Digressions&Impressions

Huizinga on Schmitt and the Collapse of the Whole System of International Law

    Though there may be abundant traces of play in domestic politics there would seem, at first sight, to be little opportunity for it in the field of international politics. The fact, however, that these have fallen to unheard of extremes of violence and dangerousness in political life among nations does not in itself exclude the possibility of play. As we have seen from numerous examples, play can be cruel and bloody and, in addition, can often be false play. Any law-abiding community or community of States will have characteristics linking it in one way or another to a play-community. A system of international law is maintained by the mutual recognition of certain principles and maxims which, in effect, operate like play-rules despite the fact that they may be founded in metaphysics. The explicit acknowledgment of the pacta sunt servanda principle is a de facto recognition that the integrity of the system rests on a  willingness to play along. Once a party withdraws from the rules of the system, the whole system of international law must, if only temporarily, collapse unless the outlaw is banished from the community as a "spoilsport." 
   The maintenance of international law has always been dependent on the [continued] validity of principles such as honour, decency, and good form. An important part of European rules of warfare developed, after all, out of the code of honour proper to chivalry. International law tacitly assumed that a defeated state would behave like a gentleman and a good loser, even if it seldom did. The duty to declare war officially, though often violated, belonged to the good form of warring states. In short until quite recently modern European war included and still retained the ludic elements of war, which we have uncovered in all archaic eras, and on which the absolutely binding character of the rules of war in large part rested. 
   A common phrase in German speech speaks of the entry of war as "Ernstfall". In strictly military parlance the term is correct. Compared with the sham fighting of manoeuvres and drilling, 'real' war is undoubtedly what seriousness is to play. But it's altogether different when he term "Ernstfall" is understood politically. It would entail that foreign policy has not attained its full degree of seriousness, her real effectiveness, until the state of war is reached. This view is confessed by some. [In the Dutch, but not English, there is a note to Huizinga's (1935) In the Shadows of Tomorrow.] For them all diplomatic intercourse, insofar as it moves in the paths of negotiation and agreement, is only a preface to war or a transition between two wars. It is logical that its adherents, who regard war and its preparations as the sole form of serious politics, should deny that war has any connection with contest [Huizinga uses 'wedkamp' here which as he notes earlier, signals the rolling of betting in legal and athletic contests--ES] and hence with play. The agonistic factor, they tell us, may have been powerfully operative in earlier eras, but contemporary warfare is elevated above the old contest. It is based on the "friend-enemy" principle. All real political relationships among nations and states, so they say, are dominated by this principle. [Here Huizinga cites Schmitt's Der Begriff der Politischen in Dutch and English editions.]** The other group is always either your friend or your enemy. Enemy, of course, is not to be understood as inimicus or εχθρός (echtros), i.e. personally hated, or though wicked, but only as hostis or πόλεμιος, i.e. the stranger, who is in your group's way or about the stand in its way. Schmitt refuses to regard the enemy even as a rival or adversary. He is according to him just an opponent [tegenstander] in the most iteral sense and is thus to be liquidated [uit de weg ruimen]. If ever anything in history has corresponded to this gross reduction of the idea of enmity, which turns it into an almost mechanical relationship, it is precisely that archaic antagonism between phratries, clans or tribes where, as we saw, the play element was of considerable significance, and from which the growth of culture has carried us beyond. In so far as there is a glimpse of correctness in Schmitt's inhuman delusion, the conclusion has to be: war is not the 'Ernstfall,' but peace is. Only by conquering that pitiable friend-enemy relationship will humanity lay claim to the recognition of her dignity. With everything that evokes or accompanies it, war always remains ensnared in the daemonic witchcraft of the game.--J.H. Huizinga (1949 [1944]) Homo Ludens: A Study in the Play-Element in Culture, London Routledge pp. 208-209. {With corrections by Eric Schliesser in bold.}*

Homo Ludens appeared in Dutch in 1938. After the Von Leers incident (recall), Huizinga was effectively black-listed in Nazi-Germany (see Gossman's "Afterword" to Otterspeer's article). Somewhat amazingly the English translation was translated from the German edition, which, according to the English translation,  is supposed to have appeared in Switzerland in 1944. But, in fact, Huizinga was also pretty effectively black-listed in neutral Switzerland. The book first appeared in German with Pantheon (a small press) in Amsterdam in 1939. Pantheon, which was not a Jewish firm, continued operation during the war. In Switzerland, the book was finally republished by Burg-Verlag in Basel, including a 1944 edition, which seems to have been a source of the English translation. I write 'a source' because the (anonymous to me) English translator appended the following note to the book:

THIS edition is prepared from the German edition published in Switzerland, 1944, and also from the author's own English translation of the text, which he made shortly before his death. Comparison of the two texts shows a number of discrepancies and a marked difference in style; the translator hopes that the following version has achieved a reasonable synthesis. (vii)*

While it is tempting to turn swiftly to Huizinga's argument against Schmitt, it is worth noting that in Dutch the sub-title of the book is, "Proeve Eener Bepaling van het Spel-Element der Cultuur." In contemporary Dutch, a 'proeve' primarily means a 'tasting,' but in the past it is often used in terms of a 'trial' or 'assaying' (or 'essay'). It shares a root with the English 'proof'. And if you read the book, it's pretty clear that Huizinga intents to convey that the book involves taste and assaying. The first word ("Essai") of the sub-title French translation ("Essai sur le fonction sociale du jeu") captures these resonances by using 'Essai', although interestingly enough the rest of the sub-title is rather over-interpretive (even reductive). But I also suspect, as (also) passages that I quoted above from near the end of the book imply, Huizinga means to suggest that in his own day the play-element of culture is being challenged if not in danger of collapsing (a proeve in the sense of a beproeving--an ordeal or test).

Okay, with that in place let's turn to Huizinga's argument. It is no surprise that writing in an age of the collapse of the League of Nations into farce that Huizinga would have thought that the system of international law was rather fragile--that a single defection could make it collapse unless the rest is strong enough to banish the rule-breaker altogether from the system. We now know that this is need not be the case. The international system can survive considerable rule breaking by even its vital and leadings members and, what is more amazing, can maintain many of its norms with important rule-breakers while they are knowingly violating international law. So, for example, even while countries are putting sanctions on Putin's regime, Russia participates in an enormous range of international commercial and technical practices that are regulated by international law that nobody will consider revoking. Obviously, there is a tipping point where that may not be true anymore.

One way to understand Huizinga's diagnosis of Schmitt's position is that according to Huizinga (and I have a distinct feeling that this anticipates Foucault's interpretation of liberalism), and in a reversal of Clausewitz's famous dictum, Schmitt treats ordinary politics and diplomacy as a continuation and extension of war. It's in this fact that, according Huizinga's Schmitt, the paraphernalia of diplomacy and politics have their true significance.   

Now, the position attributed by Huizinga to Schmitt that ordinary politics and statecraft are just the continuation of war and preparation for it implies that on the Schmittian picture there is no escape from the Hobbesian state of nature at all. So, it is worth noting that Huizinga converges on a crucial agreement with Strauss's criticism of Schmitt: (recall) that Schmitt remains, despite his own self-understanding, in the Hobbesian ambit. (I have no evidence that Huizinga was familiar with Strauss' reading of Schmitt.)

