Digressions&Impressions

Lenz's Contact Problem with some reflections on Condorcet and Rousseau

Especially early modern explanations seem to construe the mind as something that is tucked away in a body and thus inaccessible by other minds. If this is correct, how could we even begin to think of a way that my thoughts influence yours? Are there ways of transmission or other modes of influence between different minds? I would like to call this the contact problem. Intersubjective explanations, it seems, must specify ways in which one mind can affect another mind. As I will argue, at least some early modern philosophers addressed this problem and provided intersubjective accounts of the mind. What is more, they relied on different models of intersubjectivity. To present three different but crucial explanatory models, I will focus on Spinoza, Locke and Hume: Spinoza will be shown to opt for a metaphysical model, Locke as resorting to a linguistic model and Hume as relying on a medical model that combines assumptions about contagion and sympathy.
Before we take a brief look at these models, let us take a step back and look at the contact problem again. Taking human minds as individual units hidden inside a body suggests that a direct contact between minds is impossible. I can tell you what I think, but in doing so, it’s not my thought that is transmitted. Getting at the thought seems to require an inference on the part of the listener. By contrast, if I endorse a view of the mind that takes mental states to be ingrained in behaviour, such that my mental states are not hidden but part of behavioural patterns, then my mind does seem to be more directly accessible. It seems, then, that the contact problem poses an enormous obstacle for the former but not for the latter view of the mind. On this assumption, intersubjective explanations work well in a behavioural view of the mind but not on what has been called “mentalism”. Martin Lenz (2022) Socializing Minds: Intersubjectivity in Early Modern Philosophy (Oxford University Press), pp, 93-4 (emphases in original)*

I have to admit that when I first started to read Lenz's very entertaining Socializing Minds, I was a bit dubious about the so-called contact problem. It seemed to me, and sometimes still seems to me, an artifact of behaviorialism and some of Ryle's more dubious historiographic moves (which, alas, he was not immune to). But because Lenz's book is so much fun -- it mixes contemporary insights with very erudite and clearly written history of philosophy in refreshing ways easily moving between Avoerrism and memes-- I decided to revise my view. Reflecting on the contact problem is generative and so (by my lights) cannot be a mere artifact (which are sterile).

I have to admit that I don't understand why inference is thought to be a barrier to contact -- the contact problem seems to be rather the no unmediated contact problem --, but obviously for the contact problem to have real bite, by inference here (in this context) is meant something like 'not truth preserving' inference or distorting. And clearly it's true that many if not most early modern philosophers thought that language and other mechanisms of social contact are distorting of reality (and don't do full justice to our ideas of it). Lenz shows that despite this commitment, Spinoza, Locke, and Hume have different kinds of theories in which our minds are, de facto, dependant on other minds, although -- he may disagree with this -- the effect is that in interacting with others the vulnerability to embracing the false remains. (Perhaps, in Locke the vulnerability is also simultaneously the grounds for possibility of reaching some truths. About that some other time.)

Anyway, that the no contact problem seems so much an artificat of behavioralism made me wonder if one couldn't generate it in an alternative framework. This made me consider whether there are circumstances in which no contact is desirable. I immediately thought of Condorcet's Jury theorem which, formally, requires that voters do not communicate with each other and make up their own minds on a decision problem. Without such independence the result that (with rather weak assumptions about human nature) more folk do better than fewer would be unsurprising (and not so unsettling to the elitist and hierarchical mindset).+ Of course, the formation of Rousseau's general will also requires such independence.

Now, while Rousseau's account of the general will has non-trivial formal similarity with Condorcet's jury theorem -- and I would be amazed if it didn't shape Condorcet's thinking --, it is worth signaling that the nature of their independence pushes in different directions: (i) and skating over many interpretive disputes, in Rousseau's general will set up, independence is really designed to create a kind of impartiality not tainted by self-interest (and irrelevant personality features). And this is why this kind of independence is compatible with a kind of representative agent approach (familiar from, and perhaps an ultimate source of, Rawls' original position).

A representative agent approach would undermine the force of the Condorcet jury theorem; in it independence is really about a kind of authenticity of one's judgment. Other minds are corrupting (because they undermine independence). Now, I don't mean to deny that the previous two sentences are things Rousseau himself might say. I am just trying to track a conceptual distinction. (To be sure I think both directions have roots in Spinoza's debts to stoicism--but about that in a future post.) 

That is, the no contact problem is no problem in two contexts: first, one requires or needs authentic judgments that give each of us weight. That is, if one takes democracy seriously. (And lurking here are also protestant ideas about conscience that I have not touched upon above.) Second, one is dealing with a decision problem that is best handled by an impartial agent that represents (the true interests of us) all. That is, if one takes a certain species of objectivity/impartiality seriously. Put like that the two sources of the desirability of no contact seem to be a feature and not a bug of a certain conception of modern political life. And so, to put it as a serious joke, Wittgenstein and Ryle are untimely.

 

On Táíwò and Elite Capture

In 1957 the pioneering African American sociologist E. Franklin Frazier published an English translation of his study of the U.S. black middle class, Black Bourgeoisie. We might also think of it as a pioneering work in the study of elite capture of politics. Frazier accuses the black middle class of being insecure and powerless, constantly constructing a world of “make-believe” to deal with an “inferiority complex” caused by the brutal history of racial domination in the United States. Immediately controversial upon its publication, the book notes in a preface to the 1962 edition that Frazier was both applauded for his courage and threatened with violence...

Value capture is managed by elites, on purpose or not. In other words, elites don’t simply participate in our community; their decisions help to structure it, much in the way that game designers structure the world of games. After all, elites face a simpler version of oppression than non-elites do: whereas working-class black folk are pressed by racial slights and degradation alongside economic problems that might require “socialized medicine” to solve, elites’s economic position makes them comfortable enough to focus on their own status and cultural power—often at the expense of non-elites....

Such elite capture threatens a whole group’s value structure, as everyone is confronted with this simplified version of the initial values and incentives to adopt it. This can tend, over time, to push understandings of the group values—both by those in the group and outside of it—toward the elites’ simpler direction.

There is another crucial insight that can be gained from applying the analogy of games to our discussion of elite capture. Design decisions structure a game’s built environment, baking the outlook of designers into the decisions players are faced with. In similar fashion, elite decision-making determines what options are available to non-elites. This is precisely the role that the press, social media influencers, military top brass, and titans of capital have in our lives. That is, they frame the conditions of work (and play) for the rest of us.--Olúfẹ́mi O. Táíwò (May 7, 2020) "Identity Politics and Elite Capture" Boston Review 

Last year Olúfẹ́mi O. Táíwò published a number of striking essays on elite capture (I mentioned these in passing here). In Addition to the piece from Boston Review I have partially quoted above (and will quote below), I also warmly recommend this post here. And judging by his personal website (and Amazon), he is about to publish a whole book on elite capture. But since there are a lot of fascinating moving parts in the Boston Review essay, I'll focus on it alone. Do read the essay because it very cleverly draws on ideas by C. Thi Nguyen to explicate what they call "value capture," which for Thi Nguyen and Táíwò involves the narrowing and simplification of values in virtue of participation in a (gamified) process.

As Táíwò (recall also this post) notes, "Elite capture is not unique to black politics; it is a general feature of politics, anywhere and everywhere," (emphasis added). Elite capture is, thus, a law of politics. It's a natural effect of the division of labor within politics, and the natural obstacles (time, expertise, lack of transparency, etc.) to monitoring by non-elites of elites, and so shows up within political parties, unions, and basically any social organization that allows some kind of distinction between the membership and its leadership. Elite capture is also reinforced by the absence of political consensus in the context of pluralism (which makes elite negotiation and representation so important).

