Digressions&Impressions

On What we Owe the Future, Part 2 (some polemic)

A full account of abolition would require a book in its own right and would cover the countless acts of resistance, subversion, and bravery by enslaved people throughout history. It would also cover efforts from formerly enslaved people such as Frederick Douglass, Sojourner Truth, and Harriet Tubman in the United States and Luís Gama in Brazil, who shed light on the horrors of slavery, fostered public opposition, and pushed for legislative action.
Here, though, I look at just one part of this narrative. Because I’m interested in whether or not abolition was contingent, I’m interested in those parts of the history that seem unexpected or difficult to explain. And, as leading historian of abolition Professor Christopher Leslie Brown puts it, “The causes of slave resistance do not seem particularly mysterious.” What is surprising, he notes, is that slavery was attacked by those who benefited from it. Moreover, enslaved people have very often throughout history powerfully resisted their oppression. So why was there a successful abolitionist campaign in Britain in the early 1800s and not in any of history’s previous slave societies?

I think that the activism of a fairly small group of Quakers in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries provides part of the answer. Their efforts were hugely important in one of the most surprising moral about-faces in history. There were many important figures in this story, but among the early Quaker activists, the most striking was Benjamin Lay....

The abolitionists demonstrate the importance of making moral change, but we can look to them as inspiration for how to make moral change, too. Earlier, I mentioned that in the late eighteenth century, abolitionist Quakers would keep a print of Benjamin Lay in their house as a source of continued moral inspiration. I have followed their lead; a print of Lay sits next to my monitor, and he watches me as I write this book.
Lay was the paradigm of a moral entrepreneur: someone who thought deeply about morality, took it very seriously, was utterly willing to act in accordance with his convictions, and was regarded as an eccentric, a weirdo, for that reason. We should aspire to be weirdos like him. Others may mock you for being concerned about people who live on the other side of the planet, or about pigs and chickens, or about people who will be born in thousands of years’ time. But many at the time mocked the abolitionists. We are very far from creating the perfect society, and until then, in order to drive forward moral progress, we need morally motivated heretics who are able to endure ridicule from those who wish to preserve the status quo.---William MacAskill (2022) What We Owe The Future, "Chapter 3: Moral Change," pp. 49 & 71-72

This is the second post on MacAskill's book. (The first one is here; it lists some qualities about the book that I admire.)

Two ground-rules about what follows:

1. I ignore all the good non-longtermist, effective altruism (EA) has done. It's mostly wonderful stuff, and no cynicism about it is warranted.
2. I ignore MacAskill's association with SBF/FTX. I have said what I want to say about it (here), although if any longtermists associated with the EA movement come to comment here, I hope they remember that the EA community directly benefitted from fraud (and that there is an interesting question to what degree it was facilitated by the relentless mutual backscratching of the intellectual side of the EA community and SBF); and perhaps focus on helping the victims of SBF.

• Perhaps, for some consequentialists (1) and (2) cancel each other out?

Once you have read What We Owe The Future, it is no surprise that MacAskill singles out Lay and does not even mention Toussaint Louverture, Jean-Jacques Dessalines, John Brown, or Lincoln. (Equiano, Cugoano, and Wilberforce receive a passing comment each.) MacAskill prefers to think about moral entrepreneurs, who generate moral change, not about political violence or politicians. In MacAskill's narrative moral change ended slavery not revolution, war, or the buying off of slaveowners. In his account, the significance of slave revolt is primarily to trigger moral change, or prevent it. (277 n. 17; p. 69) The Haitian revolution gets mentioned (especially in the endnotes), but if you don't know what it's about MacAskill doesn't inform you. I don't recall seeing the US Civil War mentioned at all. As he puts it in a slogan (in the context of praising the admirable, Leah Garcés, and Mercy for Animals), "Revolutionary beliefs; cooperative behaviour." (73) 

Because MacAskill relies heavily on Christopher Leslie Brown's Moral Capital: Foundations of British Abolitionism, who is relatively dismissive of Baxter and not very interested in Tryon (who was greatly admired by Lay), he also ends up systematically downplaying the significance of non Quaker and non utilitarian British abolitionist ideas pre-Lay, and, subsequently, ignoring influential philosophers like Beattie, Priestley, and Adam Smith (who almost certainly influenced Wilberforce). In fact, while some endnotes exhibit much more nuance, in the main body of the text MacAskill promotes a rather one-sided narrative about the historical ubiquity of slavery to imply that moral progress is something distinctly late modern, and the effect of moral entrepreneurship working on/in a small movement (with the Quakers as model). He shows no interest in the ancient cynics (who clearly influenced Lay's behavior and provided a model for him through the writings of the historian of philosophy, Thomas Stanley), the early Stoics (who arguably were anti-slavery), or -- as Graeber and Wengrow explore in The Dawn of Everything -- the many cultures that did without slavery. (Catholic anti-slavery is shunted to an endnote.)

As I noted in my first post on his book, MacAskill has remarkably little theoretical interest in social institutions and the role of violence in them, and ending them when necessary. If I were a Marxist, I would accuse him of the bad, right-Hegelian idealism. Even when he promotes "political experimentalism," he cashes this out in terms of "increasing cultural and intellectual diversity." (p. 99) The one political experiment he mentions approvingly is local: Deng Xioping's charter cities in China. (p. 100; the massacre at Tianamen Square is passed over.)

It's not that political violence is absent in the book (Hitler, Pol Pot, Mao, and Pope Innocent III [of the Albigensian crusade] are all mentioned), but uniformly it is represented as something negative. Of course, I don't mean to deny that the world needs peace-loving (Schumpeterian) moral entrepreneurs, who are disruptive of existing social norms. But it doesn't only need them. MacAskill explicitly cites J.S. Mill approvingly (but no nod to Thoreau, Dewey or Elizabeth Anderson)  to suggest that political and social experimentation can be a source for good (p. 99). He also falsely (recall this post and follow the citation to Jill Gordon 1997) goes on to attribute to Mill the idea "of a marketplace of ideas, where different ideas can compete and the best ideas win." (p. 99)

In fact, his concern over the effects of moral homogeneity leads him to be rather critical of the possibility of "world government." (158)+ Now, I share his suspicion that a world government might suppress certain valuable practices, but it is odd that MacAskill does not confront the tension in his own argument. For, in the context of criticizing the possibility of world government, he *praises military* rivalry for its innovative technological side-effects (p. 158) in one chapter, but only two chapters earlier he worried that great power war -- another foreseeable effect of such military rivalry -- might lead to human extinction (pp. 114-116). Again, while one should never be cynical about moral change MacAskill exhibits, as also I noted in my first post, a cavalier attitude toward thinking about social theory and social institutions; his near total disregard of the significance of political even violent contestation reflects a kind of infantilization of philosophy.

