Digressions&Impressions

The Threat of Violence, Republic 1, and the Grounding of Philosophical Exchange

One oddity of Republic 1, is the ever-present threat of violence that hangs over the very existence or possibility of the conversation. This starts explicitly with Polemarchus' insistence that he will not listen to Socrates' persuasion and that he does not need to do so because he outnumbers Socrates (327C). And so Socrates is roped into a banquet at Cephalus' house. And while one may be tempted to treat this as an innocent joke, the initial exchange with Polemarchus can also be treated as an unflattering, structural analogy of the ways pure or direct democracies might treat minorities, and rational deliberation.*

Once alert to the possibility, I noticed that violence of some sort both keeps people (temporarily) out of the conversation and in it. So, Thrasymachus is literally prevented from speaking at first (336b), and then prevented from leaving (344d). And, of course, much of discussion itself, especially after Thasymachus joins, is presented in terms of -- if not lethal then -- a dangerous contest (leaving aside the fact that reputation, honor, money are all said to be at stake).

Now, let's leave aside, or pretend to leave it aside, the manner of the discussion, and renew focus on its partial grounding in the decisions of unnamed many to prevent and promote some to speak. Again, it is tempting to treat this as an analogy of the way pure/direct democracy behaves.  Since most of the 'restrainers' and 'promoters' are left nameless in Socrates' description of these events, they function very much like the choir in a Greek tragedy. We might be clever and notice that Thrasymachus' account of justice (in which the ruling element of the regime legislates law on its own behalf) kind of offers a theory for what is left as analogy earlier. And that Socrates himself claims (recall) that civic violence is the effect of injustice.

Even so, what I am really interested in here is the thought that some kind of non-trivial (ahh) nudging and silencing may be a pre-condition to philosophical exchange. That such speech-policing is a kind of ground of philosophical life. Now, some readers of Plato may object that the exchanges between Socrates and Cephalus/Polemarchus and Socrates and Thrasymachus are not really philosophical exchanges. There is a hermeneutic tradition that Plato withholds from us Socrates' interaction with a philosophical equal (say Plato). But I don't belong in that tradition (for I think the exchanges with Protagoras and Parmenides are the real deal). And while the exchange with Thrasymachus is hostile and unsatisfying, it is not without intrinsic interest nor is obvious that Socrates really gets the better of Thrasymachus (at least by the end of Book I).

Another line of concern (mixing Stoic and Enlightenment ideas, which can be  traced back to Socrates) is that true (sage-like) philosophers are autonomous givers, receivers, and evaluators of reasons or arguments; that the policing (and canceling) element I have noticed is heteronomous to our beloved activity better left to the market place or spectator sports (etc.). I don't want to take this line of concern lightly. It obviously represents a noble normative ideal, especially when so many of us find ourselves threatened to be sacked or merged away by politicians, demagogues, and bean-counters with little interest in any such ideals, but all-to0-aware of the threats our seminars pose to their (possible) rule.

Even so, it's possible that Plato presents us with the idea that important philosophical contests have to be arranged or structured in ways inimical to the desires of the philosophers themselves. And before you protest this possibility, remember that one of the main claims of the Republic (anticipated in the very discussion of Book I) is that philosophers have to be forced to rule. It's not such a big step from that to they have to be forced and restrained from engaging with each other. 

Let me make this concrete: when there exist rival philosophical schools or traditions it is very tempting to disengage or to vilify or mocking without true engagement. The vilification prevents people from reading works produced in other schools and helps schools to be(come) more unified just reinforcing the benefits from not engaging. And often the opportunity costs of engaging are quite great, while engaging on shared terms is efficient, productive, progressive, etc. (In our intellectual universe it's also fruitful for the parceling out of jobs.)

Of course, there is a cost to non-engaging. And that's that one both misses insights discovered in a different vernacular and that many shared commitments in the in-group/school are never seriously questioned at all. 

The previous two paragraphs are, of course, a metaphor for the analytic-continental (etc.) divides we live in. And I do regret that David Lewis never sought out (say) Deleuze, or was pushed into it (just as circumstances made Carnap a very astute reader of Heidegger). I would admire some leading figures of my analytic tradition more if they weren't obviously so limited that they can only talk to each other. (Yes, I know the young kidz have changed all of that!) And I honestly feel sad that some billionaires give gigantic prizes to philosophers, but do so little to get philosophers to engage with each other. 

To put it in modeling terms, the moment one entertains the idea that the market in philosophical ideas is not efficient, then the possibility that heteronomous-to-philosophy forces can structure that market is not so far-fetched. Now, speaking in my own voice (go back to reading my old digressions), I reject the idea that the market in philosophical ideas is efficient. Of course, it's not unlikely that these heteronomous-to-philosophy-policing-of-speech forces do more damage than good. 

I could stop here. But I am reminded that when we parent and educate, we often police the choices of our wards (in a curriculum, a syllabus, etc.). In fact, even our most noble aspirations, the ones that may involve not knowing the full nature of these aspirations ex ante and not understanding all the ways/mechanisms that lead to them (go read Callard's book, or my digressions about it) are structured by such forced choices. Of course, in such cases the end justifies the means. And perhaps -- no, I am not confident -- that's also true of the policing required to get Socrates and Thrasymachus, like puppets in a wonderful play, to engage. 

 

A long simmering polemical disquisition, and freedom of speech (On Beattie): (I)

Few men have ever engaged in controversy, religious, political, or philosophical, without being in some degree chargeable with misconception of the adversary's meaning: That I have never erred in this way, I dare not affirm. But I am conscious of having done every thing in my power to guard against it. The greater part of these papers have lain by me for several years. They i have been repeatedly perused by ſome of the acutest philosophers of the age, whom I have the honour to call my friends, and to whose advice and assistance, on this, as on other occasions, I am deeply indebted. I have availed myself all I could of reading and conversation; and endeavoured, with all the candour I am master of, to profit by every hint of improvement, and to examine to the bottom every objection , that others have offered, or myself could devise. And may I not be permitted to add, that every one of those who have perused this essay, has advised the author to publish it; and that many of them have encouraged him by this insinuation, to him the most flattering of all others, That by so doing, he would probably be of some service to the cause of truth, virtue, and mankind? In this hope he submits it to the public. And it is this hope only that could have induced him to attempt polemical disquisition: a species of writing, which, in his own judgement, is not the most creditable; which he knows, to his cost, is not the most pleasing; and of which he is well aware that it will draw upon him the resentment of a numerous, powerful, and fashionable party. But, If these pages, which he hopes none will condemn who have not read, shall throw any light on the first principles of moral science; if they shall suggeſt, to the young and unwary, any cautions against that sophistry, and licentiousness of principle, which, too much infect the conversations and compositions of the age; if they shall, in any measure, contribute to the satisfaction of any of the friends of truth and virtue; his purpose will be completely answered  and he will, to the end of his life, rejoice in the recollection of those painful hours which he, passed in the examination of this most important controversy.--James Beattie [1770] 1774 (fifth corrected edition) An Essay on the Nature and Immutability of Truth in Opposition to Sophistry and Scepticism, Introduction 26-28

Beattie's response (recall) to Hume's racist footnote has been in the news recently (see this fine editorial by Robin Mills.) It is worth noting that Beattie's response to the infamous footnote is introduced as a "short digression" (p. 462 in the fifth edition) in which Beattie illustrates that he is "no blind admirer of antiquity." This digression occurs near the very end of the book (p.  483; in my edition there is also a formal postscript dated november 1770, which sheds much light on Beattie's thinking.) And in context of the digression, Hume is treated as a kind of misguided modern metaphysical scholastic in this sense as misguided as Aristotle. All of this occurs in a chapter that defends the idea that metaphysics is "something worthy of contempt or censure" (p. 396); and, after discussing Spinoza, Berkeley, and Mandeville, the main charge against Hume is that "every part of philosophy becomes metaphysics in his hands." (407) Since Hume has been successfully and repeatedly re-branded and presented as the fiercest and best critic of metaphysics for over a century now,* we should not expect Beattie's argument to be intelligible at once to any of us. But about Beattie's short digression some other time soon more.

