Digressions&Impressions

On Revolutionary Leadership and Feminism (in early Islam)

I want to suggest here that during the years that interest us - from year 3 (the defeat at Uhud) to the beginning of year 8 (the conquest of Mecca) - the Prophet's project for equality of the sexes foundered because he refused to minimize the sexual aspect of life, to hide it, to consider it marginal or secondary. The Prophet was in a vulnerable position. His aims came to nothing because he always refused to separate his private life and public life. He could only conceive of the sexual and the political as being intimately linked. He would go to prayer directly upon leaving ~A'isha's bed, using the small door that linked her room to the mosque. Despite 'Umar's advice, he continued to go on expeditions accompanied by one or two of his wives, who, accustomed to being directly involved in public affairs, moved around freely and inquired about what was going on. One scene in al-Tabari depicts 'Umar as being beside himself at seeing 'A'isha strolling around the battlefront beside the trenches: "But what brings you here?" he cried out. "By my life, your boldness borders on insolence! What if a disaster befalls us? What if there is a defeat and people are taken captive?"--Fatima Mernissi (1987 [1991]) The Veil and The Male Elite: a Feminist Interpretation of Women's Rights in Islam. Translated by Mary Jo Lakeland, p. 162.

Mernissi's Beyond the Veil is, of course, better known than The Veil and the Male Elite. In fact, while scholar.google tells me that the latter book is cited plenty, I have never seen it discussed in high theory in political philosophy. This is a shame because in addition to the themes announced in its title and subtitle, it is a wonderful study in the challenges and trade-offs of revolutionary, political leadership. And while the narrative is not as gripping as, say, the masterpiece of the genre, Black Jacobins (recall here; here), it certainly held my attention through out while discussing key years of the Prophet Muhammad's early struggles and their significance to Islamic jurisprudence, historiography, ethics, and political life. 

As the quoted paragraph indicates, Mernissi treats Muhammad's original program for Muslim political life as fundamentally egalitarian. (The language of 'rights' in the sub-title is a bit misleading rights don't figure much in the book.) Throughout the book, she recounts his progressive views on women's inheritance, property ownership, and agency more generally. And she offers a plausible account how the history narrated in Qu'ran supports her argument.

In fact, in her hands Muhammad recognizes over thirteen hundred years before the second wave feminists that the political and the personal are intrinsically intertwined. And she shows this, in part, through a fascinating discussion of the spatial structure of the first mosque built in Medina with 'A'isha's apartment having its own entry into the mosque. 

Now, for Mernissi later Islamic jurisprudence (Fiqh), which governs Islamic communal life in practice, was corrupted, in part, by some dubious Hadith (sayings) attributed to the Prophet (these were promoted by interested politicians);  and, in part -- and this is more interesting -- by a flawed empirical method that treats all the data on par without regard to the systematic and ethical principles that might unify the Prophet's vision. And without some such principles, the evidence that is shaped by pre-Islamic patriarchy (and aristocracy) and by the late years' tactical regressions has no counterbalance (despite clear evidence in the sources that these regressions were challenged by important political agents in the moment).

In her book, Mernissi never mentions the Islamic philosophers (Falsafa) or Ibn Khaldun. But with them she shares a treatment of Muhammad as a political leader who, unlike failed prophets, recognizes that without arms the ethical message may not have successful uptake. And with them, there is an implied criticism that The Prophet did not handle the problem of succession very well (although with them she recognizes that the way succession was initially handled for the rightious caliphs at least has democratic potential). Because his companions are left without the right sort of guidance, within half a century the Umayyad have re-established the contingencies of (monarchic) birth as source of succession (familiar from trival life) and shortly thereafter the battle of Karbala shatters the very possibility of a unified community committed to justice (forever, it seems).

Okay, with that in place, we can now make more specific the significance of 'Umar to her narrative/analysis. 'Umar was Muhammad's father in law, one of the leading companions of Muhammad, and later the second caliph after his death. And in Mernissi's analysis 'Umar becomes the archetype of a key element in Muhammad's political coalition: strongly attracted to Muhammad's vision on intrinsic moral and political grounds, which provides a chance to overcome political and social crises, but unable to let go of what we would call male entitlement or patriarchy rooted in (tribal) martial virtues.

For Mernissi 'Umar represents resistance to "Islam as a coherent system of values that governs all the behaviors of a person and a society, and Muhammad's egalitarian project, are in fact based on a detail that many of his Companions, led by 'Umar, considered to be secondary: the emergence of woman's free will as something the organization of society had to take into account." (184)* And she describes the political circumstances in which Muhammad has to tack toward 'Umar's commitments in order to ensure the survival of the Ummah.

Now, it is important to recognize that for Mernissi 'Umar is not merely a traditionalist who lacks understanding of a part of Muhammad's vision. For she grants that the crisis years at Medina were fundamentally unstable. And she recognizes that he is not all wrong that part of the cause of the crisis or disorder were the Prophet's women (and women generally), who "were objects of envy." (185) And she implies that this crisis is not just due to the revolutionary internal regulation of Muslim communal life, but also to Muhammad's attempts to change the laws of warfare for his followers. In particular the abolition of using war as a means of enrichment and (sexual enslavement) if that meant turning fellow Muslims into booty (and slavery). (I was reminded of the issues surrounding Republic 470-1). Here's how Mernissi discusses the circumstances of the key decision at the height of the crisis:

In the circumstances of the military crisis in Medina in years 5, 6, and 7, the Prophet did not have many choices for coping with the insecurity in the city. He could either accept and live with this insecurity while waiting for the new source of power, God and His religion, to become rooted in the people's mentality, or he could reactivate the tribe as the police force of the city. The first option meant living with insecurity while waiting for God to show His power through military successes. With the second option, the tribe would assure security in the city immediately, but Allah and his community would disappear forever - at least in their original perspective. Muhammad's message - his dream of a community in which individuals are respected and have rights, not because they belong to a tribe, but simply because they are able to believe they have a link with a God - was dependent on the role that the tribe was called on to play during this transitory phase. Tribal power was the danger. Tolerating it, under any form whatever, as a means of control was a very grave compromise with the Muslim idea of a reasoning human being who exercises self-control. (187-188)**

But because tribal power is needed to make a successful transition from the crisis to Arab unification, 'Umar's more limited vision wins out. I don't mean to suggest that this is all of Mernissi's analysis--she roots the ultimate decision also in the fragility of age (and declining sexual prowess) of The Prophet. So, on Mernissi's view what Islam became after the crisis years is an unsteady mixture between Muhammad's original vision and the demands of realpolitik. 

Structurally, these circumstances are analogous to the way the initial outcome of the French revolution was a victory for men, while simultaneously a step back for women's political participation (and an unexpected disaster for slaves). The underlying problem here is a more general feature of transition problems. Recall that (here, here, here, and here), I understand the transition problem, as how to move from an unjust status quo to an ideal (or vastly improved) state and, in particular, with a population raised under bad institutions (or, if one conceives this [as I would not] in eugenic terms, bad breeding). This is intrinsically challenging. But the problem is made all the more difficult when there are foreign enemies or when the war-economy is a central feature of the pre-revolutionary society. 

Mernissi's feminist reading of the history of early Islam is an invitation to her fellow religionists to reject a millennium worth of jurisprudence and for a renewal from within (in this respect she is not unlike the fundamentalists who would have little time for her). But it is also a reflection on the challenges or constraints that pre-existing practices and beliefs generate to or impose on even the most successful projects of revolutionary renewal. To put this poetically, no prophet of political society can truly emulate God's creation from nothing, but s/he has to work with materials that cannot be fully cleansed from the effects of history, at least not at once. 

