Digressions&Impressions

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. 

 

Darwin's (meta)-Philosophy of Science In The Origin of Species (and a note on his subtle Spinozism and debts to Smith)

The belief that species were immutable productions was almost unavoidable as long as the history of the world was thought to be of short duration; and now that we have acquired some idea of the lapse of time, we are too apt to assume, without proof, that the geological record is so perfect that it would have afforded us plain evidence of the mutation of species, if they had undergone mutation.

But the chief cause of our natural unwillingness to admit that one species has given birth to other and distinct species, is that we are always slow in admitting any great change of which we do not see the intermediate steps. The difficulty is the same as that felt by so many geologists, when Lyell first insisted that long lines of inland cliffs had been formed, and great valleys excavated, by the slow action of the coast-waves. The mind cannot possibly grasp the full meaning of the term of a hundred million years; it cannot add up and perceive the full effects of many slight variations, accumulated during an almost infinite number of generations.

Although I am fully convinced of the truth of the views given in this volume under the form of an abstract, I by no means expect to convince experienced naturalists whose minds are stocked with a multitude of facts all viewed, during a long course of years, from a point of view directly opposite to mine. It is so easy to hide our ignorance under such expressions as the `plan of creation,' `unity of design,' &c., and to think that we give an explanation when we only restate a fact. Any one whose disposition leads him to attach more weight to unexplained difficulties than to the explanation of a certain number of facts will certainly reject my theory. A few naturalists, endowed with much flexibility of mind, and who have already begun to doubt on the immutability of species, may be influenced by this volume; but I look with confidence to the future, to young and rising naturalists, who will be able to view both sides of the question with impartiality. Whoever is led to believe that species are mutable will do good service by conscientiously expressing his conviction; for only thus can the load of prejudice by which this subject is overwhelmed be removed.--Charles Darwin The Origin of Species, Chapter 14.

Yesterday (recall), I remarked that Darwin likes to bookend/frame his arguments in terms of the ignorance of savages (recall also here). In later editions (from the third onward) of Origin this is accompanied by a further framing: in An Historical Sketch, Darwin gives an informed (albeit potted) history of the "progress of opinion on the origin of species" leading up to "the publication of the edition of the work." The book closes with a kind "prophetic glance into futurity"* in which Darwin sketches a trajectory for the reception of his book which I have quoted above. Of course, the rhetorical point of both (the historical sketch) and the quoted passage above is to promote and influence the uptake of Darwin's theory (and, perhaps, to reward him with  proper credit for the relevant bits of it).

Ever since the work of D.T. Campbell (on 'evolutionary epistemology' a term coined by him in Popper's (1974) Schilpp volume) and David Hull (with his evolutionary approach to development of Science) the idea of applying evolutionary ideas to knowledge has been thoroughly worked out and covers many different kinds of projects. The SEP article by Bradie and Harms suggests that Dewey and the pragmatists were the first to to do so. But I am convinced that evolutionary ideas about knowledge precede Darwin and may well have influenced the development of his views in biology (that's for another time). Even so, the purpose of the present post is to look at how Darwin conceptualizes the sociology of knowledge. 

1. The first sentence above suggests that ideas in biology are influenced by ideas about or dependent on cosmogony/cosmology. That's no surprise because as Darwin is at pains to emphasize, his theory requires an almost unimaginable lengthening of the age of the Earth. For those steeped in Christianity that's a problem; but even among christian deists there was a steady increase in the possible age of the Earth from the seventeenth century onward. Spinozists, of course, had no trouble allowing that the age of the Earth extended backward into infinity (as space was infinite).  That is to say, Darwin is acutely aware that the uptake of his ideas about the living world are influenced by what is taken to be possible and reasonable in other domains of inquiry.

