Digressions&Impressions

On Forgotten Public Philosophers-Politicians, Escapism, Willa Cather and Spinoza!

Good afternoon Professor Schliesser,

I hope this finds you well and does not create an inconvenience for you.

I am currently working on an essay on escapism within society and its justifications. Within the research process I found your blog and found your text on philosophy as escapism [here] rather interesting, wich is why I was wondering as to whether you hold an opinion on the value of escapism in our contemporary society.

Any opinions you would like to share are very much appreciated."--[Name withheld], sixthform at a grammar school in England.

A student's question is most capable of exposing my babbling.* My first reaction to reading the email was a discomfort growing into panic that I had no idea what 'escapism' meant, followed by a sense of mortification that I had used it without giving it thought. I went back to my own essay, and saw that I used 'escapism' to signify an activity that displaced discomfiting feelings. (Yes, I noticed the lurking practical regress.) 

 

Online one finds claims that escapism is a modern term (sometimes also used to describe genre) originating during the great depression in the 1930s. Playing around with google.scholar/books I found no use prior to 1800 in English, but tantalizing hints that escaping had migrated into something like escapism in the more recent sense. But it's true that reliable hits for 'escapism' only start to occur in the 1930s. So, for example, one can read in an essay,"His first published novel, One Man's Initiation, appeared a year later. It had evidently been written in the trenches, and was, strangely enough, a quiet, thoughtful book that made no attempt to be harrowing, but sought patiently to understand. In it, however, predominate those twin maladies of escapism and individualism which Dos Passos had acquired at Harvard." It's notable that escapism is treated as a disease here.Willa Cather noticed such pejorative usage of "escapism" (and, I hasten to add, "individualism"), and has a fantastic essay on the subject (1936) that I warmly recommend reading.

 

But it was another early use that caught my attention. In the Monist (1933), I found a transcript of a "A paper read at the tercentenary commemoration of Spinoza sponsored by The Philosophy Club of Chicago and held at The University of Chicago on December 9, 1932." The author is one T.V. Smith about which more below. It's an incredibly critical essay of Spinoza. I start with a long quote:

[T]here is little profit in honoring Spinoza unless it leads us to honor our own opportunities the more. And surely our opportunity is not yet reduced to making the best of the worst; we may still hope to make the worst less bad and the less bad better. The tendency in some quarters to canonize Spinoza leaves me uneasy, though I joy to honor all those who did their part toward fortifying the philosophic mind in adverse days. It leaves me doubly uneasy, however, when reverence for Spinoza is made to ornament a modern escapism. I refer to the tendency to mythologize physics with theological aureoles, to romantize mediaevalism in morals under the guise of good taste founded on uncriticized tradition, to realize Platonism by glorifying contemporary dictators as the long sought philosopher kings. I refer, in a word, to the rationalized romanticism of those who would purge the social sciences of every element that makes them social and present them as logic to be got at dialectically rather than experimentally.
Such attitudes are defeatist, and while they find in Spinoza and in Plato logical prototypes, they wrong the noble dead by accommodating them to a logic of events more pregnant than their ancient logic of discourse. With reference to our social problem and the fruitful attitude toward it I am convinced that Spinoza is a splendid example of the way not to do it in modern times. Passing as a political realist because he built his system on power, Spinoza actually romanticized the distribution of power which prevailed at his time and place. Now power itself is not given to men in a sacred lump with implied anathemas against any who would increase or reallocate it. It waxes and wanes in quantity and migrates here and there in habitat. Our task is, as Spinoza truly said, to understand power, its nature and incidence-not however in order to achieve blessedness under the worst distribution of it but in order to facilitate a more blessed redistribution of power. Spinoza is not our logical leader in the effort through science to increase power; for though engaged in what for his time was a scientific profession-lens grinding-he elected to seek personal salvation through discovering and contemplating the whole of things rather than social amelioration by detailed mastery of his own specialized part. He performed few experiments, wrote only one thing on his scientific pre-occupation, and that without distinction. Nor is Spinoza our logical leader in the task of distributing power more justly to all men; for he could not get along with men well enough to understand, much less to improve, the forms of social relations. Not wholly in his stars but partially also in himself must have lain the cause of his lifelong isolation. (34-35)

After this majestic example of victim blaming it comes as no surprise that Smith was the "editor of the International Journal of Ethics" and soon also turned to politics being elected (as a Democrat) to the Illinois State Senate, then the US House, and briefly the US Senate. (That is consistent with his views in the essay, which promote an embrace of messiness of reality in order to do good.) I have to admit that today -- I have a student to answer! -- I have little interest in fully untangling the nature of modern escapism even though I am interested in the public image/role of Spinoza. But the passage made me wonder: if there is such a thing as "modern escapism" of which Spinoza is the ornament (ca 1930), what is, then, the original (pre-modern) escapism, according to Smith? 

 

It turns out, Spinoza is the source of (original) escapism! Spinoza 

discovered how to make the best of the world at its worst. Now this is an immortal discovery in a world that some of the time for all of us and all of the time for some of us permits little alternative to the worst. All honor, then, to Spinoza for discovering how to snatch one compensation for the withering sterility of cosmic neutrality, i.e., an emotional appreciation of understanding itself. When mind eats mind, mind need never wholly starve, though its resulting life be but a sort of living death (31-32)

Smith, a man of action, is no friend of this kind of escapism. He clearly thinks it risks quietism and deference to inherited status quo. But he does grant it is authentic escapism. I am inclined to agree with Willa Cather ("give the people a new word, and they think they have a new fact") and that Spinoza only managed the not insignificant feat to make it seem as if something new was being said because he tapped into a vital need in a new (linguistic and conceptual) register.

 

It is a tantalizing possibility that an emotional appreciation of understanding itself was discovered after the 1650s and, allow me this play of words, to create, in violation of the principle of sufficient reason (or at least ex nihilo nihil fit) , surplus ("compensation") out of something sterile ("cosmic neutrality"). If I were a Marxist historian of science, I would say that the spirit of capitalism was thus given matter in Holland.

 

But to wrap up. Escapism in this sense -- an intellectual joy in being with [one's] thought** -- is a human need in all places. For, no society will manage to abolish the possibility of people with only lousy options.  And, so, long after the one-time philosophical Senator of Illinois is forgotten, Spinoza keeps being rediscovered. 

 

 

On Hong Kong, Progress, and the Judgments of Spectators (I)

 

The revolution of a gifted people which we have seen unfolding in our day may succeed or miscarry; it may be filled with misery and atrocities to the point that a right thinking human being, were he boldly to hope to execute it successfully the second time, would never resolve to make the experiment at such cost—this revolution, I say, nonetheless finds in the hearts of all spectators (who are not engaged in this play themselves) a wishful participation that borders closely on enthusiasm, the very expression of which is fraught with danger; this participation, therefore, can have no other cause than a moral disposition of the human race.—Kant "The Contest of the Faculties" (AA 7:85), translated by Nisbet.

