Digressions&Impressions

Plato on Dangerous Truths

“When anyone images badly in his speech the true nature of gods and heroes, like a painter whose portraits bear no resemblance to his models.”...“There is, first of all,” I said, “the greatest lie about the things of greatest concernment, which was no pretty invention of him who told how Uranus did what Hesiod says he did to Cronos, and how Cronos in turn took his revenge; and then there are the doings and sufferings of Cronos at the hands of his son. Even if they were true I should not think that they ought to be thus lightly told to thoughtless young persons. But the best way would be to bury them in silence, and if there were some necessity for relating them, that only a very small audience should be admitted under pledge of secrecy and after sacrificing, not a pig, but some huge and unprocurable victim, to the end that as few as possible should have heard these tales. “Yes, and they are not to be told, Adeimantus, in our city, nor is it to be said in the hearing of a young man, that in doing the utmost wrong he would do nothing to surprise anybody, nor again in punishing his father's wrong-doings to the limit, but would only be following the example of the first and greatest of the gods.” ”--Plato Republic 377e-378a, translated by Paul Shorey [emphases added]

It is only natural, I suppose, that the noble lie (414c-415e, and anticipated at 382a-d) told by Socrates near the end of Book 3 is more attention grabbing than what we may call the doctrine of dangerous truths mentioned, really in passing, in 378ab.

In context, Socrates is articulating the best education of the guardians of the luxurious city. And he uses this as an occasion to both offer a critique of the standard stories told about the Gods by great variety of poets and to propose a kind of purification (even moralization) of public religion or theology (that is, the most important things). Hesiod's stories about Uranus, Cronos, and Zeus (the "son" of Cronos) involve castration, forced abortion, cannibalism of children, and parricide among the gods.

Hesiod's depiction is not just about the gods acting viciously with each other. It also involve a failure of orderly political succession. And so, while it is not unnatural to think that by 'the things of greatest concernment,' -- Shorey may be over-translating τὸ μέγιστον, but given the repeated 'greatest' with 'lies,' it's not silly -- Socrates means here talk of the gods (especially if one is all in on Socrates' piety), it is not impossible that what he really means here is talk about the nature of (properly ordered) political life. Is theology or political philosophy the most important  topic? My more cheeky Thomist readers will quickly say, that's an unnecessary or false choice.

I mention the political reading of this material because -- and now I get to the heart of today's digression, I find it startling that at the start of 378b, Socrates is explicit that in the kallipolis that he and Adeimantus are founding, there will be no dangerous truths. And because of this remark, I read the doctrine of dangerous truths mention in 378a as confined to second (or n-th best) cities. 

Now, it's true that I think this -- that the doctrine of dangerous truths is confined to second-best cities -- because it seems to anticipate elements of the nocturnal council at 961B in Plato's Laws (a book that was important to me in graduate school). And part of the point of the nocturnal council is to try to help reform those of who have violated the laws on impiety in Magnesia. (Magnesia is a nth-best city.) Of course, I accept the tradition that suggests Laws was written well after the Republic, so I don't think this would settle the matter. 

However, it is important to recall that Socrates had articulated the idea of a dangerous truth in his initial exchange with Cephalus at 331D (recall here). There, it was used to undermine Cephalus' definition of justice (speak truth and repay one's debts), which (to speak anthropologically) we may call the definition of justice apt for commercial society. And Socrates had explained that there are circumstances where, if one takes consequences seriously (as one is wont to do in commercial society) then one is not always obliged to repay one's debts or always to speak the truth.

Alex Douglas has treated the debt case brilliantly in his book (and recall), so I won't elaborate here. At 331D Socrates expects Cephalus to agree to the claim one should not always speak the truth to the mad. They are (to foreshadow Hobbes, Foucault, and Deleuze) to be placed not just outside the realm of valid contracts, but also outside the realm of (possible) persuasion (and so political life). I do not mean to suggest that Socrates himself agrees with Cephalus about any of this. I think it is really unclear to what degree Socrates has to affirm anything when he is engaged in immanent criticism.

While the doctrine of dangerous truth is explicitly rejected in the best city, the exchange with Cephalus shows that is part of the common sense or a natural extension of it of a commercial polity. So, given that, it is not so strange that in 2nd-Nth best cities Socrates permits some such doctrine. 

An impatient reader may well think, 'sure, Socrates used the doctrine of dangerous truths in his refutation of Cephalus, but there is no evidence here that he is thinking about anything other than the Kallipolis.' I have to admit that I don't have a knockdown argument against this. But notice that the select few who are allowed to be in on the dangerous secret, have to be not just among the aged, but also fabulously wealthy because they have to be capable of sacrificing something great and very scarce.*

Now, shortly after 378a, it becomes clear that there will be wealthy folk among the non-guardians in Kallipolis (419ff). But also that this should be clearly delimited (422a). So, that in 378a Socrates cannot be speaking of his own city, but only be referring about places where great riches are permitted and also where possession of such dangerous truth would not corrupt the person holding it because they are already corrupt in some non-trivial sense (and, hence, a nth-best city).**

I do not mean to suggest Socrates' position here is very attractive: that in an oligarchic context, only Jeff Bezos is, if he is willing to forfeit a non-trivial amount of his fortune, allowed access to dangerous, secret knowledge about the truth about the lack of morality or ethical grounding governing divine rule.  The very wealthy, who benefit from the status quo in n-th best cities, are not inclined to encourage a revolution in religious or political manners and so promote corrupting stories that threaten their influence. 

Why does this matter? I think it's one of the places in the Republic (recall 351-352) -- well before Book 8 -- where Socrates shows an interest in the permissible mechanisms or functioning of non-optimal states (which are governed by the interests of their ruling elements). These are by definition unstable. In such places there will, thus, be always some truths dangerous to their functioning. And so 378a articulates its corollary: the circulation of dangerous truths must be restricted to those with an interest not to act on, or share, them. We may call this doctrine (with a wink): Straussianism for those that benefit most from status quo.

 

The Threat of Violence, Republic 1, and the Grounding of Philosophical Exchange

One oddity of Republic 1, is the ever-present threat of violence that hangs over the very existence or possibility of the conversation. This starts explicitly with Polemarchus' insistence that he will not listen to Socrates' persuasion and that he does not need to do so because he outnumbers Socrates (327C). And so Socrates is roped into a banquet at Cephalus' house. And while one may be tempted to treat this as an innocent joke, the initial exchange with Polemarchus can also be treated as an unflattering, structural analogy of the ways pure or direct democracies might treat minorities, and rational deliberation.*

Once alert to the possibility, I noticed that violence of some sort both keeps people (temporarily) out of the conversation and in it. So, Thrasymachus is literally prevented from speaking at first (336b), and then prevented from leaving (344d). And, of course, much of discussion itself, especially after Thasymachus joins, is presented in terms of -- if not lethal then -- a dangerous contest (leaving aside the fact that reputation, honor, money are all said to be at stake).

Now, let's leave aside, or pretend to leave it aside, the manner of the discussion, and renew focus on its partial grounding in the decisions of unnamed many to prevent and promote some to speak. Again, it is tempting to treat this as an analogy of the way pure/direct democracy behaves.  Since most of the 'restrainers' and 'promoters' are left nameless in Socrates' description of these events, they function very much like the choir in a Greek tragedy. We might be clever and notice that Thrasymachus' account of justice (in which the ruling element of the regime legislates law on its own behalf) kind of offers a theory for what is left as analogy earlier. And that Socrates himself claims (recall) that civic violence is the effect of injustice.

Even so, what I am really interested in here is the thought that some kind of non-trivial (ahh) nudging and silencing may be a pre-condition to philosophical exchange. That such speech-policing is a kind of ground of philosophical life. Now, some readers of Plato may object that the exchanges between Socrates and Cephalus/Polemarchus and Socrates and Thrasymachus are not really philosophical exchanges. There is a hermeneutic tradition that Plato withholds from us Socrates' interaction with a philosophical equal (say Plato). But I don't belong in that tradition (for I think the exchanges with Protagoras and Parmenides are the real deal). And while the exchange with Thrasymachus is hostile and unsatisfying, it is not without intrinsic interest nor is obvious that Socrates really gets the better of Thrasymachus (at least by the end of Book I).

Another line of concern (mixing Stoic and Enlightenment ideas, which can be  traced back to Socrates) is that true (sage-like) philosophers are autonomous givers, receivers, and evaluators of reasons or arguments; that the policing (and canceling) element I have noticed is heteronomous to our beloved activity better left to the market place or spectator sports (etc.). I don't want to take this line of concern lightly. It obviously represents a noble normative ideal, especially when so many of us find ourselves threatened to be sacked or merged away by politicians, demagogues, and bean-counters with little interest in any such ideals, but all-to0-aware of the threats our seminars pose to their (possible) rule.

