Digressions&Impressions

On Two Styles of Conservatism; or Is Conservatism a Philosophical Tradition?

The year 2016 marked a dramatic change of political course for the English-speaking world, with Britain voting for independence from Europe and the United States electing a president promising a revived American nationalism. Critics see both events as representing a dangerous turn toward “illiberalism” and deplore the apparent departure from “liberal principles” or “liberal democracy,” themes that surfaced repeatedly in conservative publications over the past year. Perhaps the most eloquent among the many spokesmen for this view has been William Kristol, who, in a series of essays in the Weekly Standard, has called for a new movement to arise “in defense of liberal democracy.” In his eyes, the historic task of American conservatism is “to preserve and strengthen American liberal democracy,” and what is needed now is “a new conservatism based on old conservative—and liberal—principles.” Meanwhile, the conservative flagship Commentary published a cover story by the Wall Street Journal’s Sohrab Ahmari entitled “Illiberalism: The Worldwide Crisis,” seeking to raise the alarm about the dangers to liberalism posed by Brexit, Trump, and other phenomena.

These and similar examples demonstrate once again that more than a few prominent conservatives in America and Britain today consider themselves to be not only conservatives but also liberals at the same time. Or, to get to the heart of the matter, they see conservatism as a branch or species of liberalism—to their thinking, the “classical” and most authentic form of liberalism. According to this view, the foundations of conservatism are to be found, in significant measure, in the thought of the great liberal icon John Locke and his followers. It is to this tradition, they say, that we must turn for the political institutions—including the separation of powers, checks and balances, and federalism—that secure the freedoms of religion, speech, and the press; the right of private property; and due process under law. In other words, if we want limited government and, ultimately, the American Constitution, then there is only one way to go: Lockean liberalism provides the theoretical basis for the ordered freedom that conservatives strive for, and liberal democracy is the only vehicle for it.

Many of those who have been most outspoken on this point have been our long-time friends. We admire and are grateful for their tireless efforts on behalf of conservative causes, including some in which we have worked together as partners. But we see this confusion of conservatism with liberalism as historically and philosophically misguided. Anglo-American conservatism is a distinct political tradition—one that predates Locke by centuries. Its advocates fought for and successfully established most of the freedoms that are now exclusively associated with Lockean liberalism, although they did so on the basis of tenets very different from Locke’s. Indeed, when Locke published his Two Treatises of Government in 1689, offering the public a sweeping new rationale for the traditional freedoms already known to Englishmen, most defenders of these freedoms were justly appalled. They saw in this new doctrine not a friend to liberty but a product of intellectual folly that would ultimately bring down the entire edifice of freedom. Thus, liberalism and conservatism have been opposed political positions in political theory since the day liberal theorizing first set foot in England.

Today’s confusion of conservative political thought with liberalism is in a way understandable, however. In the great twentieth-century battles against totalitarianism, conservatives and liberals were allies: They fought together, along with the Communists, against Nazism. After 1945, conservatives and liberals remained allies in the war against Communism. Over these many decades of joint struggle, what had for centuries been a distinction of vital importance was treated as if it were not terribly important, and in fact, it was largely forgotten.

But since the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, these circumstances have changed. The challenges facing the Anglo-American tradition are now coming from other directions entirely. Radical Islam, to name one such challenge, is a menace that liberals, for reasons internal to their own view of the political world, find difficult to regard as a threat and especially difficult to oppose in an effective manner. But even more important is the challenge arising from liberalism itself. It is now evident that liberal principles contribute little or nothing to those institutions that were for centuries the bedrock of the Anglo-American political order: nationalism, religious tradition, the Bible as a source of political principles and wisdom, and the family. Indeed, as liberalism has emerged victorious from the battles of the last century, the logic of its doctrines has increasingly turned liberals against all of these conservative institutions. On both of these fronts, the conservative and liberal principles of the Anglo-American tradition are now painfully at cross-purposes. The twentieth-century alliance between conservatism and liberalism is proving increasingly difficult to maintain.

.... But to have a strong and intellectually capable conservatism, we must be able to see clearly what the Anglo-American conservative tradition is and what it is about. And to do this, we have to disentangle it from its old opponent—liberalism...--- "What Is Conservatism" (2017) By Ofir Haivry and Yoram Hazony  @AmericanAffairs.

I tend to think of Conservatism as a humane, anti-philosophical tradition (or if it has an esoteric philosophy, it is skeptical in tenor) rooted in a status quo bias grounded in gradualist risk aversion, cognizant of human folly, and willing to embrace a plurality of human value (e.g., beauty, craftsmanship, nobility, understanding of history, the classics, etc.) in education and averse to relentless embrace of public utility or moralism (recall here). This tradition is opposed to diverse forms of tyranny. When American conservatives, even when taught by Leo Strauss and his students, embrace the Enlightenment project of Jefferson and Lincoln, I see them as adapting the virtues of conservatism to local their milieu. By now, the Enlightenment project, liberal democracy, and even the welfare state are part of our tradition, and so deserve careful conservation. Let's call this Type 1 conservatism.

