Digressions&Impressions

On Patočka, T.S. Eliot and the Treason of the Intellectuals during the Culture Wars: with a surprising cameo of José Benardete

[I am phasing out D&I at typepad. This post was first published at: digressions.impressions.substack here. To receive new posts and support my work  consider becoming a paid subscriber at <digressionsimpressions.substack.com>]

Perhaps because I recognize in myself a warmth toward Spinozism, but I am always inordinately pleased when I can recognize and act on the play of chance. After a raucous pub lecture to the members of student-club of the political science department (aptly named Machiavelli) in the Amsterdam red light district, I received Jan Patočka' Living in Problematicity -- a slim volume of essays (selected and translated by Eric Manton) -- as a gift with a touching inscription from a former student. I knew that Patočka (1907-1977) was a philosopher and a courageous co-founder of Charta 77. His clandestine discussion groups and his lectures at the under-ground university are legendary. I had never read anything by him, although his work is becoming increasingly accessible in English.

Yesterday, while in transit, I read "Platonism and Politics," which is a very short meditation on Bendas' La Trahison des clercs (1927; often translated as: The Treason of the Intellectuals); recall this post). Because in preparing a syllabus for a class on conservatism, I had stumbled on a 1944 note by T.S. Eliot engaging with Benda, I had just been musing about the use of Benda by contemporary intellectuals -- I tweeted this on june 4 (and no, Tweeting is not Thinking) -- so this post was born.

I don't mean to suggest I randomly muse about Benda. As regular readers know, I write in a philosophical tradition that feels entitled to be unlearned. And so in our controversies over 'public [facing] philosophy' and 'responsible speech' we end up repeating, over and over again, the same trite clichés without any sense of embarrassment. And this lack of shame is, of course, characteristic of a modern clerisy (in Benda's sense). Since I am a blogger, feel free to read this as self-indictment. Okay, so much for set up.

Now, for sociological reasons I do not fully understand, while Benda is wholly unknown inside my tradition, he does repeatedly get invoked in relatively serious public essays. With the help of Google, here's a few examples of the kind of thing I have in mind:

• Mark Lilla December 7, 2021 Tablet Magazine (taken from his intro to a re-issue): Julien Benda’s The Treason of the Intellectuals, an essential intervention in 20th-century debates about intellectual responsibility, is the second sort of book. Cast into the agitated waters of European politics between the two world wars, it still floats ashore every decade or so, attracting readers with its stirring call to the independent life of the mind, free from the lures of power and authority.... he makes a practical case against practicality, an engaged case against political engagements.

• Elie Kedourie, August 1992, Commentary: The phenomena against which Benda was writing were much more visible in France than in England or the U.S. There was no movement here comparable to the Action Française in its intellectual prestige or in its spread within the academy and among the intellectual classes....But in today’s English-speaking world (as indeed in today’s France), we do now see a political commitment within the academy having to do neither with the character and definition of the body politic nor with the class struggle.

• George Monbiot, 14th May 2013, the Guardian: In 1927 the French philosopher Julien Benda published a piercing attack on the intellectuals of his day. They should, he argued in La Trahison des Clercs (the treason of the scholars) act as a check on popular passions. Civilisation, he claimed, is possible only if intellectuals stand in opposition to the demands of political “realism” by upholding universal principles. “Thanks to the scholars,” Benda maintained, “humanity did evil for two thousand years, but honoured good.”.. the need for a disinterested class of intellectuals which acts as a counterweight to prevailing mores. 

• Antony Julius (reviewing Berman), May 14, 2010, The New York Time: The masterwork, however, is still ­Julien Benda’s “Treason of the Intellectuals.” This book, written in 1927 by one of the leading French intellectuals of the early 20th century, may be regarded as the inaugural work of the line....For Benda, the intellectual betrays his vocation when he compromises his commitment to universalist values. The temptation to make such compromises, he argues, lies principally in the appeal of national sentiment, to which intellectuals are quick to subordinate themselves. And the role they assume as nationalists is to conceptualize political hatreds. 

I listed these because each of these essays is worth reading as a window on their own polemical moment as well as a kind of an evolution of a meme/trope. What's notable here is the subtle shift in character among what Benda was supposedly inveighing against: political engagement by intellectuals; academic activists/political commitment; a betrayal of universal principles understood as disinterestedness; a betrayal of universal principles in the service of nationalism. I don't mean to suggest there is a mystery here: each essay has slightly different polemical contextual target(s) and so each also subtly rejigs Benda to their own local political-polemical ends (including, in the case of Lilla, criticizing Benda). That's what intellectuals do, after all, right? In general, on a left-right axis, the left-intellectuals will invoke Benda to criticize intellectuals serving power and moneyed-interests, while the right-leaning intellectuals will invoke Benda to criticize intellectuals who serve some (what we now call) social justice cause. All sides (correctly) invoke Benda when criticizing a nationalist-friendly intellectual, unless it's their own nation and they are prudently silent.

Now, what I like about Patočka's little essay (it’s shorter than some of my digressions) is that he inscribes Benda in a debate over the reception of Platonism (or "true philosophizing in general"), and to what degree what one might call the possibility of serving a certain (spiritual) kind of 'higher calling" (in the sense of Republic 487a to which Patočka appeals explicitly) associated with it (but rooted in philosophy), is still possible after Nietzsche (who goes unmentioned) and his death of God (which is intimated in various ways) in modern conditions. In context, it's clear that this Platonism is associated with an interesting mélange of Plato and Husserl. I quote from Manton's translation to give you a sense of what he has in mind:

The ultimate meaning of Platonism is, I think, a spiritual universum, into which a person penetrates by means of a certain purely inner and active (but absolutely not mythical) purification. This purification or philosophy is at the same time the most important and most intensive praxis, solely able to give to the life of the individual as well as of society a necessary unity, to give life that inner center which one potentially keeps within oneself as the unfulfilled meaning of one’s life. Thus Plato’s political conception briefly means this: (1) there exists a single and coherent, truly human, spiritual behavior named philosophy; (2) the “object” of philosophy is not primarily the contents of this world; (3) the right of philosophy to establish norms for life consists in its inner truthfulness, in its absolute character; (4) all of human activity, not founded on philosophy and not illuminated throughout by philosophy, has the character of dissatisfaction, falsehood, and a lack of inner order.

Now, I am not interested here in trying to trace each of these claims back to Plato or, by contrast, to appeal to contemporary scholarship to show that any of this is only in a very attenuated sense to be found in Plato. Rather, let's stipulate with Patočka that this captures something of a familiar ideal. For Patočka, Benda's book raises two-fold question: the first is the Nietzschean one, is this ideal dead? The second-fold is, does the ideal “exist in a certain modified form even in our own lives?" Judging by the essays linked above, the answer to the first is: yes. And to the second, no. As Patočka suggests, Platonism so conceived "can only live where those vital hypothesis discussed above on which Platonism is built also exist."

Now Patočka is clear that his conception of Platonism is itself political in a higher sense (familiar, (recall) I hasten to add from Plato Republic,  592ab), although he gives a humanist spin on it (this is the debt to Husserl whom he quotes). Interestingly enough, for Patočka this entails that the impact of philosophy in life is "the permeation, gradually and usually distortedly, of philosophical concepts into the common human consciousness." This turns Platonism into a kind of Enlightenment project, despite the fact that philosophy itself is "a matter of the few." And, in fact, Patočka calls for a kind of 'new Enlightenment' ground in a new actualization of Platonism, while simultaneously criticizing what we might call the idol of collectivism. (I wouldn't be surprised if the essay were mined by biographers who see in it a prefiguration of his later courage under Stalinism with Czech characteristics.)

For, Patočka (who thinks Benda is confused on the proper task of intellectuals and the role of Platonism in this higher sense) what Benda get right (we might say) ‘formally’ is that proper myth, that is not falsehood but rather "an imaginative vestment of truth," is a useful instrument in the permeation of these concepts and for those (collectives) who do not wish to live a spiritual life. The main point of Patočka's essay is to call attention to the need for myths that express or manifest 'poetical, philosophical yearning.' The Spinozist in me understands this yearning, and Patočka grasps what makes Benda's diatribe so enduringly fascinating.

For Patočka the task of the clerisy is to use myths to help spread this new Enlightenment. This is not far removed (as I argue in this lecture) from how my friend José Benardete understood his task in his book on Infinity (although as always with José there are complications), so if you want an example of how this is supposed to work in the hands of a metaphysician go read it. I could stop here.

Interestingly and surprisingly enough, T.S. Eliot of all people, ridicules Benda: "Benda, as I remember, seemed to expect everybody to be a sort of Spinoza." In context, it's clear that Eliot's 'everybody' is 'every member of the clerisy.' Now, I lifted this sentence from the 1944 piece, which as a subtitle has ‘On the Place and Function of the Clerisy;" one of the questions Eliot asks in it is (unsurprisingly given that subtitle) what is the function of the clerisy. One of the proper functions of the intellectuals for him is to promote the right sort of change: "the chief merits of the clerical elite is that it is an influence for change." This leaves underspecified what change they promote, but it is at least sometimes compatible with Patočka's position.

In addition, according to Eliot it is, thus, inevitable that the clerisy ends up in conflict with the forces that defend the status quo: "To some extent, therefore, there is, and I think should be, a conflict between class and clerical elite." Eliot tacitly here presupposes that the ruling class is change averse. But even ruling classes can promote change if they think it will benefit them--this is something quite familiar in our own time; it does not follow we can always identify whether the clerisy is betraying its true vocation.

As I have hinted above, Eliot decouples the function of the clerisy from a higher calling. I don't mean to suggest he completely decouples it because for him "The clerisy can help to develop and modify [culture]; they have a part to play, but only a part, in its transmission." And presumably Eliot, who is no stranger to Platonism, does think that a culture might have a connection to a higher calling. In fact, when it does, then 'culture' just means an imaginative vestment of truth. Fair enough.

Now, Eliot recognizes a form of pluralism that Patočka finds difficult to accommodate (although it is compatible with his Platonism). For intellectuals share in being outcasts, and "are apt to share a discontent with things as they are, but the ways in which they want to change them will be various and often completely opposed to each other." And while it is tempting to say that the opposition is merely over means (again compatible with Platonism), it is, of course, not impossible that the disagreement is also over ends which begins to look incompatible with Platonism if the unity of the virtues is broken as Eliot himself suggests in the remainder of his notes (and hard to disagree with in 1944).*

However, this all must seem rather quaint. Ours is not an age that wishes to gamble on a revitalized humanism. The transgender-wars take place when capital and the heirs of the once noble tradition of the radical philosophers are betting on transhumanism. Even the very idea of a human right, let alone a culture in the bildung sense assumed by Eliot is suspect. Talking about culture without naming the social sins on which it rests seems also a real betrayal of humanity. No high minded stance seems to be able to survive scrutiny.

But it is no better that the poetical, philosophical yearning(s) are met exclusively by hucksters, or worse. And if Platonism is wholly exhausted, what now? And while I dislike the word ‘problematicity,’ perhaps, if you follow me on this substack voyage, this is the question, if it is a single question, we must answer or the ‘problematic’ we must resolve.

• This first appeared at: <On Patočka, T.S. Eliot and the Treason of the Intellectuals during the Culture Wars: with a surprising cameo of José Benardete (substack.com)> a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

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*See especially his treatment "clerical small fry, we have what is called the intelligentsia...in Cairo and such places."

