Digressions&Impressions

On Liberal Exemplification: tempered liberalism and the problem of education

Tempered liberals certainly did not present themselves as models to be imitated; this would have been inconsistent with the modesty and self-subverting irony that were important features both of the ethos they advocated and their own ways of being in the world. But they did seek to exemplify a liberal ethos by putting it into practice--in their personal interactions with others, their manner of thinking through problems, and the authorial persona or voice that each cultivated--and by depicting it in earlier thinkers, fictional characters, or political leaders. At their best, they show us, by the force of example, how to cultivate these qualities, and how to urge them gracefully upon others.
The practice of exemplification and emulation is a deeply imperfect response to the liberal problem of character formation. Relying on some to rise to the challenge of exemplariness, and leaving others free to emulate them or not, presupposes that most individuals already have significant ethical resources. This will often not be the case. It may not be possible to have a decent politics without a degree of both personal goodness and political skill that is beyond what most people are mostly able to attain. And the effort to make people better may lead to more suffering and horror. Introspection, self-cultivation, and exemplification--frail reeds though these may be--may also be the best (least bad) means to foster elusive but indispensable virtues. Reflection on exemplars may help to replenish the moral foundations of liberal democracy--habits and ideals of civility, empathy, fortitude, self-restraint, solidarity, circumspection, respect for nuance and for others--by reminding us of why we need them, as well as displaying how admirable they can be.--Joshua Cherniss (2021) Liberalism in Dark Times: The Liberal Ethos in the Twentieth Century, 211

Cherniss's Liberalism in Dark Times is a fascinating book with studies of Max Weber, Raymond Aron, Camus, Niebuhr, and Isaiah Berlin. He treats the latter four as 'tempered liberals." They are treated as admirable exemplars, but by no means not perfect. (210) The main argument of the book is nicely foreshadowed in this passage:

Proponents of “tempered liberalism” accordingly undertook three broad, interlinked tasks. First, they sought to critically reconstruct liberalism--to identify and correct liberalism’s internal weaknesses and failings. Second, they sought to reconceive liberalism as a particular “temper,” a “certain condition . . . of mind or state of being,” rather than (merely) an institutional framework or policy. Finally, they sought (with varying degrees of self-consciousness) not only to explicate, but to exemplify, a liberal spirit, which could belie anti-liberal ethical critiques, and resist the temptations and pathologies of an anti-liberal ethos. (38: emphasis in original)

The passage nicely suggests that a certain kind of ethos is an important feature of being a tempered liberal. My interest in today's post is the nature and status of of liberal exemplification (the third task). In my book on Adam Smith, I had explicitly treated Smith as an exemplar of a certain kind of liberal thinker. I had done so in part, by focusing on the way Smith used Hume's life and thought as a positive and negative exemplar; I had also drawn on resources in Smith that centered on the roles of exemplary characters in his moral psychology and political theory. (These characters are largely abstract fictions.) Smith, in turn, drew on Hume's practice of exemplification and (as I insinuate in the book) Spinoza's (who also uses abstract fictions in this way). Of course, the practice has an important ancient and Machiavellian pedigree.

In both Smith and the tempered liberals, exemplification plays an important role in moral-political education. It's required because these kind of liberals (as well as Smith) highly value contextual judgment. But my approach to exemplification in Smith is different from Cherniss' in some important respects: on my account Smith is a systematic thinker and understands himself as such; exemplification is very much an integral part of this system not a kind of substitute for it as it is, by contrast, in Cherniss and his four tempered liberals. In addition, Smith rejected the kind of modesty Cherniss ascribes to his four tempered liberals, and he seems to advocate emulation of worthy exemplars as models, whereas Cherniss' tempered liberals primarily wish that only a particular kind of ethos is emulated and rejects the idea of a life as a model to be imitated (see the first quoted line above).

There is, thus, an important distinction lurking here between an agent as an exemplary model to be studied and imitated and, say, a style of agency that is exemplified. I will return to that distinction below. But it is important to recognize that on both sides of the distinction there is a commitment to the idea that some things don't fall under a rule or principle, but require the acquisition of certain dispositions and cultivated judgment. (The crispness of this observation I owe to reading David Owen's forthcoming, "On Exemplarity and Public Philosophy.")