Before I get to the famous passage from Kant let me situate it briefly in the overall argument. Kant explicitly frames the Contest of Faculties in terms of contrast between true and false prophecy (recall this); he starts his discussion by offering examples of a priori history: these all involve what we might call self-fulfilling prophecies. The self-fulfilling prophecies Kant discusses all have a distinct character: warning against a bad outcome while sticking to a course of action that necessitates will make the bad  outcome happen.* These are all too common. 

By contrast Kant is interested in forecasting a positive outcome of a special kind, namely open-ended progress. The obstacle here is that one cannot assume human nature -- understood as a collective property [it is allowed  there may be good individuals] -- is naturally good (which may secure the positive outcome). So, what is needed, then, is a particular kind of existence proof that a collective is capable of generating the conditions of self-improvement and acting on them (and so can then figure into a self-fulfilling positive prophecy). Such an event would provide evidence of, a sign, of the possibility of progress. 

Readers knowledgeable with Kant know that he wishes for something stronger: such an event would be the kind of cause that the "inevitable consequence of its operation, that mankind is improving." But as Kant explicitly acknowledged elsewhere when discussing an objection by Mendelssohn ("mankind constantly fluctuates between fixed limits"), this presupposes commitment to divine providence. Our lives are not just the possible amusement to Epicurean Gods or fit for the existentialist's absurd.

It's not that luck does not enter it into it at all; Kant allows that experiencing such an event that would be a sign of the necessity of progress is a matter of probability (we can't all be so lucky to live in interesting times). In addition, Kant is also willing to allow that any particular event that is taken as a sign may itself not be the cause of future progress (and so not necessitate it). 

What is notable about Kant's next move is that he takes Adam Smith's theory of the impartial spectator, which is primarily designed to apply to judgment of characters and individual situations,** and turns it into a social device. (For my musings, first prompted by Sam Fleischacker, on the connection between Kant and Smith see here; cf. here). I quote the passage (which precedes the famous one quoted above):

We are here concerned only with the attitude of the onlookers as it reveals itself in public while me drama of great political changes is taking place: for they openly express universal yet disinterested sympathy for one set of protagonists against their adversaries, even at the risk that their partiality could be of disadvantage to themselves. Their reaction (because of its universality) proves that mankind as a whole share certain character in common, and it also proves (because of its disinterestedness) that man has a moral character, or at least the makings of one. And this does not merely allow us to hope for improvement; it is already a form of improvement in itself.

It is notable that the significance here is not so much the French revolution itself -- Kant was notably (to use an understatement) lukewarm about revolutions --, but the reaction of the impartial spectators. That is, Kant is more interested here in the existence of an international public opinion than in the events in Paris (cf. Mill here and Lippmann here on national public opinion). The existence of a disinterested and what we might call robust and impartial public opinion is for Kant significant evidence that progress has been made and so is possible.+ Importantly impartiality does not entail neutrality; it is also compatible with, after due consideration of all the facts, taking sides in a conflict.

The way public opinion takes sides is by a kind of sympathetic identification which, in the case of French revolution, borders on enthusiasm [eine Theilnehmung dem Wunsche nach, die nahe an Enthusiasm grenzt]. Now, enthusiasm is, as Kant explicitly notes, itself a dangerous emotion. In Smith it always (recall) involves a heightened admiration, but sometimes this is misplaced and so can lead to bad decisions (something Sophie de Grouchy emphasized when discussing the bad political consequences of acting on enthusiasm (recall here; here; here, and here). Kant probably shares in fears over acting enthusiastically. But the consensus and disinterested nature of the spectators's attitudes are a different kind of event. 

I have already noted that the events in Hong Kong occur at a moment when the elected leaders of the world's liberal democracies seem to identify more with the Chinese government than with the brave people of Hong Kong. They can do so in virtue of the absence a countervailing international public opinion. 

Now, the existence of an enthusiastic international public opinion can, at times, be a contributing cause to bad outcomes. When it encourages the weaker side with a kind of implied material support and then does not (or cannot) deliver or deliver less than needed material assistance, it may generate worse outcomes than if it had not existed. [Hungary 1956; Syria more recently] spring to mind as examples. So, political leaders need not be craven if they refuse to go along with or encourage international public opinion.

It is tempting to close with the thought that when one is unlucky enough to live in times when democratic leaders are craven and international public opinion is uninterested and silent, it is hard not to feel, despairingly, that Kant did not give Mendelssohn's position its full due. 

Even so, the actions of the people of Hong Kong are themselves a source of a more slender hope. Their courage, in the face of overwhelming odds, to defend the rule of law and resist the imposition of arbitrary power is a sign that liberty's flame has not been extinguished, yet. And seeing this, no dictatorship can feel secure. 

 

 

 

On Rare Phoenixes in Philosophy (Seneca, Socrates, and Spinoza)

For one of the first class ["good men" [vir bonus]]] perhaps springs into existence, like the phoenix, only once in five hundred years. And it is not surprising, either, that greatness develops only at long intervals; Fortune often brings into being commonplace powers, which are born to please the crowd [turbam]; but she holds up for our approval that which is extraordinary by the very fact that she makes it rare. [eximia vero ipsa raritate commendat]

2. This man, however, of whom you spoke, is still far from the state which he professes to have reached. And if he knew what it meant to be "a good man," he would not yet believe himself such; perhaps he would even despair of his ability to become good. "But," you say, "he thinks ill of evil men." Well, so do evil men themselves; and there is no worse penalty for vice than the fact that it is dissatisfied with itself and all its fellows. 3. "But he hates those who make an ungoverned use of great power suddenly acquired." I retort that he will do the same thing as soon as he acquires the same powers. Seneca, Letter 42. Translated by Richard Mott Gummere (with minor changes)

The truly good are so rare we may as well call them flukes of nature. Allowing that Socrates associates philosophers with those of the first class, Socrates also seems to have thought that absent breeding, this the case (see the αὐτόματοι  Republic 520b). But Seneca seems more adamant about the cyclical rarity of then. I mention Socrates because Seneca may well be tempt the reader to think he is slyly comparing himself to Socrates; he was, after all, born about 480 years after Socrates. 

Much of the letter repeats Seneca's lessons about how a high price in the marketplace, and mass approval, are worthless or  involve commodities and states of affairs that make us worse off. A key new claim (also with a Socratic provenance) is that bad people actually (secretly) have, despite appearances to the contrary, a low estimate of themselves [At male existimat de malis.]* The etymology of existimat ( ex- +‎ aestimō) reminds us that esteem and estimate (in the sense of judging) are very closely tied together. 