As an aside, if one believes in providence, Type 1 conservatives are essentially tragic figures breaking the historical tidal waves and orienting these toward less bad outcomes they cannot endorse themselves. When one rejects such providence, Type 1 conservatives are essentially heroic--mocked from the point of view of reason and justice--who use their rhetorical and tactical genius to domesticate the ambitions of reason.

By contrast, Haivry and Hazony treat contemporary exponents of this Conservative anti-philosophical tradition as misguided.  Sensing a world-historical moment, they construct a nationalist, religious Conservative philosophical tradition not just by a list of names ("Sir John Fortescue, Richard Hooker, Sir Edward Coke, John Selden, Sir Matthew Hale, Sir William Temple, Jonathan Swift, Josiah Tucker, Edmund Burke, John Dickinson, and Alexander Hamilton. Men such as George Washington, John Adams, and John Marshall...would also have placed themselves in this conservative tradition rather than with its opponents, whom they knew all too well") but also by emphasizing the "shared common ideas and principles" of these men,  who on their account "saw themselves as part of a common tradition of English, and later Anglo-American, constitutionalism."  Of these names, they spend most of their time on Fortescue (1394–1479), who was previously unknown to me and I am pleased to learn about, and Selden (known to me, in no small part, due to Haivry's work), who deserves more study. In turn, they connect Fortescu to the history of Biblical Hebraism.

Haifry and Hazony, treat Conservatism as a constitutional tradition, which embraces national distinctiveness, and that, as a matter of principle, stands both against authoritarian absolutism (associated with certain forms of monarchy/empire) as well as liberalism (associated with another form of universalism, namely rationalism, which is connected to Grotius and Locke). This conservative tradition is both pragmatic and gradualist, and proceeds by trial and error (which is why practice of common law matters so much to it), but rooted in natural law and the teachings of revelation and an embrace a national church (which provides basis for national unity and lack of dangerous conflict over what revelation teaches). To prevent misunderstanding, Haivry and Hazony are aware that Locke is ordinarily classified as an empiricist (in epistemology and psychology), but they treat him as a rationalist because of the axiomatic "elements of Locke’s political theory".... [that is, the “perfect freedom” and “perfect equality” that define the state of nature"]... "are not known from experience." 

In sum, their let's call it Type 2 conservatism as a philosophical tradition has five core commitments:

(1) Historical Empiricism. The authority of government derives from constitutional traditions known, through the long historical experience of a given nation, to offer stability, well-being, and freedom. These traditions are refined through trial and error over many centuries, with repairs and improvements being introduced where necessary, while maintaining the integrity of the inherited national edifice as a whole. Such empiricism entails a skeptical standpoint with regard to the divine right of the rulers, the universal rights of man, or any other abstract, universal systems....

(2) Nationalism. The diversity of national experiences means that different nations will have different constitutional and religious traditions. The Anglo-American tradition harkens back to principles of a free and just national state, charting its own course without foreign interference, whose origin is in the Bible. These include a conception of the nation as arising out of diverse tribes, its unity anchored in common traditional law and religion. Such nationalism is not based on race, embracing new members who declare that “your people is my people, and your God is my God” (Ruth 1:16).

(3) Religion. The state upholds and honors the biblical God and religious practices common to the nation. These are the centerpiece of the national heritage and indispensable for justice and public morals. At the same time, the state offers wide toleration to religious and social views that do not endanger the integrity and well-being of the nation as a whole.

(4) Limited Executive Power. The powers of the king (or president) are limited by the laws of the nation, which he neither determines nor adjudicates. The powers of the king (or president) are limited by the representatives of the people, whose advice and consent he must obtain both respecting the laws and taxation.

(5) Individual Freedoms. The security of the individual’s life and property is mandated by God as the basis for a society that is both peaceful and prosperous, and is to be protected against arbitrary actions of the state. The ability of the nation to seek truth and conduct sound policy depends on freedom of speech and debate. These and other fundamental rights and liberties are guaranteed by law, and may be infringed upon only by due process of law.