 

On Hazony vs Kirk, and original sin in modern conservatism

[I am phasing out D&I at typepad. This post was first published at: digressions.impressions.substack here. To receive new posts and support my work  consider becoming a paid subscriber at <digressionsimpressions.substack.com>]

In Conservatism: A Rediscovery (2022), Yoram Hazony treats Russell Kirk's (1953) The Conservative Mind as "the most important book by a postwar American conservative." (Recall my series of posts on Hazony's book recall the first one here; here the second; here the third one; the fourth; and, fifth, on Hazony’s critique of Meyer here.) In particular, Hazony notes that "Kirk’s account of the Anglo-American tradition is in many respects similar" to his. They both praise Burke and the American Federalist party, although with important differences lurking in the latter to which I return below. 

Now Hazony draws out four important areas of overlap between his own conservatism and Kirk's. I quote Hazony:

Kirk emphasized that, for conservatives, (i) “custom, convention, and old prescription are checks both upon man’s anarchic impulse and upon the innovator’s lust for power”—although they also recognize that “prudent change is the means of social preservation.” Conservatives regard (ii) religion as indispensable, including “belief in a transcendent order” and the recognition that “political problems, at bottom, are religious and moral problems.” They see that (iii) “freedom and property are closely linked,” and that the attempt to eliminate “orders and classes” from society could only end in tyranny. And they view human life as (iv) a “proliferating variety and mystery” that cannot readily be reduced to universal formulas. Kirk regarded these principles as being given voice, most importantly, by Edmund Burke in Britain and by John Adams and the Federalist Party in America.

So far so good. Hazony adds that "Kirk made a magnificent start to reinvigorating the Anglo-American conservative tradition in America," (emphasis added.) This 'start' clearly implies there is unfinished business. In fact, Hazony also thinks that on two issues Kirk drove Anglo-American conservatism in the wrong direction: "The first is Kirk’s emphasis on regional traditions."

In fact, while Kirk opts for John Adams, Hazony has a clear fondness for Hamilton. This shapes a dramatically different view of the content of American nationalism they are willing to defend. Kirk sees in Hamilton an aggressive "empire-builder." I return to this below.

And the "second, more serious problem with his historiography" is to be found in Kirk's "diligent efforts to retrieve what was supposedly worthy in Southern political thinkers who provided the intellectual framework for defending chattel slavery [which] was a mistake from which American conservatism has not yet entirely recovered." What ties the two together is Kirk's unwillingness to see "some local traditions" as "morally questionable." Hazony clearly suspects Kirk is a moral relativist and because of that incapable of criticizing slavery. I return to Kirk's attitude toward slavery below.

As an aside, there is also another line of criticism of Kirk in Hazony: that is centered on Kirk's willingness to participate in fusionism, which for Hazony entails "nothing other than the view that one should be a liberal in one’s political commitments, and a Christian in private." I also return to this below.

Now, it is worth noting that one important reason Kirk admires Burke is that he understands Burke's role in the Hastings affair as a defense of Indian local customs; Hastings "had ridden rough-shod over native religious tradition and ceremonial in India." In fact, throughout The Conservative Mind, Kirk is scathing of (utilitarian) liberal imperialism which imposes uniformity on subject peoples. While critical of Macaulay, he admires "Burke's reforms" because they "were intended to purge the English in India from the diseases of arbitrary power and avarice, to secure to the Indians their native laws and usages and religions." So, it is not surprising that Hazony reads Kirk as a moral relativist of sorts.

But I don't think that's the right reading of Kirk for two reasons (the second being more important than the first). First, Kirk thinks local customs ought to be defended if and only if they involve sincere, socially inherited religious creed because the contents of which are principles of political and social order (see (i-ii) in the passage quoted from Hazony above). But he also thinks Christianity is the superior religion. I quote a passage in which Kirk attributes this precise view to Burke (without dissenting from it): "Christianity is the highest of religions; but every sincere creed is a recognition of divine purpose in the universe, and all mundane order is dependent upon reverence for the religious creed which a people have inherited from their fathers." So the problem with civilizational, imperial liberalism (of the sort familiar from J.S. Mill) is that it lacks understanding of a proper political art of ruling according to Kirk. Violently suppressing existing religion just opens the door to a kind of social nihilism. Kirk's stance is not an expression of moral relativism, but of political prudence.

As an aside, while Kirk is a firm critic of liberal and other homogenizing imperialisms (including "the tremendous imperialistic instinct of modern democracy"), and thinks that "generally imperial expansion is full of risks for any conservative society" it is sometimes defensible. In context he is, for example, not uncritical of Disraeli's imperialism. In fact, while the whole book is a frontal attack on really existing home-grown American imperialism, I read The Conservative Mind as a call for a reformed more prudent imperialism. About that some other time.

If he understands Christianity as the highest religion, then Kirk is not a moral relativist. The key teaching of Christianity is for Kirk the existence and ineliminable fact of original sin. It’s probably the most important concept in The Conservative Mind. As Kirk puts it, in the context of discussing Irving Babbitt’s views, “The saving of civilization is contingent upon the revival of something like the doctrine of original sin.” And before you stop reading here, there is something important worth salvaging from this position.

While Hazony is not adverse to using 'sin' and its cognates, 'original sin' is not part of Hazony's moral vocabulary in his Conservatism: A Rediscovery whereas it is the key organizing principle to Kirk's social philosophy. For, one of the crescendos of The Conservative Mind is Kirk's admiration for Nathanial Hawthorne's "chief accomplishment: impressing the idea of sin upon a nation which would like to forget it." In fact from a political perspective, we also find in this account one of Kirk's most important commitments. He praises Hawthorne's realization "that projects of reform must begin and end with the human heart; that the real enemy of mankind is not social institution, but the devil within us; that the fanatic improver of mankind through artificial alteration is, very commonly, in truth a destroyer of souls." (emphasis added.)*

Kirk's focus on original sin also qualifies to what degree he thinks one should be a Christian merely in private. As the previous paragraph suggests he very much believes that the devil within must be tamed by all social institutions working in tandem. And while this is compatible with a privatized Christianity, it does not require it and probably works better with a more robust public Christianity according to Kirk. Kirk is an admirer of various forms of Catholic social theory and a critic of certain strands of individualizing Protestantism. One may see in Shklar’s liberalism of fear a liberal attempt to struggle with Kirk’s diagnosis.

Be that as it may, at this point one may grant that I have provided considerable reason to allow that Kirk was no moral relativist. But in a way, one may think, this makes Kirk's obtuseness on slavery worse. So, Hazony is right to reject Kirk.

Before I continue: a reminder to the reader unfamiliar with my writings that I view myself as on-looker in the debates among conservatives. My own interest in these is primarily understanding and also a curiosity if anything can be learned from conservative self-reflection and understanding. I am not an impartial spectator, but I am also not an advocate for conservatism. Okay, having said that, there is something in Kirk worth paying attention to especially, alas, in the bits that are most egregious to our moral sensibility.

Now, it is true that Kirk claims that "we shall try to keep clear here of that partisan controversy over slavery." And he does so because he is eager to discuss "those conservative ideas which Randolph and Calhoun enunciated." One may well think that Hazony is right that such bracketing is a moral disaster and, when it comes to Randolph and Calhoun, impossible, if only because Randolph and Calhoun themselves tend to bring the issues together.

As it happens, Kirk is rather critical of Randolph and Calhoun and their support for slavery. He writes, "the slavery controversy confuses and blurs any analysis of political principle in the South: the historian can hardly discern where, for instance, real love for state sovereignty leaves off and interested pleading for slave property commences. Both Randolph and Calhoun deliberately entangled the debate on tariffs (at bottom a question of whether the industrial or the agricultural interest should predominate in America), and the debate on local liberties, with the debate on slavery; for thus they were able to rally to their camp a great body of slave-holders who otherwise might have been indifferent to the issues at stake." So, he recognizes that his own bracketing is not the political strategy pursued by Randolph and Calhoun.

Now, a skeptic of my interpretation might suggest that while Kirk clearly admires local liberties, it is not obvious he rejects slavery. But he goes on to claim explicitly: "Human slavery is bad ground for conservatives to make a stand upon." This is not a local relativist speaking, or a friend of slavery. In fact, later, when discussing John Quincy Adams (of whom Kirk has no particular fondness), he adds that "he was right in detesting slavery."

Kirk also recognizes that Randolph and Calhoun were at least in part motivated to defend slavery (although Kirk also thinks that Calhoun was aware of the dangers of slavery). But Kirk thinks "one may lift" their ideas "of their transitory significance and fit them to the tenets of conservatism in our day." That is, Kirk explicitly allows that the origin of some conservative ideas is highly immoral, but (with a nod to the genetic fallacy) that that they can do good work in a different context.

This is a highly unpopular position today. In our political culture tracing contemporary views to bad previous political positions (slavery, eugenics, imperialism, racism, etc.) has become a sure route to disqualifying the opposition. And again, I don't mean to defend Kirk's blinders. He seems to lack warmth for the plight of the slaves, and is not much perturbed by racism. But if you are all in on original sin it is no surprise to find bits of wisdom alongside awful commitments—and I have some sympathy toward this methodological stance.

Kirk also clearly detests Northern abolitionism as species of fanaticism. He seems to be attracted to views he associates with President Franklin Pierce that hoped that slavery would wither away by itself. But that's because Kirk thinks the civil war was an outright disaster, and that it set up the subsequent disasters of failed reconstruction and what he considers the stupidity of Jim Crow. I wouldn’t want to endorse this position; but not seeing the civil war as a disaster is also problematic. (Of course, on my view the disaster should have been avoided by getting rid of slavery beforehand!) So, Kirk understands himself as objecting to the means (war) not the goal (getting rid of slavery).

Underlying Kirk's position is a decoupling of the institution of slavery from mercantile war-mongering nationalist-imperialism. By contrast a liberal would see in slavery and imperialism the same side of a mercantile coin. Slavery is clearly a transient institution for Kirk (and, again, this position also seems informed by a reprehensible lack of warmth toward the plight of slaves), but for him nationalist imperialism is a permanent temptation for democracies in which our nature is not properly tamed. In fact, Kirk understands the opportunities for a revived conservatism as a response to the revulsion engendered by Hiroshima and Nagasaki; he sees the atom bomb as a possible trigger for much needed moral awakening.

Kirk diagnoses war as the opportunity for destructive hubris and nemesis as much as it is the site of the growth of central planning and uniform, leveling standardization. For Kirk Hiroshima is the natural outgrowth of the valorizing of war. (Kirk is not a pacifist; he accepts the need of war for defensive ends.) For Kirk, slavery is, thus, not America's original sin; rather it is the (Hamiltonian) embrace of expansive genocidal militarism centered on an an imperial president.** Hazony, by contrast, while a critic of foreign military intervention, is a friend of (Hamiltonian) economic nationalism and a strong presidency.

On Kirk's view this Hamiltonian position cannot avoid permanent war, which Kirk views as destructive to any higher culture (recall (iv)) worth having. To what degree he is right about this I leave for another time. But since we’re in an age of aggressive and destructive left and right-wing Hamiltonianism, this strain in Kirk seems worth excavating, especially for those who wish to tame our capacity toward evil.

Let me close with some blog house-keeping. As hinted in yesterday’s post, I expect to do almost no or very infrequent blogging until the second week of June. Apologies for that in advance. 