Rather, here I want to call attention to the fact that Beattie introduces his Essay as a polemic ("polemical disquisition"). The quoted passage above are the closing lines of the introduction. And in fact, from what he says this polemic simmered for a long time ("have lain by me for several years"). In reading these lines by Beattie, I realized that I tend to think of polemics as of the moment and (thereby) intemperate. And in recognizing a species of writing as polemical, I am willing to discount certain argumentative short-cuts, rhetorical flights of fancy, or even a well-placed intellectual dagger. In my initial estimation, polemics are more like crimes of passion rather than careful (ahh) scientific treatises, or principles. 

But Beattie is explicit that a polemic can be well crafted, and re-crafted ("repeatedly"), and nursed over time in light of informed criticism by esteemed others. Now, the official aim of Beattie's Essay is to shed light on the "first principles of moral science" and to instruct the young away from sophistry and skepticism. And at this point the reader already knows that Beattie's target is Hume, whom he grants is an "excellent politician, financier, and historian." (17-18) And yet, Beattie also believes strongly, that "his philosophy has done great harm." (19)

Polemic is probably derived from πολεμικός (warlike or hostile). And the grounds for Beattie's hostility, the intellectual and moral grounds for his willingness to draw intellectual blood, his willingness to suffer a bad reputation, too, become clear throughout his Essay. He really thinks that Hume is an irresponsible philosopher who helps perpetuate and generate great moral harms in the world. 

But as Beattie must have felt, these moral and political reasons for Beattie's polemic do not explain its tenor. And by it, I mean the long simmering, carefully crafted, and polished nature of the work, which, after all, succeeded in eliciting from Hume, who momentarily dropped his mask of calm politeness, a vehement non-response. For, in the postscript, Beattie adds the following thought: "My design in the his book was, to give others the very same notions of the sceptical philosophy that I myself entertain." (507) And it is pretty clear that he "detests" the skeptical writings and "despises" their authors' "talents." But that's not all of it.

Beatty is a warm defender of "liberty of speech.'  (p. 513) And he is quite explicit long before Mill that banning even the most pernicious speech will do more "hurt than good," predictably benefitting the "party" that is being suppressed. (513) But Beattie thinks that one may oppose genuinely pernicious speech with other speech that intends to make the pernicious writings "detestable in the eyes of others." (515) And this is demanded from us as "good citizens." (p. 515)* Beattie recognizes there is a complex line between making writings detestable and making an author of such writings detestable. He prefers the former, but knows that involves something of the latter.

Let me wrap up. It's possible that Beattie is rationalizing or reconstructing his motives for writing his polemical, Essay. But his words ring true to me and explain, I think, some of his rhetorical and presentational choices (including his treatment of Hume's racism). I think he really does try to make Hume's position detestable (motivated from some principled duty as a citizen or, more likely, a deeper personal "disgust" (424).) In philosophy, Beattie's reputation has -- thanks to Kant's chiming in -- not fared well because of this until, perhaps, last week; because we now recognize he really spoke up against racism. (It's not ad hoc; he has a distinct argument about the role of modern philosophy in facilitating imperialism--about that some other time.) 

But here I want to leave you with a question: is he right that the institution of free speech can only be sustained if we see it as our duty not just to refute pernicious and false opinions, but to make them detestable to others? And if the answer is yes, we must craft within liberty of speech a space for a kind of war. 

 

On Quentin Skinner On the Practice Use of Historical Studies (I)

We ought, I think, to be prepared to ask ourselves quite aggressively what is supposed to be the practical use, here and now, of our historical studies. It has never seemed to me adequate to reply that they satisfy a natural curiosity, and it seems to me dangerously self-indulgent to suggest, as Lord Acton once did, that 'our studies ought to be all but purposeless', especially in a culture as committed as ours has become to a banausic view of 'relevance'. The accusation of antiquarianism is, in short, one that troubles me deeply, and it is one that all professional  historians ought, I think, to stand ready to answer, at least to the satisfaction of their own consciences. We must expect to be asked, and must not fail to ask ourselves, what is supposed to be the point of it all....

[O]ne of the ways - perhaps the only way - of improving our understanding will be to go back to the historical juncture at which this way of thinking about politics was first articulated and developed. We shall then be able to see how the concepts we still invoke were initially defined, what purposes they were intended to serve, what view of public power they were used to underpin. This in turn may enable us to acquire a self-conscious understanding of a set of concepts that we now employ unselfconsciously and, to some degree, even uncomprehendingly. It is arguable, in short, that we need to become intellectual historians if we are to make sense not merely of this but of many comparable aspects of our present moral and political world.
    This is hardly a new thought. It is the thought animating F. W. Maitland's last and most dazzling group of essays---Quentin Skinner, (1998) Liberty Before Liberalism, pp. 107-110

βαναυσικός can be translated as 'pertaining to mechanics.' In English 'banausic' seems to have been coined as a pejorative in the middle of the nineteenth century (see here); this reflecting aristocratic prejudice. But is pretty clear that Skinner means to say that in our culture 'relevance' has a kind of practical or mundane sense. And, while he may well feel some regret over this fact, he seems to use 'banausic' in neutral fashion. It is noticeable that dictionaries often use 'utilitarian' when explaining banausic; because part of the overall argument of the book is that the purportedly liberal utilitarians (from Paley to Sidgwick) have displaced the neo-roman sense of liberty with a different sense by using less than fully convincing arguments.+ 

After rejecting pure antiquarianism -- a charge that arises from Skinner's early work -- and an "essentially aesthetic" (p. 107) justification for engaging in historical studies, Skinner takes up a practical justification for historical studies in his extended version of his justly famous (1997) inaugural lecture. He is unusually forthright, perhaps historicist, in suggesting that in our culture* antiquarianism (and aesthetics, perhaps) are not properly self-justifying. Strikingly, Skinner does not claim to be offering a justification to the wider or interested public (of the sort rejected recently (recall here) by Zena Hitz (and her book)), but rather he hopes to craft a response that can convince the "consciences" of his fellow "professional historians." Skinner leaves it to the reader to figure out what standards of judgment enter into such disciplined conscience.

Part of the answer can be found in the second half of the passage I quoted above. The point of historical practice of intellectual historians is to generate a species of  "self-conscious understanding of a set of concepts that we now employ unselfconsciously." This is rather Socratic. Skinner wishes to provide a form of self-understanding of (to switch to Wittgenstein) fundamental concepts habituated in our form of life and, then, indirectly, to make questioning of these forms of life possible.* (I return to my 'indirectly' below.)

Skinner is cautious in the way he conveys the questioning part. He explicitly distances himself from moralising historians, who are likely to be enthusiasts or indignant when "surveying the crimes, follies, and misfortunes of mankind." (p 118) He prefers the "aloof" kind of historian. Yet, he also suggests that in our status quo, we do not understand our most fundamental concepts; we deploy them 'unselfconsciously" and "most of us do not know" what some of these may mean. (p. 109). It is worth remarking that it is left unclear if this is a typically liberal disease or, as seems more likely, a perennial, or durable, feature of political life. 

So, the task of the professional historian, who wishes to improve thinking about politics for most of us not in the know, is to remove the pervasive ignorance about core even hegemonic  (p. 117) moral and political concepts. So, while the justification is offered to fellow historians, it is the many, or the public, which is supposed to benefit from the exercise. One cannot help admire such philanthropic impulse!

Above I used 'indirectly' because while Skinner leaves no doubt that he thinks that within "the traditions of thought about the character of the liberal state" (p. 119), the arguments that displaced the neo-roman conception of liberty are based on fallacious reasoning; at one point he claims that "the conclusion has already been inserted into the premise." (p. 115)).+ Despite exposing the argumentative flaws in a certain kind of liberal self-understanding (recall), he leaves it to the reader's autonomous, ruminating (120) judgment to decide whether the past choices "between different possible worlds" (p. 117) were right. So, the professional historian exercises vocational self-command. 