But in reading Cherniss I also came to realize I had not really thought through what liberal exemplification might mean. So, what follows is an exploration of Cherniss' account with an eye toward that larger project. As my remark above implies, the status of Weber in Cherniss' argument is a bit ambiguous. Anyone familiar with the depth of Weber's nationalism (and his anti-Polish sentiment) will be hard-pressed to call him a 'tempered liberal.' But he is important to Cherniss to set up the themes of the book. I quote an important passage:

Weber rejected both; this rejection was central to his own revision of liberalism. If liberals sloughed of the elements within liberal thought that reflected an ethic of normative necessity and an ethic of success, they could fortify their commitments and themselves for the hard, uncertain struggle ahead. To look for guarantees reflected inner weakness. Liberals should exemplify, as well as advocate, a dignified and free life, by affirming and defending principles without guarantees, devoting their lives to values that could not be demonstrated as rationally necessary and whose ultimate triumph was in doubt. (67)

It's unclear to me what, according to Cherniss, leads him to think that Weber advocates such exemplification. But it's clear that on Cherniss's account of Weber, exemplification is something that liberals as such should aim for. It's difficult not to think here of, say, puritan (and protestant more widely) ideas about the elect having to live godly lives as individuals and the community. I don't think that association is an accident: in the first half of the twentieth century, as Liberalism seems to be in retreat, the idea that liberalism rests on faith, or requires faith, shows up in other places. I have documented this in the case of Lippmann (here); and it's also visible in the title of Morris R. Cohen's (1946) Faith of a Liberal. (Cohen was then arguably one of the most important philosophers Stateside.)*

Interestingly enough, in the rest of Cherniss' argument, it seems not everyone should aim at such exemplification. Rather this is reserved for liberal intellectuals and public figures (like the four tempered liberals discussed by Cherniss), and, perhaps, also liberal statesmen. On Camus' possible self-understanding as an exemplar see p. 76 (and p. 85). Aron is treated by Cherniss an exemplar (p. 102, and also by Alan Bloom (p. 131)!), but I see no evidence to think Aron thought of himself that way. Cherniss convincingly suggests that Niebuhr did see himself that way (159ff).

That liberal statesman and artists could be exemplars is clearly Berlin's position. Cherniss skillfully takes us through Berlin's portraits of Herzen and Turgenev. Cherniss treatment of Berlin's "accounts of such leaders--Winston Churchill, Chaim Weizmann, and Franklin Roosevelt" is terser and in my view not especially convincing. This is a shame because the question "how political greatness and moral goodness could be balanced, in ways that could serve to sustain a liberal politics" (182) is a vital one. For, I would have liked to have read Cherniss on Berlin's blind-spots (e.g., Churchill's racialized imperialism (which led to a grossly inadequate response to Indian famine) or the fire-bombing of German cities). [To be sure such problems are hinted at by Cherniss because it's acknowledged they were a "morally mixed bunch, as he [Berlin] acknowledged." (pp. 182-3)] Chaim Weizmann as exemplar is even more complex because he was never more important than, say, Ben Gurion. In political terms, much of the last (say) decade of Weizmann's life was a sort of failure. And because of this Weizmann also seems to have been somewhat removed from decisions surrounding Zionist ethnic cleansing during Israel's war of independence.

As a non-trivial aside, in my view Berlin's personal admiration for Weizmann arguably prevented a sober reflection on Weizmann's political life by Berlin. In fact, I read Berlin as treating Weizmann as a model of a new kind of Jew: see his much quoted claim about Weizmann, as the "first totally free Jew of the modern world." But in that same sentence Berlin goes on to claim "the State of Israel was constructed, whether or not it knows it, in his image." And this part of the sentence has aged badly if it ever was plausible.

Now, Cherniss extracts a kind of gross generalization from these portraits by Berlin: "Berlin suggested that the cultivation of political judgment might indeed be connected to the promotion of a more humane politics--and that the dispositions that contributed to failures of political judgment also tended to produce inhumanity." (183) As a generalization it's not very remarkable. But it can only convince, I think, through the sketching of biographies/lives. So, the focus on exemplars allows for a species of political education, especially with those already sharing a certain ethical outlook. This is, in fact, Cherniss own understanding (while drawing on Linda T. Zagzebski and Nancy Rosenblum).

