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. 

C.L.R. James' case against Moderation

Toussaint on February 8th [1802] did not yet know the fun extent of his reverses, but as the blows fell upon him he braced himself not for surrender but for resistance. The dream of orderly government and progress to civilisation was over. He had held on to the last shred of hope for peace, but as he saw the enemy closing in, then and then only did he prepare to fight. Grievous had been his error, but as soon as he decided to look the destruction of San Domingo fairly in the face, he rose to the peril, and this, his last campaign, was his greatest. He outlined his plan to Dessalines. "Do not forget, while waiting for the rainy season which will rid us of our foes, that we have no other resource than destruction and fire. Bear in mind that the soil bathed with our sweat must not furnish our enemies with the smallest sustenance. Tear up the roads with shot; throw corpses and horses into all the fountains, burn and annihilate everything in order that those who have come to reduce us to slavery may have before their eyes the image of that hell which they deserve." It was too late. Events were to show that if he had but mobilised the masses before and purged his army, the French attack would have been crippled at the start. His desire to avoid destruction was the very thing that caused it. It is the recurring error of moderates when face to face with a revolutionary struggle.--C.L.R. James (1938) The Black Jacobins, pp. 243 (in the 2001, Penguin edition) 

In the quoted paragraph, three sub-themes of The Black Jacobins come together: first, the book is a study in revolutionary leadership. By this I do not just mean it's a study of the leaders and leadership of revolutionaries (which it is), but it's also a more general study on the nature of leadership, including counter-revolutionary leadership, during revolutions. It is truly majestic study in this respect. 

Second, the book as a whole is a fierce and insightful polemic against moderates in a revolutionary context. Not all of the moderates dissected by James are leaders and only a few end up on the side of the revolution.  The third feature is that James treats all of his agents sharing in a fundamental nature. And, in general, he is very critical of race-specific explanations (below I give some further evidence of this).

My interest here today is primarily in this second feature because James' treatment of moderation illuminates his overall argument and is instructive to would be moderates and their critics. The theme of moderation is set up, almost surreptitiously, at the start of the book, where he notes, while discussing the nature of slave society of San Domingo, that "the regular clergy of San Domingo instead of being a moderating influence were notorious for their irreverence and degeneracy." (26) While there is no reason to believe that James is a friend of organized religion or clerical privilege, the comment reveals that he also thinks that in some pre-revolutionary and/or hierarchical societies some institutions or classes can play a proper moderating functional role. And one of his criticisms of the clergy of San Domingo, one might say a naturally moderating force, is that they failed to moderate the harms of slavery and general corruption. (The implied contrast is with Las Casas, a "priest with a conscience;" recall here). Slave society has thoroughly corrupted the clergy's humanity and religiosity and, thereby, they end up reinforcing society's ills.

The previous paragraph may be thought a bit forced. But this analysis of moderation runs through James' treatment of the mulattoes. Many of these were property owning. And as the revolution unfolds in France their-would-be leaders "claimed for [their] people social and political rights." (52) These claims are described as "moderate" (52) by James. One of these leaders was "hanged...on the spot" and the other "lynched" by the whites. "Leaders in this terror were the small whites: the managers and stewards of the plantations and the mass of the townsmen." (52)

As the a-synchronous revolutions in France and San Domingo unfold, we see the "moderate" (82)  mulattoes regularly trying to through their lot in with either the local property owners and/or with whoever is in charge in Paris against the slave population.* This turns out to be a disaster for all the mulattoes.

Their error is not merely tactical. It is fundamentally, in James' telling, ideological. For, the underlying problem is that the revolution itself -- which James views, in part, as a mechanism for consciousness raising into discovering what one's true interests are -- fails to do its proper job. This becomes clear in a passage devoted to its effect on the San Domingo blacks which prepares the way for the judgment (from p. 243) quoted in the passage at the top of this post:

For the moment the blacks did not know where their true interests lay. And if they did not, it was not their fault, because the French Revolution. being still in the hands of Liberals and "moderates," was clearly bent on driving the blacks back to the old slavery. (101)

James is quite clear there are exceptions to his class analysis. But generally, moderates during the French revolution are incapable of breaking with slavery because their fortunes are tied to seeing slavery as a species of property. (In fact, James makes clear he thinks that it is fortunes from slavery that made possible a bourgeoisie capable of the initial phases of the French Revolution.) And in James' argument the very forces that benefit initially from revolutionary advances (the Bordeaux slave-owners in France; the petty whites in San Domingo) are the very forces that prevent further emancipation of slaves. In France this is due to loss aversion from economic privilege; in San Damingo it is due to a desire by the not rich (petty) whites to advance in an hierarchical society without abolishing the general (racialized) hierarchy. James echoes without fully realizing it, perhaps, Gouges' insight that (recall; and here with my debt to Eileen O'Neill) French revolutionary mass democracy is no advance for women if it means that enfranchised men can rule over women.

Now, James is clear that, in revolutionary moments, moderation always leads to ruin in virtue of the actions of (what for a lack of a better term, I'll call) reactionaries, who, rather than settle for modest loss of status, end up gambling it all in continued defense of privilege:

The current legend that the abolition of slavery resulted in the destruction of the whites is a shameless lie, typical of the means by which reaction covers its crimes in the past and seeks to block advance in the present. In May 1792 the whites were all tumbling over each other to give rights to the Mulattoes, and Roume says that when the decree of April 4th arrived, they published it the day after. It was too late. If they had done it a year before, at the outbreak of the slave revolution, they would have been able to master it before it spread. Why didn't they? Race prejudice? Nonsense. Why did not Charles I and his followers behave reasonably to Cromwell? As late as 1646, two years after Marston Moor, Mrs. Cromwell and Mrs. Ireton had tea with Charles at Hampton Court. Cromwell, great revolutionary but great bourgeois, was willing to come to terms. Why did not Louis and Marie Antoinette and the court behave reasonably to the moderate revolutionaries before August 10th? Why indeed? The monarchy in France had to be torn up by the roots. Those in power never give way, and admit defeat only to plot and scheme to regain their lost power and privilege. Had the monarchists been white, the bourgeoisie brown, and the masses of France black, the French Revolution would have gone down in history as a race war. But although they were all white in France they fought just the same. The struggle of classes ends either in the reconstruction of society or in the common ruin of the contending classes.--Black Jacobins, 103-104 (emphasis added)

It is important to recognize that James' intent here is not to justify terror or genocide. By this I do not mean he moralizes against them. He clearly thinks terror and genocide become inevitable in certain circumstances and are pretty much the expected outcome when the (previously) privileged use terror to defend their hierarchy. 