2. The second sentence, which restates an important evidential objection against Darwin's theory, reinforces that first point and recalls his ninth chapter which was devoted to refuting the objection. His response there is really three-fold: the geological record has not been exhausted yet; the geological record will always be incomplete (due to constraints on fossilization, and the submersion of previous lands into oceans, etc.); the study of the geological record is itself influenced by the recent "the revolution in our palaeontological ideas." That is, while Darwin is a gradualist about the evolution of species, Darwin conceives of development of disciplinary knowledge as capable of revolutions in thought. I am convinced this idea is indebted to Smith's History of Astronomy.+ Despite the existence of such revolutions, his own 'historical sketch' suggests that there is progress in knowledge. So Darwin is using 'revolution' not in the old-fashioned sense of a circular understanding of knowledge (time, orbits, etc.) but more in the modern sense of a dramatic change, which can (but need not) be an important advance,

Incidentally, as an aside, my mention of Spinozism is not innocent; in that ninth chapter he also writes, "During each of these years, over the whole world, the land and the water has been peopled by hosts of living forms. What an infinite number of generations, which the mind cannot grasp, must have succeeded each other in the long roll of years!" While I am happy to concede to a skeptic that all Darwin needs to be saying here is that there has been a very huge number of generations beyond the mind's possible conception, his use of 'infinite' is politically dangerous--because that implies there need not have been a start at all.** This infinity is repeated in the passage quoted above. 

3. In the second quoted paragraph Darwin then offers a non-epistemic, but psychological error-theory for why a community of enquirers, may be resistant to the uptake of his theory. He claims it is a psychological fact that we require to see intermediate steps before we grant the existence of a great change. And if those steps are not easily visible, we are "always slow" in admitting any "great change." The psychology here is indebted to Smith's psychological-epistemic account (see my book) of how gaps prevent the mind to go along with any claim (and even generate the  painful emotion of wonder--which prompts us to further inquiry). We recoil from such gaps. 

4. This is related to a further psychological point which closes the second paragraph: from the vantage point of the minds of individual epistemic agents, the claims made in geology and in Darwin's theory are fundamentally hard if not impossible to grasp. The point is a quirky one, but can be understood if we take the idea of gaps seriously. It is impossible to inspect visually or manually, as it were, each step in an (unfolding) infinite series. Even if we avoid Zeno style paradoxes here, there is simply no time or resources to do so. The would be knower here, has to allow a form of abstraction that jumps over any would be gaps.++

5. Darwin then closes with a now familiar thought (often attributed to Planck -- "A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die, and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it --) that scientists who grew up with different conceptual framework are likely to resist to come around to his theory. The epistemic significant point is that Darwin again expresses the idea that background ideas influence the uptake of new theories. In this case the background ideas are deeply entrenched in alternative paradigm. 

6. In addition, Darwin points out that there are really two main kinds of stances toward a theory: (i) one can have a disposition" to attach more weight to unexplained difficulties; (ii) and a disposition that attaches more weight "to the explanation of a certain number of facts." The first (i) is a skeptical disposition; the second (ii) is a confirmatory disposition. The interesting point here is that Darwin recognizes that (i) is a legitimate position and that he does not try to argue against it. But it's clear he thinks that this is nonthreatening because such characters may well find even more problems with other theories.

7. Darwin assumes that the community of knowers is populated with epistemic agents that have different epistemic characters. For in addition to (i-ii), it turns out that (iii) flexibility of mind, and (iv) young age (which he claims is correlated with impartiality) may also impact the uptake of new theories. (I don't mean to suggest there can't be hybrids of i-iv for Darwin.) That is, not unlike his theory of plants and animals, Darwin assumes natural variability within epistemic communities. 

8. Okay, this is a long-ish blog post now. So, one closing observation. The selection mechanism here, which is a kind of bottleneck, is the mind and its  disposition of the epistemic agent. So, it strikes me that Darwin is edging close to a theory of cultural evolution of which his meta-philosophy of science is an example.

Trump as a Return to Normal (On Grover Cleveland's First Inaugural)

The conscience of the people demands that the Indians within our boundaries shall be fairly and honestly treated as wards of the Government and their education and civilization promoted with a view to their ultimate citizenship, and that polygamy in the Territories, destructive of the family relation and offensive to the moral sense of the civilized world, shall be repressed.