And while like him, I would welcome more social experimentation, I was a bit taken aback when he noted that "homogeneity in the global response to Covid-19...was responsible for millions of deaths." (p. 97) Strikingly, in a book with about 800 official endnotes, this claim is offered ex cathedra. MacAskill is a big fan of human challenge trials and selling vaccines, and so I followed the only citation in the previous paragraph to the end-note and then the website in order to realize it was a citation to a 2020 Blog post by the well-known economist John Cochrane. But even Cochrane doesn't make this point (about millions of deaths), or even advocates for challenge trials in it. (Cochrane does think vaccines should be sold "to the highest bidder.") Neither MacAskill nor Cochrane addresses the obvious objection that not all purported vaccines offered to the public will work (and so somehow these don't enter the deaths/cost ledger). I am not against all challenge trials in all contexts, but the idea that they are unproblematic is dangerous, too. Maybe he is right that the global response to Covid-19 was responsible for millions of deaths, but like I intimated in my first post, when I observed the frequently opaque nature and sources of the probabilities mentioned by MacAskill, some of the data he mentions seems to materialize out of thin air. 

Let me close with a final thought. One person's moral entrepreneurship is another person's dude with a savior complex on steroids. And while this may seem harsh in light of MacAskill's non trivial contributions to helping actual others, it is notable that MacAskill insists repeatedly that our age is special: "At present, society is still malleable and can be blown into many shapes." (6, emphasis added.) And he regularly returns to this point, especially in the context of technological and moral stagnation, suggesting that "the glass is cooling, and at some point, perhaps in the not-too-distant future, it might set. Whether it sets into a sculpture that is beautiful and crystalline or mangled and misshapen is, in significant part, up to us." (p. 102) Even if this were true (and I'll return to his arguments in a future post), he never explains what gives him (and here he echoes (recall) his much more socially cautious hero, Parfit), and his fellow self-elect, the authority to act as the philosophical legislators of much of the future.*

To be continued.

 

Covid, Humanitarian Experiment, and Reading (Oneself)

While day-to-day my life is characterized by a discouraging lack of improvement, in some important respects my health has improved significantly during the last two weeks: I am rarely dizzy anymore. Since this was my initial symptom dating back to early December (recall here; here; here; here; and here) this is a great relief. My headaches are mostly not incapacitating; out of the last nine days only Thursday and Saturday were really bad. (Strikingly, the felt location of the headache is still moving around my skull, and the timing of the headaches is without rhyme or reason.) My insomnia has lessened: melatonin aided, I now get about six hours of sleep even on bad nights. I also show more competence at basic life skills (like not nearly burning down the kitchen regularly). And I have longer periods (up to three hours) without any symptoms at all.

It's not all good news yet. Even extremely minor physical activity can create a very strange fatigue such that my head (from the nose up) feels very heavy as if filled with a heavy liquid. I call this upper-head fatigue, which makes me want to lay flat and close my eyes. Once upper-head fatigue starts I am basically out of commission for at least an hour or more. I emphasize this because it's not like my lungs or legs are tired after, say, half a mile of ambling. On a recent good day I tried reading a science fiction novel, and even after taking regular breaks after each page (!), within a short amount of time I had the same kind of upper-head fatigue. I return to this below because there is a puzzling phenomenon associated with it.

I also have very low tolerance for background noise, including things we would not be inclined to call 'noise' at all: e.g., simple conversation and music. If any of these things (conversation, music, noise) or other disturbances occur I can be quite irritable. I have developed something akin to the  hypersensitivity to sound that reminds me of what I have encountered in some autists. I also find conversation exhausting and annoying [I think this is very much out of character], and avoid it studiously (especially phone or zoom).* 

Above I noted that lots of minor noises are irritating; even so, I can spend hours watching kung fu movies, including the very violent Indonesian ones. My main 'research' finding of the pandemic is, in fact,  that the sub-text of all kung fu films is the corruption of state institutions generally due to money, but sometimes due to occupation or imperialism. Five Venoms - a cult classic -- exhibits this point relentlessly, also in the final shot. Some kind of reading is still quite out of reach. And writing remains a slow, painful exercise. Even so, I can spend hours reading stuff on social media without getting upper head fatigue.

This had me meditating on the contrast between skim reading (social media) and concentrated reading (books). I wondered whether when I am skim reading I am doing a lot of largely tacit guesses -- based on context and background knowledge -- about what's on the screen, skipping words even whole sentences while my eyes scan content. Whereas when I engage in concentrated reading of  books I am wholly present with the text often in silent dialogue with the material, switching intellectual or emotional perspective as needs must. Perhaps the latter really is a lot more taxing on neurons/brain/mind. 

My Dutch GP, who returned my call after-hours, listened to my symptoms and interpretation. She suggested an alternative, compatible interpretation: I am having trouble multi-tasking. And anything that distracts from my focus creates mental turmoil and disturbance/irritability. This sounded plausible to me, but I objected that when I read books I am hyper-focused. I was about to launch into a soliloquy on how I could close off from the world with my book in the noisiest public places, when I realized that she was explaining to me the difference between reading a book on the page and reading from a small screen. When you read a book, she said, 'you have to make out words and sentences and ignore enormous amount of other letters and spaces on the same page.'

I was suddenly completely present. 'Normally,' she continued, 'you don't even notice you're doing it. But now it's too many tasks at once.'

I have noted, including in some digressions, I suspect, that I have a growing conviction that even our smartest students with lots of cultural capital find engaging with books difficult. They are taught from text-books, which are good at providing ready-made information and puzzle-solving; don't read the Bible weekly, and are very used to being interrupted by social media which is simply much better at holding our attention (leaving aside that much social media is actively prompting our reactive attitudes). In addition, they are immersed in the pictorial and iconographic worlds of games. I have joked that, despite high literacy, in some respects our future will be more like the middle-ages when the taste for books was constitutive of a rarified niche. 

I asked my GP whether there were any experimental drugs she could proscribe, or whether she had any suggestions about how I could read a book again. After counseling patience, and reminding me to stick with not working, she suggested trying to use a ruler magnifier when reading a book, 'that way you can focus on one line at a time when reading.' 

When I mentioned all of this to my surgeon-cognitive-scientist spouse, she suggested a kindle might have the same positive effect. If she is right about this, I would give in and start reading fiction and philosophy on a screen and we would put a stop to my mad accumulation of books. As I turned to order a ruler magnifier online, I quietly added a waterproof kindle as well. I always laugh a bit when Thoreau presents his own life, in high minded fashion, as a humanitarian self-experiment. But here I am waiting for the courier eager to start my own experiment. 

Thoreau on Man and Machines; or on Voting and Virtue Signaling

Practically speaking, the opponents to a reform in Massachusetts are not a hundred thousand politicians at the South, but a hundred thousand merchants and farmers here, who are more interested in commerce and agriculture than they are in humanity, and are not prepared to do justice to the slave and to Mexico, cost what it may. I quarrel not with far-off foes, but with those who, near at home, cooperate with, and do the bidding of those far away, and without whom the latter would be harmless. We are accustomed to say, that the mass of men are unprepared; but improvement is slow, because the few are not materially wiser or better than the many. It is not so important that many should be as good as you, as that there be some absolute goodness somewhere; for that will leaven the whole lump. There are thousands who are in opinion opposed to slavery and to the war, who yet in effect do nothing to put an end to them; who, esteeming themselves children of Washington and Franklin, sit down with their hands in their pockets, and say that they know not what to do, and do nothing; who even postpone the question of freedom to the question of free trade, and quietly read the prices-current along with the latest advices from Mexico, after dinner, and, it may be, fall asleep over them both. What is the price-current of an honest man and patriot today? They hesitate, and they regret, and sometimes they petition; but they do nothing in earnest and with effect. They will wait, well disposed, for others to remedy the evil, that they may no longer have it to regret. At most, they give only a cheap vote, and a feeble countenance and God-speed, to the right, as it goes by them. There are nine hundred and ninety-nine patrons of virtue to one virtuous man. But it is easier to deal with the real possessor of a thing than with the temporary guardian of it.