Rather, the emphasized part is the key feature of James' view on political life that moderates -- be they Girondists in Paris or Toussaint in San Domingo -- fail to grasp. And the reason why on James' view the moderates fail to grasp this, is that they are (i) too interested in generating the (economic) fruits of post-revolutionary peace and (ii) mistakenly assume all others are similarly motivated; the moderates, thus, do not grasp (iii) that those that have benefitted from tasting being on top of the hierarchy cannot be bought off easily with the (expansive) fruits of peace. Toussaint's "desire to avoid destruction" was motivated by his interest in keeping financial and human capital on the island so that prosperity could be maintained (even if shared more widely).

It is an interesting question to what degree (ii-iii) really fit James' Marxist scheme of history. In addition, not all extreme social hierarchies are undone by revolution. One can think of instances of relatively peaceful regime transitions (South Africa, Chile, etc.) that may vindicate the moderate's belief that violent revolution is not always inevitable. I do not wish here to dispute James' believe that at some moment the moderate must choose sites and, perhaps inevitably, will choose wrongly. Rather, what James can teach the moderate, or at least has taught this skeptical liberal, perhaps unwittingly, is the recognition of the significance of the fear of status loss in possible transitions. To what degree such fear can be bought off financially or accommodated with a new kind of status, I leave to another occasion.

 

 

On Adam Tooze, Ideology and Liberal Historiography

If Jamie Dimon quipped that to make sense of Dodd-Frank one needed the services of a lawyer and a psychiatrist, the same is no doubt true of the business of deciphering Donald Trump. But historians can contribute too.¹⁸ Trump offered to a bewildered present a throwback to an earlier era. Born in 1946, the same year as Bill Clinton, Trump would take office at seventy years of age, recycling a rancid version of the baby boomer narrative, which in the 1990s had still seemed fresh. Trump’s racial attitudes reflected the animosities of the era of civil rights, desegregation and New York in the 1970s. His boorish manners and sexism echoed the Manhattan party scene of the 1980s, when bond traders toasted one another as “big swinging dicks.” The sense of national crisis that drove his campaign was a reflux not so much of the recent past as of the first moment when modern Americans felt the world changing around them—the late 1970s and early 1980s. The trauma of defeat in Vietnam, America’s urban crisis and angry Japan bashing—thirty years on Trump was still harping on those fears, but now transposed onto new enemies: China, Islam and undocumented Latino immigrants.--Adam Tooze (2018) Crashed: How a Decade of Financial Crises Changed the World, 569.

One of the non-trivial sub-texts of Tooze's argument is the complacency of the Democrats and even the whole 'political class' in the face of the rise (and eventual) triumph of Trump. I don't want to claim that Tooze always or even often treats his targets as complacent, but it is a recurring theme in the book.* Now, interestingly, on Tooze's presentation, the complacent uniformly believe not just in technocratic skill, but also that by and large the present system is unavoidable (interestingly this flattens any difference between "the determinism of Thatcher and Merkel,"  and that this system is in some world-historical sense progressive ('progress' is repeated frequently in the book).

Tooze is very critical of the political class. Even so, as Perry Anderson notes (83ff.) in his by now (justly) famous review essay, Tooze also admires the complacents's skill which consist in, in part, in managing, so it seems, the irrationality that democracies naturally generate without undoing the liberal status quo (free trade, markets, glocal integragration, etc.) My interest in mentioning this is not Anderson's who is engaged in a polemic from the Marxist left against Tooze's self-proclaimed left-liberalism (p. 21 Crashed; p. 53 in Anderson).+

In fact, I quote the passage at the top of the post  because it is a place where Tooze alerts the reader to his own intellectual perspective (qua historian). And the way I read him, Tooze treats Trump as a kind of expression of atavistic sentiments and outlooks (e.g., 'throwback;' 'recycling;' 'reflux.' etc.) That is to say, just like the complacents, Tooze embraces, despite his sense of contingency, a notion of progress (in his terms an arc of  history) in which some ideas are modern and modernizing and others are old-fashioned or outright primitive. (Because of his progressive Marxism, Anderson can't really object to Tooze's stance here.)

To be sure, Tooze is doing multiple things in the quoted passage: first he explains, briefly, where Trump's ideas come from given Trump's social milieu and personal trajectory.  Second, he is conveying the sense of bewilderment of an establishment of having to confront these ideas and the manner in which they are performed anew. Third, he himself is judging these ideas/performance ("boorish," etc.) I don't think any of these three features are objectionable, and Tooze is transparent about them.

But, fourth, because Tooze treats these ideas as atavistic, he can't quite explain their nature (or their appeal) qua historian (or engaged citizen). So, while throughout the book, Tooze understands the grounds of popular dissatisfaction would with the status quo (the complacents), we're now left with a mystery why the progressive left could rarely capitalize on this dissatisfaction. For, and again Anderson is good on this, why did not ordinary citizens embrace the progressive Keynesian solutions Tooze advocates at the ballot box?

And, in my view, part of the problem for Tooze -- and this emblematic for much liberal thought in the broad sense -- is that he views the fears and desires Trump represents so well as atavistic to be overcome rather than as permanent possibilities of the human condition.** Now the moment one says this one draws the suspicion one is willing to slide into a normative defense of Trump and author authoritarian tendencies. (I have learned that to cast even minimum doubt on the reality of say, moral progress of humanity, is to invite opprobrium.)

But  the fact that those whose business is not to be bewildered were, as Tooze correctly notes, "bewildered" by Trump's rise (and Brexit, etc.) shows that there is a defect in the self-conception of contemporary liberalism. That's different from suggesting that there is a defect in contemporary liberalism that causes the rise of Trump and other authoritarian tendencies (that may be true, too). Since I care about liberalism's survival I think this is a defect in our self-conception worth addressing. The moment one respects what is taken as atavistic as a permanent possibility, one might govern and campaign (and communicate, and theorize, etc.) in a different fashion. For, even recognizing a possibility as a possibility allows one to better prevent it from happening and not treat it as mystery. It is also a start of a better explanation of why it did happen.

That is to say, I think one of the problems in contemporary liberalism is the unstated assumption that certain forms of progress are permanent and that once achieved no back-sliding is genuinely possible. But an ideology that takes its own victories for granted (in being justified and secure), after the fact, really is an ideology.*** What I admire in liberalism is a willingness to learn from experience and self-correct; it strikes me this is a feature within liberalism we need to change, or, better yet, revert back to the wisdom of Judith Shklar and Karl Popper (here; here; here) and be willing to expect the worst.