21 March 1979: Foucault Diagnoses American Analytic Philosophy (XXXI)

The second interesting use of these neo-liberal analyses is that the economic grid will or should make it possible to test governmental action, gauge its validity, and to object to activities of the public authorities on the grounds of their abuses, excesses, futility, and wasteful expenditure. In short, the economic grid is not applied in this case in order to understand social processes and make them intelligible; it involves anchoring and justifying a permanent political criticism of political and governmental action. It involves scrutinizing every action of the public authorities in terms of the game of supply and demand, in terms of efficiency with regard to the particular elements of this game, and in terms of the cost of intervention by the public authorities in the field of the market. In short, it involves criticism of the governmentality actually exercised which is not just a political or juridical criticism; it is a market criticism, the cynicism of a market criticism opposed to the action of public authorities. This is not just an empty project or a theorist’s idea. In the United States a permanent exercise of this type of criticism has developed especially in an institution which was not in fact created for this, since it was created before the development of the neo-liberal school, before the development of the Chicago School. This institution is the American Enterprise Institute whose essential function, now, is to measure all public activities in cost-benefit terms, whether these activities be the famous big social programs concerning, for example, education, health, and racial segregation developed by the Kennedy and Johnson administrations in the decade 1960–1970. This type of criticism also involves measuring the activity of the numerous federal agencies established since the New Deal and especially since the end of the Second World War, such as the Food and Health Administration, the Federal Trade Commission, and so on. So, it is criticism in the form of what could be called an “economic positivism”; a permanent criticism of governmental policy.
Seeing the deployment of this type of criticism one cannot help thinking of an analogy, which I will leave as such: the positivist critique of ordinary language. When you consider the way in which the Americans have employed logic, the logical positivism of the Vienna School, in order to apply it to scientific, philosophical, or everyday discourse, you see there too a kind of filtering of every statement whatsoever in terms of contradiction, lack of consistency, nonsense. To some extent we can say that the economic critique the neo-liberals try to apply to governmental policy is also a filtering of every action by the public authorities in terms of contradiction, lack of consistency, and nonsense. The general form of the market becomes an instrument, a tool of discrimination in the debate with the administration. In other words, in classical liberalism the government was called upon to respect the form of the market and laisser-faire. Here, laissez-faire is turned into a do-not-laisser-faire government, in the name of a law of the market which will enable each of its activities to be measured and assessed. Laissez-faire is thus turned round, and the market is no longer a principle of government’s self-limitation; it is a principle turned against it. It is a sort of permanent economic tribunal confronting government.--Michel Foucault, 21 March, 1979,  translated by Graham Burchell, Lecture 10, The Birth of Biopolitics, 246-247 [emphases added]

It's difficult to leave the riches of lecture 9 behind without exhausting all possible angles of comment, but it it is clear that in lecture 10 Foucault starts harvesting the fruits of the first nine lectures. This lecture contains two great set-pieces: (i) the comparison between the neo-liberalism of ORDOs and Chicago-school in part to explore the contrasting analysis of the relationship between market/state and market/society; (ii) the evolution of what we may call law and criminality since the Enlightenment in light of Becker's approach. So, it may strike you as a bit perverse that today's post zones in on an apparent aside. 

So, the emphasized passage is odd because it is by no means obvious that Foucault's audience ("one") will have thought of this particular analogy. As I have noted throughout my comments, Foucault is constantly assuming a kind of Bien pensant marxism in his audience. I don't want to make too much of the grammatical structure of his thought -- and I am not conformatible in the French [On ne peut pas ne pas penser, en voyant s'exercer ce type-là de critique à une analogie que je laisse encore une fois sous la forme d'analogie], but it is notable that the (analogical) thought is inevitable (and that Foucault represents his own thought in such disassociated way, and being so analogical) while Foucault takes responsibility for conveying it in the (analogical) manner he has the thought. 

Before, I get to the substance of Foucault's claim, a bit of context is useful. First, I would not be surprised if the possibility of visiting Berkeley (which starts the following year) was not already on Foucault's horizon. As we know he was visiting California from the mid 70s onward. Second, Foucault would have tracked Derrida's confrontation with analytic philosophy, first in the brilliant, and oddly neglected, (1973) The Archeology of the Frivolous. This book is ostensibly about Condillac, but it is simultaneously (recall this post) a critique of Foucualt's earlier practice of archeology and a clever exploration of the nature of analysis. I would be amazed if Foucault were unfamiliar with it because I think it can help explain some important shifts in Foucault's method(s)/stance(s). And then in the infamous exchange with Searle (Foucault's future colleague) that unfolded through the 1970s.* I assume that Foucault would have been familiar with this 'event'. So, perhaps, for Foucault, a possible personal confrontation with American analytic philosophy would have made the thought inevitable.

Let's return to the emphasized bit in the quoted passage from lecture 10 above. And to avoid misunderstanding, Foucault here is not discussing ordinary language philosophy. Earlier, in Lecture 4 (see p. 76) Foucault had noticed the significance of the movement from Vienna (and Freiburg) of certain intellectual practices to the States.** And this point gets amplified by Foucault's surprising organicist commitment in lecture 8, that when ideas travel from their origin, they are radicalized/amplified in new environments. (We may call such intensification in a new ecological niche a law of memetics!) So, on Foucault's view, we may say that what starts out as possible source of emancipation in Left Vienna, is turned into a form of speech policing Stateside.+ 

And Foucault is explicit that the policing speech is not just directed at ordinary speech, but also at scientific and philosophical speech. The significance of this is that Foucault interprets the (ahh) tools and practices of this branch of analytic philosophy in terms of technologies of control.

As an aside, it is worth noting, and a kind of historical irony, that Foucault here is kind of tracking the general atmosphere of victory of Quine-ean regimentation and, especially, a wider naturalizing program(s) over the Carnapian explanation, which had explicitly limited itself (recall here; and here) to artificial speech. I use 'general atmosphere' because what Foucault is describing (as theoretical virtues and non-virtues "contradiction, lack of consistency, nonsense",) while undoubted familiar in some sense, is surely not Quine-ean regimentation (with its own specialist clarified language)--this is a diffuser form of score-keeping familiar from polemics and classroom instruction.

So, I use 'general atmosphere' for another reason. Because the analogy itself is I think itself intended to point to what happens when certain practices leave the rarified technical discussion in elite journals and seminar rooms, and become a more general mode of thought. For, as a disciplinary practice of deploying (philosophical) technologies of speech control that American analytic philosophy is used as an elucidatory analogy for the fact of what happens when think tanks deploy techniques developed by the Chicago school to try to score and police government policy.

This is not to say one can avoid mentioning Quine. For Quine's (rather juridical) tribunal of experience is now transformed (by way of the magic of analogy) "into permanent economic tribunal confronting government."  That is to say, as the ideas of the Chicago school leave Hyde Park and are institutionalizes by well financed interests, a democratic-republican government is now made to account itself not to the voters, and their representatives, or the press, or supreme court judges, but to an intellectual edifice that deploys (protected) theoretical speech. And this edifice represents itself a strand of the liberal tradition that, as Foucault argued in lecture 9, is itself one of the animating principles of the constitutional order. 

I return to the previous paragraph in subsequent digressions on Birth of Biopolitics. Foucault leaves hanging what to make of his view of American analytic philosophy. It's important to realize that the analogy is not a moralizing criticism. If I understand Foucault's larger meta-philosophical (political) position, he thinks that the development and application of technologies of control have a kind of inevitability to them. And it is not impossible -- but here i speculate -- that he believes that (the philosophical politics of) philosophical speech itself is (given the significance of the law of non-contradiction to its way of being) also, always, constituted by technologies of control. And what may be novel here, is unusual clarity and zest of the Americans in deploying such technologies of speech control.

 

 

 

 