Since Skinner is a celebrated and much admired historian of our age, we can say that he has found a way to question moral and political pieties without attracting Socratic notoriety. Perhaps, this indifference to such foundational challenge is characteristic of liberal society.

I close with two thoughts. First, Skinner very adroitly prevents a certain kind of philosopher, who thinks the origin of concepts is irrelevant to present self-understanding, of raising the genetic fallacy. Skinner claims that by retracing concepts to their first definitions and use may help uncover what is now in some sense suppressed from us (recall: "how the concepts we still invoke were initially defined, what purposes they were intended to serve, what view of public power they were used to underpin. This in turn may enable us to acquire a self-conscious understanding of a set of concepts that we now employ unselfconsciously and, to some degree, even uncomprehendingly.")

Skinner doesn't offer us an argument why this is the best or the only way toward self-understanding (which he need not insist on); nor does he explain how this is supposed to work at an abstract level. He does not need to explain it because he has just exhibited/shown it in the book. I agree firmly with Skinner (who explicitly associates this with Foucaultian "archaeological analysis" (112)) that returning to the historical moment when concepts enter into practice/fashion is often very illuminating on the possibility spaces they help open up, and foreclose; and so heartily endorse his practice. This is because when concepts are first introduced, and the principles they animate, they are often explicated and contested by those who understand the foreseeable effects of uptake. This helps shed light on how concepts become part of an "ideology" (23; 59; 77) or life-affirming practice.

Second, one may wonder whether removing the lack of ignorance about core moral political concepts and principles improves thinking about politics. I am not here questioning the Enlightenment faith that removal of ignorance is conducive to better thought in some sense. Rather, what I have in mind is something more roundabout. Skinner explicitly endorses Pocock's idea that what is revealed by the "intellectual" historian (101) is "the changing political languages in which societies talk to themselves." (p. 105) One can agree that Namier's position -- that is, that how we talk politically acts "as the merest ex post facto rationalisations of political behaviour" -- is undoubtedly too narrow an understanding of such talk. Skinner is right to object to this because what one might wish "to legitimise [politically]...depends on what courses of action you can plausibly range under existing normative principles." (p. 105) 

But he then goes on to claim that "professed principles...will nevertheless help to shape and limit what lines of action you can successfully pursue." (p. 105) Let's grant that this is so in some great political cultures which have a juridical sensibility. Even so, this is a peculiar claim.** I do not just mean that wholly new principles may be invented or old ones reinterpreted to legitimate and even explicate the manner of success of actions after the fact (as Namier suggested), but rather, and more importantly for one's craft as political philosopher, that in order to grasp the nature of politics we must leave open the possibility of actions devoid of legitimacy and ungrounded in principles, and yet successful, even necessary, after a fashion. 

 

14 February 1979: Foucault's Polemics with 'the Left' (XVII)

When you talk about contemporary neoliberalism, whether German or any other kind, you generally get three types of response.

The first is that from the economic point of view neo-liberalism is no more than the reactivation of old, secondhand economic theories.
The second is that from the sociological point of view it is just a way of establishing strictly market relations in society.
And finally, the third response is that from a political point of view neo-liberalism is no more than a cover for a generalized administrative intervention by the state which is all the more profound for being insidious and hidden beneath the appearances of a neo-liberalism.
You can see that these three types of response ultimately make neoliberalism out to be nothing at all, or anyway, nothing but always the same thing, and always the same thing but worse. That is to say: it is just Adam Smith revived; second, it is the market society that was decoded and denounced in Book I of Capital; and third, it is the generalization of state power, that is to say, it is Solzhenitsyn on a world scale.

Adam Smith, Marx, Solzhenitsyn, laissez-faire; society of the market and spectacle, the world of the concentration camp and the Gulag: broadly speaking these are the three analytical and critical frameworks with which this problem of neo-liberalism is usually approached, and which therefore enable it to be turned into practically nothing at all, repeating the same type of critique for two hundred, one hundred, or ten years. Now what I would like to show you is precisely that neo-liberalism is really something else.--Michel Foucault, 14 February 1979,  translated by Graham Burchell, Lecture 6, The Birth of Biopolitics. 129-130.

In lecture five, Foucault had identified Marcuse's criticism of capitalism with Sombart's. Foucault is disparaging about the line of argument ("confused"), and, more striking yet, had claimed that the Nazis had appropriated it; and "indeed in opposition to this destruction of society by the [capitalist]* economy and state that the Nazis proposed to do what they wished to do." (114) The claim is rather damning toward Marcuse because in his own voice, Foucault describes Sombart's voyage (not unfairly) from "quasi-Marxism to quasi-Nazism." (113) So, one way to understand Foucault's criticism of Marcuse, is not just that his criticism is old-fashioned, but the criticism is of a dangerous sort: in its diagnosis it contributes to the very problem it wishes to analyze.

So, lurking here (recall this post drawing on ideas by Niko Kolodny) are ideas about responsible speech and a polemic -- calling somebody a fellow traveler of Nazism counts as polemic -- about how to criticize and engage with liberalism and neoliberalism. That is to say, in addition to the complex positive argument of Birth of Biopolitics, which I have argued is itself a contribution to the liberal art of government, there is lurking a polemic against a bad style of criticizing liberalism in virtue of this criticism contributing to a species of totalitarian thought. And so, the lectures ask us to consider it as an exemplary form of responsible speech.

At the start of lecture six, in the passage quoted above, he addresses what we might call the general culture of anti-liberalism in certain circles. I actually think Foucault reveals some of his irritation because while his sense is clear he literally contradicts himself (e.g, X is nothing and simultaneously X is bad). The three kinds of criticism he rejects all end up flattening liberalism,  and turn 'neoliberalism' merely into a word of disapproval. 

As an aside, it is a bit sad that these lectures were only published in 2004 (in French) and in translation in 2008. For, the problem he identifies is extremely visible, as I documented, in David Harvey's very influential (2005) A brief History of Neoliberalism. I am not suggesting Harvey would have felt obliged to take on board Foucault's reservations, but given the celebrity of Foucault he or his reviewers might have responded to them.  Having said that, and this returns me to the fifth and sixth lectures, the enduringness of the anti-liberal tropes in a certain part of the 'Left' suggests it would have made little difference. Because we don't get Foucault's thoughts on why the tropes endure I leave it at that here.

With the critique of Marcuse in the background, we can discern that Foucault is making four critical claims about the three kinds purported critical analyses of liberalism. First, they are false. Liberalism "is really something else."* They fail to grasp liberalism in its historical specificity and its evolution. The whole Birth of Biopolitics is meant to support this claim. Second, the criticisms are intellectually lazy because merely repetition. And again, the lectures show what would be required to begin to engage with the details of liberalism. (As regular readers know, I am trying to keep track critically of this feature of the lectures in these digressions.) Third, the standard criticisms of liberalisms contribute to a culture that makes Nazism if not possible, at least appear more legitimate. Here, Foucault comes extremely close to accepting (recall this post on the road to serfdom thesis as an ideal type) the ORDO interpretation of history. And it is, I think, among the best evidence for recent interpretations of Foucault as a kind of fellow-traveler of neoliberalism. Fourth, the standard criticisms are analytically useless (because they flatten what needs to be explored in detail).

