Digressions&Impressions

A puzzle about a footnote in Pippin on Strauss on Hume

[Leo Strauss] is clearly most worried that any position that links the right with what the will legislates for itself quickly slips down the slippery slope toward legal positivism, historicism, relativism, and finally nihilism....

Note 15: NRH, 17. 1 should note here that Strauss only asserts that "the historical school had obscured the fact that particular or historical standards can become authoritative only on the basis of a universal principle which imposes an obligation on the individual to accept." Depending on what Strauss means by "authorative," [sic] such a claim is either a tautology or begs the question at issue. Some principle can be authoritative for me if, in some situation it counts as a reason for me to act; to claim otherwise would require a much more serious confrontation with a figure who Strauss (and, as far as I can see, most of his students) neglect: David Hume.--Pippin, R. B. (1992). "The modern world of leo strauss." Political Theory, 20(3), and note 15 on p. 453 & p. 468

After my paper on Ernest Nagel, Sander Verhaegh kindly asked me to contribute a paper to a collection on how exiles shaped analytic philosophy Stateside (or something like that). And because Nagel is one of the few analytic philosophers to have engaged Strauss in a substantive way (and so I am well placed to discuss it), and because I tend to think analytic philosophy's polemics are at least partially constitutive of its professional identity, I thought it would be illuminating to write a chapter for Sander on how Strauss and his school ended up being conceptualized as not philosophy/philosophical by analytic philosophy. And this last point would also also allow me to reflect a bit on the role of that strange hybrid, José Benardete, in the upstate NY revival of metaphysics within analytic philosophy.

But I have had to confront a scholarly problem. Within analytic philosophy nearly all the writing about Strauss and his followers is excessively polemical (and often not very good, alas). Much of the remaining scholarship in English on Strauss is by his students (and almost inevitably apologetic in character) or by people interested in tracing the misdeeds of neocons to Strauss or tracing the reception of Heidegger's views. And so while there is huge amount of material on Strauss reception (which is, perhaps, all I need), there is remarkably little sober scholarship on Strauss and his school. In fact, Robert Pippin has corned the market in that niche with three papers: in addition to the paper quoted above, there is a companion piece, "Being, time, and politics: The Strauss-Kojève debate." History and Theory (1993): 138-161, and a more recent work,"The Unavailability of the Ordinary: Strauss on the Philosophical Fate of Modernity." Political Theory 31.3 (2003): 335-358.+ (Feel free to nominate other work!)

All three papers are sober engagements with Strauss and repay study in their own right. They are not, if that were possible, impartial scholarship because each is written from the perspective of a kind of Hegelianism that is explicitly being defended against Strauss (and from Kojève's corruption of Hegelianism). In fact, Pippin generally suggests (and my quote above is exemplary in this respect) that Strauss has missed an (Hegelian) alternative in his (that is, Strauss') diagnosis of a philosophical situation or that Strauss has posited a slippery slope, which may be halted along the way. That is, Pippin's response to Strauss tends to engage in genuine philosophical disagreement where the details matter. Pippin also recognizes that one of Strauss' characteristic modes of argument -- something about modernity (say its 'crisis') is the effect, even inevitable fate, of philosophical assumptions of some past thinker -- is non-trivially Hegelian (e.g., "The Unavailability of the Ordinary:" 341). Finally, Pippen recognizes (and articulates nicely) how odd Strauss seems in light of the "usual way[s] of a professional philosopher in a modern university," ("The Unavailability of the Ordinary: 342) despite the fact that Strauss generated a quite successful school in the modern university.

Okay, with that in place, I want focus on a puzzle that reading Pippin raised for me (and perhaps for me alone). In his 2003 article, Pippin suggests that one of the main themes of Strauss' Natural Right and History (hereafter NRH), and "the central theme of all modern European philosophy since Hegel," is the "relationship between philosophy and experience." (336) In fact, Pippin makes point of reminding his audience that this is also a theme found "in the later Wittgenstein, Austin, Cavell" (344) that is, analytic philosophy (on p. 352 he adds Bernard Williams to the list).

Now, within analytic philosophy, it's Hume that is treated as the philosopher who first problematized the relationship between philosophy and experience (if you don't trust me on this go re-read Quine or Russell). Hume is not explicitly mentioned in Pippin's 2003 piece, but his language is adopted even quoted by Pippin at one key point when he explains that for Strauss the recovery of natural right (that we are said to "need" by Strauss) "would seem to require a dualism, a nonteleological science of the universe and in some way a different, teleological “science of man.” Strauss considers this the Thomistic solution but he clearly rejects it, boldly insisting, “An adequate solution to the problem of natural right cannot be found before this basic problem has been solved,” unmistakably implying that it has not yet and appearing to promise that he will solve it, in the book to follow." (344) What's interesting about this formulation (other than it being Humean terminology) is that there is by now a academic cottage industry, at least since Allison Simmons' 2001 paper showing that various early moderns (Descartes, Spinoza, and Hume) proposed nonteleological science of the universe, and yet somehow produced (consciously/intentionally or not) a teleological science of man. 

With that in mind, in note 15 (in the 1992 paper) quoted above, Pippin is explicitly commenting on NRH; p 17. In that book, Strauss explicitly mentions Hume twice. First, a few pages later (p. 20), in the context of a discussion of historicism, Hume is treated (alongside Kant) as an originator of a "philosophical critique of a philosophic and scientific thought" that leads to skepticism. And Strauss uses the occasion to distinguish the philosophy of skepticism from historicism. Importantly, the contrast is drawn in the sense of how skepticism and historicism view themselves: skepticism is a permanent possibility for humanity (it is "coeval with human thought)," whereas historicism is indexed to specific historical situations. And even if one does not know anything about the larger project of NRH, the manner -- which is not historicist -- in which Strauss draws this distinction implies that Strauss identifies more with the skeptical self-understanding more than the historicist one (Pippin would not disagree, I think, see below).

It should be noted that near the end of the book, Strauss notes that historicism itself is an effect of skepticism about theoretical metaphysics. And this is a "skepticism which culminated in the depreciation of theory in favor of practice." (NRH 320) That is to say, Hume (and Kant) are treated both as contrasts to skepticism as well as the philosophical roots or sources of historicism. (We might say then that for Strauss historicism is at the bottom of the slippery slope from Hume.)

Second, near the end of NRH, in the context of analyzing Burke's defense of practical wisdom against the encroaches of theoretical philosophy, Strauss points out there is a connection between Burke's strictures on (and against) metaphysics and "the skeptical tendencies of his contemporaries Rousseau and Hume." And Strauss goes on to offer Burke's "theoretical work" [sic], A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful, as evidence for this claim. 

Let's stipulate that these two mentions are not a "serious confrontation." But they do suggest that in so far as Strauss discusses skepticism, and especially where it shades into philosophy's critique of itself and science, it's legitimate to explore how he may well be drawing on, or engaging with, Hume. I don't mean to suggest this is always the case. For, Strauss also thinks there are different kinds of skepticism. For, 'Socratic wisdom' is in virtue of being self-knowledge of one's ignorance, explicitly "a kind of skepticism," albeit of an "involuntary" kind (NRH: 262). Such skepticism is "not dangerous."* Somewhat confusingly if one is unfamiliar with Strauss, in context it is not just Socrates, but also Rousseau who is being described as an exemplar of Socratic wisdom. Importantly, in Rousseau, Socratic wisdom also has an important effect: it allows for science that is compatible with virtue. (In that scheme, metaphysics is the science that is incompatible with virtue.) And Strauss treats Rousseau (but not Socrates) as somebody who thinks that science can be made to serve virtue (although the way this can be institutionalized is by no means obvious).

As it happens, (an)other kind(s) of Socratic wisdom is possible -- one not wedded to natural science (NRH: 277) -- so this kind of skepticism itself comes in kinds. Strauss clearly admires Socratic wisdom, which is philanthropic in character, and this suggests that in NRH, skepticism does not (always) have a negative connotation.

Rousseau is also treated as a source of insight on a "dangerous kind" of skepticism which is a consequence of the search for truth in modern science. And this is caused whenever scientific truth is useless or unattainable. (NRH 258) It is dangerous because in modernity science has discredited faith and opinion and is meant to replace faith and opinion, and so when science fails it leaves society with nihilism. (258). 

Socrates, Hume, Kant, and Rousseau are not the only kinds of skeptics in NRH. Strauss treats Cicero as an Academic skeptic (155). In addition, Strauss recognizes that from the perspective of seventeenth century philosophy, in "traditional" philosophy (prior to the seventeenth century), there is also a form of skepticism that is a kind of natural accompaniment of dogmatism (NRH 171). I think this is clearly meant to be Pyrrhonean skepticism. And, as it happens, such Pyrrhonean skepticism is transformed in seventeenth century philosophy in NRH. For, Strauss treats Hobbes, Spinoza, and Descartes as sharing in the following commitment (one that is often attributed to Descartes alone based on a reading of the Meditations):

To guarantee the actualization of wisdom means to eradicate skepticism by doing justice to the truth embodied in skepticism. For this purpose, one must first give free rein to extreme skepticism: what survives the onslaught of extreme skepticism is the absolutely safe basis of wisdom. The actualization of wisdom is identical with the erection of an absolutely dependable dogmatic edifice on the foundation of extreme skepticism.  (NRH 172)

The significance of this modern strategy to attain wisdom is not just epistemological. For, in raising a central challenge to Hobbes' philosophy (and the manner of the challenge is rather Schmittian as is also clear in the footnote I am about to quote) in his own voice, Strauss adds a curious footnote:

One may state this difficulty also as follows: In the spirit of the dogmatism based on skepticism, Hobbes identified what the skeptic Carneades apparently regarded as the conclusive refutation of the claims raised on behalf of justice, with the only possible justification of these claims: the extreme situation—the situation of the two shipwrecked men on a plank on which only one man can save himself—reveals, not the impossibility of justice, but the basis of justice. Yet Carneades did not contend that in such a situation one is compelled to kill one's competitor (Cicero Republic iii . 29-30): the extreme situation does not reveal a real necessity. (NRH 196 note 39)

This explicitly treats Hobbes' philosophy as erected on, derived from, a skeptical foundation. Now, to be sure, this kind of skepticism is not at all like Socratic wisdom. In fact, it is the explicit denial that a good life is good in virtue of being in accord with nature (NRH 95), which is the truth embodied in skepticism (that is the basis/foundational step on which Hobbes' dogmatic science is built).

But according to Strauss, Hobbes (not Descartes) generates a form of skepticism, too: "It is this fact that ultimately accounts for the persistence of skepticism and justifies skepticism to a certain extent. Skepticism is the inevitable outcome of the unintelligible character of the universe or of the unfounded belief in its intelligibility." (NRH 174; in my own research I tend to attribute this view to Spinoza, but it's not clear to me that Strauss does so.) Hobbes here is treated, thus, as the ultimate source of a "philosophical critique of a philosophic and scientific thought" that Strauss links to Hume and Kant (and their role in generating both the kind of skepticism coeval with thought and modern historicism).

Let me take stock of where we are because I am fast reaching the limits of a Digression. Running through NRH is a classification of different kinds of skepticism. This matters for the argument of NRH because some kinds of skepticism are treated as wise and as exemplary of the (partial) rejection of historicism that Strauss endorses. In fact, Pippen (largely correctly in my view) treats Strauss as a kind of skeptic: "The radically sceptical, incomplete, or zetetic character of Strauss's version of Socraticism."  (note 12 of Pippin's 1992 article). To put my own exegetical cards on the table, I think the word 'radically' is a bit misleading because the tenor of Strauss skepticism is not Pyrrhonean but fideist (about which another time).

And so the question of skepticism in NRH is also a question of classifying Strauss. And as it happens in NRH, in this classification of skepticism, Hume plays a central role as a source , perhaps partially derivative of Hobbes, of modern historicism while simultaneously standing for the non-historicist always living possibility of skepticism in which the question of the relationship between philosophy and experience is central. In fact, what's notable about NRH is that Strauss invites the question which skeptics, if any, have Socratic wisdom, and leaves it to the reader to figure out the answer.** 

It's worth noting, in closing for today, that according to Strauss (and he is right about this) Hume rejected -- what he claims Hobbes, Spinoza, and Descartes accepted -- that is, the skeptical denial that a good life is good in virtue of being in accord with nature. This Strauss notes in a different work in which he explains the difference between Hume and (modern) positivism(s) (see The Rebirth of Classical Political Rationalism: 21-22). And so my provisional, tentative conclusion is that Strauss does not have a serious confrontation with Hume because, while Strauss generally sounds like the student of Heidegger he was, in key respects he agrees with Hume (or so I claim ex cathedra). And this somewhat perverse result actually makes the vehement rejection of Strauss and Straussianism by analytic philosophy more interesting than I initially thought.