Le Bon vs Condorcet

If the individuals of a crowd confined themselves to putting in common the ordinary qualities of which each of them has his share, there would merely result the striking of an average, and not, as we have said is actually the case, the creation of new characteristics. How is it that these new characteristics are created? This is what we are now to investigate.
    Different causes determine the appearance of these characteristics peculiar to crowds, and not possessed by isolated individuals. The first is that the individual forming part of a crowd acquires, solely from numerical considerations, a sentiment of invincible power which allows him to yield to instincts which, had he been alone, he would perforce have kept under restraint. He will be the less disposed to check himself from the consideration that, a crowd being anonymous, and in consequence irresponsible, the sentiment of responsibility which always controls individuals disappears entirely.
   The second cause, which is contagion, also intervenes to determine the manifestation in crowds of their special characteristics, and at the same time the trend they are to take. Contagion is a phenomenon of which it is easy to establish the presence, but that it is not easy to explain. It must be classed among those phenomena of a hypnotic order, which we shall shortly study. In a crowd every sentiment and act is contagious, and contagious to such a degree that an individual readily sacrifices his personal interest to the collective interest. This is an aptitude very contrary to his nature, and of which a man is scarcely capable, except when he makes part of a crowd.
   A third cause, and by far the most important, determines in the individuals of a crowd special characteristics which are quite contrary at times to those presented by the isolated individual. I allude to that suggestibility of which, moreover, the contagion mentioned above is neither more nor less than an effect.
   To understand this phenomenon it is necessary to bear in mind certain recent physiological discoveries. We know to-day that by various processes an individual may be brought into such a condition that, having entirely lost his conscious personality, he obeys all the suggestions of the operator who has deprived him of it, and commits acts in utter contradiction with his character and habits. The most careful observations seem to prove that an individual immersed for some length of time in a crowd in action soon finds himself—either in consequence of the magnetic influence given out by the crowd, or from some other cause of which we are ignorant—in a special state, which much resembles the state of fascination in which the hypnotised individual finds himself in the hands of the hypnotiser. The activity of the brain being paralysed in the case of the hypnotised subject, the latter becomes the slave of all the unconscious activities of his spinal cord, which the hypnotiser directs at will. The conscious personality has entirely vanished; will and discernment are lost. All feelings and thoughts are bent in the direction determined by the hypnotiser.
   Such also is approximately the state of the individual forming part of a psychological crowd. He is no longer conscious of his acts. In his case, as in the case of the hypnotised subject, at the same time that certain faculties are destroyed, others may be brought to a high degree of exaltation. Under the influence of a suggestion, he will undertake the accomplishment of certain acts with irresistible impetuosity. This impetuosity is the more irresistible in the case of crowds than in that of the hypnotised subject, from the fact that, the suggestion being the same for all the individuals of the crowd, it gains in strength by reciprocity.
The individualities in the crowd who might possess a personality sufficiently strong to resist the suggestion are too few in number to struggle against the current. At the utmost, they may be able to attempt a diversion by means of different suggestions. It is in this way, for instance, that a happy expression, an image opportunely evoked, have occasionally deterred crowds from the most bloodthirsty acts.
   We see, then, that the disappearance of the conscious personality, the predominance of the unconscious personality, the turning of feelings and ideas in an identical direction by means of suggestion and contagion, the tendency to immediately transform the suggested ideas into acts; these, we see, are the principal characteristics of the individual forming part of a crowd. He is no longer himself, but has become an automaton who has ceased to be guided by his will.
   Moreover, by the mere fact that he forms part of an organised crowd, a man descends several rungs in the ladder of civilisation. Isolated, he may be a cultivated individual; in a crowd, he is a barbarian—that is, a creature acting by instinct. He possesses the spontaneity, the violence, the ferocity, and also the enthusiasm and heroism of primitive beings, whom he further tends to resemble by the facility with which he allows himself to be impressed by words and images—which would be entirely without action on each of the isolated individuals composing the crowd—and to be induced to commit acts contrary to his most obvious interests and his best-known habits. An individual in a crowd is a grain of sand amid other grains of sand, which the wind stirs up at will.
   It is for these reasons that juries are seen to deliver verdicts of which each individual juror would disapprove, that parliamentary assemblies adopt laws and measures of which each of their members would disapprove in his own person.--Gustave Le Bon (1986 [1895] [Psychologie des Foules] The Crowd: A Study of the Popular Mind, pp. 6-8 (translation of second edition published by Dover)

The (1785) Condorcet Jury theorem tells us that with modest assumptions, the rule of more is better and, thereby, vindicates democracy from the verdict of history by all the learned. A century later, near the end of his book, Le Bon  admits that "the parliamentary system represents the ideal of all modern civilised peoples. The system is the expression of the idea, psychologically erroneous, but generally admitted, that a large gathering of men is much more capable than a small number of coming to a wise and independent decision on a given subject." (123) While the official theme of Le Bon's book is to offer an explanation of the functioning of crowds qua crowds, there are two sub-themes in his argument: first, how come the psychologically erroneous idea persists as a civilizational dogma (that is, Le Bon gives us a theory of the rise and fall of civilizations and institutions)?; second, why does the Jury Theorem fail so often in practice, despite the fact that it should function as a self-fulling prophecy given that people widely expect it to succeed?+ Lurking in the second sub-theme is an account of why institutions fail in different places despite the pull of incentives, and why demagogues may succeed.

Le Bon is no friend of democracy. But in this book he has little interest in offering a replacement for democracy because he accepts Tocqueville's claim that in an era of equality men have "an almost limitless confidence in the judgments of the public." In fact, he quite clearly argues that limiting the franchise to a meritocratic sub-set (a la Mill or Brennan) won't improve matters. Because for him once in a crowd, even widely diverging people behave similarly and lose a lot of the characteristics that give them their individuality.* In a crowd "men always tend to the same [low] level.....with regard to social problems... mean are substantially, equally ignorant."

Before I confront the announced subject of this post, I need to be clear about some of his population assumptions. Le Bon works with a contrast between barbarism and civilization. And once in a crowd otherwise civilized people are likely to become barbaric. Despite Le Bon's racism, all kinds of people can become civilized. (Throughout the book, he treats Islam as one of the great civilizations.) Le Bon also works with a racial theory. And it does important work for him because for him races have deep-seated commitments that help explain how people qua people respond differently to stimuli and incentives.

I actually think that what Le Bon calls a 'race,' is (for students) better translated by 'nation.' For, while Le Bon is undoubtedly casually racist (and sexist) in our modern sense (and clearly admires Anglo-Saxons over his own Latins), his race theory turns out to be primarily sociological: that is, a race is constituted by shared history, shared dogmatic commitments, and shared practices (including language). So, Le Bon's 'race' is not far removed from Renan's 'nation.' And crucially the biological stock of a race is never pure according to Le Bon. (This is because for him barbarism, which is always prior to civilization, is always a period of mixing.) And somewhat surprisingly -- given his reactionary mindset -- when explaining crowds no race escapes being barbaric in the crowd.

The brilliance of Condorcet's proof resides, in part, in the fact that (a) he assumes very modest voter competence. All that is needed (recall) is better than chance odds for getting things right. Let's call this average intelligence. Unlike modern students of Condorcet, who recognize that the conditions of (b) independence and (c) lack of communication, may often be violated, Le Bon thinks this (a) is the weak part of Condorcet's proof. For  while Le Bon accepts Condorcet's assumption that in a crowd we are (d) sincere, Le Bon thinks that once we become part of a crowd (and for him juries are also crowds) in our sincerity our competence reduces below such average. We become as it were for him hypnotized automatons. 

To be sure, Le bon thinks that in a crowd we stop acting independently in large part because through the mechanism of contagious sympathy, we end up being suggestible by the same influences. Group diversity, which might give a crowd intellectual strength, evaporates for Le Bon and we become homogeneous, hypnotized automatons in a crowd.  And while the Stoic sage is homogeneous with other Stoic sage in his philosophical virtue, crowds act like one in pursuit of one idol or another.

One may well wonder if the shared feeling of invincibility is really the triggering cause of crowd-like phenomena, and to what degree hypnosis is really the best physiological explanation and explanatory analogy for crowd behavior. I am here not to defend Le Bon. But I do note it is no objection to Le Bon's theory that some crowds get it right or produced fine political outcomes. Le Bon explicitly admits that crowds may well be heroic or help found great civilizations (etc.). If you are fond of great strikes or mass protests, Le Bon is happy to admit that these shape history.

Rather the key point is that friends of Condorcet's jury theorem assume methodological individualism: that being within a jury/crowd baseline competence is not reduced or at least not so reduced as to fall under average. And Le Bon points out this commitment (a) needs to be earned if, as is not wholly implausible, cognitive characteristics are changed when in large company (subject to polarization, group loyalty, sense of justice, etc.).

One way to put this is that in practice, the assumptions of independence and lack of communication secure the modest competence the Jury Theorem relies on. Le Bon's point is recognized by many procedural interventions/norms that prevent a group of deciding individuals to act as crowds.** That is to say, deliberative democrats are, in a way, Le Bon's true heirs. 

 

 

 

On the Rule of the Solitary

Because the ideal city is specially characterized by the absence of the arts of the doctor and the qadi [magistrate], love being the strongest bond between them, there is no contention at all. When a part of it is lacking in love and contention occurs, justice must be established, and inevitably someone to dispense it, viz. the qadi, is required. Further, all actions in the ideal city are right, this being its special characteristic which it never lacks. Hence its people will not indulge in harmful foods. Therefore they will not need knowledge of remedies for choking at the breaking of the fast nor anything else of the kind, nor remedies for excessive drinking, since nothing not properly in order is there. Similarly when people give up exercise, numerous diseases arise in consequence. Clearly this does not apply to our city. It may also be that there will be no need in it for most of the remedies for dislocation and the like. In general, cannot the healthy body rouse itself to resist diseases whose obscure causes come from outside? For its desire is not great. The severe wounds of many people of sound health are cured of themselves--with numerous instances of the same kind. And so a special characteristic of the ideal city is that there is neither doctor nor qadi, while among the traits of the four simple [ignorant?] cities is their need of both. The further removed from the ideal, the more a city needs them, and the more honourable is the rank of both these classes. Plainly in the perfect city a man is given the best of which he is capable, and all its views are true. How could a view in it be false? Its actions alone are ideal in the absolute sense, and every other action, even if excellent, is in relation to the corruption of its existence. If a limb is cut from the body, it is essentially harmful, though incidentally it may be advantageous to one whom an adder has stung, and his body is relieved by cutting it off. Similarly scammony is essentially harmful, though useful for one who is ill. A short account of these matters has been given in the Nicomachean Ethics. It is clear that every view except the view of its people which appears in the perfect city is false, and every action which takes place in it, except the customary actions, is wrong. Now the false has no definite nature and cannot be known at all... Ibn Bajjah's  Rule of the Solitary, translated by By D. M. Dunlop, 75-76

This morning I listened to Peter Adamson's lovely podcast on Ibn Bajjah [Avempace] and Ibn Tufayl. It made me re-read Ibn Bajjah's Rule of the Solitary. As it happens Ibn Tufayl is explicitly rather critical of Ibn Bajjah and, implicitly, he seems to be (recall) scathing. At the end of this post, I will return to this polemic. But first I focus on Ibn Bajjah's treatment of the best city quoted above.