All voting is a sort of gaming, like checkers or backgammon, with a slight moral tinge to it, a playing with right and wrong, with moral questions; and betting naturally accompanies it. The character of the voters is not staked. I cast my vote, perchance, as I think right; but I am not vitally concerned that that right should prevail. I am willing to leave it to the majority. Its obligation, therefore, never exceeds that of expediency. Even voting for the right is doing nothing for it. It is only expressing to men feebly your desire that it should prevail. A wise man will not leave the right to the mercy of chance, nor wish it to prevail through the power of the majority. There is but little virtue in the action of masses of men. When the majority shall at length vote for the abolition of slavery, it will be because they are indifferent to slavery, or because there is but little slavery left to be abolished by their vote. They will then be the only slaves. Only his vote can hasten the abolition of slavery who asserts his own freedom by his vote.--Thoreau (1849) Civil Disobedience.

At the core of Thoreau's argument on behalf of civil disobedience is the idea that democratic rule, the rule of many, is fundamentally the rule of "superior physical strength." And from the rule of strength one cannot expect moral rule. In fact, if one could expect such moral rule one wouldn't need democracy.

The rule of many is contrasted to the individual with conscience.  In fact, Thoreau re-conceptualizes the rugged (Emersonian) self-reliant individual, true masculinity, as the person capable of exercising conscience against the self-interested, machine-like many (and machine-like institution): "The mass of men serve the state thus, not as men mainly, but as machines, with their bodies." I return to this below.

This raises uncomfortable questions about Thoreau's commitment to democracy. Of course, he would (rightly) retort that democracy is capable of genocide* and maintains, directly and indirectly, the institution of slavery.

Thoreau, is explicit that, and he treats this as a benefit of modernity, that for a state to have legitimate authority it "must have the sanction and consent of the governed." But he is equally clear -- see the quoted passage above -- that a willingness to accept majority rule, a willingness to abide by even awful election results, also entails a kind of lack of moral seriousness, "a playing with right and wrong, with moral questions." 

His main criticism is not the familiar idea that a single vote cannot make a meaningful difference in mass democracy, but rather that individuals take their apparent inability to make a difference too seriously. And this impotent inability, this expediency, is then expressed in a whole range of symbolic (because ineffective) forms of protest: virtue signaling, petitions, etc. What's lacking is conviction and effectiveness to meet one's duty to fight enormous injustice.** So, Thoreau's fundamental argument for civil disobedience+ is that given the many forms of (self-interested) status quo bias institutionalized in democracy, and given the limited effectiveness of most forms of legal protest, it is a necessary evil by which the few can change the policy preferred by the many. 

I mentioned above that for Thoreau to be a true man just is the willingness to act on conscience at possible high cost to oneself. But this presupposes that one has social capital to spare for a good cause. It is clear that certain forms of civil disobedience are for all their sincere conviction also, simultaneously, expressions of certain social standing. Lurking in his account is a republican ideal of independent self-sufficiency, a species of noblesse oblige. 

Of course, civil disobedience need not be an expression of class (ahh) privilege. The vulnerable, those that are victims of structural injustice can, of course, also engage in civil disobedience; but for them the choice to do so is more existential. To borrow (recall) a point from Amia Srinivasan, there is a second order form of injustice lurking here.The vulnerable, the victims of structural injustice, face a tragic choice between civic disobedience or getting on with life. For many a criminal record even in the service of a most worthy cause is not the source of good jail stories -- Thoreau edges, alas, uncomfortably close to this --, but a major, fundamental obstacle to any other valuable life plans. So, when the vulnerable engage in civil disobedience it is an act of courageous self-sacrifice.++ 

 

On Weatherson on Political Principles

When senator John McCain died last year, there was an outpouring of appreciation for his career from across the political spectrum. The praise was just as strong, if not stronger, from those who had been on the opposite side of politics from McCain as from those on his own.

There is a superficial puzzle about this. Why should people who put so much effort into preventing McCain from achieving various political goals now praise his wonderful and admirable career?

But that’s an easy puzzle. Democracy isn’t war. Though it can be shot through with martial language and metaphors, democracy ultimately requires a high level of respect between the “warring” sides. Without that, the peaceful exchange of power that characterises democracy becomes impossible. In fact, if one’s view of democracy doesn’t distinguish between electoral campaigns and artillery campaigns, that democracy will be an inherently fragile project.

I’m not sure whether John McCain was principled. For that matter, I’m not sure if there is any good explanation of why he deserved this kind of cross-party praise. But some people do, and it is good to think about what makes them deserving. And the suggestion that we should admire our principled opponents is interesting.

At first glance, this looks like a plausible solution to the puzzle over when we should admire an opponent. An opponent may be admirable because they are principled, because they work hard to advance their sincerely held moral principles. But they are nevertheless an opponent, because we don’t share their principles, and we do not think their principles should be advanced.

But at second glance, this story can’t be right. It is too easy to be principled. Fanatics, terrorists and racists can all have sincerely and deeply held moral principles, and they can make enormous sacrifices to advance those principles. Yet that doesn’t make them worthy of admiration and respect...

So, if we admire our opponents, it shouldn’t be because they are principled. They may well be principled, but it doesn’t matter. It’s too easy to be principled. And since being principled is neither a redeeming feature among the wicked nor what we admire in the virtuous, we have to ask again: what makes some of our adversaries more admirable?

A better answer is that we have many different values that we try to promote through political action. We want our fellow humans to be free from oppression and also free from hunger. We want them to flourish and be free to choose how to live their lives, but also to be restricted from harming others.

Some political fights come about because others do not share our values, or because they value things that we think lack value. Perhaps they in fact positively value racial segregation, or they positively value having power concentrated in the hands of rich, white men. Few people nowadays would express such values this bluntly, or even acknowledge to themselves that this is what they value, but still their actions can reveal such disrespectable values. And there are certainly people fighting against such actions and values today.

But, crucially, not all fights are like that. Other fights arise when a plurality of values come into conflict. And in those cases, very different trade-offs can occur. Some people who really share our values make very different choices about which to prioritise, and to what degree, when those values come into conflict. And these choices might not be one-off; the people in question might systematically make different choices when there is a trade-off to be made.

That’s where you find the really admirable, really respect-worthy, opponents. There are people in politics who are promoting truly valuable ends. Or, at least, they are promoting ends we agree are valuable. They might disagree with us, perhaps dramatically, on questions of everyday policy. But their disagreements are grounded in a shared appreciation of the many and varied interests of the people affected by a policy.

...