The key genealogical move is to suggest that the American revolution founding is not exclusively indebted to Lockean rationalist-radicalism, but that "there were already two distinct political theories" in America one conservative one, associated with Hamilton, and the other more radical one associated with Jefferson (who is lumped together with English radicals influenced by Locke: "Richard Price, Joseph Priestley, Charles James Fox, Charles Grey, Thomas Paine" who were Burke's target.) The high point of the radicals is the Declaration, and the high point of the Conservatives is the Constitution, which then gets corrupted -- there is always an ejection from Eden! -- by the influence of Jeffersonian separation of Church and State and, then, destroyed by FDR's New Deal. (They skip over Lincoln, which is odd.)**

It should be obvious, at once, that Haivry and Hazony have great difficulty finding a place for the non-Lockean, liberal tradition one can associate with the younger Burke and now primarily known to us from the writings of Hume, Montesquieu, Smith, Madison, Constant, Sophie de Grouchy, and, more recently, Hayek, or Shklar--this tradition has considerable overlap with their their Type 2 conservatism, but rejects their (2)-(3) as organizing principles (and has a more positive views about immigration). In my view, this non-Lockean tradition is not conservative because it also recognizes the political and prudential utility of having a normative and systematic ideal guiding one's pragmatic choices (see, for example, Hume's Idea of a Perfect Commonwealth), but it does so through a willingness to embrace a second-best ameliorative stance that gets articulated by way of dynamics of historical, practical reason. If one is interested in the complex interplay of different strands of liberalism, one could usefully start with Jacob T. Levy's excellent Rationalism, Pluralism, and Freedom.

In fact, Haivry and Hazony often sound like Hayek in their critique of what they call 'rationalism,' but are suspicious of his cosmopolitanism and lack his interest in commerce and trade.* Once this anti-Lockean Liberal tradition is allowed back into the historical story, one can immediate see that Liberalism has a lot more resources than Haifvry and Hazony recognize. The include resources for folk one may well understand as Type 1 conservative and that have long been comfortable, perhaps  too comfortable, on the political Right.**

But let me close with an observation. Haivry and Hazony berate liberals for failing to grasp the menace of radical Islam. Let's grant, for the sake of argument, that liberalism has been slow to articulate a proper response to it. But Haifvry and Hazony spend so much time trying to distinguish (Lockean) liberalism from their own Type 2 conservatism that they forget that their greatest difficulty is to distinguish themselves from ethno-religious-nationalists with a fondness for authoritarianism. (This is not to deny they have some such resources--their nationalism is self-consciously not ethnic.) In fact, even if one grants that Type 2 conservatism is a genuine historical tradition, Haifry and Hazony overlook the fact that totalitarianism is not the only species of tyranny opposed by liberals and, bless their souls, Type 1 conservatives: after all, we recognize that non-totalitarian, ethno-religious-nationalism (i.e., folk that reject their (4)-(5)) is the other true menace of our times (a case can be made that it often merges with versions of radical Islam), and we think that Type 2 conservatives like Haivry and Hazony run the risk of becoming the intellectual handmaidens of such petty, yet nasty, tyrants.

 

On the Crisis in Liberal Democracy

Max Weber spoke of an ethic of responsibility in politics. Part of that is the duty of respect for the structures and procedures that frame the political enterprise and that make deliberation and action with others possible. Since the invention of politics, some politicians have thrived on institutional irresponsibility. In a remarkable biography published originally in 1982, the German historian Christian Meier wrote this about Julius Caesar:

Caesar was insensitive to political institutions and the complex ways in which they operate. . . . Since his year as consul, if not before, Caesar had been unable to see Rome’s institutions as autonomous entities. . . . He could see them only as instruments in the interplay of forces. His cold gaze passed through everything that Roman society still believed in, lived by, valued and defended. He had no feeling for the power of institutions . . . , but only for what he found useful or troublesome about them. . . . In Caesar’s eye’s no one existed but himself and his opponents. It was all an interpersonal game. . . . The scene was cleared of any suprapersonal elements. Or if any were left, they were merely props behind which one could take cover or with which one could fight.

Meier’s judgment of Caesar is complicated by his understanding that other participants in Roman politics had the opposite vice. They failed to grasp that the decrepit institutions of the Republic did need to be seen and maybe even “seen through” in a way that would permit the question of their restructuring to be raised.

But the point I want to make is that there is something reckless, even pathological, about a mode of political action in which the walls and structures intended to house actions of that kind become suddenly invisible, transparent, even contemptible to a given statesman. Such drastically unmediated proximity—“Now there is just you, and me, and the issue of my greatness” or “Now there is just you and me and our interest in justice”—is alarmingly like the press of millions of bodies against each other that Arendt associates with the destruction of thought and deliberation in mass society.—Jeremy Waldron (2012) “Political Political Theory: An Inaugural Lecture” 16-17 [HT Sara Amighetti]

l have been interested in the rise of Trump (recall), European neo-fascists, and European-born-and-bread Jihadists (recall) because I take them all to be symptoms of an underlying cultural and political malaise (recall). While there are non-trivial differences among these, they all share a rejection of liberal norms and values (most notably a fondness for violent rhetoric and lack of respect for those that may disagree), embrace political spectacle as a mode of communication and action, and understand the world in zero-sum terms. While it's too early to say if liberal democracy can survive so many internal challenges at once (and, perhaps, we're lucky that there is no foreign power strong enough to take advantage of our weakness), it is not a foregone conclusion it will survive even in the short term especially now that political control has fallen in the hands of anti-Liberal leadership Stateside.