Even so, it's possible that Plato presents us with the idea that important philosophical contests have to be arranged or structured in ways inimical to the desires of the philosophers themselves. And before you protest this possibility, remember that one of the main claims of the Republic (anticipated in the very discussion of Book I) is that philosophers have to be forced to rule. It's not such a big step from that to they have to be forced and restrained from engaging with each other. 

Let me make this concrete: when there exist rival philosophical schools or traditions it is very tempting to disengage or to vilify or mocking without true engagement. The vilification prevents people from reading works produced in other schools and helps schools to be(come) more unified just reinforcing the benefits from not engaging. And often the opportunity costs of engaging are quite great, while engaging on shared terms is efficient, productive, progressive, etc. (In our intellectual universe it's also fruitful for the parceling out of jobs.)

Of course, there is a cost to non-engaging. And that's that one both misses insights discovered in a different vernacular and that many shared commitments in the in-group/school are never seriously questioned at all. 

The previous two paragraphs are, of course, a metaphor for the analytic-continental (etc.) divides we live in. And I do regret that David Lewis never sought out (say) Deleuze, or was pushed into it (just as circumstances made Carnap a very astute reader of Heidegger). I would admire some leading figures of my analytic tradition more if they weren't obviously so limited that they can only talk to each other. (Yes, I know the young kidz have changed all of that!) And I honestly feel sad that some billionaires give gigantic prizes to philosophers, but do so little to get philosophers to engage with each other. 

To put it in modeling terms, the moment one entertains the idea that the market in philosophical ideas is not efficient, then the possibility that heteronomous-to-philosophy forces can structure that market is not so far-fetched. Now, speaking in my own voice (go back to reading my old digressions), I reject the idea that the market in philosophical ideas is efficient. Of course, it's not unlikely that these heteronomous-to-philosophy-policing-of-speech forces do more damage than good. 

I could stop here. But I am reminded that when we parent and educate, we often police the choices of our wards (in a curriculum, a syllabus, etc.). In fact, even our most noble aspirations, the ones that may involve not knowing the full nature of these aspirations ex ante and not understanding all the ways/mechanisms that lead to them (go read Callard's book, or my digressions about it) are structured by such forced choices. Of course, in such cases the end justifies the means. And perhaps -- no, I am not confident -- that's also true of the policing required to get Socrates and Thrasymachus, like puppets in a wonderful play, to engage. 

 

On Being Praised by Students, (Seneca Letter 52)

How mad (dementia) is he who leaves the lecture-hall smiling simply because of the clamor from the ignorant (clamores imperitorum)!--Seneca, Letter 52. Translated by Richard M. Gummere (with modest modifications) 

In Letter 52, (by appropriating some remarks of Epicurus,) Seneca describes four kinds of students of philosophy. The first are autodidacts, they find their "way to the truth without any one's assistance, carving out their own path [via]." Socrates, Al-Farabi, and Ibn Rushd are fairly explicit this describes (true) philosophers.

The second kind are a species of heterodidacts -- a term I borrow from a moving and subtle essay by Agnes Callard --; these need the gentle guidance of a teacher. But once they have right direction, they follow willingly. Of course, (recall, say, Letter 30) in Seneca, such a guide/teacher is simultaneously an exemplar, something he emphasizes throughout the letter. Seneca hints that he aspires to be though as a member of the second class. (I return to this below.) 

The third kind is also a heterodidact, but this kind needs what we might call tough love or "who can be forced and driven into the right path," (qui cogi ad rectum compellique possunt). Interestingly, Seneca stress the point by using 'coactore,' that is, one who compels often a tax-inspector. So, the teacher is here compared to someone who extracts wealth and indirectly returns something greater (the proper path, truth) to the unwilling student. 

The opening of Seneca's 52nd letter suggest that most of us need such tough love because we tend to be very inconstant (Fluctuamur inter varia consilia; nihil libere volumus, nihil absolute, nihil semper.) And, in fact, we are extricated from our inconstancy by education (and Seneca plays on the idea that extraction, elevation, and education share a similar root in Latin).

And, to echo Socrates, where is the fourth? Seneca implies some students confuse their desire for entertainment with the path to wisdom. And among these many wish to be flattered. And, in turn, the students flatter their teacher by their adulation. It's tempting to recognize in Seneca's remarks Socrates criticism of Agathon and Aristophanes, and the more general problem of demagoguery. And on some days this would be the moment to discuss the insidious ways Deans and program coordinators incentivize the fourth kind of student in the way they frame, word, and use student evaluations and promote valorisation or public facing activity by their faculty. The fourth kind of students may be credentialed, but are intrinsically non-didacts. 

Now, being a good gentle teacher (of the second kind of student), that is being at ease with one's vulnerability, is no easy matter. But as Seneca hints, helping the third kind of students overcome their own weaknesses and extract wisdom (ad sapientiam se non perduxit sed extraxit) is much more difficult for these students (and by implication for the teachers).

There is an interesting question, left hanging, if the same instructor can teach the second kind and third kind of teacher at the same time. To return to Callard's essay, which is excellent on the interactive nature of true teaching, it would like speaking to two kinds of souls at once with divergent effects and, in turn, receiving their feedback in one's own teaching (and instruction). 

I was led to the thought in the previous paragraph when I reflected on Seneca's suggestion he might be counted among the second kind of student. At first, I thought he was engaged in a false modesty -- 'don't confuse me with the natural or self-actuating wise' --, but then I wondered if the same sentence couldn't be read as flattery of Lucilius (who, we have learned, often needs tough love (recall Letter 49 and no small amount of flattery). It's not impossible that the four kinds of students are ideal types, and that in reality we often exhibit features of each (or most).

One reason why I thought Seneca might be engaged in false modesty here is that while he warmly recommends reading and studying the "ancients" as friends in our heterodidactic journey, fundamentally for him we must choose our teachers among the living. Now this might be due to the fact for Seneca true teaching is being the right sort of lodestar or exemplar in integrity and heterodidacting (those "who teach us by their lives...who tell us what we ought to do and then prove it by practice, who show us what we should avoid, and then are never caught doing that which they have ordered us to avoid.") And so certain kind of book-learning is out. But it also conveniently eliminates other options, except those few at hand.

In this context Fabianus Seneca mentions as a proper exemplar in living memory. Fabianus seems to have courted, and more importantly cultivated, a proper philosophical audience, namely one capable of and becoming capable of self-control (modeste). (Seneca implies young men are least capable of this.) But, as is clear from Seneca's description, Fabianus' audience members were not merely passive receptacles, but (as in Callard's descriptions) active co-constituters of joint learning.

When I read Seneca's letters my thoughts often wander off to my own teaching. And I was about to write something here about my apprehension about returning to the classroom after my long, covid-induced absence (and the relative lack of safety precautions by my employer) and to what degree I would be able to guide anyone at all, when it occurred to me that I was ignoring the surface fact that the conceit of the Letters is that these are (well) letters. And so that in some sense they are intrinsically a contribution to a kind of heterodidact teaching in which the interaction of the teacher and student is both partially imagined and intrinsically delayed--a bit like a very bad Zoom connection.

And, of course, in so far as Seneca's Letters are meant to be read by unknown students and even, as he himself often suggests, by those of us in posteriority (recall, say, Letter 21), the work of imagination (by the implied author/teacher and implied student/reader) and delay is only made harder. And, of course, the real author does not really allow his readers to judge independently from his self-presentation the character of the implied author.

My interest here is not in Seneca's purported hypocrisy (a favorite evergreen in folks writing about Seneca). But rather that like a painter he projects a whole complex universe of true education and teaching onto his letters and so simultaneously flattens the dimensionality of that world into one we can write and discuss. And he is so good at presenting this flattening of this interaction between student and teachers onto the written surface, that we easily forget (qua reader) that his (imagined) projection is, in fact, not alike to our own engagement with his work. And not for the first time, I realize that when Seneca describes the true nature of the skill involved in education he is simultaneously engaged, behind the scenes as it were, in a kind of enchanting artifice. And he leaves it to use decide whether such magic is an essential ingredient of true teaching, or its negation.  

On the Crisis of Liberalism (VIII): Do We Stand for Civic Republicanism?

So what, exactly, are we seeking to defend? What is the character of a liberal democracy? What does it mean for a society to be liberal, rather than for a person to subscribe to liberal principles, such as the ones Paul laid out almost four years ago?