Now Táíwò rightly singles out Frazier's (1962) Black Bourgeoisie as a landmark study of elite capture, but it should not come as a surprise that a law of politics has been studied before: the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, Italian Elite school of political sociology-- with Pareto, Mosca, and Michels as most famous scholars -- had developed a whole theory of politics ground in this political law. Including an account of rent-seeking.** In his 1943 book The Machiavellians: Defenders of Freedom, James Burnham had introduced them as a group to a wider English speaking public, and ideas about elite capture are central to his reconstruction. (Of course, Pareto, Mosca, and Michels were very well known to specialist sociologists and economists of the age.)* Both Walter Lippmann's (1922) Public Opinion, and Schumpeter's Capitalism, Socialism, and Democracy (1942), are also very indebted to ideas of the Italian Elite school.** And while I'll leave this hanging here, in fact, Pareto (partially mediated by Parsons) and Schumpeter shaped the analysis of the ideas on crony-capitalism and rent-seeking in public choice and Chicago economics (recall here).

I don't mean to disparage the originality of the Black Bourgeoisie, a book very much worth re-reading. In fact, it was so controversial in its own day that Frazier encountered what we would call canceling in his own time. As he recounts in the 1962 preface to a reprint of the book, "I was invited by a Negro sorority to discuss the book but so much bitterness was aroused by the invitation that it had to be canceled. One leading member of the sorority accused me of having set the Negro race back fifty years." (p. 2) If one goes on to read the book one learns that fraternities and sororities play a key role in his analysis of elite formation (or "molding") and recruitment, and elite commitments. 

In his Boston Review essay, Táíwò argues convincingly that identity politics as pioneered by Combahee River Collective was originally part of a broader effort to avoid certain kinds of elite capture (that expressed itself in tokenism and marginalization), and so an enabling condition of coalition politics. And he notes that they suggest more strategies (including consciousness raising, and elite participation in activism) to avoid elite capture in the "right kind of political culture."

Now, above I used Táíwò's words to attribute a law of politics to him. So, if I were interested in gotchas it would be tempting to suggest here that by his own lights political culture cannot solve the problem of elite capture, it can only mitigate it. And perhaps this is all Táíwò means to argue. (Maybe the book will shed light on this.) But, of course, the problem is that according to the theory of elite capture, political culture is shaped by elite institutions and practices, as Táíwò himself notes. So, I don't think this solves his problem.

But he has another out: he could argue that by "the right kind of political culture" he means a species of sophisticated anarchism (say, of the sort recently revived in The Dawn of Everything by David Wengrow and David Graeber). For, at least conceptually some kinds of anarchism avoid the distinction between membership and leaders (masses and rulers, etc.) As it happens, the Italian Elite school and Burnham don't ignore anarchism, and claim it, too, is inevitably shaped by elites. (Something Ursula Le Guin also suggests in The Dispossessed.) But it's conceivable one can develop a form of anarchism that is not subject to the phenomenon of elite capture. And Táíwò's closing emphasis on the fact that 'we're in it together' might suggests he inclines toward such a view. (I return to this below.)

I want to close with three observations. First, Pareto was what we would now call a classical liberal when he developed ideas of elite capture. But when Burnham popularized Pareto's ideas, Burnham -- a professor of philosophy at NYU -- was an ex-Trotsky-ite (then famous for his book The Managerial Revolution) and on his way of co-founding the revival American conservatism (co-founding The National Review with William Buckley).+ And for Burnham the key to freedom, in the context of the inevitability of elite capture, is the possibility of opposition to the government which requires a rule of law, which in turn requires that within society that there are multiple social forces that counter each other and mechanisms to prevent the concentration of power. (And because Burnham is no liberal this does not require a focus on markets or property rights.)

And so my first observation is that 'elite capture' is not an idea exclusive to one political orientation. It's an important idea to all students of political life. And it is a standing problem for conceptualizations of politics that assume representatives speak for their (political, union, or shareholder, etc.) electorates or where politics is treated like an ideal speech act. So, Táíwò is right to emphasize it, and I look forward to engaging with his book.

However, second, it's possible that Táíwò does not think of 'elite capture' as a general law of politics, as I presented him. For he writes, "it is a fully general problem of politics in a world that distributes power and resources unjustly and unequally." (emphasis his!) And this suggests that he thinks elite capture can be avoided once the material conditions have been equalized (i.e., "resources unjustly and unequally") and there is no difference in power. But the only possible political system that delivers that is a form of anarchist-syndicalism. Fair enough. But this is more than a change in political culture.

Third, I fear that in using Thi Nguyen's ideas on "value capture," Táíwò also ends up suggesting that without mediation of elites there is a more authentic and discrete set of values and commitments that should guide policy. That is, value capture corrupts the will of the people. Now, I think one can recognize the phenomenon of value capture in the political sphere, but deny that this always involves a corruption of ordinary or popular will in the context of the division of political labor.++ (The idea that elites corrupt by way of elite capture is very popular among far right populists.)  For, in virtue of the division of cognitive and political labor, outsiders, masses (etc.) will often be in the position of having no access to a minimal opinion on a topic at all. I grant that such a view can easily slide in a cynical or meritocratic attempt to down-play the views (and interests) of non-elites, but that's not what I am suggesting here. Rather, it's the political process itself that makes clear what the people's values and their orderings are (and this is shaped by elites). So, such value capture is necessary to a well-functioning liberal democracy. And that requires elites that work in the interest of those they represent. So, rather than elite capture only being a problem to liberal democratic political life, it must given its inevitability also be part of its solution. To be continued.

 

 

 

More's Utopia and the Reform of Christianity

‘People who have made up their minds to rush headlong down the opposite road are never pleased with the man who calls them back and points out the dangers of their course. But, apart from that, what did I say that could not and should not be said everywhere? Indeed, if we dismiss as outlandish and absurd everything that the perverse customs of men have made to seem alien to us, we shall have to set aside, even in a community of Christians, most of the teachings of Christ. Yet he forbade us to dissemble them, and even ordered that what he had whispered in the ears of his disciples should be preached openly from the housetops. Most of his teachings are far more alien from the common customs of mankind than my discourse was. But preachers, like the crafty fellows they are, have found that people would rather not change their lives to fit Christ’s rule, and so, following your advice, I suppose, they have adjusted his teaching to the way people live, as if it were a leaden yardstick. At least in that way they can get the two things to correspond in some way or other. The only real thing they accomplish that I can see is to make people feel more secure about doing evil.--Thomas More Utopia, Book 1, translated by Robert M. Adams

The quoted passage is part of the response by Raphael Hythloday to Thomas More's suggestion to use an "indirect approach" in one's attempts to offer expert advice to sovereigns, to use tact, and to try "what you cannot turn to good, you may at least make as little bad as possible." (37) I leave aside here the delicate question to what degree the character Thomas More stands in for the views of the author Thomas More. The character More (echoing Cicero) promotes a mitigation or amelioration strategy in contexts where one knows that there is no appetite for uptake of better, minimally decent courses of action.  

And Hythloday claims that the strategy advocated by More (the character) is a dangerous form of self-deception. Because one ends up legitimizing, even advocating true evil (even if -- one can stipulate -- it is less evil than it otherwise might be). And because More (the author) understands the problem and its complex temptations first hand, the issue is treated in timeless fashion. As I have noted before (recall; and here) the theme is pursued throughout Utopia.

