriculum,  etc.)  public universities prevent this variety from being developed. 

More could be said about this passage and his then recent rejection of the Chair at Heidelberg. And much more ought to be said about Spinoza's views of human nature in the Political Treatise.  Given the fondness for Spinozza among today's self-styled radicals and marxists, he is, to be speak frankly, surprisingly elitist about the intellectually gifted (8.2). But that's for another time.

Given the diversity of human character and given the diversity of excellence in the sciences and technology, what's needed according to Spinoza is unlimited freedom to  would be educators to teach what they wish constrained by their budgets and reputation. 

I assume that Spinoza is only speaking of higher education (academies) here. It is notable that even Smith, who was a fierce critic of the universities of his age, would not go as far as Spinoza. Smith thought that professors should indeed be paid by their students (such that a higher enrollment meant higher fees). But Smith did not propose that everybody could organize higher education as they see fit. 

It is notable, Sinoza does not consider an option to reform higher education: the creation and advocacy of something like academic freedom. While the term is a bit anachronistic, it is not much a stretch for the advocate of freedom of philosophizing/scientific thought (which is the explicit thesis of the Theological Political Treatise--a text he refers back to regularly in the Political Treatise);** there is no doubt that the nature and extent of academic freedom was debated in various controversies at Leiden University in his lifetime (some of them having to do with the status of Cartesianism). But given everything else he says about the way incentives and human nature interact to generate conditions of corruption in the Political Treatise, he must have thought this decidedly unpromising (perhaps especially in an aristocracy [since the paragraph is tucked away in a chapter on the best aristocracy]).

Another option would be for universities independent of government (and religious) control in the manner of some ancient academies and future private universities. But it is crucial, I think, that Spinoza does not advocate for the establishment of a single private university to create such freedom. Rather his emphasis is on educators, many would be educators ("each" unicuique). I happen to think we're invited to think of Plato and Aristotle and their business model with fee paying students attracted by their reputation. And it is quite clear that Spinoza thinks that in a heterogeneous population of fee-paying students, it is the interaction of payment and reputation of teachers that will produce the excellence in the sciences and technologies conducive to the flourishing of a free republic. 

It is a peculiar fact of the reception of Spinoza that a book which seriously curtails speech (but not thought), the Theological Political Treatise, is treated as the origin of modern freedom of speech; whereas the book that despite curtailing such speech (3.5) quietly promotes a market place in intellectual ideas is still (to quote Yitzhak Melamed and Hasana Sharp) a "neglected masterpiece."

 

Decolonizing the Curriculum and Viewpoint Diversity

But then I look at the stereotyped Non-Western philosophy list and I can't help but notice another thing - it's a rejection of things that contemporary heirs to the Romantic tradition hate. Fair enough, they are trying to draw out what seems to them best in the texts they are interpreting, and its my linguistic inadequacies which introduced the filter. But still, in the end, this focus, that this seems like the most salient positive achievement of the school or group under study - it still seems to me to be a reflection of disputes in contemporary mainstream Western philosophy.  (Or at least recent contemporary, at this point I think they are somewhat caricaturing their opponents.) I am not fully persuaded the focus reflects the priority or agenda of those either being studied or whose worldview is being represented,  rather than the schedule of priorities of those in contemporary academia. It just seems like too much of a coincidence.--Liam Kofi Bright (April 2019) On Eurocentrism

There are, roughly, two ways in which one can decolonize one’s bread and butter introductory, historical survey of political philosophy/theory curriculum. One is to give direct voice to those who challenge the universal authority of Eurocentric political ideas (hereafter: direct voice); another is to include traditions of thought that are not centered on, and often pre-date, European modernity (hereafter: comparative).* Both approaches have advantages, and both create, and are a consequence of, complex selection effects.

Before I get to to that, I want to get there by reflecting a bit on Bright's post (which, by his standards, got little attention in the blogosphere when it first apepared; but see Ethan Mills). Bright is focused on works that typically are not studied by English speaking philosophy students. The features of these works he is discussing can be categorized, roughly, as belonging in the philosophy of mind/metaphysics/epistemology areas. But they have a counterpart in features familiar to political theory. So, amidst a diversity of style and outlook, here are two additional stereotypical features one is likely to find. First, that the universal authority of Eurocentrentic reason is rejected in terms of parochial, local values (embodied in traditions ). Second, despite the apparent rejection of universal claims, they all end up saying pretty much the same thing: capitalism and imperialism are bad, egalitarian customs and institutions that celebrate communal life of mutual care, which reflect an authentic possibility, are good. What's indeed striking about the list -- and I only noticed it after reading Bright -- is that these reflect the program of romanticism, or at least the part influenced by the popular version of Rousseau. David Graeber and David Wengrow have been (recall) astute on this. 

So, Bright speculates that this may be due to a selection effect. To put his insight in catchy terms, there is a dominant Enlightenment narrative and the 'non-Western' readings are found to play out a dialectic familiar to European thought in which the 'non-Western' readings play a role that is despite their more egalitarian tendencies, the functional equivalent of Romanticism and its legacy in it. And, indeed, the 'non-Western'+ readings helped shape Romanticism (see also Graeber&Wengrow), and were subsequently shaped by it. I think Fanon is aware of this dynamic and pushes back against it, but about that some other time. One of the clear effects of this dialectic is to flatten the 'non-Western' landscape and efface the heterogeneity within the 'Western' traditions.

Now, if this were a polemical post, or a journal article, I would provide lots of examples. And the skeptical reader has every right to suspect I am stereotyping. But, instead, I articulate the risks of the first strategy (which also explains the selection effect Bright worries about); in shaping the curriculum -- here's a familiar route: Plato, Aristotle, Machiavelli, Hobbes, Locke, Rousseau, Madison, Hegel, Mill,  -- it is tempting to correct their racism and imperialism by giving direct voice to those who challenge the universal authority of Eurocentric political ideas. Here the function of direct voice is to oppose. And one can even hope that the opposition is effective in creating an intellectual struggle that will lead to a kind of progressive synthesis in which the now existing 'Western' worldview is transformed through the confrontation with the voice of its opposite. 