• This first appeared at: <Hazony vs Kirk - by nescio13 (substack.com)> a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

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*This also helps explain Kirk's preference for Adams and his rejection of Hamilton.

**Kirk is never more eloquent than when he quotes Burke's second letter of the Regicide Peace in which Burke links a certain kind of statism to militarism. Having said that, he expresses little interest in American, pre-settler indigenous native cultures.

On Hazony and Bourke on Burke and Frank S. Meyer, and the risks of Freedom

[I am phasing out D&I at typepad. This post was first published at: digressions.impressions.substack here. To receive new posts and support my work  consider becoming a paid subscriber at <digressionsimpressions.substack.com>]

Lodged inside Yoram Hazony's Conservatism: A Rediscovery is also a polemic against what came to be known as 'fusionism.' (Recall my series of posts on Hazony's book recall the first one here; here the second; here the third one; and the fourth.) I quote Hazony: "This alignment of liberals and conservatives was assembled, first and foremost, by William F. Buckley Jr., the young founder and editor of the conservative weekly, National Review. But its principal theoretician was his close associate, Frank Meyer, who was credited with having devised a “fusion” of liberalism and conservatism appropriate to conditions in America during the Cold War. That this “fusionism” was politically successful cannot be denied...Meyer’s fusion was also a version of Enlightenment liberalism." Chapter VI (section 5)

In fact, when Hazony turns to Meyer's (1962) in Defense of Freedom, Hazony is scathing: "Meyer’s book is devoted to repeated attacks on Edmund Burke, Russell Kirk, and other defenders of the Anglo-American conservative tradition. Among other things, Meyer accuses Burke of having inspired a standpoint characterized by “an organic view of society, by a subordination of the individual person to society, and therefore, by a denial that the freedom of the person is the decisive criterion of a good polity.”"

Intrigued by Hazony's characterization of Meyer (how could the architect of fusionism, which I think a historic mistake, be an Enlightenment liberal?), I decided to read Meyer (1909 – 1972). Vefore I get to what I want to say about Meyer today, I should note that Hazony subtly misrepresents Meyer here. Meyer is not a critic of Burke the conservative. He is, however, a critic of Kirk and other so-called 'new Conservatives' who have conflated Burke "the practical statesman," whose pronouncements were (to use Huntington's taxonomy [recall yesterday's post]) situational not a political philosophy, with an oracular prophet of a movement. According to Meyer, Burke could take for granted the worth of the (1688) constitution he defended.* That is, Meyer actually admires Burke. (This is not to deny that Meyer also disagrees with some of the late Burke's pronouncements on reason, but he tends to agree with Burke's underlying commitments on liberty.)

Meyer thinks that certain pronouncements of Burke, when treated as an eternal philosophy, lend themselves toward an organicist conception of society and a dangerous form of status quo bias, that what is, is right. As Hazony discerns (and Meyer acknowledges in a note) this is de facto a version of Strauss' criticism of the Burke Strauss found popular among American conservatives.

As an aside, if I am right about this then Richard Bourke’s characterization of recent conservatism (recall yesterday’s post) is misleading. For, our contemporary historical interest in twentieth century conservatism is due in large part to its political success in its ‘fusionist guise’ Stateside. (There is no interest in Kirk today other than as the partial trigger of fusionism.) By design, then, fusionism also rejects the very ‘Burke myth’ Bourke diagnoses from the start. How this could be so forgotten is, in fact, a very interesting question; but about that some other time.

Okay, with that as set up, let me turn, in conclusion, to the main point of today's digression. Meyer thinks reason is, then, required both as a grounds of criticism of any status quo and in the articulation of the means by which the proper end of society, virtue, must be pursued. (Meyer is in contemporary parlance, a certain kind of indirect liberal perfectionist.) In fact, he puts the point in the following way in a passage from 1964 that I find especially congenial: 

In the political and economic realm, however, these truths establish only the foundation for an understanding of the end of civil society and the function of the state. That end, to guarantee freedom, so that men may uncoercedly pursue virtue, can be achieved in different circumstances by different means. To the clarification of what these means are in specific circumstances, the conservative must apply his reason. The technological circumstances of the twentieth century demand above all the breaking up of power and the separation of centers of power within the economy itself, within the state itself, and between the state and the economy. Power of a magnitude never before dreamed of by men has been brought into being. While separation of power has always been essential to a good society, if those who possess it are to be preserved from corruption and those who do not are to be safeguarded from coercion, this has become a fateful necessity under the conditions of modern technology.--"Freedom, Tradition, Conservatism," Reprinted from What is Conservatism? (1964), p. 14 in Libertyfund edition of In Defense of Freedom and Related Essays. [Emphasis added.]

That is, we can describe Meyer's core insight that the pursuit of individual virtue requires negative freedom. But that effective negative freedom, or the freedom of choice worth having, also requires certain social conditions. And in particular, Meyer advocates the (legal) destruction of (to use Sam Bagg's felicitous phrase) concentrated powers (which prevent and curtail formal freedoms in all kinds of ways). Meyer here echoes what I take to be one of the true insights of ordo-liberalism of a generation before. (The ORDOs are more realistic, however, about how much state capacity this presupposes.)

Meyer repeatedly emphasizes that his own position requires fallible contextual judgment. Meyer recognizes that allying with conservatism often entails, I quote from the same page, being "associated with authoritarianism." In context, there is, in fact, a real difference between opposing the state's leviathan to defend the "principle of federalism that reserves to the states or to the people all power not confided to the national authority" before the break up of Jim Crow or after; to worry about sociological scientism in Brown vs Board of Education while agreeing with its verdict in the particular case (or to use such scientism to reject the verdict), etc. 

The previous paragraph is not written by a moralist. If one agrees with Meyer's framework it is worth recognizing that opposing concentrated power in the name of making the pursuit of private virtue as free and responsible agents possible is not sufficient by itself to guard against rather significant errors of moral and political judgment. For, one must also make reasoned, and fallible, judgments about the order in which these powers are tackled and by way of coalitions with those whose ends one only partially shares. What makes Meyer's philosophy especially notable, even tragic, is that his is a most articulate sensitivity toward the risk of such grave error as a feature of freedom, that is, ineliminable from the human condition.

• This first appeared at: <On Hazony and Bourke on Burke and Frank S. Meyer, and the risks of Freedom (substack.com)> a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

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See pp. 61-62 and p. 10 of the Libertyfund edition of In Defense of Freedom and Related Essays.  (P. 10 is a reference to Meyer's 1955 essay, Collectivism Rebaptized."

Adam Smith and the 'liberal' Swedish revolution of 1809

[I am phasing out D&I at typepad. This post was first published at: digressions.impressions.substack here. To receive new posts and support my work  consider becoming a paid subscriber at <digressionsimpressions.substack.com>]

As regular readers know, (recall here; and here) I have argued that the political meaning of 'liberal' that became influential in the nineteenth century can be found in Adam Smith. In Particular, rather than seeing the origin story of liberalism as a reaction to the European religious wars between Catholics and Protestants, I argue that originally liberalism is centered on taming, even domesticating state power. And that ‘liberal’ in this sense acquired its original meaning in Adam Smith (see here for a popular version of my argument).

I tried to bolster my argument by building on the work of Spanish scholars that Smith played a very considerable role in the Cortes debates around the Spanish Constitution. In the earlier posts (here; and here), I used Duncan Bell's (2014) influential paper, "What is Liberalism?" as my foil. It's important to my argument that in these Spanish debates Smith isn't merely perceived as a free-trader, but an advocate of political and institutional reform (including of Empire) and understood as such by the Spanish. I won't repeat my arguments here now.

The Spanish Liberales often show up in debates over the early history of liberalism. In part, because is clear that Bentham tried to influence them, and also because, as I show, Bentham used 'liberal' to self-describe in contact with them. But until I read The Lost History of Liberalism: from Ancient Rome to the Twenty-first Century (2018, Princeton) by Helena Rosenblatt I was unfamiliar with early Swedish self-described liberals of 1809. Here's what she writes:

Dissatisfied with the leadership of their [Swedish] king, a circle of high government officials staged a palace coup and deposed him in 1809. It was around this time that a group calling itself “the liberal party” came into existence. Not much is known about its members except that they were influenced by French revolutionary ideas and advocated principles such as equality before the law, constitutional and representative government, and freedom of the press, conscience, and trade. They were also known as “the liberal side,” or just “the liberals.”

The Spanish liberal party emerged soon after Napoleon’s armies invaded Spain in 1808, deposed the Spanish King Ferdinand, and replaced him with Napoleon’s brother, Joseph. The Spaniards promptly rebelled and established a government in Cádiz. In 1810, a group of delegates to the parliament there, called the Cortes, took the name Liberales and labeled their opponents Serviles, from the Latin servi, meaning slave. The Spanish Liberales, like the Swedish liberals, advocated principles such as equality before the law and constitutional, representative government. pp. 61-62

In a note Rosenblatt cites a 1926 paper by Arthur Thomson. Unfortunately, I don't read Swedish. Now, Rosenblatt is explicit that the Swedish liberals were influenced by French ideas. That seemed eminently plausible, of course. And since Rosenblatt doesn't link Smith to the Spanish liberales for her these two events are just a marvelous coincidence (although, of course, we can't rule out that the Spanish Liberales were inspired by the Swedish liberals). But I wondered if I could show it's possible that the Swedish 1809 liberals took the name from Smith, too.

The short answer is, YES! It involves a man called Count Adlersparre (1760 – 1835). But first I want to share a false start. After scholar.googling, I bumped into a lovely 2022 paper by Anna Knutsson. In it she describes Erik Erland Bodell (1774–1848), who was a customs officer (like Smith in the closing decade of his life). She reports that in 1800, Bodell produced  partial translation of Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations, Book V, Chapter 2, “Of the Sources of the General or Public Revenue of the Society.” This actually disappointed me because while Smith uses the word 'liberal' and its cognates in this chapter a number of times, all of these involve the older meaning of 'generous' and 'aristocratic.' In addition, as Knutsson reports, Bodell uses this material to argue for free trade. Neat, but orthogonal to my present purposes. It is no surprise that Bodell also later translated Book IV, Chapter 2 from The Wealth of Nations, “Of Restraints upon the Importation from Foreign Countries of such Goods as can be Produced at Home” for the same effect.

Knutsson reports that Bodell went on to write and publish Berättelse för år 1805, afgifven till Höglof.Gener.Tull-Arrende-Direktionen, Ifrån Marstrands Kongl. stora sjötulls-kammare: Om handeln: fabriker och manufakturer: orsaken till minskning eller förhöjning i sjötulls-inkomsterna: huru tillfällen till sjötulls-uppbördens minskning måga förekommas: om lurendrägeri: och medel till en bättre sjötulls-bevakning, (Account for the Year 1805 [ … ] about Trade: Factories and Manufactories: the reason for decrease or increase in the Maritime Customs Revenue: how the Maritime Customs revenue decrease might be overcome: about Smuggling: and measures for a better Maritime Customs Surveillance). I love these descriptive titles! And she quotes a wonderful passage from it, that I reproduce in full:

We watch and complain that the trade is decreasing, that the manufacturing is stagnating, that poverty is increasing and that Residents are leaving, and cannot understand that the cause of it are our many prohibitions, high customs taxes [ … ] Most nations are following the enlightenment of the age, they are led by more liberal tenets in their public economy [statshushållning], and enjoy all the more profitable consequences. – I love my King and my Fatherland too much, to make this comparison with indifference [ … ] the Nation’s devotion and confidence in their Regent and his officers would increase considerably, if they got laws which agreed with their own desires.