Rule of the Solitary starts with a conceptual analysis of the linguistic diversity of 'rule' in Arabic.  To simplify: rules involve teleological generalizations. The "absolute" and "noblest" rule is God's providence. One set of rules is the subject matter for "political science," and this includes rule of commonwealths and "households." (73) When it comes to cities (and households) rule can be right and wrong. Ibn Bajjah asserts that "Plato has made clear the nature of the rule of cities in the Republic." (74) Ibn Bajjah treats Aristotle's Politics as a work by Plato, and insists that it consists of the nature of the rule of households.

One complication, thus, is that he treats the Republic and Politics as two parts of one science (by one author). A further complication is that it is not obvious he has access to either text, especially doubtful that he would have had an Arabic version of Politics (and may be working from summaries).* I mention this, too, because household management (οἰκονόμοι) is mentioned at Republic 417a as something the lower classes do, although the Republic is, in a certain sense, indeed ignoring the principles of it.

He treats household management as the occasion to enunciate a general principle: "That home only is perfect in which no increase is possible, lest it may turn to loss like a sixth finger. For it is characteristic of what is exactly right that an increase is loss." (74) So, a perfect social organization is in balance or equilibrium. Presumably "increase" here refers to population and/or goods (but Ibn Bajjah does not say).

Okay, with that in place, it seems pretty clear that the four ignorant cities are a reference to the timocratic, oligarchic, democratic, and tyrannical cities. it is striking, however, that Ibn Bajja treats the city without magistrates and physicians as the best city. For, while it is true that Socrates thinks it is unworthy or unfitting to discuss these matters and to legislate on them, and leaving them to the citizens of Kallipolis to discover, he clearly implies that the city will require magistrates [425c-d]. Presumably this is one of the lesser tasks of the guardians. Something similar can be said about the role of physicians in Kallipolis. While Socrates is clearly against the kind of medicine that keeps or prolongs badly diseased bodies alive, the implication seems to be that the medicine that keeps folk doing proper their function in the state is available in Kallipolis [407cd & 409d]. In addition, the eugenics project of Kallipolis is articulated in a medicalized fashion [459C]

So, I think an alternative is possible: Ibn Bajja is treating the 'true city" (372e) or 'city of pigs' as the very best city. For despite the existence of commerce and trade, it seems to be a city without magistrates. Of course, it is (recall) a city with carers of bodies, and  (369d), and because of 341C it is natural to understand these as physicians.** But in context it is quite natural to treat these carers of bodies as akin to fitness trainers.

There are three other reasons to think that Ibn Bajja may be referring to the 'city of pigs' as his model of the best city. (I have some fondness for this city; recall extensively here; a bit here; and also more here)) First,  he claims that in it there is no falsity at all. This is manifestly not true of the Kallipolis, which requires some noble lies [414cff]. In addition, in the heart of Socrates' eugenics deception is also explicitly practiced [459CD]. 

The second reason is more tricky. Above I noted that Ibn Bajja clearly assumes that the best city is in fine balance, an increase would be a loss. It respects some kind of equilibrium condition. Those familiar with Kallipolis, will naturally think of the passage where the guardians are taught to follow the rule: “that they should let it grow so long as in its growth it consents to remain a unity, but no further [[423bc]. And it is natural to read into this population control because Socrates implies that there are only a thousand warriors in the polity. But that leaves quite inexact how large the total population is (as distinct from the exactitude of Magnesia in Plato's Laws).

By contrast, there is no doubt that the true city practices (recall) strict population control: using Reeve's translation: "they will produce no more children than their resources allow, lest they fall into either poverty or war." [372bc] Moreover, the way Socrates puts it allows a trade-off between population and goods, which is the ambiguity I noted in Ibn Bajja.

Third, Ibn Bajja is adamant that "all actions in the ideal city are right." (This is why there is no need of a qadi). Strikingly, this is not because all the inhabitants are sage-like philosophers. (Spinoza makes the point somewhere that a city of sages would not require laws.) But, rather this is so because people behave correctly from tradition ("custom"). I think this fits the true city very nicely; it seems to lack philosophy altogether. By contrast, as is well known, in Kallipolis correct behavior is the consequence of extensive drilling and censorship (etc). 

Okay, let me wrap up. Remember that Ibn Tufayl's explicit criticism of Ibn Bajja was two-fold: Ibn Bajja is mistakenly anti-mystical (and rejects the intuitive faculty) and he is personally materialistic. The more subtle criticism is that it reduces religion to the regulation of human desires as a set of customs or practices; it leaves no space for higher things. And so, religion cannot be a conduit to a philosophic life (which Ibn Tufayl and Ibn Rush claim just is living according to the inner truth of the Qu'ran). And, indeed, that argument makes sense if we understand Ibn Bajja as treating the true city, where there is a natural religion of the flesh, 'singing hymns to the gods in pleasant fellowship,' as ideal, but decidedly odd if he were taken to be thinking of the Kallipolis. 

 

 

On Siedentop and The Re-Invention of Liberalism (I)

Thus, even before Augustine’s ‘city of God’, Christian apologists were invoking ‘the country of God’ to assert the claims of the individual conscience. Such claims of conscience seemed to follow irresistibly from the assumption of moral equality. Equality, choice and responsibility hung together in their minds. Irenaeus repeatedly insisted on this as early as the mid-second century: ‘God’s just judgement falls equally on all men, and never fails.’
If God has created humans as equals, as rational agents with free will, then there ought to be an area within which they are free to choose and responsible for their choices. Identifying such an area was at first a means of self-defence by Christians. But soon it was also more than that. Tertullian saw clearly the implications of Christian moral beliefs. ‘Here lies the perfection and distinctiveness of Christian goodness,’ he argued. ‘Ordinary goodness is different; for all men love their friends, but only Christians love their enemies.’ Respecting a range of freedom of choice in all humans might be seen as one aspect of the latter.
The suggestion that belief in ‘equal liberty’ appeared in early Christian apologetics will surprise many and irritate some. For the-anticlericalism which has been an integral part of liberal historiography does not lend itself to such a conclusion. Besides, the distrust of anything like teleological explanations in history – of what is often called the Whig interpretation of history – reinforces such scepticism. But texts are facts. And the facts remain. In the mid-second century Irenaeus of Lyon asked, ‘what new thing did the Word bring by coming down to earth?’ For Tertullian, writing only a few decades later, the answer was clear. ‘One mighty deed alone was sufficient for our God – to bring freedom to the human person.’ Larry Siedentop (2014) Inventing the Individual: The Origins of Western Liberalism, 77 [HT Bart Wilson]

Jacob Levy's Rationalism, Pluralism, and Freedom starts with a footnote to Siedentop's work. The name was unfamiliar to me, but I made a mental note to check it out some time. So when, a few weeks ago, Bart Wilson asked me if I had read Siedentop's Inventing the Individual and what I thought of it, I decided to to read the book (now done). As regular readers know (recall), I think the second wave of liberalism has ended, and so it may be useful to take stock of how liberalism was re-conceptualized, even re-articulated, by those on the precipice of imminent collapse. 

Before I get to re-conceptualization, let me do one paragraph summary. The key idea behind the book is that "Christian moral intuitions played a pivotal role in shaping the discourse that gave rise to modern liberalism and secularism." (359) Strikingly, the book ends well before the invention of either 'modern liberalism' and 'secularism.' Rather it is a fascinating attempt to offer a somewhat schematic, genealogical development of western Christianity from Paul to Ockham, as the unfolding of the articulation of key moral intuitions in which we are invited to recognize the shape of future liberalism and secularism. Although Nietzsche is never mentioned, the simplest version to describe one strain, the ethical strain, of the book is that it takes the sardonic and satirical unmasking account of the Genealogy of Morals, and endorses that account with a lot more historical and conceptual detail than Nietzsche had offered. There is also a juridical, political strain which aims to show that the development of canon law and the papal conception of sovereignty prefigure structural features of political liberalism. Along the way, the invention of the institutionalization of the work ethic is attributed to the cluniac reform movement. 