Since curricula involve choices under extreme scarcity (time and student attention) that inevitably means sacrificing works of Europe's long illiberal, Christian and utopian history (so out go much of Aristotle, Augustine, Aquinas, Luther, Calvin, More,  Burke, Paine, Saint-Simon, Fourier, Luxemburg, etc.) in order to make space for Equiano, L’Ouverture Cugoano, Gouges, Grouchy, L’Ouverture, Douglass, Sojourner Truth, The Declaration of Sentiments, Du Bois, Ambedkar, Gandhi, and MLK. (Because I have a cut-off before WWI, I teach about a third of these regularly.)**

As I note above, the effect of giving voice in this way -- and yes that locution is intended to problematize my own position -- is that it reinforces the idea that European modernity is this decisive world-historical rupture and that all thought must respond to it. One can recognize that racialized slavery, eugenics, patriarchy/misogyny, and imperialism are evils that shape our world and still note that the rupture-responsive model has its own flaws as a way to structure a curriculum. Effectively, the students are taught 'liberalism and its heroic, egalitarian critics.' (This is so even though there are plenty of genuine elistists among decolonial authors [see here for fruitful document initiated by David Owens].) Often, the critics draw on the lived experience under imperialism, and the egalitarian and spiritual strains in Christianity, Stoicism, Marxism, and Utopian anarchist/socialists. 

Another route is to seek out exemplary thinkers of intellectual traditions untouched by footnotes to Plato syndrome. I was first exposed to this when I encountered the curriculum of Singaporean undergraduates. One quickly ends up teaching some of the thinkers of the Chinese Warring States period (e.g., Mencius, Master Mo, and Han Fei) and Kautilya and/or Buddhist ideas. There is a real risk here in reinforcing the (idea popular in the late nineteenth century) of autonomous great civilizations with their own distinct (illiberal and/or spiritual) political outlook. But this can be prevented if one teaches a multiplicity of voices. I also tend to point out that Europeans became familiar with these traditions just as they started to articulate modernity. I doubt it is a coincidence that Rousseau and Grouchy can sound a bit like Mencius sometimes. 

I also end up teaching Al-Farabi (who is influenced by Platonic tradition) and Al-Ghazali (who pretends not to be) because it is important, especially in the Netherlands (where most students grow up functionally atheist) that revealed religion, theocracy, and political mysticism are discussed seriously. And, given the public hostility to Islam (which is treated as synonymous with backwardness and barbarism), I want all my students to immerse themselves in extremely sophisticated discussions within it. That they encounter a version of proto-feminism is a bonus.

One advantage of this alternative is that the defenders of meritocracy, hierarchy, and empire, and honoring the traditional rites all get their articulate say. (I suspect this is one reason why some are so attracted to teaching Confucianism these days.) This generates genuine viewpoint diversity, and has odd effect of pleasing, simultaneously, cosmopolitan and conservative/authoritarian students. Another attraction is that students notice that the post Hobbesian social contract tradition (with its arc -- via Locke, Rousseau, and Kant (and possible critique by Hume) -- toward Rawls) is just one possible strain of social contract theorizing. One other advantage is that one escapes the  quiet cognitive stranglehold of westphalian statehood, which is permissive of a relatively sharp demarcation between domestic and international political arena. Of course, many critics of, say, imperialism and slavery also note the interaction between political economy and international relations. 

It's possible, of course, that we are on the precipice, of the implosion of modernity, and that would allow much more adventurous decolonizing and decentering choices if there will be universities like ours then. But going against my natural pessimism, assuming we're not, lots of blends are possible (and, in practice, I blend). Direct and indirect voice can generate exciting courses that use 'history' to provide an introductory 'survey' of important arguments, concepts, and institutions in political philosophy. I don't mean to suggest that direct and indirect voice exhaust the possibilities (recall these posts inspired by Khader (here; here; and Bright here) on grasping and modeling the constrained choices of the oppressed). But there is, in fact, a clear choice lurking here. Decolonizing through direct voice indirectly facilitates a curricular narrative of historical progress (or dialectic); while comparative voice indirectly promotes a view that political theory involves learning to model fundamental trade-offs. Perhaps this is a false choice, and we need both.

 

Patrick Deneen and The Noble Lie

During one of the more infamous moments in Plato’s Republic, Socrates suggests that the ideal city needs a founding myth—what he calls “a noble lie”—to ensure its success. The myth has two parts. The first relates that every person in the city comes from the same mother, and thus encourages belief in a common origin and kinship of all the citizens who live in the city. The second relates that every person belongs by birth to a particular class based upon his or her talents and abilities, indicated by a metal gilded upon each soul at birth: gold for the ruling class; silver for ministers, soldiers, and high-ranking servants; bronze and iron for the workers.

Socrates argues that both parts of the myth must be believed by all citizens for the city to succeed. The myth at once seeks to unite and to differentiate, to explain what is common and distinct, to foster civic patriotism amid significant difference. The first part encourages civic commitment, shared sacrifice, and belief in a common good. The second justifies the existence of inequality as a permanent feature of ­human society....If anyone is likely to accept the myth, he suggests, it is the uneducated working class.

...

Unlike Marx, [Plato] did not believe that the members of the lower class would be unlikely to know their own interests. The underclass is likely to accept the myth because they realize it works to their advantage. Its members are keenly aware of the fact of inequality. That part of the “lie” hardly seems false to them. What is novel, and what works to their advantage, is the idea that inequalities exist for the benefit of the underclass as well as the rulers. That is, members with noble metals in their souls are to undertake their work for the benefit of everyone, including those whose souls are marked by base metals. By contrast, members of the ruling class are likely to disbelieve the myth out of self-interest. They balk at the claim that every person, regardless of rank, belongs to the same family. They do not want the advantages that might solely benefit their class to be employed for the benefit of the whole.