Ultimately, what matters is not whether someone is principled, but whether they have been promoting genuinely good things. There are many ends worth pursuing, and politics is about trade-offs between values as well as clashes between people with incompatible values. When we acknowledge this, we begin to see how someone pursuing an important aspect of what is good can end up an opponent. Ideally, we’d talk them over to our side, or at least meet in the middle after listening to what the other has to say. But that won’t always happen. And when it doesn’t, we shouldn’t forget the values they are fighting for, and admire their fight.--Brian Weatherson "How to get on with your political enemies" @ NewStatesman [HT Dailynous]

Weatherson's interesting essay raises issues that I have reflected on, prompted by an important essay by Jason Brennan, obliquely while struggling to articulate the idea that terrorists have genuine courage (and, perhaps, can  be heroes). Before I get to that, three quick comments: first, the outpouring for the  senator John McCain was primarily due to him not being Donald Trump (and an occasional critic of Trump, even denying Trump crucial legislative victory on his deathbed). That's compatible with people also admiring and liking other features of McCain's character. Second, I assume Weatherson was not responsible for the headline above his piece--after all, he denies one could get on with one's real political enemies (the ones he would call "fanatics, terrorists" etc.) Third, his piece tacitly assumes a distinction, familiar (recall) from Chantal Mouffe's work, between a political adversary (or in Weatherson's terminology an "opponent") -- one that, if Weatherson is right, one is capable of praising -- and a political enemy ("fanatics, terrorism," etc.) that one that one could never praise. In what follows I assume the distinction, but what follows does not require it (because I don't want to be unfair to Weatherson).

I mention Mouffe's distinction because I want to note that the potential adversary is, on Weatherson's account, somebody whose ends one can endorse even if one cannot endorse the priority one gives to them. (This is reminiscent of, but distinct from, (recall) the twentieth century technocratic fiction that the only genuinely political disagreements were over means not ends.) I think it is undoubtedly true that it is psychologically easier to admire somebody whose ends one can endorse than somebody whose ends one must disagree with. So far so good.

But Weatherson makes things a bit easy for himself by leaving a conceptual gap between those (enemies) whose ends one cannot endorse and those (adversaries) whose ends one can endorse. I think there are political adversaries whose ends one rejects, but who one does not come to see as an enemy. For, there can be a huge difference between a fanatic and a terrorist, who, let's stipulate, is willing to blow up innocent people for a cause. By contrast, a fanatic can respect innocent lives, etc. My view is that most moral struggles require some fanatics to get off the ground and to be sustained against great adversity. These are people who go against public opinion, are unwilling to accept election or legal outcomes as a final word, and keep up mobilizing and struggling. A democracy worth having -- Thoreau is, I think, the first to make this point, but it also resonates with thoughts in J.S. Mill  --  needs to find a place for the moral fanatics. 

Weatherson could agree with this last point, by suggesting that the moral fanatics whose ends we endorse are not really enemies (nor really fanatics) but adversaries. Surely such moral fanatics exist. But there are plenty of political struggles informed by visions he/we may find immoral (Weatherson helpfully suggests 'racists').

Now, to get to my major disagreements with Weatherson: I think democracy will be an inherently fragile project if one treats those whose moral ends one disagrees with as (Mouffian) enemies or fanatics (or irrational).* This does turn any major moral disagreement over ends into possible war, indeed. 

As regular readers know I think the institutions of the states we call liberal democracies make best sense because they presuppose that a reliably moral citizenry is impossible;+ that the conditions under which political leaders will act reliable on the demand of morality are fragile; and that (recall) when citizens vote they are quite likely to favor interest over morality (in cases where these conflict). Note that the previous sentence is compatible with plenty of leaders and citizens being moral most of the time. When I write that "a moral citizenry is impossible," I mean to entail also that citizens can disagree over moral ends, fanatically so.

Now moral fanatics may accept some democratic values (e.g., non-violence, etc.), but reject others (e.g., compromise). But it does not follow they need to be treated as enemies even if one finds their ends truly misguided. Democracy as a whole benefits from the non-conforming moral fanatics. They hold sometimes very unpleasant mirrors to our lives and make us confront what values we may embrace and come to embrace. That is to say, democracy does not presuppose agreement over moral ends, but it may well come to be a means to teach us (some of) our moral ends. For this function to work it has to be possible, genuinely possible, for the would-be-moral-fanatic to be in genuine moral error and that what we take to be the bounds of acceptable opinion can shift. Obviously there are some tough cases, but where to draw the line is not my present concern.

If it is possible that the unity of  virtues does not hold -- and (recall) it very likely does not -- then one can express many virtues, steadfastness, courage in following one's conscience, in the service of what may turn out to be bad ends. From the perspective of a democratic society, such steadfastness may well be a major irritant even a contribution to making the wold worse off, but it can still be admirable in some respects, including providing a contribution to our political life (by undermining lazy conformism, ensuring vibrant exchange of ideas, etc).

I think Weatherson and I disagree here. But there is a way to reconcile our differences: I treat the indirect promotion of a  vibrant political community -- as potentially immoral fanatics are capable of doing -- as a genuine good thing. And even if the would-be-immoral fanatic has no desire to promote a vibrant political community, I can admire her contribution to it, and even praise her principled stand (while rejecting her principles). Perhaps, Weatherson will agree that one can praise the unintended, but foreseaable promotion of good things?

 

 

On Supreme Court Judges and Political Aristocracy

It is often remarked that in the American system of governance, the supreme court has evolved to be a kind of super-legislature with a small number of exceedingly influential judges having life-time tenure. (If you google <"supreme court" super-legislature> yet get almost ten million hits.) If one takes the thought seriously it is kind of surprising that we don't see more politicians and party-activists on the court. I am unsure if Earl Warren was the last major politician to be on the court (he served alongside Hugo Black, who was also a politician-judge), but it's not entirely surprising that Judge Kavanaugh exhibits -- what the founders would have called -- factional tendencies and antipathies.* To be nominated to the Supreme Court one must be seen as advancing the political interests of a particular party/politician(s). 

Of course, there is a difference between interpreting the constitution in light of one's principles (political or otherwise), which may conflict with other such principles, and being partisan about one's judgments. The former is compatible with certain forms of impartiality about particular cases one is asked to judge; the latter not. In addition, the former is to be expected in a pluralist society. And in practice, the politicians (Presidents and Senators) that get to decide who gets appointed Supreme Court Judge, have embraced the practice -- which is part of a number of useful aspirational fictions that constituted the civic religion of America, say, since 1945 -- in which judges are asked about their judiciary principles as a polite proxy for advancing their interests and ideologies. This proxy is imperfect (as the case of Judge Souter taught the republicans.)  From this perspective, Judge Kavanaugh's partisanship is not so unusual; he is just unusually bad, if not shameless (I return to this below), at hiding and disguising his partisan sensibilities.*

There is another perspective to take on the evolution of the U.S. Supreme Court (SCOTUS): it increasingly represents the meritocratic element in the US governance. This is especially striking because the (rather predictable)+ rise and effectiveness of ideological and interest based political parties  undermined the meritocratic hopes the Founders may have had for the vestiges of influence of aristocracy, Senate and electoral college. (In the twentieth centuries political parties themselves became more democratic, too.) That is, the contemporary US Supreme Court is one of the clear places where in American governance a cognitive elite gets to decide the shape of law and policy relatively insulated from democratic control but in terms of public spirit. Another such locus is, say, the Federal Reserve. While there are good grounds to be critical of such insulation (and skeptical about the existence of public spirits), it helps balance what is otherwise a polity ruled primarily by interest. 