There is an interesting question on how to translate statshushållning; words like this show up in German and Dutch too during this period and all involve a kind of transposition and explication of household-management (which is a translation of the Greek 'oeconomy') directed at the state. While in the passage 'liberal tenets' could mean 'generous policies', I'd like to think that because Bodell is steeped in Adam Smith (even his opponents accused him of wanting to be the Swedish Smith, as Knuttson notes), it's safe to say that he is using 'liberal' here in a more Smithian inflexion. That is, where liberalism is explicitly opposed to mercantilism (which is 'illiberal') and where liberalism is not reducible to free trade. Of course, Bodell's concerns here are strictly economic, so it does not advance my larger argument. In addition, Bodell did not participate in the events of 1809.

Now, Knutsson mentions Adlersparre's role as follows, "Adlersparre, who had been the first to translate Adam Smith into Swedish ten years previously in his anti-government journal Läsning i blandade ämnen." Her footnotes suggests this occurred as early as 1799 and through 1800. In fact, a number of my Swedish informants -- Max Skjönsberg, Lena Halldenius, Johan Norberg -- all pointed me to him as well. In a paper he just published, Max writes, "Adlersparre was the leader of the 1809 coup that led to the king’s deposition and a new constitution that was particularly inspired by Montesquieu’s separation of powers theory." (Notice that’s subtly different than Rosenblatt’s version.) Some other time, I’ll return to the Montesquieu-Smith connection in political thought. (This is a bit understudied.)

In fact, in his article Max never links Adlersparre to Smith. That's because Max is focused on Nils von Rosenstein (1752–1824). The point of Skjönsberg's argument is that Von Rosentein's Försök til en afhandling om uplysningen, til dess beskaffenhet, nytta och nödvändighet för samhället (An Attempt at a Dissertation on the Enlightenment, Its Character, Usefulness and Necessity for Society), is shaped by Scottish Enlightenment ideas, including Adam Smith's. Fair enough.

Crucially for my argument Max quotes some Von Rosenstein that helps set the stage for my claim: "When we speak of politics, it is not only FENELON, MONTESQUIEU, SMITH, who have enlightened the world, but also all the great and virtuous Rulers and Ministers, who have intended to make people happy’" That is, for Von Rosenstein Smith is not just an economist or moral philosopher (in fact, Max notes he calls Smith a 'metaphysician'), he is also a guide to what I call (following Locke and Mill) the 'art of government.' Max comments: "Theory and practice worked best when they supported each other." Indeed. And so in Sweden, Smith is not just received as a free-trader. (The role of Fenelon on the same side of Montesquieu and Smith is also neat, and will please my friend Ryan Hanley, but that’s also best left aside now.)

I don't mean to suggest that Skjönsberg doesn't know the significance of Adlersparre to the dissemination of Smith in Sweden. He notes in passing that "Excerpts from Smith’s Wealth of Nations were published in the periodical press." And elsewhere in his article Max notes that Adlersparre's journal Läsning i blandade ämnen (Readings in Various Subjects) "discussed political economy with reference to Smith." But that's not Skjönsberg's  main focus. Knutsson notes that Adlersparre's "Smith extracts published in Läsning i blandande ämnen focused primarily on his work on agriculture and the use of paper money. However, an extract on the balance of trade was also translated, which dealt with matters of international trade policy, arguing that “the Trade, which is conducted without force and restrictions, naturally and without interruption, between two locations will always be beneficial”." Unfortunately, while Knutsson notes that Bodell was against the 1809 revolution, she does not go into Adlersparre's role.

Now, Johan Norberg was on this very trail a decade ago. Here's what he writes:

George Adlersparre, who led the Swedish Western army at the time, published a proclamation saying that military conflict and political oppression were about to destroy Sweden. It was a revolutionary manifesto: To save the country, the army should move against the king. Adlersparre and his troops began a popular march toward Stockholm. The king fled south, but was arrested by people within the Stockholm bureaucracy. To ensure that this led to real political changes, Adlersparre’s march continued and the army occupied Stockholm, until a new parliament was formed, and reforms began to take place. This was the Revolution of 1809 – the only violent revolution in Sweden’s modern history, and it was realized by a liberal officer and publisher, inspired by Adam Smith.

Norberg's essay is a kind of popular lecture. And so his use of 'liberal officer' begs the question for my purpose. However, in correspondence, Norberg notes that "Nothing certain is known about why they called themselves liberals." But he also added that he has found evidence that Adlersparre called himself a 'liberal' in the period between his Smith translations and the revolution. I hope to pursue this trail in future research!

So, here's where we are: I don't think it's a mere coincidence that in 1809-1812 two revolutions a continent apart, the anti-imperial/mercantile, reformist parties called themselves 'liberal.' Part of the common cause is familiarity (inter alia) with Adam Smith's writings on political economy. In the Swedish case the link is, in fact, most direct through the centrality of Adlersparre. That is, I hope the Spanish and Swedish political events will also help in re-thinking Smith’s significance in the early history of liberalism.

Let's return again to a celebrated anti-Mercantile passage (the explicit target is Colbert) at Wealth of Nations, 4.9.3, it concludes with, "instead of allowing every man to pursue his own interest in his own way, upon the liberal plan of equality, liberty, and justice." I won't relitigate my argument that 'liberal' does not merely mean 'generous,' but rather just want to emphasize here that 'equality, liberty, and justice' were not intended or read as merely a free-trade doctrine; this a moral, political, and legal program.*

• This first appeared at: <On the Origins of Liberalism: The Swedish Revolution of 1809 and Adam Smith (substack.com)> a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

On Stebbing, Spinoza, and the Cognitive Demands of Political Freedom, Part 2

[I am phasing out D&I at typepad. This post was first published at: digressions.impressions.substack here. To receive new posts and support my work consider becoming a paid subscriber at <digressionsimpressions.substack.com>]

For Stebbing (recall) clarity is a property of cognition and intelligence. Clarity is necessary condition for success at thinking and action guided by it, or what she calls "effective thinking." (5) In particular, clarity is the absence of distortions in thought and perception caused by bias and ignorance one is not aware of. That is, undistorted or unbiased thought is what's being aimed at in describing something as ‘clear.’

But her suggestion is that known biases and awareness of ignorance are not an obstacle to successful thought presumably because they can knowingly be controlled for. Clarity is, in fact, for Stebbing an acquired skill that can be controlled and that makes "rational argument and… reasonable consideration" possible. A feature of the skill is logically sound argument. Unsurprisingly, awareness and discovery of possible fallacies play a prominent role in Stebbing's (1938) Thinking to Some Purpose.

As I noted, there is a whiff of Spinozism in her treatment of clarity. We know she was familiar with Spinoza’s system, which she discusses, in passing in her (1932) “The Method of Analysis in Metaphysics.” She deliberately evokes the last sentence of Spinoza's Ethics in the last sentence of the "epilogue" of her book:

My point of view with regard to this topic can be summed up in the statement: He alone is capable of being tolerant whose conclusions have been thought out and are recognized to be inconsistent with the beliefs of other persons. To be tolerant is not to be indifferent, and is incompatible with ignorance. My conclusions have been reasonably attained in so far as I have been able to discount my prejudices, to allow for the distorting effects of your prejudices, to collect the relevant evidence and to weigh that evidence in accordance with logical principles. The extent to which I can achieve these aims is the measure of my freedom of mind. To be thus free is as difficult as it is rare.-- Susan Stebbing Thinking to Some Purpose, p. 256.

Clarity, then, is a means toward freedom of mind, but also its measure. (Clarity clearly comes in degrees for Stebbing.) To avoid confusion, in that quoted paragraph, 'logical principles,' include deductive and inductive logic. 

Now 'freedom' is not introduced until the epilogue. I will quote the key paragraph to give a flavor of Stebbing's use of it: 

I believe also that similar strictures could be truly made with regard to polls held recently in Germany and in Austria. Elections in this country are not in this sense unfree. We are proud to consider ourselves a democracy; we claim to have freedom of election, freedom of speech (including freedom of the Press) limited only by the laws of libel, sedition and blasphemy, and freedom in religion. No doubt there are certain qualifications to be made; it is probable that most people would admit that without economic freedom there cannot be political freedom, and that lacking economic security no man can be regarded as economically free. But, even if these admissions be granted, it will be contended that, by and large, we in this country do have institutions that may properly be described as democratic. It is not to my purpose to dispute these contentions. Nor shall I attempt to determine what characteristics are essential to democracy. It is enough if it be granted that it lies in our national temper to dislike obvious governmental restrictions. We like to feel ourselves to be free. In short, we value civil liberties. (249)

Here 'freedom' means something like the 'means conducive toward democratic life,' including economic, political, and civil means. So, one might think that by a 'free mind,' Stebbing also means 'the mental state conducive, at least in part, toward a democratic life.' I think this is what she does mean (as I will show in the next paragraph.) But, somewhat confusingly, Stebbing goes on to write, "I deliberately omit, however, any discussion of such political obstacles to freedom as we may encounter. I am not concerned with politics. My topic is freedom of mind. Unless I can think freely I cannot think effectively." (250) And so one might think that in so far as a 'free mind' has nothing to do with politics -- and democratic life is of political significance -- that by a 'free mind' Stebbing means something essentially private. 

But that would not be right conclusion, because she immediate goes on to write, "Here ‘I’ stands for any person. If I want to make up my mind upon any problem of political action, I must be able to deliberate freely. If it were in fact true that we were all politically and economically free, still it would not follow that we were possessed of the freedom of mind without which, in my opinion, no democratic institutions can be satisfactorily maintained." (250) So, by 'politics'  on the same page, Stebbing means not 'pertaining to political life,' but rather 'subject to existing political controversy' (in the sense of which "political measure" (254) to support.) For, by a 'free mind' Stebbing clearly means a key, effective ingredient that makes public deliberation possible and so is conducive to democratic institutions, that is, political life in the institutional sense (but not in the humdrum sense of a 'subject of political controversy').

So, clarity is a skill conducive to the kinds of agency involved in public deliberation of a sort that maintains democratic institutions or democratic way of life. And by 'democracy' Stebbing means a participatory one that is exercised in voting but also (as her examples in the book make clear) in the formation of public opinion of the sort familiar from British parliamentary democracy. As she puts it 'democratic government' is more than just "the consent of the governed," -- this she thinks is actual in British political life -- but rather it means that "the voice of the people prevails." (254) The latter she denies exists because the British populace lacks freedom of mind.

Now, as Stebbing notes, her book has emphasized obstacles to such freedom: "the difficulty of freeing our minds from blinkers, the difficulty of resisting propaganda and of being content to be persuaded where we should have striven to be convinced, the difficulties of an audience dominated by an unscrupulous speaker and the difficulties of a speaker who has to address an audience that is lazy and uncritical – in short, the difficulties created by our stupidity and by those who take advantage of that stupidity." (250) But in the epilogue she focuses on "the difficulty of obtaining information – the difficulty of knowing how to discover reliable testimony." And by this she means, in particular, the way the press shapes access to information.