 

The Mises-(Karl) Polanyi debate (on Imperialism) reconsidered

The considerations and objectives that have guided the colonial policy of the European powers since the age of the great discoveries stand in the sharpest contrast to all the principles of liberalism. The basic idea of colonial policy was to take advantage of the military superiority of the white race over the members of other races. The Europeans set out, equipped with all the weapons and contrivances that their civilization placed at their disposal, to subjugate weaker peoples, to rob them of their property, and to enslave them. Attempts have been made to extenuate and gloss over the true motive of colonial policy with the excuse that its sole object was to make it possible for primitive peoples to share in the blessings of European
civilization. Even assuming that this was the real objective of the governments that sent out conquerors to distant parts of the world, the liberal could still not see any adequate basis for regarding this kind of colonization as useful or beneficial. If, as we believe, European civilization really is superior to that of the primitive tribes of Africa or to the civilizations of Asia—estimable though the latter may be in their own way—it should be able to prove its superiority by inspiring these peoples to adopt it of their own accord. Could there be a more doleful proof of the sterility of European civilization than that it can be spread by no other means than fire and sword?

No chapter of history is steeped further in blood than the history of colonialism. Blood was shed uselessly and senselessly. Flourishing lands were laid waste; whole peoples destroyed and exterminated. All this can in no way be extenuated or justified. The dominion of Europeans in Africa and in important parts of Asia is absolute. It stands in the sharpest contrast to all the principles of liberalism and democracy, and there can be no doubt that we must strive for its abolition.--Mises (1927) Liberalism 124-125

It is probably old news, but in many respects Mises is the clear target of Karl Polanyi's (1944) The Great Transformation. In particular, Polanyi thinks Mises misunderstands the nature of the illiberal reaction (post 1870s) against the earlier nineteenth century success of liberalism. Polanyi grants Mises that there was such a reaction. To simplify, according to Polanyi, Mises fails to understand that (i) markets are inherently fragile and (ii) proper functioning markets are very disruptive of traditional forms of life and destroy previously existing organic culture. Both (i) and (ii) generate reactions that have the (possibly conflicting) aims to (a) shore up and protect the market and (b) protect society to slow down the rate of social change. In some cases (a)-(b) work in the same direction by [A] strengthening liberal society (by a cunning of history) and in some cases they work in the same direction by [B] strengthening forces that threaten to overwhelm liberal society. As an aside, one can understand the developing program of Ordoliberalism (which Polanyi doesn't seem to know) as recognizing the significance of [A] and to turn it into a feature of deliberate, progressive liberal program. 

Now, Mises recognizes (i) and (ii). He thinks (ii) is fine because Mises thinks liberal society is genuinely superior form of civilization. But it's only fine if markets are embraced voluntarily--Mises is, not unlike Smith, a fierce critic of the violent extension of liberal society. (Few critics of Mises fail to acknowledge this forthrightly.) Mises has no fondness at all for the idea -- which unfortunately tempted Mill -- for the civilizational mission of European colonialism and imperial projects. Mises recognizes (i), but thinks the source(s) of fragility are to be located in the illiberal reaction against markets, and so embraces a cosmopolitan liberal global order (which would de facto eliminate opposition). The obvious problem (immanent to Mises's project) is that there is no clear path from here to there. (I return to this below.) Polanyi would add that Mises' one-sided focus on economics means Mises fails to grasp the particular conditions of the balance of power politics that enabled the growth and then demise of liberal internationalism. If true it would be a bit comic if the liberal cannot understand her triumphs from within a liberal paradigm. 

Because Melinda Cooper (recall) has brilliantly dissected the shortcomings of Polanyi (and those inspired by him) in her recent Family Values, so I will not rehearse them. But it is worth noting that one of the most arresting bits of Polanyi's thought (indebted to Marx, and eerily foreshadowed in More's Utopia) is to treat the harmful effects of capitalist development* on English peasants (between 1500-1850) and on (19th and 20th century) colonial subjects as de facto identical. In addition to violent appropriation, there is a destruction of culture and form of life such that the victims risk becoming subhuman (and Polanyi recognizes that Adam Smith had anticipated his thought).

 Now, Polanyi and Mises are in firm agreement that the violent version of capitalist development is incredibly harmful to the victims, but does eventually deliver economic fruits. They are also in firm agreement -- this also makes for some uncomfortable reading in both -- that whatever moral vices one finds in non-white colonial subjects are entirely due to the effects of colonialism and subjugation.+ (Fanon picks up the idea, but treats the behavior psychoanalytically rather than morally.) Amazingly, on this point Polanyi is much more optimistic than Mises:

Much of the massive suffering inseparable from a period of transition is already behind us. In the social and economic dislocation of
our age, in the tragic vicissitudes of the depression, fluctuations of currency, mass unemployment, shiftings of social status, spectacular destruction of historical states, we have experienced the worst. Unwittingly we have been paying the price of the change. Far as mankind still is from having adapted itself to the use of machines, and great as the pending changes are, the restoration of the past is as impossible as the transferring of our troubles to another planet. --Karl Polanyi The Great Transformation (258-259)

For Polanyi there is no going back, and the right attitude is to let progress run its course. To be sure the rate of change of this course should be slowed down where the social forces can muster appropriate power. Polanyi is surprisingly uninterested in reflecting on what this entails about the future colonial and imperial policy.

Mises, by contrast, recognizes explicitly that Europeans cannot be trusted to get this policy right and destroys self-serving myths against European withdrawal. For him it is self-evident that "The most simple and radical solution would be for the European governments to withdraw their officials, soldiers, and police from these areas and to leave the inhabitants to themselves."

However, Mises while tempted by the radical solution, fails to endorse it. And he does so because -- say (recall) unlike Henry Simons -- he believes liberalism is the right policy for everyone everywhere.  In particular, he thinks that given the (unjustified extension) of liberal institutions (property rights, trade, and accompanying legal and physical infrastructure) it would economically harm both Europeans and their victims to allow the gains from trade to Europeans and colonial subjects alike to be dissipated in the unwinding of colonial empires. And so he advocates the mandate system under the leadership of the "League of Nations" which would allow for a "transition" period (129). 

I think there is no doubt that Mises was truly naive in thinking that the League could be impartial arbiter or that any self-respecting subject could accept the tutelage it implied (as Mises kind of recognizes). But unlike cynical and uncharitable readers of Mises it seems clear to me his heart is in the right place. For him the short-term goal must be global emancipation. Unlike other advocates of the League,  Mises does not want to promote it in order to secure dominance for Europeans and their interests by other means. Rather, the problem is, as I noted earlier in the week, that Mises' (anti-pluralistic) understanding of liberalism prevents him recognizing (the plausibly liberal idea) that everyone should be free to experiment with the forms of life they wish, including the rejection of liberal institutions, even at the expense of economic fruits.  