In addition, Huizinga attributes to Schmitt an ideal of progress. (Again, this is accord with Strauss, who discerned the existential providentialism in Schmitt, who is for all his rejection of liberalism a committed modernist.) But according to Huizinga, Schmitt's idea of progress presupposes the overcoming of the ludic and agonic ideals that were once inherent in the conceptualizations of war. And, on Huizinga's account this makes modern warfare the true barbarism because it mechanically promotes the killing of enemies.

Here, Huizinga echoes the practice -- from Thomas More forward, but reaching its peak in Enlightenment thought -- of treating modern Europeans as the true barbarians. And this is supposed to meet Schmitt on his own terms because according to Schmitt it's those very humanitarian ideals -- which turn the enemy into a inhumane monster -- that lead to total war. 

At first sight, it might seem that Huizinga misses in his analysis of Schmitt is that enemies are symmetrical to each other: that there is a moment of existential choice in which some are recognized as friends to which one belongs and other social unities as enemies. This parity is absent in social domination and subordination. So, something of the agonic element is maintained even in Schmitt's analysis. And, in fact, I think this is Huizinga's position ("war always remains ensnared in the daemonic witchcraft of the game"), although it's unclear if Huizinga also thinks this is an immanent critique of Schmitt.

Be that as it may, while it's true that there is a sense in which Huizinga's response to Schmitt is question-begging (humanity is not common ground), it is not silly, and strikes me as coherent.+ In particular, Huizinga promotes the idea that the overcoming of the friend-enemy distinction is a real possibility and once this overcoming is associated with humanity's dignity (there are Kantian deals lurking here) a worthy ideal. In this, Huizinga echoes Ortega Y Gassett (recall) and he anticipates Popper's argument (recall). This is something that cannot be denied by Schmitt because the enemy-friend distinction itself presupposes an existential choice; and so could be otherwise. (Again, Strauss who parts ways with these liberals had noticed that Schmitt shares common ground in such matters with his liberal opponents.) Huizinga's position does not deny that politics plays a role in culture or in games, but rather that such activities, even when fully immersed in them, can reach beyond themselves to something ethical (or sittlich in a soft-Hegelian sense).

Huizinga does not claim that all of culture is play. In fact, he invites us to consider the renewal or development of a political art in all seriousness: this is the art of peace, how to achieve it and how to maintain it. (And given the Kantianism, this is really the art of world-federation.) And Huizinga claims here (and at the start of Homo Ludens) explicitly the authority of Plato's Laws 803:  "It is the life of peace that everyone should live as much and as well as he can." And matching Schmitt's Christian political theology, with Plato's, we learn that in order to be serious about the art of peace, we must learn to understand ourselves, looking up, as God(s)'s playthings. 

 

 

On When the Rector (Huizinga) canceled a Nazi

The rector [Huizinga] reports that he has been informed that Dr. J. von Leers, leader of the German delegation to the current ISS Congress, is the author of a pamphlet entitled "Forderung der Stunde, Juden 'raus!" [The call of the hour: Out with the Jews!], which was reprinted in March 1933 and in which can be found a passage on the ritual murder of Christian children. The passage in question concludes that this popular belief should he consid­ered an urgent threat from which there is need for protection even today. In the event that the report proves to be true, the committee believes the Senate should make its views known unequivocally and discuss possible further measures. Finally, it was agreed that, through Professor van Wijk, Dr. von Leers should be invited to discuss the matter with the rector in the Senate Chamber, in the presence of the Clerks, at which point he will be asked whether the report is correct. If he denies that it is correct, a protocol to that effect will be drawn up, to be  signed by him. If he admits this is correct, the Senate will communicate its disgust by requesting char he no longer avail himself of the hospitality of the university, and by reserving the right to rake further measures.--Quoted from Otterspeer, Willem. "Huizinga before the Abyss: The von Leers incident at the University of Leiden, April 1933." Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies 27.3 (1997): 396. Translated by Lionel Gossman and Remier Leushuis 

I recently read Huizinga's Homo Ludens. I was surprised that it closes on a profound criticism of Carl Schmitt's views on the friend-enemy distinction. (Huizinga explicitly cites Der Begriff der Politischen.) I intended to write a blog post about it, and decided to look at some secondary literature. I found two very stimulating papers on their wider exchange (see here Geertjan de Vugt 2017; and here Alexander Lambrow 2020.) The Lambrow paper confirmed the existence of a 'Von Leers incident' mentioned on the Wikipedia page devoted to Huizinga. Lambrow referred me to Otterspeer's study which is very much worth reading (not the least for its dry commentary). The passage quoted above is from the Archives of the Leiden University Senate, and are the minutes of its meeting. The date of the the event is April 11, 1933.

The ISS Congres was an opportunity for students from Germany, France, England, and Holland to meet. The Congress was hosted by Leiden university and had been opened by Huizinga. In 1933, Von Leers (the leader of the German student delegation) was not a student anymore. He had been added to the delegation, presumably by the new regime in Germany. The meeting between Huizinga nd Von Leers was quickly arranged, and Von Leers confronted with his writings. I quote some of the minutes:

When the incriminating passages were read out, he had admitted the possi­bility that they might be his own words, with the proviso, how­ever, that the passage might turn out to be a quotation. With that same proviso, the rector had expressed the Senate's "tiefen Abscheu und tiefe Verachtung" deep revulsion and deep con­tempt-in German in the text], had added that he reserved the right to take further  measures, and that he requested that Dr. von Leers no longer avail himself of the university's hospitality. Dr. von Leers had noted first that the reproved opinions were shared by the Reichs Chancellor and other high officials...Since the conversation seemed likely to become needlessly painful, [Huizinga] had put an end to it, observing chat he could no longer shake hands with Dr. von Leers. (396-7)

Now, Huizinga was already a famous scholar for his Herfsttij der Middeleeuwen (1919), translated as Herbst des Mittelalters (1924), and as The Waning of the Middle Ages (1924). And he was by no means a Marxist, Socialist, or Positivist. In fact, Huizinga had been invited to the Lippmann colloquium in 1938, so during the period he was viewed as potentially sympathetic to liberalism. In the article, Otterspeer, himself an accomplished scholar, suggests that he is "what we would now call a conservative liberal, and in his version of that posi­tion, he expressed the values of a petit-bourgeois elite." (413) I don't think this is false, and it is certainly worth noting, as Otterspeer does, that Huizinga had expressed some skepticism about parliamentarianism (especially in its mass form (415-416)). But it is also worth noting that Huizinga was astutely sensitive to what we now call 'cultural' even 'agonistic pluralism' (anticipating Lippmann's own views) and that's a view we don't tend to associate with what in the low countries passes for conservative liberalism. In addition, Huizinga was not especially known for philosemitic views.