 

 

 

On Liberal Exemplification: tempered liberalism and the problem of education

Tempered liberals certainly did not present themselves as models to be imitated; this would have been inconsistent with the modesty and self-subverting irony that were important features both of the ethos they advocated and their own ways of being in the world. But they did seek to exemplify a liberal ethos by putting it into practice--in their personal interactions with others, their manner of thinking through problems, and the authorial persona or voice that each cultivated--and by depicting it in earlier thinkers, fictional characters, or political leaders. At their best, they show us, by the force of example, how to cultivate these qualities, and how to urge them gracefully upon others.
The practice of exemplification and emulation is a deeply imperfect response to the liberal problem of character formation. Relying on some to rise to the challenge of exemplariness, and leaving others free to emulate them or not, presupposes that most individuals already have significant ethical resources. This will often not be the case. It may not be possible to have a decent politics without a degree of both personal goodness and political skill that is beyond what most people are mostly able to attain. And the effort to make people better may lead to more suffering and horror. Introspection, self-cultivation, and exemplification--frail reeds though these may be--may also be the best (least bad) means to foster elusive but indispensable virtues. Reflection on exemplars may help to replenish the moral foundations of liberal democracy--habits and ideals of civility, empathy, fortitude, self-restraint, solidarity, circumspection, respect for nuance and for others--by reminding us of why we need them, as well as displaying how admirable they can be.--Joshua Cherniss (2021) Liberalism in Dark Times: The Liberal Ethos in the Twentieth Century, 211

Cherniss's Liberalism in Dark Times is a fascinating book with studies of Max Weber, Raymond Aron, Camus, Niebuhr, and Isaiah Berlin. He treats the latter four as 'tempered liberals." They are treated as admirable exemplars, but by no means not perfect. (210) The main argument of the book is nicely foreshadowed in this passage:

Proponents of “tempered liberalism” accordingly undertook three broad, interlinked tasks. First, they sought to critically reconstruct liberalism--to identify and correct liberalism’s internal weaknesses and failings. Second, they sought to reconceive liberalism as a particular “temper,” a “certain condition . . . of mind or state of being,” rather than (merely) an institutional framework or policy. Finally, they sought (with varying degrees of self-consciousness) not only to explicate, but to exemplify, a liberal spirit, which could belie anti-liberal ethical critiques, and resist the temptations and pathologies of an anti-liberal ethos. (38: emphasis in original)

The passage nicely suggests that a certain kind of ethos is an important feature of being a tempered liberal. My interest in today's post is the nature and status of of liberal exemplification (the third task). In my book on Adam Smith, I had explicitly treated Smith as an exemplar of a certain kind of liberal thinker. I had done so in part, by focusing on the way Smith used Hume's life and thought as a positive and negative exemplar; I had also drawn on resources in Smith that centered on the roles of exemplary characters in his moral psychology and political theory. (These characters are largely abstract fictions.) Smith, in turn, drew on Hume's practice of exemplification and (as I insinuate in the book) Spinoza's (who also uses abstract fictions in this way). Of course, the practice has an important ancient and Machiavellian pedigree.

In both Smith and the tempered liberals, exemplification plays an important role in moral-political education. It's required because these kind of liberals (as well as Smith) highly value contextual judgment. But my approach to exemplification in Smith is different from Cherniss' in some important respects: on my account Smith is a systematic thinker and understands himself as such; exemplification is very much an integral part of this system not a kind of substitute for it as it is, by contrast, in Cherniss and his four tempered liberals. In addition, Smith rejected the kind of modesty Cherniss ascribes to his four tempered liberals, and he seems to advocate emulation of worthy exemplars as models, whereas Cherniss' tempered liberals primarily wish that only a particular kind of ethos is emulated and rejects the idea of a life as a model to be imitated (see the first quoted line above).

There is, thus, an important distinction lurking here between an agent as an exemplary model to be studied and imitated and, say, a style of agency that is exemplified. I will return to that distinction below. But it is important to recognize that on both sides of the distinction there is a commitment to the idea that some things don't fall under a rule or principle, but require the acquisition of certain dispositions and cultivated judgment. (The crispness of this observation I owe to reading David Owen's forthcoming, "On Exemplarity and Public Philosophy.")

But in reading Cherniss I also came to realize I had not really thought through what liberal exemplification might mean. So, what follows is an exploration of Cherniss' account with an eye toward that larger project. As my remark above implies, the status of Weber in Cherniss' argument is a bit ambiguous. Anyone familiar with the depth of Weber's nationalism (and his anti-Polish sentiment) will be hard-pressed to call him a 'tempered liberal.' But he is important to Cherniss to set up the themes of the book. I quote an important passage:

Weber rejected both; this rejection was central to his own revision of liberalism. If liberals sloughed of the elements within liberal thought that reflected an ethic of normative necessity and an ethic of success, they could fortify their commitments and themselves for the hard, uncertain struggle ahead. To look for guarantees reflected inner weakness. Liberals should exemplify, as well as advocate, a dignified and free life, by affirming and defending principles without guarantees, devoting their lives to values that could not be demonstrated as rationally necessary and whose ultimate triumph was in doubt. (67)

It's unclear to me what, according to Cherniss, leads him to think that Weber advocates such exemplification. But it's clear that on Cherniss's account of Weber, exemplification is something that liberals as such should aim for. It's difficult not to think here of, say, puritan (and protestant more widely) ideas about the elect having to live godly lives as individuals and the community. I don't think that association is an accident: in the first half of the twentieth century, as Liberalism seems to be in retreat, the idea that liberalism rests on faith, or requires faith, shows up in other places. I have documented this in the case of Lippmann (here); and it's also visible in the title of Morris R. Cohen's (1946) Faith of a Liberal. (Cohen was then arguably one of the most important philosophers Stateside.)*

Interestingly enough, in the rest of Cherniss' argument, it seems not everyone should aim at such exemplification. Rather this is reserved for liberal intellectuals and public figures (like the four tempered liberals discussed by Cherniss), and, perhaps, also liberal statesmen. On Camus' possible self-understanding as an exemplar see p. 76 (and p. 85). Aron is treated by Cherniss an exemplar (p. 102, and also by Alan Bloom (p. 131)!), but I see no evidence to think Aron thought of himself that way. Cherniss convincingly suggests that Niebuhr did see himself that way (159ff).

That liberal statesman and artists could be exemplars is clearly Berlin's position. Cherniss skillfully takes us through Berlin's portraits of Herzen and Turgenev. Cherniss treatment of Berlin's "accounts of such leaders--Winston Churchill, Chaim Weizmann, and Franklin Roosevelt" is terser and in my view not especially convincing. This is a shame because the question "how political greatness and moral goodness could be balanced, in ways that could serve to sustain a liberal politics" (182) is a vital one. For, I would have liked to have read Cherniss on Berlin's blind-spots (e.g., Churchill's racialized imperialism (which led to a grossly inadequate response to Indian famine) or the fire-bombing of German cities). [To be sure such problems are hinted at by Cherniss because it's acknowledged they were a "morally mixed bunch, as he [Berlin] acknowledged." (pp. 182-3)] Chaim Weizmann as exemplar is even more complex because he was never more important than, say, Ben Gurion. In political terms, much of the last (say) decade of Weizmann's life was a sort of failure. And because of this Weizmann also seems to have been somewhat removed from decisions surrounding Zionist ethnic cleansing during Israel's war of independence.

As a non-trivial aside, in my view Berlin's personal admiration for Weizmann arguably prevented a sober reflection on Weizmann's political life by Berlin. In fact, I read Berlin as treating Weizmann as a model of a new kind of Jew: see his much quoted claim about Weizmann, as the "first totally free Jew of the modern world." But in that same sentence Berlin goes on to claim "the State of Israel was constructed, whether or not it knows it, in his image." And this part of the sentence has aged badly if it ever was plausible.

Now, Cherniss extracts a kind of gross generalization from these portraits by Berlin: "Berlin suggested that the cultivation of political judgment might indeed be connected to the promotion of a more humane politics--and that the dispositions that contributed to failures of political judgment also tended to produce inhumanity." (183) As a generalization it's not very remarkable. But it can only convince, I think, through the sketching of biographies/lives. So, the focus on exemplars allows for a species of political education, especially with those already sharing a certain ethical outlook. This is, in fact, Cherniss own understanding (while drawing on Linda T. Zagzebski and Nancy Rosenblum).

I quote a lengthy passage because I think it helps illustrate what it might mean (for Cherniss) to think of what I called 'a style of agency that is exemplified.'

Pedagogic exemplification involves two elements: exemplification itself, and emulation. The latter consists not of slavish imitation, but a conscious, critical attempt to identify what is admirable and applicable in the exemplar, and to adapt this to the situation and the already-partially-shaped character--of the emulator. Exemplification respects liberty and individuality because the selection of an exemplar reflects the judgment and the needs of the “student,” rather than the exemplar’s will or ability to use force. This means that success is never fully in the hands of the exemplar. As a form of persuasion and guidance, rather than conditioning or compulsion, exemplification relies more on conscious human action--and requires less comprehensive control over background conditions and the experiences of the learner--than a program of habituation. At the same time, since it employs the force of example rather than (or in addition to) purely rational persuasion, it can appeal to the emotions, and promote skills of judgment that are not rule-based. (p. 210)

What's nice about this passage is that helps illustrate what is distinctly liberal about Cherniss' idea of exemplification (although not necessarily unique to liberalism). This is a form of teaching and moral/political education that leaves considerable freedom, individuality, and agency to those of us who wish to become better at being liberal (or liberal intellectuals, citizens, politicians, etc.) It echoes Mill-ean ideas (as well as those we find in Montessori) about education itself being an experiment in living and the cultivation of one's moral sentiments through the development of personality and authenticity.

Of course, the question is how much (to use Cherniss' language) pre-shaping is necessary for this to work as partially intended. That may be an empirical question. But it is also a political one (that is theoretically highly salient since the days of Plato). For example, Mill thought such pre-shaping had to be made compulsory, but was best left to the judgment of parents. Most liberal democracies have thought otherwise. And while this is no criticism of Cherniss' book, it is worth noting that in its very un-systematicity, tempered liberalism as such -- with its neglect of institutions -- has no answer to this question.+ To be continued...

 

 

Philosophers on Rawls' project; Forrester's In the Shadow of Justice, pt 2

If one understands political philosophy as an enterprise whose goal is to guide political action, then I think Forrester is absolutely correct that the abstractions and idealizations need to go...

But not all political philosophy need be understood as intending to guide our action in this very direct sense. Importantly, I do not think Rawls understood his project like this, though his acolytes seemed to have, as Forrester demonstrates in detail. Instead, Rawls understood the goals of political philosophy very differently, and how he understood the nature of his project may render some of Forrester’s criticisms inert. To this end, it is worth exploring this in more detail. 

In the introduction to the paperback version of Political Liberalism, Rawls concludes by discussing what the overarching point or goal of his project is. He writes:

Philosophy may study political questions at many different levels of generality and abstractness, all valuable and significant. It may ask why it is wrong to attack civilians in war either from the air by ordinary bombs or atomic weapons. More generally, it may ask about just forms of constitutional arrangements and which kinds of questions properly belong to constitutional politics. More generally still, it may ask whether a just and well-ordered constitutional democracy is possible and what makes it so. I don’t say that the more general questions are the most philosophical, nor that they are more important. All these questions and their answers, so far as we can find them, bear on one another and work together to add to the knowledge of philosophy.[2] 

Though he clearly thinks that all sorts of philosophical questions and projects have value, it is the latter inquiry—political philosophy at its most general and abstract—that Rawls takes as his focus in Political Liberalism. In particular, the guiding question is whether a just and well-ordered constitutional democracy is possible, and what makes it so.