To answer this question I will discuss five broad topics that make up the core of liberal democracy: liberty, democracy, rule of law, capability, and virtue. Liberty is often called “negative liberty” to emphasize that it is freedom from interference, but I think it is most usefully thought of as the specific freedoms—such as freedom of association, freedom of speech, and property rights—which give a liberal order its dynamism. Democracy under liberalism consists of using electoral systems and mass voting as tools for accountability rather than direct governance. Rule of law is a complicated topic but in practice often boils down to the existence, for ordinary citizens, of legal remedies and actions which will by and large be honored, especially by actors in the government. Finally, a liberal society—an actual liberal democracy in which voter sovereignty is given pride of place alongside other liberal characteristics—cannot survive unless liberal values are broadly held by the electorate. The tendency to live by these values on a relatively consistent basis entails what some have referred to as “liberal virtues.”--Adam Gurri "What is Liberal Democracy?" Liberal Currents

This is the eight post (recall here (I);  here (II); here (III); here (IV); here (V); here (VI); here (VII) in an open-ended series (see also here, here, here,  here; and here) on the current crisis of liberalism (which I date to 2008/9).

One of the few glimmers of hope during the current crisis of liberalism, is that since the rise of Trump, to simplify greatly (spare me your outrage), property-loving classical liberals and  justice/redistribution-loving centrist (say, Rawlsian) liberals have rediscovered that liberalism is a lot more than meets the eye. And for a few years now, Liberal Currents has been leading the way in bringing youthful talent together to think through what liberalism might mean concretely, as worth living, into the future. (Let's hope that they fly a few years under the radar of The New Yorker and The New York Times Magazine as the next big thing; we need their insouciance to cashing in for a while longer!) 

Gurri is the 'Founder and Editor-in-Chief of Liberal Currents,' and it says something of the experimental and open spirit that after four years he revisits the principles he wishes to stand for. The first few paragraphs of the piece I quoted deserve your attention, even if you have no time for what follows (so go read it). As friend of Liberal Currents, I hope I am allowed to say, 'we wouldn't be liberals if we didn't disagree over the exact meaning of liberalism'. So, today, I would like to say something about the nature of liberal society, and the values or, in Gurri's  terms, virtues in it. 

In addition to the passage quoted above, there is another paragraph  (that partially repeats the one I quoted) that I disagree with:

A liberal state staffed by people uncommitted to liberalism or to the institutions they serve will not remain a liberal state for long. And a liberal democracy in which liberal values are not broadly shared by the electorate is unlikely to remain a liberal democracy for long, nor to retain its democracy much longer than that.

So, versions of Gurri's position are extremely popular in Europe among well meaning friends of liberal democracy. It is also popular among not-so-well-meaning islamo-phobes and xenophobes. And often it is not entirely easy to distinguish the two. But the position is associated with what is called 'civic republicanism,' or (in debates over immigration/refugees) ‘civic integrationist discourse’* and so-called 'homo-nationalism'. (Gurri's position need not reduce to any of these.) Unfortunately, civic republicanism promotes, in practice, conformity and becomes a stick to make the vulnerable and inarticulate play by the rules of intolerant majorities.

Notice, too, that Gurri's position is much stronger than the Rawlsian overlapping consensus of political liberalism (and public reason), which is, at least in principle, compatible with many citizens holding many private illiberal positions.

My  view is that there is little empirical evidence for the two empirical presuppositions Gurri relies on, viz. (i) a liberal society (or, while not the same thing, liberal democracy) cannot survive unless liberal values are broadly held by the electorate; (ii) A liberal state staffed by people uncommitted to liberalism or to the institutions they serve will not remain a liberal state for long. (I call this the 'Athenian insight' -- not because Athens was liberal, it was not --, but because it trusted its citizens with education in right norms/values/virtues.) While I welcome the existence of widespread support for liberal values and virtues (broadly conceived), there is non-trivial historical experience against both. For example, in the early years of the German federal republic, there was little fondness for liberal democracy among the population, and, while there were a few ORDO, Christian Democratic and Social democratic anti-Nazis, the state was staffed by a generation of (largely unrepentant) ex-Nazi functionaries (see chapter 5 of The Denazification of Germany: A History 1945-1950).

Of the two, there is a grain of (conceptual) truth in (ii). For, on (ii) what BLM has revealed is that the liberal state, even in its core judicial/political function, is staffed by quite a few functionaries who are uncommitted to liberalism (even if we have just learned that federal judges are committed to legal principles and, perhaps, defending elections as a means of picking rulers). That's compatible with designing institutions in such a way that what these functionaries are committed to serves to protect lots of other things we care about in liberal society (property, adhering to traffic rules, etc.).+ Even in bread and butter liberal democracies a sizeable chunk of the electorate is attracted to authoritarian political practices. I first learned this from David Art's Radical Right: The Development of Anti-Immigrant Parties in Western Europe (Cambridge University Press, 2011), but I now work in a department where my comparative colleagues are world experts on this.** 

But leaving aside the empirical facts of the matter. I also think -- and this has a Mill-ian sensibility (J.S. Mill not the father), but I get it from Walter Lippmann -- the survival of a non-totalizing liberalism requires the regular confrontation with robust and thoughtful illiberal values and views within our political system, that is, in which illiberal parties and commitments/ideologies/forms of life are present to maintain, even enervate liberalism’s own vitality as a living creed and, thereby, the vitality of the whole political system. So, on my view of Lippmann (see here), in near defeat (ca 1938), liberalism simultaneously comes to endorse its own fundamental commitments and a commitment to a kind of unreasonable pluralism. 

For, the recurring challenge of both liberal emancipatory mass movements (some of which are not initially understood as liberal at all) and illiberal experiments, practices, and ideologies that helps us epistemically and politically, to figure out what we stand for, what we care about, what constitutively 'we' are (as society, polity, etc.). And this means that an open society will have to accommodate (as Kukathas has argued in Liberal Archipelago) many illiberal voluntary associations (and even parties).  

Obviously, Gurri and others are right that there is a tipping point beyond which the absence of commitment to liberalism among citizens and/or staffers makes it very vulnerable to putsches, usurpation, demagogues, and revolution (etc.). But where that point is is hard to foresee, and involves complex coordination, mobilization, and signaling among citizens. And I also do not deny that two-party duopolies (as the US is) become dangerously unstable if (a strategically important element of) one party rejects fundamentally or gradually the liberal experiment.

I do not deny (recall this post on Popper) that Liberalism, more than most other political ideologies, internalizes the idea that there are considerable uncertainties it ought not wish to eliminate. And, perhaps, we need providential hope that our liberal faith, which has been tested again this week (and may be tested the next few weeks again), will never be extinguished. But even amidst despair, we can strive while our enemies are emboldened to postpone and push back our possible defeat.

 