It is not entirely clear if Seneca thinks low self-esteem is a cause of their bad behavior or if this is, due to the workings of conscience (as Butler and Adam Smith would argue), the effect of bad behavior, or  (more likely) both. But the striking fact is that the interaction of low self-esteem with bad behavior creates a miserable psychic condition in virtue of succeeding at one's projects.** 

I have always have found the underlying psychological idea plausible enough, despite the suspicion this is the kind of thing we powerless may invent to haunt the powerful. What makes Senca's claim plausible is that his lines may well be autobiographical (he was insanely rich and not free of misdeeds). Yet, sometimes one encounters the obscenely rich and wicked who seem to lack all sense of shame. 

Be that as it may, on this view to do bad is to get caught in a vicious cycle of self-contempt. In the ledger Seneca likes to invoke, one is, were double-entry book-keeping already invented, then in the loss column.

It turns out that in this sense -- of psychic health or proper positive self-estimation -- only a fraction [quoto cuique] -- are not in the loss column. By the structure of his letter, Seneca tempts us to see in these self-contained few with nothing lost [nihil perdidit] the rare exemplars that arise every half-millennia or so. The role of these exemplar(s) is to help structure the emendation or spiritual exercises he offers, but it is de facto unattainable. 

Since I have been brief, let me add one further thought. Another way to understand the the nature of the phoenix image is in terms of the periodic rebirth of philosophy. This is in some sense the eternal recurrence of the same. Although we can expect differences because while the identity of the phoenix remains the same, the context in which she grows does not.

With that in mind, I looked anew at the last line(s) of Spinoza's Ethics: But all things excellent are as difficult as they are rare. [Sed omnia praeclara tam difficilia, quam rara sunt]. This evoke Seneca with one notable difference. Spinoza leaves no doubt that despite the difficulty, one can with a proper regimen turn oneself into one of the (mentally) blessed. And if you fail, try again and harder.

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 Marilynne Robinson's Edomites

Assmann’s argument is the sort of razzle-dazzle that depends on coinages like “mnemohistory,” which is the exalted and useful discipline of interpreting history that collective memory has displaced and suppressed so thoroughly only the writer has an inkling even of the fact of suppression. In this cognitive implosion a fusion occurs between Moses and the Aton cultus which conventional history simply cannot achieve. Assmann is writing this book in response to Freud’s abysmal question about the origins of anti-Semitism. “Strikingly enough, his [Freud’s] question was not how the Gentiles, or the Christians, or the Germans came to hate the Jews, but ‘how the Jew had become what he is and why he has attracted this undying hatred.’” He paraphrases Freud’s answer thus: “Not the Jew but monotheism had attracted this undying hatred. By making Moses an Egyptian, [Freud] deemed himself able to shift the sources of negativity and intolerance out of Judaism and back to Egypt, and to show that the defining fundamentals of Jewish monotheism and mentality came from outside it.” So we are to concede, apparently, that these are “the defining fundamentals of Jewish monotheism and mentality.” Comment is unnecessary, though I will draw attention here to the notion of victimization I remarked on earlier. We gentiles have the Torah to blame for our worst moments, it would appear.

Like others of these writers, Assmann argues that ancient polytheism was essentially tolerant, “cosmotheism,” and readily accepted other gods, translating them into the terms of the culture that received them. Granting that Melqart, a god of Carthage, did indeed lounge around in a lion skin looking just like Hercules, we have the fact that Rome loathed Carthage, and was despised in turn, and reduced that great city to bare earth and then plowed salt into the ground. Athens and Sparta had just the same pantheon, and they fought to the death. And Rome conquered Greece, whose gods it had thoroughly Latinized. That is to say, whatever the merits of polytheism, at best it only obliged people to find other than religious grounds for hostility, which they were clearly very able to do. How the wars of the Hebrews against the Canaanites are more culpable than the wars of the Romans against the Etruscans I fail to see, or why anyone should imagine that these wars were less formative for European civilization than those distant, inconclusive wars among the Semites. Or, for that matter, why they do not prove that the character of the civilization was already formed when Rome set about the conquest of Italy. Jack Miles attributes the structure of Western consciousness to monotheism on the grounds that “the Bible was the popular encyclopedia of the Middle Ages.” But in fact through most of the Common Era in Europe the Bible, and especially the Old Testament, existed almost exclusively in Latin, a language incomprehensible to the great majority of people, who were in any case illiterate. So its influence is easily overstated. Yet ferocious intolerance has characterized most of Western history in the Common Era.

Polytheism is as fashionable now as it has been since fascism was in its prime. As a corollary to the current tendency to blame monotheism for intolerance and aggression and genocide, there is an assumption that polytheism must have been tolerant, pacific and humane. This notion is old, too. In The Natural History of Religion, Hume says, “by limiting the powers and functions of its deities, [idolatry] naturally admits the gods of other sects and nations to a share of divinity, and renders all the various deities, as well as rites, ceremonies, or traditions, compatible with each other … [By comparison] when one sole object of devotion is acknowedged, the worship of other deities is regarded as absurd and impious.”

It is striking to see how the cultural discourse is circling on itself. Perhaps the real familiarity of their arguments explains why these writers I have looked at offer so little in the way of evidence. For example, Assmann, the most scholarly of them, says the Old Testament is deeply informed by aversion to Egypt, then offers no support from the text. And, coincidentally perhaps, little evidence is to be found in the text. One Mosaic law of unambiguous relevance, which goes unmentioned by him, is Deuteronomy 23:7: “You shall not abhor an Edomite, for he is your brother; you shall not abhor an Egyptian, because you were a sojourner in his land.” This law provides that both Edomites and Egyptians may enter the assembly of the Lord on favorable terms — after three generations, that is, which seems long, but which is liberal by comparison with the ancient Athenians, for instance, who never naturalized the descendants of foreigners. Nor, as I understand, do the modern Germans. This one verse is sufficient to demonstrate that there was not hatred but in fact a certain bond between Hebrews and Egyptians.

This idea, that the hatred of the Other is the signal preoccupation of the Old Testament, is carried to great lengths by Regina Schwartz..."--Marilynne Robinson, "The Fate of Ideas: Moses" in When I Was a Child I Read Books (2012), pp. 114-116. [First published in 1999 in Salmagundi.]

During the Summer my mom called attention to a lovely, recent essay by Robinson in the NYRB. (Thank you mom!) In that essay Robinson vindicates the Puritans and Cromwell as (for example) legal reformists who develop the idea of the rule of law. I may be the only would be aspiring contributor to the Republic of Letters who had missed the impact of Robinson's novels and essays and even Obama's endorsement of her. (Serves me right for skipping the NYRB for a few years!) I am trying to use the remainder of this Summer to catch up on what I missed. When I Was a Child I Read Books contains two essays, "Open thy Hand Wide: Moses and the Origins of American Liberalism" and "The Fate of Ideas: Moses," which are the bedrock on which the recent NYRB essay is built. These two essays are often read in tandem by those with an interest in advancing, what we may call, contemporary political theology (see, e.g., Paul Steaton critically; Scott D. Moringiello admirably).