Only if each group accepts each part of the “lie,” as Socrates explains, is a kind of social contract achieved. Elites and commoners both accept the part of the myth that does not appeal to them for the sake of the part that does. Elites are distinguished in a society that justifies inequality; commoners are best off in a society that compels service of elites for the whole. Instead of acting as warring parties, both sides work for the good of all. Such a compact is difficult to achieve. 

...

The part of the “noble lie” that once would have horrified the elites—the claim of common kinship—is irrelevant; instead, they resist the inegalitarian part of the myth that would then, as now, have seemed self-evident to the elites as well as the underclass. Today’s underclass is as likely to recognize its unequal position as Plato’s. It is elites that seem most prone to the condition of “false consciousness.”

....

While elites may suffer self-inflicted blindness to the nature of their position, the rest of society clearly sees what they are doing...Our ruling class is more blinkered than that of the ancien régime. Unlike the aristocrats of old, they insist that there are only egalitarians at their exclusive institutions. They loudly proclaim their virtue and redouble their commitment to diversity and inclusion. They cast bigoted rednecks as the great impediment to perfect ­equality—not the elite institutions from which they benefit. The institutions responsible for winnowing the social and economic winners from the losers are largely immune from questioning, and busy themselves with extensive public displays of their unceasing commitment to equality. Meritocratic ideology disguises the ruling class’s own role in perpetuating inequality from itself, and even fosters a broader social ecology in which those who are not among the ruling class suffer an array of social and economic pathologies that are increasingly the defining feature of ­America’s underclass. Facing up to reality would require hard questions about the agenda underlying commitments to “diversity and inclusion.” Our ­stated commitment to “critical thinking” demands no less, but such questions are likely to be put down—at times violently—on contemporary campuses.

....

From the vantage of nearly 2,500 years, Plato’s noble lie doesn’t appear to be a falsehood after all. For a society to function, two seemingly contradictory beliefs must be simultaneously held: We are radically different and radically alike. We are extensively differentiated yet bound together. We are called to sometimes radically unequal tasks, but those tasks are part of an effort to benefit the whole. Plato thought the “fact of difference” would be easy for people to acknowledge, since it is so evident to our senses, if not always easy for those in a position of lower status to accept. The challenge was how to achieve belief in a common origin and shared kinship. TheRepublic of Plato was one effort to answer that challenge, if a fairly absurd and implausible one (as Socrates readily admitted). 

....

So long as liberalism was not fully itself—so long as liberalism was corrected and even governed by Christianity—a working social contract was possible. For Christianity, difference is ordered toward unity. For liberalism, unity is valued insofar as it promotes difference.....

The new aristocrats believe we have transcended the need for Christianity, which they regard as a myth no less mendacious than Plato’s noble lie. They believe that by dispelling the old myths, they can become the vanguard of an ever more equal society. They blind themselves to the fact that this claim is a form of status maintenance, allowing denial of a deeper commonality with those they regard as benighted and backward. Elites denounce the “populists” while denying that they have fomented a class war. They deplore the obnoxiousness of Donald Trump, perfectly obtuse of their complicity in his ascent.

We are in uncharted territory. Liberalism coexisted with Christianity for its entire history, with Christianity moderating the harder edges of the regnant political philosophy, supporting forms and practices that demanded from elites the recognition of their elevated status, and hence, corresponding responsibilities and duties to those less fortunate. The thoroughgoing disdain and dismissiveness of today’s elites toward the working class is a reflection of our newfound “enlightenment,” just as is the belief among the lower class that only a strong and equally disdainful leader can constrain the elites. Liberalism has achieved its goal of emptying the public square of the old gods, leaving it a harsh space of contestation among unequals who no longer see any commonality. Whether that square can be filled again with newly rendered stories of old telling us of a common origin and destination, or whether it must simply be dominated by whoever proves the strongest, is the test of our age.--Patrick Deneen, "The Ignoble Lie" First Things.

I recently read Patrick Deneen's Why Liberalism Failed, and wanted to do a short piece on his claim in that book that liberalism today is in the grip of a noble lie that is serving the interests of elites at the expense of the have-nots; in Deneen's version the elites are deluded while the have nots see clearly. But I had left my copy at the office and instead found a version of his argument at First Things online. While the diagnosis is roughly the same between the book and the blog post, it is worth noting that in the book Deneen reads as an echt-Burkean -- distinct from the pseudo-conservatives who peddle national greatness and global markets --, who advocates a kind of withdrawal from politics in favor of small scale communal living (there are a lot of fond references to the Amish and even counterculture experimentation) while in the blog post he read as an angry Thomist who would, it seems, like to see the return of Christianity to its place of domination in the public sphere. I don't mean to suggest the two sides must be in contradiction with each other, or that Deneen is speaking in split tongues, but the distinct rhetoric is striking. (Here's another one: in the book the present-to-be-lamented-emphasis on diversity is traced back to Madison; in the blog Madison is dropped, and diversity is treated as a modern evil located in silly campus activists.) I also do not mean to imply that the historical Burke would reject national greatness and global markets!

But for my present purposes the differences between blog-Deneen and book-Deneen are irrelevant. For his account of the noble lie is fairly consistent between the two. I agree with Deneen one can encounter in elite social circles, rich folk in the grip of purported self-justifying meritocracy and victim blaming. (It is a bit peculiar that in the blog, but not the book, he seems to extol Charles Murray whose whole business-model turns on this.) But that fact is not to be confused with liberal self-understanding.