On Opinion, Political Authority, and Patriarchical Demos in More's Utopia

“Do not you think that if I were about any king, proposing good laws to him, and endeavouring to root out all the cursed seeds of evil that I found in him, I should either be turned out of his court, or, at least, be laughed at for my pains?  For instance, what could I signify if I were about the King of France, and were called into his cabinet council, where several wise men, in his hearing, were proposing many expedients; as, by what arts and practices Milan may be kept, and Naples, that has so often slipped out of their hands, recovered; how the Venetians, and after them the rest of Italy, may be subdued; and then how Flanders, Brabant, and all Burgundy, and some other kingdoms which he has swallowed already in his designs, may be added to his empire?  One proposes a league with the Venetians, to be kept as long as he finds his account in it, and that he ought to communicate counsels with them, and give them some share of the spoil till his success makes him need or fear them less, and then it will be easily taken out of their hands; another proposes the hiring the Germans and the securing the Switzers by pensions; another proposes the gaining the Emperor by money, which is omnipotent with him; another proposes a peace with the King of Arragon, and, in order to cement it, the yielding up the King of Navarre’s pretensions; another thinks that the Prince of Castile is to be wrought on by the hope of an alliance, and that some of his courtiers are to be gained to the French faction by pensions.  The hardest point of all is, what to do with England; a treaty of peace is to be set on foot, and, if their alliance is not to be depended on, yet it is to be made as firm as possible, and they are to be called friends, but suspected as enemies: therefore the Scots are to be kept in readiness to be let loose upon England on every occasion; and some banished nobleman is to be supported underhand (for by the League it cannot be done avowedly) who has a pretension to the crown, by which means that suspected prince may be kept in awe.  Now when things are in so great a fermentation, and so many gallant men are joining counsels how to carry on the war, if so mean a man as I should stand up and wish them to change all their counsels—to let Italy alone and stay at home, since the kingdom of France was indeed greater than could be well governed by one man; that therefore he ought not to think of adding others to it; and if, after this, I should propose to them the resolutions of the Achorians, a people that lie on the south-east of Utopia, who long ago engaged in war in order to add to the dominions of their prince another kingdom, to which he had some pretensions by an ancient alliance: this they conquered, but found that the trouble of keeping it was equal to that by which it was gained; that the conquered people were always either in rebellion or exposed to foreign invasions, while they were obliged to be incessantly at war, either for or against them, and consequently could never disband their army; that in the meantime they were oppressed with taxes, their money went out of the kingdom, their blood was spilt for the glory of their king without procuring the least advantage to the people, who received not the smallest benefit from it even in time of peace; and that, their manners being corrupted by a long war, robbery and murders everywhere abounded, and their laws fell into contempt; while their king, distracted with the care of two kingdoms, was the less able to apply his mind to the interest of either.  When they saw this, and that there would be no end to these evils, they by joint counsels made an humble address to their king, desiring him to choose which of the two kingdoms he had the greatest mind to keep, since he could not hold both; for they were too great a people to be governed by a divided king, since no man would willingly have a groom that should be in common between him and another.  Upon which the good prince was forced to quit his new kingdom to one of his friends (who was not long after dethroned), and to be contented with his old one.  To this I would add that after all those warlike attempts, the vast confusions, and the consumption both of treasure and of people that must follow them, perhaps upon some misfortune they might be forced to throw up all at last; therefore it seemed much more eligible that the king should improve his ancient kingdom all he could, and make it flourish as much as possible; that he should love his people, and be beloved of them; that he should live among them, govern them gently and let other kingdoms alone, since that which had fallen to his share was big enough, if not too big, for him:—pray, how do you think would such a speech as this be heard?”--Thomas More, Utopia, Book 1

In context, Raphael Hythloday is explaining why he rejects the possibility to become an expert adviser to kings. These do not (recall) welcome truthful advice. Enlightened despotism is ruled out because a range of mechanisms (group-think, status seeking, and misaligned incentives, war-profiting, etc.) prevent explicit truth from having a seat at the decision-making table. And, perhaps, in a zero-sum international environment, the advocate of peace and self-limitation should not even expect to be heard.

My interest here is in the little vignette about the Achorians. In the course of his discussion with the character Thomas More, Hythloday uses three such vignettes in Book 1. All three involve relatively isolated lands.* (This is also true of Utopia and Great Britain.) All three examples involve internal or external mechanisms by which royal authority is constrained and made to submit to law.** Two of the examples, Achoria and Macaria are said to be not far from Utopia; in light of what follows in Book 2 -- where we learn the Utopians have a sphere of influence --, it can be speculated that the good order found in Achoria and Macaria may well be the product of Utopian policy. 

The vignette fits a larger pacific argument unfolded in Utopia. War is associated with the desire for glory. But glory is treated as "petty pride."+ The contrast is with contentment and comfort (this is emphasized in the earlier vignette about the Polylerites). War and occupation of others is treated as a source of many evils not the least for undermining the rule of domestic law. Exporting war means simultaneously undermining domestic order and corrupting morality. 

Now, I don't mean to suggest More (the author) endorses any of Hythloday's arguments. Hythloday's name (nonsense peddler) does not inspire confidence; he also exhibits some contradictory claims. More's own (recall) rhetorical stance is oblique. But the vignettes may open to the reader vistas that would otherwise be occluded. 

The most striking feature of the vignette is that (royal) authority is grounded -- as David Hume, Adam Smith, and Madison would emphasize -- in the good opinion of the people. The people are not, as Kant would suggest, presented as naturally pacific. But it is implied that they will not tolerate endless troubles, and that at some point authority must engage with their interest. In a strikingly gendered metaphor, the king is presented as a bride who must give his/her undivided attention in serving her masculine gendered demos. We can discern her the way (recall) in which (and here) later democratic theory presupposes patriarchy. 

 

On Graeber and Wengrow and Institutional Flexibility

As Claude Lévi-Strauss often pointed out, early Homo sapiens were not just physically the same as modern humans, they were our intellectual peers as well. In fact, most were probably more conscious of society’s potential than people generally are today, switching back and forth between different forms of organization every year.  Rather than idling in some primordial innocence, until the genie of inequality was somehow uncorked, our prehistoric ancestors seem to have successfully opened and shut the bottle on a regular basis, confining inequality to ritual costume dramas, constructing gods and kingdoms as they did their monuments, then cheerfully disassembling them once again.--David Graeber and David Wengrow (2018) "How to change the course of human history: (at least, the part that’s already happened)" in Eurozine.

I start with a cute observation: the position attributed to Lévi-Strauss is itself an echo of one of Adam Smith's central claims in the Wealth of Nations:

It is otherwise in the barbarous societies, as they are commonly called, of hunters, of shepherds, and even of husbandmen in that rude state of husbandry which precedes the improvement of manufactures, and the extension of foreign commerce. In such societies the varied occupations of every man oblige every man to exert his capacity, and to invent expedients for removing difficulties which are continually occurring. Invention is kept alive, and the mind is not suffered to fall into that drowsy stupidity, which, in a civilized society, seems to benumb the understanding of almost all the inferior ranks of people. In those barbarous societies, as they are called...Every man too is in some measure a statesman, and can form a tolerable judgment concerning the interest of the society, and the conduct of those who govern it. 