The long quoted passage is kind of exemplary of Robinson's philosemitism. She is very acute on the ways in which biblical scholars and even very progressive intellectuals have a tendency to attribute bad features of European civilization or today's culture to a disparaged version of the Old Testament.

As an aside, she uses "Old Testament" and not "Hebrew Bible" because they have "very different cultural histories [and] the order of the books is different." (96) En passant, Robinson raises the question to what degree these can be said to be, in fact, the same book(s).*

Be that as it may, Robinson, who is often humane and wise, is pretty compelling that often the unlovely critiques of the Old Testament are grounded in lack of familiarity with the actual text. She notes that for much of the history of Christianity such familiarity cannot be presumed among many. (The revival of knowledge of the Old Testament occurred during the reformation by humanists and reformers.)+  And one of her more endearing features is to quote Scriptures to unmask dangerous nonsense presenting itself as scholarship. I don't mean to suggest she is committed to simpleminded literalism or infallibility of scripture; not unlike her hero, Calvin, she uses sola scriptura as a means to expand one's judgment and sensitivity and to ground what she calls free thought. 

Even so, I think something is off in her reading of Deuteronomy 23:7. And I will suggest it's the kind of offness that characterizes the advocate. Before I get to that, everything she says in the passage quoted above is true -- both true as readings of others and about the larger purported truths to which they refer. More important, given the contemporary scene, the passage she quotes from Deuteronomy helps provide background to the kind of claims my friend (and sometime co-author) Yoram Hazony makes (recall, for example, here and here) about what he calls the order of nation states which co-habit in peace. Hebrew, Egyptian, and (especially?) Edomite can be expected to cohabit. In fact, and again with a nod to the contemporary headlines, this is a Hebraic nationalism that rejects ethnic/racial purity and is open to immigrants becoming part of the community (and intermarry). Hazony himself has written eloquently on this (recall).** 

Okay, with that in place, I would like to quote 23:7 in Deuteronomy's slightly larger context:

3An Ammonite or Moabite shall not enter into the congregation of the LORD; even to their tenth generation shall they not enter into the congregation of the LORD for ever: 4because they met you not with bread and with water in the way, when ye came forth out of Egypt; and because they hired against thee Balaam the son of Beor of Pethor of Mesopotamia, to curse thee. 5Nevertheless the LORD thy God would not hearken unto Balaam; but the LORD thy God turned the curse into a blessing unto thee, because theLORD thy God loved thee. 6Thou shalt not seek their peace nor their prosperity all thy days for ever. Thou shalt not abhor an Edomite; for he is thy brother: thou shalt not abhor an Egyptian; because thou wast a stranger in his land.8The children that are begotten of them shall enter into the congregation of the LORD in their third generation. KJV

It's pretty clear that the Old Testament treats Ammonites and Moabites very differently from Egyptian and Edomite. What's especially striking is not the historical rationale offered by Moses,++ but the insistence that one should not aim to make peace or (I think) trade with  Ammonites and Moabites. To put the point anachronistically, in the order of nation states there will be states that are perpetual enemies (e.g., Ammonites and Moabites) and those that are not (e.g., Edomite and Egyptian. Since the Jews had been slaves in Egypt this is indeed remarkable.) It seems that there is something about the national character of perpetual enemies (lack of hospitality and, to sound Hobbesian, war-preparedness) that makes them (these nations) incapable of change.*** 

I think Robinson would be inclined to read, and she would not be wrong to do so, this passage of the Old Testament as showing that an unwillingness to open one's hand to the stranger is, according to it, almost the worst national character-trait. So, the passage supports her larger spirit.  

Even so, I close with a yes, but. 

Even if one allows (for the sake of argument) that national character is fixed, I am unsure what the assumed mechanism is by which flawed national character infects each individual such that it makes members of these nations permanently unwelcome. But it's pretty clear that the passage justifies inhumane treatment of those taken to belong to natural enemies. So, surely Robinson is correct to say that the Old Testament shows no signal preoccupation with hatred of the Other. It would be pleasant if we could all be Edomites. But that's compatible with the injunction to be on guard, in the sense of keeping out, alas, some distinct Others, forever.  

On the God Within (Seneca, Spinoza, and the Bible/Vergil)

[I]t is foolish to pray for this when you can acquire it from yourself. We do not need to uplift our hands towards heaven, or to beg the keeper of a temple to let us approach his idol's ear, as if in this way our prayers were more likely to be heard. God is near you, he is with you, he is within you. 2. This is what I mean, Lucilius: a holy spirit indwells within us, one who marks our good and bad deeds, and is our guardian. As we treat this spirit, so are we treated by it. Indeed, no man can be good without the help of God. Can one rise superior to fortune unless God helps him to rise? He it is that gives noble and upright counsel. In each good man

A god doth dwell, but what god know we not [quis deus incertum est] habitat deus].--Seneca, Letter 41. Translated by Richard Mott Gummere

To achieve a sound mind [ad bonam mentem] prayer [optare could also be mere wishing] won't do; there are not just opportunity costs involved, but our attention is misdirected outward. For, Seneca, as is familiar by now, self-cultivation is, simultaneously, a withdrawal from the world of the crowd and popular approval. He comes very close to suggesting here that public displays of religion is a participation in the worship of false idols (such as characterize the market-place, the political crowds, and the amphitheater).

Part of self-cultivation is the development of what we may call conscience, the observer and custodian [observator et custos] of the good and bad we perform. Interestingly Seneca presents the operation of conscience as a reciprocal, relationship between the agent and this hidden faculty. When we nurture conscience, we are, in turn, nurtured by it. This form of boot-strapping is the path toward overcoming the rule of chance [recall, inter alia, also letter 39 here], and to participate (as we have seen) in a life rule by necessity (recall the start of the Letters) and, thereby, become godlike (recall this post on self-reliance in letter 31). A good person is precisely the one that has justly come to rely on conscience.*

I don't mean to ignore how the people that exemplify such self-controlled god-likeness, exemplify a species of (almost Nietzschean) magnanimity, laughing at our fears and at our prayers and willing them over and over again, (Vis isto divina descendit; animum excellentem, moderatum, omnia tamquam minora transeuntem, quidquid timemus optamusque ridentem, caelestis potentia agitat.)

Now, Gummere helpfully notes that the last line of the quoted passage is itself a quote from Vergil's Aenid 8.352. Seneca here proves true to his principle that the origin of a truth is less important than the fact that (recall) there is no exclusive property right in wisdom and that it can be made available to all of mankind. Even so it is notable that he quotes a poet here and not (as he had done before) a member of a competing philosophical school. (In the previous letter (40), he made a similar point with Homer.)