It is pretty clear that in addition to Marcuse, Foucault has his sights on the style of criticism of liberalism made popular (recall) by Karl Polanyi (recall also this post, in particular, on the Mises-Polanyi debate). Strikingly, Karl Polanyi is never mentioned in the lectures, while his brother is. This Foucault-ian criticism of Polanyi has recently been articulated in impressive fashion by Melinda Cooper in (2017) Family Values, itself an impressive contribution to the critical study of neoliberalism. She is a lot more critical than Foucault is (recall here; and with modest criticism here). The not naming, other than Marcuse, of targets -- undoubtedly lots of bien-pensant French intellectuals are included -- makes this feature of the lectures a bit frustrating to the later historian.+

One final point on the third criticism. In the fourth lecture, Foucault had (recall) already offered a searing criticism of Marxism as lacking an art of government. What he adds here, is that in its modern guise, it inspires an insipid and dangerous criticism of liberalism in which neoliberalism is just a cover, a masquerade, for a kind of totalitarian form of oppression (cf. Harvey). Rather than being informative this makes it impossible to make important distinctions.** And, if I understand Foucault correctly, the failure to make such distinctions contributes to making a Nazi culture possible. We might say that Ernst Thälmann's tendency to treat the Social Democrats as the real enemy is illustrative of the dangers of such a failure in thought. I am pretty sure -- and this is speculative -- that this is why Foucault doesn't even mention Pinochet (then fresh in memory). And treats the dangers of liberalism's flirtation with benevolent despots (recall for example lecture 3) in terms of the (more distant) physiocrats. 

The question is whether Foucault's point generalizes. As noted above, and as he rightly notes ORDO-liberal thought embraces, as an ideal type, a road to serfdom thesis in which lots of social phenomena are symptoms of, and simultaneously with "internal necessity" (111) contribute to, the rise of Nazism. If Foucault thinks the criticism generalizes, then this, too, is one of his targets. (I think this only gets addressed in the final lecture(s)--stay tuned!) And what is at stake here, is the general utility of the manner in which Weberian ideal types are deployed in (German) social science of the twentieth century.++

Seneca on Slavery, and Political Fortune (Letter 47)

Fortune has the same claim on [licere] slaves and free men alike... Kindly remember that he whom you call your slave sprang from the same seed, is smiled upon by the same skies, and on equal terms with yourself breathes, lives, and dies! [ex isdem seminibus ortum eodem frui caelo, aeque spirare, aeque vivere, aeque mori!] It is just as possible for you to see in him a free-born man as for him to see in you a slave. As a result of the massacres in Marius's day, many a man of distinguished birth, who was taking the first steps toward senatorial rank by service in the army, was humbled by fortune, one becoming a shepherd, another a caretaker of a country cottage...I propose to value them according to their character, and not according to their duties. Each man acquires his character for himself, but accident assigns his duties. [Non ministeriis illos aestimabo sed moribus: sibi quisque dat mores, ministeria casus assignat.]...Show me a man who is not a slave; one is a slave to lust, another to greed, another to ambition, and all men are slaves to fear. [Ostende quis non sit: alius libidini servit, alius avaritiae, alius ambitioni, <omnes spei>, omnes timori.]-Seneca, Letter 47, Translated by Richard Mott Gummere (with minor corrections).

To simplify, we can identify two distinct ways of thinking about slavery in Plato and Aristotle. First, in Aristotle, what we may call authentic slavery maps onto an innate hierarchy of human beings. This kind of view was trotted out in the Spanish conquest of the Americas and, drawing on new iterations in Hume and Montesquieu, still popular in the eighteenth century United Kingdom.

Second, Iin Plato (who, of course, was no stranger to views on natural hierarchy), slavery is a kind of retributive punishment for defeat in aggressive war. And one finds a similar, but more Lockean version of the argument, in  the quite egalitarian and even severe critics of slavery like Cugoano. Having said that, Plato's Socrates (see here and here) clearly circumscribes slavery for those who are from the stock of would-be-permanent-enemies and tries to rule it out among the (Greek)  would-be-permanent-friends. Would be permanent friends are not rooted in human nature, but in the more conventional barriers that separate peoples.*

Third, Seneca (recall Letter 44), embraces natural equality (in the sense of the methodological analytic egalitarian (MAE)), and clearly thinks there is no moral justification for slavery. But strikingly that does not lead him to abolition. It may be worth reflecting on why this is so.

The answer resides in disordered politics. Now, Seneca is explicit that politics is governed by fortune, which can strike anytime. And, in particular, anyone can be subjugated by it. Now, looking at today's headlines one need not be reminded of natural misfortune. But Senecal is treating natural and political misfortune on par; and in political struggle force is decisive. In one sense force does not respect morality. But in another sense it is also a great equalizer--all of us can be subject to it. So, force is the cause or mechanism by which fortune elevates or diminishes each of us. (Seneca even speaks of the wheel of fortune in his play Agamemnon.)

I use 'disordered' because in this very letter (47), Seneca also produces an image of ordered politics. This is possible, when force has settled the balance of power. Then power is channeled to structure order. This image is the patriarchal household (familiares and its father). This order is clearly intimate and habitual, but also hierarchical because in addition to a father it has servants/slaves. And, in fact, Letter 47, which is among the first 50 or so letters, quite lengthy, contains a mini treatise on household management, the art of orderly political leadership [for, "a household was a miniature commonwealth"] -- when the question of force is temporarily settled among moral equals who have been turned into political unequals. 

Because today's post is not on the art of statecraft, I ignore Seneca's teachings. But crucially even this mini-treatise, understands itself as idealized. It explicitly compares itself to the representation of the ancestral, patriarchal family life on the (dated) stage (mimis).+ And, even in this representation, the ordered hierarchy can -- not unlike in carnaval -- be overturned: "They allowed the slaves to attain honours in the household and to pronounce judgment." 

So, Seneca can't see a path toward abolition of slavery because he does not see a path toward the elimination of force as the ultimate decider in political life. And, so, political inequality -- and thereby a variety of servitudes -- is inevitable.

On Philosophy Being Political

The elimination of conscious fraud is seldom mentioned in formal discussions of the reasons for repetition in science. The quasi-mythological view that scientists are uniformly of higher moral standards than ordinary mortals is maintained, and subconscious bias is usually depended upon to explain the importance of independent repetition. To repeat, scientists are not much better than other men, and there certainly are at least a few among them who would fake experiments if there was something to be gained therefrom. The induced researcher has something to gain if he can get away with such a fraud. His income depends largely on the reputation he can develop, and this, in turn, depends on his “discoveries.” It is obviously easier to produce an important and exciting article if one simply invents the facts reported than if one is confined to reality. This being so, the prevention of fraud depends on a detection apparatus. Part of the detection apparatus involves repetition (Tullock The organization of inquiry [1966] 2005: 124).

Tullock considers economics, as we have seen, to be a discipline in which the possibility of concealment is greater than in what he calls science. Now, we consider what differential auditing possibilities do to Polanyi’s argument that scientific opinion is uniform. Long before Polanyi the uniformity of opinion had been viewed as a necessary condition for scientific status....

[In his 1962 “Republic of Science”] Polanyi asked what scientists believe and proposed that everyone believes the same thing. How could this be? With the division of labor, scientists in one specialization have no competence in another so why the unanimity? Polanyi appealed to an overlapping neighborhood of competence by which all problems in science is connected....All Polanyi needs is transparency.
Characterizing Polanyi’s argument as a special case of Longfield’s argument shows that we can use one principle to analyze the intra-community connections. This will be enormously helpful because the machinery which has been set in motion for one community can be applied to the other. Thus, [Adam] Smith himself discussed how monopolies form and create inequality within the labor market. A group keeping others out can enrich themselves. If we can move the argument across communities, what does monopolization look like among experts? We are using “experts” because following Tullock, we do not know whether they are “scientists” until we know something about the institutional structure in which they function.
Tullock, when he rehearses Polanyi’s argument, silently provides the missing step and thus fails to impress his delightful cleverness on the reader. To make the overlapping competence argument work, there must be data audits, results must be checked. He says this over and over again. This distinguishes economics and science. As Tullock writes, economics allows concealment. Therefore economics allows factions and it doesn’t have the Polanyi efficiency properties. Sandra J. Peart & David M. Levy (2012) "Tullock on motivated inquiry: expert-induced uncertainty disguised as risk," Public Choice, 171-3