In particular, he seems to miss entirely -- and I think this is a great irony -- that his diagnosis of the modern noble lie echoes John Stuart Mill's in the introductory chapter 1 On Liberty. There Mill had argued (recall) that in conditions of domination/subordination, ruling ideologies will tend to favor the self-interest of the ruling classes. In so doing they corrupt the moral sentiments of the ruling class and even pervert how they treat each other. Deneen and Mill agree about this. In addition, Deneen and Mill agree that the lower classes see through the delusion. The one key difference is that Mill seems to suggest that the lower classes are, despite their knowledge, corrupted by becoming servile. Whereas Deneen suggests they turn to socialists and authoritarians. 

That is to say, and Deneen is oblivious to this, liberalism is quite capable of a truthful self-understanding of its own condition as an ideology that accommodates ruler-ship, while simultaneously recognizing that it needs to be committed to ameliorating the conditions that give rise to its rule while simultaneously reinforcing it. In my view this idea is also fully present in Adam Smith, who thought (recall) that property rights protect the rich from the indignation of the poor but that such a system would also benefit the poor. And while this does no justice to Rawls' arguments it is a pretty vulgar, but no less true, interpretation of the difference principle. In fact, once one pays attention to this feature of liberalism it is quite entrenched in the tradition.* 

So,  the more interesting fact is that for all his animus toward liberalism, Deneen can't see that the roots of his very critique is itself grounded in some of the best features of the liberal tradition. That is, the very terms by which Deneen proposes his criticism of liberalism is part of a historical dialectic generated by liberalism, and fully anticipated by the thinking branch of liberalism. In fact, in the book his solutions echo the Smithian strains in Pierre-Joseph Proudhon. What I am hinting at is that liberalism's understanding of progress also foresees the kind of reactions Deneen exhibits. 

What to make of this is a harder question. As regular readers know I am not complacent about the future of liberalism. And once I return to the office, I want to use the more perceptive elements of Deneen's diagnosis of liberalism to help articulate our challenge today. But here I close with a kind of puzzle and a further thought: it is a notable fact that some of the most strident and most intelligent enemies of liberalism since, say, Carl Schmitt (recall) have a tendency to treat it as rank stupidity. This is a shame because liberals and even the most skeptically liberal educators have always recognized that we need our critics. Which is the true reason -- and not some deference to Christianity -- our cannon (from Plato to Nietzsche) is, well, so illiberal.

Getting Thrasymachus right, the Comfort College, and the Fate of Liberal Education

Thrasymachus, a post-modernist a couple of millennia ahead of his time, denies there is such a thing as justification — there is only motive and cause. There’s only one answer to the question Why should I be just? Swords and spears.

It took 2,400 years, but Thrasymachus has won in the comfort college. When objectivity is scorned, when justification is considered only subjective, when reason and logic are taken to be only the tools of oppression and the province of the oppressor, then all that is left is power.

To ask the reason for something can only mean to ask for the motive or cause. The study of logic has a name for what happens when we confuse the origin of a belief with its truth, or the origin of an argument with its validity. It’s called the genetic fallacy.

The comfort college’s acolytes make the figurative fallacy literal. It is the arguer’s genes that determine truth and validity, not facts or reason. That is why, in the comfort college, testimony has come to substitute for rational argument. When students (and more and more faculty) demand a new policy, their arguments often begin as (and rarely go beyond) accounts of victimization; the account is justification enough.

This ritual institutionalizes the denial of rational justification. It corrupts the healthy multicultural idea, built on Enlightenment universalism and cosmopolitanism, that different perspectives matter, and that what one sees often depends on where one stands — and that we are all better off from listening to those who stand in different places, who see the part of the truth that is blocked from our particular vision. The liberal ideal of the pursuit of knowledge is that by cooperating we all can see and understand better. But identity politicians reject the Enlightenment’s hope of mutual understanding and reason’s path to get us there. In the fragmented comfort college, the only tool is power — the power to enforce the dogma.--Steven Gerrard "The Rise of the Comfort College" Bloomberg, Opinion.[HT Leiterreports]

Yesterday, when I first read this I was prompted to snark. I won't withhold from you my more critical reflections of Gerrard's self-understanding and analysis. But that will not be the main point of this post: what I really want to do is discuss and grasp the sense of "loss" (a word he uses more than once) that Gerrard describes of a college in transition from one regime to another kind of regime. Not to put too fine point on it, this transition is clearly traumatic for some (the ones who feel loss). And maybe their trauma can help us start to reflect on the nature of this transition.

But before I get to that it is notable that Thrasymachus (and since Plato is a leitmotif in Gerrard's two-part essay, I will assume that 'Thrasymachus' refers to the persona in the Republic) is misrepresented. Socrates explicitly marks the fact that Thrasymachus (somewhat originally [348e]) treats injustice as objectively (!) a part of virtue/wisdom. And Thrasymachus has offered a justification for this claim. The status of the justification is complex because it draws on empirical features, but in virtue of treating injustice as properly part of virtue/wisdom, the argument is also normative. Moreover, Thrasymachus alllows that while the content of what is called 'justice' is regime dependent, its structure is regime invariant. (There is a formal sense in which this anticipates Aristotle, but there are also non-trivial differences, including differences in how to express the insight.) And while one easily imagine this being the grounds of ideology critique ('justice' serves the interests of the locally strong), a natural reading of Thrasymachus position is that this state of affairs can be endorsed upon reflection (hence it is properly part of virtue/justice). It's possible, of course, that Thrasymachus'  argument is flawed, but it's not because Thrasymachus denies that reasons can be given or that he is a moral nihilist or a caricature post-modernist.* 

I mention this not just for minimal historical accuracy, nor to note that this is an instance of a more general phenomenon that those that bewail the fall of civilization and invoke Plato are such odd readers of Plato, but rather that Gerrard slides a bit too quickly from presenting Thrasymachus as the anthithesis of "Enlightenment universalism and cosmopolitanism, [and the idea'] that different perspectives matter" to a critic of objectivity. In some respects Thrasymachus prefigures the (non-trivial) strain in Enlightenment pluralist thought that as a matter of objective fact recognizes differences in institutional and political arrangements and simultaneously acknowledges that they can instantiate common commitments. And while there is plenty of resistance of Enlightenment thinkers to the idea that local might makes right, many do think that (to echo Adam Smith) the law exists to provide the powerful rich nighttime "security."