There is a lot to be said about the context of 8.352 and how it relates to the political self-conception of Rome and its founding. But, at this point, and in virtue of a recent lecture by Steven Nadler that I attended, I am reminded of the epigram to Spinoza's Theological Political Treatise (hereafter TTP): Per hoc cognoscimus quod in Deo manemus,/et Deus manet in nobis/quod de Spiritu suo dedit nobis (1 John 4:13; in the King James, Hereby know we that we dwell in him, and he in us, because he hath given us of his Spirit.) What's clever about this is that the first two parts of the verse, just express the Spinozism of the Ethics (we are in God and he in us). Later, in chapter 14 of the TTP, when he comments on the very verse, Spinoza explains that to have possession of the (holy) spirit just means exhibiting faith in works, that is obedience to God, that is showing one's charity (or 'lovingkindness' in Curley's translation).+

Now, Spinoza and Seneca agree that a holy spirit dwells within us and that being attentive to it guides our good behavior. They also agree on a structural feature: that to behave in accord with it, is to be guided by (an eternal property, that is,) reason, that is, necessity, that is, (one's second) nature. And that to do so is the path of salvation (see the rest of letter 41). I don't mean to suggest that they agree, exactly, on the contents of conscience or what the holy spirit demands from us. That's for another time.

Rather, I want to close with a final observation prompted by one of the most striking passages in the TTP (from Chapter 5):

So the narratives contained in the Old and New Testaments are better than the other, secular narratives, and among the [Scriptural narratives], some are better than others, in proportion as the opinions which follow from them are salutary. Hence if someone has read the stories of Holy Scripture, and has had faith in it in every respect, and has nevertheless not attended to the lesson Scrip­ture intends to teach with those stories, nor improved his life, it is just the same as if he had read the Koran, or the dramas of the Poets, or even the ordinary Chronicles, with the same attention as the multitude commonly give to these things. On the other hand, as we have said, someone who is com­pletely unfamiliar with these stories, and nevertheless has salutary opinions and a true manner of living, is absolutely blessed and really has the Spirit of Christ in him.**

There is a lot to say about this passage (recall), but the key point is that one has the Spirit of Christ if one exhibits the right kind of behavior and that one does not need exposure to Scripture nor philosophy to attain it. More subtly, and controversially, perhaps, any text, if read attentively, can be made to yield the salutary opinions needed to instruct others -- as Seneca instructs Lucillius -- in the art of living...if, and perhaps only if, one has a well-prepared mind, as Seneca shows with his use of Vergil.

 

Of Opinion, Hume and Spinoza

NOTHING appears more surprizing to those, who consider human affairs with a philosophical eye, than the easiness with which the many are governed by the few; and the implicit submission, with which men resign their own sentiments and passions to those of their rulers. When we enquire by what means this wonder is effected, we shall find, that, as FORCE is always on the side of the governed, the governors have nothing to support them but opinion. It is therefore, on opinion only that government is founded; and this maxim extends to the most despotic and most military governments, as well as to the most free and most popular. The soldan of EGYPT, or the emperor of ROME, might drive his harmless subjects, like brute beasts, against their sentiments and inclination: But he must, at least, have led his mamalukes, or prætorian bands, like men, by their opinion.--David Hume "Of the First Principles of the Government"

The key theoretical point Hume makes is that opinion is the ground of all (despotic and free) government. Opinion has contrast terms in multiple registers: it is explicitly opposed to force by Hume; it is implicitly contrasted with true belief or knowledge. It is probably a contrary of, as Paul Sagar argues in his book, (Bodinian/Hobbesian) sovereignty. The afterlife of this (ahh) opinion is momentous in that it informs the Madisonian strain of the constitution of the United States. Until men are displaced by robots as enforcers the maxim will remain plausible.*

Here I want to focus on the first sentence of Hume's first sentence. Adam Smith reminds, wonder and surprise are the intellectual sentiments. Hume notes that philosophers will be surprised by at the fact that the many are willing to be governed by the few. (This fact is true even of societies that call themselves democratic or republican.) I suspect Hume  thinks that in order to wonder at this, to be the start of philosophical inquiry, one needs to be in the grip of certain philosophical ideas first. In particular, one must come to embrace the natural (rough) equality of men. By Hume's lights one won't wonder at this if, as all of us are wont to do, one accepts custom; nor will one wonder at this if one is in the grip of ideas that posit natural hierarchies or divinely sanctioned kingship.

To be sure the idea that the few rule the many through opinion is not original with Hume or even post Hobbesian philosophy. For example, in Al-Farabi it (opinion) is (recall) explicit taught as a means of rule. But Al-Farabi proves the point; he accepts (a variant of) natural hierarchy, and so there is no surprise at the very fact of obedience of the many to the few or the proposed mechanism to achieve it. 

The puzzle of obedience is, thus, grounded in the embrace of a certain egalitarian philosophy. The polemical point of the puzzle is to argue against aristocratic, despotic, and priestly rule. One can recognize this alongside the other aims of the puzzle: to teach the art of state-craft, to explain the mechanism of society, etc. All of this is illuminated when we recognize that Hume here offers a kind of hommage to, and modest correction (or generalization) of, the "preface" of Spinoza's Theological Political Treatise. There Spinoza writes,

(18) But if, in despotic statecraft, the supreme and essential mystery be to hoodwink the subjects, and to mask the fear, which keeps them down, with the specious garb of religion, so that men may fight as bravely for slavery as for safety, and count it not shame but highest honour to risk their blood and their lives for the vainglory of a tyrant; yet in a free state no more mischievous expedient could be planned or attempted. (Translated by Elwes.)

Spinoza's point may seem more narrow than Hume's. He clearly implies that it is false opinion (superstition) that moves the many to obey the few. But the contrast between the two is smaller than it seems. For Spinoza's position is compatible with the thought that in free states opinion, true and false, is also a means of rule. (Spinoza often calls his free state a democracy, but he means what we would call a republic.)

He draws out the point, in somewhat sly and sardonic manner, a few lines down: 

(20) Now, seeing that we have the rare happiness of living in a republic, where everyone's judgment is free and unshackled, where each may worship God as his conscience dictates, and where freedom is esteemed before all things dear and precious, I have believed that I should be undertaking no ungrateful or unprofitable task, in demonstrating that not only can such freedom be granted without prejudice to the public peace, but also, that without such freedom, piety cannot flourish nor the public peace be secure.---Spinoza, Preface Theological Political Treatise

Now, the main point in context (it's in paragraph 19) is that if censorship is removed, a source of disturbance is thereby removed: if people are free to think what they want, unshackled, a source of controversy and sedition is removed. As Machiavelli teaches (recall), the stakes are, as it were, lowered, and sources of anger removed (and so public peace enhanced), when "opinions are" not "put on trial and condemned" (quod opiniones tanquam scelera pro crimine habentur, et damnantur ; 19) and nobody can be sent to the stake. From the vantage point of governance, this is a counter-intuitive thought; suppression of opinion is ultimately more dangerous to the ruler(s) than granting freedom of opinion.