14 March 1979: Foucault's Science Fiction of Neo-Liberal Eugenics (XXX)

[I]n Gary Becker there is a very interesting theory of consumption, in which he says: We should not think at all that consumption simply consists in being someone in a process of exchange who buys and makes a monetary exchange in order to obtain some products. The man of consumption is not one of the terms of exchange. The man of consumption, insofar as he consumes, is a producer. What does he produce? Well, quite simply, he produces his own satisfaction. And we should think of consumption as an enterprise activity by which the individual, precisely on the basis of the capital he has at his disposal, will produce something that will be his own satisfaction. Consequently, the theory, the classical analysis trotted out a hundred times of the person who is a consumer on the one hand, but who is also a producer, and who, because of this, is, as it were, divided in relation to himself, as well as all the sociological analyses—for they have never been economic analyses—of mass consumption, of consumer society, and so forth, do not hold up and have no value in relation to an analysis of consumption in the neo-liberal terms of the activity of production. So, even if there really is a return to the idea of homo oeconomicus as the analytical grid of economic activity, there is a complete change in the conception of this homo oeconomicus.
So, we arrive at this idea that the wage is nothing other than the remuneration, the income allocated to a certain capital, a capital that we will call human capital inasmuch as the ability-machine of which it is the income cannot be separated from the human individual who is its bearer. How is this capital made up? It is at this point that the reintroduction of labor or work into the field of economic analysis will make it possible, through a sort of acceleration or extension, to move on to the economic analysis of elements which had previously totally escaped it. In other words, the neo-liberals say that labor was in principle part of economic analysis, but the way in which classical economic analysis was conducted was incapable of dealing with this element. Good, we do deal with it. And when they make this analysis, and do so in the terms I have just described, they are led to study the way in which human capital is formed and accumulated, and this enables them to apply economic analyses to completely new fields and domains.
How is human capital made up? Well, they say, it is made up of innate elements and other, acquired elements. Let’s talk about the innate elements. There are those we can call hereditary, and others which are just innate; differences which are, of course, self-evident for anyone with the vaguest acquaintance with biology. I do not think that there are as yet any studies on the problem of the hereditary elements of human capital, but it is quite clear what form they could take and, above all, we can see through anxieties, concerns, problems, and so on, the birth of something which, according to your point of view, could be interesting or disturbing. In actual fact, in the—I was going to say, classical—analyses of these neo-liberals, in the analyses of Schultz or Becker, for example, it is indeed said that the formation of human capital only has interest and only becomes relevant for the economists inasmuch as this capital is formed thanks to the use of scarce means, to the alternative use of scarce means for a given end. Now obviously we do not have to pay to have the body we have, or we do not have to pay for our genetic make-up. It costs nothing. Yes, it costs nothing—and yet, we need to see ... , and we can easily imagine something like this occurring (I am just engaging in a bit of science fiction here, it is a kind of problematic which is currently becoming pervasive).
In fact, modern genetics clearly shows that many more elements than was previously thought are conditioned by the genetic make-up we receive from our ancestors. In particular, genetics makes it possible to establish for any given individual the probabilities of their contracting this or that type of disease at a given age, during a given period of life, or in any way at any moment of life. In other words, one of the current interests in the application of genetics to human populations is to make it possible to recognize individuals at risk and the type of risk individuals incur throughout their life. You will say: Here again, there’s nothing we can do; our parents made us like this. Yes, of course, but when we can identify what individuals are at risk, and what the risks are of a union of individuals at risk producing an individual with a particular characteristic that makes him or her the carrier of a risk, then we can perfectly well imagine the following: good genetic make-ups—that is to say, [those] able to produce individuals with low risk or with a level of risk which will not be harmful for themselves, those around them, or society—will certainly become scarce, and insofar as they are scarce they may perfectly well [enter], and this is entirely normal, into economic circuits or calculations, that is to say, alternative choices. Putting it in clear terms, this will mean that given my own genetic make-up, if I wish to have a child whose genetic make-up will be at least as good as mine, or as far as possible better than mine, then I will have to find someone who also has a good genetic make-up. And if you want a child whose human capital, understood simply in terms of innate and hereditary elements, is high, you can see that you will have to make an investment, that is to say, you will have to have worked enough, to have sufficient income, and to have a social status such that it will enable you to take for a spouse or co-producer of this future human capital, someone who has significant human capital themselves. I am not saying this as a joke; it is simply a form of thought or a form of problematic that is currently being elaborated.
What I mean is that if the problem of genetics currently provokes such anxiety, I do not think it is either useful or interesting to translate this anxiety into the traditional terms of racism. If we want to try to grasp the political pertinence of the present development of genetics, we must do so by trying to grasp its implications at the level of actuality itself, with the real problems that it raises. And as soon as a society poses itself the problem of the improvement of its human capital in general, it is inevitable that the problem of the control, screening, and improvement of the human capital of individuals, as a function of unions and consequent reproduction, will become actual, or at any rate, called for. So, the political problem of the use of genetics arises in terms of the formation, growth, accumulation, and improvement of human capital. What we might call the racist effects of genetics is certainly something to be feared, and they are far from being eradicated, but this does not seem to me to be the major political issue at the moment.--Michel Foucault, 14 March, 1979,  translated by Graham Burchell, Lecture 9, The Birth of Biopolitics, 226-229 [emphasis added on 'inevitable'].

It is difficult to write this blog post because I am so in awe of Foucault's analysis. For, in these pages, and the ones that follow and precede it, Foucault basically articulates the whole paradigm in which economic analysis becomes incapable of self-limiting and, thus, totalitarian. The question becomes not just how the genetic endowment, but the "child’s family life will produce human capital?" (229) And as Foucault notes this means that everything that can be measured in this environment must be measured to uncover its effect on human capital formation. Deep learning was made, we might say, for human capital theory.

And this human capital will not just be the principle that generates (possible) income into the future, but also the skill to consume it. Foucault's analysis of Becker's treatment that consumption isn't merely a passive doing, a mere hedonic receptacle, but an effect of human capital is masterly. We must not merely acquire taste but must gain the skill to enjoy our acquired commodities. We might say, as a serious joke, that Becker and Mincer (and Schultz, etc.) re-discover Rousseau and Kames in the vernacular. Foucault alerts us to his own interest in this merging of the philosophy of culture and education with the logical of capital/computing by calling it 'very interesting' (226) which is a stark contrast to the 'banalities' when he discusses political history (216/218). 

As an aside, I noted last week the brilliant almost counterfactual history of economics inscribed in this ninth lecture. But it is also worth noting a bizarre lacuna. For in Foucault's hands it is immediately obvious that this strain of Chicago economics -- the human capital, economic imperialism one -- rediscovers and revives the eugenic features of late nineteenth century and early twentieth century economics most associated with names like Galton and Pearson, but visible and significant in wide variety of American and British progressives, such that it infected the foundation of the welfare state nearly everywhere.* 

That is to say, what Foucault misses, and with him many other well-meaning intellectual commentators, is that part of the neo-liberal reaction against "Keynesian policy, social pacts of war, and the growth of the federal administration through economic and social programs" which "formed the adversary and target of neoliberal thought, that which it was constructed against or which it opposed in order to form itself and develop" (217) had a further moral underpinning (other than the anti-war, anti-collectivism already explicit in Foucault's analysis) one that had high salience after the Nazi-era is that of human moral equality. And this fits even Becker and his Chicago allies/teachers because in their version of human capital theory, after the Robbins redefinition of the nature of economics, the individual agency of each (recall last week) of us matters.  

My language of 'misses' in the previous paragraph is misleading. Given Foucault's knowledge of the study of deviance, it is unlikely he is not aware of this. And, in fact, he clearly signals he is aware of it: "call the racist effects of genetics is certainly something to be feared, and they are far from being eradicated," but he tells us why he does not alert us to this in his treatment: it "does not seem to me to be the major political issue at the moment." This comment raises tough questions about the hermeneutics of Foucault. 

The whole lecture series is (recall) oriented around the liberal art of government. And foucault makes clear that in one sense his is descriptive treatment of praxis and theory, and in other sense he is constructing what we may call the optimal art of liberal government. Now, it comes as no surprise that Foucault is aware of his situatedness in a particular political context; I have tried to be alert in where he hints at this. But here he alerts us to the fact that his decisions about what to highlight are themselves a function of his judgment of what he takes to be a major political issue at that moment. But he does not tell us what -- to be reflexive for a moment -- what enters into the formation of, and what secures the ''output'' of this judgment, and what counts as political for him.

Okay, let's close with a final observation. Above I noted that Foucault rightly discerns a kind of totalitarian element in the neo-liberal turn of Becker, Mincer, Schultz because as a domain of enquiry it is incapable of self-limitation. What he discerns is that (nearly) everything that can become data or a data-set connected to human activity is, in principle, possible evidence (about genes, environment, learning, production, risk, etc.) in this theory. (The remainder of the lecture Foucault spells this out nicely and ambitiously--very much worth re-reading for its significance to theories of capitalism, imperialism, and development.) In so far as there are constraints these are determined more by search costs than by the nature of the paradigm. This is really a contrast to how many other forms of enquiry function, where the paradigm limits severely what may count as possible evidence. 

But, of course, one may object that the totalitarian tendency in enquiry is not sufficient to count something as totalitarian in political praxis. The objection misses the point here. For Foucault is clearly committed to the idea once certain questions become intellectually pertinent -- not to an individual but (notice the bourgeois or at least Weberian terminology of Gesellschaft) "society"* -- then they become also necessarily ("inevitable") pertinent to, and actionable for, political practice ("control, screening, and improvement of the human capital of individuals.") He does not explain why he believes in this kind of weirdly friction-free market in ideas such that the social problem must generate its own social praxis. It is notable that he does not offer a mechanism for why this is inevitably so, and a critique of the present must originate here. But that's for another time.  

To put the more arresting point of the previous paragraph as a serious joke, if one raises the question of what Plato [Republic 546d] calls the marriage number (viz. "the human capital of individuals, as a function of unions and consequent reproduction"), then even in a liberal society (focused on "individuals") there is, contra the hopes of Bacon no self-restraint on its pursuit.* That is to say, Foucault accepts the kind of Heideggerian/Thomistic critique of modernity without their moralism or, despite his latent political "fears," existential angst. 