But what I had not quite noticed before is that Hythloday uses the occasion to point out that speaking truth to power is as difficult as speaking truth to ordinary people (assuming, for the sake of argument, he believes in the truth of Christ's teaching). And not unlike the early Protestants who are just about to arrive on the historical horizon, Hythloday claims (in very Epicurean fashion) that the clergy have corrupted Christ's teaching in order for it to be acceptable by the people. (The point survives the further thought that on balance, Hythloday's pure religion is a rather Spinozistic Christianity [see here; here; and here.] He had made the same point -- the key role for the opinion and sentiments of the governed -- about the nature of royal authority in his vignette (recall) on the Achorians a few pages before. Interestingly enough, in both cases ordinary opinion dramatically constrains the ambitions of a ruling authority, in the case of royalty for the better (it makes it more responsible and pacific) and in the case of Christianity for the worse (it undermines the core teachings of the religion).

But the situation is a bit more complicated yet. As I noted when I was still writing at NewAPPS, earlier Hythloday contrasts, (i) Moses's legal code and the more gentle rule of Christianity. (Both are treated as mediation's of God's will.) And an implied contrast (ii) between the way one rules a barbarous people (recently liberated from tyranny) and the way one rules a more civilized people. The implied contrast (ii) effectively historicizes the Bible, whose commandments are now understood as fitted to a people at a particular time and place in need of strict rule. But in the passage quoted above, it becomes clear that the gentle rule of Christianity is in some sense felt to be too demanding for kings and people alike in the context of Roman empire and European feudalism.

Now, one way to go at this point is to look for a renewal of Christianity by a legislator with Moses' political skill. And it is not farfetched to see Utopus and (say Bacon's refounder of Bensalem, King Salomana) as an example hereof (recall here; here). And there are echoes of this project throughout the early modern period (up to Rousseau's divine legislator in the Social Contract).

Another way to go, if you think religions are in part a function of context and popular uptake, is to suggest that traditional Christianity has outlived its possibility. And that what is needed is a new kind of religion better suited for time and place. Comte is the best known example of an explicit attempt at this. But plenty of religious reformers between More and Comte can be said to fall in this category. I actually think an option like this is explored  in Book II of Utopia, but that's for another time.

At this point one may well wonder 'why religion at all?' Rather than treating the question as an anachronism, it is pretty clear that there is an answer to it in Utopia; where throughout religion is treated (anticipating Spinoza and Kant) as a regulator of moral life. And, as the quoted passage reveals, at least Hythloday believes strongly (anticipating Spinoza's eighteenth century critics) that without the restraint of religion people would be even more evil than we find that they are. People claiming to be Christians act in very unchristian fashion.

I will stop here. But I don't mean to suggest this exhaust the issue in Utopia. Of course, that people claiming to be Christians act in very unchristian fashion may also suggest that the problem is Christianity. Whatever else Book 1 of Utopia establishes (recall) is that people respond to incentives and that one must design and reform social institutions accordingly. It also establishes that monopoly power (in economic and political life) without countervailing powers is very dangerous to public or "common good." So, Book 1 also invites us to consider to what degree one needs religion to promote common good, and if one does, how it should be organized given a given material context. And if I understand More (the character) aright, this will be articulated in an indirect fashion.

 

 

Adam Smith, Plutarch, Foucault, Leibniz, and a Forgotten Utopian.

Wherever prudence does not direct, wherever justice does not permit, the attempt to change our situation, the man who does attempt it, plays at the most unequal of all games of hazard, and stakes every thing against scarce any thing. What the favourite of the king of Epirus said to his master, may be applied to men in all the ordinary situations of human life. When the King had recounted to him, in their proper order, all the conquests which he proposed to make, and had come to the last of them; And what does your Majesty propose to do then ? said the Favourite.--I propose then, said the King, to enjoy myself with my friends, and endeavour to be good company over a bottle.--And what hinders your Majesty from doing so now? replied the Favourite. In the most glittering and exalted situation that our idle fancy can hold out to us, the pleasures from which we propose to derive our real happiness, are almost always the same with those which, in our actual, though humble station, we have at all times at hand, and in our power. Except the frivolous pleasures of vanity and superiority, we may find, in the most humble station, where there is only personal liberty, every other which the most exalted can afford; and the pleasures of vanity and superiority are seldom consistent with perfect tranquillity, a the principle and foundation of all real and satisfactory enjoyment. Neither is it always certain that, in the splendid situation which we aim at, those real and satisfactory pleasures can be enjoyed with the same security as in the humble one which we are so very eager to abandon. Examine the records of history, recollect what has happened within the circle of your own experience, consider with attention what has been the conduct of almost all the greatly unfortunate, either in private or public life, whom you may have either read of, or heard of, or remember; and you will find that the misfortunes of by far the greater part of them have arisen from their not knowing when they were well, when it was proper for them to sit still and to be contented. The inscription upon the tomb-stone of the man who had endeavoured to mend a tolerable constitution by taking physic; 'I was well, 1 wished to be better; here I am; may generally be applied with great justness to the distress of disappointed avarice and ambition.--Adam Smith The Theory of Moral Sentiments, 3.3.31, pp. 150-151.

The charming exchange between The King of Epirus and his favourite receives a note by the editors of the Glasgow edition of Adam Smith's works; they helpfully point to Plutarch, Lives, Pyrrhus, x4. And then add, "The king was Pyrrhus, the favourite Cineas." The passage is introduced by what we may call an axiom of status quo bias: "Wherever prudence does not direct, wherever justice does not permit, the attempt to change our situation, the man who does attempt it, plays at the most unequal of all games of hazard, and stakes every thing against scarce any thing."

The latter part of the axiom is reminiscent of Pascal's wager, but then in reverse. The axiom basically suggests that only in the context of the established rule of law (that's how I am glossing 'justice' here), and then only when one acts prudently, can it be sensible to try to change one's situation. At this point it is easy to get caught up in the circular nature of the axiom because presumably it is only prudent to play games of hazard when the odds are favorable.

But notice that there is a more important point lurking here -- one pertinent to the exchange between Pyrrhus and Cineas -- that outside the rule of law, one should not act from honor, ambition, spirit of revenge, or desire for plunder at all. That is, one should not go to war unless one is sure to win (and, if there is established internal law, within one's right). Since one is rarely sure to win in war, Smith's axiom is quite anti-militaristic. And this fits with Smith's much broader criticism of mercantilism (which exhibit a warlike spirit). I don't mean to deny that the axiom also fits his criticism of projectors/speculators (who are over-optimistic and over-ambitious). The passage also links up with other themes in Smith (about the nature of true happiness, and the tendency of our imagination to delude us).

Now, as it happens, the axiom is not in Plutarch.

Recently, I noticed that in a lecture of 22 March 1978, Foucault directs attention to a now forgotten work called The New Cyneas. The author was a man called Émeric Crucé (1590–1648). While I am only a third way in, The New Cyneas is an amazing work. It's relative obscurity is a reminder that as a society we are keener on remembering the conquerors, the Clausewitzes, and the liberators, than creating statues of the true friends of peace. I will blog a bit about the book when I can. 

I do not mean to suggest he was always obscure. As others have noticed, Leibniz had read the work as a young man and told others about it (see here; here). Interestingly enough, on one such occasion Leibniz repeats the anecdote from Plutarch:

When very young, I came to know a book titled the New Cyneas, whose unknown author counseled sovereigns to govern their states in peace and to resolve their differences through a tribunal; but I can no longer find this book and no longer recall any details. We know that Cyneas was a confidant of King Pyrrhus, who advised him to rest [and rejoice] first, since it was his purpose (as he confessed) when he had conquered Sicily, Calabria, Rome and Carthage.--Leibniz to Leibniz to Saint Pierre, 4 April, 1715. (The Abbot Saint Pierre wrote a famous proposal for European pacific Federation, which also inspired some work by Rousseau (recall))

In Leibniz there is no hint of Smith's axiom.