As theorists, it's our task to address the current fragility of liberal institutions so that we can prepare the way for their revival one day. In so doing we should not underestimate the ideological and psychological pull of anti-Liberal sentiments, whether militant Islam or assertive, cultural (and racialized) nationalism; even so what needs to be understood is why liberal commitments have lost their ability to attract and inspire considerable groups of people. While the neo-Marxists are undoubtedly right to call attention to a generation-long rising inequality, stagnating incomes for ordinary peoples, the retrenching welfare state, and financial sector bail out(s) alongside austerity for the many, it is undeniable that the response to these facts has simultaneously been an abandonment of the political Left (not just Third Way left) by its natural constituency (even if one can discern stirrings of a revival in some places).

In particular, it's clear that what is driving the turn to militant Islam and ferocious nationalism is not so much fear (which would benefit the old Left), but rising anger. (On the significance of anger in nationalist thought, see, especially, Jamie Mayerfeld, "The Myth of Benign Group Identity: A Critique of Liberal Nationalism.") It is pretty clear that beyond a complex relationship to consumerism and modern sexual culture, young Jihadists are driven, in part, by a lack of recognition--so much so that boys born and raised in western Europe are willing to engage in suicidal missions against it.* Their sense of grievance is echoed by Trumpists, who believe that the world is rigged against them and want somebody to re-rig it on their behalf at the manifest and explicit expense of others (including advocating war-crimes and ethnic immigration policies, etc.).**

Waldron's (2012) inaugural lecture correctly calls attention to the significance and danger of politicians who thrive on institutional irresponsibility (and, as is clear from larger context, he castigates theorists' lack of interest in such politicians and the institutions that generate them). Waldron notes that such institutional irresponsibility has been a feature of liberal political life for some time and is, in fact, a natural consequence of familiar practices. Here I want to call attention to two features of his diagnosis.

First, he thinks that some influential, ruling values of liberal life (efficiency, utility, etc.) undermine liberal institutions. This is illustrated by an extraordinary passage:

In my home country, New Zealand, it was budgetary considerations that explained the abolition of the upper house, the Legislative Council, in 1950 [!], and in recent years a similarly ruthless efficiency-based approach has led to the elimination of a Parliamentary quorum in the House of Representatives, not to mention the elimination of any requirement that members have to be personally present in the chamber in order to vote (what a waste of their time, it is said, when it could be spent more efficiently somewhere else); the Whips just call out their nominal party strength whenever there is a division. In general, in New Zealand, the efficiency approach to political institutions has engendered the growth of a bullying mentality that insists that, since the government is almost always bound to get its way in the House of Representatives, there can be no real objection to the truncation of formal parliamentary debate by repeated use of urgency and closure motions. It is a sorry spectacle. (11)

Here Waldron is describing a sixty year arc in which considerations of efficiency and utility get so intertwined with the practice of power that they while they leave the form of liberal institutions intact they effectively efface the substance of these institutions. New Zealand is not treated as an anomaly, but as kind of run-of-the-mill-example-of-the-road-to-liberal-ruin in which there are bad "side-effects of the operation of our institutions on people." (In context Waldron is quoting Mill about good side-effects.) Waldron's observation suggests that what is known as new public management (associated with neo-liberalism) is, in fact, always a live possibility within the tradition--something foreshadowed by Swift's A Modest Proposal (recall).** 

Waldron quotes with approval a key insight of J.S. Mill's "great book" Considerations on Representative Government: "it is a personal injustice to withhold from any one . . . the ordinary privilege of having his voice reckoned in the disposal of affairs in which he has the same interest as other people...Every one has a right to feel insulted by being made a nobody, and stamped as of no account." In context, Mill is defending the positive role of parliament as a debating club. According to Mill the role of parliament is, in part, a means toward recognition and respect of all individuals. As Waldron notes a genuine willingness to debate has become a rarity in our houses of representatives long before the present.+ A political culture that is incapable of genuine debate is one in which recognition may be impossible.

Second, in the quote from Meier, Waldron hints at our elites's (and theorists') inability to understand the present (that is I am reading the claim about Roman elites -- that "they failed to grasp that the decrepit institutions of the Republic did need to be seen and maybe even “seen through” in a way that would permit the question of their restructuring to be raised" -- as applying to our times.) Waldron turns this into claim about institutional functioning (which fits his larger, admirable program of focusing political theory on real world functioning and stability institutions); but I am inclined to articulate the point as a failure of leadership that is unable to discern the rot within and so is unable to engage in a restorative project while still possible. This failure is widespread in our political, economic, and intellectual ruling classes.++

This very last point suggests that a liberal education fails to prepare its ruling members to understand their own society.*** (I include myself in this category: I view my blogging of the last few years as a very public record of attempted catch-up.) More important, our liberal education has failed in creating the conditions that may preserve itself.