Once upon a time, those that defended the Enlightenment were proud of the fact that it was thought capable, perhaps uniquely capable, to develop a tradition of internal critique (including critique of critique, etc.)--such that ideology critique became a mainstream feature of it. Gerrard proudly notes that he taught Mill, but he seems to have missed that chapter 2 of Mill's Of Liberty (recall) presents a straightforward account of ideology that generalizes to all societies: "Wherever there is an ascendant class, a large portion of the morality of the country emanates from its class interests, and its feelings of class superiority."  Ideology critique is not something to be ceded to Marxism, but it is a reflexive feature of the liberal strand of the Enlightenment. The tools of ideology critique are immanent in Thrasymachus (and arguably developed in the rest of the Republic). This is no easy matter because there is a genuine threat that any ideology critique can be corrosive. But to echo Socrates (and Spinoza), the excellent things in life are not easy.

Gerrard tells us that his trials started when some faculty at Williams tried to have their institution "sign a national pledge of allegiance to principles of free expression that originated at the University of Chicago, adopted which he calls "the mainstream liberal principles." Now, I don't think these new principles are very liberal (either in the sense of classical liberal or in the modern sense of liberal); I have discussed (early articulations) of those new principles (recall here; here) critically and treated them, agreeing with Jacob T. Levy, unfavorably in light of the (earlier) the University of Chicago statement on freedom of expression and the Kalven Report, "which are much better statements of governing academic principle."

Now Gerrard's own position seems that censorship or event cancellation is a mistake, but rather that "we just have to work to maximize the educational mission of all our events." It is notable that somebody who happily invokes Plato throughout his essay fails to pause at the fact that, at least according to Plato (or Plato's Socrates), the educational mission of students (let's leave maximizing aside), and citizens, requires (extensive) censorship and non-trivial policing of what can enter into a curriculum and course of study. Plato was no liberal and, I am leaving aside his views on political speech. But the very idea of a curriculum presupposes decisions about what viewpoints can and cannot be heard and how the interaction among these decisions can shape a course of study. And while those decisions do not reduce to power, it is peculiar to fail allow that, in practice power enters into them.** 

Now, Gerrard inscribes his analysis into a fourfold division (mostly indebted to  Frederick Rudolph) of the evolution of colleges: 1. the Christian college; 2. the gentlemen’s college; and 3. the consumer’s college; 4. the comfort college. In Gerrard's schema were transitioning between 3 and 4, and "are on the cusp of this new era." He then makes his most important observation:

The controversies over free speech, safe spaces, trigger warnings, microaggressions and the like are symptoms of this shift. They are currently considered controversies because the colleges are in transition, and many do not realize that the old standards no longer hold. Once the transition is complete, the “correct” side of the controversies will become central to a school’s identity — just as faith was to the Christian college, self-confidence was to the gentlemen’s college, and alumni devotion and achievement were to the consumer’s college.

While no era was homogeneous, I agree with Gerrard that a transition is occurring. {I learned (recall) from Bejan that the concern with microagressions goes back to Hobbes.} That is to say, while a lot of the public writing about the transition is simply a business-model on the intellectual right (I note with amusement that Gerrard published this in Bloomberg!--and I defend markets:)), even a form of virtue signaling (of which I am no critic), the vehemence of the response to the ordinary ebb and flow of american elite campus life does indicate something. One reason I am focusing on Gerrard is that unlike those who turn campus life into click-bait, he recognizes that given the educational mission of a university "insensitivity toward people’s identities should be self-censored, and social pressure to do so is a helpful tool."  He is a serious educator.

Now, Gerrard thinks that new (comfort) college devalues "the pursuit of knowledge."+ And he thinks this is indicated, in part, by the willingness of Williams' students to claim that “We hold the truth of discursive and institutional violence to be self-evident.” Presumably the students find this self-evident in the manner that Jefferson (and the other Enlightened Founders) held, against the manifest evidence of their senses--and perhaps also their actions, "that all men are created equal." What that manner is is not easy to articulate and since I am not a student at Williams I wouldn't wish to speak on their behalf.

But the students' statement does point to the costs and harms of the pursuit of knowledge and also the harmful effects of its application. We can study that within the Enlightenment project as a species of inductive risk. Even given the unfavorable gloss offered by Gerrard, the students seems to be asking for the responsible pursuit of knowledge one that recognizes the harms done along the way and is willing to be held accountable for the conditions that make it possible (hence the obligation to Williams College of "reparation and reconciliation to Indigenous peoples").

Let me close with a final note, Gerrard asserts that "Our students are comfortable in their opinions but uncomfortable with their lives, finding their world and the Williams campus a threatening place." He interprets his students as wanting to be comforted and sheltered by the college. I hope he forgives this sentence, but it strikes me that in dealing with genuinely unpleasant disagreements he is so traumatized that he misses a more plausible and also more generous interpretation.++ For the very evidence he presents suggests that at least his more vocal students are eager to confront the very real threats the world poses and to make education and knowledge an engine to try to change them materially and confront them symbolically. I am enough a historian of Enlightenment philosophy to recognize that in so doing these students are children of the very Enlightenment he claims they deride and he wishes to preserve. 

