Digressions&Impressions

Some Pre-History on the History and Sociology of Multiple Discovery: Merton, Dicey, Stigler- (etc.)

It may very well, owing to the condition of the world, and especially to the progress of knowledge, present itself at the same time to two or more persons who have had no intercommunication. Bentham and Paley formed nearly at the same date a utilitarian system of morals. Darwin and Wallace, while each ignorant of the other’s labours, thought out substantially the same theory as to the origin of species.--A.V. Dicey [2008] (1905) Lectures on the Relation between Law & Public Opinion in England during the Nineteenth Century, Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, p. 18 n. 6 (based on the 1917 reprint of the second edition).

As regular readers know (recall), I was sent to Dicey because he clearly shaped Milton Friedman's thought at key junctures in the 1940s and 50s. So, I was a bit surprised to encounter the passage quoted above. For, I tend to associate interest in the question of simultaneous invention or multiple discovery with Friedman's friend, George J Stigler (an influential economist) and his son Steven Stigler (a noted historian of statistics). In fairness, the Stiglers are more interested in the law of eponymy. In his (1980) article on that topic, Steven Stigler cites Robert K. Merton's classic and comic (1957) "Priorities in Scientific Discovery: A Chapter in the Sociology of Science." (Merton project was revived in Liam Kofi Bright's well known "On fraud.")

When Merton presented (and first published it) he was a colleague of George Stigler at Columbia University (and also Ernest Nagel). In his (1980) exploration of the law of eponymy, Steven Stigler even attributes to Merton the claim that “all scientific discoveries are in principle multiple." (147) Stigler cites here p. 356 of Merton's 1973 book, The Sociology of Science: Theoretical and Empirical Investigations, which is supposed to be the chapter that reprints the 1957 article. I put it like that because I was unable to find the quoted phrase in the 1957 original (although the idea can certainly be discerned in it, but I don't have the book available to check that page).

Merton himself makes clear that reflection on multiple discovery is co-extensive with modern science because priority disputes are endemic in it. In fact, his paper is, of course, a reflection on why the institution of science generates such disputes. Merton illustrates his points with choice quotes from scientific luminaries on the mores and incentives of science that generate such controversies, many of which are studies in psychological and social acuity and would not be out of place in Rochefoucauld's Maximes. Merton himself places his own analysis in the ambit of the social theory of Talcott Parsons (another important influence on George Stigler) and Durkheim. 

The passage quoted from Dicey's comment is a mere footnote, which occurs in a broader passage on the role of public opinion in shaping development of the law. And, in particular, that many developments are the effect of changes in prevaling public opinion, which are the effect of in the inventiveness of "some single thinker or school of thinkers." (p. 17) The quoted footnote is attached to the first sentence of remarkably long paragraph (which I reproduce at the bottom of this post).* The first sentence is this: "The course of events in England may often at least be thus described: A new and, let us assume, a true idea presents itself to some one man of originality or genius; the discoverer of the new conception, or some follower who has embraced it with enthusiasm, preaches it to his friends or disciples, they in their turn become impressed with its importance and its truth, and gradually a whole school accept the new creed." And the note is attached to 'genius.'

Now, often when one reads about multiple discovery (or simultaneous invention) it is often immediately contrasted to a 'traditional' heroic or genius model (see Wikipedia for an example, but I have found more in a literature survey often influenced by Wikipedia). But Dicey's footnote recognizes that in the progress of knowledge, and presumably division of labor with (a perhaps imperfect) flow of ideas, multiple discovery should become the norm (and the traditional lone genius model out of date).

In fact, Dicey's implicit model of the invention and dissemination of new views is explicitly indebted to Mill's and Taylor's account of originality in chapter 3 of On Liberty. (Dicey only mentions Mill.) Dicey quotes Mill's and Taylor's text: "The initiation of all wise or noble things, comes and must come from individuals; generally at first from some one individual." (Dicey adds that this is also true of  folly or a new form of baseness.)   

The implicit model is still very popular. MacAskill's account (recall) of Benjamin Lay's role in Quaker abolitionism (and itself a model for social movement building among contemporary effective altruists) is quite clearly modelled on Mill and Taylor's model. I don't mean to suggest Mill and Taylor invent the model; it can be discerned in Jesus and his Apostles and his been quite nicely theorized by Ibn Khaldun in his account of prophetic leadership. Dicey's language suggests he recognizes the religious origin of the model because he goes on (in the very next sentence of the long paragraph) as follows: "These apostles of a new faith are either persons endowed with special ability or, what is quite as likely, they are persons who, owing to their peculiar position, are freed from a bias, whether moral or intellectual, in favour of prevalent errors. At last the preachers of truth make an impression, either directly upon the general public or upon some person of eminence, say a leading statesman, who stands in a position to impress ordinary people and thus to win the support of the nation."

So far so good. But Dicey goes on to deny that acceptance of a new idea depends "on the strength of the reasoning" by which it is advocated or "even on the enthusiasm of its adherents." He ascribes uptake of new doctrines to skillful opportunism in particular by a class of political entrepreneurs or statesmanship (or Machiavellian Virtu) in the context of "accidental conditions." (This anticipates Schumpeter, of course, and echoes the elite theorists of the age like Mosca and Michels.) Dicey's main example is the way Bright and Cobden made free trade popular in England. There is space for new directions only after older ideas have been generally discredited and the political circumstances allow for a new orientation. 

It's easy to see that Dicey's informal model (or should I say Mill and Taylor's model?) lends itself to a lot of Post hoc ergo propter hoc reasoning. So I am by no means endorsing it. But the wide circulation of some version of the model helps explain the kind of relentless repetition of much of public criticism (of woke-ism, neoliberalism, capitalism, etc.) that has no other goal than to discredit some way of doing things. If the model is right these are functional part of a strategy of preparing the public for a dramatic change of course. As I have noted Milton Friedman was very interested in this feature of Dicey's argument [Recall:  (1951) “Neo-Liberalism and its Prospects” Farmand, 17 February 1951, pp. 89-93 [recall this post] and his (1962) "Is a Free Society Stable?" New Individualist Review [recall here]].

I admit we have drifted off from multiple discovery. But obviously, after the fact, multiple discovery in social theory or morals can play a functional role in the model as a signpost that the world is getting ready to hear a new gospel. By the end of the eighteenth century, utilitarianism was being re-discovered or invented along multiple dimensions (one may also mention Godwin, and some continental thinkers) as a reformist even radical enterprise. It was responding to visible problems of the age, although its uptake was not a foregone conclusion. (And the model does not imply such uptake.)

It is tempting to claim that this suggests a dis-analogy with multiple discovery in science. But all this suggestion shows is that our culture mistakenly expects or (as I have argued)  tacitly posits an efficient market in ideas in science with near instantaneous uptake of the good ideas; in modern scientific metrics the expectation is that these are assimilated within two to five years on research frontier. But I resist the temptation to go into an extended diatribe why this efficient market in ideas assumption is so dangerous.

Foucault, Lepage, Anarcho-capitalism and anti-Marxism

In his fifth lecture of 7 February 1979 Foucault introduces "American anarcho-capitalism" as a synonym for "contemporary American liberalism." (The Birth of Biopolitics p. 104.) In context, the intended contrast is with German Ordoliberalism and Hayek's Austrian liberalism. In the next lecture, of 14 February, 1979, Foucault contrasts "contemporary American anarcho-capitalism" with the "classical liberalism of the nineteenth century." (p. 133) Later in the sixth lecture, Foucault claims that "American anarcho-capitalism" develops from the rejection of "Keynesian economics, and others from the Beveridge plans or European social security plans." (pp. 144-145) Foucault doesn't use the phrase "Anarcho-capitalism" again. He does use 'anarcho-liberal' (and its cognates) a few times (p. 117; p. 161) as apparent synonym. 