For, SCOTUS is importantly unlike the Federal Reserve and say the Army (an institution also notable for its meritocratic spirit), because the judiciary is one of two institutions -- the other is the research intensive academy -- that is also committed to the production and establishment of truth. (I am drawing on Hannah Arendt's ideas here.) Because SCOTUS is a kind of super-legislature, its commitment to truth is, in practice, very imperfect.

Even if Judge Kavanaugh were factually innocent of sexual assault (which I doubt), it is no surprise that he has been turned into the symbol of entitled privilege and patriarchy. The philosopher Kate Manne has correctly noted that the response to Dr. Blasey's accusation has been a "pathological moral tendency to feel sorry exclusively for the alleged male perpetrator ...while relentlessly casting suspicion upon the female accusers." These are instructive and legitimate frames with which to evaluate the present political situation.

Even so, while I take human imperfection as axiomatic in my own understanding of liberal democracy, I was struck by the extent and range of his character imperfections during his hearings. He was loud, bullying, enraged, lacking in civility and self-control, and shameless in his contempt for several US Senators. This is, not unlike the President, not now a man with a warm heart for democratic mores. By speaking of his political critics in conspiratorial tones ('frenzy on the left;' 'outside left wing'), he is, in fact, rejecting the very idea of civic unity among conflicting views.  

Because I am teaching Ibn Rushd's commentary on Plato's Republic this week, I was reminded of a passage I have quoted before:

Such is the case with these virtuous natures when they grow up in these [defective--ES] cities and are badly educated. Hence the causes of the great evils in these cities are none other than these individuals...Their thought and their rulership over the cities: this indeed is the greatest of the causes for the loss of wisdom and the extinguishing its light.--Ibn Rushd, On Plato's Republic, second treatise, 63.27-64.13, translated by R. Lerner.

A student noted today that the defects of the badly educated among the would be cognitive elite are not individual, but caused by impoverished structures. In bad structural circumstances, "the seeds of the best plants will," Ibn Rushd says echoing Socrates (Republic 491), "turn into the very worst of the bad kinds." Judge Kavanaugh was educated at America's elite institutions, and the patterns of his behavior, which are being revealed, represent the debased expression of the values that are permitted to fester among them. All of us who have spent our life-time in academia, are familiar with the sexualized forms of hazing and assault that are encouraged by fraternities, defended by alumni donor networks, and often too tolerated by our college administrations.** While few would advocate the return of strict moral norms on college campuses, Judge Kavanaugh's behavior, which could not have gone unnoticed by many peers, tells us about the gross practical imperfections for what passes as education today.++ 

To be sure, those very same institutions also produced Dr. Blasey (although she did not spent any time at Yale), who spoke eloquently of her understanding of civic duty. So, I am not suggesting they must produce bad character.

Ibn Rushd -- who not unlike Plato was an unabashed epistemocratic elitist -- thought that institutions that purported to promote a meritocracy were among the most dangerous because they could pretend to offer an excellent education, while simultaneously undermining not just the very possibility of the cultivation of excellent moral character, but also (thereby) the polity. And in fact, one cannot escape the thought that President Trump has stuck with Judge Kavanaugh's nomination in virtue of his shameless viciousness and, thereby, undermine the very possibility of thinking about the court in terms of meritocratic, public spiritedness.

 

 

 

On Seneca's Self-Reliance

Sail, therefore, not just past one insidious place because of its treacherous delights, but past every city. Be deaf to those who love you most of all; they good natured [bono animo] pray for the wrong sort [mala] of things on your behalf. And, if you would be happy [felix], entreat the gods that none of their fond desires for you may be brought to pass. What they wish to have upon you are not really good things; there is only one good, the cause and the main prop [firmamentum] of a happy life,-trust in oneself [sibi fidere].--Seneca, Letter 31

It is often the case that unsolicited advice from others is more informative about the person proffering the advice than the one receiving it. It can be allowed that practical wisdom may not be rare (even if as Seneca suggests in this letter it involves a certain skill or artistry [prudens atque artifex]), but that, in practice, other people tend not to see your circumstances with the clarity they deserve because it is your path to be trodden not theirs. This is familiar enough. 

In our age of religious pluralism, it is not uncommon for an atheist, say, to receive well wishes by way of prayers to a deity. It does not take any effort to show gratitude and among friends to comment that even if the success of the procedure is doubted, the effort is appreciated and, when efficacious, the benefits welcomed. After all, we can all use all the help we can get when the sailing gets rough. (Seneca deliberately echoes Socrates's understanding of philosophers as the true sailors at Republic 488-9.)

Seneca, however, challenges us to reject, even actively challenge (at least with their gods!), other people's good wishes even prayers because they tend to desire the wrong sorts of things (success, beauty, money, etc.) for us. What we should desire is to become the kind of person that does honorable, enduring things; others have a tendency not to pray for that on our behalf.

And this gets me to the two radical thoughts lurking here. For one may well think surely the god(s) won't listen to and heed misguided prayers. And why is there even a need to ask the gods to ignore the wrong sort of prayers? And Seneca's answer is not to deny the power of the common gods, but to suggest that they don't know what's good for us. Rather, we ought to make ourselves happy [fac te ipse felicem] by doing the right sorts of things.

For, the point of the highest good is not to be a supplicant of the gods but to become godlike (or to be joined in fellowship with god) [incipis deorum socius esse, non supplex]. And to make clear what this entails, Seneca sketches the contours of what we may call (and I now get to the first of two radical things), a philosophical non-anthropomorphic (without beauty or violence) god: the highest and most powerful of beings, who is the true support of all things [deus ille maximus potentissimusque ipse vehit omnia.] With such an (philosophical) godly exemplar, we should turn ourselves into great souls who exhibit integrity and goodness [playing around a bit with animus, sed hic rectus, bonus, magnus]. I emphasize integrity because the highest good for Seneca is to be virtuous and have an internally harmonious and proportionate life [aequalitas ac tenor vitae per omnia consonans sibi] which relies on knowledge of human and divine things.

As an aside, Seneca quotes Virgil's Aeneid "et te quoque dignum/finge deo" to emphasize the point that we should model ourselves on a godly exemplar. He had used the same fragment in Letter 18. (There he had (recall my post) done so to illustrate the rejection of riches as fellowship with the gods.) Seneca hereby shows, without having to say it, that true philosophy needs to rely poetry when it teaches virtue. (He uses a passage in which Aeneas is being exhorted to emulate Hercules by humble Evander--the exact spot is where Rome's symbols of imperial might will stand.)