But since Spinoza doubts that ordinary people will generally have correct opinions, this is tantamount to claiming that state security can be safely grounded in opinion. (In fact, the state wouldn't be needed, for Spinoza, if we had possession of the truth in reliable fashion.) In fact, Spinoza's makes this more explicit than it seems. But the 'piety' (pietate) is here not just a devotional attitude toward god, but also refers to obedience to the state/ruler.+ 

Now, for a certain reader the idea that Hume is nodding to Spinoza seems a bit far-fetched (although these days there is a lot of scholarship that has established a firm link). But notice that in the quoted passage (20), that is, Spinoza's "we have the rare happiness of living in a republic, where everyone's judgment is free and unshackled" [itaque nobis haec rara faelicitas contigerit, ut in Republica vivamus,  ubi unicuique judicandi libertas integra,] Spinoza echoes Tacitus's famous claim: Rara temporumfelicitas, ubi sentire, quae velis; & quae sentias, dicere licet. (The Histories, 1.1.) Spinoza's echo of Tacitus is not unintentional, because he quotes him nearly verbatim as sub-title of the TTP ( "... that freedom of thought and speech not only may, without prejudice to piety and the public peace, be granted; but also may not, without danger to piety and public peace, be withheld") and the epigram to chapter 20 of the TTP (Ostenditur, in libera Republica unicuique et sentire,  quae velit, et quae sentiat, dicere licere).

I call it 'famous' because Hume put the claim on the frontispice of Book 1 & 2 of his Treatise "Rare Happiness of our Times, that you may think as you will, and speak as you think."** As I have noted before, Paul Russell has nicely explored this connection in an important paper, which also calls attention to Toland's creative use of the Tacitus quote.

In my view, them, Hume knows that his Maxim is developing a Spinozistic (and Machiavellian) framework. Part of the more general argument "Of the First Principles of the Government" is, in fact, the use of this Spinozistic framework to argue against some Spinozistic conclusions, but that impression cannot be articulated now.

 

On unadorned and plain Truth

3. Therefore, mark my words; that forceful manner of speech, rapid and copious, is more suited to a mountebank than to a man who is discussing and teaching an important and serious subject. But I object just as strongly that he should drip out his words as that he should go at top speed; he should neither keep the ear on the stretch, nor deafen it. For that poverty-stricken and thin-spun style also makes the audience less attentive because they are weary of its stammering slowness; nevertheless, the word which has been long awaited sinks in more easily than the word which flits past us on the wing. Finally, people speak of "handing down" precepts to their pupils; but one is not "handing down" that which eludes the grasp. 4. Besides, speech that deals with the truth should be unadorned and plain. This popular style has nothing to do with the truth; its aim is to impress the common herd, to ravish heedless ears by its speed; it does not offer itself for discussion, but snatches itself away from discussion. But how can that speech govern others which cannot itself be governed? May I not also remark that all speech which is employed for the purpose of healing our minds, ought to sink into us? Remedies do not avail unless they remain in the system.--Seneca, Letter 40. translated by Richard Mott Gummere

In an unusually long letter, Seneca appears to be conveying a relatively simple claim: true (philosophical speech) should be "unadorned and plain" [quae veritati operam dat oratio incomposita esse debet et simplex.] He contrasts such speech with speech intended for the market place aimed at ordinary folk (who, it is thought, are impressed by verbal pyrotechnics and, as he makes clear later in the letter, respect different national styles). The contrast is not absolute because Seneca thinks the unadorned and plain speech is also apt for ordinary rhetoric iff the point is to convince the multitude of the truth! But he clearly thinks that's not generally the aim.

That true speech should be unadorned and plain/simple is, of course, a recurring trope in ages that reject scholasticism and rhetorical flourishes. (It is unusual to see its elitism acknowledged.) The aim of philosophical speech for Seneca is (a) not merely to convey the truth, but in so doing (b) heal minds, that is, to be part of a philosophical emendation; and (c) by taking hold of their minds to govern others [rapere...regere]. Somewhat confusingly, at first, for us, who are used to thinking that the patient's autonomy is central, Seneca treats true speech of the philosophical healer/magister as a locus for self-governance.

Thus, even true speech is a means of control of another. This point is made explicit, somewhat rarely, when we say of a demonstration or inference that it compels assent; at such points disagreement, however voluntary, is often thought to be irrational. If you accept the premises, then you must accept the conclusions, etc. To make others accept premises is, thus, a means of control. To be made to accept true premises and a conclusion is, thus, a rational form, perhaps, of subordination,.

So, on Seneca's conception, a healthy mind, one receptive toward the truth, is in some sense under the control of, let's say, the party of truth. I put it this way because for Seneca (recall and here), (i) truths belong to all of mankind, and (ii) one is -- this clearly inspired/anticipated Spinoza -- least individual (and most eternal) when one's mind is filled with truths/apt remedies.

There is a further feature of true philosophical speech that Seneca notes by way of a negative contrast (near the end of the letter). In the more spectacular and pyrotechnic style one must ignore the sense of shame that accompanies it and this can only be done by not listening to oneself speak. One would wish to criticize oneself if one would give oneself the opportunity.

Seneca suggests that being exposed regularly to one's own rhetorical fluff undermines this sense of shame in oneself. I am not entirely sure if Seneca thinks the poison is that one regularly hears oneself say silly stuff or that one regularly ends up suppressing the need for self-criticism in oneself (or both). Either way, Seneca clearly thinks that while a lack of shame facilitates one's complicity in spreading nonsense, it is the manifestation of a self-inflicted malady.*

It would be an anachronistic, of course, to treat Seneca as an anticipation of the now not uncommon thought that certain forms of public nonsense are instances/expressions of  lack of mental health. I think the anachronism is only partially true here. Not because the concept mental health is absent in him, but because what Seneca would take to be a disposition or expression of a healthy and shame-sensitive mind is almost certainly not the statistical norm of health maintained by our clinicians.

Here I stop; for once briefer than Seneca. 

On Repetition, Politics, and Science

He exchanges pound notes for the letters M.P. As the dominant cultural fiction of developed societies, money is the ideal nonsensical sign. I have always found it amazing that in exchange for paper I can get a book or a dress, that the stock market actually rises and falls on rumor — mere talk — and that people trade in something called Futures, as if such a thing were possible. I accept that all this is part of my world, and yet I continue to find it bizarre. Dickens obviously shared this bafflement. As powerful as it is, money refers to nothing real. Currency floats. Dickens reiterates Marx’s idea of money as society’s founding gibberish, as “the general confounding and compounding of all things — the world upside down.” When money is hoarded, it becomes even more meaningless because it buys nothing. It just accumulates like so much wastepaper.