For a liberal higher education serves multiple ends. But one of the fundamental ends is to provide individuals and society with the means to confront the many biases of the status quo. The liberal's preference for markets and education also entails a willingness to live with the uncertainty that the past is not reproduced, but challenged. How to educate students to be democratic activists is no easy matter (and I leave to others who have expertise). But a true liberal education, in fact, is committed to the risky (recall) idea that students will take our teachings and surprise us with their uses of it including the inadequacy of our dogmas. 

 

On Rare Phoenixes in Philosophy (Seneca, Socrates, and Spinoza)

For one of the first class ["good men" [vir bonus]]] perhaps springs into existence, like the phoenix, only once in five hundred years. And it is not surprising, either, that greatness develops only at long intervals; Fortune often brings into being commonplace powers, which are born to please the crowd [turbam]; but she holds up for our approval that which is extraordinary by the very fact that she makes it rare. [eximia vero ipsa raritate commendat]

2. This man, however, of whom you spoke, is still far from the state which he professes to have reached. And if he knew what it meant to be "a good man," he would not yet believe himself such; perhaps he would even despair of his ability to become good. "But," you say, "he thinks ill of evil men." Well, so do evil men themselves; and there is no worse penalty for vice than the fact that it is dissatisfied with itself and all its fellows. 3. "But he hates those who make an ungoverned use of great power suddenly acquired." I retort that he will do the same thing as soon as he acquires the same powers. Seneca, Letter 42. Translated by Richard Mott Gummere (with minor changes)

The truly good are so rare we may as well call them flukes of nature. Allowing that Socrates associates philosophers with those of the first class, Socrates also seems to have thought that absent breeding, this the case (see the αὐτόματοι  Republic 520b). But Seneca seems more adamant about the cyclical rarity of then. I mention Socrates because Seneca may well be tempt the reader to think he is slyly comparing himself to Socrates; he was, after all, born about 480 years after Socrates. 

Much of the letter repeats Seneca's lessons about how a high price in the marketplace, and mass approval, are worthless or  involve commodities and states of affairs that make us worse off. A key new claim (also with a Socratic provenance) is that bad people actually (secretly) have, despite appearances to the contrary, a low estimate of themselves [At male existimat de malis.]* The etymology of existimat ( ex- +‎ aestimō) reminds us that esteem and estimate (in the sense of judging) are very closely tied together. 

It is not entirely clear if Seneca thinks low self-esteem is a cause of their bad behavior or if this is, due to the workings of conscience (as Butler and Adam Smith would argue), the effect of bad behavior, or  (more likely) both. But the striking fact is that the interaction of low self-esteem with bad behavior creates a miserable psychic condition in virtue of succeeding at one's projects.** 

I have always have found the underlying psychological idea plausible enough, despite the suspicion this is the kind of thing we powerless may invent to haunt the powerful. What makes Senca's claim plausible is that his lines may well be autobiographical (he was insanely rich and not free of misdeeds). Yet, sometimes one encounters the obscenely rich and wicked who seem to lack all sense of shame. 

Be that as it may, on this view to do bad is to get caught in a vicious cycle of self-contempt. In the ledger Seneca likes to invoke, one is, were double-entry book-keeping already invented, then in the loss column.

It turns out that in this sense -- of psychic health or proper positive self-estimation -- only a fraction [quoto cuique] -- are not in the loss column. By the structure of his letter, Seneca tempts us to see in these self-contained few with nothing lost [nihil perdidit] the rare exemplars that arise every half-millennia or so. The role of these exemplar(s) is to help structure the emendation or spiritual exercises he offers, but it is de facto unattainable. 

Since I have been brief, let me add one further thought. Another way to understand the the nature of the phoenix image is in terms of the periodic rebirth of philosophy. This is in some sense the eternal recurrence of the same. Although we can expect differences because while the identity of the phoenix remains the same, the context in which she grows does not.

With that in mind, I looked anew at the last line(s) of Spinoza's Ethics: But all things excellent are as difficult as they are rare. [Sed omnia praeclara tam difficilia, quam rara sunt]. This evoke Seneca with one notable difference. Spinoza leaves no doubt that despite the difficulty, one can with a proper regimen turn oneself into one of the (mentally) blessed. And if you fail, try again and harder.

PPE as Synthetic Philosophy (or synthetic science)

PPE (Philosophy, Politics, and Economics) is an increasingly popular undergraduate and graduate major. In practice there are two models: one is what I like to call a confederate model: in this approach students take a mixture of courses from the three contributing disciplines. One is what I like to call a federated model: in this approach students take a mixture of courses from the three contributing disciplines and then jointly (or partially) bring these to bear on a capstone topic (a paper, thesis, project, etc.) Most PPE programs I am familiar with fall somewhere between these two models.

Obviously other options are possible, including the reflexive option in which students study the three contributing topics, in part, from each others's perspectives (i.e, philosophy and politics of economics, the economics of philosophy, etc.) A final approach would be the integrated model in which students take some courses from the three contributing disciplines, but primarily are learning to apply them jointly  (as mutually supporting, mixed methods). Obviously these approaches can be blended in various ways and the list is not exhaustive.

Recently I visited the third annual PPE conference in New Orleans, and to my surprise I came away thinking that PPE may be a viable research area. I think this for a number of sociological reasons: first, the number of PPE programs is growing and so are their enrollments.* This means that there is steady hiring in PPE. Second, while the (quite popular) confederate model means one can hire faculty without much interest in PPE to teach within PPE, hiring folk with fondness and interest in PPE prevents downstream troubles. These two reasons are, we may say, demand-led.