In light of the concentrated ownership of the press, and its interests in withholding or shaping such information, and in light of many examples of partial or biased reporting that Stebbing discusses, Stebbing concludes:

I am forced to say this; if my belief in the reliability of the testimony is false, then I am not free to decide. If such information as I have is not to be trusted, then I lack freedom of decision. For this reason, those who control the Press have power to control our minds with regard to our thinking about ‘all public transactions’. A controlled Press is an obstacle to democracy, an obstacle that is the more dangerous in proportion as we are unaware of our lack of freedom. (253)

The implication being that the British seem to think that they have free minds, but in reality -- because they do not reflect on the conditions that shape their access to the information salient to public life and do not seem perturbed by their controlled press -- they are not. They "acquiesce" in rule by a narrow elite, "the ruling class," whose decisions "control us." (254) Empirically, Stebbing echoes, thus, the sociological thesis (associated with Pareto, Mosca, and Michels) that one can have elite rule even in a functioning parliamentary democracies. Unlike the Italian elite school, she deplores this situation. 

Now, it is natural to read Thinking to Some Purpose, and come away thinking that to think clearly and to become free requires a lot of very time-consuming individual effort at self-betterment. And one can certainly cite passages to that effect: "I do seek to convince the reader that it is of great practical importance that we ordinary men and women should think clearly, that there are many obstacles to thinking clearly, and that some of these obstacles can be overcome provided that we wish to overcome them and are willing to make an effort to do so." (29) She closes the book with the admonition that "I...would maintain that it is desirable that we should develop in ourselves a habit of sceptical inquiry." (255) These are passages where Stebbing, thus, anticipates Arendt's conception of democratic life.

But as the book unfolds and reaches its crescendo in the epilogue, it is obvious that Stebbing also thinks that there are many structural obstacles to removing all such impediments to clear thinking. Even if one grants that Stebbing's rhetoric is designed as a kind of call to action (say to break up the ruling class monopoly on ownership of the popular press), somewhat disappointingly, she does not offer a program of how those obstacles can be removed while not undermining the possibility of a democratic life in the deliberative and self-governing sense she advocates. (She does not offer any program!)

It is also not entirely clear on Stebbing's account what to make of a people that does not seem to wish to be free in Stebbing's sense, as she implies of the English: "The vast majority of English people want to be governed peaceably, and want to be free to pursue their own unpolitical interests." (254) This echoes Lippmann's (1922) diagnosis of the (American) democratic public in Public Opinion. It is worth noting that even if one agrees with Stebbing's diagnoses, the English are not irrational. For it is, in fact, very hard work to be free in the sense she advocates, and as the concluding paragraph quoted above suggests, she is explicitly aware of this. (In fact, I like that she notes how difficult achieving tolerance is.) In addition, given the obstacles to such freedom she diagnoses, it also seems rather fruitless and (ought implies can) not required or unnecessary to be free in the political or democratic sense advocated by Stebbing. To be sure, for many unpolitical pursuits such freedom, clear thought, will be necessary for effective action and within reach.

Given the many economic and educational preconditions required and the demands on our time and attention that a life of thinking clearly requires on Stebbing's account, it is a bit surprising that she does not explore the psychological, collective, or institutional means we might have to organize our lives in complex epistemic and political environments. For example, while I have no interest in defending the English or its ruling class (then or now), but if it's true that its "ruling class, [is] educated for political purposes, trained from birth to undertake the responsibilities of ruling" (254) then this does represent (one might say echoing Schumpeter) a possible, even rational response to the structural impediments to creating a mass society of free minds in the political sense Stebbing diagnoses (even if it is also a contributing cause to maintaining such political tutelage). 

In fact, Stebbing clearly thinks that attachment to a political party is a contributing source of bias and so of not thinking clearly. (This is especially clear in chapter 8, see p.  98 on party attachment.) Throughout Thinking to Some Purpose, she often uses politicians of opposing parties as examples to illustrate biased thinking. And by varying these examples she tries to be even-handed and entice her readers to discern the structural obstacle(s) to clear thinking she diagnoses.

It does not seem to occur to Stebbing, however, that part of the epistemic or cognitive function of parties may well be to provide useful signals in complex social and political environments for cognitively overburdened or agents without sufficient interest in political life. (One may well think that one of liberal democracy’s fruits is that such a lack of interest in active political life need not be irrational.) So, because Stebbing treats clarity as a property of individual minds who must almost possess the virtues of a stoic Spinozistic sage, she misses how in the division of (cognitive and economic) labor, we might well have strategies or heuristics that allow individuals to remain in partial darkness while being part of collectives that can act with sufficient enough effectiveness.*

• This first appeared at: <On Stebbing, Spinoza, and the Cognitive Demands of Political Freedom, Part 2 (substack.com)> a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

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*One may well see the exact contemporary, Lippmann's (1938) The Good Society, as developing this strategy, and laying the groundwork for a research and political program for handling the problems diagnosed by Stebbing.

On Susan Stebbing and Clarity (with some nods to Carnap, Quine, and Ernest nagel), Part I

[I will phase out D&I at typepad. This post was first published at: digressions.impressions.substack here. To receive new posts and support my work consider becoming a paid subscriber at <digressionsimpressions.substack.com>]

When, back at NewAPPS, I first blogged about Susan Stebbing (1885 – 1943), a key figure in early analytic philosophy, there was almost no scholarship on her. Since then a fine entry in the Stanford Encyclopedia of philosophy and a number of important scholarly papers and books have appeared. I take no credit for this joyous state of affairs!

My present interest in her work is to explore to what degree she helps us make sense of the nature of 'clarity' or 'clearness' so valued by analytic philosophers then and today. To do so, in this post I focus on Thinking to Some Purpose (1939), which was written for a wide audience (it was commissioned by pelican). This may bias our treatment of her views on clarity. But we have to start somewhere (and the book gives us some of her most detailed views on the matter).

The official topic of the book is announced in the prologue:

I am convinced of the urgent need for a democratic people to think clearly without the distortions due to unconscious bias and unrecognized ignorance. Our failures in thinking are in part due to faults which we could to some extent overcome were we to see clearly how these faults arise. It is the aim of this book to make a small effort in this direction.--Preface to the 1939 edition, pp. xxix-xxx*

It's worth noting that 'clear' and its cognates are used repeatedly through the book. Clarity here is a property of thought and perception. In what follows, I use 'cognition' as shorthand for both. Clarity seems to be a necessary condition for success at thinking (and action guided by it). In particular, clarity is the absence of distortions in thought and perception caused by bias and ignorance one is not aware of. Undoubtedly undistorted thought is what's being aimed at in describing something as ‘clear.’ But the suggestion is that known biases and and awareness of ignorance are not an obstacle to successful thought presumably because they can knowingly be controlled for. Crucially, clear cognition is a key ingredient for intelligence on Stebbing's view. (22)

It is an important question in political philosophy to what degree it really is necessary for a democratic people to have undistorted thoughts and even control for known biases. But I leave that aside here. (Well, I return indirectly to it at the end of the post.)

Presumably, Stebbing's interest in unconscious bias is prompted by the significance of political propaganda, demagoguery, and advertising (she groups these together as "rhetorical persuasion") and presumably also reflects the growing stature of Freudianism in the age. It is an interesting sociological-historical fact that interest in such bias was revived in recent decades in the context of concerns over racial discriminatory practices. However, for Stebbing an important example of such unconscious bias are (not the desires of our infant inner child, but rather) the "concealed contradictions" we acquire as members of a group. (p. 22) In fact, racial biases are one of the kinds she discusses.

Be that as it may, Stebbing's notion of clarity is not the only one that one can find in the analytic tradition. For Carnap (recall) clarity is an (aesthetic) property or by-product of formal systems, of constructed languages. Clarity in the hands of Carnap means to capture a kind of demand for transparency in one's inferential practices, one's commitments, and the use of terms (it very much hopes to prevent equivocation and polysemous use).  Carnapian clarity is really a second-order property of an otherwise esoteric, expert practice.

By contrast, Quine had a tendency, as Greg Frost-Arnold has shown, (i) to associate clarity with more general forms of intelligibility. In later years, Quine might argue that (ii) his program (developed in Word & Object) of the philosopher regimenting scientific language to exhibit its ontological commitments, may also be aiming at a species of clarity (about the 'ontology' of science), alongside systematicity.  He also (iii) came to think of clarity as a more general theoretical virtue of a system. 

What's important for present purposes is that neither Carnap's nor Quine's notions of clarity is aimed at or -- given that science is highly specialized -- apt for a democratic people. (I don’t mean to deny that Carnap was very interested in facilitating improved democratic life.) And while there are undoubtedly some family resemblances and overlaps between their notion of clarity and Stebbing's it's useful to keep them distinct (more on that below).

Interestingly enough, also in 1938, (recall) Ernest Nagel was concerned with the role of clarity in democratic life. For Nagel clarification is the development of canons of intelligibility and validity apt for (esoteric) special sciences, but also the making transparent of the methods and practices of science that generate warranted claims to ordinary people in part by showing how and the way terms/concepts hang together and function in a system of knowledge and forms of ordinary practice. In particular, the cultivation of clarity is a contribution to a democratic ethos that prevents mere reliance and dependence on authoritative experts and also ensures that calls to action are proportioned to the evidence on their behalf. (See here for a scholarly version of this claim.)

Again, while I don't want to exaggerate the differences between Nagel and Stebbing —they share in fact a pragmatist sensibility, and agree on the significance of proportioning belief to evidence and the important focus of the way we do things with reasonings --, it's important to see the contrasting notions of clarity at work here. In Nagel, clarity is something we do to specialist language and practices that, amongst other functions, can shape and diagnose features in ordinary life, whereas for Stebbing clarity can be immanent in and part and parcel of ordinary life. Not to put too fine a point on it, Nagel, Carnap, and Quine all share in the idea that there is some salient contrast between formal and specialist, regimented languages, on one hand, and ordinary speech, on the other. (How that contrast is characterized is famously a matter of substantive disagreement among them.) In this divide clarity is not to be found primarily on the side of ordinary talk. Stebbing is the outlier in thinking that clarity is not so restricted, but available, in principle, to us all. This is the first thing I wanted to establish today.

The second is that while Stebbing treats clarity as a property of thought and perception that is, in principle, widely diffused among ordinary people (she thinks we all have "some capacity to follow an argument" (21) and in a footnote hopes its not unduly optimistic (26)), she also treats it as a skill that can be acquired for one can be "trained to think clearly." (p. 4) Such training makes "rational argument and… reasonable consideration" possible. Stebbing's role in articulating a deliberative conception of democracy is worth highlighting.

Now what such training involves and who controls access to it are quite important, but I postpone discussion of her views to another time. What matters here is that the skill itself can, once acquired with "effort" (29), also be something that we control. (She emphasizes that have to wish to think clearly.) And, third, that a feature of the skill is logically sound argument (which should not be conflated with syllogistic reasoning).

In future posts, I want to make more precise and also explore some of the difficulties with Stebbing's conception of clarity. But it is worth noting two final features of it in this digression. Stebbing takes

for granted that to be clear-headed is worth while for its own sake. Without this assumption I should not have wanted to write this book. It is, however, enough if you will admit that muddled thinking ends in bungled doing, so that to think clearly is useful for the sake of achieving even our most practical aims. Unless you admit at least as much as this, there will be no point, so far as you are concerned, in what I have to say. Our points of view would be too different for discussion to be possible. (34)

The first feature is that clarity is not just treated as an instrumental value to democratic deliberative life. Stebbing values it as a private and presumably highly intellectual virtue or end in itself. (There are shades of Spinoza here whose work she knew well.) Fair enough, and not wholly surprising.

