Digressions&Impressions

Anscombe's Two Mistakes

Returning to my example of the intrinsically unjust: if a procedure is one of judicially punishing a man for what he is clearly understood not to have done, there can be absolutely no argument about the description of this as unjust. No circumstances, and no expected consequences, which do not modify the description of the procedure as one of judicially punishing a man for what he is known not to have done can modify the description of it as unjust. Someone who attempted to dispute this would only be pretending not to know what "unjust" means: for this is a paradigm case of injustice.

And here we see the superiority or the term "unjust" over the terms "morally right" and "morally wrong." For in the context of English moral philosophy since Sidgwick it appears legitimate to discuss whether it might be "morally right" in some circumstances to adopt that procedure; but it cannot be argued that that the procedure would in any circumstances be just.--Anscombe, "Modern Moral Philosophy" [1958)], reprinted here.

But an innocent man, though of more than ordinary constancy, is often, not only shocked, but most severely mortified by the serious, though false, imputation of a crime; especially when that imputation happens unfortunately to be supported by some circumstances which give it an air of probability....An innocent man, brought to the scaffold by the false imputation of an infamous or odious crime, suffers the most cruel misfortune which it is possible for innocence to suffer.--Adam Smith, The Theory of Moral Sentiments.

For the second time in three years, a rich, fascinating public lecture by Julia Driver, (this time) 'The Case Against Consequentialism: Anscombe, Foot, and Murdoch,' has inspired some musings in me (recall). In what follows in these Digressions, I do not comment on Driver's thesis and argument, but once her paper has appeared in print I will do so. Here I explore features of the quoted passage above from Anscombe featured in Driver's essay, which made me return to "Modern Moral Philosophy" (MMP), that are orthogonal to Driver's argument.

Anscombe's MMP is, despite its scholarly popularity, not Anscombe at her most subtle; yet it is a polemical masterpiece. This is not to deny it is a very important statement; I always relish her contempt for the "provinciality of mind" among the "English" (Sidgwick and his followers), although she mistakenly believes that Sidgwick did not know what he was doing when he excluded non-trivial features of the "Hebrew-Christian ethic;" for while she is right to note that in Sidgwick the important things in him occur in asides and footnotes and small bits of argument which are not concerned with his grand classification of the "methods of ethics," she fails to recognize that these asides also exhibit Sidgwick's stance on philosophical prudence which are a feature not a bug of his (what came to be known as) Government house utilitarianism. 

MMP has an apparent accessibility, which -- in addition to the care-free pot-shots at previous, (once) canonical thinkers --, undoubtedly helps sustain its popularity. Her readings of others lack -- to invoke a Christian virtue that has, perhaps unwisely, been adopted by generations of scholars -- charity and, thereby, she can exhibit an-oft subtle point, while simultaneously scoring points that many students of philosophy might think they could have made too (e.g. "Kant introduces the idea of “legislating for oneself,” which is as absurd as if in these days, when majority votes command great respect, one were to call each reflective decision a man made a vote resulting in a majority, which as a matter of proportion is overwhelming, for it is always 1-0.")

Anyway, in the quoted passage at the top of this post, Anscombe makes two connected mistakes (which are, at bottom, the same),* one not too subtle and the other more so. First, in the passage she tacitly presupposes that in the philosophy of law or political philosophy, legal positivism is ruled out. It is, hence, no surprise that a few lines before, she heaps scorn on "a rule of law by which something is "deemed" to be the case which is admittedly not the case as a matter of fact." But Anscombe has not earned this position; to show that legal positivism or legal proceduralism has immoral consequences is not a decisive argument against it. (To be clear: she is critical of positions that allow the execution of innocents under certain circumstances.) For, not only does all human law have immoral consequences (to assume otherwise would be to assume the conditions under which human law wouldn't be necessary), but it also begs the question to assume that moral authority trumps political and legal authority when they come into conflict. When they do, this opens up, to echo Anscombe (discussing Hume) "very deep and important problems" that are only easily resolved by analytical philosophers who -- to historicize++ -- have a tendency to take the very existence of political order for granted; the political intermingles with all  philosophical inquiries of axiological importance (recall Isaiah Berlin's criticism of analytical philosophy). I return to this below.