 

 

On Nagel vs Neurath on the Icy Slopes

While Frank and his institute began to lose favor at the Rockefeller Foundation, increasing numbers of his colleagues in philosophy – besides Kallen and Hook, who had led the way in the 1940s – began to voice public sympathy with some of the dominant anticommunist themes and postures of Cold War intellectual life. With regard to the questions of whether and how science (or scientific philosophy) should treat matters regarding values – political, social, or ethical – two general stances were popular. The first called for disengagement and held that philosophy of science should abstain from such debates. The second held that philosophy of science should at least support the view that absolute moral and social values exist, if not also the partisan view that those of the West are plainly superior to those of the Soviets. In the early 1950s, Ernest Nagel and Martin Gardner touched on these issues and illustrated these stances.
In an obituary for Felix Kaufman, Ernest Nagel referred to “the acute issue whether questions concerning public and individual moral values are capable of being settled scientifically and objectively.” Nagel approved of Kaufman’s position, one that gingerly sided with Frank’s: If our “rules of application” of moral terms are made explicit, Nagel explained, then “moral questions are as much capable of objective decision as are questions in physics and biology” (Nagel 1950, 467). When it came to politics and the problem of international peace and stability, however, Nagel was skeptical that science or philosophy had any relevance. Reviewing a book by Lewis Mumford, in which he insisted that we must “learn to participate in a durable universal communion with the whole of humanity,” Nagel wrote in the anti-Stalinist New Leader,

It is extremely doubtful whether such a reorientation by every human being constitutes a necessary condition for the disappearance of the cold and hot wars that [Mumford] so fervently desires. There are surely respectable grounds for believing that this objective could be realized within the framework of current political organizations of men and on the basis of current moral ideals.

Nagel did not accept Mumford’s utopianism because history did not support it:

As for Mr. Mumford’s suggestions concerning the establishment of intimate neighborhood organizations, of public-work groups, or of international travel fellowships, there is little evidence to show that such devices have contributed much in the past to the creation of a world community, or that without fundamental political and economic reorganization on both a national and international level they are likely to do so in the future. (Nagel 1951, 22)

Nagel agreed with Kaufman and others (including Frank, Morris, and Dewey) that science and philosophy of science could illuminate values and related questions about human conduct. But with respect to the Cold War, he was resigned to quietism and disengagement. Only political and economic restructuring, and not resources offered by philosophy, could advance a “world community” or reduce international tensions.
Martin Gardner followed Hook and Kallen more closely  than Nagel. When he reviewed books in the New Leader, he urged philosophers of science take up the cause of anticommunism and not retreat to any apolitical posture. George A. Reisch (2005) How the Cold War Transformed Philosophy of Science: To the Icy Slopes of Logic (CUP) 310-311

I was a PhD student when I first encountered Reisch's brilliant, archive based demolition of conventional wisdom and self-serving myths in the profession often based on anecdotal evidence or hearsay. His book (hereafter Icy Slopes) is one of the towering achievements of various intellectual communities (HPS, HOPOS, History of Analytic, 'the fans of Carnap' etc.) that I have self-identified with over a good chunk of my professional life. Unlike much history of analytic philosophy it unsettles comforting narratives. And like many much nobler souls, I applauded and continue to admire his intellectual rehabilitation of those that gave analytic philosophy its original moral and political purpose. 

So, with an intro like that, you know I am going to disagree with Reisch.

Icy Slopes has a rise and fall structure. The passage I quoted is part of one of the key turning points in the book where the unity of science program (initiated by Neurath and left Vienna, and then still promoted by Frank) collapses. And while Nagel is not portrayed as himself a villain, he is treated as an exemplar ("illustrated these stance") of a certain retreat from more ambitious and nobler aspirations. I think Reisch misunderstands Nagel's position, and the misunderstanding is illustrative of a wider problem of his conceptual framework. But at the end of this post I am also going to suggest that in a certain sense Reisch's misunderstanding is not surprising given the way the profession evolved.

So, Reisch is absolutely right that Nagel is an anti-communist (recall; and here on his reviews of Cornforth); see also his withering 1939 review in The Nation of Haldane's The Marxist Philosophy and the Sciences which Nagel republished in Logic Without Metaphysics (1956; hereafter LWM). But it is worth noting, first, that Nagel was not just an anti-Communist. His polemical targets in this period, also include folk who may now classify as sympathetic to the right: these include not just an assortment of neo-Thomists and the obscurantism popular in Nazi Germany, but also harshly negative reviews of the realist theorist Hans Morgenthau's Scientific Man vs Power Politics (in The Yale Law Journal 1952) and (recall) the rhetorically devastating review in (1952) The Journal of Philosophy  of Hayek's The Counter-Revolution of Science both re-published in LWM.

So, even in his anti-communism Nagel did not give fellow critics of Marxism a pass. In that sense Nagel does not fit the stereotype of a cold war intellectual. This gets me to second point. Reisch is, thus, a bit misleading to imply that anticommunist themes and postures shaped Nagel's thought or that he conformed to them. His philosophical politics, if we may call them that, were not centered on anti-marxism as such. Rather his anti-marxism is an expression of his underlying views about philosophy and political life.

As I have discussed (here and here), Nagel's political stance in the period echoes the liberal ideal of rule by discussion. In Nagel's case his political position was ground in and mirrors his metaphysics and, in particular his philosophy of science. While science contains differential expertise and skill, Nagel views it as an open-ended conversation responsive to public criticism and reasons and, thereby, self-corrective. Crucially for Nagel over time the norms and criteria change, even improve. Not unlike say, Polanyi, he treats this idealized conception as a useful model for a political life worth having. This is a progressive conception of the possibilities of political life that, in practice, recognizes many improvements are the consequence of local, accumulating incremental change.+

Nagel indicates something like the image I have just sketched in many places, including, I should note in the rather moving (!) memorial to Felix Kaufman quoted by Reisch! Here is a passage I have in mind:

[Kaufman] was impressed by the fact that empirical science is a potentially ceaseless process of evaluating propositions in the light of changing evidence for them. And very early in his own intellectual development he recognized as an essential feature of scientific method the tacit use of the principle he came to call the principle of permanent control, according to which no proposition dealing with matters of fact is beyond criticism and revision. He employed this principle, which admirably expresses the self-corrective nature of modern science, in his trenchant criticism of atomistic sensationalism, of philosophies of self-evidence, and of dogmatic claims to finality. The principle was indeed an expression of an essential trait of the man himself: of his native abhorrence of authoritarianism, of his readiness to receive as well as to give criticism, and of his disciplined humility in recognizing the difficulties that stand in the way of obtaining warranted knowledge...(466)

And while the point of Nagel's description is to characterize Kaufman's position, and he sometimes disagrees with Kaufman, this part, as Reisch recognizes, he clearly endorses ("admirably expresses...") I know of no reason to assume Nagel ever gave up on this. 

Now it is worth noting that Nagel's view of science was less naive then it may seem now. At the time science was much smaller and the government's role in shaping science underdeveloped. In addition, while Nagel emphasizes the self-corrective nature of science (and may seem to buy into a kind of efficient market in ideas hypothesis), he is not unaware, and calls attention to the fact, that correcting for social and political bias, even in the natural sciences, is often not easy in practice (as he notes in well known material excerpted from The Structure of Science (and circulating as "the value-oriented bias of social inquiry.")* 

Okay, with that out of the way, let's look at Reisch's analysis. It is notable the for Reisch the two (anti-communist) alternatives to the unity of science are (i) quietism or disengagement; (ii) extolling of objective superiority of the West and its values. This leaves a lot of alternatives unexplored. 

For, the point of establishing the possibility of, and reflecting on the form of the of, objective values is not, in Nagel's hands, intended as an uncritical vindication of the status quo. They also provide the possibility of standard of criticism from which one can evaluate (and now I use one of Nagel's favorite words) the "warrant" of one's beliefs. That is to say, the question of, say, demarcation between science and not science is supposed to be able to be mirrored in social and political sphere. And, say, unlike conservative anti-communists, Nagel (and again he praises Kaufman this) firmly believes that tacit rules and commitments of our social practices, including science and induction, must be made explicit and articulated in order to allow for rational evaluation, justification, and correction/improvement.

Now if we turn to Reisch's treatment of Nagel's review of Mumford, something odd happens. A casual reading of Reisch may leave one with the impression that Mumford is a spokesperson for the kind of utopian thought we might associate with the unity of science movement. But Mumford's approach is, and now I quote Nagel himself, more consistent with being a "spokesman for one phase of intellectual and moral liberalism." (LWM 409) Mumford (who is fascinating) is as non-marxist as Nagel is (as Nagel recognizes LWM 410). And Nagel leaves no doubt he is quite familiar with Mumford's wider views.