I used a cognate of 'canceling' in this the title of this post not just as click-bait. (Von Leers really was a Nazi.) As the passages reveal, Huizinga revoked the university's hospitality while Von Leers was in Leiden. (This led to the conference ending prematurely amongst other consequences.) In addition, he used the occasion to formally express the "deep revulsion and deep con­tempt" of the university to Von Leers and this is symbolically reiterated by the refusal to shake hands. What is especially notable about this, is that all reports suggest that Von Leers remained polite throughout. And that while Von Leers had expressed anti-Jewish sentiments at the conference, the desire to take action did not come from any student participants, but from the rector, that is, Huizinga, who had been informed that Von Leers was the author of an anti-Semitic pamphlet which espoused blood libel.*

Now, as it happens some members of the board of governors, who had been exposed to German complaints about Huizinga's decision, were not happy with Huizinga's actions. It's not entirely clear if their lack of approval is due, as seems most likely, their sense that Huizinga over-stepped his authority and took a decision which he should have run by the board first, or whether they thought it was imprudent to make enemies out of the new German government. It's also possible they thought he made the wrong decision on substantive grounds (although Otterspeer offers no evidence of substantive criticism). Much remains unclear to me about the subsequent interaction between the Board and Huizinga.** 

It seems to have been self-evident to Huizinga that somebody who expressed blood libel as an imminent danger to the German people in print had no place at a serious university. This also means he didn't really formulate the principles on which he was acting. Lionel Gossman, who wrote an afterword to Otterspeer's paper in the English translation, thinks that Huizinga decided to act in order to defend "the honor of the university" which embodied so many of his ideals. (p. 417) What this amounts to Gossman explain near the end of his afterword:

Von Leers's transgression seems rather to be of nonprofessional conduct-not playing by the basic rules of the scholarly or academic game. For Huizinga evidently assumed that as an educated man, von Leers knew that the popular stories about ritual murders or Christian children by Jews were unfounded and had been shown to be so by historical scholarship. In other words, von Leers had cynically sought to manipulate public opinion by presenting palpably false statements in the guise of historically valid ones. He had only played at playing the scholarly game; in fact, he had shown no respect for any partner nor observed any rules. (324; this interpretation is endorsed with some elaboration by Lambrow 2020: 827)

Gossman's account also fits with the argument that Huizinga was to develop in Homo Ludens. But in the absence of direct evidence, it must be treated cautiously as informed speculation.

Having said that, what I like about Gossman's suggestion is that Huizinga intuits an important distinction between scholarship and ersatz scholarship as an ideal worth policing at a university. And that it is unbecoming to universities to welcome those that promote ersatz scholarship to the public. For all involved in the dispute it is telling that Von Leers seems to think that the approval of the Reichs Chancelor is at all salient to the matter at hand. Why this is so is worth articulating.

Gossman makes clear that Huizinga's expulsion of Von Leers should not be merely interpreted as Huizinga seeing Von Leers as a spoilsport. (These can be useful sometimes according to Huizinga.) Rather, it is Von Leers' aims that are very much part of the problem. (And this is where Gossman connects the issue to Huizinga's later polemic with Schmitt--some other time I return to this.) "He had betrayed," Gossman writes," "and undermined the game, had ''played" at playing, for the sake of no higher principle, no prin­ciple at all nothing but the elimination or all obstacles for the untrammeled exercise of power." (429)+ This must be met by contempt and expulsion.

Clearly, Huizinga's position as attributed to him by Gossman, presupposes a willingness to make two kinds of substantive judgments: first, that some agent is involved in ersatz scholarship; second, that this ersatz scholarship does not serve a proper aim or principle. And, in fact, the approval of the Reichs chancelor is not a proper aim of scholarship. And whatever else one can say about Huizinga, he was not deluded about the nature of National Socialism in 1933.++

Huizinga's position cannot be defended under freedom of speech and seems to go against the ordinary norms of hospitality, but it is wholly intelligible in terms of academic freedom. For, academic freedom recognizes that scholarly speech is rule-bound (and evidence/method-bound) in lots of evolving ways, and that it presupposes judgments of quality on a regular basis. And engaging in ersatz scholarship disrespects the scholarly community and its members. In addition, Huizinga's position presupposes that once a determination of ersatz scholarship has been made, there is a willingness to judge the ends it is serving. And it is pretty clear that these ends are in this case not just incompatible with commitment to truth, but also what we may call the spiritual authority of a university--it must not be seen as a mere servant of power. It is surely not a coincidence, that mere weeks after Hitler acquired dictatorial powers, Huizinga didn't treat Von Leers' past writings as an insignificant curiosity.

Now, Huizinga's stance is not an easy position to defend. It's notable that Huizinga was not being critical of what Von Leers said at the conference (where he was plainly anti-semitic, as Otterspeer notes), but of his previous published writings. But it can help explain the particular animus shown to some scholars who present themselves as scientific authorities, but avoid (say) the normal practices of scholarly peer review and scholarly give and take, and who seem to welcome the protests they generate as good for business or  the political ends they serve. I have come to think this is characteristic of, say, the work of Charles Murray (recall here for evidence; here), but fill in your favorite example. Of course, such judgments can and must be defeasible. (Notice, that Huizinga makes a real effort to establish whether Von Leers is the author of what's attributed to him.) Of course, once one has established that someone is engaged in ersatz scholarship, it is very difficult to treat their ends as somehow redemptive. 

I perfectly grant that a lot of apparent and real contemporary canceling is not like this on contemporary campuses. So, I don't want to suggest Huizinga anticipates all the versions of canceling and the excesses of our age. I also think that it is perfectly legitimate for universities to invite despicable characters in order to facilitate mutual understanding among hostile groups (which is what ISS was trying to promote). Some celebrated universities today have friends of torture and other war criminals on faculty, after all. 

But in virtue of Huizinga's willingness to take academic life seriously, and the fact that his academic achievements were not insignificant (and, for all the limitations we have discovered in them by now, still worth engaging with), I do wish to treat him as a kind of exemplar. Huizinga was rather cautious about involvement in political affairs, and for most of his life he kept his distance from politics. Huizinga's role in the Von Leers incident challenges many common preconceptions about the significance of canceling not the least the claim that the policing of academic speech is somehow extraneous to academic life or motivated by political ideologies or partisanship of various sorts. Unlike those that conflate academic freedom with freedom of speech, Huizinga recognizes that academic speech is governed by rules and an ethos that need to be enforced. And to respect these rules and that ethos, one most be willing to discriminate and judge, and hold some agents accountable for their words such that they are unwelcome on campus. It's incumbent on each academic community to figure out if they are willing to live by such demanding ideals.***

 

Seneca on Slavery, and Political Fortune (Letter 47)

Fortune has the same claim on [licere] slaves and free men alike... Kindly remember that he whom you call your slave sprang from the same seed, is smiled upon by the same skies, and on equal terms with yourself breathes, lives, and dies! [ex isdem seminibus ortum eodem frui caelo, aeque spirare, aeque vivere, aeque mori!] It is just as possible for you to see in him a free-born man as for him to see in you a slave. As a result of the massacres in Marius's day, many a man of distinguished birth, who was taking the first steps toward senatorial rank by service in the army, was humbled by fortune, one becoming a shepherd, another a caretaker of a country cottage...I propose to value them according to their character, and not according to their duties. Each man acquires his character for himself, but accident assigns his duties. [Non ministeriis illos aestimabo sed moribus: sibi quisque dat mores, ministeria casus assignat.]...Show me a man who is not a slave; one is a slave to lust, another to greed, another to ambition, and all men are slaves to fear. [Ostende quis non sit: alius libidini servit, alius avaritiae, alius ambitioni, <omnes spei>, omnes timori.]-Seneca, Letter 47, Translated by Richard Mott Gummere (with minor corrections).