Okay, with that in place, let's turn to the character of the individual and liberalism Siedentop offers, and to start conveying why I find this book highly problematic. For a book on the invention of the individual, it is refreshing to see Petrarca, Luther, Montaigne, and Descartes nearly entirely ignored.*  This is deliberate: Siedentop is not interested in and rejects what he calls the "cult of individuality" which he associates with the Renaissance. (337) He contrasts the individual as a moral notion (originating in Paul's Letters) rooted in ontology (fleshed out by Ockham) with the cultivation of self as an aesthetic project he associates with Renaissance humanists. The true individual is interior and, in its reliance of conscience, in some sense independent of society; whereas for Siedentop the 'cult of individuality' depicts the (false) "individual as the 'victim' of social pressures and heroism as resistance to such pressures. Social institutions were presented as a threat to  the self." (337)

Let's leave aside Siedentop's embrace of Whig philosophy of history. As regular readers know, I have no right to that criticism. I have defended the legitimacy and utility of teleological explanations (of history) in print. My criticisms of Siedentop's historiographical practice will be from the perspective of a teleological fellow traveler. And not unlike him, I have (recall on Petrarca) reservations about the Renaissance expressions of individuality.

Even so, it's worth asking in light of the attack on the 'cult of individuality' what's so liberal about Siedentop's individual. Siedentop identifies "classical liberalism" with the commitment to ‘equal liberty’ which "rests on the firm belief that to be human means being a rational and moral agent, a free chooser with responsibility for one’s actions. It puts a premium on conscience rather than the ‘blind’ following of rules. It joins rights with duties to others." (361)  It is no surprise that Kant is acknowledged as a kind of end-point of the narrative, (p. 107, 359), although somehow Siedentop forgets that this agent is ideal, not flesh and blood.  Even so, let's stipulate that equal liberty understood in this fashion is a core commitment of liberalism.

Yet, something more than our fallen human nature is missing here. Siedentop somehow skipped On Liberty (and Orwell's essays), and so the threats of conformism to (civil rights of) the individual and the ways in which even lofty moral ideals can turn into oppressive group think seem to elude Siedentop entirely.

Of course, he is not entirely unaware of this. To give a telling example: when the inquisition is first mentioned, briefly, it is obliquely criticized in terms of shaky juridical foundations: "Even writers well disposed to the papacy concede that ‘the juristic principles which the procedure embodied bore hardly any resemblance to those which were commonly accepted and consistently advocated by the papacy itself.’ (288) But the next mention of it (on p. 362) is in terms of the "legend of the Spanish Inquisition." My point in mentioning this is not to re-enforce enmity between secularism and religion -- something Siedentop thinks represents Europe's "civil war" -- (362). But while Siedentop clearly endorses "civil liberty" (262) and judicial safeguards for the accused, he seems to have no interest in the conditions of pluralism. 

This is, in fact, revealed by the snub of  Montaigne, who is described, and rejected as a skeptic (335; 386). Rather than understanding Montaigne's skepticism as one of the antidotes to fanaticism and one of the grounds of an experimental life worth having, it is clearly seen as corrosive of ''conviction" (362).

Thus, although the book begins with offering an attractive picture of Christian experimentation with different forms of life, under the collapsing Roman empire, once we get to Augustine, pluralism is generally presented as unattractive. Pluralism is identified with feudal, legal disorder (253; 256)-- and this is a book that embraces the middle ages as a progressive era!

This is surely deliberate. The acceptance by the 'religious camp' in the centuries after the French revolution of "religious pluralism" is presented as a good thing (360). But this is not because of a commitment to true diversity. For, there is explicitly no room for Islam in Siedentop's vision of Europe (362). Siedentop is alarmed by "born-again" Christianity Stateside. With political friends like these, religion needs no enemies.

That is to say, Siedentop shapes a narrative of the "tradition" of the "West" in the service of developing citizens that have moral convictions such that they can "shape the conversation of mankind" (363--these are the last words of the epilogue). Yet, these convictions are not to be tested robustly by alternative viewpoints.

This is characteristic of the central historiographic failure which is ultimately a failure of imagination. In Siedentop's narrative the tradition is entirely, as it were, homegrown. The emphasis is really on 'Western' in 'Western Liberalism' (except not as far west as Muslim Spain, which is mentioned once as a source of translations of Greek philosophy). The tradition, once understood, is sui generis and has nothing to learn from others; and, in fact, in Siedentop's presentation never learned anything from without. To put my cards on the table, ahead of my next installment, if that un-inquisitive autarchic edifice were the liberal tradition, it is not worth re-animating, But luckily, we find in Siedentop some of the clay for a nobler project.

 

 

Roger Scruton, Roger Crisp, Pollution, and Modernity in Moral Philosophy (I)

When considering Greek tragedy we observe two striking facts: first, that the tragic fault is seen as a pollution, by which others might be contaminated should it not be purged or purified; second, that the situations portrayed arouse the deepest feelings in us, without our really knowing why. Those facts did not escape the notice of Freud, of course, and he gave a contentious explanation of them. In the Greek tragedy we witness the residue of an older form of moral thinking, an archaeological stratum beneath the realm of personal choice. This older form of thinking, which anthropologists, following Mary Douglas, have called the “ethic of pollution and taboo,” sees moral faults as arising as much by contagion as by deed. It emphasizes purity and purification in sexual and familial relations; and it punishes people not by holding them liable for their actions and opening a path to contrition and forgiveness but by casting them out from the community and readmitting them only if some act of purification has changed their status. One might say that the tragic theater takes us into the hunter-gatherer cave, where things long hidden in darkness are briefly revealed, as though by a flash of lightning. The play is an exorcism, arousing fearful spirits, making them briefly visible, and then expelling them in a mystic act of purification. This revisiting of ancient terrors is a part of overcoming them, and it has its equivalent in our own tragic art, as well as our religious rituals.--Roger Scruton (2017) On Human Nature, Chapter 3, 87-88.

In my blogging, I have been unrelentingly critical of Scruton qua public philosopher. But I had never engaged with any of his books, so I figured a Pandemic would be as good a time as any to survey them independently. But a certain weariness made me opt for the shortest one I could find in my local bookshop. On Human Nature offers plenty of grounds of more criticism (not least its insidious way -- because allowing plausible deniability -- of sneaking in homophobia on p. 119), but today's post will bracket polemics. Rather, I want to use Scruton as a kind of useful exemplar of a philosophical mindset that presupposes successful moral progress associated with modernity. I use him because (i) in many ways he is a critic of modernity -- there is a reason conservatives of various stripes eulogized him so favorably --, and (ii) he is willing to use the language of pollution in his own theorizing (see, especially, chapter 4 of On Human Nature). But my diagnosis of Scruton also applies in crucial ways to philosophers that, at first blush, share very little in common with him (such as Roger Crisp). If you are the kind of philosopher whose response to experiencing Oedipus Rex is, 'I don't get the fuss, he was innocent,' I am probably also talking of you. 

Scruton treats examples of the 'ethic of pollution' even when displayed on the for us ancient, Athenian stage as a kind of prehistoric relic, "an archaeological stratum beneath the realm of personal choice." If I were a scholar of Scruton, I would be tempted to explore how Nietzschean Scruton's reading here is, with a society characterized by  law-governed, Apollonian sensibilities, being made to confront and then jointly excise a collective unconscious rooted in our breeding evolutionary history.

I am going to leave that aside. I  stipulate, by contrast, that modernity (and its cognates) itself presupposes a contrast between (a) the extended present, which is characterized by disenchantment and law-governed practices of moral accountability based on choice and (b) a distant past that involves ethic/practices centered on purity/pollution by way of contagion; (c) in which (a) has largely overcome or displaced (b). My account of modernity decouples it from a particular epoch although often people who understand themselves in light of a conception of modernity often think of it as having occurred once.  