And, second, Seneca emphasize that each of us [e.g., a Roman knight just as well as into a freedman's son or a slave] can become godlike in this fashion. One can leap to the heights from the slums [Subsilire in caelum ex angulo licet].* For -- and here Seneca puts his own political career in its proper perspective -- human hierarchy is always and everywhere the offspring of human ambition and misdeeds [nomina ex ambitione aut iniuria nata].

Let me come to a close. Seneca poetically introduces his philosophical conception of God at the very moment when he rejects the very idea of any human exemplar to the best form of life.  He does so, however, with  a kind of anti-poetics, which anticipates Romans 9.21 (and, recall,  Smith and Spinoza), because the god we must emulate is molded not from gold or silver, but clay. The point is to inspire us to become generous souls [Generosos animos] who promote noble causes through hard work. And to do this we must dare to be steadfast and turn our backs on the wisdom and wishes of crowds.

And, yet, by withdrawing from popular opinion, and inspiring heroic deeds, Seneca flirts with abjuring kindness and disowning gentle love. And so his prototype of self-reliance edges perhaps too closely to the sort of fanatic who shudders at human touch.

 

 

On the Pre-History of Children's Rights and Libertarianism; life as an experiment

FINALLY, on this point of individual liberty: Every man must necessarily judge and determine for himself as to what is conducive and necessary to, and what is destructive of, his own well-being; because, if he omits to perform this task for himself, nobody else can perform it for him. And nobody else will even attempt to perform it for him, except in very few cases. Popes, and priests, and kings will assume to perform it for him, in certain cases, if permitted to do so. But they will, in general, perform it only in so far as they can minister to their own vices and crimes, by doing it. They will, in general, perform it only in so far as they can make him their fool and their slave. Parents, with better motives, no doubt, than the others, too often attempt the same work. But in so far as they practise coercion, or restrain a child from anything not really and seriously dangerous to himself, they do him a harm, rather than a good. It is a law of Nature that to get knowledge, and to incorporate that knowledge into his own being, each individual must get it for himself. Nobody, not even his parents, can tell him the nature of fire, so that he will really know it. He must himself experiment with it, and be burnt by it, before he can know it.

Nature knows, a thousand times better than any parent, what she designs each individual for, what knowledge he requires, and how he must get it. She knows that her own processes for communicating that knowledge are not only the best, but the only ones that can be effectual.

The attempts of parents to make their children virtuous are generally little else than attempts to keep them in ignorance of vice. They are little else than attempts to teach their children to know and prefer truth, by keeping them in ignorance of falsehood. They are little else than attempts to make them seek and appreciate health, by keeping them in ignorance of disease, and of everything that will cause disease. They are little else than attempts to make their children love the light, by keeping them in ignorance of darkness. In short, they are little else than attempts to make their children happy, by keeping them in ignorance of everything that causes them unhappiness.

In so far as parents can really aid their children in the latter’s search after happiness, by simply giving them the results of their (the parents’) own reason and experience, it is all very well, and is a natural and appropriate duty. But to practise coercion in matters of which the children are reasonably competent to judge for themselves, is only an attempt to keep them in ignorance. And this is as much a tyranny, and as much a violation of the children’s right to acquire knowledge for themselves, and such knowledge as they desire, as is the same coercion when practised upon older persons. Such coercion, practised upon children, is a denial of their right to develop the faculties that Nature has given them, and to be what Nature designs them to be. It is a denial of their right to themselves, and to the use of their own powers. It is a denial of their right to acquire the most valuable of all knowledge, to wit, the knowledge that Nature, the great teacher, stands ready to impart to them.

The results of such coercion are not to make the children wise or virtuous, but to make them ignorant, and consequently weak and vicious; and to perpetuate through them, from age to age, the ignorance, the superstitions, the vices, and the crimes of the parents.--Lysander Spooner (1875) "Vices are not Crimes" XV, pp. 14-16. [HT Matt Zwolinski]

Reading Spoooner helps one understand that Libertarianism is a political doctrine that, at a very high level of world historical abstraction, mixes a mostly Lockean theory of natural right/law with a peculiar form of secularized Protestantism. I call it 'peculiar' because -- as the quoted passage reveals -- it's a species of Protestantism without original sin. (At the very end of the paragraph he calls the doctrine of original sin a "false and vicious" theology.) Spooner, in particular, shares with Emerson and Thoreau [recall] as well as other American thinkers (such as Dewey and Elizabeth Anderson [recall]), the idea that our lives are an open ended series of experiments--a word Spooner uses throughout the pamphlet.

While Spooner is committed to a rather fundamental form of moral equality (he was a fierce abolitionist), he also thought that each of us is idiosyncratic in all kinds of ways. This is crucial because it means for him each of us will be happy in ways particular to each of us and to be discovered by us individually. (I call it Protestant because Spooner is distrustful of [social/ancient] authority and he privileges individual, direct experience.) Virtues are conducive to our individual happiness, and vices harm them. Because these are idiosyncratic they should not be legislated for or against. By definition crimes do harm others, and these can be legislated against, although Spooner is very distrustful of the motives and aims behind much legislation in practice.

Life then becomes a Popperian-Darwinian series of trial and errors, in which children our trusted to find their own way and the role of our parents is limited to preventing catastrophic errors. (Come to think of it, this is a nice metaphor for his conception of the state which he tends to articulate in terms of contractualist language and mutual association or insurance.) He is critical of parents/family authority over children. In fact, one of the main ways in which parents harm children, for Spooner, is the ways in which our attempts at protecting children is a form of indoctrination into false beliefs that make impossible the (idiosyncratic) happiness of the child. 

In so doing Spooner articulates a rather robust notion of children's rights and competences.*  I am not an expert on the history of children's rights. But it is often said that these originate in concern over exploitation of children in factories (think Dickens) or the fate of orphans in mass society. That may well be true. But Spooner reminds us that there is also a more optimistic, perhaps over-optimistic, anti-conformist strain that grounds a social interest in children's rights; that's our joint concern in discovering the multiplicity of possible lives that can contribute to the stock of happiness, and knowledge of lives worth living. This must include a freedom to make one's own mistakes.

Most days of the week I do not share the optimistic assumptions about human nature that ground Spooner's thought. But I have to admit that I finally got a glimpse of Libertarianism's capacity to enchant the noblest minds.  

On Virginia Woolf on Thoreau being a Counterpart of Emerson

But for a time he was to live in the world of men, at least in that very remarkable section of the world of which Emerson was the centre and which professed the Transcendentalist doctrines. Thoreau took up his lodgings in Emerson’s house and very soon became, so his friends said, almost indistinguishable from the prophet himself. If you listened to them both talking with your eyes shut you could not be certain where Emerson left off and Thoreau began ‘…in his manners, in the tones of his voice, in his modes of expressions, even in the hesitations and pauses of his speech, he had become the counterpart of Mr. Emerson.’ This may well have been so. The strongest natures, when they are influenced, submit the most unreservedly; it is perhaps a sign of their strength. But that Thoreau lost any of his own force in the process, or took on permanently any colours not natural to himself the readers of his books will certainly deny.--Virginia Woolf (July 12, 1917:) commemorating the 100th anniversary of Henry David Thoreau’s birth for the Times Literary Supplement.