But third, what struck me hard at the PPE conference is that there is now a critical mass of people ((ahh) the supply side) that are confident in offering and evaluating arguments and proposals with competence derived from at least two of the three contributing areas, while maintaining (a) shared conversation, and (b) being capable of informed and overlapping criticism(s), and (c) without disagreements wholly being methodological. In addition, while the conference attracts quite a number of market friendly types --  this became clear during a straw-poll taken by Al Roth during his lecture on kidney selling --  PPE is clearly not synonymous with 'libertarian friendly' or 'heterodox economist.' Quite a few sessions explored criticism of really existing capitalism.+

As an aside, during the past year I read (recall) James Scott’s Seeing Like a State, which gave me a (relatively) contemporary exemplar in what PPE research could be. This autobiographical example is connected to what take to be one of the main problems with the (fast growing and developing) PPE society: political science is primarily represented by political theorists (and philosophers masquerading as political theorists) and that there is little contribution from the rather large group of political economists in political science departments (of a sort that publish in journals like Review of International Political Economy, New Political Economy, and European Journal of Political Economy among others). That philosophers and economics find it easy to talk to each other is no surprise -- we share overlapping methods and research topics (decision theory, Bayes, justice, welfare, future generations, etc.), even overlapping research cultures.

But (inter alia) political scientists bring facility with mixed methods to the table as well as a focus on power. Political scientists are also naturally at ease with theorizing about far-from-ideal and especially messy circumstances (in ways that P&E are not).** Non-trivially, political scientists also have much better developed research ethics toward would-be-research subjects (while philosophers and economists tend to assume that research ethics is limited to not getting caught plagiarizing [okay that (see here) may be changing]). 

So, what could PPE research be? A lot of it will be folks doing research in one of the three core disciplines while drawing on or engaging with one of the others (much of what I do fits in this category). But here's one possible, more ambitious answer: something akin to synthetic philosophy. Recall that:

Synthetic philosophy [is] style of philosophy that brings together insights, knowledge, and arguments from the special sciences with the aim to offer a coherent account of complex systems and connect these to a wider culture or other philosophical projects (or both). Synthetic philosophy may, in turn, generate new research in the special sciences, a new science connected to the framework adopted in the synthetic philosophy, or new projects in philosophy. So, one useful way to conceive of synthetic philosophy is to discern in it the construction of a scientific image that may influence the development of the special sciences, philosophy, public policy, or the manifest image.

So, understood quite a bit of PPE is already (developing into) synthetic philosophy: work on climate justice, obligations to future generations, the institutions and norms of transition economies, institutions and norms of uncertainty, the political economies of migration are all fertile areas that mix normative theorizing and various social sciences.*** More subtly topics that have been sidelined in the constitutive disciplines may be quite important in developing PPE into synthetic philosophy. I give two examples, first philosophers are wont to think that poverty is exhausted by the difference principle; but in fact, poverty impacts all kinds of significant projects (migration, international law, hunger, intersection with gender and parenting, etc.). Second, philosophy of education has almost no status anymore within contemporary philosophy (sorry); but the political economy and philosophy of education matters a lot to development, migration, and future oriented projects within PPE.++ 

One may suspect that what makes PPE a viable research area is the felt need to combine normative theorizing (the strength of philosophy) with social science research (the strengths of Ps&E). I don't think this is mistaken; but it's not the whole truth. In part it is not the whole truth because much of the theory required  -- that is normatively sensitive and sensible [and avoids noxious status quo bias] -- is still to be developed within such social science(s).+++ So, it's not the whole truth because philosophy can contribute more than pre-existing normative theory. And in part because the social sciences supply more than just empirical knowledge/theory; Ps&E also supply a large range of methods and familiarity with policy environments. 

The previous paragraphs are, of course, a promissory note.

For those that worry that even PPE as (integrated) synthetic philosophy is philosophy hegemonic (or merely cleverly piggybacking on the social status of economics), I am open to the idea that the future of PPE really is Synthetic Philosophy Science.

On Commanding to be Philosophers: a tentative response to Agnes Callard

You might think that undergraduate teaching is a case of “doing philosophy with non-philosophers”—public philosophy within academia. But that would be a mistake. It is true that most of the undergraduates to whom I assign, e.g., Plato’s Republic will not major in philosophy, let alone continue with graduate education. Nonetheless, in my classroom, they are philosophers, if only for a few hours a week. The institutional structure—the syllabus, the assignments, the grades, my status as Professor, even the physical and social characteristics of the classroom—make it possible for me to tell them to be philosophers. I instruct them to engage directly with questions of whether the soul has parts or whether justice is the advantage of the stronger or whether poetry corrupts; and, amazingly enough, they do it.

To say that they engage directly with those questions is to say that their engagement is not tied to the following considerations:

(1) The fact (if it is one) that answering those questions will help them do something else that they were doing anyways. I don’t promise them answers, let alone helpful ones.

(2) The fact (if it is one) that they find it fun or pleasant or intellectually stimulating. They have to do the reading, come to class, write papers—whether or not they enjoy it.

We do philosophy for its own sake, because its questions are important, not because it is useful or pleasant.-- Agnes Callard "Is Public Philosophy Good?" (emphasis in original [HT: Dailynous])

Callard's piece has generated online discussion in virtue of her claims about the nature and practice of public philosophy. Since that is a topic I have said all I wish to say thus far,+ here I want to reflect a bit on what Callard -- an increasingly prominent scholar (see here for example) -- has to say about her classroom. I call my remarks 'tentative' for a few reasons: first, it is possible Callard does not intend her description of her classroom to be exemplary of proper philosophical education. That is, that rather than holding up the institutional features of her teaching as a kind of widely accepted norm, she is merely doing autobiography. I think it would be a 'mistake' to interpret her like that, but can't rule it out. Second, as regular readers know (recall here; here; here), I think there are good reasons having to do with privacy and vulnerability as well as the trust of one's students to be cautious about discussing one's class-room experiences in public. Third, often what is said about class-room stance represents a kind of public image one wishes to project rather than the messy reality.

Even so, I was struck, even unpleasantly struck by the authoritarian elements in Callard's self-presentation. After some reflection, I have to admit that part of the shock is recognizing one's own authoritarianism in the description of the other. Unlike some colleagues, I don't let me students vote or set the curriculum, and not unlike Callard, I impose all kinds of structures and demands on my students that make possible, so I tell myself, the conditions of their philosophizing in the class-room. And so, after further reflection, I also allow it's possible that others can be commanded into philosophy. 