The quoted paragraphs is from a paper, even research program, methodological analytic egalitarianism, that (as regular readers know) has long influenced me. I was inspired to go back to it by Liam Kofi Bright's recent, interesting argument that "all philosophy is political is a trivial consequence of the more interesting fact that all inquiry is...united." [HT Dailynous] Drawing on Neurath, Bright argues this unity is a regulative or normative ideal, "it is an achievement to be won, not a fact to be granted." Neurath's argument is also a bit self-interested because within the division of scientific labor, it gives philosophers, a new kind of philosopher, a special role, of (linguistic/conceptual) orchestration. (See here; I link to this piece because Neurath is especially clear about the anti-totalitarian political significance of the program.) Uncharacterstically, Bright does not quite mention this, but the general gist is clear from his presentation:

The unity of science consists in the fact that we may potentially bring the results, methods, and fruits of inquiry in one field to bear on all others, providing we take the time to formulate our claims in a way that can be mutually understood, and are sufficiently clear in stating logical or evidential relations. The unity of science is thus a kind of consequence of the attitude of seeking to be clear and assist one another.*

If it is remembered that 'We' here is 'we [new] philosophers' Bright's position is echt Neurathian. If the 'we' here is all of of us engaged in science, Bright has subtly added a set of virtues some epistemic some social to the practice of all science. Notice, and Bright is very good on this, that even if one rejects some such normative unity program, the attitude is useful because "we cannot ever rule out the potential relevance of any one field of inquiry to another." Bright gives some cute historical examples. I would just add that anybody who is engaged in debates in contemporary climate science will be struck how many different,and different kinds of sciences are brought to bear on each other all the time. So far so good.

Now, here's my observation, if we think of different sciences also as reflecting different interests, then we should not automatically assume that when two sciences are brought in communication/trade with each other they will automatically agree. As Max Weber pointed out, pluralism is a consequence of the division of labor and differentiated interests. It is, thus, to be expected that when two sciences or sub-fields within a discipline/science are made to communicate some disagreement is to be expected. (Obviously, it does not follow there will always be disagreement or even most of the time.) The claim in this paragraph is strengthened, perhaps a trivial consequence, of the idea that not all sciences rely solely on epistemic commitments (see Heather Douglas' now classic book). 

Of course, if we think of the ways in which sciences are brought to bear on each other, it is quite possible to come to agreement either by creating a third new science (which may well has its task of figuring out the discrepancies between the two sciences) or by transformation of one of the sciences (in dialogue with each other). [If you think not all disciplines are science, then follow Peart/Levy and substitute expert-disciplines where necessary!] This sounds abstract, but actually happens quite a bit in the history of science. 

I put the Tullock in, in part, to show that Tullock anticipates the debates over the replication crisis (in some bits of the academy) by several decades. And that is I want to strengthen Bright's argument (in his spirit, see here) by suggesting that even if one is doubtful of the desirability or feasibility of general unity of science that he (and I, with slightly different sensibility) embraces, there are additional reasons to embrace the idea of leaving room to keeping open, '"the potential relevance of any one field of inquiry to another." It reduces the incentives and possibilities for fraud and rents for members of autonomous disciplines. As we have seen, that is not just a hypothetical possibility.

But, and here I close, the idea of intellectual even disciplinary autonomy is very much part of the DNA of philosophy, perhaps uniquely so (with exception of 'pure' math) [recall this old post on Williamson]. To be an intellectual self-legislator, to have autonomous/foundational or self-sufficient reason, is an ideal that is a permanent temptation for philosophers (in ways not so for other disciplines within the division of intellectual labor)--go read Descartes, or even Kant. I think it is some such ideal that makes some philosophers also uneasy about the very idea of (what I call) a philosophical politics within philosophy or in its relationships with other disciplines. The Neurathian offers orchestration (and its modern successors) as a consolation prize to them (if orchestration seems like the wrong way to go, then see the program of synthetic philosophy!)

Of course, the would be autonomous philosopher can refuse to allow his philosophy to be scrutinized by outsiders. (Just as not all offers to trade are accepted.) The risk of such hermeticisms, of thinking philosophy pure and untainted by politics, is, in fact, to make philosophy a hiding place for charlatans and cultists.  It is amusing to see my own ilk, analytic philosophers embracing that risk.

 

 

On the Philosophical Attack on Heritable Intellectual Rank

If there is any good in philosophy, it is this, – that it never looks into pedigrees. All men, if traced back to their original source, spring from the gods....[a] noble mind is free to all men; according to this test, we may all gain distinction. Philosophy neither rejects nor selects anyone; its light shines for all. Socrates was no aristocrat. Cleanthes worked at a well and served as a hired man watering a garden. Philosophy did not find Plato already a nobleman; it made him one. Why then should you despair of becoming able to rank with men like these? They are all your ancestors, if you conduct yourself in a manner worthy of them; and you will do so if you convince yourself at the outset that no man outdoes you in real nobility. We have all had the same number of forefathers; there is no man whose first beginning does not transcend memory. Plato says: "Every king springs from a race of slaves, and every slave has had kings among his ancestors." The flight of time, with its vicissitudes, has jumbled all such things together, and Fortune has turned them upside down. Then who is well-born? He who is by nature well fitted for virtue. That is the one point to be considered; otherwise, if you hark back to antiquity, every one traces back to a date before which there is nothing. From the earliest beginnings of the universe to the present time, we have been led forward out of origins that were alternately illustrious and ignoble. A hall full of smoke-begrimed busts does not make the nobleman. No past life has been lived to lend us glory, and that which has existed before us is not ours; the soul alone renders us noble, and it may rise superior to Fortune out of any earlier condition, no matter what that condition has been.

Suppose, then, that you were not a Roman knight, but a freedman, you might nevertheless by your own efforts come to be the only free man amid a throng of gentlemen. "How?" you ask. Simply by distinguishing between good and bad things without patterning your opinion from the populace. You should look, not to the source from which these things come, but to the goal towards which they tend. --Seneca, Letter 44 Translated by Richard Mott Gummere.

In Morgenröte, Nietzsche treats the invention of Darwinism as the undoing of heritable grandeur, "This however has now become a forbidden path for the ape stands at its entrance and likewise other fearsome animals grinning knowingly as if to say: no further this way!" But as Seneca reminds us, one does not need Darwinsim to make the argument. There are five  key features of Seneca's argument: first, the argument relies on a distinction between what we may call history and pre-history (or the unreliable past). If you think this distinction is too anachronistic, recall this post, prompted by Adrienne Mayor, on the  nature of deep time in Ancient Greek thought. Because of the existence of pre-history, the origin and hence purity of no lineage is secure. This, second, relies on the idea that a noble-making character of the lineage is essential to the lineage and gets handed down through the lineage. The existence of pre-history makes all lineages epistemically suspect hostage to fortune.* In addition, third, and this is more of an empirical claim, what we know of human nature, all lineages will contain the ignoble. Fourth, he relies on the idea, one we have seen him develop through all the Letters, that there is no property right in the truly noble. While his sages have a certain amount of individuality -- given their differing circumstances -- the noble, which instantiates the infinite, lacks individuality (recall letter 3).