Second, Anscombe is mistaken in making her position turn on terminological superiority. For one can describe the case she labels as a paradigmatic instance of 'intrinsic justice' (and agree that it is paradigmatically so) without using "injustice" at all and without sounding like one is using euphemisms. As an example of this, I quoted the relevant passage in Adam Smith above. He very carefully avoids describing the case of a "judicial condemnation of the innocent" as an instance of injustice while still managing to convey the moral gravity of the situation ("suffers the most cruel misfortune which it is possible for innocence to suffer") and without giving in to the temptation of calling such situations "morally right." That is, Smith recognize that the institution of justice can do genuine, severe harms, but that one should be cautious about calling these instances of "intrinsic injustice."** That is, she is wrong to think that "someone who attempted to dispute this would only be pretending not to know what "unjust" means;" rather than arguing it, I showed it. Of course, from the vantage point of the innocent person it is proper to call it an instance of "injustice:" As Smith goes on to write "The innocent man, on the contrary, over and above the uneasiness which this fear may occasion, is tormented by his own indignation at the injustice which has been done to him."*** The humane spectator understands this indignation and, if she is wise, too, would not try to argue otherwise.

The true point Anscombe wishes to make, that is, that the kind of moral philosophy associated with Sidgwick and his followers can easily become, and was, complicit in the (procedurally licensed) evils and harms, large and small, of the technocratic state is surely right (see, especially, her last paragraph).+ She can say that (and I would agree) without accusing the other side of not knowing how words are used or whose (paradigm-relative) terminology is superior. But making that charge stick would have forced her to explore the relationship between her moral certitudes and her paradigmatic exemplars that sustain them and a form of life that takes the (forgive my scholasticism) the nature(s) and existence of the all-too-human-political-legal-order seriously. Of course, she has explored some of these issues elsewhere and a polemic is often not the right place for generosity. +++

 

 

On Being a Hypocrite; or on True Teaching

I could swagger about Fortitude and the Contempt of Riches as much as Seneca himself.---Mandeville, Fable of the Bees (recall).

Far different is the purpose of those who are speech-making and trying to win the approbation of a throng of hearers, far different that of those who allure the ears of young men and idlers by many sided or fluent argumentation; philosophy teaches us to act, not to speak; it exacts of every one that he should live according to his own law [facere docet philosophia, non dicere, et hoc exigit, ut ad legem suam quisque vivat, ne orationi vita dissentiat vel ipsa inter se vita], that his life should not be out of harmony with his words, and that, further, there is unity to the color of one's actions [unus sit omnium actio num color].  This, I say, is the highest duty and the highest proof of wisdom, - that deed and word should be in accord, that a man should be equal to himself under all conditions, and always the same.--Seneca, Letter XX (slightly modified translation).

I am no stranger to falling short of my personal ideals (recall) and know plenty of well-established professional philosophers who are moralistic yet routinely exhibit lack of basic decency. I know extremely kind and generous folk who advocate hardship and worse for less articulate and connected others (in the name of utility, good governance, etc.). I know courageous advocates of civic liberties who fail their students by their incapacity at sublimating intellectual eros. So I did not expect it to find it so difficult to continue my series on Seneca's Letters and write about Letter XX in which Seneca addresses the discord between words and actions (and, thus, extends the theme of Letter XIX, recall). Given that Seneca is notorious for the mismatch between words and deeds, it is tempting to read this letter as Seneca's Apologia Pro Vita Sua addressing the known criticisms of his activities under Nero in which he grew rich in the service of a tyrant.

Upon extended reflection: the key to the letter is the implied distinction between being a teacher and being a philosopher (aka being wise and, explicitly, being great-souled [ingentis animi est]). Seneca identifies himself as a teacher not as a philosopher. He teaches, not unlike Plato [and unlike Nietzsche], in part, by pointing away toward proper exemplars (e.g., Demetrius the Cynic) and by drawing on Epicurean themes. Such exemplars have a three-fold function: (a) they offer an existence-proof that a comportment with integrity, that is, a harmony between right action and words, is humanly possible; (b) he holds up exemplars to be emulated (recall my treatment of Letter 5); (c) it allows him to deflect, in part, the charge of hypocrisy--for he very clearly implies that he falls short of the comportment with integrity while not being so corrupted (by the axiology of the marketplace/public [recall Letter 14]) that he cannot recognize true wisdom in others.

More important, from (c) it follows that (d) Seneca thinks he can bypass the more fundamental version of Meno's paradox (see Abe Stone); he can teach some virtue to Lucilius without being fully virtuous himself in a context where, as he implies, ordinary social institutions do not facilitate even such limited virtue. We may even add that Seneca shows some wisdom by recognizing his own limitations not only in light of exacting pure standards of integrity, but also in light of available human instantiations. (It is, thus, important that Demetrius is not merely a mythical or historical figure.)