It's almost a century ago that Woolf published these remarks. I was reminded of her moving essay, and this passage, in particular, yesterday when, in the company of my former supervisor, I heard him (my Doktorvater), say, in passing (in a festive mood after a succesful defense of one of my students), that's just swell.+ (As it happens we had just discussed Allan Bloom's distaste for Zelig.) Now, I was not surprised by his use; I have long known that somehow, without initially noticing it, I have picked up the habit of using this (folksy) expression from him. Luckily, despite my fascination with prophets, we do not share many doctrines (but recall) and, as he will be the first to remind me, I am no Thoreau (and he is no Emerson).

While few philosophers live with their intellectual mentors, the phenomenon that Woolf describes is familiar enough. There are many mannerism associated with certain intellectual environments (when the Oxford trained philosopher of a certain generation in a galaxy far away says (recall), 'I am confused' to you, you know they think you are a moron.) I am sure the next sentence will land me in  trouble (but here goes): for a while, I could unfailingly pick out a Pittsburgh trained philosopher based on the way s/he nodded during a lecture (in apparent disagreement) or used the phrase 'deep' to pick out a favored position. (There was selection bias.)

Of course, what makes Woolf's description (she is quoting a description by a former classmate of Thoreau, the Rev. John Weiss,) especially amusing is that both Emerson and Thoreau strongly attacked conformism and praised robust forms of individuality (recall this post, for example). In fact, Woolf enjoys her own joke so much that she adds for good measure, "The strongest natures, when they are influenced, submit the most unreservedly; it is perhaps a sign of their strength." Here she is also recalling Emerson's and Thoreau's interest in magnanimity (of course a strong soul need not always be a magnanimous soul, but, following, say, Thomas (inspired by Seneca), Emerson couples them (for example here) and so does Thoreau) [for a lovely paper on this topic, see Andrew Corsa, himself a former student].

Besides joking, Woolf makes the further point that certain forms of submission may well be the expression of a form of courage.* At first, she does not explain what she has in mind. But she returns to the topic later in her essay, "He was a wild man, and he would never submit to be a tame one." Again, she echoes Thoreau here (his work is suffused with the strong tropological contrasts between wildness/strength/true America vs civilization/weakness/cultured Europe (false America). Somewhat mischievously,** Woolf goes on (in the original quote at the top of this post) to conflate the persona as presented by Thoreau to his readers with the author/the man Thoreau.

Be that as it may, we may say that for Woolf, on her reading of Thoreau,*** that in one's education, or path to wisdom, a species of courage consists in submitting to the right sort of influence or exemplar. In so doing, one need not become inauthentic (colours...natural to himself) nor loose one's identity/strength++ (lost any of his own force), although even the strong soul may do so along the way (permanently).

Woolf here reminds the reader that much true education involves a potentially temporary submission to the will of  another. (My blog-persona reminds you, dear reader, that this is also true (recall) of reading other people's ephemera.) And sometimes education involves oneself in a comical, repetitive mimicking, with or without difference, of other people's ticks or turns of phrase.

    Isn't that swell?

 

On Higher education and Student Protests; Middlebury, reconsidered (II)

Genuine higher learning is possible only where free, reasoned, and civil speech and discussion are respected.--Free Inquiry on Campus: A Statement of Principles by over One Hundred Middlebury College Professors  [HT WSJ]

[The first part in this series can be found here.]

During my studies, I was a student rep on the Board of Trustees for finance and administration at Tufts. My main qualification for this position was the fact that I had turned the International Club's annual booze-cruise into a profit center for student government (which had landed me on the student-faculty budget and priorities committee). After college, I briefly tried to turn my experiences into a lucrative gig (helping universities improve learning and PR outcomes by drawing on student participation) with one of the consulting arms of one of the big accounting firms, but it came to naught. That's to say, I was on the decidedly pragmatic wing of student activism destined for Wall Street or (via the law) 'public service.'

One year, near the end of the Spring semester the Tufts Dean of students office (citing security concerns) canceled a visit by a then well-known activist speaker who was going to talk on gays in the military. I assembled a broad coalition of student groups to challenge it (that is, those who cared about free speech, those who cared about gays, and those who cared about the military, and those who liked to protest in the Spring); I got my first taste of how difficult it is to keep people with fundamentally different value commitments talking to each other. (I failed: the conservative groups left the coalition to the glee of the more progressive student groups.) The administration knew it had the upper hand because with the semester ending students dispersed. I am sure my memory is not super reliable on all of this, but I recall that as a fig leaf to student government, the administration set up a committee to re-examine (the already detailed) guidelines for future speaker series. I never expected when I counted the revenue of the Tufts-Wellesley international booze-cruise that I would get such an education in politics. So much for autobiography.

It is a peculiar fact about those that sincerely claim to care about higher education's role in democratic life and then go on to promote it is a means toward civic education, that they persistently ignore the significance of universities as sites of education in a variety of styles of political practices, including activism and protesting (the strength of the do-gooders on campus) as well as including mocking and satire (the strength of the conservatives on campus). Democracy, even our perhaps doomed liberal democracy, is not constituted by reason and civil speech. It is constituted by -- to echo Max Weber who knows something about the nature of higher education -- an ongoing battle of opposing forces and ideals. (The previous sentence is, of course, compatible with spheres of reason and civil speech in a polity.) To expect – I am not making this up – that “the contest of clashing viewpoints” is going to be rupture free is to wish for unperturbed fantasy. (Weber was rather impolite with the eugenicists of his own age [see Kim 2002: 439-440].)

As an aside, it is empirically false that "Genuine higher learning is possible only where free, reasoned, and civil speech and discussion are respected." [Emphasis added.] Almost certainly, genuine higher learning is best possible under conditions of considerable adversity. (What I have in mind is, for example, the secret seminars in totalitarian and corrupt societies.) True higher education is possible when (recall Seneca) students and teachers are willing to set themselves against the norms of society and start the painful and exhilarating process of examining and shedding the pious and convenient opinion of the marketplace of ideas and goods.* This is generally not a product of serenity.

Without idealizing college campuses (cf. booze cruises above, and my comments about the alcohol and drug fueled club med, party atmosphere on college campuses a few days ago), these are also places where students learn the nuts and bolts of, and leadership qualities associated with, mobilization, coalition building, debating, information gathering, pr-strategies, strategic bargaining, and protesting). Our child-adults learn to question authority and to become authoritative. In so doing they learn about opportunity costs in time, strategic planning, and handle multiple life-projects at once. Sometimes they do so inspired by local faculty or faculty activists, but, more often than not, students are (as the glossy recruitment materials will assert) each other's best teachers in such matters. They learn that some friends should not be trusted in a crowd, and that others show courageous determination. While colleges certainly do not approximate Thoreau's ideal of an experiment in living, they do provide a space for a footpath toward such an experiment.