To simplify, we can identify two distinct ways of thinking about slavery in Plato and Aristotle. First, in Aristotle, what we may call authentic slavery maps onto an innate hierarchy of human beings. This kind of view was trotted out in the Spanish conquest of the Americas and, drawing on new iterations in Hume and Montesquieu, still popular in the eighteenth century United Kingdom.

Second, Iin Plato (who, of course, was no stranger to views on natural hierarchy), slavery is a kind of retributive punishment for defeat in aggressive war. And one finds a similar, but more Lockean version of the argument, in  the quite egalitarian and even severe critics of slavery like Cugoano. Having said that, Plato's Socrates (see here and here) clearly circumscribes slavery for those who are from the stock of would-be-permanent-enemies and tries to rule it out among the (Greek)  would-be-permanent-friends. Would be permanent friends are not rooted in human nature, but in the more conventional barriers that separate peoples.*

Third, Seneca (recall Letter 44), embraces natural equality (in the sense of the methodological analytic egalitarian (MAE)), and clearly thinks there is no moral justification for slavery. But strikingly that does not lead him to abolition. It may be worth reflecting on why this is so.

The answer resides in disordered politics. Now, Seneca is explicit that politics is governed by fortune, which can strike anytime. And, in particular, anyone can be subjugated by it. Now, looking at today's headlines one need not be reminded of natural misfortune. But Senecal is treating natural and political misfortune on par; and in political struggle force is decisive. In one sense force does not respect morality. But in another sense it is also a great equalizer--all of us can be subject to it. So, force is the cause or mechanism by which fortune elevates or diminishes each of us. (Seneca even speaks of the wheel of fortune in his play Agamemnon.)

I use 'disordered' because in this very letter (47), Seneca also produces an image of ordered politics. This is possible, when force has settled the balance of power. Then power is channeled to structure order. This image is the patriarchal household (familiares and its father). This order is clearly intimate and habitual, but also hierarchical because in addition to a father it has servants/slaves. And, in fact, Letter 47, which is among the first 50 or so letters, quite lengthy, contains a mini treatise on household management, the art of orderly political leadership [for, "a household was a miniature commonwealth"] -- when the question of force is temporarily settled among moral equals who have been turned into political unequals. 

Because today's post is not on the art of statecraft, I ignore Seneca's teachings. But crucially even this mini-treatise, understands itself as idealized. It explicitly compares itself to the representation of the ancestral, patriarchal family life on the (dated) stage (mimis).+ And, even in this representation, the ordered hierarchy can -- not unlike in carnaval -- be overturned: "They allowed the slaves to attain honours in the household and to pronounce judgment." 

So, Seneca can't see a path toward abolition of slavery because he does not see a path toward the elimination of force as the ultimate decider in political life. And, so, political inequality -- and thereby a variety of servitudes -- is inevitable.

On Gardening, Communism, Eugenics and Competitive Emulation in Thomas More's Utopia.

Their buildings are good, and are so uniform that a whole side of a street looks like one house. The streets are twenty feet broad; there lie gardens behind all their houses. These are large, but enclosed with buildings, that on all hands face the streets, so that every house has both a door to the street and a back door to the garden. Their doors have all two leaves, which, as they are easily opened, so they shut of their own accord; and, there being no property among them, every man may freely enter into any house whatsoever. At every ten years’ end they shift their houses by lots.

They cultivate their gardens with great care, so that they have both vines, fruits, herbs, and flowers in them; and all is so well ordered and so finely kept that I never saw gardens anywhere that were both so fruitful and so beautiful as theirs. And this humor of ordering their gardens so well is not only kept up by the pleasure they find in it, but also by an emulation between the inhabitants of the several streets, who vie with each other. And there is, indeed, nothing belonging to the whole town that is both more useful and more pleasant. So that he who founded the town seems to have taken care of nothing more than of their gardens.--Raphael Hythloday in Thomas More, Utopia, Book II, from Open Utopia.

Echoing the plan for the guardians in Kallipolis (Republic 416ff), there is no genuine private property on Utopia. But there is some stability of possessions. For, every "ten years" they "shift their houses by lots." Sortition represents the egalitarian element of the plan of Utopia. One may well wonder why if all houses are pretty much the same, they need to be assigned by lot at all. But the geography of Utopia is not fully uniform: the city has a river and a hill. And presumably this means that not every spot is equally desirable. (Traditionally, rivers double as sewage and so less desirable to live alongside.)* The lack of permanent private and inherited property has not prevented the improvement of the housing stock. (At the founding of Utopia "their houses were at first low and mean, like cottages, made of any sort of timber, and were built with mud walls and thatched with straw.") 

The easy entry into homes reveal the lack of privacy at the core of Utopian life. Long before Bentham's panopticon, and probably inspired by Plato's Laws, the Utopians  have a society in which they all "live in full view, so that all are obliged both to perform their ordinary task and to employ themselves well in their spare hours." The lack of privacy does generate interesting questions about our understanding about Utopian domestic life because population and household numbers as well as monogamous relations are strictly regulated in Utopia; one wonders how such free access to private spaces fits into the larger scheme. 

That good-breeding is central to Utopia is symbolized by the role of the gardens. The utility and aesthetics of this institution, which we are  told has endured for all of Utopia's existence, is marked by the fact that it is part of the original design for Utopia by the king-conqueror-founder of Utopia (king Utopus). The gardens are means to create, (i) temporary local group solidarity -- at the level of a neighborhood -- and (ii) they channel competitive emulation to proper ends. The former is important because Utopia is the product of a conquest by an alien population and this regular mixing of location increases the chances that the aboriginals and the newcomers will mix and create mutual friendships. (We are explicitly told that after the conquest Utopus put victors and defeated to joint work to create a sense of such commonality.) Concern with the dangers of disunity show up in the design of other institutions, especially the religious practices (see my treatment of Utopus and religion here and here). 

Of course, unity is not the only benefit from these garden competitions. It's also one of the few ways in which the dangerous and natural desire for honor/status can be expressed. (Another is in the manner of one's death.) The desire for honor generates beautiful and fertile gardens. It teaches the virtues of local collaboration and is, thereby, useful (because it generates lots of produce and fruits). This is a nice analogy for the way production is organized in Utopia and the strength of collaborative labor. 

But the significance of these gardens is not just economic and social. The garden also represents the focus on fertility and domestic selection. With regard to fertility, I already noted that population levels are monitored strictly and maintained in static equilibrium (e.g., households are kept between 10 and 16 members); when population grows this generates an imperial and colonial impulse among the Utopians who sent colonies abroad. (The reverse is rarely the case.) On the island population numbers in towns and households are maintained at steady levels (through adoption schemes and population movements).

With regard to domestic selection, the Utopians have an unusual selection procedure (undoubtedly inspired by Laws VI 771ff). I quote the details and explanation:

in choosing their wives they use a method that would appear to us very absurd and ridiculous, but it is constantly observed among them, and is accounted perfectly consistent with wisdom. Before marriage some grave matron presents the bride, naked, whether she is a virgin or a widow, to the bridegroom, and after that some grave man presents the bridegroom, naked, to the bride....But they, on the other hand, wondered at the folly of the men of all other nations, who, if they are but to buy a horse of a small value, are so cautious that they will see every part of him, and take off both his saddle and all his other tackle, that there may be no secret ulcer hid under any of them, and that yet in the choice of a wife, on which depends the happiness or unhappiness of the rest of his life, a man should venture upon trust, and only see about a hands breadth of the face, all the rest of the body being covered, under which may lie hid what may be contagious as well as loathsome.  