Notice how political philosophy in its most general and abstract form seems to be quite different from the underlying account of political philosophy that Forrester presumes, where the goal of the philosopher of public affairs is to offer concrete advice to remedy pressing problems such as global inequality or overpopulation. Instead, the task is to construct a sort of possibility proof of the kind mathematicians or theoretical economists might pursue. Just as a mathematician tries to show that a certain mathematical object with interesting properties exists, or a theoretical economist might try to show that there exists a certain kind of equilibrium solution for a particular class of games, Rawls is trying to show that a certain kind of society—a just and well-ordered constitutional democracy—can, in fact, exist. As Burton Dreben, one of Rawls’s friends and a great interpreter of his work describes the project: “What Rawls has primarily been doing for the last twenty years is engage in a certain kind of very complex conceptual analysis, namely, he has been investigating the question, Is the notion of a constitutional liberal democracy internally consistent or coherent? Is it conceptually and logically possible to have as an ideal—it’s not even a question of how to bring it about.”--Brian Kogelmann reviewing In the Shadow of Justice: Postwar Liberalism and the Remaking of Political Philosophy (2019), by Katrina Forrester in The New Rambler [HT Matt Lister]

Yesterday (see here) Matt Lister nudged me toward Kogelmann's fascinating review of Forrester. Unlike Freeman's review, Kogelmann's provide a sufficiently accurate and helpful summary so that the reader can decide whether they ought to read the book. In addition, without actually stating the book's official aim, recall [I] "the book is about the politics of political philosophy and the political implications of conceptual choices," (xxi), Kogelmann's review actually says quite a bit about the book such that the second half of that aim comes into clear view such that the reader of Kogelmann's essay has a sence of what Forrester is up to. Below I return to discuss the substance of that.

Despite appearances to contrary, it's not my life's mission to 'score' philosophy book reviews. But I do find it interesting that a book that states prominently and early that it is about the "politics of political philosophy" fails to elicit discussion among philosophers about her analysis of the politics of political philosophy. I have now read five reviews by philosophers of the book, and of these only Lea Ypi mentions it (here) in her very interesting review without really exploring Forrester's views on the politics of political philosophy. Whereas non-philosophers (political theorists and intellectual historians, etc) have no trouble engaging with this theme. Feel free to call my attention to reviews by philosophers that I have missed that do engage with what she has to say about the politics of political philosophy.

As an aside, I find this state of affairs baffling. Philosophers of science (Liam Kofi Bright, Cailin O'Connor, etc) and feminists (e.g., Dotson) have brought different kinds of versions and models of (what we may call) the sociology of knowledge to bear on philosophy itself in journals and even in widely read blogs. And even those who don't write or read these works, are familiar enough in thinking about philosophy in Kuhnian terms. And given that many political philosophers teach in PPE programs, it is odd that they would be so unwilling to engage with scholarship that suggests that a philosophical status quo is itself the effect of the complex interaction between arguments and social environment (recall my treatment of p. 257 in yesterday's post), and what we might call the attractor effects of an established paradigm, as Forrester suggests.

In fact -- and now back to Forrester -- Forrester explicitly and repeatedly treats Rawlsianism as a philosophical paradigm (xx, 150, 174--I am sure I have missed a few (she also uses 'framework' sometimes); she also very often talks of a "distributive paradigm."). And she suggests that the uptake of Rawls' book was facilitated by the network he was in and their efforts. In fact she suggests her book will show two distinct further theses:

Just as often, rival political visions or arguments were not rejected outright, but domesticated and accommodated within the liberal egalitarian paradigm—often in a way that diffused their force. As subsequent generations built on the arguments of their forebears, a philosophical paradigm took on a political shape that none of its discrete theorists might have intended. (xx)

That is, first, once Rawlsianism become hegemonic it was capable of diffusing challenges by incorporating some of their insights (on domestication, see also p. 207 & 230). In a different context I have claimed (recall here; here) this sponge-like quality is not just a feature of the liberal egalitarian paradigm, but of analytic philosophy as such once it was safely ensconced in philosophy departments without serious rivals. The politics of analytic philosophy rarely figure in the book (except when she is discussing Wittgensteinian influence on early Rawls) under that guise, but Forrester alerts the reader in a few footnotes to work by Joel Isaac that she is aware of its significant to her story (but see also p. 131; 244). My own view is that Rawlsianism became hegemonic has a lot to do with the character of analytic philosophy in the 1960s. (About that soon.)

And second she claims in rather deflationary fashion that even if Rawls were a self-conscious philosophical legislator (something she is really rather mum about--she does not discuss the significance of his lectures and his PhD training to the formation of a Rawlsian 'school'), most of what became Rawslianism is the unintended effect of philosophical debates with critics and alternative approaches in light of shifting contexts. This (I almost called it a 'Hayekian') theory of the intellectual market place helps explain why after she has discussed  the period leading up to the 1971 of Theory of Justice,  in her treatment Rawls himself often disappears in his own shadow.  

Okay let me now turn back to Kogelmann. He notes perceptively that whatever the aims of Forrester's approach to Rawls are, and like all readers he has picked up on important strains of criticism, she may not be doing justice to Rawls' own views. To put it in terms of the historian's craft, if she were writing about Rawls' aims then she has violated the injunction to use actor's categories. (I think that's neat aspect of his criticism quoted above.) But Forrester is not very interested in Rawls' intentions, but in the construction of a Rawlsian paradigm by a community of scholars. And Kogelmann charitably reads her as claiming to be following norms of that paradigm (namely that political philosophy shouldn't merely clarify political problems but also "bring them to a resolution."*) The first sentence of his review I quoted above comes after a paragraph in which he grants that "this general vision of what the philosopher should do is widely adopted among the discipline’s practitioners." 

Kogelmann is a bit too charitable here. I really wish Forrester had added a chapter in which she had come more clean on her own (normative) framework in evaluating the success or failure of Rawlsianism. Because it is not entirely clear what the rules of the game are here. After all, as she demonstrates in all kinds of ways, Rawlsianism was a resounding success within the politics of political philosophy: as she shows, even philosophers that rejected the content and methods of Rawls' project did end up using his vocabulary (and vice versa). As I joked yesterday, as she shows, Rawls' achievement is akin to the claim that in economics Koopmans, Marschak, Arrow, or Debreu got economists to use convex analysis; and it is no doubt that this acted as a formal constraint on what kind of economy could be imagined, or at least the vocabulary in which one must speak in order to advance in professional economics. (I return to this below.) So, it's not entirely transparent how her empirical work in (say) the sociology knowledge connects to her critical strain. 

The purported political failure of Rawls according to her is that -- to simplify -- after Theory of Justice appeared, political life increasingly shifted away from Rawls' moral (and political) vision (chapter 7 is really a masterful treatment of this theme). Now, this is a very interesting general fact. This is one reason, for example, why I am myself much more interested in liberal programs that did sometimes manage to shape in some ways political outcomes (ordoliberalism, chicago school, public choice, law and economics, third way, etc.) But for all my great admiration for her book, Forrester really has not earned this conclusion because she has not really studied how Rawlsians tried to shape health care (e.g., Norman Daniels), the law (Nussbaum barely registers), and other areas of public policy. (She acknowledges this in response to critics here.) If the two parts of [I], "the politics of political philosophy" and "the political implications of conceptual choices," are connected it is not obvious from her book how. To make a (Schumpeterian) joke: winning the philosophical argument may be the worst possible predictor of the capacity to shape politics. And if Plato, Madison, and Smith are right one should not expect that at all (okay, sorry that was advertisement for my book).

It's also not clear why she thinks political philosophy can shape political outcomes given that she generally seems to think and argue it's the social environment that shapes and even partially determines political philosophy (and so makes it un-dangerous to the status quo), especially at the "elite institutions" (xvii) she is primarily interested in (again this exchange is very good about this).** And, to be fair, we don't criticize Hobbes for not preventing the messy mixed constitution of the Glorious Revolution (be grateful for small mercies, I say) nor do we criticize Olympe de Gouges for not preventing that mass democracy was gendered male for centuries (we praise her for her prescience and courage!).

Okay, let me wrap up with a three comments on Kogelmann's Rawlsian counter proposal from the paperback version of Political Liberalism, and then one on the significance of this to Forrester's argument. (Only the third will be critical.) Now, at first sight it seems Kogelmann is begging the question against Forrester's approach; for Rawls' own views have no special standing here (see above). Yet, I have come to think it is actually a fair response to Forrester's argument, but not convincing. For, it's fair because it actually presupposes something important about how in [I] "the politics of political philosophy" and "the political implications of conceptual choices," could be connected. (And as we will see I don't think Forrester herself has a compelling story.) For, one can reformulate Kogelmann's position in light of Forrester's book as follows: winning the politics of political philosophy, and by building on A Theory of Justice and Political Liberalism, allows a community to establish with its tools that it is "possible in a world of reasonable yet nonetheless insurmountable and irreconcilable disagreement for a just and well-ordered constitutional democracy to exist[.]" And, for Kogelmann (and Rawls) this will have beneficial political implications.

For, second, and in fact, by 'possibility' Kogelmann interprets Rawls to mean something like what the economist means by an 'existence proof.'+ (I return to that below.) And then he glosses this as follows: "it is possible generally speaking for a just and well-ordered constitutional democracy to exist, regardless of the particularities of a county’s circumstances and history. But proving the general claim requires we abstract away from current political realities, contra Forrester...Rawls’s project is not to show that a just and well-ordered constitutional democracy is possible for a society populated by knaves. Rather, he wants to show that such a political order is consistent with human nature when at its best...[without] to idealize away all our blemishes." And this possibility, when established by the Rawlsian paradigm, can influence people: "citizens will be influenced by the arguments of political philosophers, and this will have a down-the-road and very distant impact on the kinds of policies and laws that are eventually implemented."++ It's not entirely clear if we are supposed to believe that citizens will be expected to be influenced by reading Rawls (like the citizens of a Hobbesian commonwealth must read Leviathan, etc.) or, perhaps more likely, if the influence is supposed to trickle down through mediators.

Third, what is odd about Kogelmann's position is that nobody alive thinks that the economists' existence proofs or their arguments will convince citizens of anything. And since the analogy to existence proofs in game theory is so important to Kogelmann, let me quote a pre-eminent game-theorist on why he avoids using Rawls' framework; when confronted by Theory of Justice, even economists noted that as a model of political life it left out something very important. Aumann (who I usually do not cite approvingly) writes:

Criteria of equity that do not take power considerations into account have a pleasing air of symmetry and abstract perfection; they appeal to our philosophical, ethical senses. But what would make society adopt such criteria? And even if adopted, what chance do they have of surviving the attacks of pressure groups, large and small? For better or for worse, economic realities are dictated not by ethical considerations, but by the exercise of economic power. (Robert J. Aumann (1976) "Values of Markets with a Continuum of Traders," 621; notice that this does not require that everyone is a knave, but that the rich and other rent-seekers may well be.)++

Notice that I am not treating Aumann  as an authority on philosophy. Rather, to put this in jargon: I take what Aumann is suggesting is that while it is true that "belief in what is possible or impossible affects [citizens'] thoughts and attitudes," the transmission mechanism that Kogelman assumes from Rawls' arguments to citizen influence goes in the face of everything we know about political life. So, rather than inspiring political hope, Rawls' can only be appreciated aesthetically, as it were, for the artistry of the proof. Again, to put it as a serious joke: Kogelman's Rawls assumes a kind of invisible hand mechanism such that right arguments magically or mysteriously will win out in political life. I actually mention this because I also suspect this criticism can be lodged against Forrester's own views.

In a way, the remark by Dreben quoted by Kogelmannactually suggests the same. Rawls' possibility proofs are disassociated from "how to bring it about."  Quite right. (I should note that a natural reading of Political Liberalism suggests that Rawls is highly aware that local political traditions  can matter greatly to the conceptual engineer. But this does not fit Kogelmann's proposal.)