It's pretty clear, however, that he is thinking of the Chicago school, especially the strand inspired by Henry Calvert Simons (1899 –1946). Because Foucault makes clear that that "Simons drafted a number of critical texts and articles, the most interesting of which is entitled: “The Beveridge Program: an unsympathetic interpretation,” which there is no need to translate, since the title indicates its critical sense." (p. 216) In addition, Foucault had just introduced Simons to his audience as follows, "The first, fundamental text of this American neo-liberalism, written in 1934 by Simons, who was the father of the Chicago School, is an article entitled “A Positive Program for Laissez-Faire.” (p. 216) And, in fact, Foucault explicitly identifies 'anarcho-liberalism' with the Chicago school (p. 161).

Foucault's adoption of the phrase 'anarcho-capitalism' is a bit strange because Simons is no anarchist. And, in fact, to the best of my knowledge most real anarchists (Left and Right) would not treat any Chicago economist as an anarchist (since they tend to accept non-trivial state institutions). Milton Friedman's defense, for example, of central banking often gets him criticized by certain libertarians and anarchists alike. 

Unusually, the editorial team of The Birth of Biopolitics is silent on Foucault's use. I mention that not to criticize them. For, in a note attached to a cryptic remark by Foucault -- "The ideas of North on the development of capitalism, for example, are directly in line with this opening up made by the neoliberals" -- in lecture of 14 February 1979 they call to "H. Lepage, Demain le capitalisme (Paris: Librairie Générale Francaise, 1978; republished “Pluriel”) p. 34 and chapters 3 and 4 (this book was one of the sources used by Foucault in the last of these 1979 lectures)." Lepage treats North at length in this fascinating book, translated by Sheilagh C. Ogilvie* as Tomorrow, Capitalism: The Economics of Economic Freedom (Open Court, 1982).

Lepage introduces the term 'anarcho-capitalism' near the end of the first chapter ("The New Economists") in a section, "The Libertarians," as follows:

This renaissance in modern economic thought has given rise to the appearance on the American political chessboard of a new ideological movement—the Libertarian movement. It does not yet represent more than an intellectual fringe, but it embodies an astonishing reconciliation between a distinctly controversial social libertarianism (favoring legalization of drugs, moral freedom, freedom from military conscription, international neutrality, suppression of the CIA, abolition of the corrupt ‘‘military-industrial complex’’) and an economic libertarianism that calls for a radically laissez-faire capitalist society in which a maximum of transactions would take place through voluntary contractual exchange.

Often having close ties with the ‘‘radical”’ philosophy of the New Left and mostly less than 40 years of age, these libertarians are the direct descendants of the great libertarian revolt of the 1960s. They hold the very existence of the state to be the supreme evil that is to be actively resisted. Opponents of all manifestations of Gulag, down to the least offensive, their objective is to abolish the state in favor of a social system in which all public functions would be made private. This has given them the name ‘‘anarcho-capitalists,’’ a name assumed by certain of their leaders such as David Friedman, son of Milton Friedman, also a professor of economics, now at UCLA and formerly at the Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University in Blacksburg." Lepage Capitalism, Tomorrow, p. 25

A few pages later Lepage clarifies that "Milton Friedman, for instance, passes for “‘libertarian’’ in most circles, but he is not recognized as libertarian by militants of the Libertarian Party such as his own son." (p. 27) And a few lines down, he is equally clear that "not all Chicago school adherents or the new economists are libertarians." (p. 27) It's natural to read this page as suggesting that Nozick and David Friedman are anarcho-capitalists. In the section on anarcho-capitalism (near the end of chapter 7) only David Friedman is mentioned and quoted (and no Chicago economist).+ 

I suspect Foucault gets the term 'anarcho-capitalism/liberalism' from Lepage. And it is pretty clear that Lepage's discussions of Becker, Stigler, and North shape Foucault's analysis (about this some time soon more). But Foucault does not follow Lepage slavishly (or may have conflated Milton and David Friedman). Another important difference between Foucault and Lepage is that while Lepage identifies Simons as one of the founders of the "Chicago tradition," he treats Knight (correctly) as the "true founder." (p. 5) Lepage devotes no space at all to discuss Simons (who was long dead when Lepage wrote his book). By contrast Foucault largely ignores Knight and focuses on Simons. 

Okay, Capitalism, Tomorrow (Demain, le capitalisme) is a superb survey of anti-Keynesian economics and political philosophy of the 50s-70s. (It was a bestseller in France.) In his "foreword" to the English translation, James Buchanan notes that Lepage visited in September 1976. Throughout the foreword Buchanan treats Lepage as a "journalist." But I understand from Guillaume Yon that Lepage wrote important policy briefs for the regulatory framework of French electricity industry. And in France Lepage quickly became associated with 'new economists' and 'anarcho-capitalism.' And I suspect that Foucault used 'anarcho-capitalism' to alert his audience that he would be talking about the whole ensemble of characters that Lepage discusses in his book, rather than conflate the more narrow work of David Friedman with the much broader movement that Lepage discusses.

One reason Douglass North is so important to Lepage's argument, and why I think Foucault mentions him in that otherwise obscure passage when he first introduces 'anarcho-capitalism,' is that running through Lepage's book are a whole number of set-pieces in which known criticisms by Marxists of capitalism, markets, and/or liberalism are answered (if not refuted) rather thoroughly. As Lepage puts it in his introduction, "capitalism and economic freedom cannot be defended successfully...[without] new theoretical and scientific insight into the economic bases and implications of their own political philosophy," (p. 3; emphasis in original.) In fact, Capitalism, Tomorrow would still work very well in an 'intro to PPE' course or as the right-wing response to (say) Polanyi's The Great Transformation (or some such book) or as an introduction to economic way of thinking.

An example of this occurs right at the start of the book. After briefly introducing the significance of human capital theory and the new theory of consumer behavior to his audience, Lepage writes,

Formulated separately by Gary S. Becker at Chicago and Kelvin J. Lancaster at Columbia, the new theory of consumption sees the consumer as an individual who not only consumes but also ‘‘produces’’ his own satisfaction, using inputs consisting of his market purchases and his time. This is in itself—as we shall see'’—an intellectual revolution, yet despite its controversial political implications it is still practically unknown outside economic circles. Its new view of consumer demand finally makes it possible to reply effectively to the critics of capitalism who base their view of society on a supposed distinction between ‘‘true”” and ‘‘false’’ needs. In their view, advertising, by changing people’s desires, makes consumers the slaves of the producers, and the proliferation of new products becomes proof of the wasteful and suicidal nature of consumer society. But consumer behavior can be explained convincingly without invoking ‘‘false needs’’ or consumer irrationality. (Capitalism, Tomorrow, Chapter one, pp. 9-10, emphasis added)

My present point is not to endorse Lepage's claim that the new theory of consumption does respond adequately to the Marxist criticism. To evaluate that we will need to explore the details of his argument (in the very near future!) But rather that responding to anti-capitalism systematically is clearly Lepage's purpose. And I suspect this is what made the book attractive to Foucault, who, as is well known, runs with the idea that what is distinctive about American neoliberalism (as exemplified by Becker and Stigler) is the "programming of policies of economic development, which could be orientated, and which are in actual fact orientated," toward the development of human capital. (Birth of Biopolitics, p. 233) And this programming can, as Foucault clearly discerns, be developed through social policy and one's own activities.

Finally, Becker's move is at odds (recall; see also here) with Frank Knight’s position who claimed that “wants which impel economic activity and which it is directed toward satisfying are the products of the economic process itself.” (This is a view that is not just Marxist, but goes back to Smith and Rousseau and probably Aristotle.) Arguably this is one of the central oppositions between 'old' and 'new' Chicago.  TBC.

 

 

On Hayek, Entrepreneurs, Elites and Social Change [Guestpost by Erwin Dekker]

[This is an invited guest-post by Erwin Dekker.--ES]

The Austrian tradition in economics/political economy is known for its theory of entrepreneurship. In its Schumpeterian version the entrepreneur is a heroic character who can break routines, innovate, and persuade others to go along in their endeavor. The Mises and Kirzner version of the entrepreneur is a more mundane figure ‘alert’ to profit opportunities which are not yet exploited by others (recall here and here). Both versions of the entrepreneur emphasize the conscious and intentional nature of the innovative acts. Although the entrepreneur’s behavior cannot be captured in a simple maximization framework, it does fit within the teleological means-ends framework of human action which Mises (Hayek’s teacher) developed.