For according to Lévi-Strauss (and as it happens Graeber & Wengrow) and Smith, and unless social conditions conspire against it, we are  capable of what we may call natural political theorizing--the imaginative effort of reflecting on institutional arrangements, perhaps even counterfactual institutional arrangements. 

Smith famously thought that the extensive division of labor corrupted our natural capacity in certain kinds of wage laborers (see also this passage). For Smith we are primarily shaped by our environment. It is no surprise (recall) that his initial example of technological innovation and liberty (!) is due "one of those boys, who loved to play with his companions," because in children our natural inventiveness and play-fullness is not yet destroyed.

If I understand the larger argument of David Graeber (recall these posts) & David Wengrow, one I heard extended last week at a public lecture, they think there is quite a bit of archaeological and anthropological evidence that humans deploy their natural capacity for "play" and what above I called natural political theorizing to experimenting with institutional arrangements even alternating among them on a regular basis. They think this was once well known, but (shades of Kuhn loss) lost: Scholarship does not always advance. Sometimes it slides backwards.  I quote an extensive passage before I comment:

Why are these seasonal variations important? Because they reveal that from the very beginning, human beings were self-consciously experimenting with different social possibilities. Anthropologists describe societies of this sort as possessing a ‘double morphology’. Marcel Mauss, writing in the early twentieth century, observed that the circumpolar Inuit, ‘and likewise many other societies . . . have two social structures, one in summer and one in winter, and that in parallel they have two systems of law and religion’. In the summer months, Inuit dispersed into small patriarchal bands in pursuit of freshwater fish, caribou, and reindeer, each under the authority of a single male elder. Property was possessively marked and patriarchs exercised coercive, sometimes even tyrannical power over their kin. But in the long winter months, when seals and walrus flocked to the Arctic shore, another social structure entirely took over as Inuit gathered together to build great meeting houses of wood, whale-rib, and stone. Within them, the virtues of equality, altruism, and collective life prevailed; wealth was shared; husbands and wives exchanged partners under the aegis of Sedna, the Goddess of the Seals.

Another example were the indigenous hunter-gatherers of Canada’s Northwest Coast, for whom winter – not summer – was the time when society crystallised into its most unequal form, and spectacularly so. Plank-built palaces sprang to life along the coastlines of British Columbia, with hereditary nobles holding court over commoners and slaves, and hosting the great banquets known as potlatch. Yet these aristocratic courts broke apart for the summer work of the fishing season, reverting to smaller clan formations, still ranked, but with an entirely different and less formal structure. In this case, people actually adopted different names in summer and winter, literally becoming someone else, depending on the time of year..

Quite independently, archaeological evidence suggests that in the highly seasonal environments of the last Ice Age, our remote ancestors were behaving in broadly similar ways: shifting back and forth between alternative social arrangements, permitting the rise of authoritarian structures during certain times of year, on the proviso that they could not last; on the understanding that no particular social order was ever fixed or immutable. Within the same population, one could live sometimes in what looks, from a distance, like a band, sometimes a tribe, and sometimes a society with many of the features we now identify with states. With such institutional flexibility comes the capacity to step outside the boundaries of any given social structure and reflect; to both make and unmake the political worlds we live in. If nothing else, this explains the ‘princes’ and ‘princesses’ of the last Ice Age, who appear to show up, in such magnificent isolation, like characters in some kind of fairy-tale or costume drama. Maybe they were almost literally so. If they reigned at all, then perhaps it was, like the kings and queens of Stonehenge, just for a season.

There are really three main points to Graeber & Wengrow's argument: first, there is a polemic against the idea that in the state of nature, or in pre-history, societies are naturally "tiny egalitarian bands of hunter-gatherers" (without any or much private property) and that the rise of inequality is the consequence of the invention of property and new forms of social instutions. The most famous version of the account is to be found in Rousseau, who treats it (as they note) as a fiction.**

Second, Graeber & Wengrow attack the impoverished taxonomy used to classify different kinds of political societies. They claim the historical record shows (for example) cities are possible without bureaucracies or without large inequalities (including standing armies; they claim that "in those parts of the world where animals and plants were first domesticated, there actually was no discernible ‘switch’ from Palaeolithic Forager to Neolithic Farmer" instead there were hybrids of various forms. 

Third, the first two points are part of a larger argument that is meant to undermine a species of fatalism about theorizing about social organizations. The record shows that humans are capable of reflecting on and experimenting with many different kinds of social organization; as they put it in the sentence just before the passage I quote at the top of this post, "those same pioneering humans who colonised much of the planet also experimented with an enormous variety of social arrangements."

Now, in their criticism of social fatalism, I much prefer Graeber & Wengrow's argument over Foucault's (which, to simplify in reductive fashion, emphasizes contingency of our present arrangement, but somehow can't imagine an alternative to the status quo). So, I prefer not to close with a critical worry. Even so, in reading their sentence of the pioneering humans I had to think of the Cambian explosion so wonderfully described by Gould. Perhaps, we humans are a bit like the Burgess Shale fossils: after a period of immense social diversification, our social Baupläne have been narrowed down quite a bit.+

I am not sufficiently expert to suggest an explanation for this reduced experimentation (beyond Smith's point that societies with extensive division of labor reduce inventiveness and play). Perhaps, after the bout of experimentation, our ancestors increasingly started bumping into each other again and resource competition among societies of homo sapiens caused the winnowing; perhaps the invention of written language was a decisive technological shift in favor of certain extractive political economies. I am not suggesting that we are doomed to the status quo.++ Given the challenges facing humanity, we should, perhaps, allow our imagination more play and experimentation, 

 

 

Toward a Perfect Ensemble; On Gouges' The Rights of Woman

Woman, wake up; the tocsin of reason is resounding throughout the universe: acknowledge your rights. Nature's powerful empire is no longer surrounded by prejudice, fanaticism, superstition or untruth. The light of truth has dissipated all the clouds of nonsense and usurpation. Enslaved man increased his power and had to have recourse to yours in order to break his fetters. Freed he became unjust towards his companion. Oh women! Women, when will you cease to be blind? What advantages have you gained through the Revolution? A greater scorn, a more pronounced disdain. During the centuries of corruption you only reigned over the weakness of men. Your empire is destroyed: what is left to you? The conviction that men are unjust? Reclaim your heritage, that right founded on the wise decrees of nature; what can you fear from such a fine undertaking? A witticism from the Governor of the Feast of Cana? Are you afraid that our French Governors, correctors of an inappropriate morality that was too long caught up in the branches of politics, will say repeatedly: women, what have we got in common? Everything, you must reply.--Olympes de Gouges, The Rights of Woman. 5 September in 1791

Gouges' text reminds that, in the first instance, the age of revolution and democracy was inter alia a disaster for women:* a very imperfect and unequally distributed informal power behind the scenes in feudal times got replaced by a formal subordination to male fraternity. The would-be-age-of-mass democracy was also the age of mass disenfranchisement. As Gouges is writing, she is explicitly aware that there are well-entrenched financial interests in the new "National Assembly" that "are agitating to re-enslave "men of color" in the French colonial empire. 