Third, Kogelmann recognizes something like this objection. And he has an implied response by way of a quote from Rawls on the fall of Weimar: "A cause of the fall of Weimar’s constitutional regime was that none of the traditional elites of Germany supported its constitution or were willing to cooperate to make it work. They no longer believed a decent liberal parliamentary regime was possible." Friends have repeatedly quoted this to me, too. And I can see why people find it beautiful and tragic (as Kogelmann does). But while something like this may have been true of German Marxists -- they thought that the fall of Weimar was demonstrated by science --, this claim is not true of the 'traditional elites' in the sense required for Rawls and Kogelmann. In so far as German traditional elites then ever believed a decent liberal parliamentary regime was possible (and it's not obvious many did), these gave up on it for reasons having nothing to do with philosophy but everything to do with the state of the economy, the street violence, the intimidation (including assassination), reparations required by Versailles' treaty, and a host of other issues not least that it was unclear to them how democracy could defend itself against its enemies while staying democratic. (Popper, of all people, gets this right.) 

So, finally, while Kogelmann has a serious response to Forrester's position, and even thereby finds a way of showing how the elements of [I] might be connected, I don't think anyone ought to be persuaded by it, especially if one takes Forrester's approach seriously. But this leaves as an open question what, if one takes her historical arguments seriously, the lessons of her argument are for a political philosophy worth having in light of the necessity of the politics of political philosophy and an interest in having these conclusions shape political life. To be continued. 

 

On Freeman's Review of Forrester's In the Shadow of Justice, pt 1

Katrina Forrester's book is an engaging history of John Rawls's intellectual development and the outpouring of work in political philosophy his ideas have engendered. She focuses on the evolution of Rawls's theory of justice and the historical conditions from which it purportedly grew in the late 1940s and early 1950s. She discusses the responses of Rawls's notable critics and reviews alternative positions by significant philosophers and political theorists of the era. These include Brian Barry, Charles Beitz, G.A. Cohen, Ronald Dworkin, Robert Goodin, H.L.A. Hart, Thomas Nagel, Robert Nozick, Susan Okin, Onora O'Neill, Derek Parfit, T.M. Scanlon, Amartya Sen, Peter Singer, Judith Shklar, Charles Taylor, Judith Thomson, Michael Walzer, Bernard Williams, and other leading figures. Forrester concisely summarizes their core ideas and discusses how their work responds to or is critical of the left-liberal position Rawls advocated, liberal egalitarianism. The book provides a significant summary, with few distortions, of the philosophers' ideas it reviews, and is a notable contribution to the history of ideas.

The development and critical response to liberal egalitarian theories of justice has been a central concern within political philosophy since Rawls's Theory of Justice. This is the "shadow of justice" Forrester invokes in her book's title. Her primary thesis is that for the past fifty years, Rawls and the liberal egalitarianism he inspired have defined the intellectual environment of political philosophy, coloring the work of political philosophers of all persuasions. Rawls's shadow also defines the terms of engagement that must be adhered to by political theorists who reject justice as the proper place to begin, or even end, discussions in political philosophy and theory. "The Rawlsian framework came to act as a constraint on what kind of theorizing could be done and what kind of politics could be imagined." (p. 275)--Samuel Freeman reviewing Katrina Forrester's In the Shadow of Justice: Postwar Liberalism and the Remaking of Political Philosophy, Princeton University Press, 2019 at Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews.

When back in the day I first read Samuel Freeman's review of Forrester's In the Shadow of Justice, I was a bit puzzled by it. If the thesis of the book was really, as he reported, that [A] "The Rawlsian framework came to act as a constraint on what kind of theorizing could be done and what kind of politics could be imagined," why, from Section II onward, which starts with the observation that "We are in a period of heightened criticism of Rawls's views," did he spend most of the review defending Rawls' theory from criticisms? For the thesis attributed to Forrester [A] is a thesis in the sociology of knowledge or the historical epistemology of philosophy. It's an empirical (with an accompanying modal) claim orthogonal to criticisms of Rawls' views.

Taken as reported, and at face value, [A] is akin to, neither strictly analogous or identical I hasten to add, the claim that [B] in economics Koopmans, Marschak, Arrow, or Debreu got economists to use convex analysis and that this acted as a formal constrain on what kind of economy could be imagined, or at least the vocabulary in which one must speak in order to advance in professional economics.  [A-B] are claims about professional frameworks -- oh damn you Kuhn, I almost wrote 'paradigm' [Forrester uses "philosophical paradigm" [xx].* And while claims like [A-B] are never innocent -- they might well function in unmasking projects or limit theorems -- by themselves they cannot do the work of criticizing claims discussed within the framework or even about the framework.  Yet most of Freeman's review is a defense of the framework (and some of its specific commitments).

From the review I could not infer how Forrester's argument was supposed to work or what it really is. And when I re-read the review, I noticed that most of Freeman's references to Forrester's book where from the start and end of the book. (I now know they are nearly all from her preface and epilogue.) I left it at that. 

Well, that's not quite true. As regular readers know, back at NewAPPS I have blogged a bit about Rawls' annotations in his books (recall here;) and so knew he had read Robbins and Knight carefully (recall also here), and so back in 2015 I had some fun pointing to Rawls' esotericism in The Theory of Justice (really, go read the post). And yes, I lectured and blogged more about Rawls (especially on Knightian uncertainty and how his lectures on history shaped our perception of the past and present (recall), but except for contextualizing Rawls a bit in this essay (here), I held off on doing scholarship on him. Meanwhile, ever since I heard about a historicizing Rawls conference (2017) at Oxford that culminated in this special issue of Modern Intellectual History, edited by Sophie Smith, Teresa Bejan, and Annette Zimmermann, and with the appearance of Forrester's book, I knew that my time to pontificate about Rawls was up. There were now legitimate experts out there who had put the the pearls I had briefly touched but had put away in a safe, to work in important scholarship. (Not my first academic blunder.)

But then I read Olúfẹ́mi O. Táíwò's fascinating review of Forrester's In the Shadow of Justice, in The Nation (here), which prompted a response from me (recall here). That review (which does not mention Freeman's review) attributes to Forrester a mechanism that might support an inference from [A] to a conclusion worth attacking by Freeman: [X] "By redirecting us from both history and sociology and premising justice on abstract game theory, Rawls’s book and its liberal vision of justice ended up promoting a political philosophy that was ill-equipped for the era of sustained academic and popular attention to historical injustice." But from Táíwò's review it's unclear if that claim [X] is in Forrester or Táíwò. [X] could at least explain why the constraint(s) mentioned in [A] would be taken as a criticism of the framework.  But as I noted in my response to Táíwò, Rawls' work had been (repeatedly) used to tackle historical injustice at least in journal articles.

Now, in reading Táíwò's review I had come under the impression that Forrester's book is a kind of intellectual biography. (He doesn't say this, but a lot of the material he discusses is presented in terms of Rawls' biography.) And in going back to Freeman's review after reading and blogging about Táíwò's, I realized that I could not triangulate from both reviews what Forrester's book was about. And since I felt a bit guilty in blogging about Táíwò's review without having read the book, I read the awe-inspiring book over break and even 'life-tweeted' my impressions by chapter. 

The book is difficult to summarize, but Forrester is admirably clear about its main aim: [I] "the book is about the politics of political philosophy and the political implications of conceptual choices." (xxi) Notice that Rawls is not mentioned in [I]. (The whole paragraph that explains [I] does not mention Rawls!) So, strictly speaking the thesis of the book is not about Rawls or his framework at all. Rather, Rawls is an example of [I] or is supposed to illustrate it [I]. Now, if one were to quote [I] out of context it would be puzzlingly ahistorical. The politics of political philosophy has shifted as philosophy has shifted sites and ages. We will never know exactly the circumstances of how Speusippus ended up succeeding Plato and not, say, Aristotle, and it is hard for us to grasp fully if this had effects on the important conceptual choices in the way political philosophy was pursued in (say) Hellenistic times, but we can know that it is institutionally different from the far-reaching effects (as Forrester shows) of the founding of Philosophy and Public Affairs by a then relatively close-knit group connected to (a reading group known as) Society for Ethical and Legal Philosophy (SELF). So, we cannot take [I] at face value like that. But in context it is pretty clear what she means; the first words of the book -- "political philosophy in the English speaking-world today" -- supply the required context that makes precise the implied reference of [I].

It should be noted that it is by no means obvious one needs to discuss the politics of philosophy in order to discuss the political implications of conceptual choices. One can, for example, discuss inductive risk of a scientific theory without discussing the way science is organized. But plenty of philosophers of science (myself included) have discussed the two alongside each other. So, I understand the pull to do so. Implied in [I] is a non-trivial and controversial causal assumption that [a] the structure of academic discussion (at least in political philosophy), or at least the way such structure shapes the content of what is taken to be authoritative, has some downstream effects on the way the content of academic discussion is taken up in political life. And while I called it a causal assumption, one might equally suspect that lurking in [I] there is a more normative claim [b] that (a) political philosophy [worth having] ought to guide politics in some sense (and in a good way).  And, in fact, in Forrester's book [b] or something close to it is attributed to Stuart Hampshire (in his critique of utilitarianism, 82 & 242), and Alisdair MacIntyre (p. 82), and at times she is clearly tempted by it herself. 

In the book, the political implications of conceptual choices are primarily or perhaps I should say most recurringly investigated through left-leaning Oxford philosophers (many of whom influenced Rawls and, in turn, were influenced by him) and their aspirations to shape the British Labor party's politics. But is not limited to that, we also get a number of American case studies about how Rawlsian ideas were taken up in areas of applied and global ethics (but oddly not Norman Daniels' attempt to shape Hilary Clinton's healthcare plan along Rawlsian lines). We also learn how these fields came to be known as 'applied' (see, for example, 73).

As an aside, and briefly returning to my remarks on Táíwò's review, 'historical injustice' is indeed one of the cases Forrester discusses. But her argument is that it was Nozick who put historical injustice on the agenda for Rawlsians. For, the need for reparations' for historical injustice(s) falls out rather neatly from his argument because original ownership matters a lot to Nozick (see Forrester's pp. 130-135). And by using Bedau, who stands in as a 'left-liberal' (but whose intellectual formation precedes Rawls' main works), as a kind of guide to the debate, she helps explain why it took so long for Rawlsians to really develop an account of historical injustice (perhaps still insufficiently so to Táíwò). To put it as a joke: Rawlsians had to be invented first before an approach to historical injustice could be articulated by them.

In its arguments, Freeman's review ignores the politics of political philosophy. And so fails in the minimal requirements of reviewing; it does not accurately convey what the book is about. It is not a work in the "history of ideas" as he claims. By this I mean it is neither the history ideas in the technical sense of Arthur Lovejoy (and now barely practiced), the history of tracing unit-ideas (we would say, Memes) through different historical epochs (recall), nor is the presumably  more informal sense that Freeman intends by the the phrase, that is, a work of tracing influence or, as he implies, the evolution of a debate.

I do not mean to imply that Freeman's review isn't shaped by the politics of political philosophy. Note that in the first paragraph Freeman lists an alphabetized group of names he treats both as "significant philosophers and political theorists" and "leading figures." Those honorifics suggest we are not far from today's politics of political philosophy. But his first paragraph fails to convey how when Forrester is practicing history -- which to repeat is in the service of an a-historical claim [I] -- she does it.  

As I noted, Forrester's method, when she is practicing something like history of ideas (in the informal sense--it's more common to call it 'contextual history of philosophy' or 'history of political thought'), is to use a privileged well informed contemporary of Rawls to shed light on how Rawls transforms the debates within political philosophy and even establishes a new vocabulary or register for the field. And while some of the names Freeman mentions are, of course, important to her story, her methodological strategy is not to focus on the all-stars in depth. Rather she uses particular guides, most notable she uses Brian Barry for this very purposes. Not infrequently (but not as prominently as Barry) she uses Hugo Bedau (who is clearly not significant enough for Freeman to be listed among the leading figures). When she focuses on her Oxford theme, she uses Richard Titmuss' work to fascinating effect (and David Miller's). And as I hinted above, Stuart Hampshire shows up throughout the book for such illuminating purposes too. 

Because I have run on long as is, let me note one other aspect of how she understands [I]. She does not treat the politics of academic disciplines as autonomous. By this I mean, that she sometimes suggests that academic influence is itself a consequence of larger social forces. The most explicit example of this is after noting the malleability of communitarianism, her claim that "communitarianism...became influential within political theory because it did not seriously threaten the assumptions of the postwar liberal order." (257; emphasis added). The fuller significance of this is, and it is another way in which 'shadow' in the title of the book functions (and Freeman almost gets this right), is that in Forrester's analysis political theory as distinct from political philosophy becomes constituted, at least for a while, as a field that is un-Rawlsian.