Intentionality fades slowly from Hayek’s later work. In the Constitution of Liberty (1960) he argues: “Humiliating to human pride as it may be, we must recognize that the advance and even the preservation of civilization are dependent upon a maximum of opportunity for accidents to happen” (29).[1] Hayek contrasts the ‘countless number of humble steps taken by anonymous persons in the course of doing familiar things’ with ‘major intellectual innovations which are explicitly realized’ (28). Change in his social philosophy is more a process of adaptation to changing circumstances than the result of human imagination or alert actions to improve the everyday run of things.

It has always struck me as surprising that the most famous Austrian thinker is essentially silent on the theme of entrepreneurship. One plausible explanation is that Hayek was worried about a typical version of romantic individualism, which attributed too much uniqueness to the individual mind and will, as Eric has recently suggested here. A contributing factor is that Hayek was always more of an evolutionary thinker who emphasized the market process rather than the actions of individuals within such a market. His famous critique of the static nature of (perfect) competition in neoclassical models therefore does not blame it for lack of attention to entrepreneurship, but for its lack of attention to the dynamic interactive process of competition. More generally he emphasizes mutual adjustments rather than social change through intentional agency.

And yet, upon rereading the Constitution of Liberty for a recent weekend of the Adam Smith Fellowship program I could not help but being struck by the elitist nature of the theory of social change in Hayek. The key chapter in this regard appears to be the innocuously titled ‘The Common Sense of Progress’ (chapter 3), in which he first argues that the rich bear most of the costs of experimentation, because they are the first to buy new goods which come to the market, initially in limited quantities. Hayek, as is typical for him, does not dwell on examples or empirical substantiation, but at least up to this point we might understand this as a stylized empirical fact: new products are first offered to a small elite which adopts them, and if successful the product will be produced in larger quantities at lower costs, and become available to the middle classes.

But Hayek is aware of the fact that economic inequality in this way breeds social inequality, because: “most of what we strive for are things we want because others already have them” (45). The effects of which he calls cruel, but inevitable: “[in a] progressive society, some must lead, and others must follow” (45). To drive the point home as it were, he turns his more narrowly economic argument into a social argument, by suggesting that it is the rich who engage in experimentation with “new styles of living”, which over time will make these new styles ‘accessible to the poor’, without which the poor would advance much slower. It is important to see that we have moved here from a narrower argument about differences in purchasing power to a broader argument about the role of the rich in advancing society.

Hayek then develops this argument into the political realm by suggesting that a similar dynamic plays out among nations. Just like the poor in a given society benefit from the experiments in buying and living of the rich, so the populations of other countries benefit from the experiments in buying and living of those in leading countries. Both the British labor classes and the rest of the world benefitted from ‘a rich class with old traditions [which] demanded products of a quality and taste unsurpassed elsewhere’ (48). It is an argument that Tyler Cowen has occasionally made about the way in which European regulated welfare states benefit from innovation and permissiveness in the United States.

The flipside of the argument that the rich are those who experiment and therefore bear the costs of social change, is that it is only the rich which are truly free. An implication which would bring Hayek surprisingly close in outlook to Schumpeter, who believed that the masses were merely following rules and customs, while entrepreneurs were those who could psychologically break free from these everyday constraints and imagine better alternatives. One might suggest that such a reading is somewhat uncharitable, but Hayek himself asks the reader at the start of chapter eight ‘Employment and Independence’ to wonder whether the arguments he developed still holds in modern times: “in which a relatively larger part of the people, and most of those who counted in the forming opinion, were independent in the activities that gave them their livelihood” (118).[2]

One might expect Hayek to make the argument that rising living standards mean that more individuals are now in a position to engage in economic and social experimentation. Quite to the contrary he suggests that when the franchise was extended to workers, they quite naturally looked to limit the freedoms of the rich for they could not imagine what these were good for. There are moreover important sociological consequences of the fact that wage-laborers do not assume risks or personal initiatives: “A man who works under direction for a fixed salary or wage may be as conscientious, industrious, or intelligent as one who must constantly choose between alternatives; but he can hardly be as inventive or experimental” (120).

In what follows Hayek continues to systematically distinguish two classes in society, the dependent wage-laborers, and the men of independent means, who have ‘an indispensable role to play in any civilized society.’ They are of particular relevance beyond the market: “in the field of cultural amenities, in the fine arts, in education and research, in the preservation of natural beauty and historic treasures, and above all, in the propagation of new ideas in politics, morals, and religion” (125). So essential does Hayek consider the role of this social class, that if it did not exist, he suggest it might have to be created through a kind of lottery which would free a certain group of individuals to exercise true independence and freedom, although these individuals might lack the education and familiarity with wealth that the children of the rich have. In the absence of such a lottery, the merits of this social class provide an argument in favor of inheritance for Hayek.  

The Austrian tradition, Hayek included, is typically known for its emphasis on the heterogeneity of individuals. But in his theory of social change Hayek suggests that such heterogeneity is in fact largely limited to a small subset of individuals who are free of many of the (material) obligations that life in contemporary society brings with it. His own theory that changes come about through a response to changing circumstances which necessitate adjustments for individuals all over society is seemingly contradicted by his suggestion that only the rich are truly free to experiment. Hayek’s plea for the importance of local and contextual knowledge of time and place next to, or even above, general scientific knowledge, has strong democratic undertones, which completely disappear in the way he talks about the generation of new knowledge through market and social experimentation. This surprisingly makes Hayek theory of social change elitist in a way not too dissimilar from that of Joseph Schumpeter, Hayek even refers repeatedly to the rich as an avant-garde, a favorite metaphor of the maverick Schumpeter. Although, it must be said that Schumpeter, like John Stuart Mill before him, puts more emphasis on differences in character and energy between individuals, while Hayek stresses differences in material circumstances.

Another notable difference with John Stuart Mill is that the experiments in living which both he and Hayek discuss, have no intrinsic value for Hayek. In Mill they foster a spirit of individualism and turn human beings into a ‘noble and beautiful object of contemplation’. Hayek worries that such individualism might upset the social order and the process of coordination, but more importantly he is not at all concerned with the value that individuals might derive from experimentation and deviance, or how it might reinforce a liberal spirit.

If there is a real tension between the broader Hayekian tenets of dispersed knowledge, mutual adjustment, and process theory and his theory of social change, this implies that a Hayekian theory of social change is still to be developed. In my book on the Viennese Students of Civilization I noted similarities between the work of Norbert Elias, who essentially developed a trickle-down theory of social change through imitation of the superior ways of the aristocracy and that of some Austrian economists. Later social theorists, including sociologists originally inspired by Elias, have suggested social change originates from the fringes of society, where individuals have either less pressure to conform (and so the costs of deviant behavior are lower) or oppressed so that individuals stand relatively more to gain from experimentation and protest. Especially since Hayek is explicitly progressive on social liberal issues, he praises: “the abolition of slavery, penal and prison reforms, the prevention of cruelty to children or to animals, and a more humane treatment of the insane” (127).

This tension is also relevant for a political economic analysis of power in society. One might expect that those with independent means will primarily be interested in protecting the status quo, rather than changing it. Hayek admits that this class is more likely to produce ‘bons vivants than scholars and public servants’, but he never entertains that they might abuse their economic and social power to corrupt the political system in their favor. Whereas Schumpeter praised the rotation of elites in one of his characteristic metaphors which spoke of the elite as the top floor of a hotel which is always full, but always with different people. Hayek seems more concerned with the disappearance ‘of a cultural elite’ which resulted from the combined effects of inflation and taxation (129).  