But it is a bit peculiar that she thinks her imagined interlocuter or reader must share in the commitment that "to think clearly is useful for the sake of achieving even our most practical aims." Admittedly, it seems odd for anyone to deny this in the most general sense. But it is not wholly unreasonable for such an interlocuter to also claim that clarity of cognition may often (perhaps always) be unnecessary to achieve our most practical aims (because relying on tradition, faith, instinct, testimony, or expertise/authority of others). And perhaps (admittedly there are shades of Hume and Nietzsche here) its our biases (or overconfidence) that help us acquire  our most fundamental, practical aims (which are always constrained by time and other resources scarcities). The real problem here is not the purported role of clarity in achieving our aims, but in Stebbing's insistence that muddled thinking must end in muddled doing. This has not been established. (It's hard to see how it could be established given how much has been achieved in conditions of ignorance and superstition.)

Now, what's odd is that in order to have discussion at all, Stebbing assumes assent on this very point of contention. And the reason it is odd is that in a democratic society we can't assume or stipulate agreement over such questions or ways of life including those that, to put it exaggeratedly, resist the clarion call of Enlightenment. My point here is not that one cannot help others see how useful clarity might be (and Stebbing is wonderful on this score), but rather that it must the potential effect of such discussion not its common ground.

• This first appeared at: <On Susan Stebbing and Clarity (with some nods to Carnap, Quine, and Ernest Nagel), Part I (substack.com)> a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

On JPP, Wiley, Prestige Production, and Game Theoretic Modeling

[I will phase out D&I at typepad. This post was first published at:  digressions.impressions.substack here. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber at <digressionsimpressions.substack.com>]

As Leiterreports (and here; here) and Dailynous reported, Wiley (a commercial publisher), got rid of Robert Goodin (a prominent political philosopher) as editor of the Journal of Political Philosophy (JPP), which is (one of) the leading journals in political philosophy in good part thanks to Goodin's long stewardship.  It is no surprise that most of Goodin's fellow editors and board resigned in protest. There has been a lovely closing of ranks.

Because I am going to be rather (sternly) critical of the ranks, I want to stress that Wiley's explanation was ridiculously and scandalously vague. More important, the manner in which they fired Goodin also suggests unwarranted editorial interference that actually risks endangering academic freedom. So, resignation was the right thing to do.

But as the resigning editorial board members' comments started to appear in public, it seems that folk in the know believe that the cause of Wiley's decision is that it wanted to increase the number of published papers rather rapidly up to a tenfold more (see here; here). Immediately one started to read on social media that pursuit of profit is undermining quality. (This show up in the threads I have already linked to above, but also in discussions elsewhere.)

However, a major reason why Wiley is nudging many presses to expand journal space is that universities, libraries, and grant agencies have contracted with them to do so in the context of expanding open access. From the perspective of grant agencies and universities this makes a lot of sense: they are funding research that, if of sufficient quality, needs an outlet. (For those who work in a grant system the absence of slots often becomes visible only after acceptance when one discovers that a journal has no more slots available in a given year!) I am not a fan of these contracts because they basically show what happens when well-connected corporations take advantage of well-intentioned policy shifts: they capture the financial rents. Yet, it doesn't follow that open access or expanding journal space (and so increasing acceptance rates) is a mistake. And in what follows I focus on the latter.

For, as is well known, academic philosophy has incredibly low acceptance rates in its flagship journals (often under 5% acceptance rates).* I couldn't find a recent number for JPP, but it seems to be around 5% and I wouldn't be surprised if it were lower. A quick count suggests, JPP publishes 24 articles a year (give or take). Another leading journal, P&PA "has historically published 12-16 articles per year." And it does not get much better at a journal like CRISPP (about 20). [I make the relationship between slots and acceptance rates more precise below.] The situation is not much better in most areas of professional philosophy (but see below).

I have noted in the past that these acceptance rates only make sense, epistemically, if philosophical activity had enormous inductive risk to society. Nobody believes that as Tim Crane argued in an important essay in TLS (back in 2018; see here for ungated version). Tim helpfully suggests that the real explanation is that "publication in one of these journals may no longer be that sole decisive achievement that will get you that job or grant." That's clearly true, but not wholly right not just because I would add promotion to his list. As Anna Stilz, whose comments were highlighted by Justin Weinberg, notes, publication in these journals is a "signalling device that validates the importance of someone’s work when they go up for tenure and promotion."

However, as should be well known, compared to other disciplines, including the sciences, professional philosophy's acceptance rates is especially low (recall Justin Weinber's discussion). And other disciplines also hire and promote people. Thus, I suggest the real function of such very low acceptance rates is the felt need for prestige production in professional philosophy among the circle entrusted to run leading journals.+ Before I get to the attempt to conflate such 'prestige' or 'importance' with 'quality' that insiders often make, it is worth noting that the needs of such signaling are not evidently co-extensive with the pursuit of truth (leaving wisdom aside) or progress in the field. In fact, they clearly can come apart.

For, there are some (quite predictable and also widely discussed) side-effects of the very low acceptance rates: very fine papers need to be shopped around to many journals before they find a home. This has overburdened the supply of referees, and it has put tremendous pressure on editorial process at many journals. We are a discipline that is familiar with moratoria on submission and backlogs from acceptance to publication at quite a few journals. There is also often a huge delay between submission and verdict. And consequently overall a huge delay between research and actual publication for too many papers. Thus, as organized, prestige generation slows down whatever rate of progress one might hope for in the field. (Yes, I am a skeptic about philosophical progress, so I use 'progress'  here relative to a research frontier or relative to how competent judges in a field would describe it.)** 

The problem with this state of affair is not merely epistemic. It also generates huge additional anxiety for people who are or expect to be on the job market and who are up for promotion. (This is also true in other fields, of course.) With acceptance rates so low, they basically face a (weighted) lottery whether their papers are accepted in a time frame needed. This state of affairs probably reinforces all kinds of structural injustice, again not only relative to other disciplines. The fact that many leading journals have, sometimes for decades on end, been entrusted to a 'safe pair of hands' (a distinguished, often male, philosopher) probably increases the bottlenecks and the risks of such structural injustice, but -- like the fact that we see so little experimentation with journal form (and kinds of review) [something I strongly advocate] -- I leave that aside here.

Now, I am not claiming editors are gaming acceptance rates directly. But they do clearly view number of issue/volume slots or pages as a hard constraint (perhaps regulated by an implicit willingness to let publication not be delayed for more than a year or two after official acceptance). But notice that restricting supply of slots is not the same as selecting on quality. If one really selected on quality alone one would allow the supply of slots/pages to be flexible. So, in what follows (and above) I use 'low acceptance rates' as a proxy for limiting the number of publication slots, or selectivity.

Above I noted that prestige generation trade-offs with progress at the low rates of acceptance in professional philosophy. We don't need to model that. (It gets more complicated as acceptance rates rise significantly because there may well be an inflection point where too much ease of publication undermines progress.) But we need some modeling to help understand that prestige generation or selectivity and quality can come apart significantly.

Luckily for me (and the quality of discussion) I was sent a pre-print of a paper, "Academic journals, incentives, and the quality of peer review: a model," by K. J. S. Zollman, J. Garcıa, and T. Handfield conditionally accepted at Philosophy of Science that has a game-theoretic model exploring possible trade offs between aiming for quality and (you guessed it) for low acceptance rates, in contexts where selectivity is taken to be a measure or proxy for quality. The paper should be publicly available fairly soon. But my discussion won’t turn on technical details and its possible lack of robustness. (I call incentive-alert philosophy of science, ‘public choice philosophy of science.’) In their model quality is an effect of peer review which is costly. And somewhat worrisome they conclude that "journals incentivized by selectivity have strong incentives to maintain worse peer review than those incentivized by their quality." I claim this nicely describes well what happens in professional philosophy. 

Now, they note that aiming for low acceptance or selectivity creates an incentive among editors to discourage "self-selection because a paper which is not submitted cannot be rejected. This results in a strange process whereby journals make peer review worse in an attempt to induce bad papers to submit, but maintain sufficiently good peer review to ensure that a large proportion of those bad papers will probably be rejected." And somebody may well object that referee quality at our leading journals is -- despite the boorish incivility and rudeness -- actually qualitatively great. Let's assume there is a lot of correct testimony to this effect.

One can explain such testimony in light of Zollman/Garcia/Handfield model, if we pay attention to the role of desk rejects (something they ignore.) Let's return to JPP; it is especially famous for two interrelated features: it offered quick (even helpful) desk-rejects (often/always by Goodin) to the vast-majority of initial submissions and then stellar review process on the papers sent out to reviewers which help improve the final publications. (I know important scholars who almost only review for JPP.) And this creates (now quoting Zollman et al) "the appearance of high standards."

One may think that JPP has, thus, hit on a fine equilibrium between balancing peer review costs and quality; and that it actually is a good way to aim for selectivity and quality at once. And people do like to point to the quality of the papers appearing in JPP. (In 2021 its impact factor was according the journal's website 1.881--quite respectable for philosophy standards, but not especially noteworthy. Something fans of selectivity tend to ignore.) Fair enough.

But, of course, desk-reject even by an impartial and distinguished and unrushed editor is a very coarse-grained (and very cheap) peer review system. And the Zollman et al. model explains that this does reduce quality. Obviously, this presupposes that among the desk-rejects are sufficiently many papers that with (costly) peer review would have been as good as the papers that JPP did publish. That's obviously true, but that's because among the papers published in very selective peers of JPP and even slightly less selective journals there is very little difference in overall quality. But the nice thing about working with a game-theoretic model like Zollman et al.'s is you don't have to trust my judgments, it's a predictable effect of the incentives -- artificially limiting supply! -- shaping decisions. Of course, the model may not be robust so here I have used it solely to help think through the issues. But notice that when multiple journals aim to be selective it becomes much costlier to provide adequate peer review because referees get overworked (and perhaps bored by seeing the same papers multiple times).

Now, I am not against prestige in professional philosophy or higher education (although one does wonder if excessive selectivity in admissions to top colleges actually is conducive to society's needs). But from the perspective of the epistemic (and social) needs of the discipline and profession, it is a mistake to have excessive selectivity in philosophy journal publication help produce or coincide with that prestige. It slows down research and, as the model suggests, plausibly hurts quality. (It probably does so by reducing intellectual diversity and increasing risk aversion.) 

So, from my perspective, while the publishers should respect editorial independence and not use heavy-handed practices, nudging our leading journals to accept more papers is the right thing to do even if the motive -- profit -- or honoring flawed open access contracts need not be so. We need such a regime change.

Of course, the increase should be gradual and not tenfold at once. The critics of Wiley have a point! As should be clear most arguments that conflate incredible selectivity and quality in defense of the status quo seem bogus and, I say this politely (these are my friends, after all), seem generally self-serving not the discipline's interest.

Tom Hurka suggested that such selectivity allows one to "keep abreast of important new developments and contributions in the field without having to wade through dozens or hundreds of published pieces." This was very true before the age of scholar.google and philpapers. But less so now. I do think we need more outlets like (as Ingrid Robeyns suggested in context) Philosophy Compass that (especially with the disappearance of review chapters in dissertations) give opinionated surveys of recent developments, but that's orthogonal to the present discussion.