However, and unterestingly enough, we find a predecessor to Smith's axiom at the start of The New Cyneas. After pointing out that wars are usually fought for honor, profit (plunder), or revenge, and then dismissing the idea that they are fought for religious purposes (which "serves most often as a pretext), Crucé goes on to write that the ordinary fruits of war is a bunch disasters. He proposes as a fine lesson to Princes,

[T]o learn that there is more dishonour to fear, than glory to hope for in war. For the bad comes often [in war]  than the good; and if it is considered a folly to leave the certain for the uncertain, princes should guard their honor, without risking it [sans le mettre au hazard] for the appetites and promptings of those who nourish them with hopes, and hold out to them what they can gain and not what they can lose.--Translated by Thomas Willing Balch (1909)

Now Crucé wrote before Pascal and Fermat had their celebrated exchange. I do not want to claim that he anticipates all the details of Smith's axiom. But I hope it is fair to say he anticipates its spirit. As I hope to show soon, Crucé anticipates quite a bit more in Smith. 

 

Spinoza & Rousseau, On European Federation

Let us admit then that the Powers of Europe stand to each other strictly in a state of war, and that all the separate treaties between them are in the nature rather of a temporary truce than a real peace: whether because such treaties are seldom guaranteed by any except the contracting parties; or because the respective rights of those parties are never thoroughly determined and are therefore bound—they, or the claims, which pass for rights in the eyes of Powers who recognise no earthly superior—to give rise to fresh wars as soon as a change of circumstances shall have given fresh strength to the claimants.--Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1761) "Statement of St. Pierre's Project" [here's the French]

The passage is from a text that purports to be a summary of Abbé St. Pierre's proposal of European federation tied together by a permanent peace treaty, free trade, a standing army and what we may anachronistically call a European Council with a rotating presidency. The nineteen major European powers would be represented in this Council. As Rousseau presents it, the proposal would freeze boundaries and constitutional forms in place. The argument in favor of the proposal distinguishes itself from utopian projects by claiming to present the true (as opposed to apparent) interests of rulers and subject in peace which produces the conditions for (to quote Hobbes) commodious living and virtuous cycles of economic and population growth.

The key obstacle, and this is the main point of Rousseau's critical remarks in his "judgment" on St. Pierre's project, published separately (and posthumously), but written more or less simultaneously,* is that the transition from here to there is blocked by the way sovereigns and their chief advisors understand their interests. They recognize that war is a source of possible profit for them personally and that it is a pretext and mechanism to oppress their own citizens. One understands why Rousseau waited to publish this. Although anybody familiar with the first few books of Livy's Discourses and Machiavelli, or the way of the world, could have guessed that this is Rousseau's criticism.

And this gets me to Spinoza, and in particular his Political Treatise, published posthumously alongside Ethics (etc.) For, despite the many allusions and references to Machiavelli, one way to understand the unity among the various proposals of the best constitutional orders in Spinoza's Political Treatise, is (recall my treatment of (6:12 and 7:8)) to find institutional arrangements and incentives that make war unattractive to rulers and their advisors and, as Yitzhak Melamed has recently emphasized, to make states not threatening to their neighbors (7.28); on the significance of institutional arrangements to promote peace as an end, see also 3.10; 4.2; 5.2; 8.7; 8:31; and even 11.4 the last two sentences.

The reason I mention Spinoza in the context of Rousseau's European federalism, is three-fold (and connected). First, and less interesting by itself, the quoted passage above reminded me of Spinoza (and makes me suspect that this passage is one of the places that is more Rousseau than St. Pierre [whom I have  not read yet]). For, it is a doctrine notoriously associated with Spinoza:+ "every commonwealth has the right to dissolve its contract, [proinde unicuique civitati ius integrum est solvendi foedus], whenever it chooses ,and cannot be said to act treacherously or perfidiously in breaking its word, as soon as the motive of hope or fear is removed."(3.14; see also 4.6)** And, indeed, for Spinoza (and here he echoes Hobbes), the commonwealth is, relative to other states, still in the state of nature (7:22; 4.6, and especially 3:11.)).

But, second, and more interesting, in the Political Treatise, Spinoza, too, proposes a federation as a guarantee for peace in the very context in which he describes that treaties may be broken when they outlast their utility.++ 

To commonwealths, which have contracted a treaty of peace, it belongs to decide the questions, which may be mooted about the terms or rules of peace, whereby they have mutually bound themselves, inasmuch as laws of [308] peace regard not one commonwealth, but the commonwealths which contract taken together (Sec. 13). But if they cannot agree together about the conditions, they by that very fact return to a state of war.

The more commonwealths there are, that have contracted a joint treaty of peace, the less each of them by itself is an object of fear to the remainder, or the less it has the authority to make war. But it is so much the more bound to observe the conditions of peace; that is (Sec. 13), the less independent, and the more bound to accommodate itself to the joint will of the contracting parties. [Quo plures civitates simul pacem contrahunt, eo unaquaeque reliquis minus timenda, sive unicuique minor est potestas bellum inferendi; sed eo magis pacis tenetur conditiones servare, hoc est (per art. 13. huius cap.) eo minus sui iuris est, sed eo magis communi foederatorum voluntati sese accommodare tenetur.] Political Treatise 3.15-16,

Spinoza describes here the outlines of a federation of peace (more fully developed in Adam Smith and Kant). And the underlying insight is that if the state of nature of the international arena can be transformed into a state of peace when and only when the grounds of mutual fear among states are reduced. Strikingly, for Spinoza this does not require a common enemy (as nearly all the famous federations in history presupposed). Rather what's required is a transformation of their own internal dynamic or of their joint (state) system. That is to say, that once mutual accommodation can become the norm (without foolishness), in virtue of the expectation that the whole will try to maintain/impose conditions of peace, joint peace has a chance. And, looking ahead to Kant, the very growth of such a system (as more states join), the more pacific it can become. 

So, to sum up, Rousseau and Spinoza both draw on Machiavellian premises to develop institutional design for perpetual peace. Both explicitly deny, and this is my third reason, their approach is utopian in character (and this ties them to Hume and Adam Smith), and takes man as he is not as he ought to be (here in Rousseau; and here, more famously, in Spinoza), that is, they model humans as rational devils. I also believe, but have provided no evidence yet, that their ideas about how to solve the transition from here to peace are roughly similar. But about that some other time.

 

Decolonizing the Curriculum and Viewpoint Diversity

But then I look at the stereotyped Non-Western philosophy list and I can't help but notice another thing - it's a rejection of things that contemporary heirs to the Romantic tradition hate. Fair enough, they are trying to draw out what seems to them best in the texts they are interpreting, and its my linguistic inadequacies which introduced the filter. But still, in the end, this focus, that this seems like the most salient positive achievement of the school or group under study - it still seems to me to be a reflection of disputes in contemporary mainstream Western philosophy.  (Or at least recent contemporary, at this point I think they are somewhat caricaturing their opponents.) I am not fully persuaded the focus reflects the priority or agenda of those either being studied or whose worldview is being represented,  rather than the schedule of priorities of those in contemporary academia. It just seems like too much of a coincidence.--Liam Kofi Bright (April 2019) On Eurocentrism

There are, roughly, two ways in which one can decolonize one’s bread and butter introductory, historical survey of political philosophy/theory curriculum. One is to give direct voice to those who challenge the universal authority of Eurocentric political ideas (hereafter: direct voice); another is to include traditions of thought that are not centered on, and often pre-date, European modernity (hereafter: comparative).* Both approaches have advantages, and both create, and are a consequence of, complex selection effects.