Hayek’s own emphasis on heterogeneity and his plea for maximizing the chances for accidents to happen, could equally well be developed into a social theory which suggests that social change is more likely to occur when opposing groups or individuals with different values meet each other, and the necessity for mutual adjustment emerges. This is also what Mill concluded about the reason why pressures for social conformism have not led to social stagnation among the European family of nations. This was not due to the superior excellence in any one nation or class, but a result of: “their remarkable diversity of character and culture. Individuals, classes, nations, have been extremely unlike one another: they have struck out a great variety of paths, each leading to something valuable, their.” This is in line with more recent work in (cultural) economics which suggest that more social diversity is good for growth and  development.

Closer to Hayek’s own epistemological liberalism there is increasing attention in the philosophy of science for the benefits of cognitive diversity (see Ryan Muldoon's overview). Most importantly, it would take more seriously the stylized facts which Deborah Coen in her Vienna in the Age of Uncertainty made central to Viennese liberal thought: the increasing heterogeneity between all individuals in an increasingly complex society, spurred on by the division of labor and the resulting division of knowledge. I think with Mill that a liberal should find such heterogeneity on its own desirable, but it also supplies a better starting point for theorizing social change, than the one that Hayek provides.

On Public Philosophy and the Rejection of Clarity

The promulgation of a world declaration of rights depends, as bills of rights seem always to have depended, on the existence of a broad region of interpretation, within which court decisions and administrative and legislative actions have worked progressively to a practical definition and within which divergent philosophies have worked to less ambiguous or less conflicting theoretic bases. The declaration will not remove the sharp differences in interpretations of civil and political rights, but it will provide a ground within which they may be brought into closer approximation, if economic and social rights are established sufficiently firmly to provide a minimum of welfare and security and if freedom of communication and freedom of thought are advanced enough to contribute to universal well-being and mutual understanding. Agreement can doubtless be secured concerning the list of human rights only if ambiguities remain both because of the absence of a uniform manner of administering them and because of the absence of a single basic philosophy; but that ambiguity is the frame within which men may move peacefully to a uniform practice and to a universal understanding of fundamental human rights.--Richard McKeon  "The philosophic bases and material circumstances of the rights of man." Ethics 58.3, Part 1 (1948): 187.

lt is an article of faith among analytic philosophers that more clarity is better than less clarity. While the argument for this stance is (recall) often consequentialist, the underlying motive is ultimately aesthetic.* We do not hear much about projects that reject clarity. (But recall my posts here and here.) Now that analytic philosophy is rediscovering and embracing the significance (recall) of public philosophy, it may be useful to return to an influential, public philosophy distinctly reserved about clarity.  

This post was prompted by reading chapter 6 of The Emergence of Globalism: Visions of World Order in Britain and The United States by Or Rosenboim. She calls attention to the role(s) of Richard McKeon in the "Committee to Frame a World Constitution." The members of this committee "were deeply convinced that 'Humanities scholars' should contribute to policy making and public affairs." (207) McKeon is now forgotten, although he was part of a wider pluralist school and he played a significant role in the early development of the modern human rights regime. (The paper quoted above reflects a bit on that role.)

As it happens, McKeon is unmentioned but alluded to, rather unfavorably, when in his autobiographical reflections, Carnap turns to his "personal impressions" about "the state of philosophy" in "the Department of Philosophy at the University of Chicago." The general impression conveyed by Carnap's remarks is that the department was full of historians of philosophy steeped in the past and unaware of modern philosophical developments. Carnap seems to have been decidedly unimpressed by McKeon. Howard Stein, who studied with both McKeon and Carnap, gives a sense of the nature of McKeon's pluralism "in the politics of the department the single dominating figure - was Richard McKeon, who maintained that differences of philosophical principle are invariably irremediable - to be understood, in terms of a classification of the possible coherent philosophical stances, but never to be resolved: philosophers with divergent principles were doomed to talk at cross-purposes."

The quoted passage above is from an article in which McKeon claims that the "political problems faced in framing a declaration of human rights are basically philosophic." McKeon suggests that this is due to the fact that while there is a broad consensus on the list of human rights, the significance and meaning of these rights is contested. And he suggests that the very articulation of these conflicting interpretations, which will turn on questions of "basic assumption, actual fact, and appropriate implementation" will "make even agreement concerning the bare enumeration of rights impossible." (180) One key point he makes is that discussion of a declaration will "revive" long dormant "differences" about the philosophical assumptions behind any enumerated list of rights (182).

McKeon's argument for a species of constructive ambiguity turns on the idea that the very circumstances that generate, urgent fundamental philosophy disagreement require that "a political frame may be sought within which [strategic/non-philosophic] agreement is possible concerning common action toward common ends, on the assumption that basic disagreements are more likely to be removed when mutual suspicions have been lessened by successful common action. The utility of a declaration of human rights depends on the possibility of separating the political from the philosophic question." (182)

That is to say, public philosophy is turned into a species of diplomacy, where the embrace of constructive ambiguity is an ordinary tool of statecraft. McKeon suggests that this approach -- of enumerating rights, and postponing the precisification of their meaning -- has a long pedigree in the history of philosophy rooted in the experience of early modern enumeration of declaration of rights. Paradoxically, by "stating ideals," which in some fundamental sense were ambiguous, and left fundamental ideological disagreement alone, had the effect of  "improving the relations of men and in advancing the practice of justice." (183) This improvement may result in a clarification of the meaning of the rights.

But McKeon does not believe that with experience, and over time, and evolving political and legal practices, potential conflicts are always eliminated. For it is just as likely that technological and economic changes will generate new challenges to existing the ordering and interpretation of rights. (Cf. what has happened to the very possibility of privacy during the last decade(s).)

McKeon is not arguing that constructive ambiguity is always the rights stance. But he clearly implies that in the context of what we may call substantive pluralism it may well be the wisest course of action. For in such contexts, the very desire to create a common ideal, also risks dangerous disruptions. If McKeon is right -- and I have not argued that -- that in some political contexts public philosophy needs to embrace constructive ambiguous in order to be promote consequences worth having (peace, mutual accommodation, etc.), then analytic philosophers, which trump their own clarity, may well risk doing more harm than good in their efforts to shape political life. 

 

 

Getting Thrasymachus right, the Comfort College, and the Fate of Liberal Education

Thrasymachus, a post-modernist a couple of millennia ahead of his time, denies there is such a thing as justification — there is only motive and cause. There’s only one answer to the question Why should I be just? Swords and spears.

It took 2,400 years, but Thrasymachus has won in the comfort college. When objectivity is scorned, when justification is considered only subjective, when reason and logic are taken to be only the tools of oppression and the province of the oppressor, then all that is left is power.

To ask the reason for something can only mean to ask for the motive or cause. The study of logic has a name for what happens when we confuse the origin of a belief with its truth, or the origin of an argument with its validity. It’s called the genetic fallacy.

The comfort college’s acolytes make the figurative fallacy literal. It is the arguer’s genes that determine truth and validity, not facts or reason. That is why, in the comfort college, testimony has come to substitute for rational argument. When students (and more and more faculty) demand a new policy, their arguments often begin as (and rarely go beyond) accounts of victimization; the account is justification enough.

This ritual institutionalizes the denial of rational justification. It corrupts the healthy multicultural idea, built on Enlightenment universalism and cosmopolitanism, that different perspectives matter, and that what one sees often depends on where one stands — and that we are all better off from listening to those who stand in different places, who see the part of the truth that is blocked from our particular vision. The liberal ideal of the pursuit of knowledge is that by cooperating we all can see and understand better. But identity politicians reject the Enlightenment’s hope of mutual understanding and reason’s path to get us there. In the fragmented comfort college, the only tool is power — the power to enforce the dogma.--Steven Gerrard "The Rise of the Comfort College" Bloomberg, Opinion.[HT Leiterreports]

Yesterday, when I first read this I was prompted to snark. I won't withhold from you my more critical reflections of Gerrard's self-understanding and analysis. But that will not be the main point of this post: what I really want to do is discuss and grasp the sense of "loss" (a word he uses more than once) that Gerrard describes of a college in transition from one regime to another kind of regime. Not to put too fine point on it, this transition is clearly traumatic for some (the ones who feel loss). And maybe their trauma can help us start to reflect on the nature of this transition.