Gouges' argument turns on the thought that if women can be taxed and hanged, then they should be able to shape the law.+" Perhaps the most memorable line of her declaration is, in fact, that "woman is entitled to mount the scaffold; she must be equally entitled to mount the rostra so long as her manifestos do not disturb the public order according to the law." (That freedom of speech can be curtailed by considerations pertaining to the disturbances of public order is a spinozistic idea, which can also be found in article X of Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen .) Underlying her thought is the basic idea that if one has duties, one has correlated rights. (She puts it like this: "woman shares all the labour, all the hard tasks; she should therefore have an equal share of positions, employment, responsibilities, honours and professions." (Arictle 13))

The impartiality of the law, for Gouges, is exemplified by the lack of special mercy or lenience toward women: "the law will rigorously pursue any woman found to be guilty." We can discern in this the influence of Beccaria's ideas, who thought that for the law to be effective as a deterrent and just, it must be machine-like predictable in its effects and without room for discretion. 

I do not mean to deny that there is also another strain running through the argument grounded in democratic majoritarianism. This is not initially obvious. She first claims "The law must embody the general will [volonté générale];"  (Article VI) Of course, the general will in the service of the common good, or common utility [in the 18th century sense of common interest], need not require participation by all. But Gouges makes that "all Female and Male citizens must contribute personally, or through their representatives, to its development." And she reiterates the point a few articles later But she also claims that "the constitution is worthless if the majority of individuals [les majorités des individus] that make up the Nation has not participated in its redaction." (Article XVI) And because she expects men never to be fully unified, no majority is possible without women citizens.

Gouges' addressing the declaration to the Queen did not help her once the Terror set its sights on her. (She was guillotined 3 November 1793.) But for present purposes, what is most notable is that she claims that "the principle of sovereignty is vested primarily [or even essentially] in the Nation." (Article 3) One may expect that, in turn, the nation is constituted by a shared language, shared history, or certain geography. But she treats he nation as "the union of Woman and Man." This is an important contrast to the 1789 Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen, where the referent of the nation is implied (the French people) in virtue of the fact that it is promulgated by the "representatives of the French people." 

The contrast matters because Gouges turns the nation into something abstract, outside of time and place: in one sense, "the union of Woman and Man" [réunion de la femme et de l'homme] just seem to refer to a marriage (I return to that below). In another sense, treating réunion as a kind of assembly, it is a regulative ideal in which men and women are co-equals in a political project. In both senses the nation can be truly universal in a way that a propagation by the French National Assembly cannot.

It is no accident that Gouges formulation of the sovereign evokes marriage. It is pretty clear that while Gouges explicitly conceived the point of political life in terms of "liberty, property, security and above all the right to resist oppression," she understands the right to property in terms of marriage, inheritance, and home. The connection among these is made explicit by the rather surprising postscript to the Declaration, which is a kind of marriage contract (and which has no counterpart in the Declaration of the Rights of Man) about the combining of assets. It explicitly allows for divorce and has provisions for the care of children (recognized by the mother). The whole tenor of Gouges' declaration is, in fact, is to change the definition of marriage in such a way such that any child born to a citizen is part of a family (with a right to inheritance) and a right to housing, even public housing if necessary.

I am ascribing such a right to housing to Gouges from her somewhat enigmatic remarks about the utility of reintegrating prostitutes into the body politic such that a "perfect ensemble" [un ensemble parfait] is produced. She writes:

I would also like, as I suggested in The Primitive Happiness of Man in 1788, that streetwalkers be housed in designated areas. It is not streetwalkers who contribute the most to the depravity of morals, it is society women. By reinstating the latter one modifies the former. This bond of fraternity will create disorder at first but by and by it will it will produce a perfect ensemble.

While I am unsure what the mechanism is by which improvement is supposed takes place over the medium term, I think the underlying diagnosis (despite the potential for victim-blaming) is important. (In what follows, I am assuming that the "designated areas" are not hidden from 'society'.) Gouges' point is, in part, that to tackle the effects of inequalities on the (invisible) vulnerable, one must make the vulnerable and these inequalities visible and felt again.

 

 

 

On Neo-Liberalism, Religion, and Walter Lippmann 80 Years Later

Because that which we seek [to do] is not to resuscitate a theory, but to discover the ideas that permit the momentum [élan] toward freedom and civilization to triumph over all the obstacles resulting from human nature, historical circumstances, the conditions of life on this earth. It is a long-term task that requires sustained efforts, sustained support, and the noble patience of those who sincerely and humbly seek the truth. Before it is achieved, humanity will go through, I believe, a very profound and vast religious experience: it will have to evaluate science and its relationship to philosophy and morality anew, it will have to revise the idea of the State, of property, of individual rights and the national ideal. Civilized men will have to submit the conceptions they found novel before the [first World] war to new scrutiny, determined as they will be to discover those that are and those that are not compatible with the vital needs and the permanent ideal of humanity. It is to these vital needs and to this permanent ideal, and not to the doctrines of the nineteenth century, that one should refer to, so as to undertake the reconstruction of liberalism. Let us also seek not to teach an old doctrine, but to contribute within our means to the formation of a doctrine of which none of us has more than a vague notion at the present moment. And we should think of liberalism not as a thing accomplished in the olden days and dated today, but [rather] as something not yet achieved and still very young.--Walter Lippman (1938), p. 105-6.

The term 'neo-liberalism' is associated with many features of liberal ideology of the last half century. But its associaton with a movement is due to the 1938 Walter Lippmann colloquium in Paris (hereafter the colloquium). This gathering was the brain child of Louis Rougier, himself a fascinating (and somewhat disturbing character) with very strong ties to some of my intellectual paragons, Susan Stebbing and the members of the Vienna Circle, including hosting the  International Congresses for the Unity of Science. After the collapse of the first wave of liberalism in WWI and the subsequent rise of communism, fascism, and  nazism, the Colloquium laid the groundwork for rethinking liberalism that, after allied victory in war and Pax Americana, led to spectacular rebirth of liberalism in many new institutions, international collaboration, and a period of astounding prosperity (alongside decolonialization and dismantling of European empires.) While we cannot discount possibility of a great war between China and America, our present conditions, while dire for many and grounds for grave fears, are not yet on the same scale of catastrophe as the atmosphere surrounding the colloquim. Many of its participants are exiles,and the sense that major war is imminent pervades the precedings. The previous sentence is not intended to mimize the suffering of those presently facing persecution nor to deny the looming terror consequent to the unfolding environmental disaster due to climate change.