The procedure is focused almost entirely on ensuring mutual bodily attraction and preventing hidden physical defects or "deformity" from souring any relationship. Given that monogamy is strictly enforced they think this procedure is required. (Mutual divorce is allowed, but discouraged.) Physical defect is associated with lack of productivity and fertility. It's no surprise that medicine is of all the sciences most honored there; they view it as "one of the pleasantest and most profitable parts of philosophy. In particular, their medicine is focused on restoring patients back to productive health.

While the Utopians explicitly do not practice infanticide (as the best regimes by Plato and Al-Farabi do), they do encourage (government and religious supervised) euthanasia for those that are suffering painfully and can't contribute to the productive economy of Utopian society: they tell such patients, that they are "a burden to themselves and to all about them, and they have really out-lived themselves, they should no longer nourish such a rooted distemper, but choose rather to die since they cannot live but in much misery; being assured that if they thus deliver themselves from torture, or are willing that others should do it."**

One can only speculate what the eugenic effects are of the particular mate selection of the Utopian mechanism. But since they are so focused on the body, it seems they expect couples to select each other on aesthetic and apparent physical grounds. (In other respects, the Utopians are prevented from letting aesthetics be a source of distinction.)  One can predict that the Utopians are voluntarily breeding an attractive -- albeit not especially bright -- and fertile population.+ That is, what collaborative, competitive emulation does for fruits in the gardens, structured individual choices do for human population. 

 

On what is Philosophy

For several reasons, then, effective criticism requires the creation of novel theories. To define philosophy in terms of its critical spirit is not, then, to miss its  constructive side; it is to require it. It should, of course, be said, that not all philosophers go in for criticism and construction in equal proportions. Some-perhaps Russell-do; some-such as Nietzsche- are more knockers-down than standers-up; and some of the great  system-builders-perhaps, Spinoza-are more standers-up than knockers-down. As ever with work, there may be a certain division of labour-just as there are theoreticians and experimentalists in physics. Moreover, some philosophers may well be more interested, subjectively, in constructing their own system of thought than in using it to criticise others-just as some theoretical physicists may be more interested, subjectively, in developing the mathematics of their own theory than in putting it to the test. So it can look as though creating systems of thought is an independent part of the philosophical enterprise. But if the argument I have just given is right, it is not. Objectively, its existence is a corollary of the critical nature of philosophy.--Graham Priest (2006) "What is Philosophy" (p. 206).

For Priest, philosophy is a "critical spirit;" it "is precisely that intellectual inquiry in which anything is open to critical challenge and scrutiny." (202) In her famous (2013) response to, and elaboration of, Priest (not just Priest), Kristie Dotson points out that on Priest's view, philosophy is 1) subversive, 2) unsettling, and 3) of universal import (Priest 2006, 202-203). As the first sentence above makes clear, Priest relies on a distinction between effective and (let's say) not-so-effective criticism. Unfortunately, he does not quite explain what he means by it, but from his use we can infer some of the things he he has in mind.

One sense is intellectual (and this is the one that Priest emphasizes): the criticism becomes more (i) intelligible/sensible and even (ii) visible in light of alternative theory (206). To become intelligible and visible are not the same, and Priest does not treat them as such. This does not exhaust the uses of alternative theories in making criticisms effective. But here I just want to note also the sociological sense: (iii) to offer effective criticism means one cannot be ignored. So, if one cannot produce a rival theory one's criticism is ineffective (one may as well keep quiet). Priest does not really discuss this sociological feature, but it hovers in the background because Priest motivates his account through copious and generous quotation of Kuhn's (and Laudan's) philosophy of science (recall this post). That is, the inability to produce a constructive, rival theory is a stepping stone to the silencing or making ineffective of one's criticism. (Obviously, Dotson alerted me to the significance of this.)

As an aside, it is worth noting that Priest seems to imply that effective criticism with older/discarded/unfashionable theories is also not effective. I suspect, but can't prove, that this, too, is a sociological claim. It presumably relies on the idea that old theories were discarded for good reasons and so can't really be revived. (There is, here, then, a kind of rationality assumption akin to efficient market in ideas about the institute of philosophy; the community rejects/discards theories for solid, in the sense of durable, epistemic reason.)

Now, I don't wish to imply that Priest (the philosopher) is especially keen on silencing folk. His work is notable for its ecumenical, inclusive spirit. (The inaugural lecture I am quoting from has a serious engagement with Derrida's views.) But the demand that a criticism has to be couched in a rival theory has the effective effect of making most criticisms impotent. Of course, Priest would allow that in a colloquium talk (during Q&A) or in a seminar one could raise criticisms without absent a novel theory. (He is very good on the norms that govern such settings.)*

The position also makes it much harder to permit reductio as a legitimate form of philosophy if one ends up in skeptical aporia. This anti-skeptical sensibility is quite clear in his criticisms of Rorty's Derrida:

Are Derrida and Rorty playing with us? I doubt it; but if they are, we have no reason to take them seriously, any more than I have to take seriously the things that you tell me if you area musing me with riddles-'As I was going to St. Ives, I met a man with seven wives ...' This is, in fact, just a special case of a well-known bind that was first observed as long ago as Plato's Theaetetus (171a4-c7). Someone who claims that there is no appropriate notion of truth to which assertion must answer can say anything they like. There is therefore no reason to believe them. They have argued themselves out of the game. (200)

I leave aside here, Priest's rejection of play (recall this post; or Derrida's category of frivolity). But it is not quite right (I was about to say 'true') that "Someone who claims that there is no appropriate notion of truth to which assertion must answer can say anything they like." That really depends on their conception of responsible speech. (And here one may well think there are crucial differences between Rorty and Derrida.) So, for example, if you know that somebody's conception of speech is ethical -- that they care about the prevention of harms, that they recognize the capacity of language to be itself a source of oppression, that they think their words create and bind their selves --, one may well have excellent reason to find their utterances  trustworthy (I almost said 'believable' and 'credible') despite the fact that they are disinclined to invoke truth. This may well require contextual and contrastive judgments of character; of course, such judgments may be inefficient or themselves corrupted.

Either way, Priest's rejection of Derrida is too greedy here, even if it is sociologically effective. Most of Priest's readers will come to his text already agreeing with him that Derrida is not worth taking seriously (even if Priest clearly thinks otherwise). As Dotson implies, once one recognizes that there may be more than one game in town, we may also pay more attention to how the rules of the game we're playing may rule out moves on grounds that narrow the playing field too (ahh) narrowly.

 

On the Inner, Intellectual Life

The intellectual life as portrayed in this film [“The Hedgehog”--ES] has four central features:

1) It is a form of the inner life of a person, a place of retreat and reflection.

2) As such it is withdrawn from the world, where ‘the world' is understood in its (originally Platonic, later Christian) sense as the locus of competition and struggle for wealth, power, prestige, and status.

3) It is a source of dignity—made obvious in this case by Renee's low status as an unattractive working-class woman without children and past child-bearing age.

4) It opens space for communion: it allows for profound connection between human beings.