 

 

On Plato's System of Natural Liberty (and Adam Smith's True Religion)

After thirteen years in the profession (and by switching disciplinary affiliation), I finally have the chance to teach, and thereby read through, Plato's Republic -- a text that was central to the DNA of the ongoing discussions in several departments at my graduate institution (The University of Chicago) -- to undergraduates (in a course on Political Utopianism).* Over the years I had checked various passages, to refresh my memory, in the context of my scholarship and blogging, but as I prepared my first class on it (we're doing four three hour sessions), I recognized at once that I had forgotten not just details, but non-trivial features of the book (for example the exchange with Cephalus at the start of Book 1 about which soon). Anyway, teaching the book generated sparkling class discussion and prompted some new impressions.

One striking feature of Book 2 is that the true city (372e)-- Socrates' first city in speech  (369b-372d) -- is introduced as a heuristic for something else (to unearth the nature of justice in the individual):  “Is not the city larger than the man?... Then, perhaps, there would be more justice in the larger object and more easy to apprehend." (368e) In a large-scale, complete (or fully grown) (371e) model distinguishing features may be more available, and (if so) in virtue of size more easily unearthed and analyzed. While this strategy is compatible with certain forms of reductionism, it is notable that in Plato we study (a feature of) a big object in order to understand (that same feature in) the smaller ones (see Gulliver's Travels, Book 2). Obviously, this involves a bet on scale-invariance.

Here I treat the so-called "city of Pigs" (Glaucon's phrase (372d) as Socrates' genuine normative ideal or baseline. The title of this post is, of course, a (serious) joke. But not just a joke. For, Socrates' healthy city has an uncanny resemblance to Smith's system of natural liberty. (In the old Loeb translation Paul Shorey also notes this.) There are, of course, subtle (and not-so-subtle) differences, but  it is worth reminding ourselves of the important similarities: both 'ideal states' have an extensive division of labor and, thus, specialization; a monetized economy; are broadly egalitarian; are open to internal and external trade (that is, generate a surplus of goods and leisure time); are free of slaves; they are pacific; are property-owning; have a minimal state structure; and are famine free (about which more below). They also rely on a non-trivial distinction between necessaries, conveniences, and luxuries (see below).  There is one further important similarity, but that's the  speculative last paragraph below.

Of course, Socrates assumes a differentiated human nature (the differentiation is, in part, explicitly physical [371c & 371e] and natural skill) whereas Smith, as a good analytical egalitarian, assumes (agreeing with Thrasymachus) a roughly uniform human nature: "the difference...between a philosopher and a common street porter, for example, seems to arise not so much from nature as from habit, custom, and education." (On analytical egalitarianism see here and here). To be sure, there is also a crucial difference between Smith and Thrasymachus: Smith puts himself (the modeler) inside his model (philosophers are no different in human motivation) [echoing Hobbes and Mandeville], whereas Thrasymachus' vanity (Peart and Levy) leads him to treat his own expertise as somehow distinct from the folk he describes. (It's true that Thrasymachus is not called vain, but his blush (350d) reveals that he recognizes that he is working with an inconsistent model in which he either has to give up on his own elitism and embrace for himself the base -- proto-utility-maximizing -- description he gives of others, or has to insist that in virtue of his expertise he is somehow different from the ordinary agent. And if he, why not others?) But here, in the true city (369b-372d), Socrates does not assume, I think, a hierarchy of types (as he does elsewhere). So, the disagreement with Smith is truly minimal.+

In Socrates's true city, population growth is (to use Smith's terms) regulated by their wealth (372b) and available fertile country (372c)--thereby avoiding poverty and wars of acquisition. That is, there will be (to use Malthus's phrase) a moral check on off-spring. But this is just one of the side constraints. For, more subtly, in Socrates' ideal city, rather than generating luxury surplus, the population is allowed to grow when possible (so that, wealth/income per head stays roughly the same over the time). This is also pretty much Smith's ideal model for the right relationship between food supply, income, and population growth. [It is, I think granted by Socrates that conveniences of life (olives, cheese, salt, etc.) are allowed to grow (within moderation) and this may be culture relative; if the previous sentence is right then Smith's model is very close to Socrates's.]**

There is one very important difference between Socrates's true city and Smith's system of natural liberty. (No, I am not talking about the role of competition or Socrates's embrace of vegetarianism.) In Socrates's true city philosophy is absent. I believe this is due to the fact that philosophy is not needed, as a trade among many, in a healthy and proper functioning state. This presupposes, of course, controversially that philosophy is never purely contemplative nor a basic human need. The previous sentences are compatible with philosophy as a pure leisure activity (about which more below).