Even so, what I miss in Callard's description are four non-trivial features: first, there is the absence of play. In Laws, Plato's Athenian stranger repeatedly presents education as a form of serious play, culminating in his statement (803c) that, when we are properly cultivated, our education lasts a life-time, "playing at the noblest of pastimes." It's true that play is only indirectly useful. (Some forms of play -- like war-games -- may be highly useful to the polity.) But it's peculiar not to allow it a pleasure proper to it. The questions of philosophy may be important and self-justifying, and the philosophical-life impossible to justify (because hopelessly comic or mad to others), but it strikes me as odd to ignore that philosophical education is, despite moments of frustration, pleasurable in all kinds of ways. 

More important, second, while play presupposes rules, what's especially interesting about philosophical education is the ongoing mastery and simultaneous overcoming of rules. The previous sentence may strike one as bizarre if one reduced philosophy to nothing but sound/valid argument (which, let's stipulate, is rule-governed). But learning how to ask philosophical questions (recall) is simultaneously rule-governed, taught through repeated practice/drilling, an imitation of the best, and creative innovation.

That is, the play analogy reminds us that philosophical education is also a means toward something new. This is the third point I wish to make. In play, we interact and through our interaction we may reach a point wholly new. This is possible in the class room, when we are receptive to learning from our students. A class discussion is an invitation to have a joint exploration. The last point may be distinctive of liberal education: a receptivity toward letting one's students discover is characteristic of such an education. Rather than magisterially conveying a fixed body of knowledge (say in a huge lecture course), in a philosophy classroom, the discussion is part of a path of discovery, even if it is often a dead-end. A liberal  education is not risk averse. Discussions can fail. 

Of course, in practice, one may well have an agenda for a typical class discussion (the distinction between primary and secondary qualities must be covered, etc.), and experienced teachers often guide discussion toward a known destination. But the best kind of teaching is receptive toward the students' perspectives, and invites them into an open-ended discussion, including ones on the nature of a philosophical question. These are not merely given (as Callard seems to suggest), but always and everywhere up for re/new-articulation.

Let me close with a final, fourth observation: I have now repeatedly used the word 'invitation.' I do so because, in a different context, discussing the pragmatics of sexual intimacy, Rebecca Kukla calls attention to the significance of inviting others to joint activity.* I quote a relevant passage:

Invitations leave the invitee free to accept or reject them. If you turn down my invitation, I get to be disappointed, but not aggrieved (although I can feel aggrieved if it is turned down rudely or insultingly). An interesting quirk of invitations is that, if they are accepted, gratitude is called for both from the inviter and the invitee. I thank you for coming to my dinner, and you thank me for having you. [emphasis in original]

Invitations are (as Kukla emphasizes) norm-governed and compatible with differences in power, status, and knowledge. Not all students accept the invitation to philosophize in one's class room. This can be due to the character of the teacher (my style is not for everyone) or to the student's disposition at the time. Such students, the ones that refuse our invitation, can still pass the course, even with flying colors. But the students who engage in philosophy -- partially constrained by rules of logic and the curriculum -- are often grateful for the opportunity; and indeed deserve gratitude, even awe. 

 

On Academic Giants and Reputation

Prominent legal and political theorists, including Jeremy Waldron, Cass Sunstein and John Tasioulas, have called Finnis a ‘legal giant’, invoked his right to academic freedom, and insisted that the best thing for students to do is engage with his views. ‘It’s only respectful, and they may even learn something,’ Tasioulas said.--Sophie Smith (january 2019) 'academic freedom' in LRB.

We testify to the grace, the keen wit, and the intellectual commitment of Professor Ronell and ask that she be accorded the dignity rightly deserved by someone of her international standing and reputation.  If she were to be terminated or relieved of her duties, the injustice would be widely recognized and opposed.--Judith Butler (et al!) May 2018, [HT Leiterreports.]  

President Charles de Gaulle is reputed to have said you don't arrest Voltaire.'  It's a revealing anecdote about onetime French elite attitudes toward intellectuals -- Sartre was to be arrested for civil disobedience-- and, more important, the (unequal) rule of law. There is a more subtle point lurking here: Voltaire had, in fact, been imprisoned in his life (when he satirized the regent)--he took the name 'Voltaire' after his release from the Bastille. He also experienced exile. But over time he became useful to various political authorities and he found being close to power not altogether uncongenial.

I was reminded of the anecdote in reflecting on the curious spectacle of academics stressing the purported greatness of disciplinary and professional colleagues in the midst of controversy. I don't mean to be naive; of course the institutional standing and prestige of Professors Finnis and Ronell have clearly played a role in the public interest in their actions and views as well as the university responses to them. And, we see the same currency of prestige, even modest celebrity, at work in those other academics coming to their defense.

For those of us who participate in the prestige hierarchies (recall) of academia this raises uncomfortable questions. This is so, I think, regardless of one's views on the merits of each situation.* When I see the articulation of and doubling down on such prestige, I ask myself, perhaps narcissisticly, is this what would be expected from me in such circumstances? Is that the price one pays to enter into 'elite' echelons of professions, even -- in the case of some law professors -- political society?

Even if the intentions behind signals of solidarity may be unequivocally high minded, such closing of ranks with an appeal to prestige and greatness also invites others to perceive these, perhaps even involuntarily, as in some sense self-vindicating; as worth rallying to. In the context of public controversy, appeals to greatness rely on the equivocation between institutional status and intellectual worth such that they can justify a kind of (dazzling) state of exception for those that inhabit the role.**

What this shows, I fear, is that rather than being elevated by the credit economy of academia, we end up polluted by it.