Astonishingly, the guardians of civil life -- these are my peers -- claim that Students have the right to challenge and to protest non-disruptively the views of their professors and guest speakers. Let's translate this into ordinary language: you can fake protest. I am not against non-disruptive protests--sometimes a point needs to made merely by letting off steam; there is a ritualized form of protest where lovely steps are danced, recognition is demanded and offered, and nothing changes. That has its place in civic life. But protests can legitimately be very disruptive not just in ordinary strikes but also in more thoroughgoing civil disobedience. To claim that this has no place inside the walls of the Academy is to assert that it is not a training ground for civic life in a great democracy. Remarkably, the very same faculty go on to claim that "The purpose of college is not to make faculty or students comfortable in their opinions and prejudices… [but] the primary purpose is…the cultivation of the mind." Yet, to insist on non-disruptive protest is no more than the demand for a comfortable, safe-space zone for faculty and other friends of the status quo! To be sure, I am no enemy of non-disrupted environments—I can also use a sabbatical right now.

But, my god, what kind of faculty complains about students who have not yet resigned themselves to a life of quiet despair? What kind of scholar frames a rowdy student protest as evidence of unwillingness to challenge oneself? What conceited mind responds to excessive, youthful ardor and idealism with the suggestion to learn to play nice?

I am not the kind of faculty member that such activist-idealistic students gravitate to; it’s pretty obvious that I have not signed up for the life of scholar-activism. They instinctively grasp that my tenor does not resonate with their needs, which I often barely comprehend, and their politics, which I tend to dislike. They recognize I do not wish to be their friend. I prefer endless talk over decisive action. I prefer order over romantic adventure.

Of course, disruptive protests have serious consequences. There are no cost-less and risk-free true actions. Disruptive protests generate harsh responses and destabilize natural coalitions. They provoke an endorsement of a sterile order in many. They allow savvy opponents to re-frame the master narrative and win PR wars. They may engender a breakdown of conversation, and even escalate into threatening mobs. Those are real risks. But any serious scholar of social movements also knows that disruptive protests can be a necessary means to create genuine conversations or to express solidary with those whose voices will not be heard; such disruption may lead us down the doomed path of focusing on our divisions rather than our common humanity. If it is my duty as an academic to sign up for the ritualistic and anodyne embrace of the significance of a ‘diversity of opinion’ promoted by those who refuse to face up to the fact that it is precisely such soul-less and thoughtless ritualization of what passes for public opinion these days that has contributed to the existential crisis of our civic and political culture? Is that the price of tenure?

I understand the impulse to oppose “the incivility and coarseness that characterize so much of American politics and culture” with a genteel domain of civility and politeness. But to demand it from others is to behave like the members of the great courts of absolute monarchs where such virtues originate. This is not to promote “incivility and coarseness on” a “college campus;” but what kind of thought imagines that all that is required to address our crisis is to turn the values of Donald Trump upside down.

Simply put: our preachers of epistemic “modesty” and “openness to considering contrary views” are not engaging the arguments and perspectives of Middlebury’s students. (See here for a student document responding to the faculty document. [HT Michael Kremer].) The faculty claim to disdain the intolerant hectoring of students and repay them in the same coin.

On Compassion and Nation Building

But to come to those who, by their own ability and not through fortune, have risen to be princes, I say that Moses, Cyrus, Romulus, Theseus, and such like are the most excellent examples. And although one may not discuss Moses, he having been a mere executor of the will of God, yet he ought to be admired, if only for that favour which made him worthy to speak with God--Machiavelli, The Prince

And the daughter of Pharaoh came down to bathe in the river; and her maidens walked along by the river-side; and she saw the ark among the flags, and sent her handmaid to fetch it. And she opened it, and saw it, even the child; and behold a boy that wept. And she had compassion on him, and said: 'This is one of the Hebrews' children.'--Exodus 2: 5-6

While discussing the Hebrew Bible's embrace of civil disobedience to unjust laws and rulers in his God and Politics in Esther, Yoram Hazony calls attention to the quoted passage of Exodus (p.51). The act of saving Moses from the water by the daughter of Pharaoh is indeed an act of disobedience to her father, the Pharaoh, who had ordained (twice) that all Jewish boys must be killed in Exodus 1:16 & 1:22 . Surprisingly, this act of disloyalty (to her father and, thereby, the law) is not punished by the Pharaoh. (Some day I'll discuss the Quran's alternative account of these events.)

Moses grows up as her (adopted) son (presumably) at court. He somehow retains a sense that he is Jewish because he feels connected to the other Jews in Egypt. When adult, Moses flees Egypt after becoming concerned about the Pharaoh's likely response to the consequences of his taking the law in his own hand (he had killed an Egyptian who had been abusing a Jew). Before Moses leads his people out of Egypt he has already been an at-risk-minority and a (criminal) refugee. The Pharaoh eventually dies; the Scriptural narrative do not say what happens to his daughter. But here I wish to dwell a bit longer on her.

Hazony (see his note 15 on 220) goes beyond the biblical text and draws on Talmud Megillah 13a in order to claim that in her act of saving the helpless child, Pharaoh's daughter becomes "a Jew because she renounced her servitude to the idol in order to do what is right." We may call this (acting from conscience against immoral man-made law and rejecting man-made idols) a moral conception of Jewishness one that is not tied to blood or nation. On this moral conception of Jewishness anybody can be Jewish (in this moral sense). After all, the Egyptian princess had not been exposed to revelation. (This idea echoes the treatment of Abraham's true faith in the Quran and Spinoza).* This naturally raises the question: what could generate her exemplary behavior? On this point the otherwise extremely terse biblical narrative of this event is explicit.

"the Spirit of Christ"

For, the act of saving the boy from the water is, in addition to her disobedience, simultaneously, an act of compassion  (וַתַּחְמֹל from חמל to feel mercy) by the daughter of Pharaoh. Before she thinks of adoption -- perhaps she was infertile (and this would explain her disappearance from the Biblical narrative) -- she has to feel some kind of generosity toward the vulnerable (weeping) creature in need. Such compassion to or pity for vulnerable strangers is not a special property of daughters of the Pharaohs, but in principle, available to all of us. It is part of our common humanity.**

Of course, as the daily headlines remind us, in practice such compassion is not abundant; it is an important question in political psychology what set of institutions and  norms could help cultivate and make robust and fruitful such compassion. Because we ordinarily cannot rely on the compassion of others we need reasonably just laws and judges.

Even though the Jews initially reject Moses as their judge/ruler ('Who made thee a ruler and a judge over us? thinkest thou to kill me, as thou didst kill the Egyptian?' Exodus 2:14; this echoes Genesis 37:8), Moses becomes the (godly) vehicle for generating self-government under a moral law and the systematic rejection of idols. (In fact, even such sober thinkers as Machiavelli [recall] and Spinoza (recall) hold him up as en exemplary political founder.) It is easy to see in this a call to (just) political self-determination. It surely is this, too. But the Hebrew Bible is explicit that the whole narrative of Jewish liberation would not have gotten off the ground without the disobedient and compassionate intervention of Pharaoh's daughter. National political success, even when the product of great resourcefulness (as Hazony and Machiavelli both note), may originate not just in fortune or chance events (Pharaoh's daughter does not spend all day her time bathing in the river), but also in acts of basic kindness from strangers.

How to obtain political self-determination with sufficient unity without undermining the very possibility of basic mercy toward strangers, we may label the political question.