Of these four features of intellectual life, it is the notion of withdrawal that is centrally important. It is removal of intellectual life from the world that accounts for its true inwardness—an inwardness distinct from the narcissistic inner tracking of one's social standing. It is the withdrawn person's independence from contests over wealth or status that provides or reveals a dignity that can't be ranked or traded. This dignity, along with the universality of the objects of the intellect—that is, that they are available to everyone—is what opens up space for real communion.--Zena Hitz "Freedom and the Intellectual Life," First Things.  [HT Rachena Kamtekar on Facebook]

In her important essay, Zena Hitz addresses the "crisis of confidence among ourselves [that is, Humanists--ES], a crisis caused by a failure of self-understanding. We are haunted by a sense that what we do is somehow inadequate or pointless." Hitz, whose integrity is exemplary, goes on to criticize the instrumental defenses of the Humanities (sometimes she uses 'Liberal Arts'), which she usefully distinguishes between (i) the effective acquisition of wealth, and (ii) those who think they promote social and political goods.

To be sure, in her evident distaste of these instrumental defenses, Hitz ignores the possibility that at least some of these goods may be (foreseeable or occasional) byproducts of a society in which the intellectual life is allowed to flourish. More seriously, she also seems to think that having a rich inner intellectual life is somehow incompatible with a life of social and political activism. This strikes me as prejudice: while it's true that few of us have large enough souls to combine multiple ways of being in the world, it is my experience -- in observing the genuine political activists among us -- that those most devoted to social change also tend to have rich inner, intellectual lives (percolating in the shadows of all that visible activity) that are, in some sense, at odds with the public engagement. Of course, the nature of this inner world can be transformed, even radically transformed, during the vita activa. Hitz also seems to think (but I am less confident about this) that it's only the intellectual life that can generate (and here she echoes the way I read Seneca [recall]) an axiology of respect and communion that is orthogonal to the life of the market-place. But while this may be true, it needs to be argued because it is not obvious--for, it may be also true of other passionately engaged, shared human activities or play outside the trades and public life.

The previous paragraph is no criticism of Hitz's underlying insight that the intellectual life can facilitate an inner life, one that is sometimes withdrawn from the world, even (to use one of her key terms) ascetic. She is right to emphasize this, for it connects to the ways in which reading books and poems, and engaging with the arts, are an escape, even a life-line within the loneliness and other circumstances of one's life. This sense of escape, which is simultaneously a possible connection to others [to stick with reading, reading allows intimacy with an other's mind], was my original path into the life of the mind with a flashlight reading books under the blankets late at night as a child trying to escape the emotional turmoil that surrounded me; it sustains me, even after decades of being disciplined, as a professional philosopher. In order to avoid confusion, the life of a professional (which is governed, in part, by a credit/gift economy, and differences in status and power) is distinct from the inner life. These Impressions are my attempt to make visible that which is caught in the form of limitation between inner sanctum and outer professional.

The question is, of course, if the respect and communion (I would have said, 'friendship') that flows from the existence of an inner life (a) vindicates the intellectual life as such and (b) vindicates it to a skeptical outside world (or hypothetical taxpayer). It is pretty clear that some of Hitz's (named) targets, who offer an instrumental defense of the humanities, are primarily focused on (b). While I share some of her misgivings about these defenses, Hitz is insufficiently generous to them because she understands (with an appeal to Republic 496d--about which  more below) the true or exemplary (Socrates) philosopher "as someone who retreats from public life." (Elsewhere, with a nod to Republic 592ab I have offered a less quietist interpretation of Socrates.) But unless one has some kind of providentialist belief in the survival of good activities, then Hitz's stance engenders fatalism about the survival of the humanities as an institutionalized or corporate (in the medieval sense) way of life as such.

In fact, the examples that Hitz draws from Augustine, Robert Campin Fra Filippo Lippi all presuppose an institutional structure -- a Church committed to the understanding of the word of God – in which the “affinity between the intellectual and spiritual lives” can be taken for granted. Undoubtedly some such affinity still exists for many individuals and some (but as she notes by no means all) Christian universities; but these do not require any new, public vindication of the intellectual life. Once one accepts the need of disciplined engagement with sacred texts, the Humanities are home-free. Of course, it’s the very doubt about that is the central underlying the cause of the idea that the intellectual life is “inadequate or pointless.” To put it too simply (recall): the Humanities have been the victim of their own (debunking) scientific success.

As an aside, like all good essayists, Hitz invites us to re-visit works she discusses, and so I want to go see “The Hedgehog” again. Even so, “The Hedgehog” also comments on its own activity in a way that is ignored by Hitz—the young, bourgeois girl, who is at the center of the narrative, Paloma films her surroundings with her family camera. That is to say, the movie acknowledges the material pre-conditions that make her own activity possible; it does so by reinforcing the implicit contract with the movie’s audience which pretends to sustain the noble ideals of the intellectual life during the performance (and is flattered by the movie that it can partake in it), while not threatening the institutions which prevent the affirmation of those ideals outside the theatre. Paloma’s transformation during the film leaves the “empty bubble that surrounds them” untouched because to do so would be self-defeating (from the perspective of the continued existence of this art).

Let me conclude. Hitz rightly calls us back to the “zeal for Humanist learning,” which springs from an inward experience – I would say ‘joy’ --, that vivifies the intellectual life. This zeal does not need institutions of (note the elevation) higher education and may well be contaminated by them. But in the very passage that Hitz quotes from Plato’s Republic, the person, “who takes refuge” during a “storm of dust or hail driven by the wind,” does so “under a little wall.” At their very best, our universities can be such a little wall—and as we all know, somebody needs to lay the bricks and keep them from keeling over.

The Letter against Derrida's Honorary Degree, re-examined.

The Times (London). Saturday, May 9, 1992

Sir, The University of Cambridge is to ballot on May 16 on whether M. Jacques Derrida should be allowed to go forward to receive an honorary degree. As philosophers and others who have taken a scholarly and professional interest in M. Derrida's remarkable career over the years, we believe the following might throw some needed light on the public debate that has arisen over this issue.

Derrida describes himself as a philosopher, and his writings do indeed bear some of the marks of writings in that discipline. Their influence, however, has been to a striking degree almost entirely in fields outside philosophy – in departments of film studies, for example, or of French and English literature.

In the eyes of philosophers, and certainly among those working in leading departments of philosophy throughout the world, M. Derrida's work does not meet accepted standards of clarity and rigour.

We submit that, if the works of a physicist (say) were similarly taken to be of merit primarily by those working in other disciplines, this would in itself be sufficient grounds for casting doubt upon the idea that the physicist in question was a suitable candidate for an honorary degree.

Derrida's career had its roots in the heady days of the 1960s and his writings continue to reveal their origins in that period. Many of them seem to consist in no small part of elaborate jokes and puns (‘logical phallusies’ and the like), and M. Derrida seems to us to have come close to making a career out of what we regard as translating into the academic sphere tricks and gimmicks similar to those of the Dadaists or of the concrete poets.

Certainly he has shown considerable originality in this respect. But again, we submit, such originality does not lend credence to the idea that he is a suitable candidate for an honorary degree.

Many French philosophers see in M. Derrida only cause for silent embarrassment, his antics having contributed significantly to the widespread impression that contemporary French philosophy is little more than an object of ridicule.

Derrida's voluminous writings in our view stretch the normal forms of academic scholarship beyond recognition. Above all – as every reader can very easily establish for himself (and for this purpose any page will do) – his works employ a written style that defies comprehension.