Here she leaves hanging what the source of this status quo bias is (is it ideology, subtle disciplinary pressure from political scientists on appointments, is it funding sources within universities, etc.)? While she is very interested in themes like journal capture, and the way centers promote fields, Forrester is relatively quiet on such mechanisms. But I'll postpone my own more substantive criticisms of the book until I engage with more of the actual argument of the book (and perhaps I'll also return (eventually) to Freeman's effort to refute some of the claims of the epilogue). To be continued.

The Dispossessed (Spoilers), Pt 3.: Utopia without Satire (on Le Guin and Borges)

Bedap’s eyes had got very small, like steel beads. “Brother,” he said, “you are self-righteous. You always were. Look outside your own damned pure conscience for once! I come to you and whisper because I know I can trust you, damn you! Who else can I talk to? Do I want to end up like Tirin?”

“Like Tirin?” Shevek was startled into raising his voice. Bedap hushed him with a gesture towards the wall. “What’s wrong with Tirin? Where is he?”

“In the Asylum on Segvina Island.”

“In the Asylum?”

Bedap hunched his knees up to his chin and wrapped his arms around them, as he sat sideways on the chair. He spoke quietly now, with reluctance.

“Tirin wrote a play and put it on, the year after you left. It was funny—crazy—you know his kind of thing.” Bedap ran a hand through his rough, sandy hair, loosening it from its queue. “It could seem anti-Odonian, if you were stupid. A lot of people are stupid. There was a fuss. He got reprimanded. Public reprimand. I never saw one before. Everybody comes to your syndicate meeting and tells you off. It used to be how they cut a bossy gang foreman or manager down to size. Now they only use it to tell an individual to stop thinking for himself. It was bad. Tirin couldn’t take it. I think it really drove him a bit out of his mind. He felt everybody was against him, after that. He started talking too much—bitter talk. Not irrational, but always critical, always bitter. And he’d talk to anybody that way. Well, he finished at the Institute, qualified as a math instructor, and asked for a posting. He got one. To a road repair crew in Southsetting. He protested it as an error, but the Divlab computers repeated it. So he went.”

“Tir never worked outdoors the whole time I knew him,” Shevek interrupted. “Since he was ten. He always wangled desk jobs. Divlab was being fair.”

Bedap paid no attention. “I don’t really know what happened down there. He wrote to me several times, and each time he’d been reposted. Always to physical labor, in little outpost communities. He wrote that he was quitting his posting and coming back to Northsetting to see me. He didn’t come. He stopped writing. I traced him through the Abbenay Labor Files, finally. They sent me a copy of his card, and the last entry was just, ‘Therapy. Segvina Island.’ Therapy! Did Tirin murder somebody? Did he rape somebody? What do you get sent to the Asylum for, beside that?”

“You don’t get sent to the Asylum at all. You request posting to it.”

“Don’t feed me that crap,” Bedap said with sudden rage. “He never asked to be sent there! They drove him crazy and then sent him there. It’s Tirin I’m talking about, Tirin, do you remember him?”

“I knew him before you did. What do you think the Asylum is—a prison? It’s a refuge. If there are murderers and chronic work-quitters there, it’s because they asked to go there, where they’re not under pressure, and safe from retribution. But who are these people you keep talking about—‘they’? ‘They’ drove him crazy, and so on. Are you trying to say that the whole social system is evil, that in fact ‘they,’ Tirin’s persecutors, your enemies, ‘they,’ are us—the social organism?”

“If you can dismiss Tirin from your conscience as a work-quitter, I don’t think I have anything else to say to you,” Bedap replied, sitting hunched up on the chair. There was such plain and simple grief in his voice that Shevek’s righteous wrath was stopped short.--Ursula Le Guin (1974) The Dispossessed, Chapter 6, pp. 141-143 (in the British edition). 

This post is the third in an open-ended series on Le Guin's The Dispossessed (see here for pt 1; here for pt 2.). Annares is an anarchist society without public laws, property, nor guilt. Relatively minor violations of local norms and practices are generally sanctioned by social criticism and ostracism. The exchange between Bedap and Shevek, the initially foolish hero of the story, reveals that some major violations of norms are medicalized; one is viewed as psychologically diseased if one murders, rapes, or systematically refuses to contribute work to society (a society -- it should be noted, in fairness -- that teeters on the edge of subsistence and otherwise is quite generous). Presumably the Asylum aims at rehabilitation. (In chapter 10, we hear the Asylum understands itself as a "refuge.") Bedap's suggestion is that those who show too much independence of  thought are also nudged to the Asylum.

What makes Tirin's situation so interesting is that his free-thinking is expressed in terms of a satire. And it becomes clear through the narrative that Annares is unfamiliar with such comedy. In this respect Annares, a community devoted to sympathetic mutual aid, is not unalike to how Socrates legislates Kallipolis and, perhaps more pertinent, how J.L. Borges imagines (recall) Ibn Rushd's Muslim Spain (which also lacks satirical comedy). That Le Guin was very familiar with Borges' thought, and took it rather seriously, is suggested by her (1988) introduction to Borges' co-edited volume The Book of Fantasy, which focuses exclusively on Borges (without paying much attention to the two other editors) and the "honours" she thinks he is due, and scattered remarks in her non-fiction writing. Among the noteworthy claims of that introduction is that she treats fantasy and science fiction as a joint genre, each (to convey her thought rather reductively) devoted to making visible the moral questions of our age.

The arts are key to social life to the relatively isolated communities of Annares. And, in particular, the theatre is very important, "the Art." (Chapter 6; p. 131) But the syndics who put up art-works also have rather restrictive interpretations of what art should be shown. So, comedies do exist on Annares, but are not as central: ‘They performed tragedies, semi-improvised comedies, mimes. … Rising out of and embodying the isolation and communality of the Anarresti spirit, the drama had attained extraordinary power and brilliance.’ (p. 131) So, satire is unknown.

My students and I had some initial difficulty in understanding why Tirin's play created such trouble for him in Annares. It looks rather innocent. Here is a brief, post-facto summary by an eye-witness (in chapter 10):

“Did you see the play he put on, the one that made trouble for him?”

“At the Summer Festival, after you left? Oh yes. I don’t remember it, that’s so long ago now. It was silly. Witty—Tirin was witty. But silly. It was about an Urrasti, that’s right. This Urrasti hides himself in a hydroponics tank on the Moon freighter, and breathes through a straw, and eats the plant roots. I told you it was silly! And so he gets himself smuggled onto Anarres. And then he runs around trying to buy things at depots, and trying to sell things to people, and saving gold nuggets till he’s holding so many he can’t move. So he has to sit where he is, and he builds a palace, and calls himself the Owner of Anarres. And there was an awfully funny scene where he and this woman want to copulate, and she’s just wide open and ready, but he can’t do it until he’s given her his gold nuggets first, to pay her. And she didn’t want them. That was funny, with her flopping down and waving her legs, and him launching himself onto her, and then he’d leap up like he’d been bitten, saying, ‘I must not! It is not moral! It is not good business!’ Poor Tirin! He was so funny, and so alive.”

“He played the Urrasti?”

“Yes. He was marvelous.--chapter 10, p. 269

At first sight, Tirin is merely making fun of the money-obsessed Urrasti, drawing on the shared prejudices or ideology of the anarchists of Annares. These views are taught on Annares from a young age. In addition, Urrasti are not allowed to visit Annares. (Annares and Urras are each other's moons.) This is, in fact, part of the founding "Settlement" that governs the isolationist anarchist society (which is developed out of the refugees of the members of a failed revolution on Urrasti). They keep outside influences and people, which are seen as dangerously corrupting, out of Annares. This is achieved by limiting planetary entry to a few commodities that are exchanges with mining commodities that are useful to the much wealthier Urrasti societies. 

So, Tirin's play is a fantasy about the troubles an Urrasti might find in adjusting to life on or trying to subvert life on Annares. And since the Urrasti is not presented in attractive fashion and is, in fact, held up to ridicule, it is at first odd that Tirin is sanctioned so badly for staging the play (and his life haunted by it), and that Shevek eventually decides he has to publish it independently despite social disapproval. 

Now, eventually, we are informed that Shevek learns to understand Tirin as an "inventor-destroyer, the kind who's got turn everything upside down and inside out. A satirist, a man who praises through rage." (Chapter 10, p. 270.) This goes very much against the purpose of drama on Annares, which really frowns on (i) individuality in all the arts and tends to praise works that (ii) promote (without being shallow) uplifting harmony. (This is also seen in the treatment of choral music on Annares.) 

So, let's take stock: in virtue of (i) and (ii) and (iii) representing immorality in satirical fashion Tirin's play is called "immoral" by some (270). Even in the narrative of The Dispossessed, it is recognized that calling an author immoral in virtue of (i-iii) is not an especially sophisticated response to the play.  But despite the Urrasti being the but of the joke, there is an important feature of the play that is highly critical of Annares. While the satire seems to be primarily directed against the traditional capitalist or properterian enemy it also expresses a criticism of the isolation of Annares. As Shevek puts it, this satire also teaches, "what prisons are, and who builds them. Those who build walls are their own prisoners." Annaeres is simultaneously a great social project, and a prison.

Now, for us as readers with only partial and second hand access to the play, it's not entirely clear how this interpretation follows from what we have been shown. But it is not entirely unclear either: the local Annares women does not get satisfaction, and the interaction between the man and women is governed by mutual misunderstanding. And all of this is due to the fact that the Settlement has built a theoretical and empirical wall around Annares. To keep capitalism out, the locals also deliberately keep themselves uninformed and to avoid nearly all mutual exchange.* The outside world is a source of contamination--and needs to be quarantined out. (This point is actually made on the very first page of the book.) 

And taken like this, Tirin's satire is not misunderstood at all by those who criticized and socially ostracized him. And while they may seem initially outlandishly vindictive and dangerously totalitarian to us, Tirin's audience accurately perceives that his ridiculous satire is taking aim at the foundational commitments of their society of mutual aid.+ (Notice that in the play, the Annares basically leave the Urrasti to his own devices.)

To close: one of the main questions that The Dispossessed makes us ask -- this is played out in a number of set-piece debates in chapter 12  -- is whether a society founded on the noble ideals of mutual aid and solidarity, can tolerate individual, intellectual commerce with the rest of the world (especially if that commerce is not governed by social utility) without risking its own survival by it. The question is, of course, not limited to such admirable societies. Le Guin's book offers no platitudes of reassurance or an answer to the question; each of us have to think it for ourselves with our communities.**

 

On Pynchon on 1984

By the time they have left the Ministry of Love, Winston and Julia have entered permanently the condition of doublethink, the anterooms of annihilation, no longer in love but able to hate and love Big Brother at the same time. It is as dark an ending as can be imagined. But strangely, it is not quite the end. We turn the page to find appended what seems to be some kind of critical essay, "The Principles of Newspeak". We remember that at the beginning, we were given the option, by way of a footnote, to turn to the back of the book and read it. Some readers do this, and some don't - we might see it nowadays as an early example of hypertext. Back in 1948, this final section apparently bothered the American Book-of-the-Month Club enough for them to demand that it be cut, along with the chapters quoted from Emmanuel Goldstein's book, as a condition of acceptance by the club. Though he stood to lose at least £40,000 in American sales, Orwell refused to make the changes, telling his agent, "A book is built up as a balanced structure and one cannot simply remove large chunks here and there unless one is ready to recast the whole thing . . . I really cannot allow my work to be mucked about beyond a
certain point, and I doubt whether it even pays in the long run." Three weeks later the BOMC relented, but the question remains, why end a novel as passionate, violent and dark as this one with what appears to be a scholarly appendix?
The answer may lie in simple grammar. From its first sentence, "The Principles of Newspeak" is written consistently in the past tense, as if to suggest some later piece of history, post- 1984 , in which Newspeak has become literally a thing of the past - as if in some way the anonymous author of this piece is by now free to discuss, critically and objectively, the political system of which Newspeak was, in its time, the essence. Moreover, it is our own pre-Newspeak English language that is being used to write the essay. Newspeak was supposed to have become general by 2050, and yet it appears that it did not last that long, let alone triumph, that the ancient humanistic ways of thinking inherent in standard English have persisted, survived, and ultimately prevailed, and that perhaps the social and moral order it speaks for has even, somehow, been restored.--Thomas Pynchon (2003) "Introduction" Nineteen Eighty-Four By George Orwell [HT: Victor Gijsbers]

We know that Pynchon is not the only major novelist that grappled with Orwell's Appendix to Nineteen Eighty-Four; at the end The Handmaid's Tale, Atwood, who according to her own testimony about 1984, "read it again and again," pays homage to it in the "Historical Notes" themselves "Being a partial transcript of the proceedings of the Twelfth Symposium on Gileadean Studies, held as part of the International Historical Association Convention held at the University of Denay, Nunavit, on June 25, 2195." In presenting these historical notes, Atwood, reassures the reader, who may have no taste for (recall) Socratic metaphysics --  "for everything that has come into being destruction is appointed, not even such a fabric as this will abide for all time, but it shall surely be dissolved" (Plato, Republic, 546a)" -- that the "Gilead period," too, will come to an end in some sense. 