So, Seneca knows he falls short of and he does not hold himself up as the standard for comportment with integrity. Thus the traditional charge against Seneca is (somewhat) misguided. Seneca may even hint that he knows intimately what he is warning against (do as I say, not as I did) and, thereby, (against Deleuze's protests) become a better teacher for some pupils (say, ambitious types like Lucilius). It is, after all, by no means obvious that Demetrius un-mediated by, say, a Seneca would be recognized as wise by an untutored pupil. Sincerity of even the noblest expressions does not guarantee moral approval, after all.

Ever since Socrates's trial we know that students' actions can reflect badly on the quality and reputation of their teachers' activities. Seneca embraces this fact--again, like Plato who shows us some of Socrates's more disastrous teaching methods (that's compatible with admiration of Socrates). So, it turns out, that Seneca is closer to the modern university professor than one might initially have thought. Like most of us, he is no holy man, and he does not expect to be evaluated as one.

Rather, Seneca correctly expects to be evaluated, in part, on the consequences of his teaching on his pupils (that is, the addressee and other, later readers of his Letters) and the societies their actions help shape. This is no eternal moral-get-out-of-jail-free-pass. Rather (at least late in life) Seneca embraces that he lives by a rather demanding standard that in addition to complex skills requires considerable luck (recall) and turns each of our teaching and writing lives into trials in which we are judged, fairly (with satire) or not, as causes of unknown (and potentially extended) multiplicity of effects (recall).* We may, then even say -- echoing Spinoza (Ethics 1p36 [recall]) -- that Seneca claims there is true glory [mea enim gloria erit] in being in virtue of such effects.

 

When the Experts will be Ignored in Politics (Thomas More's Utopia on Teaching Virtue)

The [foreign] seamen were not unskilled in managing wind and water; but they were most grateful to him, Raphael said, for showing them the use of the compass, of which they had been entirely ignorant. For that reason they had formerly sailed with great timidity, and only in summer. Now they have such trust in that loadstone that no longer fear winter at all, and to be careless rather than safe. There is some danger that through their imprudence this device, which the thought would be so advantageous to them, may become the cause of such mischief.—in Utopia (by Thomas More), Part I. (Edited by George M. Logan and Robert M. Adams; Cambridge)

Centuries before social scientists started to worry about so-called risk compensation, More has one of his characters recognize that acquiring novel technology can generate overconfidence (from timidity to imprudence) and move agents’ so-called risk-appetites (perceived advantageousness). If the accompanying harms are social/political then the introduction (or teaching) of new technologies has to be managed carefully (for more on law & economics style reasoning in Utopia, recall). One attentive reader of More, Francis Bacon,[1] makes this issue an important theme in his New Atlantis, where even very useful technologies are regularly shielded from government and population by a secretive scientific elite.

More returns to the issue of technological transmission in Part II when he shows the reader how Utopians acquire foreign technologies and learning from Raphael. So, in what follows I do not wish to pretend that I have dealt sufficiently with More’s perspective on the topic. But it’s also possible to read the compass episode as an parable on the nature of teaching (of philosophy, broadly conceived), responsible speech, and expert guidance.[2] For one of the main set-pieces of Part I of Utopia is an exchange over what to do when expert advice is unwelcome:

“Now don’t you suppose if I set these ideas and others like them before men strongly inclined to the contrary, they would turn deaf ears to me?”--Raphael

“Stone deaf, indeed, there’s no doubt about it’, I said, ‘and by heaven it’s no wonder! To tell you the truth, I don’t think you should thrust forward ideas of this sort, or offer advice [to kings] that you know for certain not be listened to. What good can it do? When your listeners are already prepossessed against you and firmly convinced of opposite opinions, how can you win over their mind with such out-of-the-way-speeches? This academic philosophy is pleasant enough in the private conversation of close friends, but in the councils of kings where great matters are debated with great authority, there is no room for it.”[--More]

“That is just what I was saying’, Raphael replied. ‘There is no place for philosophy in the councils of kings.’