Before I get to to that, I want to get there by reflecting a bit on Bright's post (which, by his standards, got little attention in the blogosphere when it first apepared; but see Ethan Mills). Bright is focused on works that typically are not studied by English speaking philosophy students. The features of these works he is discussing can be categorized, roughly, as belonging in the philosophy of mind/metaphysics/epistemology areas. But they have a counterpart in features familiar to political theory. So, amidst a diversity of style and outlook, here are two additional stereotypical features one is likely to find. First, that the universal authority of Eurocentrentic reason is rejected in terms of parochial, local values (embodied in traditions ). Second, despite the apparent rejection of universal claims, they all end up saying pretty much the same thing: capitalism and imperialism are bad, egalitarian customs and institutions that celebrate communal life of mutual care, which reflect an authentic possibility, are good. What's indeed striking about the list -- and I only noticed it after reading Bright -- is that these reflect the program of romanticism, or at least the part influenced by the popular version of Rousseau. David Graeber and David Wengrow have been (recall) astute on this. 

So, Bright speculates that this may be due to a selection effect. To put his insight in catchy terms, there is a dominant Enlightenment narrative and the 'non-Western' readings are found to play out a dialectic familiar to European thought in which the 'non-Western' readings play a role that is despite their more egalitarian tendencies, the functional equivalent of Romanticism and its legacy in it. And, indeed, the 'non-Western'+ readings helped shape Romanticism (see also Graeber&Wengrow), and were subsequently shaped by it. I think Fanon is aware of this dynamic and pushes back against it, but about that some other time. One of the clear effects of this dialectic is to flatten the 'non-Western' landscape and efface the heterogeneity within the 'Western' traditions.

Now, if this were a polemical post, or a journal article, I would provide lots of examples. And the skeptical reader has every right to suspect I am stereotyping. But, instead, I articulate the risks of the first strategy (which also explains the selection effect Bright worries about); in shaping the curriculum -- here's a familiar route: Plato, Aristotle, Machiavelli, Hobbes, Locke, Rousseau, Madison, Hegel, Mill,  -- it is tempting to correct their racism and imperialism by giving direct voice to those who challenge the universal authority of Eurocentric political ideas. Here the function of direct voice is to oppose. And one can even hope that the opposition is effective in creating an intellectual struggle that will lead to a kind of progressive synthesis in which the now existing 'Western' worldview is transformed through the confrontation with the voice of its opposite. 

Since curricula involve choices under extreme scarcity (time and student attention) that inevitably means sacrificing works of Europe's long illiberal, Christian and utopian history (so out go much of Aristotle, Augustine, Aquinas, Luther, Calvin, More,  Burke, Paine, Saint-Simon, Fourier, Luxemburg, etc.) in order to make space for Equiano, L’Ouverture Cugoano, Gouges, Grouchy, L’Ouverture, Douglass, Sojourner Truth, The Declaration of Sentiments, Du Bois, Ambedkar, Gandhi, and MLK. (Because I have a cut-off before WWI, I teach about a third of these regularly.)**

As I note above, the effect of giving voice in this way -- and yes that locution is intended to problematize my own position -- is that it reinforces the idea that European modernity is this decisive world-historical rupture and that all thought must respond to it. One can recognize that racialized slavery, eugenics, patriarchy/misogyny, and imperialism are evils that shape our world and still note that the rupture-responsive model has its own flaws as a way to structure a curriculum. Effectively, the students are taught 'liberalism and its heroic, egalitarian critics.' (This is so even though there are plenty of genuine elistists among decolonial authors [see here for fruitful document initiated by David Owens].) Often, the critics draw on the lived experience under imperialism, and the egalitarian and spiritual strains in Christianity, Stoicism, Marxism, and Utopian anarchist/socialists. 

Another route is to seek out exemplary thinkers of intellectual traditions untouched by footnotes to Plato syndrome. I was first exposed to this when I encountered the curriculum of Singaporean undergraduates. One quickly ends up teaching some of the thinkers of the Chinese Warring States period (e.g., Mencius, Master Mo, and Han Fei) and Kautilya and/or Buddhist ideas. There is a real risk here in reinforcing the (idea popular in the late nineteenth century) of autonomous great civilizations with their own distinct (illiberal and/or spiritual) political outlook. But this can be prevented if one teaches a multiplicity of voices. I also tend to point out that Europeans became familiar with these traditions just as they started to articulate modernity. I doubt it is a coincidence that Rousseau and Grouchy can sound a bit like Mencius sometimes. 

I also end up teaching Al-Farabi (who is influenced by Platonic tradition) and Al-Ghazali (who pretends not to be) because it is important, especially in the Netherlands (where most students grow up functionally atheist) that revealed religion, theocracy, and political mysticism are discussed seriously. And, given the public hostility to Islam (which is treated as synonymous with backwardness and barbarism), I want all my students to immerse themselves in extremely sophisticated discussions within it. That they encounter a version of proto-feminism is a bonus.

One advantage of this alternative is that the defenders of meritocracy, hierarchy, and empire, and honoring the traditional rites all get their articulate say. (I suspect this is one reason why some are so attracted to teaching Confucianism these days.) This generates genuine viewpoint diversity, and has odd effect of pleasing, simultaneously, cosmopolitan and conservative/authoritarian students. Another attraction is that students notice that the post Hobbesian social contract tradition (with its arc -- via Locke, Rousseau, and Kant (and possible critique by Hume) -- toward Rawls) is just one possible strain of social contract theorizing. One other advantage is that one escapes the  quiet cognitive stranglehold of westphalian statehood, which is permissive of a relatively sharp demarcation between domestic and international political arena. Of course, many critics of, say, imperialism and slavery also note the interaction between political economy and international relations. 

It's possible, of course, that we are on the precipice, of the implosion of modernity, and that would allow much more adventurous decolonizing and decentering choices if there will be universities like ours then. But going against my natural pessimism, assuming we're not, lots of blends are possible (and, in practice, I blend). Direct and indirect voice can generate exciting courses that use 'history' to provide an introductory 'survey' of important arguments, concepts, and institutions in political philosophy. I don't mean to suggest that direct and indirect voice exhaust the possibilities (recall these posts inspired by Khader (here; here; and Bright here) on grasping and modeling the constrained choices of the oppressed). But there is, in fact, a clear choice lurking here. Decolonizing through direct voice indirectly facilitates a curricular narrative of historical progress (or dialectic); while comparative voice indirectly promotes a view that political theory involves learning to model fundamental trade-offs. Perhaps this is a false choice, and we need both.

 

On Alan Ryan's On Politics and Duplicitous Seductresses

Mary Wollstonecraft’s Vindication of the Rights of Woman devoted a long chapter called “Animadversions on Some of the Writers Who Have Rendered Women Objects of Pity Bordering on Contempt” to the comprehensive demolition of Rousseau’s views. What she argues, and what Rousseau knew in his heart, was that he had produced a recipe for educating women to be duplicitous seductresses. Alan Ryan (2012) On Politics: A History of Political Thought from Herodotus to the Present, p. 555.

The quoted passage occurs in the chapter (15) on Rosseau in the section, "Émile and Withdrawal." It's a chapter that I assign alongside some selections from the Social Contract to my (480!) introductory students. In re-reading it, while preparing the resit exam, I noticed that the second sentence is (to use an understatement) peculiar. Let me explain.