The laws should be rigidly enforced which prohibit the immigration of a servile class to compete with American labor, with no intention of acquiring citizenship, and bringing with them and retaining habits and customs repugnant to our civilization.--Grover Cleveland Inaugural Address, March 4, 1885.

It is comforting to think that President Trump's racialized xenophobia is an aberration; that in a democracy the cosmopolitan embrace of brotherhood (say, in the French Revolution) is always the more tempting strain; that it briefly interrupts the arc and march of (recall) historical American progress toward racial harmony. It is, perhaps, more tempting to view him as an especially lucky or skilled demagogue, who defeated Madison's design to prevent the rise of such a character because of innovation in the media and the development of open primaries (which reduce party elite control over the electoral process). What really needs explaining on this account is how a mixed, wealthy, and educated society can elect such a character after an extended period in which elections were won in the moderate center (vindicating Downs' voter theory (recall)). 

Regular readers will not be surprised I think of Trump as a regression to the mean. Xenophobia and demagogy are permanent possibilities in liberal democracies. These have no special tendency toward acting morally abroad or toward their own minorities. (That's compatible with lots of other political systems being especially atrocious.) Even belated acknowledgments of past wrongs are unlikely to lead to genuine compensation in democracies. As Spooner puts it "Do not imagine that the Parliaments and Courts of oppressors will ever right the wrongs of the oppressed." (That may be too categorical.) 

I decided to take a look at Cleveland's inaugural address because I had been reading Lysander Spooner's criticism of it. To the best of my knowledge Cleveland has a decent reputation among historians and he is not remembered, especially, for his fiery rhetoric or immoral behaviour toward minorities and foreigners. Even so, in his Inaugural Cleveland appeals to a shared sense of cultural superiority toward native Americans, immigrants, and Mormons. (Strikingly the Inaugural is silent about the former slaves and Reconstruction.)* It is my sense that the "servile class...with no intention of acquiring citizenship, and bringing with them and retaining habits and customs repugnant to our civilization" is a dog-whistle about Chinese immigrants.

Crucially, this sense of cultural superiority is cashed out by Cleveland in moral terms (which is why the Mormons can be included in the list). The de facto military and economic power of the United States is understood in terms of superior moral civilization that risks being polluted by others. It expresses and understands itself paternalistically toward the native Americans, which are forced to assimilate. Even the nakedly economic argument against immigration is primarily justified by fears over moral contamination. (Spooner attacks Cleveland not on this sense of superiority but with the suggestion that the economic gains of immigration restriction are captured by employers not workers.)

Cleveland was not an experienced politician when he became President. (In this he reflects the last two Presidents.) And he is distinct from American populism. (But he does echo Jacksonian strains.) I mention him not because I think his words are especially distinct from what one would expect, but rather because I suspect they are really a normal attitude in democracies. The previous sentence is not an argument for expert-rule or multi-national empire (or sortition, etc.). To say "that's normal" is not intended to excuse it. (To say that the business cycle is normal is not to approve of recessions.) But rather to help us see that at no time one can be confident that voters will not be seduced by awful ideas dressed up as civilizational or moral talk. ** What needs genuine explanation is when this does not occur. 

 

On the Female Gaze (De Grouchy on Demagogues)

When we see a man for the first time, we observe his features, we search them for his soul. If his face has any charm or beauty at all, even if it is only distinguished by some singularity or other, we study it carefully, attempting to grasp the impressions that cross it, and to tease out those that habitually do so. There is no one whose character we cannot guess at least a little from the first sight of a face, enough that we may draw some conclusion, favorable or not, about it. Soon, the impression made by a person’s physiognomy is enhanced, altered or undone by their movements, manners, words, or by whether their words agree or not with their actions. If in the eyes, which betray the soul, or the voice, which modulates it, the physiognomy, which tells of its habits, and the manners which reveal them, we think we find a character, or the signs of some quality that particularly interest us – either because they are like ours, or because they are amongst those we most highly approve of, or because together they strike us as extraordinary and engaging – then a feeling of benevolence rises in us towards the person who seems thus gifted. We feel drawn to him, we enjoy thinking about him, and the interest we feel intensifies our observations, and increases their accuracy. Sometimes, yet, this first impression is so strong as to confuse us, and it takes over our capacity to observe. In lively souls, the effect of such an impression is to give rise to prejudices that blind them, rendering them incapable of right and sometimes even reasonable judgment.--Sophie de Grouchy, Letters on Sympathy, Translated by Sandrine Berges (forthcoming),* Letter 3 (see here for a French version).