Finally, and fifth, he relies on the idea that superior qualities can be caused by a chain of inferior qualities. This point is notable because it goes against the idea -- familiar to modern readers from Descartes's Meditations (but often associated with a species of Platonism) -- that what is more perfect — that is, contains in itself more reality — cannot arise from what is less perfect. But Seneca clearly thinks this would involve one in a kind of genetic fallacy (You should look, not to the source from which these things come, but to the goal towards which they tend.). While the past is full of excellent exemplars, natural genealogy has no special status 

Seneca here anticipates the Hobbesian and Smithian idea that one is not a philosopher by nature, but that one is made into a philosopher. From this vantage point all are noble [omnes...hoc sumus nobiles] or at least capable of attaining it.+ (This is a core commitment of what I call methodological analytic egalitarianism) Now, as David Levy and Sandra Peart always insist to me, that a Stoic is in some sense a radical egalitarian is no surprise (given the known radical strain of early Stoicism--I warmly recommend René Brouwer's book). But Seneca insists that the point can also be found in Plato. This is a bit more surprising because while Plato is not Aristotle (think natural slaves/rulers), Plato tends to be associated with the idea that there is a hierarchy of human types (and  philosophers can be bred accordingly). Sometimes Plato presents  as thinking that natural hierarchy can be irrelevant politically or morally (see this post for some of these claims). This got me curious about the passage quoted by Seneca. (A helpful note by the translator directed me to the Theatetus): 

Hence it is, my friend, such a man, both in private, when he meets with individuals, and in public, as I said in the beginning, [174c] when he is obliged to speak in court or elsewhere about the things at his feet and before his eyes, is a laughing-stock not only to Thracian girls but to the multitude in general, for he [like Thales] falls into pits and all sorts of perplexities through inexperience, and his awkwardness is terrible, making him seem a fool; for when it comes to abusing people he has no personal abuse to offer against anyone, because he knows no evil of any man, never having cared for such things; so his perplexity makes him appear ridiculous; and as to laudatory speeches [174d] and the boastings of others, it becomes manifest that he is laughing at them—not pretending to laugh, but really laughing—and so he is thought to be a fool. When he hears a panegyric of a despot or a king he fancies he is listening to the praises of some herdsman—a swineherd, a shepherd, or a neatherd, for instance—who gets much milk from his beasts; but he thinks that the ruler tends and milks a more perverse and treacherous creature than the herdsmen, and that he must grow coarse and uncivilized, [174e] no less than they, for he has no leisure and lives surrounded by a wall, as the herdsmen live in their mountain pens. And when he hears that someone is amazingly rich, because he owns ten thousand acres of land or more, to him, accustomed as he is to think of the whole earth, this seems very little. And when people sing the praises of lineage and say someone is of noble birth, because he can show seven wealthy ancestors, he thinks that such praises betray an altogether dull and narrow vision on the part of those who utter them; because of lack of education they cannot keep their eyes fixed upon the whole and are unable to calculate that every man has had countless thousands of ancestors and progenitors, among whom have been in any instance rich and poor, kings and slaves, barbarians and Greeks. And when people pride themselves on a list of twenty-five ancestors and trace their pedigree back to Heracles, the son of Amphitryon, the pettiness of their ideas seems absurd to him; he laughs at them because they cannot free their silly minds of vanity by calculating that [175b] Amphitryon's twenty-fifth ancestor was such as fortune happened to make him, and the fiftieth for that matter. In all these cases the philosopher is derided by the common herd, partly because he seems to be contemptuous, partly because he is ignorant of common things and is always in perplexity. Plato Theaetetus translated by Harold N. Fowler. C 

Regular readers know I have a minor obsession about the representation of Thales at the origin of philosophy (recall here; here; here; here); even in scholarship, and also here). And so re-reading this familiar passage -- which so clearly articulates the tense relationship between philosophy and ordinary opinion/commitments [i call that the Socratic Problem; see here]-- in light of Seneca came as a shock to me. For, indeed, Socrates here ruthlessly attacks the idea of nobility by birth as alien to a truly philosophical mind.+ And Socrates' argument anticipates Seneca's in claiming that all lineages are impure: the products of mixture and extremely long chains themselves the product of fortune.*

Seneca, of course, invokes Socrates and Cleanthes as intellectual exemplars. And he implies that Socrates supports his argument that it is constitutive of philosophy to reject inherited social distinctions, including ones based on ethnicity, as relevant to evaluations of philosophical distinction.** I am inclined to think Seneca is right here. And so while there are original sins in the Platonic tradition of philosophy -- its hostility toward rustic wisdom is one --, its known origins (see what I did there?) also point the way toward some noble commitments. 

 

On Callard on Taste, and Badness-promotion

We tend to think of aesthetic disputes as reflecting the least substantive differences between people—you like vanilla, I like chocolate, there’s no arguing over taste, let’s move on. But that point of view may be infected by the wishful thinking of backwards argumentation: given that there is no arguing over taste, those differences had better be unimportant. What if some of them are not?

Consider the fact that the most passionate friendships—those of youth—tend to coalesce around aesthetic passions: movies, music, comics, games. When you meet a stranger and you “click” with them, isn’t it very often because you liked the same book, or movie, or fell in love with the same city or language or artist? Consider real gift-giving, which involves pre-selecting the recipient, by contrast with the self-selection of “whoever might pass by and want it.” Meaningful, personalized gifts tend to succeed precisely when there is some shared aesthetic between the giver and recipient.

...It is striking that Socrates lumps together ethics and aesthetics as the two sources of strife.

The history of ethical thought is a record of the attempt to insert a wedge between those last two kinds of judgments. In both cases, we’ve worked to turn down the heat, but in the aesthetic case it’s by agreeing to disagree, whereas in the moral one it’s by way of the conceit that some kind of unified moral theory—be it Kantianism or Consequentialism—can serve as backdrop for adjudicating all disputes. We can just “weigh” the reasons and see who is “objectively” right and who is “objectively” wrong. In aesthetics we don’t need objectivity and in morality we can have it: strife solved.

I believe there is no scale that resolves all moral disagreements, and that it is not always possible to agree to disagree about the beautiful and the ugly. These claims are not unrelated to one another, or to the fact that the aesthetic and the moral are not as separate as we would like to believe.

I find guns ugly; the gun enthusiasts I know find them beautiful. I find meat delicious; many vegetarians I know have a distaste for it. Whether the ethics drives the aesthetics or vice versa, once they have fused it is to be expected that some of the recalcitrance of a person’s ethical “intuitions” will be due to the fact that they are also visceral aesthetic responses. We pick our friends as much by the contents of their playlists as the contents of their characters—perhaps because we see the contents of their playlists as a not insubstantial part of the contents of their characters.

It is, of course, ridiculous of me to hate the person who gave me that silly bowl, just as it is ridiculous of you to hate the bearded hipster, or the backwoods redneck, or the sleek businessman, or the unwashed hippie, or whichever “type” of person strikes you as having contemptibly bad taste. When political disputes fall along cultural and geographic lines, as they do in our country, it’s hard not to suspect that the divide is as much about aesthetics as about ethics.

The fact that at some fundamental level we remain on the same page—life, liberty, the pursuit of happiness, etc.—is not necessarily cause for much optimism. When it is in the aesthetic dimension that people drift apart from one another, the rift between them is not very amenable to rational persuasion. We Americans have become multiple nations in taste.

An aesthetic divide between two human beings is not trivial; it obstructs their ethical relations. The earth-mother aesthetic encoded in the belly bowl ran counter to my vision of parenting a newborn, which involved no breastfeeding, no cloth-diapering, no co-sleeping. If I leave that bowl in the entryway, I am doing so with the hopes of establishing an ethical connection—benefaction—to someone solely on the grounds of a fundamental aesthetic divide. The person who picks up such a bowl is a “different kind of person” from me. I have no doubt that, were I to meet her, I’d find some common ground, but one thing that can’t serve as that common ground is the fact that my trash is her treasure. Or so I saw it.

Ben saw things more amicably. While granting to me the existence of aesthetic divides so profound as to occasion moral offense, he didn’t think the tackiness of the bowl qualified. He asked me to take a step back: surely I wouldn’t want to live in a world of monolithic aesthetic taste. The plurality of aesthetic points of view is a product of the genuine diversity between human beings, and the fact that they are free to judge for themselves what appeals to them. It should occasion respect, not contempt.