Finally, I don't want to claim that increasing, even doubling slots or reducing/halving selectivity (to say 10-20% acceptance rates) solves the profession's social problems. Undoubtedly, if journal publication in particular venues is seen as key, then we cannot prevent an arms race among job candidates and tenure seekers to publish in such journals. And maybe the gains to the referee process will be ephemeral or temporary--only time and experience will tell. But my argument for the epistemic gains from increasing slots remain.

Academic disciplines do need high quality signals for quality in publication for institutional and epistemic reasons; excessive selectivity is a bad mechanism to produce such a signal and it perniciously confers prestige that reinforces all the bad effects of the very steep disciplinary prestige hierarchies. I hope the scholars who nobly and correctly resigned in protest also work to change this bad status quo.

• This first appeared at: <On JPP, Wiley, Prestige Production, and Modeling Quality: (substack.com)> a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

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*I am going to ignore the pervasive editorial unaccountability and deviations of best scholarly practices that also show in these journals.

**Of course, the salience of significant work seeps out to well connected insiders, but that just strengthens my argument.

+Some field specific journals within philosophy that actually presuppose considerable technical expertise (in the sciences or ancient languages) have much higher acceptance rates without corresponding loss of prestige. I think this is due to the fact that the prestige is already sufficiently accorded to the expertise (and that editors in these fields can focus more on keeping the discussion going aright).

 

On The End of History and the Displacement of Logic

[I will phase out D&I at typepad. This post was first published at  digressions.impressions.substack here. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber at <digressionsimpressions.substack.com>]

Because we understand ourselves as forward-looking problem-solvers, and recognize with the sciences that through inevitable progress today's ruling views will seem quaint when the research frontier has shifted (as it will), analytic philosophers have no major investment in curating themselves as a tradition. It has a sponge-like character in assimilating doctrines and techniques from without, and, as seen from a distance, appears to reinvent itself continuously. Because it is such a moving target external critics often seem comically out of date to knowing insiders whereas internal critics often end up being domesticated by subsequent generations (without, alas, getting credit for it). That it is a tradition is the effect of intellectual and sociological path dependencies that express themselves in certain aesthetic (clarity, transparency, rigor, etc.) and epistemic values, and the existence of bits of post Frege-Russell-Whitehead logic as a kind of (often tacit) lingua franca long after developments within logic stopped being a source of major disciplinary excitement or much utility elsewhere. 

The move from a logic requirement to a 'formal methods' in Yale University's graduate curriculum [see here at Dailynous; here at Leitterreports] tracks and, as it will be copied, shapes a much larger set of shifts in professional philosophy. In what follows, I, first, say something about how this constitutes the discipline going forward, and, second, I close -- as the previous paragraph hints -- at what predictably will be lost. The shift to 'formal methods' is often articulated in (broadly consequentialist) terms of what is useful to PhD students in their actual research or employment possibilities. It's anodyne to suggest that this actual work is interdisciplinary (with STEM/Social Sciency disciplines) in character in some sense. 

What it (really) is are three different projects (at a certain level of abstraction): (i) the projects that I have called 'synthetic philosophy' which, while using a particular technical/formal model/theory, brings together insights, knowledge, and arguments from the special sciences with the aim to offer a coherent account of complex systems and connect these to a wider culture or other philosophical projects (or both); (ii) the projects one can subsume under 'conceptual explorative research,' which amounts to developing concepts and techniques (including formal) that either are generative of scientific or social projects or help explain/understand perceived foundational problems in them; (iii) the continuous working out of inherited-as-philosophy puzzles. Presumably all three of these projects will involve collaboration with AI as coupled (human/machine/network) systems. With new base-lines, progress is possible. To be sure, the practice of wisdom does not require academic philosophy.

These three projects are at this level of generality not always at tension with each other, and because the fruits can be felt in disciplines outside of philosophy are not always zero-sum (job-wise). But we should expect near continuous hybridization and splitting and reconfiguration among such projects until a new political hegemon reconfigures higher education in the service of new ideals. (I am hinting at the fickleness of student-demand or donors as instruments of permanently shaping the discipline.) What I am, thus, stipulating -- perhaps rashly -- is that we should not expect hegemonic intellectual schools to re-emerge except temporarily. 

At this point one may object that 'argument' is missing in the previous paragraph. Perhaps, it will remain as constitutive element of philosophy. I am pretty skeptical about this possibility once formal logic is displaced from the intrinsic DNA of our professional formation. Yes, there are statistical arguments, but the skill one acquires is not argumentative, but something distinct. (What that is may be beyond my expertise, but I am inclined to say it is a skill at spotting differences that make a difference.) To be sure, I am a pluralist about the nature of 'argument' so it may be safer to predict that what will count as a paradigmatic argument will shift.

Now, before I mention some of the predictable 'losses' that follow from the shift under way, I want to prevent the misinterpretation that I somehow mourn the end of analytic philosophy (in the sense described by Liam Kofi Bright). I see nothing wrong in the fact that the half dozen departments (and the ones that mimic them) that train the influential PhDs of the next generation do not want to defend the intellectual path that got them there. The end of the unfolding history of analytic philosophy turns out to be a historical whimper. So I am using 'loss' analogously to or in the sense of 'Kuhn-loss'--the systematic forgetting of certain results and insights.

Second, it's predictable, for example, that as logic disappears as a (tacit) lingua franca much of the history of analytic philosophy will seem like strange territory and unmotivated to future students, and will become near unreadable. All kinds of moves that seemed obvious or intelligible -- think of the uses of regimentation, or Tarski's account of truth, bound variables, etc. -- will stop being self-evident. I had a glimpse of this when I read Quine's Word and Object a decade ago with Dutch undergraduates who were simply bewildered. 

In addition, I suspect that lacking such a tacit lingua franca, the three kinds of projects I mentioned will become increasingly at least partially estranged from each other and will, thereby, reflect the underlying social pluralism of our societies. That is compatible with each sharing in structural commonalities (including some that may well turn out to be politically or socially problematic). Unfortunately, that will imply that metrics and measures that are orthogonal to (intrinsic) philosophical worth, if there is such a thing, will be increasingly used for purposes of evaluation and advancement. 

• This first appeared at: <On The End of History and the Displacement of Logic (substack.com)> a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

 

Hayek on Liberal Utopia, the Long Game, and Weberian Politics

[Over time I am plan to phase out this blog at typepad. This post was first published at  digressions.impressions.substack here. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber at <digressionsimpressions.substack.com>]

In response to my recent suggestion, in my celebration of Chandran Kukathas, [see also this nicely edited reprint in Liberal Currents] that, not unlike other liberal thinkers, "Hayekians" are profoundly anti-political (even suspicious of politics), I was redirected to Hayek's (1949) "The Intellectuals and Socialism" by the doyen of Hayek studies, Bruce Caldwell. In that paper, Hayek argues that liberal intellectuals should focus on the long game and develop what Hayek calls, "liberal utopia." Contemporary neo-Hayekians -- I am thinking of people not unlike Caldwell and Kukathas, but also Pete Boettke (whose writings [see, for example here] first alerted me to the significance of the passage I am about to discuss) -- seem to be  inspired by the following passage as articulating the task of liberal intellectuals:

What we lack is a liberal Utopia, a program which seems neither a mere defense of things as they are nor a diluted kind of socialism, but truly liberal radicalism which does not spare the susceptibilities of the mighty (including the trade unions), which is not too severely practical and which does not confine itself to what appears today as politically possible. We need intellectual leaders who are prepared to resist the blandishments of power and influence and who are willing to work for an ideal, however small may be the prospects of its early realization. (F.A. Hayek (1949) "The intellectuals and socialism," p. 432; emphasis added).

Somewhat sadly most critics of Hayek and what is now known as 'classical liberalism' or 'neoliberalism' do not take this passage seriously at all. They are quick to associate Hayek with Reagan, Thatcher, and Pinochet and all kinds of (dirty) practical politics. Such critics find it hard to believe that the argument's effect on Hayekian intellectuals has been to urge them to keep their hands politically clean and to focus primarily on the noble task of contributing to articulating the elements of a liberal utopia unhindered by short-term feasibility.

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In a creative (2022) paper, Mikayla Novak plausible treats Hayek's pre-WWII proposal for interstate federation as a kind of exemplar of the sort of liberal utopian thinking, which she treats as an instance of heterotopia, Hayek may council. In an important article, Caldwell himself points to Hayek's theorizing in The Constitution of Liberty (1960) and Law, Legislation and Liberty (1973-79) as other examples of such utopian theorizing. The function of a liberal utopia is not to guide day-to-day policy based on a blueprint (that's there error of the so-called 'man of system' derided by Adam Smith), but to offer an ideal (even a social theory) that may mobilize others in the long term and that also may be useful in interpreting reality. In fact, in Law, Legislation and Liberty Hayek puts the point as follows: "It is not to be denied that to some extent the guiding model of the overall order will always be an utopia, something to which the existing situation will be only a distant approximation and which many people will regard as wholly impractical. Yet it is only by constantly holding up the guiding conception of an internally consistent model which could be realized by the consistent application of the same principles, that anything like an effective framework for a functioning spontaneous order will be achieved." And in context, it is clear that Hayek treats Adam Smith's impact on the development of British free trade as the exemplar to be emulated.

However, if we look again at the passage quoted from "The intellectuals and socialism," it is worth noting that a liberal utopia is also called a "program" (Foucault picks up on this) and that in his choice of words, 'truly liberal radicalism,' Hayek is evoking the Philosophical Radicals, the politicians who were inspired by Bentham's program. The natural implicature in light of Hayek's relentless criticism of the constructivism of Bentham, which is thus a false liberal radicalism, is that Hayek is trying to generate a program that involves both an intellectual revolution and eventually actionable legislation of the sort we find in the circle of Bentham's political admirers in the 1820s and 30s. Since Hayek (and other neo-liberals of the period) was in dialogue with Dicey's Lectures on the Relation between Law and Public Opinion (recall; also here; and here), and Dicey describes the significance and impact of the Benthamite program, it stands to reason Hayek was inspired to offer an alternative.

Now, I admit that the claims of the previous paragraph rests on slender evidence. But the liberal utopia passage is preceded by another one on the previous page that motivates my reading:

"The difficulty of finding genuine and disinterested support for a systematic policy for freedom is not new. In a passage of which the reception of a recent book of mine has often reminded me, Lord Acton long ago de-scribed how "[a]t all times sincere friends of freedom have been rare, and its triumphs have been due to minorities, that have prevailed by associating themselves with auxiliaries whose objects differed from their own; and this association, which is always dangerous, has been sometimes disastrous, by giving to opponents just grounds of opposition..." More recently, one of the most distinguished living American economists has complained in a similar vein that the main task of those who believe in the basic principles of the capitalist system must frequently be to defend this system against the capitalists-indeed the great liberal economists, from Adam Smith to the present, have always known this. --Hayek "The intellectuals and socialism." (p. 431).

The point of this paragraph is not that the true liberal must restrict herself to devising a new utopia, but that in addition they must seek out ("finding"/"associating themselves") political coalition partners. To be sure, this is not ad hoc policy. It has to be a 'systematic policy' -- that is based on a program -- that can promote freedom. In fact, this is so in the full expectation that these others will not share in Hayek's liberal ideals and may be motivated by much less lofty goals.