Ryan offers no evidence about what is or is not in Rousseau's "heart." Of course, he can't offer such evidence; Rousseau is dead, and Ryan has no privileged access to what Rousseau did not write.*  But, as Ryan puts it, in a different context, while writing about Luther, "God (alone) sees into our hearts." (p. 338) So, by contrast, when Ryan returns to theme of seductive women --  in the context of Burke and Maistre on authority (p. 635) or Tocqueville on the superiority of American marriage over European kind -- he can be plausibly taken to be summarizing texts. 

But the rhetorical effect of claiming that Rousseau already "knew" the key insight of Wollstonecraft's "demolition" is to deny Wollstonecraft her originality and significance. You might think this uncharitable because, after all, it's a chapter devoted to Rousseau. But, in fact, this is one of four mentions of Wollstonecraft. Here are the other three passages.

First, and I have hinted at this passage before, in the chapter on "Humanism," there is a section devoted to Christine de Pizan. After a quick summary of Pizan's biography, Ryan notes: 

Christine de Pizan has become famous as the author of The Book of the City of Ladies and The Book of the Three Virtues, sometimes called The Treasury of the City of Ladies. We focus, not on these, but on The Book of the Body Politic. The more famous books are feminist manifestos, but not political in focus or purpose. They belong, as does Mary Wollstonecraft Vindication of the Rights of Woman four hundred years afterward (though not her Vindication of the Rights of Man), to the genre of la querelle des femmes. (295)

Second, while writing on Burke's Reflections, in chapter 17 ("The French Revolution and its Critics") he notes: "Burke’s attacks on the revolutionaries and all their works were spread over several books, of which the Reflections is the best-known and the most formidable. It provoked Paine to write Rights of Man, and Mary Wollstonecraft to write Vindication of the Rights of Man, several years before she wrote her better-known essay A Vindication of the Rights of Women." (p. 622)

Finally, in the same chapter, but in the section on "Thomas Paine," Ryan offers Wollstonecraft as an example when he asserts "from a distance of more than two centuries it is hard to understand how the essentially pacific radicals who supported the revolution through thick and thin managed to do so." He then goes on to claim, "How they averted their gaze from the violence and chaos increasingly evident in France by the end of 1789 has puzzled many commentators. It is not as though they did not know about it. Mary Wollstonecraft lived in Paris, and there were innumerable newspaper reports of events." (p. 641)

So, Wollstonecraft's own views are never summarized except for the criticism of Rousseau noted at the top of the post. In the paragraph from p. 295, he basically claims that Vindication of the Rights of Women is inconsequential to political theory. One might think this is due to the fact that he treats it as a manifesto, but of course, he lavishes attention on the Communist Manifesto (pp. 772-792), and, elsewhere Ryan singles out for praise, as a “manifesto” (p. 706), On Liberty! So, it must be due to the fact that it does not quite fit his conception of 'the political.'

It's possible I missed his definition, but one can kind of infer that by ‘political’ he means something like ‘the contest and conflict of interests’ on which  Wollstonecraft has quite a bit to say. Regardless, that can't be sufficient reason not to discuss her views. For, Ryan has long chapters on Plato and Marx, both of whom he explicitly (and repeatedly) treats as antipolitical thinkers. In addition, Vindication of the Rights of Women has quite a bit to say about political norms, gender politics, and the political significance (in Ryan's sense) of education. All topics he is happy to discuss in the context of Montesquieu, Plato, Tocqueville, and, yes, Rousseau. 

So, the cumulative effect of these four paragraphs, is that Wollstonecraft wrote a famous text that is, despite a criticism of Rousseau, irrelevant to political theory; and she wrote another text, Vindication of the Rights of Man, that is relevant but not worth giving a brief summary of. In addition, it's clear he thinks Wollstonecraft should have condemned the violence of the terror.

Now, one of the charms of Ryan's book is that, in addition to being very detailed,  it is an opinionated survey. So, it seems churlish to pick on his treatment of Wollstonecraft. But notice that the treatment of Wollstonecraft reflects a more general dismissal of feminist contribution to political theory. A telling example of this is that Carole Pateman’s The Sexual Contract is uncited, while her Participation and Democratic Theory is praised in the "further reading" section (p. 1052). De Gournay, Olympes de Gouges (and here), Sophie de Grouchy, Simone de Beauvoir,** Germaine de Staël, Ida Wells, Audre Lorde and, if I am not mistaken, all the suffragettes and female abolitionists go unmentioned entirely. (This is especially notable because "enfranchisement of women" is a form of equality "the Athenians would have scoffed at." (949) There is a totemic reference to Rosa Luxemburg (611), and a slightly more substantial one to Beatrice Webb (900). Let's assume/stipulate I missed a few others (not counting the non-sequitur about Virginia Woolf on p. 410.)

Of course, Harriet Taylor is mentioned quite a bit in the biographical details of Mill's life, but not as the author of The Enfranchisement of Women. In addition, Ryan does not even mention Mill's claims about her significance in the composition of Principles of Political Economy and of The Subjection of Women (to which Ryan devotes a section). Since Ryan is one of the world's experts on Mill it would be strange if he were unfamiliar with this. In passing, and only once, does he state, "By the early 1850s when he and Harriett began to draft the essay [On Liberty], they had become convinced that Britain suffered from a stifling conformism." (p. 715) Mill is always Mill, never 'John Stuart,' except when he is to be distinguished from his father. Strikingly, Ryan is happy to acknowledge the influence of Tocqueville on Mill (p. 727), no such influence from Taylor on Mill is even hinted otherwise!

This post is not comprehensive. In particular, Ryan has quite a bit to say about The Book of the Body Politic. He also assumes familiarity with the significance of Arendt (e.g. 824, 905), and even (!) offers a brief defense of Totalitarianism (916). But after a thousand pages of small print a reader of Ryan's survey can easily come away thinking that according to Ryan women made negligible contribution to the history of political thought, and only figure as historically significant queens and countesses, but primarily as mothers, wifes, daughters, and, yes, mistresses.***

 

 

 

On the Origins of Humanitarian Intervention

[T]hose people are barbaric, uninstructed in letters and the art of government, and completely ignorant, unreasoning, and totally incapable of learning anything but the mechanical arts; that they are sunk in vice, are cruel, and of such character that, as nature teaches, they are to be governed by the will of others....But, for their own welfare, people of this kind are held by natural law to submit to the control of those who are wiser and superior in virtue and learning, as are the Spaniards (especially the nobility), the learned, the clergy, the religious, and, finally, all those who have been properly educated and trained. Such persons must be considered when a judgment is to be made about the morals and character of any people, for in them especially shine forth natural ability, uprightness, training, and the best morals of any nation. Both in Spain and among the Indians, spiritual and temporal government is entrusted to these people rather than to soldiers, who, for the most part, are unprincipled and, under cover of military license, inflict many injuries.

The conclusion drawn from this is that the Indians are obliged by natural law to obey those who are outstanding in virtue and character in the same way that matter yields to form, body to soul, sense to reason, animals to human being, women to men, children to adults, and finally, the imperfect to the more perfect, the worse to the better, the cheaper to the more precious and excellent, to the advantage of the both. This is the natural order, which the the eternal and divine law commands be observed, according to Augustine.

Therefore, if the Indians, once warned, refuse to obey this legitimate sovereignty, they can be forced to do so for their own welfare by recourse to the terrors of war. And this war will be just both by civil and natural law, according to the second, third, and fifth chapters of the Politics of Aristotle....Finally, all political philosophers, basing themselves on this reason alone, teach that in cities, kingdoms, and states those who excel in prudence and virtue should preside with sovereignty over the government so that government may be just according to natural law....