And if we look at the passage that Reisch quotes in light of that, it is clear that they are criticized not for being politically wrong-headed. But rather that they do not help solve the (recall) transition problem from here to there and so are, at bottom, a "counsel of dark despair," (LWM 411). Such transition problems do not merely beset marxists, but as Nagel clearly recognizes, liberal thinkers too (something recently emphasized (recall) by Scott Scheall). If one's solution to the transition problem requires "wholesale and simultaneous victory over all problems" (LWM 411) then by Nagel's lights (and i am inclined to agree) that's no solution at all. (One can agree to that without always caving to demands of feasibility!) That is to say, a political philosophy that cares about changing the world is bound to confront the transition problem and take it seriously. This fits with Nagel's larger views on (recall) the "demands of responsible discourse."

For, more subtly, Nagel recognizes, thus, that a certain kind of revolutionary stance is not political at all, but a species of "moralizing exhortations." And, in fact, Nagel is explicit that the quetism is Mumford's: "He therefore proposes....the cultivation of the personal withdrawal and solitary reflection." (LWM 412, he then goes on to quote Mumford). So, the very criticism Reisch lodges against Nagel is Nagel's criticism of Mumford!

Now, Reisch and the friends of revolution, inspired by Neurath, need not agree with Nagel's incrementalist position, which embraces a "realizable process of indefinite approximation" (LWM 413, quoting Plato approvingly!) And I recognize that for some Nagel's charge that Mumford does not offer a "serious contribution to the solution of our present social dilemmas" may be unfair or unduly 'realistic' in a conservative way. But Nagel's willingness to work "within the framework of current political organizations...and on the basis of current moral ideals" (414) it is not a withdrawal from the world or a quietest, complacent stance even in international affairs.** (In 1951 the United Nations had been founded, and the Bretton Woods structure was being developed.) It is neither glorification of the American way nor antipolitical.

There is an important issue that ends up obscured by the limitations of Reisch's particular criticism (and may help explain them). One may well wonder, fairly, how Nagel's approach to philosophy of science, and the professionalism that it helped promote, may contribute to the solution of social dilemmas. And from the other end, the philosophical profession Nagel helped shape and bequeath does seem a fair target for Reisch's criticism. We may still wonder how Nagel's "convictions of a people confident that a bold but disciplined intelligence is still a creative power in the world" is actualized in a life of philosophy of science... 

 

Locke, Usurpation (and Trump)

Sect. 197. AS conquest may be called a foreign usurpation, so usurpation is a kind of domestic conquest, with this difference, that an usurper can never have right on his side, it being no usurpation, but where one is got into the possession of what another has right to. This, so far as it is usurpation, is a change only of persons, but not of the forms and rules of the government: for if the usurper extend his power beyond what of right belonged to the lawful princes, or governors of the commonwealth, it is tyranny added to usurpation.

Sect. 198. In all lawful governments, the designation of the persons, who are to bear rule, is as natural and necessary a part as the form of the government itself, and is that which had its establishment originally from the people; the anarchy being much alike, to have no form of government at all; or to agree, that it shall be monarchical, but to appoint no way to design the person that shall have the power, and be the monarch. Hence all commonwealths, with the form of government established, have rules also of appointing those who are to have any share in the public authority, and settled methods of conveying the right to them: for the anarchy is much alike, to have no form of government at all; or to agree that it shall be monarchical, but to appoint no way to know or design the person that shall have the power, and be the monarch. Whoever gets into the exercise of any part of the power, by other ways than what the laws of the community have prescribed, hath no right to be obeyed, though the form of the commonwealth be still preserved; since he is not the person the laws have appointed, and consequently not the person the people have consented to. Nor can such an usurper, or any deriving from him, ever have a title, till the people are both at liberty to consent, and have actually consented to allow, and confirm in him the power he hath till then usurped.--John Locke, Second Treatise. 

One of the oddities of what passes for learned public discussion of American politics since the rise of Trump, is the near total absence of John Locke. The one exception also proves the point: in a New York Times editorial (back in 2019), Locke is mentioned but then set aside for "James Madison, who was as committed as either Locke or Smith to the supremacy of individual liberty but was acutely aware of the inherent tension between liberty and democracy."* It is a peculiar reason to set aside Locke (in the name of saving liberalism) for, of course, that is one of Locke's great themes. Anyway, here I use Locke because he gives us the words we need. And while Locke never acts smarter than his readers, Locke actually thought hard about circumstances when checks and balances may fail. And, while I yield to few in my admiration for Madison, it is not entirely clear the founders can help here (recall this post on Federalist 70; and see also the strange optimism in Federalist 28--although both were probably written by Hamilton). 

So, ahead of the election President Trump started to signal he was willing to become an usurper. His present unwillingness to concede the obvious -- that he was defeated in the election -- and, more important, his legal actions and the behavior of some of his political partisans (I am thinking of Senator Graham's phone call to the Georgia Secretary of State and the attempts to prevent certification of results in Wayne Co. in particular) all are properly conceptualized in terms of usurpation.

Now, it is clear that Locke assumes that usurpation is extra-legal, although note that this is compatible with it being non-violent. And part of the trickiness of the present situation is that Trump and his partisans are not subtle about signaling that they expect, and clearly actively try, to get others to bend the law in their favor. For the rule of law is (recall) fragile when (what we may call) the agents and upholders of the law lack integrity or courage. But even if Trump could prevail with some and obtain formal legal recognition for his actions, it is clear his actions are by no means in the spirit of the laws. And, given that the constitution prevents a further re-election, he would remain an usurper (since the people lack  the "liberty to consent," and opportunity to "confirm in him the power he hath till then usurped").

As an aside, when the Senate refused to convict President Trump after the House had impeached him, it was said, for example by Senator Lamar Alexander,  that 'the consequences of the president's actions should be decided in the next election.' I believe, as I write this, Sen. Alexander has not yet congratulated the President-elect or acknowledged his victory.+

Of course, it is natural to read Locke as kind of assuming that the usurper is not already a legal ruler eager to overstay his welcome. But I think it says something of his foresight that his analysis is compatible with our circumstances. And I doubt this is a coincidence. Because Locke is pretty sensitive to the fact that legal authority, which holds power in trust, can degenerate; he notes all "forms of government are liable to it." (201)

For Locke degeneration starts "when the governor, however intitled, makes not the law, but his will, the rule." (199) And this shift from the rule of law to rule by will is necessary to be considered tyrannical. It is not sufficient because sometimes the laws are broken for the good of the population. As Locke put its on the frontispiece of the work, Salus populi suprema lex, and explains, while quoting it, in sect 158: "whatsoever shall be done manifestly for the good of the people, and the establishing the government upon its true foundations, is, and always will be, just prerogative." So, for Locke a tyrant is a law-breaker acting in his own interest (and generally also likely "to impoverish, harass, or subdue" the people "to the arbitrary and irregular commands of those that have" power. (201; (202)))

Above, i noted that certain political acts like some kinds of usurpation may not formally break the law, even though they bend it greatly against their proper intent. Locke alerts the reader to the significance of this; undermining of the spirit of the law systematically discourages redress through the law. And once such redress is thought impossible, or very discouraged, the door to political violence is opened; as Locke puts it "where the injured party may be relieved, and his damages repaired by appeal to the law, there can be no pretence for force, which is only to be used where a man is intercepted from appealing to the law." (207) That is to say, seriously corrupting the spirit of the rule of law is a return to a (Hobbesian!) state of nature.

Now, my interest in Locke here is to discuss a passage which is exactly on the undermining of what I have been calling the spirit of the rule of law; Locke calls this 'to elude the law' and he uses it in a passage that evokes (and responds to) Plato's ship of state analogy:

210. But if all the world shall observe pretences of one kind, and actions of another; arts used to elude the law, and the trust of prerogative (which is an arbitrary power in some things left in the prince's hand to do good, not harm to the people) employed contrary to the end for which it was given: if the people shall find the ministers and subordinate magistrates chosen suitable to such ends, and favoured, or laid by, proportionably as they promote or oppose them: if they see several experiments made of arbitrary power, and that religion underhand favoured, (tho' publicly proclaimed against) which is readiest to introduce it; and the operators in it supported, as much as may be; and when that cannot be done, yet approved still, and liked the better: if a long train of actions shew the councils all tending that way; how can a man any more hinder himself from being persuaded in his own mind, which way things are going; or from casting about how to save himself, than he could from believing the captain of the ship he was in, was carrying him, and the rest of the company, to Algiers, when he found him always steering that course, though cross winds, leaks in his ship, and want of men and provisions did often force him to turn his course another way for some time, which he steadily returned to again, as soon as the wind, weather, and other circumstances would let him?