But before I get to that it is notable that Thrasymachus (and since Plato is a leitmotif in Gerrard's two-part essay, I will assume that 'Thrasymachus' refers to the persona in the Republic) is misrepresented. Socrates explicitly marks the fact that Thrasymachus (somewhat originally [348e]) treats injustice as objectively (!) a part of virtue/wisdom. And Thrasymachus has offered a justification for this claim. The status of the justification is complex because it draws on empirical features, but in virtue of treating injustice as properly part of virtue/wisdom, the argument is also normative. Moreover, Thrasymachus alllows that while the content of what is called 'justice' is regime dependent, its structure is regime invariant. (There is a formal sense in which this anticipates Aristotle, but there are also non-trivial differences, including differences in how to express the insight.) And while one easily imagine this being the grounds of ideology critique ('justice' serves the interests of the locally strong), a natural reading of Thrasymachus position is that this state of affairs can be endorsed upon reflection (hence it is properly part of virtue/justice). It's possible, of course, that Thrasymachus'  argument is flawed, but it's not because Thrasymachus denies that reasons can be given or that he is a moral nihilist or a caricature post-modernist.* 

I mention this not just for minimal historical accuracy, nor to note that this is an instance of a more general phenomenon that those that bewail the fall of civilization and invoke Plato are such odd readers of Plato, but rather that Gerrard slides a bit too quickly from presenting Thrasymachus as the anthithesis of "Enlightenment universalism and cosmopolitanism, [and the idea'] that different perspectives matter" to a critic of objectivity. In some respects Thrasymachus prefigures the (non-trivial) strain in Enlightenment pluralist thought that as a matter of objective fact recognizes differences in institutional and political arrangements and simultaneously acknowledges that they can instantiate common commitments. And while there is plenty of resistance of Enlightenment thinkers to the idea that local might makes right, many do think that (to echo Adam Smith) the law exists to provide the powerful rich nighttime "security."

Once upon a time, those that defended the Enlightenment were proud of the fact that it was thought capable, perhaps uniquely capable, to develop a tradition of internal critique (including critique of critique, etc.)--such that ideology critique became a mainstream feature of it. Gerrard proudly notes that he taught Mill, but he seems to have missed that chapter 2 of Mill's Of Liberty (recall) presents a straightforward account of ideology that generalizes to all societies: "Wherever there is an ascendant class, a large portion of the morality of the country emanates from its class interests, and its feelings of class superiority."  Ideology critique is not something to be ceded to Marxism, but it is a reflexive feature of the liberal strand of the Enlightenment. The tools of ideology critique are immanent in Thrasymachus (and arguably developed in the rest of the Republic). This is no easy matter because there is a genuine threat that any ideology critique can be corrosive. But to echo Socrates (and Spinoza), the excellent things in life are not easy.

Gerrard tells us that his trials started when some faculty at Williams tried to have their institution "sign a national pledge of allegiance to principles of free expression that originated at the University of Chicago, adopted which he calls "the mainstream liberal principles." Now, I don't think these new principles are very liberal (either in the sense of classical liberal or in the modern sense of liberal); I have discussed (early articulations) of those new principles (recall here; here) critically and treated them, agreeing with Jacob T. Levy, unfavorably in light of the (earlier) the University of Chicago statement on freedom of expression and the Kalven Report, "which are much better statements of governing academic principle."

Now Gerrard's own position seems that censorship or event cancellation is a mistake, but rather that "we just have to work to maximize the educational mission of all our events." It is notable that somebody who happily invokes Plato throughout his essay fails to pause at the fact that, at least according to Plato (or Plato's Socrates), the educational mission of students (let's leave maximizing aside), and citizens, requires (extensive) censorship and non-trivial policing of what can enter into a curriculum and course of study. Plato was no liberal and, I am leaving aside his views on political speech. But the very idea of a curriculum presupposes decisions about what viewpoints can and cannot be heard and how the interaction among these decisions can shape a course of study. And while those decisions do not reduce to power, it is peculiar to fail allow that, in practice power enters into them.** 

Now, Gerrard inscribes his analysis into a fourfold division (mostly indebted to  Frederick Rudolph) of the evolution of colleges: 1. the Christian college; 2. the gentlemen’s college; and 3. the consumer’s college; 4. the comfort college. In Gerrard's schema were transitioning between 3 and 4, and "are on the cusp of this new era." He then makes his most important observation:

The controversies over free speech, safe spaces, trigger warnings, microaggressions and the like are symptoms of this shift. They are currently considered controversies because the colleges are in transition, and many do not realize that the old standards no longer hold. Once the transition is complete, the “correct” side of the controversies will become central to a school’s identity — just as faith was to the Christian college, self-confidence was to the gentlemen’s college, and alumni devotion and achievement were to the consumer’s college.

While no era was homogeneous, I agree with Gerrard that a transition is occurring. {I learned (recall) from Bejan that the concern with microagressions goes back to Hobbes.} That is to say, while a lot of the public writing about the transition is simply a business-model on the intellectual right (I note with amusement that Gerrard published this in Bloomberg!--and I defend markets:)), even a form of virtue signaling (of which I am no critic), the vehemence of the response to the ordinary ebb and flow of american elite campus life does indicate something. One reason I am focusing on Gerrard is that unlike those who turn campus life into click-bait, he recognizes that given the educational mission of a university "insensitivity toward people’s identities should be self-censored, and social pressure to do so is a helpful tool."  He is a serious educator.

Now, Gerrard thinks that new (comfort) college devalues "the pursuit of knowledge."+ And he thinks this is indicated, in part, by the willingness of Williams' students to claim that “We hold the truth of discursive and institutional violence to be self-evident.” Presumably the students find this self-evident in the manner that Jefferson (and the other Enlightened Founders) held, against the manifest evidence of their senses--and perhaps also their actions, "that all men are created equal." What that manner is is not easy to articulate and since I am not a student at Williams I wouldn't wish to speak on their behalf.

But the students' statement does point to the costs and harms of the pursuit of knowledge and also the harmful effects of its application. We can study that within the Enlightenment project as a species of inductive risk. Even given the unfavorable gloss offered by Gerrard, the students seems to be asking for the responsible pursuit of knowledge one that recognizes the harms done along the way and is willing to be held accountable for the conditions that make it possible (hence the obligation to Williams College of "reparation and reconciliation to Indigenous peoples").

Let me close with a final note, Gerrard asserts that "Our students are comfortable in their opinions but uncomfortable with their lives, finding their world and the Williams campus a threatening place." He interprets his students as wanting to be comforted and sheltered by the college. I hope he forgives this sentence, but it strikes me that in dealing with genuinely unpleasant disagreements he is so traumatized that he misses a more plausible and also more generous interpretation.++ For the very evidence he presents suggests that at least his more vocal students are eager to confront the very real threats the world poses and to make education and knowledge an engine to try to change them materially and confront them symbolically. I am enough a historian of Enlightenment philosophy to recognize that in so doing these students are children of the very Enlightenment he claims they deride and he wishes to preserve. 

For a liberal higher education serves multiple ends. But one of the fundamental ends is to provide individuals and society with the means to confront the many biases of the status quo. The liberal's preference for markets and education also entails a willingness to live with the uncertainty that the past is not reproduced, but challenged. How to educate students to be democratic activists is no easy matter (and I leave to others who have expertise). But a true liberal education, in fact, is committed to the risky (recall) idea that students will take our teachings and surprise us with their uses of it including the inadequacy of our dogmas. 