In  context of this section of the Letters, De Grouchy is discussing (among other things) the problem of tragedy which exercised many philosophers in the eighteenth century (see Dadlez's very useful introduction). In the quoted passage, De Grouchy adopts the first person plural perspective. It is not entirely clear who is included in this 'we.' As the title of this post suggests, I want to suggest that De Grouchy is articulating something like the (hetero-)female gaze.

In the first sentence of the Letters, De Grouchy speaks in her own authorial-persona voice (first person singular): It seems to me that man [L'homme] has no more interesting object of meditation than himself. If the sentence is read sarcastically (and feministically), (such that L'homme is not 'mankind' but MAN) then she accuses (intellectual type of) men of a species of narcissism. (The sentence has an implied addressee, 'C'--generally thought to be Cabanis, De Grouchy's brother-in-law and a famous physician, and so one wonders how he took it.) If the sentence is read straight up (and a generic claim about mankind) she shows her anti-theistic hand (which shows up throughout the Letters), in which our study is rightfully oriented toward man (not God) and this life (not the afterlife).

The first person plural voice is introduced in the second sentence of the Letters: Is there, indeed, a more fulfilling and pleasant way to pass the time than to turn one’s soul onto itself, study its operations, trace its movements; to employ our faculties to observe and puzzle each other out and to seek out and understand the fleeting and secret laws that guide our intelligence and our sensibility. Here the first person plural seems to be describing a generic experience common to all of us.** Now, this enterprise of self-knowledge, which is about the discovery of hidden laws of (human) nature, includes non trivially  (in an age when women are not assumed to be philosophers) women.

During most of the Letters, the first person plural describes such generic common experience and it is pretty irrelevant if this experience is gendered or not. But, it's not too much of a stretch to say that in the quoted passage articulates a version of what we may call (pretentiously and essentializing -- with all the problems this entails) the female gaze. In fact, she describes what's it like to be infatuated ("this first impression is so strong as to confuse us, and it takes over our capacity to observe.") As she puts it in the next paragraph (from the quoted above): When we see in a man the promise of qualities that please us, we feel drawn to him.

I don't mean to belittle the passage by calling it the female gaze (or to suggest that according to De Grouchy only women have the female gaze.) De Grouchy's text leads the reader to see an analogy between infatuation of a pretty man and being under the sway of a demagogue (a topic that becomes central later in Letter 4, recall here). For, a few pages before she had already had introduced her political interest in the attraction of public spectacles, "which leads the crowds to gather constantly around scaffolds, and to witness there sometimes, in all their horrors, tortures which, nearly always, bring them to tears? The human heart is, in some ways, drawn to what moves and stirs it."

Now, I don't mean to suggest that De Grouchy is the first to articulate the female gaze from within. (I am not an expert on such matters, but I suspect we need to go back to at least Sappho.) But she is notable for articulating the female gaze within a clearly philosophical treatise that itself is not aimed at belittling women's experience.*** (Again, I am not claiming she is the first to do so, but I do welcome learning of other, earlier instances!)

While De Grouchy is clear that there are potential bad consequences of the female gaze, she does not dwell on them. Rather, she goes on to treat the infatuation stage as a path toward moral education into necessary friendship+ and its good political consequences (her main topic):

This is because once alert to the possibility of those qualities, we long for all the rewards we implicitly associate with them. Thus, a necessary effect of the most basic and the least reflective kind of self-love is that we love those whose opinion conforms with ours and who thereby raise in our own eyes the value we attach to our own judgment, and reassure us that we are not mistaken. Similarly those who recommend themselves to us by their virtue, their humanity and their charity interest us either because their memory brings help and support to our plans or projects, or because the very idea of the good they have done or might yet do renews in us the emotion usually produced by the sight or anticipation of public happiness, or the relief of private unhappiness.