As Emily C. Nacol observes in chapter 3 of An Age of Risk, which prompted the present digression, Algiers was then a notorious slave market. She writes, "Locke wants his citizens to be vigilant subjects who guard against tyranny."  (60-1). And as Nacol notes, Locke is quite explicit that there is a right to preventive rebellion, he writes that "men can never be secure from tyranny, if there be no means to escape it till they are perfectly under it: and therefore it is, that they have not only a right to get out of it, but to prevent it." (220) Here we see that Locke anticipates Popper (recall) and allows that a kind of defensive violence against creeping usurpation and tyranny is permitted.

Let me wrap up. One might think that by talking about "the people," Locke assumes -- in proto-Rousseauian fashion -- too much civic unity. One might worry that he misses that in practice, in the context of polarization, eluding the law is a factional affair. And one may think that Locke, thus, misses that an usurper can count on plenty of support while undermining the constitutional order. But this, too, is anticipated by Locke. Sometimes "factions have been fatal to states and kingdoms" (230).

So, here's the bottom line, the longer it's genuinely thought possible that Trump's usurpation might succeed, and that sufficient number of his more prominent supporters are willing to allow it to succeed, the more likely and more legitimate political violence becomes Stateside on Locke's analysis.  Ideally sooner rather than later -- as Trump's legal strategy has clearly run aground--, as states certify results, leading Republicans must signal publically that Trump has genuinely lost the election and it is time to move on to secure a peaceful transfer of power.

Even the fact that one must write such sentences is symptomatic of a deeper problem. Trump's initial rise to power demonstrated that the trust between Republican party elites and their primary voters was broken. The current party elites are clearly loath to re-open such wounds even though after four years of his Presidency, the American electorate has opted for a partial restoration of the situation ex ante. I say 'partial' because few Republican politicians paid an electoral price for their continued support of Trump. And while we're not quite at the precipice yet, we're starting to inch very close to it. And this is, thus, the most dangerous period because, as Locke notes, not only once one falls over it, it's too late, but because one now must face -- and this is the great theme of Nacol's argument -- the uncertainty in judging how other citizens will act, if one acts to prevent such collapse. 

 

 

On Being Distant in Time

Medieval readings of Boethius’s Consolation tended to smooth the forcefulness of its message, by making its arguments harmonise too easily with the Christian culture that the people of the time shared with its author. Readers today have a distance from the work that enables us to read it more precisely in the context of Boethius’s own times, and to discover how much Boethius’s way of thinking has in common with our own. We can see the Consolation both as a bold defence of human reason in the face of injustice and impending violent death, but also as an uncovering of reason’s inadequacy. Boethius the Prisoner receives some consolation from Philosophy, but more instruction, and the most important lesson that he learns is one about epistemic humility.-- John Marenbon (9 October, 2020) "Why read Boethius Today?" Aeon.

The main message of the very passage, -- the final one of Marenbon's essay -- that has us learn epistemic humility, is that we're in the best or merely a better position to study the past than our predecessor. And let's call the idea that we can read better from a distance "Machiavellian readings" in honor of Machiavelli. --Why Machiavellian? you may ask. Because for Machiavelli a certain distance is required to get an objective view on the object of study (say, the prince).+ And we can contrast this Machiavellian reading or stance with the "Spinozist reading" which is conscious of the fact that as time passes all the evidence that can make understanding a past work, its context, even the very language in which it is written, is a marvelous act of self-deception or political legislation.*

On the side of the Machiavellian stance we might say that technologies of recovery (philology and languages, cultural and hermeneutic studies, archaeology, anthropology, digital humanities, analytic rigor, etc.) are constantly improving. It is such confidence that  led analytic readers of Plato in the second half of the twentieth century to ignore confidently two millennia of Plato interpretation. In addition academic specialization allows the cultivation of highly trained readers of an author or even particular works. So, for example, I have friends who have spent most of their adult life studying Hobbes' Leviathan, but who are functionally illiterate when confronted by, say, Gilbert's On the Magnet or Suarez's Metaphysical Disputations (both written half a century before). 

The previous paragraph suggests that there may well be a kind of path dependency to making a text from the past seem legible. Martin Lenz has emphasized that such path dependency -- stabilized by canon-formation and education -- generates a kind of sense of clarity. Lenz is critical of this sense (see also here) because it is no better than a kind of pattern-matching. If Lenz is right then most scholarly eureka moments (including, alas, my own) need to viewed with some suspicion because informed by a great deal of unnoticed confirmation bias.

There is a further risk lurking here due to the way philosophical scholarship has been organized. As I have noted before it is a rare department where the selection of historical specialist is governed by such specialists themselves. And, all other things being equal, others prefer to have historical (or comparative) specialists  that can discuss topics of contemporary interests as decided by the 'core' or 'authoritative' 'generalists'. And so this generates another sieve of unacknowledged pattern-confirmation bias. (If you don't believe me, how come the previous generation of scholarship made every other historical figure into a proto-Quinean naturalist; and the more recent ones every figure into..?)

Of course, the argument is not that the pattern that is picked out is somehow unreal. Lenz' argument is not skeptical about historical meaning in the way the Spinozist stance is. Rather, what it suggests is that searching for commonalities ("discover how much Boethius’s way of thinking has in common with our own") itself risks reinforcing such confirmation bias. 

As an aside, I tried reading Boethius' Consolation one chilly Summer somewhere in the Scandinavian Northlands while conceiving of myself as a poet. I found it bewildering. Marenbon has encouraged me to give it another try before long.

Regular readers may be surprised here because I have a tendency to defend methodological anachronism and lampoon scholarly methods that try to dwell on the strangeness of the past (even comparing folk in Cambridge robes to disaster tourists). But my criticism is not of seeking out the multiplicity of the strangeness of the past -- the patterns that fit ours badly; it's the dwelling on such strangeness that I reject.

To be sure, Marenbon is undoubtedly right that some distance can be useful to weed out shared prejudices against and in favor of certain readings. After all, early reception is often influenced by hagiographic or institutional politics and cleverly instrumentalized anecdotal evidence that is used to devalue or praise an author. There are very sound psychological and political reasons to be mistrustful of students' readings of their teachers, even if the students are themselves eminent (cf. Quine and Davidson on Whitehead).

And as Marenbon notes, sometimes a whole culture conspires against making a certain message explicit. But, of course, that cuts both ways unless one assumes -- and this is far removed from epistemic humility -- in our air we can think more honestly and more aptly than before. This is not exactly, Marenbon's claim. For, Marenbom claims that while the book was a bestseller, it was so in virtue of its exoteric/"more obvious" features. (It would be amazing if otherwise.) But his argument is that "if read carefully," and properly situated "in its historical and literary context," the esoteric/"its hidden complexities and subtleties are what can open its appeal to readers" now. It's easy to make fun of this given that this text appears in Aeon. But since I have defended the practice of esoteric reading, don't expect such fun from me.

The more serious problem is the confidence in thinking one has firmly grasped the proper 'historical and literary context' of a work == okay, don't forget I last read it when I was an angst-ridden, self-important teenager == that in one of its (ahh) registers is the eternal one, transcending context and, simultaneously, attempting to shape the context of temporal reception.  Or to put the point methodologically, what counts as context may be stipulated, as Mogens Lærke has argued, but it is not merely given. It may well be a complex conversation between, say, the author(s)'s and reader(s)'s commitments.**

Let me wrap up. Readers aware of my tendency toward skepticism may suspect that I incline toward the Spinozist stance. And the polemicist in me finds it tempting to trot it out as true species of epistemic humility: the past is like a distant shore that can never be reached by mortals like us in the leaky boats we possess. This thought may generate a kind of defeatism. But if we only traveled to safe destinations Boethius would have never landed in that prison cell. 

 

 

Newton, Spinozism, and mind/body interaction

Every sentient soul, at different times and in different organs of senses and motions, is the same indivisible person. There are parts that are successive in duration and coexistent in space, but neither of these exist in the person of man or in his thinking principle, and much less in the thinking substance of God. Every man, insofar as he is a thing that has senses, is one and the same man throughout his lifetime in each and every organ of his senses. God is one and the same God always and everywhere. He is omnipresent not only virtually but also substantially, for active power [virtus] cannot subsist without substance. In him all things are contained and move, but he does not act on them nor they on him, experiences nothing from the motions of bodies; the bodies feel no resistance from God's omnipresence.---Newton, "General Scholium" Principia, translated by Cohen & Whitman (1999), 941-942

The first three sentences of the quoted paragraph were inserted into the  third (and final) edition of the Principia (while the rest was added to the second edition). They have become subject of intense scholarly scrutiny because of the light they might share on the constraints on any possible explanation of the cause of gravity. So, for example, my good friend Andrew Janiak thinks that in the quoted passage there is a hidden premise that 'a substance cannot act where it is not substantially present' and this reinforces his argument that Newton (always) rejects unmediated action at a distance (Hylarie Kochiras has also argued this; in context my work is one of their targets.) Here I want to bracket that debate (but will return at the very end to it), and reflect a bit on Newton's underlying metaphysics of mind and mind-body interaction.