 

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 Commanding to be Philosophers: a tentative response to Agnes Callard

You might think that undergraduate teaching is a case of “doing philosophy with non-philosophers”—public philosophy within academia. But that would be a mistake. It is true that most of the undergraduates to whom I assign, e.g., Plato’s Republic will not major in philosophy, let alone continue with graduate education. Nonetheless, in my classroom, they are philosophers, if only for a few hours a week. The institutional structure—the syllabus, the assignments, the grades, my status as Professor, even the physical and social characteristics of the classroom—make it possible for me to tell them to be philosophers. I instruct them to engage directly with questions of whether the soul has parts or whether justice is the advantage of the stronger or whether poetry corrupts; and, amazingly enough, they do it.

To say that they engage directly with those questions is to say that their engagement is not tied to the following considerations:

(1) The fact (if it is one) that answering those questions will help them do something else that they were doing anyways. I don’t promise them answers, let alone helpful ones.

(2) The fact (if it is one) that they find it fun or pleasant or intellectually stimulating. They have to do the reading, come to class, write papers—whether or not they enjoy it.

We do philosophy for its own sake, because its questions are important, not because it is useful or pleasant.-- Agnes Callard "Is Public Philosophy Good?" (emphasis in original [HT: Dailynous])

Callard's piece has generated online discussion in virtue of her claims about the nature and practice of public philosophy. Since that is a topic I have said all I wish to say thus far,+ here I want to reflect a bit on what Callard -- an increasingly prominent scholar (see here for example) -- has to say about her classroom. I call my remarks 'tentative' for a few reasons: first, it is possible Callard does not intend her description of her classroom to be exemplary of proper philosophical education. That is, that rather than holding up the institutional features of her teaching as a kind of widely accepted norm, she is merely doing autobiography. I think it would be a 'mistake' to interpret her like that, but can't rule it out. Second, as regular readers know (recall here; here; here), I think there are good reasons having to do with privacy and vulnerability as well as the trust of one's students to be cautious about discussing one's class-room experiences in public. Third, often what is said about class-room stance represents a kind of public image one wishes to project rather than the messy reality.

Even so, I was struck, even unpleasantly struck by the authoritarian elements in Callard's self-presentation. After some reflection, I have to admit that part of the shock is recognizing one's own authoritarianism in the description of the other. Unlike some colleagues, I don't let me students vote or set the curriculum, and not unlike Callard, I impose all kinds of structures and demands on my students that make possible, so I tell myself, the conditions of their philosophizing in the class-room. And so, after further reflection, I also allow it's possible that others can be commanded into philosophy. 

Even so, what I miss in Callard's description are four non-trivial features: first, there is the absence of play. In Laws, Plato's Athenian stranger repeatedly presents education as a form of serious play, culminating in his statement (803c) that, when we are properly cultivated, our education lasts a life-time, "playing at the noblest of pastimes." It's true that play is only indirectly useful. (Some forms of play -- like war-games -- may be highly useful to the polity.) But it's peculiar not to allow it a pleasure proper to it. The questions of philosophy may be important and self-justifying, and the philosophical-life impossible to justify (because hopelessly comic or mad to others), but it strikes me as odd to ignore that philosophical education is, despite moments of frustration, pleasurable in all kinds of ways. 

More important, second, while play presupposes rules, what's especially interesting about philosophical education is the ongoing mastery and simultaneous overcoming of rules. The previous sentence may strike one as bizarre if one reduced philosophy to nothing but sound/valid argument (which, let's stipulate, is rule-governed). But learning how to ask philosophical questions (recall) is simultaneously rule-governed, taught through repeated practice/drilling, an imitation of the best, and creative innovation.

That is, the play analogy reminds us that philosophical education is also a means toward something new. This is the third point I wish to make. In play, we interact and through our interaction we may reach a point wholly new. This is possible in the class room, when we are receptive to learning from our students. A class discussion is an invitation to have a joint exploration. The last point may be distinctive of liberal education: a receptivity toward letting one's students discover is characteristic of such an education. Rather than magisterially conveying a fixed body of knowledge (say in a huge lecture course), in a philosophy classroom, the discussion is part of a path of discovery, even if it is often a dead-end. A liberal  education is not risk averse. Discussions can fail. 

Of course, in practice, one may well have an agenda for a typical class discussion (the distinction between primary and secondary qualities must be covered, etc.), and experienced teachers often guide discussion toward a known destination. But the best kind of teaching is receptive toward the students' perspectives, and invites them into an open-ended discussion, including ones on the nature of a philosophical question. These are not merely given (as Callard seems to suggest), but always and everywhere up for re/new-articulation.

Let me close with a final, fourth observation: I have now repeatedly used the word 'invitation.' I do so because, in a different context, discussing the pragmatics of sexual intimacy, Rebecca Kukla calls attention to the significance of inviting others to joint activity.* I quote a relevant passage:

Invitations leave the invitee free to accept or reject them. If you turn down my invitation, I get to be disappointed, but not aggrieved (although I can feel aggrieved if it is turned down rudely or insultingly). An interesting quirk of invitations is that, if they are accepted, gratitude is called for both from the inviter and the invitee. I thank you for coming to my dinner, and you thank me for having you. [emphasis in original]

Invitations are (as Kukla emphasizes) norm-governed and compatible with differences in power, status, and knowledge. Not all students accept the invitation to philosophize in one's class room. This can be due to the character of the teacher (my style is not for everyone) or to the student's disposition at the time. Such students, the ones that refuse our invitation, can still pass the course, even with flying colors. But the students who engage in philosophy -- partially constrained by rules of logic and the curriculum -- are often grateful for the opportunity; and indeed deserve gratitude, even awe. 

 

On Understanding Without Mathematics and the Slums of Sociology

I must confess that my own first reaction to the General Theory was not at all like that of Keats on first looking into Chapman's Homer. No silent watcher, I, upon a peak in Darien. My rebellion against its pretensions would have been complete except for an uneasy realization that I did not at all understand what it was about. And I think I am giving away no secrets when I solemnly aver-upon the basis of vivid personal recollection-that no one else in Cambridge, Massachusetts, really knew what it was about for some 12 to 18 months after its publication. Indeed, until the appearance of the mathematical models of Meade, Lange, Hicks, and Harrod there is reason to believe that Keynes himself did not truly understand his own analysis.
Fashion always plays an important role in economic science; new concepts become the mode and then are passé. A cynic might even be tempted to speculate as to whether academic discussion is itself equilibrating: whether assertion, reply, and rejoinder do not represent an oscillating divergent series, in which-to quote Frank Knight's characterization of sociology-"bad talk drives out good."
In this case, gradually and against heavy resistance, the realization grew that the new analysis of effective demand associated with the General Theory was not to prove such a passing fad, that here indeed was part of "the wave of the future.--Paul Samuelson (1946) "Lord Keynes and the General Theory," Econometrica. 187-188.

As I noted yesterday, an invited comment on Backhouse's biography of Samuelson has had me take a second look at Samuelson's biographical sketches and obituaries. It's testimony of Samuelson's confidence and rhetorical abilities that his lack of initial understanding of the General Theory is treated as a problem of the General Theory (and even Keynes). It is notable that he does not consider the obvious alternative suggestion that Cambridge, MA, was a relative intellectual backwater in 1936 (the year the General Theory appeared) and so unfamiliar with the new thinking developing in Cambridge England. (To his credit, in the rest of his essay, Samuelson provides some evidence for the latter half of that claim.)

As an aside, it is a bit peculiar to see a low estimation of sociology attributed to Frank Knight, the man most responsible of generating initial interest in (and translation of) Weber Stateside. One wonders if, perhaps, Samuelson's memory is failing him and that he is importing his own negative characterization of sociology (recall) into his memory of Knight's acerbic wit. My evidence for this suggestion is that when in a different obituary, he discusses Jacob Viner's ferocious use of the Socratic Method (indebted to the Harvard economist Taussig), Samuelson adds that graduate students who did not meet Viner's exacting standards "had no choice but to drop out or to transfer to the slums of political science or sociology." (JPE, 1972: 6) It's not impossible that the low estimation of sociology was more common among economists in Chicago, but we know from Stigler's citation practices that some read sociology and social theory rather seriously, and that it even influenced Milton Friedman's methodology. 