Even if these barbarians (that is, the Indians) do not lack capacity, with still more reason they must obey and heed the commands of those who can teach them to live like human beings and do the things that are beneficial for both their present and future life.--"Summary of Sepúlveda's Position" from In Defense of the Indians by Bartolomé de Las Casas, translated by Stafford Poole, pp. 11-13 [ca 1550]

Juan Ginés de Sepúlveda was at the time the royal historian of Emperor Charles V. Las Casas treats him as a trained theologian, but I have also seen him described as a lawyer (see here; perhaps he was both). The Summary of Sepúlveda provided by his opponent, Las Casas, understates Sepúlveda's assertion of natural hierarchies between and within peoples. A line often quoted elsewhere from Sepúlveda's (ca 1550) Democrates Alter, Or, on the Just Causes for War Against the Indians states that "The man rules over the woman, the adult over the child, the father over his children. That is to say, the most powerful and most perfect rule over the weakest and most imperfect. This same relationship exists among men, there being some who by nature are masters and others who by nature are slaves."  This does echo Aristotle. Sepúlveda also goes beyond Aristotle. In the same document Sepúlveda pretty much compares the Indians to apes,* in a way that anticipates Rousseau's idea in a note to the Second Discourse that certain kinds of humans are apelike in the state of nature.

Of course, while Sepúlveda wholeheartedly and repeatedly embraces natural hierarchies, his argument actually does not rest on it. For he allows that, perhaps, the Indians are in no way inferior in capacity. In fact the real work is done by the purported existence of social misery, especially certain form of immorality, in their affairs ("that they are sunk in vice, are cruel,"). In fact, according to Sepúlveda intervention is required because they must be raised from their present immorality, which is bestial and savage.

Sepúlveda is relying on reports of human sacrifice and ritualized cannibalism among the Indians (see here). This matters not just because it shows they are pagans and abhorrent, but also because innocents are harmed if the Spaniards stand by and do nothing. (In context, Sepúlveda offers testimony for this assertion.)

That is the say, the thrust of Sepúlveda's argument does not rest on the reality of natural hierarchy, but rather on the claim that without Spanish, humanitarian intervention, all the Indians will be harmed to some degree, and especially the weak  innocent among them. Indian existence is a proto-Hobbesian state of nature, and so an educated Spanish sovereign is better than no sovereign. 

As an aside, even Sepúlveda indirectly admits that the Spanish conquest need not be beneficial to the Indians in all respects. For, where the Indians fall under de facto Spanish military occupation, they are simply miserably oppressed. 

Sepúlveda, thus, brings together (perhaps partially reinvents) two tropes that become extremely influential and pernicious: (i) that the violent extension of civilization, conquest, is to be pursued because it ultimately benefits the backward and savage. And (ii) that immoral and wicked practices may invite humanitarian intervention. This intervention is humanitarian in character because it is in the interest of the Indians to become humane ("to live like human beings") and acquire the skill and practice of civilization and thereby benefit from it politically and personally, that is, in the afterlife ("that are beneficial for both their present and future life.")). 

According to Sepúlveda, Spanish empire is providential ("God wanted the greater part of the world to come under their dominion so that it might be ruled more justly..." (p. 13)). It's notable that it's not just in Sepúlveda and adherents of providence that (recall) (i) and (ii) can amount to the same thing.

 

 

 

On Sex Equality, Original Sin, Rousseau, and François Poullain de la Barre

Even the wisest legislators found no interesting role for women when they founded their republics. All laws seem to have been made to keep men in their present position of power. Men we regard as fonts of wisdom have never said anything good about women. In fact, men’s behavior towards women in all places and at all times is so uniform that it seems to be part of an organized movement. Some people have even thought that men are impelled to behave this way through some hidden instinct ordained universally by the Creator of nature.
This view is all the more easily justifiable when we consider the way women themselves tolerate their situation. They see it as being their natural place. Either because they do not think at all about what they are, or because they are born and raised in a state of dependency, they share the male point of view. In all these things, both men and women tend to believe that their minds are as different as their bodies and that the distinctions that necessarily exist between them should be extended to all aspects of life. This opinion, however, like most of the ones we hold about custom and usage, is pure prejudice, and is dictated by superficial appearance rather than close analysis. We would certainly reject it if we took the trouble to go back to its origin. We could find many examples of things that were done formerly that we could compare with the things we do now, and we could weigh ancient customs against present-day ones. If we had followed this rule more often, we would have avoided a lot of mistakes. As far as women’s present situation is concerned, we would have realized that it is simply the rule of the stronger that has put them in such a subservient position, and we would understand that it is not through any natural deficiencies that they have been denied the advantages enjoyed by our sex.
Indeed, when we think honestly about human history, both past and present, we realize that there is one common denominator: reason has always been the weakest element in our decisions, and all stories seem to have been made up for the sole purpose of demonstrating what we see in any lifetime, that from man’s very origins might has always prevailed. The greatest empires of Asia owe their beginnings to usurpers and brigands, and the inheritors of the ruins of Greece and Rome were upstarts who thought they could resist their masters and dominate their equals. All societies exhibit the same kind of conduct. If men behave in this way towards their equals, then it is most likely that they behaved in the same way first of all towards women. Here, more or less, is how it came about.
Men, realizing they were the stronger and physically superior sex, imagined they were superior in all respects. This was of no great consequence for women at the beginning of the world, when a very different state of affairs prevailed from today. There was no government, no learning, no employment, no established religion; dependence was not considered irksome. I imagine that people lived like children, and winning or losing was part of the game. Both men and women, who were naive and innocent, contributed equally to the tasks of tilling and hunting as savages do today. A man went about his business and a woman hers; the person who made the greatest contribution was the most respected.--François Poullain de la Barre (1673) On the Equality of the Two Sexes Translation by Vivien Bosley, Part 1.**

I tend to ignore Poullain de la Barre because he lacks the biting satire I enjoy so much in Gournay or Mandeville, and because I find many of his arguments a bit cringe-worthy, especially because he is so sincere . But re-reading the passage -- made famous by Simone de Beauvoir (see also Marina Reuter here) -- above reminded me that it is quite amazing that Poullain de la Barre died of natural causes.  Beauvoir uses the passage in her argument that men "sought to make the fact of their supremacy a right." I don't disagree with Beauvoir, but there is more here worth noting.

First, the whole paragraph is structured around a contrast between what "some people" think and the truth (according to Poullain de la Barre). What most people think is that the male instinct to dominate, and to dominate in solidarity with each other, is part of human nature. And that this is part of God's providence. This view has a complex relationship to original sin. 

By contrast, according to Poullain people, are naturally cooperative, naturally embrace the division of labor, and more or less accurately track in their praise and blame people's contribution to group welfare. This natural sociability view comes very close to denying original sin altogether by suggesting that an original golden age was actually possible. 

Second, as it happens, our natural sociability is a bit like Locke's pre-political state of nature because there does exist some property. I mention Locke because Poullain de la Barre also associates this child-like friendly state of nature with really existing 'savages.' But, and this indeed anticipates Rousseau (as Reuter notes), it's when states are originated that (great) inequality and permanent gendered structures of hierarchy come into being. And, in fact, according to Poullain de la Barre all polities (I am avoiding the confusing use of 'societies') originate in acts of theft and overthrowing of basically pacific social orders.  This is not just true of all the great empires of the past, but "All...exhibit the same kind of conduct." He is essentially saying that all polities have illegitimate origins that they perpetuate in present conduct.