‘Yes, it is true’, I said, “that there is no place for this school philosophy which supposes ever topic suitable for every occasion. But there is another philosophy, better suited for the role of a citizen, that takes its cue, adapts itself to the drama in hand and acts its part neatly and appropriately. This is the philosophy for you to use…If you cannot pluck up bad ideas by the root, or cure longstanding evils to your heart’s content, you must not therefore abandon the commonwealth….Instead, by an indirect approach, you must strive and struggle as best you can to handle everything tactfully – and thus what you cannot turn to good, you may at least make as little bad as possible. For it is impossible to make everything good unless all men are good, and that I don’t quite expect to see for quite a few years yet.’[--More]

‘The only result of this,’ he said, ‘will be that while I try to cure the madness of others, I’ll be raving along with them myself….You wouldn’t stand a chance of changing anything for the better by that “indirect approach”. This is why Plato in a very fine comparison declares that wise men are right in keeping from public business.’[—Raphael.]

More distinguishes between academic philosophy, which speaks truth directly without regard to context. This would be prudential only in public circumstances where much of such advices would be dispensable anyway, that is, in context of well-ordered public institutions (or with philosopher-kings). Direct truth speaking is only appropriate for the ivory tower and among private friends. As an aside, a few centuries later Hume would bemoan the rarity of such intellectual friendship, wistfully looking back at Cicero’s circle; and Adam Smith would commemorate Hume as having such intimate friendships (see here and here). Either way, More implies that sticking to such a theoretical approach to philosophy is uncivilized.  

As More’s characters recognize the demand side for expert guidance structures the content of speech among prudential experts. And only experts that are willing to play the game will be heard. This means that in non-well-ordered societies, the available (that is spoken) public council will be sup-optimal from the point of view of truth and general social utility. Note that More’s insight holds even if there is no explicit censorship. More points to a whole range of mechanisms (from group-think, to status seeking, to misaligned incentives) that will be prevent explicit truth from having a seat at the decision-making table.

The character More suggests that civilized philosophers (so-called theoreticians) lower their standards not just in terms of truth speaking – he clearly implies they need to adopt the art of flattery and Raphael is explicitly concerned it also entails practicing Noble lies --, but also in terms of ends sought: now she aims to ameliorate the bad rather than seeking the good. (It could be worse, of course; the expert could just be optimizing her own position.)

Rather than resolving the debate between academic and civilized philosophy, it is worth noting that in the compass example, Raphael learns that his intellectual philanthropy is not sensitive to the unexpected consequences of his education on his students. It is not obvious that transferring technology has made the recipients better off (if they become more accident prone). So, we can say, that Part I of Utopia raises two kinds of concerns about context-insensitive forms of education: in one (e.g., the compass) case it can make the recipient worse off—we are not told if this makes Raphael more cautious in the future. In the other (that is, speaking truth to corrupt power) it is self-undermining and Raphael has learned from experience to avoid supplying it.[3] At the close of part I of Utopia, More leaves his reader with the question if truth-telling, or philosophocal education, can ever be appropriate in public. But he does so in a format -- what I would call philosophical prophecy -- that is far removed from the academic and not wholly the civilized philosophy.

 [UPDATE: this version is slightly modified from the original post thanks to Ed Kazarian's comments.]

Of Four Kinds of Writer's Block

In the imagination there is no daylight and,                                              

Like Wallace Stevens, I know the dark is crucial.                                         

I sing, I grieve in it, I dream what haunts each night:                                                       

These bodies, even lynched, still are thinking.                               

Nothing is final, I’m told. No man shall see the end—

But them, my fathers, lifted into fire, like tongues.--Rickey Laurentiis.    

 

Poetry is a finikin thing of air

That lives uncertainly and not for long

Yet radiantly beyond much lustier blurs.--Wallace Stevens.

I am often teased by my peers that I write so much;* I frequently answer truthfully that I am no perfectionist and that I have always worked with low (and very low) teaching loads with courses that directly (or indirectly) fed into my research. So, I may be utterly unqualified to write about writer's blog -- 'look who thinks he is nothing!' --, but I am intimately familiar with four kinds of staring at a blank page:

1. I have nothing to say despite (or, perhaps, because) having embraced the image of being a poet or philosopher. No, no (you suspicious mind) not so much from some purported high status that is derived from these venerable terms 'poet,' ('philosopher'), nor with the idea that if I wear black and smoke Gitanes, some beautiful woman will whisper her phone-number into my ear while I babble on about Rilke and Sartre.  No, it's because I regularly have sensory overload, where each pleasure and each pain has an exquisite and hitherto ignored delicacy so that I assume that the world requires me to channel the cosmic fire into words. Even so I stare at blank pages recognizing the painful truth that, perhaps as of yet, I have nothing to say of enduring consequence (few do I learn over the years, but that offers little consolation). Professional philosophy solves this problem by after considerable education, inserting us into a tradition that either embraces the intellectual division of labor, which bequeaths each of us open-problems, or  that allows us to re-tell the same historical story with minor, corrective variations in both cases advancing 'the discussion.' It's possible that if one is 'productive' enough, or mesmerized by chasing the next career step (dissertation, a job, tenure, etc.), one forgets this kind of writer's block.** I have speculated that the existence of  this kind of half-forgetting helps explain some of the professional bullying we encounter.

2. I lack skill. At some point half way through my graduate education and a few years out after the PhD, I could spot problems in what I read and I could sense that an alternative might be philosophically more satisfying, but I didn't know how to start organizing my thoughts. Sometimes the blank space would be filled with extensive notes, and long copiously footnoted excerpts from others (many of my dissertation chapters started like this), but even so I would be unable to find a path from the complexity I perceive (and that I think eminently worth sharing) to something that might count as intelligible to an outsider. Within analytical philosophy, this problem is solved by decomposing the complex mess to something that one can take a stance on, a thesis, (and then argue for while recognizing and incorporating a sub-set of  the innumerable objections one might discern.) In addition, there are tacit templates for journal articles that help set further constraints. At some point, practice, repeated feedback from more skilled others, and, eventually, repeat 'success,' evaporated this kind of writer's block. I re-encountered a version of this kind of writer's block, when I started to write for non-professional audiences or new formats (e.g., newspaper editorials, interdisciplinary venues, blogging, etc.), but without accompanying panic (hence, the past-tense in this paragraph): decomposing and practicing in the new genre always removed the writer's block over time.

Sincerity is the Denial of Complexity

[T]he arbitrariness of art careers, or were they really arbitrary? Who gets to speak and why?--Chris Kraus I love Dick (164)

[I]sn't sincerity just the denial of complexity?--Chris Kraus I love Dick (181)

These letters're the first time I've ever tried to talk about ideas that I need to, not just to amuse or entertain.--Chris Kraus I love Dick (192)

"[D]on't forget you live by compromise and contradiction cause those who don't just die like dogs."--Chris Kraus I love Dick (240)

A few weeks ago, when I was a bit low after a bruising encounter with fierce, confident philosophically trained minds, I wrote a friend how much I admire her uncompromising ability to combine being a philosopher and being, well, her. She wrote me back that while my fine thoughts reflect well on my image of her, the real, more fragile her was struggling with suicidal despair through the Summer. It's not that the despair as such that caught me by surprise—all the people I admire let their fragility and despair into their lives, and it's their capacity to do so that gives their words, professional and informal, an urgency that I treasure—but I had always half expected her to reach out to me if she would hit bottom. Upon reflection I consoled my wounded vanity with the thought that, of course, she had sunk so low she had become incapable of reaching out to me; my conscience answered, in turn, 'maybe she expected to be pushed further down by Professor Schliesser?' 'Would she think me really capable of such cruelty?' 'Who isn't?'

Around the same time I noticed that a young scholar listed Chris Kraus's I love Dick in a top-10 book-list that have been popular on Facebook. I had never heard of it before which I decided spoke in its favor. Despite the book's humor, it makes for uncomfortable reading—the deformation of the moral reflexes of pretentious academic men (you know, like me) and their impact on (to quote) a Serious Young Woman are exhibited in eerily familiar fashion. The deformation is captured in many scenes, but this passage presents it in a nice one-liner:

Because emotion's just so terrifying the world refuses to believe that it can be pursued as discipline, as form.--Chris Kraus I love Dick (196)

Kraus here holds out to the possibility of disciplined emotion. We might say an analysis in which the head is coupled to our feelings. The idea that emotion can be terrifying resonates with my experience; it need not be yours, of course. When I was a teenager I was cautious about letting anybody get close to me intimately. (I still prefer baby-steps.) And so now I wonder if I prefered the company of books because they kept me distant from my feelings (and other people's).

Even so, Kraus's book is not anti-intellectual. In fact, it offers a remarkable defense of the idea that books can offer a life-line to those capable of grabbing it:

Reading delivers on the promise that sex raises but hardly can ever fulfill—getting larger cause you are entering another person's language, cadence, heart and mind.--Chris Kraus I love Dick (207)