Pynchon, who is not exactly known for his optimism, is right to pay attention to the Appendix to 1984, but I am not entirely sure that his hesitant ("perhaps") optimism about what the Appendix signals can withstand scrutiny. His interpretation assumes, first, that the (let's call it) authorial stance of the Appendix has to be taken at face value. That's decidedly odd because 1984 represents us with a world in which just about every text is a forgery of some sorts. (While it would be a mistake to treat them alike, Orwell and Borges were contemporaries, after all.) In fact, much of the action of 1984 consists in the production of forgeries (not just of texts of memories). The production of newspapers by the Ministry of Truth and the torture chambers of Ministry of love have this in common. So, why would the Appendix be any different?

As an aside, the apparent function of the forgeries in Oceania appear to be to produce a totalizing infallibility about everything, not the least the past, of the Party. (No Pope would dream of this!) And what it illustrates is that even if one were to grant (for the sake of amusement) the linguistic idealist, that all is text, what one may call the production values that inform or are exhibited by the production of texts make a huge difference. Linguistic idealism comes in many varieties. If one treats this focus on 'values' as bourgeois, feel free to replace 'production values' with 'means of production' in the previous sentence. In so far as Orwell is a true socialist (and an author), this attention to the conditions of textual production need not surprise. 

But let's stipulate that we need to take the Appendix at face value. You may say, 'What else can we do, after all?' It's true, as Pynchon emphasizes, that the Appendix treats Newspeak as a thing of the past. Given that Pynchon explicitly understands Newspeak as the essence of Oceania, and in his argument tacitly relies on the metaphysical principle, I'll paraphrase Spinoza (E2D2), that when its essence is taken away the entity ceases to be, Pynchon infers from the demise of Newspeak quite reasonably that Oceania must have ended.

Before I get to the merits of Pynchon's argument, a reader may suspect that I will object to Pynchon's metaphysics as an imposition on the world of 1984. Of course, I am assuming you are not the kind of reader who may find my parading of metaphysical jargon quite pedantic. Even so it's worth noting that the core torture scenes in Part III of 1984, emphasize that metaphysics is salient. The torturer, O'Brien, repeatedly, in fact, reminds his victim, Winston Smith, that metaphysics is not his "strong point." So I am not going to object to the form of Pynchon's argument.*

Newspeak is what the philosophers call a final language. In the text -- I have in mind both 1984 and its Appendix -- this is marked by the contrast between the provisional versions (as, I now quote the Appendix, "embodied in the Ninth and Tenth editions of the Newspeak Dictionary") -- and its definitive form "embodied in the Eleventh Edition of the Dictionary."  As we learn from the Appendix and, earlier in the novel, from Syme, who, before he is presumably vaporized, is one of the developers of Newspeak, Newspeak is supposed to be an austere language: its vocabulary culled down, and, through some semantic tools the expressive power of particular words is greatly enhanced, the language's expressive power is curtailed. It's a final language designed to be spoken and used by the Party.**

Now, Syme indeed suggests that the "Revolution will be complete when the language is perfect. Newspeak is Ingsoc and Ingsoc is Newspeak." The narrator of 1984 adds that this is expressed with "a sort of mystical satisfaction." And indeed this idea, the perfection of language, is characteristic of what we may call Enlightenment mysticism (and satirized by Swift). Pynchon's interpretation of 1984 is rooted in Syme's understanding of Newspeak.

The Appendix, which follows Syme's interpretation of Newspeak sometimes literally, omits this mystical claim. I'll quote the Appendix (and then suggest an alternative to Pynchon's interpretation):

The purpose of Newspeak was not only to provide a medium of expression for the world-view and mental habits proper to the devotees of Ingsoc, but to make all other modes of thought impossible. It was intended that when Newspeak had been adopted once and for all and Oldspeak forgotten, a heretical thought--that is, a thought diverging from the principles of Ingsoc--should be literally unthinkable, at least so far as thought is dependent on words. Its vocabulary was so constructed as to give exact and often very subtle expression to every meaning that a Party member could properly wish to express, while excluding all other meanings and also the possibility of arriving at them by indirect methods. This was done partly by the invention of new words, but chiefly by eliminating undesirable words and by stripping such words as remained of unorthodox meanings, and so far as possible of all secondary meanings whatever.

Unlike Syme, the Appendix places greatest emphasis on the fact that the purpose of Newspeak was to make what in 1984 is called 'Thoughtcrime' impossible. Even a Quine-ean couldn't be heretical through indirect methods in Newspeak. We might say, then, that it is regimentation that is the fundamental function of Newspeak as a final language.

Interestingly enough, this is an aside, the author of the Appendix recognizes that once Newspeak is perfected, it would make translation of books and even complex fragments from older languages into Newspeak in a certain way impossible unless they either referred "to some technical processor some very simple everyday actions." (The Appendix offers the Declaration of Independence as an example of how "impossible" would be to render it into Newspeak.) One wishes (recall) our advocates of formal languages would keep this in mind.

Be that as it may, a more natural interpretation of the demise of Newspeak presents itself now.  For, from the point of view of the Party, the elimination of even possible Thoughtcrime would be self-defeating. For Thoughtcrime grounds the repressive apparatus of the Party. The possibility of Thoughtcrimes are -- as much as the conditions of permanent War -- central to the structure of self-discipline of the Party. The elimination of Thoughtcrime as a category would spell doom to the survival of the Party because it would lose its main means of self-control as a ruling, corporate spirit. It would then have to start codifying laws of some sort and bureaucratize, formalize these. This was not a problem in the world of 1984 because the perfection of Newspeak had been projected, as the Appendix notes in its closing sentence, into a more distant future (2050).

So, a more natural political possibility is that the Party abandoned the project of Newspeak because it saw that its perfection would be self-undermining and incompatible with the ideological needs of Ingsoc in power.*** (By contrast, a socialist language planner like Carnap recognizes that Esperanto, for example, is great for a world of public Enlightenment.) And the Appendix reflects the writings of someone who is intimately familiar with the abandonment of Newspeak (not the demise of Oceania).  Admittedly, there are some passages in the Appendix that exhibit a rather free-thinking attitude: the use of the Declaration of Independence as an example, in particular, is rather cheeky. And it forms the best evidence for Pynchon's interpretation. But the more literal reading of the Appendix understands it as a fragment from a reconstruction of the rise and fall of Newspeak as a social enterprise. That is compatible with the survival of Oceania once the Party realized that the mystical attitude toward Newspeak threatened to make it the essence of Oceania.+

 

 

On the Social Workers of Um-Helat (pt II)

So the social workers of Um-Helat stand, talking now, over the body of a man. He is dead—early, unwilling, with a beautifully crafted pike jammed through his spine and heart. (The spine to make it painless. The heart to make it quick.) This is only one of the weapons carried by the social workers, and they prefer it because the pike is silent. Because there was no shot or ricochet, no crackle or sizzle, no scream, no one else will come to investigate. The disease has taken one poor victim, but it need not claim more. In this manner is the contagion contained . . . in a moment. In a moment.

Beside the man’s body crouches a little girl. She’s curly-haired, plump, blind, brown, tall for her age. Normally a boisterous child, she weeps now over her father’s death, and her tears run hot with the injustice of it all. She heard him say, “I’m sorry.” She saw the social workers show the only mercy possible. But she isn’t old enough to have been warned of the consequences of breaking the law, or to understand that her father knew those consequences and accepted them—so to her, what has happened has no purpose or reason. It is a senseless, monstrous, and impossible thing, called murder.

“I’ll get back at you,” she says between sobs. “I’ll make you die the way you made him die.” This is an unthinkable thing to say. Something is very wrong here. She snarls, “How dare you. How dare you.”

The social workers exchange looks of concern. They are contaminated themselves, of course; it’s permitted, and frankly unavoidable in their line of work. Impossible to dam a flood without getting wet. (There are measures in place. The studs on their scalps—well. In our own world, those who volunteered to work in leper colonies were once venerated, and imprisoned with them.) The social workers know, therefore, that for incomprehensible reasons, this girl’s father has shared the poison knowledge of our world with her. An uncontaminated citizen of Um-Helat would have asked “Why?” after the initial shock and horror, because they would expect a reason. There would be a reason. But this girl has already decided that the social workers are less important than her father, and therefore the reason doesn’t matter. She believes that the entire city is less important than one man’s selfishness. Poor child. She is nearly septic with the taint of our world.

Nearly. But then our social worker, the tall brown one who got a hundred strangers to smile at a handmade ladybug, crouches and offers a hand to the child.

What? What surprises you? Did you think this would end with the cold-eyed slaughter of a child? There are other options—and this is Um-Helat, friend, where even a pitiful, diseased child matters. They will keep her in quarantine, and reach out to her for several days. If the girl accepts the hand, listens to them, they will try to explain why her father had to die. She’s early for the knowledge, but something must be done, do you see? Then together they will bury him, with their own hands if they must, in the beautiful garden that they tend between caseloads. This garden holds all the Um-Helatians who broke the law. Just because they have to die as deterrence doesn’t mean they can’t be honored for the sacrifice.

But there is only one treatment for this toxin once it gets into the blood: fighting it. Tooth and nail, spear and claw, up close and brutal; no quarter can be given, no parole, no debate. The child must grow, and learn, and become another social worker fighting an endless war against an idea . . . but she will live, and help others, and find meaning in that. If she takes the woman’s hand.--N.K. Jemisin (2018) "The Ones Who Stay and Fight" in How Long the Black Future Month?, pp. 10-11.

Last week (recall), I focused on the pecularities of the coming of age ritual in Um-Helat (a "postcolonial utopia" (p. 12)). The ritual alluded to, again, near the end of the story (quoted above). Because the daughter of the man executed by the social workers of Um-Helat has not undergone the ritual yet. She is, hence, unaware of her father's crime and the reasons for his sudden death. 

Presumably, this lack of awareness has also spared her life: there is in her no mens rea. Because she did not undergo the coming of ritual, she had no knowledge of the taboo on Earthly (social) media consumption, and the effects that may follow from the violation of it. This despite the fact that she is also infected with the Earthly ideas her father pursued and shared secretly. These ideas involve the denial of equal respect, the advocacy of social hierarchy. But also directed, or exclusive love like the intense love the child feels for her late dad. To be sure, it's okay to love one's children and parents in Um-Helat, but not at the expense of others--so in the ideals of Um-Helat, one should be aunties to many children (p. 1).

Um-Helat is governed by the ideal of mutual, egalitarian respect. But also by a kind of principle of sufficient reason (PSR) because, as the passage quoted above implies, all actions in Um-Helat can be explained (and so justified) to each other. This suggests that Um-Helat does not lack philosophy. The mutual respect ideal and the PSR are defended violently against those that seek out and circulate ideals of social subordination associated with our world. If capital punishment were not shocking enough, Um-Helat's 'social workers' act as secret prosecutors, juries/judges, and executioners at once in defense of certain kind of social taboos. 