Finally, in Socrates's true city, there is room for religion. But this religion is neither the ordinary superstitious religion in which the Gods need to be bribed out of fear  (see, especially, the exchange with Cephalus at 331b) nor the rationalistic religion that Socrates will articulate in the more luxurious city (378ff). But rather, in the true city there is a life-enhancing, joyful religion: "they will feast with their children, drinking of their wine thereto, garlanded and singing hymns to the gods in pleasant fellowship." I had never previously assimilated this proto-Nietzschean strain in Socrates. (I think this feature was in part obscured for me by Nietzsche's polemic against the life-denying, sickly aspects of Platonism.) It is, of course, possible that the symposia will generate philosophical discussions. 

I close with a further, speculative thought. I have long wondered what the content of Adam Smith's pure and rational religion, "such as wise men have in all ages of the world wished to see established" (emphases added) might be. Earlier, I kind of focused on Smith's debts to Locke, Spinoza, and Enlightenment thinkers (like Voltaire and Hume). But in reflecting on the structural similarities between Socrates' ideal city and Smith's regulative ideal, I wondered if Smith, too, -- who insists  that on this point there is consensus among the wise of all ages -- is not signaling his desire for a Socratic, that is, joyful religion. 

Pure and rational religion, free from every mixture of absurdity, imposture, or fanaticism, such as wise men have in all ages of the world wished to see established"- - See more at: http://digressionsnimpressions.typepad.com/digressionsimpressions/2015/05/lockes-redefinition-of-religion.html#sthash.RIBiY8MY.dpuf

On Disturbed Aesthetics and True Politics (Swift's A Modest Proposal)

It is a melancholy object to those, who walk through this great town, or travel in the country, when they see the streets, the roads and cabbin-doors crowded with beggars of the female sex, followed by three, four, or six children, all in rags, and importuning every passenger for an alms.--Swift (1729).

A Modest Proposal begins (the quoted sentence above) with an ugly sight; we are not called to sympathize with the beggars in rags--looking at them, even reflecting on them, are downers. Rather it's taken for granted that we side with what we might call the disturbed aesthetics of those that encounter an urban landscape filled with miserably dressed, begging poor. In context it is implied that encountering orderly, working poor would not generate such aesthetic revulsion. Rather than fleeing the urban scene to find the sublime in the wild (as Burke would soon urge), some are moved to propose an aesthetic sanitation project. It's this impulse that is at the root of many noble reform projects and Disneyfication, but also of many modern species of tyranny, grandiose and petty.

It's easy to miss the role such disturbed aesthetics plays in Swift's narrator's argument because when he introduces aesthetic pleasure later in the context of luxury consumption by the landed (and commercial) rich, very different, more familiar notions of beauty operate. Such beauty is all about (to use eighteenth century terms) refinement and delicacy as well as status.

To be clear the narrator, who proposes the project of reform, himself is very careful not to reveal if he, too, is one of those urban walkers disturbed by ugliness. But he knows that is how he can grab his audience's first attention, and he is wise enough to understand that one mention is sufficient.

Swift's tale is, as is well known, the dark prophecy of Neoliberalism: he sees through the complex interaction among the mutually supporting inner logic(s) of markets, technocracy, utilitarianism, patriotism, and commodification. But unlike many later critics and observers who use such jargon, Swift, the poet, understands the source or wellspring of their enduring appeal such that passionate human beings might sacrifice all, and especially others, for such cold logics. 

I could end with the previous paragraph. A Modest Proposal is also a tale about the true art of politics. For, Swift implies that if we can recognize the role that disturbed aesthetics plays in driving our politics, we can channel this sanitizing energy into less harmful projects ("other expedients") and social arrangements. This requires not just the shaming of the grossly immoral, but making alternatives attractive to the public by seeming to be responsive to our aesthetic needs. That is to say, politics is also aesthetic prophecy.

The Walk-On Philosopher

[...] Only Dirck, or Theodore Rembrantsz, an astronomer and surveyor in North Holland, made his acquaintance in that time, when the most remote and obscure villages were hardly less fertile in the growth of philosophy, than the flourishing cities of commerce….

Dirck Rembrantsz was a Dutch peasant, native the village of Nierop, at the end of North Holland, facing Friesland. The exercise he made in the trade of shoemaker in the place of his birth, provided him barely with the means necessary to maintain his subsistence. But he had found ways to overcome his fortune by an exquisite knowledge of mathematics, that he could not help but to grow beyond the detriment of the work of his hands. Mr. Descartes' famous name, linked with the minor satisfaction he had received from the mathematical books he had read in the vernacular, resulted into the leave of his village for consulting [the philosopher].

His [Descartes'] fame had portrayed him as a man of the world, who was easy to access, and the idea of a secluded philosopher did not withheld him, even when the entrance of his solitude was guarded by some Switzers. But he was put off by the valets of Descartes as a bold farmer, and they only informed the master of the house, after Rembrantsz returned two or three months later, in the same outfit as the first time, and demanded to speak to Mr. Descartes, with the resolution of a man who seemed to confer with him on important business.