Many have been willing to give M. Derrida the benefit of the doubt, insisting that language of such depth and difficulty of interpretation must hide deep and subtle thoughts indeed.

When the effort is made to penetrate it, however, it becomes clear, to us at least, that, where coherent assertions are being made at all, these are either false or trivial.

Academic status based on what seems to us to be little more than semi-intelligible attacks upon the values of reason, truth, and scholarship is not, we submit, sufficient grounds for the awarding of an honorary degree in a distinguished university.

Yours sincerely,

Barry Smith
(Editor, The Monist)

Hans Albert (University of Mannheim)
David Armstrong (Sydney)
Ruth Barcan Marcus (Yale)
Keith Campbell (Sydney)
Richard Glauser (Neuchâtel)
Rudolf Haller (Graz)
Massimo Mugnai (Florence)
Kevin Mulligan (Geneva)
Lorenzo Peña (Madrid)
Willard van Orman Quine (Harvard)
Wolfgang Röd (Innsbruck)
Karl Schuhmann (Utrecht)
Daniel Schulthess (Neuchâtel)
Peter Simons (Salzburg)
René Thom (Burs-sur-Yvette)
Dallas Willard (Los Angeles)
Jan Wolenski (Cracow)

Internationale Akademie für Philosophie, Obergass 75, 9494S Schaan, Liechtenstein. [Quoted from here.]

Today, I presented a guest-lecture in which I mentioned my transformative experience, qua philosopher of economics, with a distinguished, mathematical economist who used themes from Derrida (and innovated with them) in order to explain and articulate a philosophy of mathematical economics and, thereby, also made feel what the, as it were, life-world of a mathematical economist qua theorist is like. This encounter -- in the years when I was an untenured professor -- made me revisit my conviction that Derrida is bullshit, and made me realize that my acquaintance with Derrida's writings could be charitably described as very indirect. I had accepted the epistemic authority of others (on Derrida) without much thought, and it made me examine how much of my intellectual self-understanding was handed down by others without my conscious mediation. In preparing the lecture I looked up the famous letter protesting the intention to award a honorary degree to Derrida by Cambridge University.

It is sometimes noted that it is extremely unlikely that most of the signers had read much more of Derrida than I had by the time I left graduate school. What is not noted is that it is extremely unlikely that these signers had read much of each other. (Obviously there are exceptions! [No need to remind me that Quine and Barcus Marcus were pretty familiar with each other's work.]) They are an eclectic mix of anglo-phone analytical philosophers, anglo-phone 'analytical' historians of 19th and 20th century philosophy, european and anglophone Husserlians, European 'Austrian' philosophers, European analytical philosophers, and a few whom I wouldn't know how to characterize. Moreover, the use of 'European' is in some sense an anachronism because in the early 1990s there was no shared philosophical space (of the technocratic sort familiar from ERC grant proposals and journal rankings). As it happens, according to Barry Smith's own testimony, the future of European philosophy in the years after the fall of the Berlin wall is one of the main issues at stake; Smith was worried that after the collapse of political Marxism there would be an embrace of Derrida style "nihilism" at the expense of other pre-Marxist (local) "traditions." Smith's letter failed to prevent the awarding of the honorary degree to Derrida. But from the vantage point of two decades, we can say that the take-over of European philosophy by Deconstruction did not happen. As philosophical politics go that's a victory for Smith.

What's striking about the letter is that it tacitly appeals to canons of normal science (hence the analogy with physics): the disciplinary experts drawn from "leading departments" decide merit based on "accepted standards." (Accepted by who? Well, of course, by the members of the leading departments at "distinguished" universities.) The self-serving and self-reinforcing, conservative nature of such reasoning -- and let's stipulate that the letter only expresses uncontroversial truth --  is by now obvious. Known "influence" outside leading departments counts for nothing. We have to remind ourselves that it is not too difficult to construe narratives in light of these norms of "merit," that Descartes, Locke, Hume, Thoreau, Nietzsche would have also fallen obviously short. Given that  professional philosophers operate in a zero-sum institutional environment (for jobs, status, time, appointments, funding, etc.) it is by no means obvious that they even have incentives to collect the kind of evidence that would allow them to offer such utterances in an epistemically reliable matter.

Even if one allows that "clarity and rigour" are the true touchstone of quality in the "eyes of philosophers" (and one ignores my reservations), it is, in fact, somewhat amusing that it's only very recent affair -- with the rise of meta-philosophy -- that the methods of at least some of the signers are being scrutinized with care and attention. Even the friend of clarity and rigour can recognize other criteria (truth, fruitfulness, social/moral utility, etc.) that may trump "clarity and rigour."

Another striking feature of the letter is the utter contempt for the "Dadaists or of the concrete poets" as contributions to philosophy. (What philosophy, if not nihilism? Well, I am no expert, of course, but it be useful to see these as a contribution to the experimental art of living.) Evidently, philosophy is a serious enterprise. Now one need not be friend of Žižek (who makes Derrida seem highminded), to recognize that one, thereby, is in no position to recognize that sometimes -- maybe all the time in our fallen world in which our hands are sullied with innocent blood everywhere -- the stance of the jokester is the only morally responsible stance; undoubtedly there are other more earnest stances that are worth exploring, too.  I am not claiming this is so, but ruling this out a priori is, well, a philosophical mistake.

As an aside, the important point -- lost on the signers -- is that since Socrates we know that all genuine (and ersatz) philosophy always runs the risk of "ridicule" and that such ridicule is unavoidable absent philosophers-kings.

Finally, it is a bit odd (even if indirectly very clear) to see in a letter devoted to defending the standards of clarity and rigour, the same writing characterized as defying "comprehension" -- there is universal consensus ("every reader") assumed over this --, yet also being, somehow, "semi-intelligible" and being "either false or trivial." (Yes, I am sure, that with considerable effort, you -- you are well-trained, after all -- can turn this into a consistent triplet with the help of elegant distinctions.)

Undoubtedly, the infelicities I have noted in the letter to the editor are the consequence of haste, consensus formation among an eclectic group of professional philosophers, and editorial interventions. The letter got polemical work done, and, I am open to the argument that Derrida's philosophical politics merited this kind of response. But in so far as I have had this letter and effort praised to me when I was a student (and heard claims like these marshaled against other philosophers that needed to be rejected), I note that it is more revealing about the commitments of the signers than either about Derrida or the politics of honorary award granting.

 

 

 

On Being a Hypocrite; or on True Teaching

I could swagger about Fortitude and the Contempt of Riches as much as Seneca himself.---Mandeville, Fable of the Bees (recall).

Far different is the purpose of those who are speech-making and trying to win the approbation of a throng of hearers, far different that of those who allure the ears of young men and idlers by many sided or fluent argumentation; philosophy teaches us to act, not to speak; it exacts of every one that he should live according to his own law [facere docet philosophia, non dicere, et hoc exigit, ut ad legem suam quisque vivat, ne orationi vita dissentiat vel ipsa inter se vita], that his life should not be out of harmony with his words, and that, further, there is unity to the color of one's actions [unus sit omnium actio num color].  This, I say, is the highest duty and the highest proof of wisdom, - that deed and word should be in accord, that a man should be equal to himself under all conditions, and always the same.--Seneca, Letter XX (slightly modified translation).