In the sense that I am using 'modernity' here, Scruton is unabashedly modern, although unlike most moderns his views are compatible with the thought that different historical epochs instantiate modernity and that modernity may need or require elements of the pre-moderns to be worth endorsing. The more frequent position is that signs of pre-modern thought are disqualifying or grounds of debunking. Here's Roger Crisp commenting (also in 2017) on the piacular form of agent regret:

Could it really be that the nature of our current sentiments depends on the content of moralities far in the past? In fact, it is hard to see how it could not. Patterns of sentiment once established are, as Williams himself notes, hard, perhaps impossible, to uproot, and this certainly appears to have been the case with those in the western tradition involving pollution. As Mary Douglas pointed out long ago, St Paul’s attempt to characterize the Mosaic law as part of the  ‘old dispensation’ and similar moves within the early Church were unable to override the view, strongly supported by sentiment, that bodily states were relevant to ritual. Douglas focuses in particular on the idea of pollution by blood, noting that even the current Roman ritual for purification of a mother probably derives from the kind of Judaic practice outlined above (Douglas 2002, pp. 75–6).
   [Adam] Smith’s view, then, is that the apologies and assistance offered to the family of a person one has unintentionally and non-negligently killed are the modern analogue of an animal sacrifice....The special relation in question [of agent-regret] is most plausibly seen as involving a secularized version of the notion of ritual uncleanliness and pollution. And if we accept this account of the origin of our sense of the piacular in such cases, I take it that many would see it as providing the basis for a debunking argument credible enough at least to put the onus of justification on the defenders of the result-sensitive sentiments in these cases. Roger Crisp, (2017) "Moral Luck and Equality of Moral Opportunity," Aristotelian Society Supplementary Volume, Volume 91, p. 13

I happen to disagree with Crisp's analysis of moral luck (he cites one of my papers somewhat dismissively in a note). And, full disclosure, this post is in some sense motivated by a desire to give a kind of counter-diagnosis to his attempt to burden shift. Here I just want to call attention to the way characteristic features of modernity are on display (leaving aside the grip of Mary Douglas and Bernard Williams on Scruton and Crisp). But rather than treating the ethic of pollution as shaped by earlier stage of civilization (hunter-gathering) as Scruton does, it is now treated as a remnant of the Mosaic law. To put this with the aim of being clever: in Crisp's hands, St. Paul and the early Church try to be modern but fail, whereas the "many" today are confident in their modernity.

Now, people who exhibit modernity in the way I have diagnosed always take its existence for granted, as something obvious. They never treat it as a hypothesis worth establishing. (By contrast, I think modernity in this sense is a kind of ideology.) That's peculiar because it is possible that the ethics of pollution/purity track genuine moral phenomena or features of moral phenomenology.  

As an aside, and to signal what I am claiming, from a metaphysical point of view moral pollution/purity is less weird than, say, a personal god or  property dualism, and on par with (more controversially) the existence of persons and human rights. While, perhaps, a personal god has not survived modernity, the others have flourished just fine. Moral pollution/purity track genuine relations between people and their effects (and the causes on people) and the way people relate to the norms of the community they inhabit. 

The claim of the previous paragraph needs to be established by argument. That's for another time. But modernity would be wrong (or an ideology) if the elimination of purity/pollution means not tracking real relations. And then if modernity were true, it would be impoverished. 

That modernity, while true, is impoverished is, in fact, Scruton's position (but not Crisp's). He wants to claim that inter alia "piety, pollution, and the sacred are necessary to us." He goes on to say, "Without transgressing the ontological assumptions of liberal contractarianism, I want to restore the complete picture of the embodied moral agent, as we know this from the literature, art, and religion of our civilization." (133; one wonders who is included in 'our' here.)

Now, this post is quite long already. So, let me take stock. One can reject modernity either by denying (a), (b) or (c). Or one can show that modernity has a function in practice and thought that is, in a sense, not truth conducive (because, say, being ideological). So, in a series of pandemic-era posts, I am going to argue that we, who are reminded of the significance of contagion,  may never be modern. 

 

On Scorekeeping in Professional Philosophy, and Other Credit Economies

Last week, two events occurred that are emblematic of the repeated structural gaslighting of disabled philosophers in which nondisabled philosophers engage and the continued exclusion of disabled philosophers of disability from the profession that almost all philosophers tacitly enforce and reward. One of these events took place in comments on the Daily Nous blog, involving philosophers who seem largely uninformed about ableism in philosophy and indeed uneducated about how power operates in the profession and society more broadly. The other event was the consequence of an event that I have written about before, namely, the recruitment for a position in Bioethics and Disability Studies in the philosophy department at Georgetown.

In the first case, the philosophers in question depoliticized and individualized a politically saturated situation, namely, the unacknowledged use of the insights of disabled philosophers of disability by nondisabled philosophers, appealing to dismissive remarks about political correctness and unexamined views about personal intentions in order to do so. In the second case, the position was awarded to a nondisabled philosopher even though numerous disabled philosophers of disability applied for the job, many of whom have much more knowledge about and experience of ableism and disability than the nondisabled philosopher who got hired.

Both events became part of the public discourse that circulated in philosophy on social media last week. Yet no nondisabled philosopher came forward to challenge the events and draw attention to the ways in which they reinforced the asymmetries of power that currently condition relations between disabled and nondisabled philosophers. ...

Indeed, my disabled philosopher colleagues and I feel betrayed once again.... betrayed by the philosophical community that continues to exploit and distort disabled people’s experiences and wisdom while denying us the authority and professional acknowledgement of that knowledge..--Shelley Tremain @Biopolitical Philosophy [HT Dailynous]

A tacit assumption, even existential commitment, I have long had is that professional philosophy  is characterized by reasonably accurate scorekeeping. We are a relatively small discipline, with even smaller sub-fields, that generally have overlapping workshops/conferences and referee poules. If anything, I tend to worry that professional philosophy is too clubby. So, a few years ago I was stunned to discover material in a handbook chapter that went over the very same correspondence (between A & B) that I had covered in a high profile journal in the field a few years before without mentioning. What made the case neat was that the other scholar worked with the archived papers of B, whereas I had worked with A. (Turns out A & B both kept copies of their own letters. Oh the vanity of academics!)

Because I was on friendly terms with the other scholar (cf. clubbiness), I wrote the other scholar that I was disappointed my piece was not cited. That passive aggressive remark was left unanswered. As the weeks past, I did wonder whether I should write the editor of the handbook and kvetch. But because I had missed deadline after deadline for that very same handbook -- recall I said things are a bit clubby in philosophy -- and then my hasty draft  (on a different topic than the correspondence between A&B) was rejected as inadequate (not entirely unfairly), I decided that I would probably regret pursuing this further. I console myself with the thought that the handbook paper is cited only by its author so far. Undoubtedly, I would be greatly pleased if a book-reviewer pointed out the author's oversight some day.

I was surprised the episode, and in particular the lack of acknowledgment after I noted the omission, stung me so badly; and not for the first time I reflected on the fragility of my professional ego. When Tremain's piece (quoted above) reminded me of my own episode, I tried reading Callard's famous essay ("Is Plagiarism all wrong?") as therapy; but that failed because her first key move, "many of us are prepared to debate the fine points of questions such as “Under what circumstances it is okay to torture someone?”, but only against a background of unquestioned agreement that representing other peoples’ ideas or phrasings as your own is, always and forever, evil" reminded me a bit of one my own thoughts,: "academics tend to treat sins against the profession/discipline far worse than society treats a whole range of awful crimes." When I went back to my essay to make this very point, I was confronted with the fact that the thought I happily attributed to myself wasn't even original with me (I cite a "journalist" as a source).

It is by no means original to recognize that the credit economy of philosophy, and any of the intellectual disciplines, functions, in addition to multiple epistemic roles, as a mechanism to facilitate career advancement and the distribution of jobs, prestige, and even research programs. (Go read Liam Kofi Bright and his co-authors.) And given the immense (and narrow) prestige hierarchy of philosophy, it is predictable that patterns of citation exclusion will impact the most vulnerable colleagues most along many dimensions.

So, there is really no ground for optimism in thinking that the profession, or those like ours, is especially good at scorekeeping for those who may need such accuracy most. (That's in fact compatible with the idea that the scorekeeping is reasonably decent for epistemic purposes.) If the victims of such patterns of exclusion are denied standing to claim their due, there is really no reason to expect change for the better. It is not my task to judge all the particular accusations in Tremain's piece (if only because she is critical of some of my friends as she has been critical of me in the past); but I hope this post helps amplify the structural inequities she diagnoses. 

I have long been pleased by the following thought from The Quran: "Allah will not change the condition of a people until they change what is in themselves." (13:11) I don't think this passage is an instance of victim-blaming (even if it can be abused in that fashion). Rather, it diagnoses that in  bad circumstances collective action (by a people) is needed. As many reformers have noted, we can't eliminate structural injustice merely by doing better individually. If it is too much to expect individuals to do better at scorekeeping given the incentive structure of the status quo, then it is long overdue we collectively change how we organize such scorekeeping or the rules of the game. I am open to suggestions.