In fact, both Acton & Hayek recognize that coalitions with others will involve judgment, including judgements one may turn out to be truly mistaken or "sometimes disastrous." (Just ask the critics of neo-liberalism's occasional flirtation with transitional dictatorship.) And the risks involved include that one must also be willing to speak truth to potentially powerful friends (capitalists), and take on vested interests (unions) that are also dedicated to helping the people whose freedom one claims to promote. This all echoes Weber's account of the sometimes tragic choices facing a “politician with a sense of vocation.”

As an aside: I don't think that Hayek is here anticipating the fusionism (between truly liberal radicalism) and conservative thought that became so characteristic of actual American politics on the right. But that it occurred need not surprise after the fact. What Hayek shows is that political life involves aligning oneself with those, who may share quite different commitments, to make possible one’s goals. This is, in fact, very much like my own view,* and this is why I spoke of 'Hayekians' and not Hayek in my piece.

Now originally, I thought Caldwell understands Hayek to be advocating a kind of political dis-engagement by the intellectual who prepares the way for later generations. But he called my attention to a set of recorded remarks by Kukathas on the 'dilemma' that the liberal, who might exercise power, faces. In his five minute remarks, Kukathas rejects the path of avoiding political life and the path of realism, but advocates restraint and forbearance in power and to stick to liberal principles, especially as ground in the core value of toleration. (The remarks start around 1 hour and 13.) I take it Caldwell thinks this is more principled than the one I endorse. I agree that Kukathas' position is rather noble, it follows (to quote Weber) "the maxim of an ethic of ultimate ends-that is, in religious terms." But this one sided political stance, is not Hayek's.

For, I doubt Hayek believes that when one associates "with auxiliaries whose objects" differ from one's own, one can always stick to one's liberal principles in political life (be at coalition building or power holding). For, if one could stick to one's principles in political life then there wouldn't be any danger or risk of disaster. That's to say, Hayek is, as Foucault discerned, a Weberian in ways that many contemporary Hayekian intellectuals are not.

• Over time I am plan to phase out this blog at typepad. This post was first published at  digressions.impressions.substack here. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber at <digressionsimpressions.substack.com>

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*Recall I wrote: "So, from this perspective, any program of reform must include a constituency or coalition that can promote the policy effectively. Obviously, the promise here is that this may increase the chances of uptake; it also often makes all liberal proposals much more status-quo friendly. Sometimes the concession to feasibility makes the liberal program appear as a handmaiden to conservatism or common sense morality."

On Tasioulas, Conceptual Inflation, and Public Reason

Hélène Landemore enthusiastically shared a piece, “The Inflation of Concepts,” published at Aeon by John Tasioulas (who she describes as her “Oxford colleague”). Appealing to the work of Jürgen Habermas and John Rawls, Tasioulas focuses on a “threat to the quality of public reason” (which he claims) “tends to go unnoticed. This is the degradation of the core ideas mobilised in exercises of public reason.” And, in particular, what he has in mind is ‘conceptual overreach’. This “occurs when a particular concept undergoes a process of expansion or inflation in which it absorbs ideas and demands that are foreign to it.”

At this point I kind of expected Tasioulas to suggest as an example ‘democracy’ but he initially focuses on “human rights or the rule of law” [he is a legal philosopher] which “is taken to offer a comprehensive political ideology, as opposed to picking out one among many elements upon which our political thinking needs to draw and hold in balance when arriving at justified responses to the problems of our time.” Near the end of his essay he does focus on democracy (which he thinks of as a more “contestable” example!) and while drawing on the excellent work of Joshua Ober, he complains that some people mistakenly use ‘democracy’ and ‘liberal democracy’ interchangeably. (Our reading habits are clearly different because most of the conflations I see involve ‘democracy’ and whatever views a theorist expects/wishes to see approved by their imaginary demos.)

In all three of his main examples, a clear concept is developed by the intellectual class in order to add new features to it, including some that thereby muddle it. Now, Tasioulas does not object to this on the grounds that may tempt what we may call a ‘conceptual purist analytic philosopher’ that true conceptual change is impossible (for the conventional wisdom in the corner of analytic philosophy in which I grew up was that concepts are what they are, eternally). For Tasioulas allows for “the possibility that a given concept might legitimately come to incorporate new demands over time without this constituting a form of conceptual overreach.”

So, lurking in Tasioulas is a kind of consistency requirement that only additions to the content of a concept are legitimate that are compatible with its original identity and, to use a vaguer terms its spirit (this to capture Tasioulas’ examples and his notion of ‘foreign’). Those political agents that inflate concepts beyond the possible limits of intra-conceptual coherence, are conceptual polluters.

I put it like that because Tasioulas shares with his sometime Oxford Colleague, Neil Levy (whose very fine book Bad Beliefs: Why They Happen to Good People I reviewed here [open access]), a kind of fantasy that that the public sphere can remain unpolluted and (this is the public reason part) should remain unpolluted. Of course, if it is a fantasy, then (ought implies can) the duty to keep foreign elements out disappears and one can welcome conceptual hybridization (perhaps even inflation).

Before I explain why it is a fantasy, it is worth noting that the concepts Tasioulas focuses on are also paradigmatic cases of ‘essentially contested concepts’ (in Gallie’s sense) and so one might think that his purist approach to them does not get off the ground. Tasioulas hints at his awareness of this hypothetical objection (not just with his use of ‘contestable’ in the context of his democracy example, but also ) because -- while tacitly invoking the concept/conception distinction that has been used by public reason scholars to domesticate the possibility of ‘essentially contested concepts’ --, he acknowledges that his position “is further complicated by the fact that there might be various equally acceptable ways of specifying the meanings of a range of important concepts.” But it is important to see that for Tasioulas these acceptable ways cannot, in principle, reveal or express internal, latent contradiction(s) or foreign-ess within the concept.

Interestingly enough, and to his credit, Tasioulas does not disguise the elitist commitments in his version of public reason. Alongside the “craving for simplicity,” he fundamentally blames “elite actors and institutions,” “special interest groups,” and “dialectical gambits” by political agents who wish to deprive their “political opponents of a conceptual place on which to stand.” And so in the final paragraph he closes with the claim that the “responsibility” for maintaining a relatively pure conceptual public sphere “falls on all of us, but especially on the wielders of great public and private power.” And this fits his diagnosis at the start of his essay that conceptual inflation is the effect of “the utterances of elite actors, such as bureaucrats, lawyers, politicians and representatives of international organisations and NGOs.”

What’s ironic about all of this is that usually (left) critics of public reason (like my brilliant former teacher Iris Marion Young) tend to point to the elitist presuppositions of public reason (comparing its norms to that of a genteel seminar room) to discredit it and that these norms leave out many other (quite intelligible) forms of contestation and argumentation. By contrast, Tasioulas basically blames the very people who ought to be all in on public reason for not living up to its demands for public speech.

With that in place let me acknowledge that I recognize that communication and decision-making might seem a lot easier if people stuck to a shared notion of particular concepts and that any extensions of these should remain sufficiently pure and avoid what Tasioulas calls inflation. I use ‘seem’ because Tasioulas ignores all the ways in which strategic ambiguity makes peace, collective decisions, coalition-building, and even agreeing to disagree possible.

To be sure, I too am tempted by worry over the confusion and lack of clarity that might follow from conceptual hybridization and inflation, and it can be terribly frustrating to see the mis-use of concepts in public. (I am often happy to die on the mole-hill that Trump was an attempted usurper between January 2-6, 2021, but did not attempt a coup d'état.) And I often see ‘violence’ used in ways that I think inflated. It is part of the analytic philosopher’s political faith that if the concepts are clarified, social life can be in a much better state (this is actually visible in Carnap and, as I have argued in, Ernest Nagel). Nothing I say here undermines that faith, or the purported utility that follows from conceptual engineering, conceptual clarification, or conceptual amelioration. After all, I have appealed to the work of a philosopher’s conceptual coining ‘essentially contested concept’ here! (Some time I return to the odd status of Gallie within professional philosophy.)

Now, above, I used ‘fantasy,’ for three reasons. First, Tasioulas ends up having to tell a mythic stories about concepts that originally are (relatively) pure and then are corrupted by (even well intentioned) strategic actors. (It shares quite a bit of elements with standard accounts of the Fall.) The story is mythic because the temporal and conceptual proper base line Tasioulas appeals to in each case is always drawn arbitrarily by him such as to make the concept do the work Tasioulas wants.

This can be seen even the case of the ‘rule of law.’ Tasioulas writes “Traditionally, this refers to a range of formal and procedural requirements that enable people to comply with the law.” (emphasis added) Because ‘traditionally’ is so vague it is hard to contest this on historical grounds (hence my use of ‘mythic,’ although it helps knowing that Tasioulas is an admirer of Raz!) I was a bit taken aback by this understanding of the rule of law because I don’t tend to think of it in such functional terms (that it enables compliance with the law).

For, it is worth noting that Dicey, who is ‘standardly’ (see what I did there?) credited by conservatives and liberals alike in the Anglo-world for giving the central formulation of the rule of law, describes its first principle as "no man is punishable or can be lawfully made to suffer in body or goods except for a distinct breach of law established in the ordinary legal manner before the ordinary Courts of the land.” This makes clear that the rule of law is understood as a kind of constraint on the exercise of power.

My modest point here is not to argue in favor of Dicey as the proper baseline (why him and not Aristotle or Cicero or Blackstone etc?), but just to suggest that in all his explicit examples Tasioulas is engaged in cherry picking to promote his own favored understanding of a concept as the baseline and then to treat deviations from it that he disapproves of as conceptual inflations. This is essentially arbitrary, and even where I happen to agree politically with Tasioulas, one should not expect wider agreement. I happen to think this is part of the human condition because conceptual inflation just is a strategy that is always available to political agents, but nothing I say requires you to accept that.

However, because it is always going to be somewhat arbitrary, conceptual inflation is always going to be a charge that itself will be contestable. And so functionally one can expect that if there is uptake of ‘conceptual inflation’ as a term of abuse, that rather than focusing on the issues under dispute, it shifts dispute to a more meta-level (about the origins and proper use of a concept). This may be good for the business of analytic philosophy (it’s our area of expertise), and other elite intellectuals, but it will neither cure us of the phenomenon (Tasioulas’ professed aim) nor solve the underlying disputes (although they may displace them which can be preferable sometimes).

Second, even by Tasioulas’ own lights his proposal to keep concepts in “good repair” is likely to fail. Because he does not address the grounds, institutions, or incentives that by his own lights give rise to conceptual inflation (This is why I mentioned Neil Levy’s book, which at least begins the important conversation what would be required to keep the political environment relatively unpolluted.) So, even if Tasioulas could establish a duty to avoid conceptual inflation, it seems defeasible in practice (because obeying it would undermine other important morally salient political aims).

Let me close by assuaging a possible worry that I am making a category mistake, and that I am sneakily trying to undermine commitment to public reason on empirical grounds. But that’s not what I am doing here (even though it’s probably true that I lack warmth toward public reason as a project). Rather, third, it is Tasioulas who mistakenly assumes (with appeal to Habermas and Rawls) that adherence to public reason is existing common ground. And if that were true then indeed he could remind participants in it (like a seminar leader) that they are violating shared norms and all would be well. But, unfortunately, contemporary elites (the ones he appeals to) quite clearly do not believe this, their actions (alongside their utterances) belie it.

• This first appeared at: <https://digressionsimpressions.substack.com/p/on-tasioulas-conceptual-inflation> a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.