But there is a fine line between respecting others’ right to their bad taste, and opting to participate in it. Ben saw that participation from a bird’s eye-view, as autonomy-promotion: helping people enjoy whatever they might like. I saw it from the ground-up, in terms of badness-promotion. The question here is the degree to which peoples’ inability to see eye-to-eye is itself something they can see eye-to-eye about. Is there a way to adjudicate this disagreement between Ben and me? Or is it a difference in taste?--Agnes Callard "Do you want my garbage?"  @The Point. [HT Dailynous]

Agnes Callard is a distinctive and ambitious, fresh voice writing for a wider audience without pandering to the "many." Since there are few of these in the profession, this is very welcome. I use 'ambitious' because she is willing, as the post above suggests, to present herself as speaking to and on behalf of a much larger national 'we' even if, perhaps, especially when, she is being a contrarian. This latter feature was on display in one of her other pieces this past week, which appeared in the New York Times, and (alas) got lots more attention (see for example here).

I thought her NYT piece conflated the pure (politics free) form of philosophy with the institution of professional philosophy where (what I call) a species of philosophical politics is inevitable even as a means to improve philosophy (for, an example, recall this post on David Lewis). In it, she also stipulates (without argument) that philosophical teaching/influencing is about bringing other "people to believe only what they, by their own lights, can see to be justified."  

Now, one feature of professional philosophy I am attracted to emotionally is our freedom to criticize. And when I reflected on today's Digression the nuggets in the previous paragraph where going to be its fuel. But I have come to think that our professional practices overvalue criticism and discourage us to seek out the lovely and handsome in other philosophers.* And, in fact, the part of me that admires Callard is not her persuasiveness, rhetorical or argumentative, if any, but her ability to raise significant questions in a playful-serious way.+ And she does so in virtue of her clear willingness not to see certain alternatives. 

Take, for example, the gun case. This will illustrate both what I mean by a willingness not to see (in this case, it's my limitation), and something about her ruling out. I can find guns aesthetically pleasing objects. The aesthetic involved is one my eighteenth century teachers would call 'fit.' Often it is not solely fit; the beautiful guns draw on other aesthetic features (including speed, a certain kind of faux sexuality, and shininess, precision, etc.). I do so by taking a certain stance toward guns; the one that screens off the gruesomeness of the effects. There is nothing ennobling about hunting or killing people. But I think it's possible, genuinely possible, to admire guns and wish to see them banned. Quite clearly, if I allowed myself to see the gruesomeness of the effect(s), the aesthetic valence of guns might, gestalt-like, change as it clearly does for Callard. But it is not impossible that the gruesomeness would (if one has a Goth sensibility) enhance the aesthetic value. After all, sometimes a joke is funny because it is, in part, in bad taste (for more reflections on that issue see here).

It is possible that the last two sentences reflect, as I imagine Callard would say, a defect of character (in me).  And what I like about her public persona is this very puritanical strain in her [to be contrasted with the amicable], which can be grounded in her sensibility of disgust (read the full essay to grasp what I am talking about it) and then seeks to justify the actions that follow from this sensibility (without, I note, trying to come to grips with her disgust).** I tend to find such sensibility comical in one off situations, yet when others aim to live up to it consistently (and so exhibit integrity), admirable, too. I think we can be plastic about our evaluative criteria depending on extremely minor variations in context. (So, yes, one can value another's integrity, while being a situationist oneself.) 

Of course, she may think the flaw in position may not be of character at all. She may think I mistakenly keep distinct, aesthetic and ethic, that are simply intertwined. (But my appeal to the aesthetic quality of the gruesome is meant to illustrate that I do no such thing.)

Even so, my preference for Callard is not just aesthetic, it's also substantive. She is right to call attention to the significance of aesthetics in our lives, our friendships, and our politics. For example, one cannot understand the grip Trump has on his followers if one ignores aesthetics (recall here and here).++  

She is right that the unwillingness to discuss taste is no evidence for its lack of significance in our lives. But it is surprising she does not note that the silence on difference of taste functions like a taboo (recal and here). As she recognizes it clearly prevents social conflict. And since she grants that it is very possible that aesthetic matters themselves are foundational, these conflicts could not be adjudicated by any arbiter. 

Or at least she invites us to consider that possibility. I am struck, amazed really, by the felt need of adjudication. If Ben and Agnes were in the situation in which a collective decision was necessary, then, indeed, adjudication would be required. But I don't see why one would have to force a decision, and not allow further discussion. 

What Callard does not seem to allow, perhaps cannot see, is that talking about differences in taste, to keep that conversation going despite one's differences (recall here and here) is itself, or can be, a joyful exercise. Adam Smith in presenting the exemplary nature of Hume's life, whose philosophical views he predicted would fail to persuade many, called this, with a nod to Addison and agreeing with Pope, a 'gaiety of temper.' It's an open question for me -- no really this is not an objection! -- if such a temper can facilitate Callard's wish to participate in badness-promotion. 

On (Lippmann and) Ignorant Voters

The hypothesis, which seems to me the most fertile, is that news and truth are not the same thing, and must be clearly distinguished. The function of news is to signalize an event, the function of truth is to bring to light the hidden facts, to set them into relation with each other, and make a picture of reality on which men can act....For the troubles of the press, like the troubles of representative government, be it territorial or functional, like the troubles of industry, be it capitalist, cooperative, or communist, go back to a common source: to the failure of self-governing people to transcend their casual experience and their prejudice, by inventing, creating, and organizing a machinery of knowledge. It is because they are compelled to act without a reliable picture of the world, that governments, schools, newspapers and churches make such small headway against the more obvious failings of democracy, against violent prejudice, apathy, preference for the curious trivial as against the dull important, and the hunger for sideshows and three legged calves. This is the primary defect of popular government, a defect inherent in its traditions, and all its other defects can, I believe, be traced to this one.--Walter Lippmann (1922) Public Opinion (Chapter 24, 228-230) 

As regular readers know, I think reflection on Walter Lippmann is important in present circumstances. He is one of the intellectual architects (recall) of what I call the second-wave of liberalism (1945-2008), which has been imploding during the last decade, and even was the proximate cause of the development of what came to be known as neo-liberalism. More subtly, his conception of the good society, which hearkens back to the (attractive) kind of liberalism of Adam Smith and Sophie de Grouchy, rejects both state neutrality and state-craft as soul-craft; the good society is one that has many morally salient characteristics (the people are flourishing and can lead lives of their own choosing without fear or coercion). To attain the good society, not unlike a medieval cathedral, is a multi-generational, collective project. There is a sense in which this is a religious project. But, probably unlike the cathedral, the path and the outcome of the good society is, due to the uncertainty generating conditions of modern life, full of surprises. 

One reason to return to Lippmann (not in order to agree -- he also has (recall) serious weaknesses --) is that, as  JohnDewey emphasizes, he understands the problem of voter ignorance not, as anti-democrats do, as a problem of other (not-so-smart or gripped by ideology) voters, but as a structural feature of the human condition. One need not agree with all of Lippmann's ways of articulating the situation, to see that the (Platonic) cave is the human condition in mass society. And to overcome such ignorance, here he anticipates Hanna Arendt, is a rare achievement to be found in, or (perhaps its better to say) produced by, a few institutions:  the law and science.

As an aside, Lippmann, who knew the press from within, is adamant that the press is even during the best of times and ownership structures not that kind of institution capable of reliable generating truth.* And, in fact, he claims that, when the press is conducive, it is often relying on the rule-following features of the administrative state. Importantly, his skepticism about the press' truth-conducive-ness does not entail that the press has no positive contributions to make to democratic life. (If he thought that, his life would be self-undermining in a very obvious ways.)