From the 1960s onward the revival of liberalism became associated with three distinct commitments: (i) a propogation of markets in many spheres of life even at the expense of other voluntary forms of collaboration or organization; (ii) a way of life focused on the profit motive and acquisition of more material comforts or the re-distribution of income/wealth; (iii) the sexual revolution and the concommitant welcoming and newfound construction of forms of life, even identities, that previously were repressed by state and church (or both).* What's striking about the proceedings of the colloquium is that none of these trends are foreshadowed in it--with the exception, perhaps, of (i). But because the proceedings are heavily influenced by ordo-liberal thought, even the most rigorous defenders of markets at the colloqium are committed to the idea that these presuppose a robust state with its own sphere of autonomy and capable shaping the laws required for a market economy.

So, with that in place it is worth looking at the religiosity of Lippmann's conception of liberalism. By this I do not just mean that he thinks that a liberalism worth having will preserve a kind of autonomy for religious associations, churches, and religious ways of life. Rather, I mean that (a) the very idea of liberalism worth having itself involves a spiritual transformation over extended or historical time. And, in particular, that (b) the destination of liberalism is, in a certain sense not yet known. This has strong resonance with a form of Kantian religion (recently ably articulated by Sam Fleischacker in his The Good and the Good Book (Oxford, 2015)) in which the working out of the content of religious faith is itself a matter of uncertainty over the outcome combined with great deal of trust in the guiding ideals (or holy book). At the end (c) there is a promised land that is, in part, the consequence of a revolution in thought (informed by science, experiments in living, and moral discovery). 

This is a liberalism that is grounded in the vital needs of people and principles of humanity. It's pretty clear that for Lippmann these needs are not merely material, although it would be a mistake to shun those material needs. A liberalism that leaves people to suffer is inhumane (and politically unappealing). But these needs also presuppose something spiritual and intellectual. Now, here too, religiosity rears its head. Because rather than privatising those vital needs to churches and voluntary associations alone, it is clear that Lippmann thinks the to-be-discovered-values of liberalism itself need to be, if not themselves sacred objects, at least vessels toward such religiosity. Here Lippmann sounds more like the great Victorian liberal, T.H. Green (and Lippmann's contemporary Niehbur) or the youthful Rawls, than, say, Milton Friedman.**  The achievement of a liberalism worth having is, like the future of scientific development, a multi-generational project that requires self-command, delayed gratification, and a faith in the trustworthiness of the ideal of humanity.

In the last half century liberalism has been increasingly understood, by its advocates and enemies, as somehow anti-religious. This has been a disaster politically because it has driven too many religious into the arms of strongmen and false prophets of security or national glory. In so far as liberalism is hostile to inherited privilege and unquestioned authority this perception of mutual animosity is not without reason. In so far as it caters to a certain skeptical mindset one may superficially believe this to be anti-religious. But such skepticism is itself an expression of religiosity--a willingness to suspend judgment, to consider no question fully settled, a regimented self-doubt, the rejection of conformist consensus these all require faith (even if desparing faith) that illumination can come from the most unlikely sources. One can reject Lipppmann's masculine confidence in civilization, while still recognize that he glimpsed an essential truth, that the articulation of liberalism requires a form of religiosity that awaits its inventors.

  

 

On Public Philosophy and Transgender Rights Campaign

During the past year professional philosophers have struggled with controversies pertaining to transgender issues (recall the Tuvel/Hypatia affaire here and here; and again involving language in journal articles [recall my piece on the open letter to the editors of PPR at Dailynous here;] the debate between Talia Mae Bettcher and Kathleen Stock;[1] the language of the APA philosophy blog [see Leiterreports]), etc. These debates have intersected with wider society and have even led to campaigns to to have faculty removed from their positions in the UK. While I am no friend of calls for civility in debate (recall this post among many), the way this debate is conducted is unedifying and I have already expressed despair that even the philosophers party to the debate seem to be unable to recognize explicitly each other's vulnerabilities. 

I start this post with two preliminary comments. First, as regular readers know, I support so-called public philosophy (recall; which comes in many varieties [see here]) and philosophical activism (which comes in many flavors and in support of many different kinds of causes) of society and the profession. I have long admired the service philosophy of Kristie Dotson (recall), Hugo Bedau's activism against the death penalty, and John Corvino's work on same-sex marriage. (I am sure readers can add to this list their own favorites.)* Such cause/ideal-promoting political activism is both self-justifying and a useful means of discovery of truth. While philosophy can benefit from a measure of distance, cool reflection, and impartiality, it's also the case that engagement with the messy details of lived experience and the arguments generated by political conflict can also be a useful constraint on and source of creativity for philosophical discovery of the nature and properties of an ideal. 

However, I have  long thought that it seems unwise, or at least imprudent, when philosophers qua being philosophers support active politicians and political parties. (That's compatible with doing so qua being citizens of a particular polity). It seems best if one's pursuit of truth and the good is not sullied by and subject to the many tactical compromises and fatal injustices that accompany political life pursued by imperfect beings like us. I rarely see philosophical excellence in support of a politician or party,+ and much that I find cringe-worthy.

Second, transgender people are subject to bigotry, discrimination, harassment, and violence. This is well documented in the UK and US. The evidence also suggests that many transgender victims are also (intersectionally) members of other historically discriminated minority groups, I assume here that the violence occurs in virtue of their being transgender, and that belonging to it means one belongs to (all other things being equal) a vulnerable category of people. So,

• I wholeheartedly support the campaign for transgender rights and protection under the law.***

Regular readers know (recall this post on MLK Jr.) that I also think that human imperfection, self-interest, and bigotry often undermine enforcement of the law and can even make the most beautifully written laws a tool of oppression. What's needed is, thus, also sufficient popular support or opinion and the right dispositions in favor of such rights. Political campaigns are, therefore, crucial to generate such support.** Of course, there is something of a paradox lurking here, because where such support exists the right would not be necessary.

One important feature of new rights is that the costs and (new) down-side risks of these need not be distributed evenly on the population. That's of special concern if these fall on other vulnerable groups. I understand the present campaign against trans rights, which includes some high profile self-described feminist philosophers -- where not informed by or leaning on bigotry -- as aiming to articulate some such risks to vulnerable women, especially those in prisons and among the homeless. I think such concerns eminently reasonable, but that's because there is a reasonable fear of violence and degradation within prisons and fear of violence against the homeless (see here). But rather than fighting transgender rights, the proper response to such concerns for the very vulnerable is, I would think, to join the coalition for thoroughgoing prison reform and better/more resources and conditions for the homeless.++ 

So my preliminaries have turned into a blog post, which was prompted by my momentary reconsideration of my stance on public philosophy.+++ It's true that there is no reason to believe that philosophical activism will always be beneficial. And I am reminded of the fact that even in the pre-internet age (which, let's stipulate, can make any bad thing worse), there was and never is a golden age of civility (as those of us old enough to recall philosophical debates over abortion, LGBTQ rights, or if one pays attention to debates over Zionism/BDS, etc.)---I have often remarked upon the fact that as a discipline we have an all-too-human fondness for philosophical debates as blood-sports and the delicious take-down.