 

 

On Reichenbach's Wager, Prior, and Pascal's Wager, and Al-Ghazali

The way toward an understanding of the step from experience to prediction lies in the logical sphere; to find it we have to free ourselves from one deep-rooted prejudice: from the presupposition that the system of knowledge is to be a system of true propositions. If we cross out this assumption within the theory of knowledge, the difficulties dissolve, and with them dissolves the mystical mist lying above the research methods of science. We shall then interpret knowledge as a system of posits, or wagers; with this the question of justification assumes as its form the question whether scientific knowledge is our best wager. Logical analysis shows that this demonstration can be given, that the inductive procedure of science is distinguished from other methods of prediction as leading to the most favorable posits. Thus we wager on the predictions of science and wager on the predictions of practical wisdom: we wager on the sun's rising tomorrow, we wager that food will nourish us tomorrow, we wager that our feet will carry us tomorrow. Our stake is not low; all our personal existence, our life itself, is at stake. To confess ignorance in the face of the future is the tragic duty of all scientific philosophy; but, if we are excluded from knowing true predictions we shall be glad that at least we know the road toward our best wagers. Hans Reichenbach (1938) Experience and prediction;: an analysis of the foundations and the structure of knowledge. p 404

In a footnote to a profound and witty dialogue(called a "play") from 1942, "Can religion be discussed?" (The Australasian Journal of Psychology and Philosophy), Arthur N. Prior seems to refer to the quoted passage when he describes "an astonishing resemblance" between Reichenbach's wager "argument for induction to Pascal's "wager" argument for religion." (See p. 148, note 8.) In the preamble to the dialogue, Prior writes that "my characters are Barthian Protestant,* Modernist Protestant, Catholic, Logician and Psychoanalyst. The footnotes are by myself." So, I think Prior wants us to reflect on the similarity between Pascal's wager for God's existence and Reichenbach's claim that fallible inductive science provides us the road toward best wagers.

As an aside, I find two features of Reichenbach's position notable: first, these days epistemologists accept that knowledge is compatible with fallibilism. It is notable that Reichenbach still felt the need to argue the (Humean) case. Second, Reichenbach treats decisions within science as formally alike to wagers of practical wisdom. That is to say, lurking here is a (Kantian) effacement of any significant difference in kind between theoretical and practical knowledge. For, the very system of theoretical knowledge (science) rests on a practical, even existential decision -- this is very akin to Carnap's voluntarism --, namely on the wager that induction and a system of inductions is the best route to practical prudence. I call this Reichenbach's wager. 

Anyway, since Pascal is mentioned by Reichenbach as one of the original investigators of the "mathematical concept of probability" (298-299), the resemblance may well be deliberate and Pascal the original inspiration for Reichenbach's (presentation of his) version of the idea. I don't think the similarity between Pascal's wager and Reichenbach's wager is entirely a contingent matter depending on historical circumstances. Because  in Al-Ghazali we find versions of both Pascal's Wager (recall here) and Reichenbach's wager (recall here). Strikingly, in Al-Ghazali the inductive leap required for scientific discovery is itself likened to prophecy. (I don't think there is evidence that Reichenbach or Pascal were familiar with Al-Ghazali's writings.) 

For, Al-Ghazali the development of successful scientific theory requires guided intuition of structure (or special properties), and this guided intuition is of the same kind in prophecy. One way to think about Reichenbach's wager in light of Al-Ghazali, then, is that wagers based on past science (and new information, etc.) play a role in the role of guiding of the scientist's intuition when discovering or developing new science.

Prior's footnote is attached to a passage by the "logician" character in the dialogue in "Can religion be discussed?": "The validity of inductive inference, on which Psychoanalyst's "explanation " of religion ultimately depends, can only be affirmed as a leap in the dark." The claim by the logician about inductive inference is more Kierkegaardian than, I think, the Al-Ghazali inspired interpretation of Reichenbach's wager I just offered. On the latter, there is no less an existential leap, but it's less in the dark than the Kierkegaardian leap of the logician (who anticipates the kind of thing Thomas Kuhn seemed to be groping toward sometimes). 

It would have been natural to assume that the "logician" speaks for Prior. And that my distinction between the Kierkegaardian and Al-Ghazalian interpretations is mere artifice. But Prior had already alerted the reader that only in his footnotes is Prior (ahh) himself. So, we can, even must, read Prior's footnote as a correction to the logician.

I could stop here. But I want to add a kind of appendix.

Prior's engagement with religion was non-trivial. Even so, his comments about Islam reported in the Stanford Encyclopedia  are rather derogatory. In the body of "Can religion be discussed?," the psychoanalyst is quoted as treating Islam as a "sort of sideshow;" ("The kind of clear and sharp and anti-idolatrous belief that we have been considering is hardly to be found outside ancient and modern Israel and the Christian Church (with Mohammedanism as a sort of sideshow)." So I was a bit surprised that in footnote 9 (the one after not 8 containing the comment about Reichenbach), Prior, speaking for himself, writes: 

In a work of early Scottish Protestantism, with which Barth has strong affinities, occurs this sentence: "The poets say, (Oedipus knew that he had a father, but knew not that Laius was his father  so the heathen know that there is a god, but know not the true God." It is from this point of view that Mohammedanism is a "sideshow"; for while it may be a purer form of abstract " monotheism "' than Judaism or Christianity, it is not so definite and unambiguous (and so '"monotheistic") in its identification of God's Person by His concrete presence and action in history.

I cannot here do justice to Prior's relationship to, and reflection on Barth. So, I just want to focus on the second sentence of this footnote. Prior is clear that Islam is (relative to Judaism and Christianity) the purest form of monotheism. But he thinks Islam is problematic, rather, in how according to Islam God's presence is manifested in history. I suspect, but would love for a theologian to help me out, that what Prior objects to is that for Islam Jesus is just one of many prophets, and that the Church is just one of many religious institutions.** 

This note 9 turns out, thus, to be a partial correction to the psychoanalyst who misunderstands the manner in which Islam is a sideshow. But it is also a partial elaboration of an earlier footnote (5) in which Prior writes as himself:  "Freud's "Moses and Monotheism"' is, as far as I know, the only anti-religious work which treats the uniqueness of the Hebrew-Christian tradition as a serious problem for unbelief to solve, and does not evade it with chatter about all religions being the same, or evolving along a single line." That is to say, for Prior a certain tradition of monotheism generates a special challenge to the anti-religious or really atheist ("unbelief") argument. (On Prior's atheism recall here.) But Islam is not part of that tradition. And the reason it is not part of that tradition, for this purpose, is how Islam handles the identification of God's Person by His concrete presence and action in history. (That is to say, for Prior the status of Islam merits a central role in the commentary in his own voice on the argument of "the play.")

If I am right about why Prior admires Barth* then for Prior the real problem with Islam is that it does not really allow Church autonomy in the face of worldly ambition or evil (because, on this view, Islam does not really accept the church/state distinction). One may still wonder why this removes Islam from the tradition that is a genuine obstacle for the atheist's argument. I think the answer is that for Prior monotheism generates for the atheist not an epistemic but a moral-political obstacle.

Ibn Tufayl's Polemic with Ibn Bajja

When I speak of the rationalists’ method—God raise you to the level of love!—I do not confine myself to their knowledge of the physical world, any more than I confine myself to the metaphysical when I speak of intuition. The two modes of apprehension are quite distinct and are not to be confused, but what I mean by the rationalist’s apprehension includes his understanding of the metaphysical—for example, that of Ibn Bājja. It is a necessary condition of what is reached by pure reason that it be true and valid. Thus the difference between the rationalist and those who enjoy intimacy is that while both are concerned with the self-same things, the latter enjoy a clearer view and far greater delight.
Ibn Bājja censured them for the pursuit of this joy. He claimed it was a product of their imagination and even promised a clear and distinct description of just how ecstasy ought to be enjoyed. Here is the answer he deserves: ‘Do not declare too sweet fruits you have not tasted, and do not trample on the necks of the saintly.’ The man did not, in fact, keep his promise or any such thing. What prevented him, perhaps, was that, as he himself says, he was pressed for time with the trouble of getting down to Oran. Or perhaps he felt that describing this state would force him to say something derogatory to his own way of life or at odds with his encouragement of amassing wealth and of the use of various artful dodges to acquire it. But I digress.--Ibn Tufayl Hayy Ibn Yaqzan, translated by Lenn Evan Goodman, P. 98

One of the "veils" or mysteries that surround Ibn Tufayl's Hayy Ibn Yaqzan is the meaning of the framing device which includes a rather cursory history of philosophy in the Islamic world and an even more cursory review of the state of learning in Islamic Spain. Included in these are the polemical remarks quoted above. These remarks are treated as a digression and are easy to miss because they occur just after a much more memorable and striking thought (recall) experiment in which Ibn Tufayl describes the joyful, transformative experience of suddenly seeing color after being born blind (which is meant to illustrate the nature of a kind of mystical, intuitive knowledge of the highest truth, or union with God). As it happens, some of the texts that Ibn Tufayl discusses in his historical survey anticipate versions of the thought experiment, and so one is invited (recall) to compare his version with those of his predecessors, including Al-Ghazali and Al-Farabi.  