This leads her to deviate strongly from Hume and Smith and offer a positive account of enthusiasm+ (about which another time more). Contrary to first appearances, perhaps, De Grouchy does not assume that infatuation will always lead to the moralized and humane friendship. Her larger argument requires the existence of proper institutions that make possible the proper cultivation of our feelings both in us qua excitable individuals as well as in us as qua members of a would be mob (who enjoy the frisson of political action and delusion).

 

 

The choice between a sort of Humane Nationalism vs Elitist, Cosmopolitan Liberalism (I)

Brexit has turned the floodlights on it, exposing, so that all can readily see, the deepest fault line in the politics of Western nations today. It is along this line that the bitterest and most fateful political battles in our time are likely to be fought....What we are seeing is the beginning of a struggle over the character of the international political order itself.

For 350 years, Western peoples have lived in a world in which national independence and self-determination were seen as foundational principles. Indeed, these things were held to be among the most precious human possessions, and the basis of all of our freedoms. Since World War II, however, these intuitions have been gradually attenuated and finally even discredited, especially among academics and intellectuals, media opinion-makers, and business and political elites. Today, many in the West have come to regard an intense personal loyalty to the national state and its right to chart an independent course as something not only unnecessary but morally suspect. They no longer see national loyalties and traditions as necessarily providing a sound basis for determining the laws we live by, for regulating the economy or making decisions about defense and security, for establishing public norms concerning religion or education, or for deciding who gets to live in what part of the world.

But those who have made this transition in fundamental political orientation have done so without making sure that everyone else was on board. Millions of people, especially outside the centers of elite opinion, still hold fast to the old understanding that the independence and self-determination of one’s nation hold the key to a life of honor and freedom. These are people who believe that no one ever consulted them about giving up on the freedom of their nation to protect its people, their interests, and their traditions. And when people think they weren’t consulted about giving up such precious commodities, they are apt to respond in dramatic, harsh, and often violent ways.

This means that the clash of fundamental political assumptions we are watching unfold is already much more extreme than has been fully understood. As what is at stake comes better into focus, political parties will realign. Entire countries will realign. The Brexit vote is only the first shot fired in a protracted conflict that will play itself out throughout the West and elsewhere. Yoram Hazony, 6 september 2016 Nationalism and the Future of Western Freedom @Mosaic.

Hazony's words were written in between Brexit and before Trump's (first?) Presidential victory. The piece advances numerous theses worth reflecting on, but the core idea is this: roughly between 1600-1950, Europe (and eventually the world) came to be dominated by a certain Old-Testament inspired, "Protestant construction" of nationalism (implicitly recognized at the Treaty of Westphalia in 1648). This construction rejected universal claims of empire (promoted as much by the Catholic church and the heirs to the Holy Roman Empire as the Caliphate) in favor of the nation-state. Around 1950 the construction was displaced by a Pax Americana which produced an elite project of liberal cosmopolitanism that effaced the moral and political foundations of the nation state, both on a global scale and in various regional projects (especially the Europe Union).

The Protestant construction was founded on two (not entirely coherent) principles: "First, the king or ruler, if he is to rule a nation by right, must devote himself to the protection of his people in their life, family, and property, to justice in the courts and the maintenance of the sabbath, and to the public recognition of the one God;" and "second, nations that were cohesive and strong enough to secure their political independence would henceforth be regarded as possessing what later came to be called the right of self-determination, by which was meant the right to govern themselves under their own national constitutions and churches, without interference from foreign powers." On Hazony's reading of the subsequent history, the tension between these two principles proved to be creative, as it promoted creative friction within and among states and (echoing Hume without acknowledgment) competitive emulation. Hazony is fond of the Protestant construction, but he does not ignore its moral blemishes.* It's crucial to his larger argument that these blemishes are bugs not features of the Protestant construction (which he revives, in part, also to re-articulate a fresh vision for Zionism).