Some other time I'll explore the significance of the proto-cyclical-equilibrium model of scientific fashions, a model that would certainly have some significance (recall) for professional philosophy (where the idea that ideas cycle in and out of fashion is itself a recurring fashion.)* I mention it here because the whole obituary is framed in proto-Kuhnian terms in which Keynes generates a scientific revolution (and in which differential response to the revolution is explained in terms of generational differences.) Later in the piece, Samuelson notes that textbooks break the cycle: "most important from the long-run standpoint, the Keynesian analysis has begun to filter down into the elementary textbooks; and as everybody knows once an idea gets into these, however bad it may be, it becomes practically immortal." (189) Samuelson was just finishing up his mega-influential textbook. (Luckily, in philosophy textbooks are not the dominant mode of instruction yet.)

Okay, let me get to the main point. Samuelson claims here that mathematics is the language in which by way of a model one understands an analysis. (The previous sentence is compatible with the further thought -- pressed by Samuelson's ironic critic -- that mathematics may well be many languages.) This is true not just of the readers of the General Theory, but also its author. Samuelson emphasizes the point later: "In it the Keynesian system stands out indistinctly, as if the author were hardly aware of its existence or cognizant of its properties."** Now, to be sure, there are two important truths lurking in Samuelson's position: first, that the meaning of a text may well escape or go beyond an author (and sometimes even may be so intended by an author)--I made that same point when discussing the debate between Plantinga and Hazony over biblical meaning. Second, sometimes, maybe often, an analysis in non-mathematical language is fuzzy or unclear or equivocal in ways that are only made transparent by a mathematical model. (A claim Samuelson would repeat regularly later in his rejection of verbal economics as opposed to mathematical economics.)*** Only later in life (1972), when discussing Viner's significance (he calls him both the "greatest neoclassical economist" and a "great eclectic"), does Samuelson relent on the point: "Jacob Viner was a respecter of mathematics, but also both critical and defensive about it. Let me make clear that Viner possessed in superlative degree what might be called native mathematical ability....But I now realize in retrospect that the subject of economics gained from having Viner concentrate upon those areas of wisdom and erudition for which he had a unique comparative advantage, and that more mathematical facility might merely have diverted him from his appointed task."

Samuelson does not consider an alternative interpretation: that in different ways,  Meade, Lange, Hicks, and Harrod may have offered models inspired by the General Theory, but  in their very formulation changed the meaning of the 'Keynesian' analysis.+ One can recognize the previous point while allowing that the new models may have had all kinds of uses (teaching, policy, transferring knowledge, etc.) made difficult by the General Theory. To argue that case is not my present charge (and I would have to re-familiarize with all the relevant models), although I have already suggested that Keynes's insights about the nature of true uncertainty were lost in the way his views got formalized. (I made some such point in a different context when discussing Carnapian explication.) 

Strikingly enough, and Samuelson often buries his most important points in footnotes, he adds the following observation:

8 Indeed only in connection with Frank P. Ramsey's "A Mathematical Theory of Saving"...does he show interest in an esoteric theoretical problem; there he gave a rather intricate interpretation in words of a calculus-of-variations differential-equation condition of equilibrium. His reasoning is all the more brilliant -- and I say this seriously! -- because it is mathematically unrigorous, if not wrong. The importance which Keynes attached to this article is actually exaggerated and can be accounted for only in terms of his paternal feeling toward Ramsey, and his own participation in the solution of the problem. (196)

An uncharitable reading of Samuelson may suggests that he is committed to the idea that wrong mathematical reasoning is better than no mathematical reasoning (even if not wrong). A more charitable reading would suggest that he recognizes that sometimes insight does trump a wrong mathematical formulation, especially -- and this is not meant as criticism -- if it takes a Samuelson to discern the kernel of insight.

 

On The Sociology and Philosophy of Science in and by Economists

Just prior to Hayek's departure from post World War II mainstream economics came what must be hailed as his greatest important contribution to economic science. It can be well understood if I make reference to the famous debate between Lerner–Lange and Ludwig von Mises (1935) over the role of the supply-and-demand mechanism in a socialist state. Lerner (1934), as well as Lange and Taylor (1938) quasi-independently, suggested that playing the game of parametric supply–demand auctioning could optimally organize a socialist society that had evolved beyond historic capitalism.

Arguably this general notion might be traced back to Adam Smith's legendary Invisible Hand, which led society unconsciously to achieve the maximal “general good.” Individual avarice, under market checks and balances, achieved this happy state. A more sophisticated version of the same idea came in the 1890s from Pareto (1896–97) and Barone (1908), long before Arrow-Debreu breakthroughs. Pareto deduced the mathematical theorem that the determinative equations of Walrasian general equilibrium mimicked exactly the maximizing welfare conditions for utopias.

By contrast, Mises in his polemics prior to Lerner–Lange, had contended that only under actual capitalism could one even define a post-Bentham welfare economics. Autobiographically, I can testify that most economists born after 1910 at that time would have voted Lerner and Lange to be the debate winner, with Mises as the prime loser. (Even my Harvard mentor Schumpeter saw some merit in the Lerner–Lange conjectures.¹)

In the 1940s Friedrich Hayek in an invited Harvard lecture introduced a new dynamic element into the debate. Call it “information economics.” The broad competitive markets, Hayek proclaimed, were the recipients of heterogeneous idiosyncratic bits of individuals’ information. Playing for matches rather than for real money or blood was as different an economic dynamics as night is from day.

I was not at all the only one to be converted to the view that, as between Abba Lerner, Oskar Lange and Ludwig von mises, Friedrich Hayek was actually the debate's winner. (After the U.S. State Department persuaded Lange to go back to Stalinesque Poland, Lange reportedly lost his lust for auction markets.)

The jury of history judges innovators not by adding linearly their plus and minus contributions. Hayek's 1974 Stockholm Nobel Prize was importantly won for him by his notions about decentralized information economics discussed that day in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Never mind that Hayek over-praised the optimality of individualistic spontaneity. Charles Darwin's genius long earlier had eclectically enumerated both the plusesand minuses of individualistic natural selection.

I do not know how much George Stigler had ever been influenced by Hayek when later Stigler's work on information economics helped bring him his Nobel medal. Senior Robert K. Merton, as sociologist, historian and philosopher of history of science, taught us again and again that great things come in pairs and triplets. Darwin had his Wallace. Newton had his Leibniz. Leibniz had his Newton. Thomas Kuhn documented the case that the fundamental Law of Conservation of Energy had a dozen different fathers. Although what each had discovered was not precisely the same thing, maybe at most one of the dozen did understand all the nuances.--Paul Samuelson (2009) "A few remembrances of Friedrich von Hayek (1899–1992),"  Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization.

Two long-running themes of my blogs on the philosophy and history of twentieth century economics, are (a) that ideas from the philosophy of science played a big role in cutting edge discussions among leading economists, and (b) that some ideas we associate with philosophy of science were developed or articulated within economics. On (b) I have primarily focused on the role of Kuhnian ideas within economics (between 1870-1960) [for an overview see here]. One reason to mention Kuhn is to note the otherwise peculiar fact the leading and influential ,professional economists of the age (Samuelson, Stigler, Buchanan, -- all Nobel laureates --) were serious and leading historians of economics, while simultaneously arguing for and writing textbooks with a conception of a professional economist that left little relatively room for the history of economics inside the discipline. 

Because, yesterday, I was asked to comment on a précis of Roger Backhouse's first part of his biography of Paul Samuelson, the aptly titled, Founder of Modern Economics: Paul A. Samuelson, I returned to some of Samuelson's many biographical sketches of others. He excelled in the genre, in which he mixed personal memory, character sketches, and a kind of summing up of theoretical significance. In one of his earliest contributions to genre, his (1946) obituary of Keynes, he pretends as if the significance of a biographical sketch is merely short term: "The personal characteristics of the scientist can only be captured while memories are still fresh; and only then, in all honesty, are they of maximum interest and relevance." Yet, he closes the 1946 obituary with a footnote (#15) in which he writes, " should like at this point to pass a clue on to the future historian of economic
thought." What follows is a rather clever suggestion of the influence by Keynes on Joan Robinson 1933--the effect of which is to diminish the originality of Robinson and, thereby (because Samuelson is a canny operator) to diminish her would be future influence. Because Keynes is dead, he can't set the record straight on her behalf (if he would have been so inclined). So, in stroke he has undercut one of the sharpest operators of his time.  Even if you don't agree with my interpretation of the footnote, the wording of the footnote shows that is also playing a long game in the service of posthumous fame and score setting.