Ibn Bajja (Avempace) is treated as a rationalist critic of those that claim (like Al-Ghazali, Ibn Sinna, and Ibn Tufayl--and later Spinoza) that there is an intuitive faculty beyond (and higher than) reason which can permit a certain kind of ecstatic union with the divine. Ibn Tufayl's response is rather polemical and ad personam suggesting that earthly attachments and the vices needed to accumulate them prevented Ibn Bajja from transcending his own rationalism. (This, too, anticipates Spinoza, see the Emendation of the Intellect.)

I like puzzling through the veils of Hayy Ibn Yaqzan with my students. And last fall one of my excellent undergraduate students, Astrid Ytre-Eide, called my attention to the following feature: that this very criticism of Ibn Bajja is echoed in an episode near the end of the book. In particular, it is echoed in the context of Hayy's failure to convert Absāl's friends, the political and intellectual elite of the island where Salāmān ruled (Salāmān being the one-time close companion of Absāl, who is now Hayy's only spiritual follower). On Hayy's analysis his failure to convert this elite is caused by their commitment to their earthly possessions and a conception of knowledge that leaves no possibility to transcend the material world: 

They had made their passions their god, and desire the object of their worship. They destroyed each other to collect the trash of this world, “distracted by greed ’til they went down to their graves.” Preaching is no help, fine words have no effect on them. Arguing only makes them more pig-headed. Wisdom, they have no means of reaching; they were allotted no share of it. They are engulfed in ignorance. Their hearts are corroded by their possessions.*

Hayy goes on to claim that in a culture in which intuitive knowledge is ruled out, the only possible function of religion is earthly: to regulate social life ("religion was for this world, in that it helped them lead decent lives without others encroaching on what belonged to them.") Now, (recall) Al-Farabi, Ibn Sinna, and (on more controversially, but on my reading) Al-Ghazali all agree that this is indeed one of the purposes of true religion (which they understand in a very broad Platonic sense as any truth-apt public image or ritual conducive toward flourishing in this world). But the other, more fundamental purpose is to generate eternal flourishing (recall also this post on the costs of Salman's rule). This more fundamental purpose is impossible when people embrace a religion (and prejudices) that have the same effect as Ibn Bajja's philosophy.

Now we should not let Hayy's own analysis of these matters be the last word because Hayy lacks understanding of rhetoric and history; he is incapable of further analyzing his own failure. And so he cannot learn (recall) from more successful prophets.

But even so, Hayy's failure does allow us to discern a further feature about Ibn Tufayl's polemic against Ibn Bajja. Ibn Bajja's philosophy is not just false, it is also wrong; the wide circulation of Ibn Bajja's philosophy, which appeals to prejudices of the thoughtful among the rich and powerful, will prevent the development of a more spiritual way of life. Of course, the more fundamental point, perhaps, is that where a philosophy like Ibn Bajja's is adopted, a religion very much like Islam is necessary to regulate social life. It's left to the reader to decide whether the necessity also goes in the other direction.  

Ibn Khaldun, Prophets, and his Critique of Martyrdom

[E]very mass (political) undertaking by necessity requires group feeling. This is indicated in the aforementioned tradition: "God sent no prophet who did not enjoy the protection of his people."...
To this chapter belong cases of revolutionaries from among the common people and of jurists who undertake to reform evil (practices). Many religious people who follow the ways of religion come to revolt against unjust amirs. They call for a change in, and prohibition of, evil (practices) and for good practices. They hope for a divine reward for what they do. They gain many followers and sympathizers among the great mass of the people, but they risk being killed, and most of them actually do perish in consequence of their activities as sinners and unrewarded, because God had not destined them for such (activities as they undertake). He commands such activities to be undertaken only where there-exists the power to bring them to a successful conclusion....Rulers and dynasties are strongly entrenched. Their foundations can be undermined and destroyed only through strong efforts backed by the group feeling of tribes and families, as we have mentioned before. Similarly, prophets in their religious propaganda depended on groups and families, though they were the ones who could have been supported by God with anything in existence, if He had wished, but in His wisdom He permitted matters to take their customary course.
If someone who is on the right path were to attempt (religious reforms) in this way, (his) isolation would keep him from (gaining the support of) group feeling, and he would perish. If someone merely pretends to (achieve religious reforms) in order to gain (political) leadership, he deserves to be hampered by obstacles and to fall victim to perdition. (Religious reforms) are a divine matter that materializes only with God's pleasure and support, through sincere devotion for Him and in view of good intentions towards the Muslims. ...

Most men who adopt such ideas will be found to be, either deluded and crazy, or to be swindlers who, with the help of such claims, seek to obtain (political) leadership -which they crave and would be unable to obtain in the natural manner. They believe that such claims will be instrumental in bringing to them the fulfillment of their hopes. They do not consider the disaster that will overtake them in consequence. The trouble they create will speedily cause their death and bring their trickery to a bitter end.---Ibn Khaldun, "Chapter 3, paragraph 6. Religious propaganda cannot materialize without group feeling," The Muqadimmah (translated by F. Rosenthal), p. 88.

Earlier in the week (recall) I claimed that Ibn Khaldun is a proto-political Spinozist. By which I mean that he embraces the idea that revelation is authoritative in social affairs, but that revelation should not be treated as a book that gives us a philosophy of nature. Today I want to spell out a bit more the way revelation's authority is supposed to work. I have noted before (recall) that Ibn Khaldun treats prophecy as a real agent of historical change. But he explicitly rejects (recall) the (Islamic) philosophers' suggestion that prophecy is just a synonym for a true political founder (akin to a Rousseau-ian legislator). So, for him states, even well ordered states are possible without prophecy. This is no to deny that he thinks prophets can be political legislators.

For, to be sure, he treats Muhammad as a genuine prophet. In fact, he attributes two miracles to Muhammad: he "wrought no greater miracle than the Qur'an and the fact that he united the Arabs in his mission." (Sixth prefatory discussion.) The second of these points to the political significance of Muhammad's life; he was capable of unifying Arab tribes. (This is a standard Islamic idea.) 

Now in Ibn Khaldun's philosophy of history, the pre-unity Arabs are treated as Bedouins who live in a kind of anarchic state of nature, of equality and independence. (They also lack wealth because they do not really practice division of labor.) They have a lot of latent power, but ordinary this power is invisible because they are at war with each other or subordinated to some sedentary civilization.  

This latent power can be channeled through royal authority. And royal authority, in turn, (recall) relies on group feeling, or what I call sympathy. In Ibn Khaldun's philosophy of history, genuine change starts in the periphery and, at first, is destructive of civilization life. There is a strain -- I am uncertain if it is the dominant strain --  in Ibn Khaldun that welcomes such purifications because while he has clear fondness for the benefits of civilization, he also thinks it decadent.

True prophets -- as opposed to false, wannabe prophets -- rely on group feeling to survive. As the example of Muhammad shows, they are capable of gaining what Ibn Khaldun calls royal authority.  They do so, in part, because people follow truthful and ethical leadership willingly: good conduct id taken "as proof of Muhammad's truthfulness." (Sixth prefatory Discussion.)

What I find interesting about Ibn Khaldun's analysis is that he grants that some wannabe prophets may well be motivated by sincere and apt outrage at political injustices: they are "on the right path." (He is also adamant that "most" are political opportunists.) Now, you may have thought that he would treat the sincere would be prophet who gets killed as a martyr. But Ibn Khaldun does no such thing. Not only does he barely register the possibility, he is distinctly reserved about treating anybody as a martyr (treating sincere would be prophets who fail as in the grip of a"delusion and stupidity" (Chapter 6, in par. 51)). 

A quick check (this may be misleading) reveals that in his long book, Ibn Khaldun only acknowledges the existence of three martyrs: Al-Husayn (who is revered in Shia Islam)* and Ibn al-Zubayr. Both opposed Yazid, albeit for different reasons.* Ibn-al-Zubayr basically defended what we would call a democratic kingship conception of the Caliphate against turning it into a hereditary institution. What's striking about the treatment of the case of Ibn-al-Zubayr is that Ibn Khaldun both thinks he was mistaken in thinking he had the authority to revolt, and so was killed with lawful authority, AND that he had "(good) intentions and the fact that he chose the truth." It is notable that Ibn Khaldun does not claim that Ibn-Al-Zubayr was mistaken about the political principle at stake.+ But he treats those who opposed him as right. In particular, they were right to see the consequences of revolt, and, thus, civil war, as leading to bloodshed.

What all of this reveals is that Ibn Khaldun both thinks there is a huge political status quo bias in human social life. Anticipating Hobbes, even justified rebellion is frowned upon.++  On my reading he embraces this so much that his whole book is one long argument against any cult of martyrdom. To put it succinctly, Ibn Khaldun's view is that the only prophets worth having are those that succeed in gaining political power.**