I am no stranger to falling short of my personal ideals (recall) and know plenty of well-established professional philosophers who are moralistic yet routinely exhibit lack of basic decency. I know extremely kind and generous folk who advocate hardship and worse for less articulate and connected others (in the name of utility, good governance, etc.). I know courageous advocates of civic liberties who fail their students by their incapacity at sublimating intellectual eros. So I did not expect it to find it so difficult to continue my series on Seneca's Letters and write about Letter XX in which Seneca addresses the discord between words and actions (and, thus, extends the theme of Letter XIX, recall). Given that Seneca is notorious for the mismatch between words and deeds, it is tempting to read this letter as Seneca's Apologia Pro Vita Sua addressing the known criticisms of his activities under Nero in which he grew rich in the service of a tyrant.

Upon extended reflection: the key to the letter is the implied distinction between being a teacher and being a philosopher (aka being wise and, explicitly, being great-souled [ingentis animi est]). Seneca identifies himself as a teacher not as a philosopher. He teaches, not unlike Plato [and unlike Nietzsche], in part, by pointing away toward proper exemplars (e.g., Demetrius the Cynic) and by drawing on Epicurean themes. Such exemplars have a three-fold function: (a) they offer an existence-proof that a comportment with integrity, that is, a harmony between right action and words, is humanly possible; (b) he holds up exemplars to be emulated (recall my treatment of Letter 5); (c) it allows him to deflect, in part, the charge of hypocrisy--for he very clearly implies that he falls short of the comportment with integrity while not being so corrupted (by the axiology of the marketplace/public [recall Letter 14]) that he cannot recognize true wisdom in others.

More important, from (c) it follows that (d) Seneca thinks he can bypass the more fundamental version of Meno's paradox (see Abe Stone); he can teach some virtue to Lucilius without being fully virtuous himself in a context where, as he implies, ordinary social institutions do not facilitate even such limited virtue. We may even add that Seneca shows some wisdom by recognizing his own limitations not only in light of exacting pure standards of integrity, but also in light of available human instantiations. (It is, thus, important that Demetrius is not merely a mythical or historical figure.)

So, Seneca knows he falls short of and he does not hold himself up as the standard for comportment with integrity. Thus the traditional charge against Seneca is (somewhat) misguided. Seneca may even hint that he knows intimately what he is warning against (do as I say, not as I did) and, thereby, (against Deleuze's protests) become a better teacher for some pupils (say, ambitious types like Lucilius). It is, after all, by no means obvious that Demetrius un-mediated by, say, a Seneca would be recognized as wise by an untutored pupil. Sincerity of even the noblest expressions does not guarantee moral approval, after all.

Ever since Socrates's trial we know that students' actions can reflect badly on the quality and reputation of their teachers' activities. Seneca embraces this fact--again, like Plato who shows us some of Socrates's more disastrous teaching methods (that's compatible with admiration of Socrates). So, it turns out, that Seneca is closer to the modern university professor than one might initially have thought. Like most of us, he is no holy man, and he does not expect to be evaluated as one.

Rather, Seneca correctly expects to be evaluated, in part, on the consequences of his teaching on his pupils (that is, the addressee and other, later readers of his Letters) and the societies their actions help shape. This is no eternal moral-get-out-of-jail-free-pass. Rather (at least late in life) Seneca embraces that he lives by a rather demanding standard that in addition to complex skills requires considerable luck (recall) and turns each of our teaching and writing lives into trials in which we are judged, fairly (with satire) or not, as causes of unknown (and potentially extended) multiplicity of effects (recall).* We may, then even say -- echoing Spinoza (Ethics 1p36 [recall]) -- that Seneca claims there is true glory [mea enim gloria erit] in being in virtue of such effects.

 

Novels are bad for you!

From learning to pity the misfortunes of the heroes of our novels, we wind up feeling too much pity for our own.--Borges (The End, translated by A. Hurley) [HT Michael Deckard]

If one grants that moral education is a possible consequence of engaged reading of novels, then an immoral education is also possible. This thought is familiar enough from Platonizing concerns about being stained in enduring fashion by entering into and, thereby imitating, characters that practice wickedness (recall). Borges takes the less familiar road, as if to say, who needs Philosophers to indict poetry?* His narrator does not explain how practicing pitying (fictional) others may lead to too much practice of pity of self. The problem may be that reading cultivates excessive reliance on a single virtue or psychological mechanism (let's call this the overshooting thesis); but upon second thought, I suspect that the point is that novels do not cultivate other virtues or psychological mechanisms that prevent excessive self-pity (let's call this the incomplete virtues thesis); such virtues are self-command, patience, cultivated hatred, etc. --unsurprisingly, these are all exhibited in The End.

To avoid confusion: having no self-pity at all -- Borges's Recabarren -- is also excessive. It may easily turn into habituated un-reflective "living in the present, as animals do." That is, pity, of others and self, may, as Adam Smith teaches, prompt thought; in particular if properly cultivated it will make us seek out the contextually salient causes that prompt our response.**

One may think that it is a cruel joke to interpret Borges's The End as a (lyrical) contest with Plato's Meno about the very possibility of moral education (see this piece by Stone). It is [spoiler alert], after all, about a deadly duel in which a prior killing is to be avenged. But the duel is preceded by a short exchange:

"I gave [my kids some advice," he said, "which is something you can never get too much of and doesn't cost a lot. I told them, among other things, that a man ought not to go spilling another man's blood."

A slow chord preceded the black man's response: "Good advice, too. That way they
won't grow up to be like us."

"Not like me, anyway," said the stranger

Is it possible to teach virtue if one is not virtuous by saying, as it were, Do as I say, but do not imitate me? Given the rarity of genuine virtue the hopeful answer to this question  is 'yes;' because I am professional educator, self-interest and public prudence tempt me into claiming the affirmative, but it is unclear what the grounds of such hope might be.+

Immersed in Play (or Of Philosophy and Playgrounds)

A four-year-old can be immersed in play.

When my son meets school-friends at playgrounds, they often play tag.* As seasoned tag players know, there are many variations. One striking feature of the game is that they sometimes change variants in mid play just in virtue of somebody calling out a new rule. Rather than seeing this as a violation of fair play (my spectatorial reaction), the other kids adjust quickly often seamlessly and with mental agility, but not always--sometimes there is resistance and the game halts. In principle, whole new rules can be introduced in mid play, but if there are more than a few kids this tends to stop the flow of the game. There are, of course, games of tag that have ultimate winners, and that approximate war-games, but the four to five year olds that play with my son favor the indefinite type of game of tag. The point of tag is to stay in that joyful flow. (That's compatible with momentary anguish and fear, of course.) 

As an aside, the moralists and humanitarians are right that there is too much injustice and cruelty in the world. But at the risk of giving offense, the most damning thing that can be said about our political and economic orders is that even among the privileged, we do not cultivate joyful flow, which would be self-justifying, and encourage the substitution of practices that facilitate delusion about this. Among the saddest sights is to see otherwise capable adults embrace escapist activity that they claim generates joy, but that produces loneliness and anxiety. (Fill in your favorite exemplars.) Sometimes it takes a novelist to show us this sight, and then turn it into comedy. 

At the playground, when new rules are introduced in mid-play, the game may halt for 'discussion.' This is a fragile moment--things can as easily devolve into mutual recrimination or into a cascading laughing fit.  It's not to deny that 'discussion' can restore the game, but it never appears to be a foregone conclusion.