His appearance did not contribute to a better reception than before, and when the news was brought to Mr. Descartes, he was depicted as an importunate beggar, who in the eyes of the servants used his wish to the talk about philosophy and astrology, as an excuse to ask for charity. And to avoid going into that, Descartes sent him some money and wished him [Rembrantsz] to say that he would dispense the trouble to speak to him [any further]. Rembrantsz, whose poverty not had affected his heart, refused the generosity of our philosopher, and decided that his hour had not yet come, and he returned home this time, in the hope that a third trip would become more succesful. This reply was reported to Mr. Descartes, who regretted not have seen the peasant and who ordered his people to give him notice, when he returned.

Rembrantsz returned a few months later and this peasant, who had such a passion to meet Mr. Descartes that he already had made two trips in vain, was recognized, and he was finally satisfied in what he had sought so hard and with such perseverance.

Descartes recognized his skills and merits in this field and would pay back his [Rembrantsz'] troubles with interest. He [Descartes] was not satisfied with the teaching of all his problems, but provided him with the methodology to correct his arguments. He welcomed him yet among a number of his friends, without paying attention to the lowness of his position, but considered him among those of the first rank, and he assured him that his house and his heart was open to him at all times.

From that time on, Rembrantsz, who lived only five or six miles apart from Egmond, frequently visited Descartes, and with his school he became one of the leading astronomers of his time. He had mastered so well the knowledge of his [Descartes'] principles, that in the rest of his life he only build on these foundations.-- Adrien Baillet (1691) La vie de Monsieur Descartes, part 2, pp. 553-556, translated by Huib Zuidervaart in THE CORRESPONDENCE OF DIRCK REMBRANTSZ VAN NIEROP (1610-1682), edited by M. Rijks.

There are, I am guessing, about  forty-thousand professional philosophers world-wide. I am an experienced enough historian of philosophy to assert confidently that even if our civilization continues and digital storage is perfected most of us will -- just a handful excepted -- be forgotten within a generation or two, three, even if we would deny that the Golden Age of analytical philosophy is past. As it is, only a few of us are actually read outside a small, narrow group of specialists at any given moment; a charismatic PhD supervisor may stretch this audience a bit wider. Even most of those that today have a disciplinary or wider public audience are almost certainly incapable of competing in an enduring fashion for scarce, future curricular time, or the more intimate choices of discerning future readers. It's easy to imagine that Berkeley will disappear from the curriculum once the empiricism/rationalism divide is set aside as parochial or, to hit closer to home, that Davidson will be a mere footnote to Quine and Whitehead, while Mandeville, De Grouchy, and Swift will be rediscovered time and again by readers trying to make sense of living in a (let's stipulate, Chinese-speaking) corrupt, commercial civilization (recall this review).

If we reflect on our situation, I suspect most of us console ourselves with the idea that through our teaching we touch the minds of the young and, in so doing, help give their lives, which will radiate in all kinds of unexpected directions, some shape. I know that some of my peers are convinced that they are part of a progressive (even scientific) enterprise within the intellectual division labor in which their contributions allow future generations to progress even closer to the truth; even if they remain anonymous to future generations they will have participated in a great trans-historical project. Such delusions are harmless. Some of us contribute more concretely by offering philosophical reflections that might help our communities navigate what may seem urgent and confused matters. I am not denying, of course, that even the most distinguished (reflexive and privileged, etc.) of our philosophical peers is undoubtedly mostly just enjoying her intellectual activity immersed in the problems and puzzles that animate her thought drawing a generous salary that secures her from the more common anxieties consequent hunger and lack of shelter.

Even so, sometimes the unremarkable play a walk-on role in history, and this is not dispiriting. Let me explain.

The view from up here

He who studies with a philosopher should take away with him some one good thing every day: he should daily return home a sounder man, or in the way to become sounder.--Seneca Letter 108