Yoram Hazony spends quite a bit of time discussing the significance of the first principle, reading it as embracing "the minimum requirements for a life of personal freedom and dignity for all." One may say, in the language of the eighteenth century, that the Protestant construction embraces a commitment to common humanity, even if this commitment is both differently expressed locally and can sustain very different political orders. Hazony spends less time on the second principle, which is shame because it is Spinozistic in character: it is a variant of might makes right. All nations have a right to self-determination if they can secure it either on the battle-field or through restraint by others. I call it a "variant" because it does not legitimize wars of conquest; Hazony emphasizes (by drawing on his interpretation of the Hebrew Bible) that the second principle also demands a certain amount of restraint--one cannot use one's power to dominate other nations.

By contrast, "the liberal construction of the West is premised on the idea that there is ultimately only one principle at the base of legitimate political order: namely, individual freedom." Hazony traces this ideas to Locke, and he has some fun criticizing Locke's impoverished anthropology which results in a "shocking depreciation of even the most basic bonds that had been thought to hold society together." While Hazony recognizes that Locke is a child of the Protestant construction, he argues that he inspired in others to "tirelessly elaborate this dream-world, working and reworking the liberal vision of human beings freely pursuing property on the basis of consent and without borders."+ This is, in fact, Hazony's main philosophical charge against cosmopolitan liberalism: that it is based on impoverished and unrealistic understanding of human nature. (Here Hazony makes it a bit easy on himself because while he takes Kant's cosmopolitanism to be one of his main targets, he does not recognize that Kant's liberalism is rooted not in Locke's anthropology, but in a very different, thoroughly pessimistic view of human nature.)

Hazony makes a few other charges against the liberal construction (which includes what passes for conservatism, too): it is in contrast to its self-understanding, monist in character. (So, liberals do not understand themselves.) It produces conformity in education, it is "the virtually unquestioned framework for what an educated person needs to know about the political world," which produces jobs and projects for folk so educated,** and it produces a kind of moral ideology that makes modern folk unaware "that there might be intelligent and decent people whose estimation of the worth of such enterprises is drastically different from their own." One side effect is that all particularist or nationalist alternatives to the liberal order and up being "considered akin to racism or fascism." (I have expressed some sympathy for this charge.)

As an aside, sometimes Hazony recognizes that his historical narrative is at times tenuous. After all, the great age of nationalist independence -- decolonization -- occurred during the first few decades of Pax Americana and was at least for a long time not very liberal (nor very Protestant). In addition, while it may be true that there "are people who believe that no one ever consulted them about giving up on the freedom of their nation to protect its people, their interests, and their traditions" it is notable that a good chunk of the electorate that voted leave (the aged) in the Brexit referendum, had in 1975 "expressed significant support for EC membership," given that it was decided "67% in favour on a national turnout of 64%." That is, while Brexit has become framed in terms of a populist revolt against Elites (and Hazony promotes this meme), reality is closer to this being an instance of buyer's regret. Crucially, Hazony implicitly recognizes but does not reflect on the significance of this, that the consent of the governed (a Lockean liberal principle not a Protestant construction principle) is central to legitimacy.

This is not to deny that joining the EU wasn't also an elite project for the UK. But, as Kenneth Clarke pointed out in his speech to the Commons (which closes with Burke), it was a means to maintain the UK's political stature and influence in a world dominated by others after the loss of its empire. For the truth is, for much of the Protestant construction the European powers that accepted a European concert were also imperialists (even Scotland's parliamentary union with England was itself the product of a failed imperial project). So, while it is possible to see in the Protestant construction a progressive unfolding of moral insight such that many of the immoralities produced by it come to be seen for what they are (such a conception of history is certainly available to the historical agents Hazony considers), there is no reason to think that the nation states which participated in the Protestant construction truly recognized the self-limitations that Hazony ascribes to it in his articulation of the second principle. A Europe of nations is a Gaullist principle enunciated once France was within the EU (and had come to terms to the loss of its imperial project).