The lack of separation in the juridical functions of social workers is presumably rationalized by their commitment to keep the fact of contagion as quiet as possible, and to weed it out as quick as possible. The law and its severe consequences are known to adults, and there is even a kind of consent to it in Um-Helat.* And so, one may think this meets minimal ideals of public reasons. But the execution of the law is not. There is a clear denial of publicity in Kant's sense (e.g., "all actions relating to the right of other human beings are wrong if their maxim is incompatible with publicity"). In addition, the law of Um-Helat does not build into its execution any safeguards against false accusation or mistakes. So, the social workers of Um-Helat are more akin to the guardians of a Government House utilitarian society (than a Kantian one).

The language of 'contagion' reminds us that the social taboo on forbidden knowledge is medicalized. Violation of the taboo on consumption of Earthly (social) media is treated as a disease. And the 'social workers' are Um-Helat's immune system. Strikingly enough, the 'social workers' of Um-Helat are themselves partially infected or "contaminated themselves" (..."it’s permitted, and frankly unavoidable in their line of work") with the very thing they are tasked to fight.

That the angry child is a potential recruit to what we may call the 'guild of social workers' makes a lot of sense upon reflection. She is spirited and loves too-partially, which are, in fact, two key qualifications for the guardians of Plato's Republic (375). So, part of the implied (invisible to us) education of such contaminated young kids into would be 'social workers' of Um-Helat is the redirection, the turning of this angry, powerful directed love into a love capable of serving the common good ferociously. 

In fact, the un-deviant, and unquestioning healthy citizens of Um-Helat are not suitable to the task of social worker. They are basically too happy and too dutiful for the task of defending the psychic health of Um-Helat with extreme measures.+ So, it makes sense that 'social workers' who are central to the survival of the ideology/ideals of Um-Helat are recruited from those like the child, spirited and with intense love. We learn that these social workers can otherwise be anyone (including (recall) a gethen).

The reason I have adopted the language of the Republic, is that the social workers themselves are both an elite of Um-Helat and, simultaneously, may also be controlled by somehow. That they are a kind of elite becomes clear early in the story, when one of them is seen to promote common mutual acknowledgment publicly (see p. 3). And, in fact, the official task of these 'social workers' is "to ensure the happiness and prosperity of their fellow citizens." (p. 7) Those that are entrusted with this noble task are those that have experienced a secret grief and kind of loss of a sort unknown (and unknowable) to the rest of Um-Helat.  

We get a hint about the function of "the studs on their scalps;" at an earlier point in the (very brief) text we were told that these are "implanted." (p. 3.) And it is also implied that all social workers have them (p. 7). Presumably to allow control from afar, a safe-guard. This is a city known for its great technological innovations, so such distant control is not beyond the possible for them. What's left unclear is who controls, who can be entrusted with power over those studs in a city in which every question is supposed to have an answer. 

The Ship of State again, Democratic Elites, and Populism

One of the attractions, which is simultaneously one of its great dangers, of blogging is that there are no referees (and editors) to warn you against a serious mistake. Since these digressions are by and large ephemeral, and since I tend to discuss abstruse topics, the stakes are pretty low -- the worst that can happen is that my balloon-ish reputation is deflated even more -- so by and large it's worth acquiring some freedom for the risk of letting a howler slip through. Besides, howlers also slip into the august pages of our best journals, and I often have friendly readers that offer quiet or more notable corrections. I often quietly correct factual and typographic mistakes in the first day of 'publishing' an Impression. And when I am wrong about something substantively, I alert the readers to my corrections in the original post and/or leave em standing with the hope that some future nerdy scholar, running on lots of terabytes, who has decided to use my pieces as a window into 'the decadent phase of late capitalism's philosophical scene' will find my mistakes amusing.

So, it's all a bit embarrassing that my (2018) piece on Plato's ship of state (here) has attracted more than 17,400 page-views. (My hunch is that these are undergrads looking for help on their term paper in some way.) Even by my standards that's not a shabby number of page-views. In this case, I don't gloat about this because the piece contains a glaring mistake. Remember that the analogy starts with this sentence (now quoting Reeve) "The shipowner is taller and stronger than everyone else on board. But he is hard of hearing, he is a bit short-sighted, and his knowledge of seafaring is correspondingly deficient. The sailors are quarreling with one about captaincy."

In my commentary at the time, I reject the (correct) idea that the people are the ship-owner, and claim (incorrectly) that the ship-owner reflects the propertied class. This is bad enough, but because of this mistake I fail to mention that in the analogy the sailors are supposed to be the political elites of a democracy. This is, in fact, hard to miss because Socrates says it explicitly at 489c. (And some of my own students reminded me of this.)

Somewhat surprisingly much of what I said in the post is not actually much undermined by this mistake. But what the piece ends up missing is that the point of Socrates' criticism of democracy in the ship of state analogy is to be especially scathing about democratic political elites. And, in fact, there is a tempting way to read Socrates as a true democrat because in the ship of state analogy the people are the victims of their elites. (Of course, this also exhibits a strain of elitism because it kind of denies the agency of the demos.)

What's worth noticing about this today is that Socrates' critique of democratic political elites anticipates the tenor of contemporary so-called populist criticism of liberal democratic elites, who don't represent the interest of the people and who by their bickering undermine unity and flourishing.* He later suggests they are composed of the useless drones, a parasitic rentier class (564c).

That Socrates anticipates the populists becomes even clearer when one recalls his first law of political science/unity:  "[T]he simple and unvarying rule, that in every form of government revolution takes its start from the ruling class itself, when dissension arises in that, but so long as it is at one with itself, however small it be, innovation is impossible" (Republic, 545d, translated by Shorey). For the populist this empirical-conceptual regularity is actually encouraging because if they can nudge such disunity along, political rule is within reach. 

I don't mean to suggest that contemporary populists are (despite the fondness of some of them to quote classical sources) promoting a kallipolis. Nor do I mean to deny that from Socrates' perspective such populists are in fact the intoxicant who eat and drink up the ship's cargo and become would-be tyrants (565e).

At this point one might think that I could have saved my initial argument back in 2018 by saying (as contemporary critics of our democracy are won't to do) that the people are to blame for their leaders. And there is a sense in which Socrates also, eventually, makes a claim like this later in Book 8 (in 562cd &  563d), suggesting that the people will reject leaders who won't give them what they want which just is license and live from moment to moment (561c). Interestingly, the main examples of such license are extreme sex-equality and (near) abolitionism of slavery (563b), and relatively open borders to immigrants (562e/563a). {I love hearing folk saying that such ideas are modern inventions.}* 

Now, more is worth saying about how when democracy was revived in recent centuries some of the criticisms of Socrates were internalized in different ways in different liberal democracies. But that's for another time. I have decided not to delete the earlier post on the ship of state. What gives these diaries their charm, if any, is that they reflect my howlers, too. But I will add a disclaimer to it to check out this post, too, for corrections to it. And, yes, it's possible I will need to do that again.

On Comedians that Punch Down (Srinivasan/Cowen, and yes Chappelle)

One of the great jokes of the political circumstances of our age is that comedians are the great political commentators of the age. And while it would be silly to claim that David Letterman is solely responsible for the political ascendancy of Donald Trump, it's also true that he helped turn Trump from a New York city character into a national celebrity by repeatedly giving him space for -- I say this with the benefit of hindsight -- test-running his campaign massages. Belatedly, around 2010 Letterman himself grew uneasy about this, calling Trump a racist and sharply demarcating the "circus" (in which Letterman and Trump were both starring (ahh) freaks) from the political arena. The point of the contrast in Letterman's shtick then is to proclaim Trump unfit for office. (The interview with Dr. Phil is still worth re-watching; Jason Zinoman's 2017 New York Times article gives useful background, although does not mention Trump's role in the Central Park five.)

Letterman's underlying instinct that there is a contrast between comedy and politics is an important one. It's no less important than the difference between work-place harassment and comedy. What's  funny and worth having in one context, is oppressive in another.

I am thinking of these matters not just because Plato implies that Aristophanes is responsible for the accusation (and so eventual execution) of Socrates, or the predictable controversy about Dave Chappelle's latest special, and (recall) my struggle with the implications of my admiration for Norm Macdonald, but also because the topic frames the relatively recent, fascinating discussion (or interview) between Tyler Cowen and Amia Srinivasan. 

So, let's first look at how that exchange commences:

COWEN: You’ve described yourself as a utopian feminist. In your vision of utopian feminism, how much room is there for what I would call compartmentalization? Just to give a simple example, if you look at, say, stand-up comedy, a lot of it is sexist or racist, or even if it’s not, it’s perceived as such. What happens to that in the utopia? Do we just compartmentalize and let it continue? Or how do you treat it?

SRINIVASAN: I’m not sure about room for compartmentalization. I do think there’s a lot of room for context. For example, when you’re thinking about the violence in rap lyrics, an obsession that began in the conservative pearl-clutching in the ’80s, you’ve got to think about what those invocations of violence are doing performatively in a piece of art, that is, rap music. It’s not the same thing as someone standing up in the middle of the town square, trying to deliberately incite violence against people.

Not even speaking about the utopia, just speaking about how we should think about performative utterances right now, I think we need to address them with a great deal of contextual sensitivity and think about, in general, what is happening in these particular cases. What seems to be problematic might not be. But then, let’s be honest, if you’ve spent any time in a comedy club — and I recently did that when I was last in LA — there is just a lot of quite naked sexism there.

It’s pretty shocking — despite the fact of this feminist revolution in comedy — just how much stand-up comedy is really quite comedically boring and sexist. Now, there’s this question about — I take it that one of the thoughts you have is something like humor —

COWEN: Right, which has a brutal element to it. How humor fits into utopia is a long-standing puzzle because humor is often brutal, right?

SRINIVASAN: Yes. Look, I don’t think the utopia or the post-revolutionary world is a place without any form of brutality, and it’s certainly not a place without humor. It’s going to have disappointment and heartache and tragedy and tragicomedy. Human foibles will still exist. Heartbreak will exist. With all of those things, you have humor.

What is very limited is the thought — and I’m not suggesting that you’re advocating for this thought — but the thought that you basically need structures of organized political oppression like racism to have humor. The Greeks had humor without having racism. They had other systems of domination, but they had a great and advanced sense of humor, often directed at intellectuals and philosophers, who, I think, are often very much a worthy target.

I think there can be this view on which ending forms of domination and oppression somehow drains life of all that is special and textured about it: humor, love, intimacy, friendship. I just don’t think that’s true. I think, in fact, what the end of domination would do is release us more fully into the specific things that make human life worth living, including humor.

Now, it's quite possible that Cowen surprised Srinivasan with this line of questioning. I recently read (and discussed) Srinivasan's The Right to Sex, and, while she does self-describe as a 'utopian feminist,' and mentions Louis C.K's misdeeds, I don't recall comedy being especially important to her arguments. Having said that Cowen did his homework and seems to have been aware of the fact (as I was not) that Srinivasan has a serious background in theater (as she affirms later in the interview). I hope to return to the meat of the interview some other time.

I was, however, taken aback by Srinivasan's comments that I have just quoted. For, if a post-revolutionary world, feminist or not, cannot do without "brutality," then it is not obviously worth having. Of course, she leaves unclear what 'form of brutality' she foresees, and without further specification there is not much more to say here.*

Second, she thinks that "intellectuals and philosophers" are worthy targets of comedy. Since she is talking about ancient Greece, and is one of our leading philosophers, one might say she forfeits Plato's/Socrates' "ancient quarrel" (Republic, 607b) against Aristophanes on behalf of the rest of us. She does not explain why, but given her comments in context, I assume this is so because the "intellectuals and philosophers" are not at the bottom of the dominance hierarchy and, one might argue, can wield the pen (or feather/keyboard) as sharply as the comedian. I suspect, then, she thinks it's kind of a fair fight that old quarrel between philosophy and the comic poets.

Fair enough. Although it's worth noting -- as the fate of Socrates suggests --, it's not wholly a fair fight because the comedian can attract a much wider audience than the philosopher, and may well be much better at political and social rhetoric (this is one of the sub-themes of the Symposium, after all.) And the consequential afterlife of such public rhetoric can be quite unpredictable. Aristophanes' Clouds may well have been thought harmless to Socrates when it first was performed, but after a plague, disastrous imperial overreach, a civil war and murderous dictatorship, context shifted dramatically. I mention these historical facts because what Letterman himself clearly thought initially was harmless entertainment, became politically potent after a great financial meltdown and a bailout of the rich and connected.