Why money should be so precious to an ass so dull as to exchange it for no other satisfaction, is strange; but there is no animal so sure to get laden with it, as the Ass who sees nothing written on the face of the earth as the three dry letters L.S.D. not Luxury, Sensuality, Dissoluteness, which they so often stand for, but the three dry letters.

In an age when designer labels and celebrity names are used to sell everything from cars to lipstick, when meaningless slogans and lyrics and acronyms are constantly beamed and displayed and written on screens and billboards and the covers of magazines, when right-wing politicians hammer out the same empty phrases ad nauseam, corrupting words like freedom and truth until they are no longer recognizable and refer to absolutely nothing,--Siri Hustvedt "Charles Dickens and the Morbid Fragment" in (2006) A Plea for Eros, pp. 166-7

One often hears economist say with respect, that is, without irony, put your money where your mouth is (see here Cowen and Tabarrok). The underlying idea is not just that money is more solid than cheap talk, but that staking money is a form of serious agency -- skin in the game -- whereas mere talking is prattle. (I consider the epistemologist, who treats betting as the sine qua non of rationality, in the same boat.)

Hustvedt, a terrific novelist and even better essayist, helps us note that this disdain for talk is puzzling not only because (i) talk often moves markets (and so is causally efficacious, one is tempted to say talk better be treated as an endogenous variable), but also because (ii) money is ultimately grounded in some gibberish.+

As an aside (for those who follow recent high profile debates surrounding modern monetary theory (hereafter MMT [see here for Krugman, here my friend Alexander Douglas (who used to be more in favor)], one reason I suspect why modern monetary theory seems so attractive to some is that in it money is not grounded in nonsense (nor the labor theory of value) but in the very real power of the state (which can demand payment in its  own I.O.U.s.)* MMT is ultimately grounded in a kind of Hobbesian intuition.** 

Let me return to Hustvedt, in virtue of the fact that money originates in gibberish and floats, she is inclined to suggest that it cannot refer to something real. The underlying idea is hitched to the (correct) thought that signs are arbitrary. (Given how philosophically sophisticated Hustvedt is, one may even say that the PSR is lurking behind her position.) Unlike Hustvedt I think that money can refer to something real even if (as I grant her) it is founded in the arbitrariness of nonsense and tracked with something arbitrary (a sign).  

How so?

As any Connecticut poet (hoobla-how, hoobla-hoo, and hoo), or Humean-Deleuzian, can tell you, repetition can turn gibberish into something causally efficacious. And as Spinoza teaches, to be is to be a cause (and vice versa). This fact, that some of our beings/causes are grounded in nonsense, is an affront to those who think our starting points should be clear propositions. Be that as it may, because it has causal powers, money is as real as talk.++

In The Summer Without Men (Husvedt's 2011 novel), her narrator writes, "Repetition. Repetition, not identity. Nothing is repeated exactly, even words, because something has changed in the speaker and in the listener, because once said and then said again and again, the repetition itself alters the words." (51) I think the intuition -- the power of repetition -- is sound even if I am uneasy about Husvedt's manner of expressing it. While above I noted that repetition can generate identity, Husvedt is clear it can also, in the opposite direction, as it were, undermine identity. 

In her comment on Dickens, Hustvedt makes the point in stark fashion: repetition can create gibberish from truth. Her claim is not the familiar one associated with the theory of propaganda that through repetition lies can become thought true,*** but rather that one can debase words, even true and respected ones, by repeating them in certain ways. That is, certain forms of repetition vacate truth.

That is it for now. But I add a perhaps puzzling paragraph as a promissory note (and explication on my first paragraph above). As regular readers know, I think (recall) Arendt is right that only a limited number of institutions (related to science and justice) are capable of producing truth in a reliable fashion.+++ (It's now a familiar thought that replication is important in some of their practices.) The slide from [A] 'X=true' to [B] 'X=true if and only you are willing to take a bet on X' is made possible, I suspect, by a certain form of such vacating, that is, pernicious repetition.

 

 

Adam Smith on Three Types of Bad Political Leadership

In this post I argue that according to Smith there are three kinds of bad politicians: (i) a decisionist type; (ii) an ideological type; (iii) a factional type. In practice the qualities that belong to each can be blended.  I discuss them in turn and that point to some commonalities. Consider the following passage:

To insist upon establishing, and upon establishing all at once, and in spite of all opposition, every thing which that idea may seem to require, must often be the highest degree of arrogance. It is to erect his own judgment into the supreme standard of right and wrong. It is to fancy himself the only wise and worthy man in the commonwealth, and that his fellow-citizens should accommodate themselves to him and not he to them….This arrogance is perfectly familiar to them. They entertain no doubt of the immense superiority of their own judgment….they seldom see any thing so wrong in it as the obstructions which it may sometimes oppose to the execution of their own will. They…consider the state as made for themselves, not themselves for the state. (TMS 6.2.2.18, 234)

In context Smith is describing the dangers of acting from the ‘idea of perfecting of policy and law’ (that’s ‘that idea’ in the first quoted sentence). But the problem that is diagnosed is not unique to it. Rather, what’s being rejected is what we would call ‘shock therapy’ (“establishing all at once;”) when it comes to policy and institutional change, Smith promotes gradual change. He worries that fast economic changes will generate dislocations that are inhumane and disorderly (WN 4.2.40, 469.) But he also thinks that shock therapy shows an arrogant lack of respect to other people’s opinions (‘in spite of all opposition.’) Such political arrogance generally presupposes a moral arrogance: one’s ‘own judgment’ is  turned ‘into the supreme standard of right and wrong.’ This is a moral failing because this standard – the ‘idea of exact propriety and perfection’ (TMS 6.3.25, 247) – can only be set by the feelings of impartial spectator (TMS 7.2.1.49, 249). 