The conceptual-historical point of the previous paragraph is this: Hazony thinks that under Pax Americana nationalism went into retreat because of a kind of misinterpretation of the Nazi-Germany. On Hazony's reading, it's national-socialism which gave nationalism a bad name. (And, so, Hazony makes an effort to show that Hitler was really an imperialist not a nationalist.) But, of course, among progressive intellectuals it was WWI which revealed the strength and immorality of nationalism (in which the workers turned out to be more loyal to their warlike nation states than amiable, international brotherhood). Rather, the post WWII, cosmopolitan liberal order was founded on the recognition that the age of liberal empires, except the American one, was finished.

None of this is to deny that Hazony may well be right that we're in a age of massive realignment along the lines he suggests.+ One attractive feature of Hazony's attempt to re-aminate  and renew the Protestant construction is that it can avoid a clash of civilizations, which (paradoxically enough) is more likely if the West remains wedded to a cosmopolitan, liberal order. (But it is also notable that many of the political ascendant nationalists see the world not as win-win, but fundamentally as zero-sum in which mutual interference is regarded as quite normal.) The question I'll pursue in a follow up post, is if a revitalized version of the Protestant construction is really worth having politically and morally and if Hazony's fundamental claims survive scrutiny.

Another attractive feature of Hazony's attempt is that it does not cede nationalism to those that embrace racism and fascism. In another, follow up post I explore to what degree one can fashion a liberalism out of the best features of the Protestant construction without giving up on liberalism altogether.++

 

 

Before Orientalism there was another possible Path

The first major work of Oriental scholarship after d'Herbelot's Bibliotheque was Simon Ockley's History of the Saracens, whose first volume appeared in 1708. A recent historian of Orientalism has opined that Ockley's attitude towards the Muslims — that to them is owed what was first known of philosophy by European Christians — "shocked painfully" his European audience. For not only did Ockley make this Islamic pre-eminence clear in his work; he also "gave Europe its fiat authentic and substantial taste of the Arab viewpoint touching the wars with Byzantium and Persia. "* However, Ockley was careful to dissociate himself from the infectious influence of Islam, and unlike his colleague William Whiston (Newton's successor at Cambridge), he always made it clear that Islam was an outrageous heresy. For his Islamic enthusiasm, on the other hand, Whiston was expelled from Cambridge in 1709.--Edward W. Said ([1978] 2003) Orientalism, 75-6 [*Said is quoting A.J. Arberyy.]

Some other time I return to Said's remarks about Whiston. In re-reading Orientalism, Ockley's name rang a bell. He is, in fact, the translator of Ibn Tufayl's Hayy Ibn Yaqzan (Translated by Simon Ockley 1708); it's the translation I have used here at D&I when discussing Ibn Tufayl. (Sadly Said does not mention the translation.) In his  "preface" to the translation Ockley (1678-1720) explains what he takes to be the main point of Ibn Tufayl's book, "The Design of the Author is to shew, how Human Capacity, unassisted by any External Help, may, by due Application, attain to the Knowledge of Natural Things, and so by Degrees find out its Dependance upon a Superior Being, the Immortality of the Soul, and all things necessary to Salvation." That is, the book is read as an inductive, naturalistic argument for the very possibility of knowledge of nature, God, etc. So, one may think that Ockley wishes (i) to promote so-called natural religion. This despite the fact that in his Appendix, Ockley concedes that the book relies on outdated Philosophy and mistaken Divinity (one being "Aristotelian, the other Mahometan").

This is not to deny that most of the Appendix is devoted to undermining (i). Ockley sets out to deny the idea "That God has given such a Power or Faculty to Man, whereby he may, without any external Means, attain to the Knowledge of all things necessary to Salvation, and even to the Beatifick Vision it self, whilst in this State." That is, against the position he associates with Malebranche in his own day, Ockley defends the necessity of (Mosaic/Christian) prophecy and revelation (in light of man's cognitive weakness) which, in turn, is (largely) dependent on God's will (and the presence of the holy spirit).

In addition to promoting natural religion, in the first sentence of the Appendix he attached after his translation, Ockley commends the book for the "lively Image and Representation which it gives of unspotted Virtue, unfeigned Love of God, and Contempt of the Things of this Life." That is, Hayy Ibn Yagzan the purported hero of the novel is treated as (2) an exemplary model of ascetic virtue and piety.