Third, this last point is a feature and not a bog of his argument because he thinks all (socially significant) gender inequality is grounded, ultimately, in a social order that is inherently violent (see also Reuter) and devalues reason and peace.  So, rather than seeing political society as a solution to the problem of violent or Hobbesian state of nature, it just is the Hobbesian state of nature. To be sure, Poullain is not an anarchist. He ultimately wishes to reform/re-order society on rational grounds in which peace and our true intellectual contributions (not just by women, but also women) are valued--but that is a normative ideal nowhere reality.*

Fourth, political dominance founded in violence and hierarchy always generates an ideology in which the superiority is projected onto other features of the dominant group. He associates the workings of such ideological projection with imagination. (For Poullain de la Barre reason seems both pacific and truth-apt in ways the imagination is.) 

Fifth, and most striking organized religion is itself one of the institutions that facilitate domination and is an exercise of such imaginative ideological projections.+ It only comes into being after polities come into being and then it is inevitably tainted by, if not a tool of, the violence of male hierarchy. 

Let me close with a modest moral. It is a recurring feature to situate Poullain in the Cartesianism of his age (see this excellent piece by Schmitter) That's not all false, and I will return to that link some time. But it also raises expectations about the philosophical nature of his work. In many ways, his evidential and conceptual arguments do not really make one think one is dealing with an especially promising Cartesian (natural philosopher or metaphysician). But unlike most of the Cartesians of his age (and here I am relying on Alex Douglas' wonderful book on Spinoza), who preferred to focus on medicine and science, Poullain did not shy away from very important political and theological issues and consequences of the Cartesian revolution in philosophy. And in so doing he landed in a place that is as radical and far-reaching as, say, Hobbes and Spinoza, and in some ways closer to enduring significance. 

On Demagogues and Democracy

The demagogue is not a romantic fellow who appears now and then, but...he appears whenever government is not effectively representative. Demagoguery is the falsification of representative government, the cultivation of the transient and apparent rather than of the considered and real will of the people...That is why the Constitutional Convention attempted to set up truly representative government; in order to protect the masses from the hypnosis of the moment, they invented devices for balancing the constituencies and delaying their decisions. They sought to make the people safe for democracy. What they meant to do every civilized people has to do, and if the checks and balances of the American Constitution are now antiquated, others will have to be devised to replace them.--Walter Lippmann (1938) The Good Society, 256. (In context, Lippmann is discussing Madison.)

Unlike most liberals who confronted the worldwide collapse of democracy in the 1930s, and who helped shape reflection on the post war revival of liberalism (under the guise of Pax Americana), Lippmann kept faith in the democratic experiment and had a healthy distrust of those that wished to prevent self-government. He also recognizes, correctly, that in modern conditions no account of legitimacy could ignore that "any government, despotic or liberal, is an organization of power drawn out of the reservoir of popular force." (p. 249; he credits Jose Ortega y Gasset!) And, more important for present purposes, unlike much subsequent liberal political philosophy, he confronted the problem that demagogues pose without complacency and the gravity it deserves. Demagogues are always a live possibility in democratic self-government.

By contrast the inability to take demagogues seriously is visible (recall) even in the response to the Trump presidency. The currently popular approaches center on proposals for abolishing the electoral college and to move toward a more straightforward majoritarian system. But while that addresses the feature in the electoral college that has generated minority presidencies and over-representation of rural areas, it is likely to increase the odds of demagogues attaining the presidency. And while partisan friends of the Democratic party or coastal electorates, may welcome such an outcome, it is not obvious why it's good for the country (or the world).* 

The effectiveness of the electoral college as a block to the rise of demagogues has been successfully undermined over time by making party selection of leaders more democratic, while maintaining the effective and [given winner takes all structure of most electoral contests Stateside], natural duopoly of the two parties. (Of course, the existence of a party-system was unwanted when the electoral college was devised.)

As the quote reveals, Lippmann was aware that the intended system of the Founders and American constitutional reality differed. In particular, the system of checks and balances was systematically undermined. As Jacob T. Levy recently has argued (here), the system of checks and balances has been further weakened since. So, while Hamilton (who offers, recall my post, an ingenious cost-benefit, risk-reward analysis) is very explicit that there is a non-negligible risk of a demagogue even under the original system, we must now assume the likelihood is rather high that more demagogues will be elected. 

Now, Lippmann's analysis presupposes a distinction between an apparent, false democratic will and a hidden, true democrat will. The former is transient and passionate while the latter is more reasonable and enduring. The true will tracks people's genuine interests, while the false will tracks people's momentary infatuations. For Lippmann it is obvious, perhaps too obvious, that a demagogue appeals to our false wills and not the authentic ones. Lippmann has a lot to say about the conditions under which such a mature (another term he likes) will is possible, but that will not concern me at present.  

Like all approaches that rely on such a distinction one may well wonder how the true  will can be revealed. (There has been a lively debate over, say, Rousseau's general will.) Lippmann's answer is worth reflecting on. For, Lippmann takes very seriously the temporal features mentioned in the distinction between the true and false democratic will. He thinks an electorate's will can be "refined" ((p. 250; 261), this is Madison's (Humean) terminology). On his view the way to capture the authentic, refined democratic will is to ensure that it is revealed and, then represented, over time.+ He claims the American "founders sought to approximate a true representation of the people by providing many different ways of counting heads" (p. 254) at different times and in different configurations. [Full disclosure: I have learned to pay attention to political time by Elizabeth Cohen (here), especially, and Mathias Thaler (see here).] 

The idea being that the democratic will is neither formed instantaneously nor expressed in a given moment. That is democratic representation is not homogeneous, but, in fact, multi-faceted in time (and geographic space). This strikes me as the sound intuition in Lippmann's analysis. It also expresses the liberal distrust of appeals to the people who are taken to be unified and unidirectional by populists (and much worse) without being distrustful of democracy.

Lippmann thinks this fact requires regular elections (and geographically uneven constituencies) with the possibility to focus on different features of representation. We can be represented as citizens of a local place and, say, larger region and at different given times. And indeed the American way of government has, despite a peculiar fondness for November election days, a tendency to fragment the expression of the popular will. To what degree this way of counting heads truly generates an approximation of a true representation may well be doubted. It can also reveal the fact of heteronomy.**  

True or not, if temporally separated voting were to reduce the power of demagogues it would be a useful check for that reason alone. But, as we know, it obviously cannot prevent a demagogue by itself.  

Now, unlike other political philosophies, democratic liberals are willing to live with some uncertainty. (That's also part of our defense of markets.) So, perhaps one must simply accept that the demagogue is the natural byproduct of democracy--something that cannot be eliminated without undermining democratic self-rule. Regular readers may suspect that this fits my generally skeptical tenor.

As I noted, Lippmann thought part of the answer was changing the nature of how people think about the point of government.+ Something like that attitude is also visible in those with a preference for markets over elections, or a preference for experts over elections (this (recall) tempted Lippmann, too), etc. But it strikes me these do not exhaust the options. One of the problems of the evolution of the American system is that it has (d)evolved into (what used to be called) elective (temporary) kingship ((and it has its defenders recall Al-Farabi; Ibn Rushd); Mozi). But if kingship is the problem, as it was in 1776, then (more) elections alone won't solve it (recall).

What's needed is a more thoroughgoing realization than Lippmann allows that no human should have as much power as an American president. Democracy is the response to human imperfection. If we were truly virtuous and wise we wouldn't need this form of government. But why perpetuate an office that by its nature requires the best instincts of any saint?**