It's a familiar fact that the pursuit of a worthy cause can turn into fanaticism and unpleasant and vindictive (moral) righteousness. And it is known that friends of worthy causes will find it difficult to condemn the excesses because they do not wish to be seen as undermining the worthy cause. For, it's also all-too-common that critics of the worthy cause will use such excesses as a tactic to undermine a cause, and shift debate away from consideration of the underlying evils. Savvy intellectuals recognize the temptation they may benefit from escalation and from hyping an otherwise unworthy critic, inviting abuse from their anonymous followers, with the cycle being renewed etc. And so it can often happen that wisdom is pushed aside or found crouching unnoticed in the margins of the arresting debates. 

In light of such facts people of good will may prefer to retreat to the ivory tower, and pursue their worthy work in undisturbed quiet. Others will note that these facts are part of the eternal return of life's carnival, and will will them...one tweet at a time eternally.  

 

 

Al-Ghazali's Genealogy of Philosophy and Natural Religion

29. Know that the philosophers, notwithstanding the multiplicity of their groups and the diversity of their doctrines, can be divided into three main divisions: Materialists, Naturalists, and Theists.
30. The first category, the Materialists, were a group of the most ancient philosophers who denied the existence of the omniscient and omnipotent Creator-Ruler. They alleged that the world has existed from eternity as it is, of itself and not by reason of a Maker. Animals have unceasingly come from seed, and seed from animals: thus it was, and thus it ever will be. These are the godless in the full sense of the term.
31. The second category, the Naturalists, were men who devoted much study to the world of nature and the marvels found in animals and plants; they also were much taken up with the dissection of animal organs. In these they saw such marvels of God Most High’s making and such wonders of His wisdom that they were compelled, with that in mind, to acknowledge the existence of a wise Creator cognizant of the aims and purposes of all things. Indeed, no one can study the science of anatomy and the marvelous uses of the organs without acquiring this compelling knowledge of the perfect governance of Him Who shaped the structure of animals, and especially that of man. 

32. However, it appeared to these philosophers, because they had studied nature so much, that the equilibrium of the mixture of humors had a great effect on the resulting constitution of the animal’s powers. Hence they thought that man’s rational power was also dependent on the mixture of his humors and that its corruption would follow the corruption of the mixture of his humors, and so that power would cease to exist. Once it ceased to exist, they alleged that bringing back the nonexistent would be unintelligible. So they adopted the view that the soul dies, never to return. Consequently they denied the afterlife and rejected the Garden and the Fire, the assembly and the Recall, and the Resurrection and the Reckoning. So in their view there would be no future reward for obedience, and no punishment for disobedience. Therefore they lost all restraint and abandoned themselves to their passions like beasts. These were also godless men, because basic faith is belief in God and the Last Day — and these men denied the Last Day, even though they believed in God and His Attributes.
33. The third category, the Theists, were the later philosophers, such as Socrates, the master of Plato, and Plato, the master of Aristotle. It was Aristotle who systematized logic for the philosophers and refined the philosophical sciences, accurately formulating previously imprecise statements and bringing to maturity the crudities of their sciences. Taken altogether, these refuted the first two categories of the Materialists and the Naturalists. Indeed, by the arguments they advanced to lay bare the enormities of the latter, they relieved others of that task: “And God spared the believers from fighting (the unbelievers)” (33.25) by reason of the unbelievers’ own infighting.
34. Then Aristotle refuted Plato and Socrates and the Theists who had preceded him in such thorough fashion that he disassociated himself from them all. Yet he, too, retained remnants of their vicious unbelief and innovation which he was unsuccessful in avoiding. So they all must be taxed with unbelief, as must their partisans among the Muslim philosophers, such as Ibn Sina and al-Farabi and their likes. None, however, of the Muslim philosophers engaged so much in transmitting Aristotle’s lore as did the two men just mentioned. What others transmitted is not free from disorder and confusion and in studying it one’s mind becomes so muddled that he fails to understand it — and how can the incomprehensible be rejected or accepted?--Al-Ghazali Deliverance from Error.

In Deliverance from Error (recall and here), Al-Ghazali conceives the origin of philosophy as a atheist revolt against a natural form of theism, one that posits an omniscient and omnipotent Creator-Ruler of the sort that naturally accompanies sovereign kingship [in which the political ruler understands himself as a God, the mirror image  of the cosmic Creator-Ruler). We are not told much else about the natural form of theism, but (given the stringent denials of the original philosophers), we can infer it posited a providential creation story. (I return to this below.) By contrast (on the hostile interpretation of Al-Ghazali) the first philosophers -- one can recognize a stylized picture of the atomists in it -- posit a cosmic order of eternal return without meaning. 

Al-Ghazali is careful not to name any of these original philosophers nor to characterize the natural theism they reject. But they both precede Socrates. There is, in fact, a peculiarity here in that Al-Ghazali ignores the pure forms of Greek polytheism. The natural form of theism is closer to Judaism and (perhaps more likely on his mind) Zoroastrianism; and original philosophy a revolt against it.  

Al-Ghazali's 'naturalists' are a kind of empirical, natural philosophers. (It's a bit surprising he does not mention medicine in this context, but there are hints of Galen throughout the piece.) These find evidence of functionality and design everywhere, there are led, inductively to a theistic designer. But they view a soul as something emergent from or grounded in physical processes and so mortal. Because they deny an afterlife (and resurrection), they become practical atheists. 

It's no surprise that Al-Ghazali sees a tight connection between beliefs about the nature of the soul and, perhaps, more important the existence of judgment day and  observed behavior. (Let's stipulate he is right about observed behavior.) But it is a bit surprising that the charge of immoral behavior is only lodged against the so-called naturalists and not the earlier materialists (a point repeated in paragraph 33!)

I called Al-Ghazali's narrative a 'genealogy.' But it would have been better, perhaps, to call it a 'natural history.' The achievement of the (Socratic) Theists is not just to refute the materialists and naturalists theoretically and to show why the behavior of the latter was truly immoral, but to turn an immature practice into a mature fields ("accurately formulating previously imprecise statements and bringing to maturity the crudities of their sciences.") To put Al-Ghazali's narrative in Kuhnian terms, Socrates is the start of a revolution in philosophy that culminates in Aristotle's achievements.

In the analysis of the after-effects of Aristotle's achievements, Al-Ghazali notices that even theistic philosophy inherit the "remnants of...vicious unbelief and innovation" of the naturalists and materialists relative to the original religion. This entails that Al-Ghazali treats the original religion as a species of (what we may call along with the tradition) true religion. Not for the first time (recall), I notice that Al-Ghazali suggests that that while Muhammad's revelation is instrumentally useful, it is not itself necessary for the existence of true religion.