Samuelson exhibits here the marks of a Kuhnian legislator, who can operate at multiple dimensions, short term and long term, but also bring together different kinds of concerns (recall this post on Samuelson's biographical sketch of Viner). This ability to play chess on multiple boards at once is characteristic of Samuelson's command of the discipline even at a young age. (He  was 31 in 1946.) While Samuelson pioneered many techniques, his greatest skill was, in my opinion, to write the paper that would help the rest of the economics discipline understand what the issues were on any topic. He did this time and again, and his citation score is monstrously large.   

As an aside, Samuelson's biography of Keynes is full of gems, but the most revealing about Samuelson is this one:  Keynes, who became a celebrity outside academia with the Economic Consequences of the Peace, "met the practical men of affairs on their own ground and won the reputation of being an economist who knew how to make money." Samuelson would become a celebrity and wealthy with his textbook and trading success.

Okay, let me now turn to the final paragraph I quoted above from the Hayek biography. If we ignore the interpretation of Adam Smith (and the amusing and not wholly false proposal that Smith is the founder of Socialist Utopias as opposed to the Stalinist kind),* the comment on the context and significance of Hayek's greatest contribution to economics is judicious. But it is a bit surprising to see Samuelson take yet one more pot-shot at George Stigler (who had died in 1991). Now, you need to know that Samuelson and Stigler knew each other from the The University of Chicago of the mid 1930s, where Samuelson was a precocious undergraduate and Stigler one of the leading graduate students. They were both greatly influenced by Frank Knight and Jacob Viner. But Samuelson developed into the leading 'centrist' (his own words in the biography of Hayek) technocrat, whereas Stigler became one of the leading lights of the Chicago school. (As Samuelson makes clear Hayek pretty much left professional economics after 1945.) I have repeatedly explored their debate that originated in the status of welfare economics (see here, and follow the links back) in 1943.

But Samuelson does not merely suggests that Stigler won the Nobel for not quite original, cutting edge work. He also introduces the great sociologist of science Robert K. Merton to reinforce his point. Now, Merton had been a colleague of Stigler's at  Columbia and (together with Talcott Parsons) a great influence on Stigler's conception of science (recall also this post.) Stigler loved to quote Merton in his methodological papers, and there is no doubt that when Stigler wrote Kuhn just after Structure appeared to inform Kuhn that Kuhnian ideas were developed by economists like himself, they had drawn on Mertonian insights. But the plot thickens (as Backhouse gently reminded me yesterday) because Merton was also the father of the economist Robert Merton (and another Nobel laureate which he won for his contribution to the famous option price formula named after Black and Scholes). Merton and Samuelson wrote an important and widely cited text  from the "perspective of a model in which agents can revise their decisions continuously in time." 

It's quite clear that Stigler, who was something of an attack dog, is being treated as the lesser light and being likened to Wallace (and that Hayek is more akin to Darwin). And then for good measure, the reader is reminded that there are good odds that neither Stigler nor Hayek truly understood what they had contributed: there can be only one who understands all the nuances, and that's Samuelson.

 

On Surveys of the History of Political Philosophy/Theory

After  the death of Mohammed in 632, Islam began a triumphant century of conquests. These victories, which left Islam the dominant force in the wealthy Eastern Mediterranean, destroyed what was left of the urban cultural base of the Roman Empire.--Dick Howard (2010) The Primacy of the Political: A History of Political Thought from the Greeks to the French & American Revolutions (Columbia UP), 140.

The quoted passage is just about the only mention of Islam in Howard's book. The passage represents Islam as a powerful military force. It also treats it -- I will grant that this is unintentional -- as destructive of civilization. The contributions to political theory by Islamic thinkers go unmentioned. Howard's book is a survey. It claims to be a History of Political Thought, but outside of Europe and North Atlantic, it fails to cover the other traditions of political theory inspired by Plato. Of course, Islamic-Platonic political theory was also practiced in Europe (e.g., Spain), so the previous sentence is far too generous. This is not the only oversight. While Howard mentions the significance of women and family relations throughout the book, he fails to discuss any female thinkers let alone treat any of them (or a group of them) as worthy of a chapter.+

Alan Ryan's (much larger and) more sophisticated On Politics, mentions some of the leading Islamic philosophers in chapter 6, titled "Between Augustine and Aquinas." But it treats them as metaphysicians and contrasts them with the (somewhat later) Ibn Khaldun, who is considered as the first Islamic political theorist. Now as regular readers know, I am a huge fan of Ibn Khaldun (recall here and here), but this is ignorance about Al-Farabi and those he inspired as well as the roots of key moves in later history of political thought.** (It's not that Ryan ignores their role as transmitter of the Ancients.) Ryan does better on more recent, anti-colonial, twentieth century Islamic  thought; he is clearly fascinated by Sayyid Qutb. And it is not impossible that Sayyid Qutb's  polemical rejection of the Islamic philosophical tradition as somehow not really "true Muslim philosophy", may have encouraged Ryan to treat it as a topic that can be safely ignored. (That can't be the whole story because Ryan also recognizes that Qutb himself is being extremely inventive about the history of Islam.)

On women's role in the history of political theory, Ryan does somewhat better than Howard. While no woman gets her own chapter, the text is at least sprinkled with references to female thinkers and De Pizan gets serious attention. Peculiarly, feminist manifestos are seen as responding to foolishness and lacking political implications. (Because Ryan is unaware of Ibn Rushd's political theory and Platonic feminism (recall), he also suggests that other than Plato nobody drew the conclusion that political capacity and authority had nothing to do with birth and sex)*

Okay, so much for my polemic and brief survey of the field of historical surveys of political theory. Some other time I'll reflect on the presuppositions that make this kind of practice normal. This post was prompted by my search for a decent textbook to use in a rather massive (300-400 students) first year, Intro to History of Political Theory lecture course (from Plato to Marx) that I have been asked to teach. Our teaching coordinators frown on teaching such first year courses from primary texts alone and -- because an exam is given -- encourage the use of a text-book. 

As an aside, most of my scholarly friends in the profession prefer to teach through primary sources. (This has as nice side-effect that our teaching is both research-led and can lead to fruitful research.) And, having  gone through The University of Chicago, I, too, share the prejudice. But even for us  -- text snobs -- surveys are not trivial; they provide the narrative arc that, if they are written by somebody influential and creative, hovers in the back of our minds and quietly seeps into our teaching and research. In addition, these surveys are also the face of our discipline to many students and wider public. 

So, right now, I am still looking for a survey of the history of political philosophy/theory that, in addition to ordinary requirements (competence and nicely written), has three more, moderate desiderata:

    (i) some coverage of political theory outside of Europe/North America, and coverage of Islam (within Europe).

• We are constantly being told about globalization and clash of civilizations, but we allow ourselves to be ignorant of the theories that inspire alternative forms of political reflection.

    (ii) no ignoring of demography, imperialism, racism, eugenics, and slavery (and theoretical debates about these)

• With the rise of concern of global warming and trans-humanism, there is renewed interest in demography and eugenics; these are perennial topics in the history of political theory (and so are questions over  social hierarchy). 

    (iii) some interest in history of feminism female and male -- (and the theoretical debates about it)

• Feminism has a long history. We flatter ourselves and our students by pretending its novel; such flattery only promotes conformism.

So, this gets me to my question: anybody have suggestions for a history of political theory from a cosmopolitan perspective?* I need a text rather urgently.:)

If non exists, who will step up to write it and which publisher will commission it?