Yet, the reason given for translating the text, anew (apparently there already existed two translations from Latin not Arab), is to "other Persons whom I would willingly incline to a more favourable Opinion of Arabick Learning" (emphasis added). That is he wishes to correct a biased and unfavorable or unflattering view of the intellectual achievements of the 'Arabs' in twelfth century Spain. (He also mentions Averroes in the same, brief Preface). In particular, it combats the idea that Islam is, in principle, incompatible with great intellectual and scholarly attainment. Unfortunately, Ockley does not tell us who may be the source of the meme that Islam is incompatible with Enlightenment. Remarkably for an an early modern, Ockley does not treat the embrace of Aristotelianism as a sign of intellectual weakness.

As an aside, and curiously enough, neither in in his preface nor in his longer Appendix does Ockley mention the relationship between Islam and Enlightenment is, in fact, a major sub-plot of Hayy Ibn Yaqzan. In the translated story, but not in Ockley's comments we are exposed to the failure of Hayy Ibn Yagzan's mission to convert the people who grow up in society to the truth. For, the (exoteric) meaning of the text very strongly suggests that true virtue and political/social life are incompatible.**

Ockley's position becomes clear when we see how he understands progress:

Indeed, if it were in Religion, as in Arts and Sciences, it might with a great deal more Reason have been expected; that considering the vast Distance of Time since the first planting of the Christian Religion to this present Age, we might have been improved to a Degree of Prophecy. For Arts and Sciences receive their Beginnings from very small Hints at first, and are afterwards improved proportionally to the Industry and Capacity of those who cultivate them; and therefore we may reasonably expect, that the longer they continue, the more they will be advanc'd. But the case is vastly different in Religion, which is always best and purest at its first setting out. And there is a very good Reason to be given, why it should be so; for after the first Covenant made by God with Mankind in the Person of Adam: every other Dispensation has found Men under a State of Corruption, and in the actual Possession of Errors, diametrically opposite to those Truths which it came to instruct them in; and therefore it was requisite that the means to remove these at first, should bear Proportion with the Difficulties they were to encounter. Appendix § 11.

Ockley thinks that religion inevitably declines (due to the Fall and the necessity of always and everywhere of having to remove errors in religion first), while the arts and sciences necessarily improve over time. This helps explain why Ockley does not hold Ibn Tufayl's Aristotelianism against him. For, Ockley is relying on a tacit symmetry principle: on Ockley's account the natural philosophy of his own day will become as dated to future readers as Ibn Tufayl's science seems dated to him. In addition, there is no reason to think that modern Christians are superior to 12th century followers of Islam. For, his own age is one of half millennium of additional religious decline.

There is a further symmetry principle at work in Ockley's Appendix. For in it, Ockley argues that there is no prophecy after Christ. (This means that he systematically discounts the prophetic status of the Qu'ran.) But he goes on to suggests, somewhat on the sly, that although Ibn Tufayl is is a sincere Mahometan, he agrees with him because Ibn Tufayl allows Hayy Ibn Yagzan to gain knowledge without exposure to Islam/revelation.  In fact, Ockley treats the religious errors of his audience's day (inclination toward mysticism, enthusiasm, etc.) as analogous to the 'errors' of Ibn Tufayl (" If I have not spoken all the while particularly to my Author, the reason is, because I write to Christians, and chiefly have regard to those Errors, held by some of that Denomination, which are common with those of our Author."). So, his readers have no right to feel superior to Ibn Tufayl neither in science because it is intrinsic to science that future ages will surpass the earlier ones nor in religious matters because each later age is further removed from the truth.

Let me close by returning to Said. Early in Orientalism, he notes that "Unlike Michel Foucault, to whose work I am greatly indebted, I do believe in the determining imprint of individual writers upon the otherwise anonymous collective body of texts constituting a discursive formation like Orientalism." (23) This remark I find endearing because it it is an embrace, as an article of faith ("I believe") of a certain form of authorial agency.  The embrace of agency also entails the possibility of failure. We can, thus, lament that Ockley's was not the 'determining imprint' on his century.