In context, in the last sentence of the previous paragraph, Newton has just asserted that God is eternal and omnipresent ("will not be never or nowhere," (941)) And in the paragraph following the one just quoted he claims that "the supreme God necessarily exists, and by the same necessity he is always and everywhere." (942; emphasis in original) That is to say, Newton's God is immanent in the universe. Quite a few more remarks in the General Scholium suggest this.

And, in fact, as 'the same necessity' suggests Newton's God's relationship to space and time is very tight (I would say an internal relation). Rather than creating space and time, by an act of will, they exist when he exists in virtue of the same necessity. How to think of Newton's modal metaphysics here is no simple matter (and I have devoted some space to it recall here; here; here). In an early text, De Gravitatione, Newton had tried to characterize this relationship in terms of an emanation doctrine, and there, too, it signals that space and time are not created (or so I argue here).

It's crucial to Newton's general argument that space and time are not nothing or merely ideal or useful conventions. (In De Gravitatione he makes a point of emphasizing this. In the General Scholium it's treated as self-evident.) And it follows from this that there are structural features of the universe (space and time) that are as infinite and eternal as God is. My interest is in trying to characterize one of the relationships between sentience and this spatial-temporal structure.

Now, a few paragraphs before  Newton had explicitly denied, and he added a second denial to the third edition, that God is a world soul (940). But a natural reading of the quoted passage at the top is that God is sentient with a soul. (I return to this below.) And such ensouled sentience makes a person. But unlike say, in Descartes' metaphysics, Newtonian ensouled sentience can be spread out in space and time. Yet, like a Cartesian soul, such a Newtonian ensouled sentience does not, despite existing in space and time, itself have parts or is even divisible.

As an aside, my own view is that Newton is a substance monist. For Newton, a substance is a directed source of activity, that is an agent.* (Janiak and I agree about this. But we differ on the monism.) And that the only truly active agent in his metaphysics is God. I grant that Newton uses the plural 'substances' (942) in order to deny, in Lockean fashion, that we have knowledge of their essences (and even less of God's essence). But when he uses 'substances' he means it in the more innocent sense of a 'material entity' not an 'agent.' 

Now, an obvious way to make sense of the contours of Newton's position on ensouled sentience in the General Scholium is that he thinks sentience is a kind of emergent property of matter immanent in nature. And so Newton articulates a kind of property dualism.+ This works well for what he says about human persons. 

In fact, Newton returns to the question of ensouled sentience in his fascinating closing paragraph of the General Scholium:

A few things could now be added concerning a certain very subtle spirit pervading gross bodies and lying hidden in them; by its force and actions, the particles of bodies attract one another at very small distances and cohere when they become contiguous; and electrical [i.e., electrified] bodies act at greater distances, repelling as well as attracting neighboring corpuscles; and light is emitted, reflected, refracted, inflected, and heats bodies; and all sensation is excited, and the limbs of animals move at command of the will, namely, by the vibrations of this spirit being propagated through the solid fibers of the nerves from the external organs of the senses to the brain and from the brain into the muscles. But these things cannot be explained in a few words; furthermore, there is not a sufficient number of experiments to determine and demonstrate accurately the laws governing the actions of this spirit. (943-944)

As Dempsey has argued, building on I.B. Cohen's interpretation of some draft manuscripts while Newton was developing a response to Leibniz (published in 1715 Account), Newton explicitly refers to experiments done by Hauksbee. Here it looks like Newton is sketching how sentience itself is ground in a powerful, "very subtle spirit" that pervades bodies. In particular, the presence of this spirit helps explain the exciting of sensation in beings like us. Now ''spirit" is a fluid (we use it in that sense when we describe liquor as 'spirits'). And for Newton a kind of (subtle) matter. So, this fits with the emergentism I attribute to Newton. (To be sure, I agree with Stein (2002) and Dempsey that Newton viewed this as a research program because we simply know to little about the nature of mind--so my claim is not meant to be doctrinaire, although Newton is an adamant critic of some positions he rejects.)

In particular, Dempsey calls attention to a passage, "if this spirit may receive impressions from light and convey them into the sensiorium & there act upon that substance which sees & thinks, that substance may mutually act upon this spirit for causing animal motions’" (quoted by Cohen in Newton 1999: 282) I agree with Dempsey that Newton thinks this spirit is a key element in mental causation. But the most natural reading of the passage is, I think, that this subtle spirit is a mechanism by which mental causation takes place. It is not obvious that this spirit also helps constitute or ground the substance which sees and thinks.

Interestingly, Dempsey argues it is likely that Newton is "not here endorsing the independent existence of the mind, but rather is distinguishing it from the organs of sense and the brain. What is more, one straightforward explanation of the natural interaction of this spirit and the mind is precisely that the mind and the spirit with which it interacts are quite similar in nature." (Dempsey 2006: 438) And this fits very nicely with my own emergentist reading. But as I note this very monistic interpretation of Newton's metaphysics of mind is rather speculative.

In fact, I often read Newton in Spinozistic fashion in which God is the one and only substance. (This is, in fact, Clarke's position in 1704, which is what made him a juicy target for Leibniz.) And the universal quantifier in the first sentence of the quoted paragraph, seems to suggest that what Newton says about human minds must fit also God's mind: "Every sentient soul, at different times and in different organs of senses and motions, is the same indivisible person." And if this 'every' includes God, this suggest that God is not just immanent nature, but also material (e.g., "motions").

But I have always hesitated about this because in the General Scholium Newton rejects, as I noted above, the idea of God as a world soul and he writes shortly hereafter that God "totally lacks any body and corporeal shape" (942). So, I think it is not obvious that God's sentience is an emergent property of matter. For (a) God's sentience cannot be grounded in such matter, and (b) in various places, Newton seems to suggest that conceptually and temporally God precedes matter. (In the General Scholium that is not explicit, but it is a kind of implication of his claims about the designed nature of the visible universe.)  And so if this is right God's sentience and personhood is not ensouled. But something altogether mysterious.

The passage in which I take him to reject God as the world soul reads as follows:

But, in looking again  He rules all things, not as the world soul but as the lord of all. And because of his dominion he is called Lord God Pantokrator. [Newton adds a note: 'that is, universal ruler.'] For "god" is a relative word and has reference to servants, and godhood is the lordship of God, not over his own body fas is supposed by those for whom God is the world soul, but over servants. (940)

Drawing on early work by Dobbs, Rudolf De Smet & Karin Verelst have convincingly argued that here (and in a few other places of the General Scholium) Newton is echoing Lipsius's attack, inspired by Philo, on the old stoic notion  of anima mundi. The effect of this Lipsian reading is that God remains immanent to nature, but is not ground in body. 

In re-reading the passage, it is not obvious to me anymore that Newton rejects conceiving God as the world soul as such. Rather, he is rejecting analyzing God's rule in terms of the world soul because it does not capture the hierarchical nature of God's dominion.

So, it is possible that Newton thinks God's sentience in the pervasive more subtle (electric) fluid/spirit. Even so, given that Newton is explicit that God "totally lacks any body and corporeal shape" (942). it seems unlikely that we're supposed to read Newton as claiming that God's sentience is ground in, and emergent of a, subtle electric (etc.) spirit.++ So, I don't think it is correct to treat God's sentience in terms of emergent properties (in the way, say, Spinoza's parallelism encourages).**  Even though Newton and Spinoza agree that thought is a something like an attribute of substance.

So, where does this leave us? First, rather than seeing Newton as relying on a principle of local action, he is articulating an account of the relationship between sentience and body. For human sentience this is ground in a kind of emergent quality of body, especially a subtle fluid. Second, God is immanent in nature, and features of his existence can be derived from the study of nature. Ordinarily,** bodies are not hindered by his presence, and "he does not act on them nor they on him." In so far as God does interact with the bodies and spirits in nature this is fundamentally mysterious, as mysterious as his substance. In fact, in a passage that echoes a skeptical trope in Locke, Newton really stresses the fact that we really have no epistemic access, not even analogical, to God's sentience.

he is all eye, all ear, all brain, all arm, all force of sensing, of understanding, and of acting, but in a way not at all human, in a way not at all corporeal, in a way utterly unknown to us. As a blind man has no idea of colors, so we have no idea of the ways in which the most wise God senses and understands all things. (942)

Third, rather than positing a principle of local action, Newton is developing an account of sentience that may be illuminated by experiments on electricity. But leaves us without any resources to make claims about God's agency.

 

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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