I do not think Lippmann's answer to the problem of voter ignorance is successful, but it was (judging by what happened next) very influential; and if not influential, at least prophetic. It is possible that by Lippmann's own standards his solution would be deemed successful because Lippmann's aspirations were (again noted by Dewey) were more ameliorative than utopian.  Lippmann's proposal has three central features: first, is to advocate for an expansion of the (meritocratic) bureaucratic state and infuse it with what he calls 'technical knowledge' that he associates with "statisticians, accountants, auditors, industrial counsellors, engineers of many species, scientific managers, personnel administrators, research men, "scientists," and sometimes just as plain private secretaries." (234) He thinks such technical knowledge can also be turned into an "experimental social science." (237)  The point, for Lippmann, is not that such technicians will run the show, but rather that they become embedded (as "permanent intelligence section") in all government apparatuses (nationally and locally). For, by definition, a technician is not the decision maker.+

A key second feature of his proposal is that there will be a permanent circulation of college graduates from universities, perhaps even a privileged 'national university' (247) recruited from government staff, into government; and technical, government bureaucrats returning regularly to train and teach at universities. This intellectual flow of human capital would itself (in part) constitute "political science" and, in turn, would "associated with politics in America."+ (In 1922 economics was not yet seen as the future queen of the social sciences.) Lippmann optimistically assumes that all of this can be done transparently and openly (246).  The third, key feature is to insist that any political decision must be channeled through a procedure that will involve the bringing to bear of technical expertise on a problem (e.g., 255). 

As an aside, Lippmann's account is clearly distinct from the (later) Hayekian narrative, which sees the rise of the bureaucratic, technocratic state as a consequence of the experience of (mobilization and) war-planning during WWI. Lippmann, by contrast, thinks that the rise of the technician in the great society is itself the consequence "of blind natural selection" (234); complex organizations faced with complex decision environments started to require technical expertise merely to help integrate the flow of data and to structure decision-making for the executive. One discerns in Lippmann that the problem of big data is a nineteenth century problem, and that to overcome it even in competitive markets, requires the rise of expertise within organizations.

Now, Lippmann is not unaware that there is a real risk the technocrats will quickly run the show and displace elected officials and electorate. His response to this is to insist on a stark distinction between executive and technical functions and to aim to align incentives between them properly. [242]+ Only this can keep the technician's disinterestedness in place. If such a distinction were to be maintained in practice, and an esprit de corps among the technical class could be cultivated, then his hope that there will be circumstances in which the presence of a class of technicians can even abolish partisanship would not be comical. I don't mean to suggest that Lippmann's proposal is impractical: it very much reflects reality inside important elements of the governance of the EU and the US Federal government. As Dewey discerned, Lippmann proposes what became a tool, even an effective technique of governance one that has undoubtedly helped reduce the catastrophic mistakes all political agents can make.**

I used the word 'comical.' Perhaps that's unfortunate.  For Lippmann's weakness is the weakness of much of twentieth century liberalism. We can discern in Lippmann a tendency toward consensus and de-politicization in thinking about politics. In his (1937) Good Society, he demands that politicians combine, in spirit, the temperament of a legislator and a judge (who is impartial, fair, temperate, etc.) As the earlier Public Opinion teaches, that aspiration would only be possible in reality if political life is not governed by opinion. But if that were possible, we wouldn't (recall) need democracy at all. 

 

 

On Originality in Philosophy

What seemingly unites commentaries to texts, annotated editions and translations or reviews is that they focus on the presentation of the ideas of others. Thus, my hunch is that we seem to think more highly of people presenting their own ideas than those presenting the ideas of others. In a recent blog post, Peter Adamson notes the following:

“Nowadays we respect the original, innovative thinker more than the careful interpreter. That is rather an anomaly, though. […]

[I]t was understood that commenting is itself a creative activity, which might involve giving improved arguments for a school’s positions, or subtle, previously overlooked readings of the text being commented upon.”

Looking at ancient, medieval and even early modern traditions, the obsession with what counts as originality is an anomaly indeed. I say “obsession” because this trend is quite harmful. Not only does it impoverish our philosophical knowledge and skills, it also destroys a necessary division of labour. Why on earth should every one of us toss out “original claims” by the minute? Why not think hard about what other people wrote for a change? Why not train your philosophical chops by doing a translation? Of course the idea that originality consists in expressing one’s own ideas is fallacious anyway, since thinking is dialogical. If we stop trying to understand and uncover other texts, outside of our paper culture, our thinking will become more and more self-referential and turn into a freely spinning wheel… I’m exaggerating of course, but perhaps only a bit. We don’t even need the medieval commentary traditions to remind ourselves. Just remember that it was, amongst other things, Chomsky’s review of Skinner that changed the field of linguistics. Today, writing reviews, working on editions and translations doesn’t get you a grant, let alone a job. While we desperately need new editions, translations and materials for research and teaching, these works are esteemed more like a pastime or retirement hobby.

Of course, many if not most of us know that this monoculture is problematic. I just don’t know how we got there that quickly. When I began to study, the work on editions and translations still seemed to flourish, at least in Germany. But it quickly died out, history of philosophy was abandoned or ‘integrated’ in positions in theoretical or practical philosophy, and many people who then worked very hard on the texts that are available in shiny editions are now without a job.

If we go on like this, we’ll soon find that no one will be able to read or work on past texts. We should then teach our students that real philosophy didn’t begin to evolve before 1970 anyway. Until it gets that bad I would plead for reintroducing a sensible division of labour, both in research and teaching. If you plan your assignments next time, don’t just offer your students to write an essay. Why not have them choose between an annotated translation, a careful commentary on a difficult passage or a review? Oh, of course, they may write an essay, too. But it’s just one of many philosophical genres, many more than I listed here.--Martin Lenz "Philosophical genres. A response to Peter Adamson"

Of course, quite a few people think little philosophy before 1970, and not much since it and, say, 1990, is worth reading. And, in fact, as long as you are in the grip of contemporary standards of rigor, much of the older work, and even quite a bit of the recent stuff, will seem comically badly argued. The few works to the contrary prove that ceteribus paribus in philosophy rigor is a function of the number of generations that have been permitted to develop a view/paradigm, distinction, position, etc.

Be that as it may, neither Lenz, in his response to Adamson (which is promoting a volume he edited on Averroes/Ibn Rushd--and which, amusingly, wishes to draw attention to his ample talents beyond being a skilled commentator),* nor Adamson, really historicize the shift away from valuing the skilled presentation and (re-)interpretation of other people's works to valuing originality and (somewhat less) individuality. So here goes (in a few hundred words):

It's common to credit Montaigne for introducing individuality/personality into philosophy (at least in the European branch). If you think Socrates and Cicero are hyper-individualized personalities, feel free to rewrite the previous sentence. (If you think Zhuangzi is the first real personality; fine!) But since Montaigne was not a professor nor a monk, it was relatively easy for him to get away to obsess about himself. Most of the major early modern thinkers we still read and teach [Bacon, Descartes, Hobbes, Margaret Cavendish, Locke, Hume, Mandeville, Toland, De Grouchty, etc. ] -- and some of whom present a quite distinct authorial persona and claim non-trivial originality --  stayed outside of the academy. The exception to the rule is Leibniz, who was deeply original and often tried to present it as originating elsewhere. Of course, there were many generations of novatores such that they became, in part, a type or old hat (grin).

Some scholars will claim that the focus of originality and connecting it to genius is a romantic invention. But we see hints of it already when Adam Smith praises "the original and inventive genius of the English has not only discovered itself in natural philosophy, but in morals, metaphysics, and part of the abstract sciences." (This is from an early 1757 piece, Letter to the Edinburgh Review, usually attributed to him.) It's clear that Smith allows different kind of genius, including un-inventive ones; but the focus is already decidedly on the original inventive kind.

I mention Smith, because the division of labor and competitive market mechanisms generate open-ended novelty (an older school may say, generates open ended sources of wonder), including technological novelty. I don't deny that one could say the same thing of the institution of science, which has become an astounding novelty generator (second only to technology). That is to say, professional philosophy's changing mode of presentation and sources of value within have copied the characteristics of the surrounding society. (That's true even if some philosophers have something to do with the popularity of the division of labor and competitive markets.) 

The point I am hinting at is that professional philosophy is, in so far as the universities in which it is embedded are reliant on outside sources of funding. non-autonomous and inevitably takes on characteristics of its surrounding society. To challenge the one-sided focus on novelty is, in part, a demand of a form autonomy that is out of reach (except if you have a great endowment and terrific tenure, etc.) As regular readers know, I fully endorse grasping the impossible, and so hence in these digressions I often adopt the commentary format, Q.E.D.