So, lurking in Srinivasan's comments, which, as I suggested, may well be entirely improvised, is the idea that humor, even brutal humor, is fine as long as it does not reinforce a structural hierarchy of some sorts. In addition (I take this from what she says about rap), comedy should not incite violence. 

Now, one natural way to read Srinivasan is that while comedy may not be art (like some rap is), comedy is, in fact, self-justifying. It's just one of those things that make a good life good. And because I agree with her about this (that comedy is self-justifying), and her suggestion that even in a very well ordered (albeit brutal) society there would be comedy, I do not want to exaggerate our differences.

But it does not follow from this that in addition to being good in its own right, comedy serves no social purpose in a disordered, hierarchical society like ours. For, comedy also offers society a mirror, even if it is a crooked or distorted mirror. And, not unlike great utopian fiction, it reflects back to us -- in exaggerated fashion, perhaps, -- the way laws, norms, and mores operate and the effect of them on all of us or some of us. In fact, Aristophanes Lysistrata has an important role to play in combining comedy with the birth pangs of feminist utopianism (if I don't have enough street cred for you to say this, this is the place in which I invoke the authority of De Beauvoir). Much of the old Chappelle's Show on Comedy Central (now available on Netflix) was about offering society a mirror on racial relations that with the benefit of hindsight looks prescient in light of black lives matter. 

Of course, Chappelle's recent special on Netflix, taped in Detroit, has gotten a lot of attention for its explicitly pro-TERF stance and its many transphobic jokes (also a theme in his earlier 2019 special). But if you watch his shows, there is a broader more complicated position. I want to introduce my defense of that claim by first mentioning another theme unrelated to transgender issues. A set of Chappelle's jokes (this is in his earlier 2019 show) is about Michael Jackson's child victims. And some of the jokes clearly minimize the harm done to the children (and others suggest Chappelle does not believe all the allegations). But the set is itself explicitly framed by Chappelle mentioning the fact that 50% of the audience members have probably experienced sexual harassment or worse. And while each of his punchlines can be construed as a belittling of the problem, the overall point is that there is a horrid epidemic of sexual harassment (and it should not just focus on celebrities). 

I think something analogous happens with Chappelle's orientation toward transgender issues. This is an issue he has gotten flack for in the past, and some of that criticism is part of the narrative. (I don't mean to suggest he is fair to his critics or actually responds well to them.) So, for example, there is a series of jokes about how on a road-trip a car, which includes a transgender person (a 'T'), can't make bathroom stops in four states. What's interesting about these jokes is that Chappelle is clearly not at all oblivious to the fact that many states make it inordinately difficult to be transgender; and his sympathies are clearly with the transgender against the states that wish to police bathroom behavior. 

After watching Chappelle's special and his (2019) Sticks & Stones, it seems pretty obvious to me that his underlying political outlook is live and let live (as long as Chappelle can make fun of you). I don't know whether Srinivasan thinks Chappelle is one of the "boring" comedians, but plenty of his jokes are not just transphobic, but also sexist.** (He recycles and repackages Norm Macdonald's sexist jokes about the WNBA. He also repurchases MacDonald's Jacques de Gatineau joke which is not sexist at all.) It would be disingenuous to say that he is merely representing or providing a window on sexism in society. He is also reenacting it.

But I don't think Chappelle is reenacting his transphobia merely for the purpose of putting his finger in the eyes of his critics. For the recent special culminates in a narrative about his relationship to Daphne Dorman a transgender (part-time) comedian, who ended up committing suicide. What's interesting about the narrative is not that Dorman (and later her family) defended Chappelle or that Chappelle set up a trust fund for Dorman's daughter, or that he has had a transgender friend and offered her professional opportunities, or even that Chappelle thinks white transgenders use their racial privilege in ways he rejects. But rather that Chappelle hoped to speak with Dorfman's daughter someday and that he wants to say to her (and now I quote from memory) that he "knew her father. And he was a hell of a woman.” (See here for slightly different rendition.) And whatever else Chappelle is implying with this joke, he is telling his audience that if even a transphobe -- and if you listen to his set he does not present himself as a moral exemplar at all -- like him can recognize and see Daphne Dorman's gender, anyone can. The implicature of the special is, thus, that the transphobes who act on their transphobia politically and economically are the real problem, and that if one recognizes one's own imperfections one can rise above them.

For Chappelle, we are all flawed none of us is really without sin. And his best jokes (and impersonations) have or exhibit, and now I echo Norm Macdonald's considered views about all good comedy, compassion for their targets.

The underlying point is that by being the object of a joke one can also, simultaneously, be humanized. Of course, this is not always true. But even jokes that are experienced as offensive and entrenching subordination also bring the outcasts into the community and into a larger conversation. (This is Chappelle's own defense in the special.) Not all purported jokes or the sets they are part of do this, of course. And my judgment here is fallible. And I also don't think Chappelle's humor is always that funny. (I never found Chappelle's Show on Comedy Central especially funny, but I also recognize that this may be colored by the realization that people like me were its target! Yet, some of the sketches are etched in my memory.)

But let's say I am wrong about all of this. Maybe his transphobic stance (funny or not to some) is simply beyond the pale, and maybe there are no positive consequences from punching down at all in comedy.  I would still argue that when performing, comedians should have an artistic license to mock and insult on par with the academic freedom of academics in academic life. 

For, it's healthy for society to have a place where none of us is above the joke. I don't just think this because it creates a privileged space for politicized or social commentary and for presenting the effects of our follies and foibles. Because of workplace rules and polarization, there are, in fact, few places where controversial and potentially obnoxious views can be aired at all in relatively heterogeneous company (outside echo chambers). And it is not like comedians can say anything. They, too, are regulated by public opinion and the views of their audience. So, the social utility of comedy is not just that it offers us a window into (the effects of) a lot of our social norms and practices, but also that they do so -- despite audience fragmentation and filtering -- in a way that is accessible to a relatively heterogeneous (and potentially large) public. This is, after all, one of the reasons why despite their lack of authority, they are important politically. 

I have gone on longer than is typical in such a Digression. And this reflects my awareness that perhaps I am all wrong here. So, I should stop here. But I wanted to add two more thoughts.

First, at one point, in an interview I think with Larry King, Norman Macdonald says in self-effacing manner, that stand-up comedy is no art. And this may suggest that Srinivasan is right in her implied contrast between rap (an art) and comedy (not an art) in her response to Cowen quoted above. For, Macdonald says, art is capable of multiple interpretations, whereas the job of a stand-up comedian is to make a room or a TV audience have the same reaction at the same time. What's funny about the comment, of course, is that Macdonald was quite capable of generating multiple reactions to his jokes over time (in the same audience). So, comedy is art, after all, but can only show (not say) it. Many of Chappelle's stories and jokes, too, also have multiple layers to them. He is not just creating laughs, but he is also inviting multiple interpretations. (This also suggests I should not be too confident in my own!)

Second, my partial defense of the fruitfulness of even potentially offensive comedy presupposes that comedy knows its proper place and stays in its lane. But as Letterman discovered that assumption is naïve. When a clown is seen as a trickster or noble truth-teller, they can become quite powerful politically in times of instability even potential civil war. (For the contrast between a clown and trickers see this fine essay on Boris Johnson by Alan Finlayson.)  

My idea that comedy is an important social safety valve and sometimes an epistemically useful window in a democracy also entails that it may be socially dangerous (as dictators everywhere recognize). My cop-out response here is that thankfully Chappelle's critics have access to influential outlets so that their concerns are also heard. Unlike the popular representation of Mill (which, inspired by Jill Gordon, I don't think captures Mill's views), I doubt the truth prevails over time in the 'marketplace of ideas.' Rather, liberal democracy is also a project in forbearance in which we ought to try to minimize mutual inconvenience and harms. Comedy can produce genuine harms, but it also plays an indispensable social role in helping see a way beyond them.

 

 

 

A Small Puzzle About Cattle, Pigs, and Vegetarianism in Plato's Republic

Then we shall have to enlarge the city again. For that healthy state is no longer sufficient, but we must proceed to swell out its bulk [and population] and fill it up with a multitude of things that exceed the requirements of necessity in states, as, for example, the entire class of huntsmen, and the imitators, many of them occupied with figures and colors and many with music—the poets and their assistants, rhapsodists, actors, chorus-dancers, contractors—and the manufacturers of all kinds of articles, especially those that have to do with women's adornment. And so we shall also want more servitors. Don't you think that we shall need tutors, nurses wet and dry, beauty-shop ladies, barbers and yet again cooks and chefs? And we shall have need, further, of swineherds; there were none of these creatures in our former city, for we had no need of them, but in this city there will be this further need; and we shall also require other cattle in great numbers if they are to be eaten.--Plato, Republic 373b-c, Translated by Paul Shorey.

The quoted passage is part of the transition from the healthy, "true city" (372e5)-- thanks to Glaucon's intervention known as the "city of pigs" (372d3-4)-- to the luxurious or feverish city. At this point we learn that the city of pigs actually does not contain any real pigs because they were not needed in a city devoted to meeting our necessary needs.

At first, I thought this meant that pigs were taken to be luxury (a bit like salmon today). Even so, this puzzled me because pigs have been domesticated for more than 9000 years,  and seemed to have been an important food staple.

The last quoted sentence ("and we shall also require other cattle in great numbers if they are to be eaten,") implies that the inhabitants of the city of pigs are vegetarian. This is also implied in 372b: "for their nourishment they will provide meal from their barley and flour from their wheat, and kneading and cooking these they will serve noble cakes and loaves on some arrangement of reeds or clean leaves." However, as 373c implies, there is cattle in the city of pigs (which is explicitly mentioned at 370e1).  

So, given the presence of cattle (and sheep) it is by no means obvious that the city of pigs is vegetarian. True, the only function explicitly and originally ascribed to cattle is to plough (3701e1). Since the good folk of  the city of pigs don't go around naked (they will have weavers for clothes and cobblers for shoes 369d7-9), it is not a stretch to assume the cows also supply leather. In addition, in response to Glaucon's horror, Socrates admits that the cows also supply the necessary city with cheese (the latter explicitly mentioned at 372c3), and so presumably also milk. So, why not meat?

It would, after all, be a waste not to eat cattle meat. And since the city explicitly trades of luxury for population growth, it would make sense for them to eat meat. But if they do, why not also farm pigs? Since the city requires export commodities (370e-371a), one could argue that the cattle meat is used to pay for necessary goods from abroad. Of course, this kind of local vegetarianism is not especially principled. 

There is a further more far-fetched hint that the inhabitants of the city of pigs were not vegetarians. When in Book 3, Socrates describes the lifestyle of the auxiliaries of the luxurious city when they are on campaign, he explicitly notes that soldiers prefer roasted meat because it is most easily available (404c2). If the inhabitants of the city of pigs would find themselves on a military campaign it's likely they would eat meat. However, (recall) Socrates explicitly denies that they go to war (372c). They maintain an optimal population to avoid poverty, luxury, and war. 

So, if the inhabitants of the city of pigs are vegetarians, as seems most likely (but not certain), it is odd that they keep cattle. But if they are not vegetarians it is odd that they do not farm pigs. Why are pigs only introduced in the feverish city. Perhaps, some classicist will inform me they had high status as a luxury item in Socratic Athens. But I doubt it.

One of my undergraduate students from a farming background* made the following plausible observation. Unlike cattle, pigs will eat almost anything. They thrive in environments such as the luxurious city with many forms of human waste. Whereas in the city of pigs, which, due to trying to maintain being on an equilibrium point of population growth, is constantly on the edge of hardship, it would require considerable and impossible effort to make sure that the pigs are adequately fed.  Since Plato's readers were gentlemen-farmers, it is not implausible they would have recognized this at once (unlike city-slickers like me).

I liked this hypothesis. But why does Socrates say that pigs are "needed" in the luxurious city? Why not use and expand existing cattle? Here my class proposed that pigs are more efficient meat producers than cattle. And so these are much better able to sustain a larger population without requiring ever expanding land something Socrates explicitly wants to prevent. For, territorial and population expansion of the territory of the Kallipos has to be governed not by population or farming pressures, but by the need to maintain (what we may call) social unity (423b). Unfortunately, I have no idea whether modern relative Feed Conversion Ratios (FCR) among animals match those in ancient times. But I'd like to think so.