The arrogant leader assumes that fellow-citizens will accommodate themselves to him. Smith presupposes here that leaders are not rulers over subjects, but their servants We can discern here a commitment to a species of republicanism, where non-domination is a ruling virtue. What’s key for my present purposes is that such arrogant leaders detest delay (‘at once’), constitutional process, and compromise; they are fond of unitary authority, which facilitates their decisiveness (‘obstructions which it may sometimes oppose to the execution of their own will.’) In context Smith is clear that such arrogance comes naturally to royal princes (“imperial and royal reformers” (TMS 6.2.2.18, 234) and, perhaps, also those with great inherited wealth).[*]

The second kind of bad leader, the ideologue, is one who has excessive fondness for a particular ‘system’ of thought. To understand Smith’s criticism we need to be clear about the role of aesthetics as a legitimate political motive to action in his thought. A key passage is the following:

The same principle, the same love of system, the same regard to the beauty of order, of art and contrivance, frequently serves to recommend those institutions which tend to promote the public welfare. When a patriot exerts himself for the improvement of any part of the public police, his conduct does not always arise from pure sympathy with the happiness of those who are to reap the benefit of it. It is not commonly from a fellow-feeling with carriers and waggoners that a public-spirited man encourages the mending of high roads…The perfection of police, the extension of trade and manufactures, are noble and magnificent objects. The contemplation of them pleases us, and we are interested in whatever can tend to advance them. They make part of the great system of government, and the wheels of the political machine seem to move with more harmony and ease by means of them. We take pleasure in beholding the perfection of so beautiful and grand a system, and we are uneasy till we remove any obstruction that can in the least disturb or encumber the regularity of its motions. All constitutions of government, however, are valued only in proportion as they tend to promote the happiness of those who live under them. This is their sole use and end. From a certain spirit of system, however, from a certain love of art and contrivance, we sometimes seem to value the means more than the end, and to be eager to promote the happiness of our fellow-creatures, rather from a view to perfect and improve a certain beautiful and orderly system, than from any immediate sense or feeling of what they either suffer or enjoy. There have been men of the greatest public spirit, who have shown themselves in other respects not very sensible to the feelings of humanity. (TMS IV.1.11, 185)

Smith clearly thinks that the love of system can be aesthetic, and this also includes systems about “those institutions which tend to promote the public welfare.” Aesthetics has motivational pull because it is “pleasing.” What is notable is that according to Smith such aesthetic judgment can compensate for a lack of (or ‘imperfect’) sympathy with those aided by one’s institutional reform project. True public spirit may, in fact, be more a consequence of such aesthetic motives than concern for the lives of those one claims to be helping; this fact does not undermine (recall) the reality of ‘public spirit.’ (Again, there are republican sensibilities here.)

I do not mean to suggest the significance of the passage is only in its focus on the nature of aesthetic motivation. The key point is that there is a mismatch between why one may desire to improve the constitution of a state – recall from section 1 that this refers to the underlying social structures which give a particular state its stability --  and the proper normative grounds or justification for doing so. For constitutions “are valued only in proportion as they tend to promote the happiness of those who live under them. This is their sole use and end.” That is, when it comes to social affairs, Smith is an egalitarian consquentialist. Imperfect motives, the aesthetic pull of the harmony or fitting-ness of intellectual systems, can lead to good outcomes. Smith also allows that “the perfection of police [that is, public policy], the extension of trade and manufactures, are noble and magnificent objects.” The aesthetic pull of a system that aims to achieve such ends is not illusory; these really are noble objects worth pursuing. This helps explain the comment quoted above that the ““some general, and even systematical, idea of the perfection of policy and law, may no doubt be necessary for directing the views of the statesman.” (TMS 6.2.2.18, 234) Smith thinks (recall) policy must be governed by an ideal vision of society.

The problem is that the aesthetic pull of an intellectual system can displace the public spirit  it should be animating: “This spirit of system commonly takes the direction of that more gentle public spirit; always animates it, and often inflames it even to the madness of fanaticism.” (TMS 6.2.2.15, 232) Smith thinks that such an aesthetic attachment to an ideology is dangerous. For Smith fanaticism is always associated with violence (TMS 3.3.36-7, 152-3; TMS 6.3.26, 249). Not all fanaticism is associated with an ideology taken too far, Smith often treats religion and faction as likely sources of violent fanaticism. Either way, fanaticism enhances readiness to use violence and undermines the working of our moral sentiments: “Of all the corrupters of moral sentiments, therefore, faction and fanaticism have always been by far the greatest” (TMS 3.3.43, 156). So, Smith warns against certain kind of political leaders, of an intellectual kind, who are in the grip of a beautiful ideology and turn violent to achieve their ends.

As the passage reveals (TMS 3.3.43, 156), Smith clear also thinks that the spirit of faction, we would say partisanship, is very dangerous. Smith concern with faction runs through TMS (for example):

The animosity of hostile factions, whether civil or ecclesiastical, is often still more furious than that of hostile nations; and their conduct towards one another is often still more atrocious…It is needless to observe, I presume, that both rebels and heretics are those unlucky persons, who, when things have come to a certain degree of violence, have the misfortune to be of the weaker party. In a nation distracted by faction, there are, no doubt, always a few, though commonly but a very few, who preserve their judgment untainted by the general contagion. They seldom amount to more than, here and there, a solitary individual, without any influence, excluded, by his own candour, from the confidence of either party, and who, though he may be one of the wisest, is necessarily, upon that very account, one of the most insignificant men in the society. All such people are held in contempt and derision, frequently in detestation, by the furious zealots of both parties. A true party-man hates and despises candour; and, in reality, there is no vice which could so effectually disqualify him for the trade of a party-man as that single virtue. The real, revered, and impartial spectator, therefore, is, upon no occasion, at a greater distance than amidst the violence and rage of contending parties….Even to the great Judge of the universe, they impute all their own prejudices, and often view that Divine Being as animated by all their own vindictive and implacable passions. (TMS 3.3.43, 156)

For Smith factions are cohesive because they are echo-chambers of mutual sympathy (“general contagion”).[**] And in so doing they create a robust form of partiality which does not respect, even comes to loath (“hates and despises”) truth and equity. Religious factions are inclined to innovate theologically, and create theological justifications for their own otherwise immoral behavior. Smith notes that it’s very difficult and lonely to avoid becoming factional in the midst of other people’s fanaticism. A key problem of the existence of polarizing partisanship is that a robust willingness to stick with one’s independent and impartial judgment becomes itself a matter of suspicion and antagonism; who has not heard ‘you are either with us or against us.’[+]

And in fact, he thinks that partisan leaders may well themselves be less fanatical and partisan than they let on,[11] but that they cannot reveal their true feelings amidst great partisanship: “Even though the leaders should have preserved their own heads, as indeed they commonly do, free from this fanaticism, yet they dare not always disappoint the expectation of their followers; but are often obliged, though contrary to their principle and their conscience, to act as if they were under the common delusion.” (TMS 6.2.2.15, 233) So, a factional leader will, if she does not willingly encourage fanaticism, be unwillingly be carried along by the zeal and madness (“delusions”) of their fellow partisans. That is to say, while an arrogant leader tramples on the opinions of the people, a factional leader must flatter his followers to stay in power.

These three types of bad leadership have in common some features: they are not impartial, they lack public spirit, and, most notably, they facilitate the corruption of moral life. In sum, they presuppose political life as a zero-sum activity and act accordingly. They also fail to find the right balance between respecting people’s opinions and guiding them. It follows from this that Smith thinks public spirited leaders, who are impartial and promote good morals (or mores) as well as promote policies with (to adopt Jacob Levy's claim about Montesquieu) the grain of society, are laudable.