In the bowels of cyberspace, philosopher Eric Schliesser (Ghent) has earned the amusing nickname "the Ghent Balloon," in recognition of the amazing amounts of hot air he can generate on any topic, no matter how trivial.  Since he is a serious scholar and philosopher, my own suspicion is that he really doesn't believe a lot of the stuff he blogs, and that he does it mainly to garner attention or to satisfy his apparently   enormouos appetite for righteous posturing.  Whatever the explanation, his latest balloon ride warrants a couple of observations.  First, regarding its juvenile title, there was no "dust-up":  Prof. Haslanger made a claim, and I disgreed with it for the reasons given.  I often agree with Prof. Haslanger on issues in the profession, but I did not agree with her about this.  That is not a "dust-up," but Prof. Schliesser apparently would like to make it one.  Second, if Schliesser does not believe that meaningful qualitative judgments are possible, and that all we can do is meet the demands of each "constituency," then he should cut through the hot air with a bracing burst of icey directness and say so clearly.  Third, his feigned uncertainty about this line from my original comments--"Only if one thought every intellectual constituency within the APA produced good philosophical work could [representing them all] possibly be a desideratum:  but does anyone really believe that?  (One need only look at the MIT faculty to see that no one there does.)"--is a bit incredible, even allowing for his rhetorical tendencies.  If anyone at MIT believed that all the intellectual constituencies in the APA produce high quality philosophical work, then MIT would have--maybe just once in the last 25 years, say--hired a philosopher trained at a SPEP department, or a philosopher affiliated with the Society for American Philosophers.   In fact, MIT hires (even when they hire Continental and feminist philosophers) only from a small handful of departments, about a half-dozen (Princeton, Berkeley, MIT, Oxford, two or three others on occasion).  I conclude that no one there believes that all the intellectual constituencies in the APA produce high quality philosophical work.  I also think that is the only reasonable view to hold, and I would be astonished if it were not Eric Schliesser's view, posturing to one side.--Brian Leiter.

I have always admired balloons, from a distance. They courageously glide, silently through the sky, yet vulnerable to the unpredictable elements. They represent our noble inquisitiveness and sense of adventure, while reminding us of the fragility of our control over the environment. Piloting a balloon requires skill and judgment as well as a bit of luck. It's a lovely aesthetic; come visit us in Ghent some time (here).

But, yes, I have somehow managed to become a character in a Swiftian plot. And I know than when you have been defined in some such way, it's wiser to incorporate the new meme into one's identity than to pretend it away. After all, to give you my metaphysical thought of the day, the comedy of life is constituted by potentially contrary impressions! So, I give you an image of Ghent from a balloon as a reminder to myself that my aspirations look ridiculous to some as well as a mark of my timidity.

On Finding a Home

‘we are like sailors who on the open sea must reconstruct their ship but are never able to start afresh from the bottom…’--Otto Neurath

[Aristotle’s ghost] freely acknowledged his own mistakes in natural philosophy, because he proceeded in many things upon conjecture, as all men must do; and he found that Gassendi, who had made the doctrine of Epicurus as palatable as he could, and the vortices of Descartes, were equally exploded. He predicted the same fate to ATTRACTION, whereof the present learned are such zealous asserters. He said, that new systems of nature were but new fashions, which would vary in every age; even those who pretend to demonstrate them from mathematical principles would flourish but a short period of time, and be out of vogue when that was determined.--Gulliver's Travels, Chapter VIII of Voyage III.

Today starts the bi-annual HOPOS conference (HOPOS = History of the Philosophy of Science) that my department is hosting in Ghent. Attending this meeting is a kind of intellectual home-coming because it is the only conference where I don't feel I need to justify my academic specialization to fellow philosophers. Even among early modernists, I felt like an outsider as long as I understood myself, and perceived others to look at me, as 'one of those weird Adam Smith guys.'

HOPOS, which has been around a few decades or so, is an anomaly in the profession: unlike other historical-philosophical topics it is not organized around a central figure -- although I often joke it is a coalition of folk that like Carnap and folk that like Newton -- nor characterized by a historical epoch. I am unfamiliar with professional societies devoted to HOM (History of Metaphysics), HOPOL (History of the Philosophy  of Language), HOE (History of Ethics), HOA (History of Aesthetics), etc. It is prima facie odd that a sub-specialization of philosophy, philosophy of science, would merit a society devoted to its history as an area of research (with even its own journal). The oddity of HOPOS (I have been a proud steer at one point) is deepened by the fact that there is a general sense that GPOS (General Philosophy of Science) is being displaced by more specialized sub-disciplines (PoX, that is philosophy of biology, philosophy of economics, philosophy of physics, etc., and even sub-disciplines of these: space/time, QM, etc.). Perhaps, the gradual demise of GPOS is a necessary pre-condition for the rise of HoPoS (history as burying the dead?), but I have never heard anybody say that.

In principle, HoPoS is a way of doing philosophy of science. So, after philosophy of science turned historical, say, with Kuhn, it is natural, albeit not necessary, to become reflexive about this turn and understand one's own activity historically. It's not clear that one could really go meta from HoPoS to, say, HoHoPoS, so it seems the potential infinite regress is blocked at HoPoS. To be concrete: I have long been puzzled and fascinated by the fact that some of the most significant features of Kuhn's Structure, were anticipated in Adam Smith's "The History of Astronomy" (written in the first half of the eighteenth century). Apparently thinking of science as an open-ended succession of revolutions between systems of thought that are in some sense incommensurable with each other is a kind of permanent open possibility in philosophical-logical space. That idea has a history, too (see the quote from Gulliver); it is, in fact, somewhat of a skeptical trope (while researching my dissertation I found a version of it in Montaigne).