I quote a lengthy passage because I think it helps illustrate what it might mean (for Cherniss) to think of what I called 'a style of agency that is exemplified.'

Pedagogic exemplification involves two elements: exemplification itself, and emulation. The latter consists not of slavish imitation, but a conscious, critical attempt to identify what is admirable and applicable in the exemplar, and to adapt this to the situation and the already-partially-shaped character--of the emulator. Exemplification respects liberty and individuality because the selection of an exemplar reflects the judgment and the needs of the “student,” rather than the exemplar’s will or ability to use force. This means that success is never fully in the hands of the exemplar. As a form of persuasion and guidance, rather than conditioning or compulsion, exemplification relies more on conscious human action--and requires less comprehensive control over background conditions and the experiences of the learner--than a program of habituation. At the same time, since it employs the force of example rather than (or in addition to) purely rational persuasion, it can appeal to the emotions, and promote skills of judgment that are not rule-based. (p. 210)

What's nice about this passage is that helps illustrate what is distinctly liberal about Cherniss' idea of exemplification (although not necessarily unique to liberalism). This is a form of teaching and moral/political education that leaves considerable freedom, individuality, and agency to those of us who wish to become better at being liberal (or liberal intellectuals, citizens, politicians, etc.) It echoes Mill-ean ideas (as well as those we find in Montessori) about education itself being an experiment in living and the cultivation of one's moral sentiments through the development of personality and authenticity.

Of course, the question is how much (to use Cherniss' language) pre-shaping is necessary for this to work as partially intended. That may be an empirical question. But it is also a political one (that is theoretically highly salient since the days of Plato). For example, Mill thought such pre-shaping had to be made compulsory, but was best left to the judgment of parents. Most liberal democracies have thought otherwise. And while this is no criticism of Cherniss' book, it is worth noting that in its very un-systematicity, tempered liberalism as such -- with its neglect of institutions -- has no answer to this question.+ To be continued...

 

 

The Haifa Republic and the Future of Liberal Zionism, Pt: 2: On Zionist Theodicy

The liberal intellectual narrative and the suppression of the Nakba that accompanies it is beginning, however, to face challenges. Ari Shavit’s 2013 My Promised Land: The Triumph and Tragedy of Israel, for example, does break a certain amount of new ground. A major best seller in North America, the book was celebrated as a conversation changer: The New Yorker excerpted it; and The New York Times ran three glowing reviews. Shavit’s main thesis is that the occupation—deplorable and pernicious as it may be—isn’t Israel’s main problem. The country has deeper historical and existential reckonings to make. First, the historical fact of the expulsion of the Palestinians must be openly admitted. Second, it is necessary to recognize that the demographic problem that led to this expulsion continues to be the main threat to Israel’s existence. “Today 46 percent of all of the inhabitants of greater Israel are Palestinians,” Shavit writes. “Their share of the overall population is expected to rise to 50 percent by 2020 and 55 percent by 2040. If present trends persist, the future of Zion will be non-Zionist.” Lastly, Shavit warns of the danger of being “blinded by political correctness.” The Tel Aviv elite, he argues, “instilled ad absurdum a rigid political correctness by turning the constructive means of self-criticism into an obsessive deconstructive end of its own”—that is, through excessive self-criticism, Israel has lost its national unity and sense of justification. Americans and Europeans can perhaps afford the luxury of being “politically correct” about things, Shavit contends, but Israelis cannot: only by the sword can Jews survive in the Middle East. They have no choice but to get their hands dirty.
Shavit, in short, is a liberal Zionist who recognizes the Nakba’s role in Israel’s national narrative, and this is no mean achievement. We see this most clearly in the book’s Lydda chapter—the one that gave it its fame—in which Shavit retells the city’s story of expulsion and massacres....

In describing Lydda as Zionism’s “black box” and “dark secret,” in recognizing that “substantial contradiction,” Shavit accomplished something that Israeli liberal intellectuals like Oz et al. had refused to even attempt.
The acknowledgment, however, only goes so far: throughout his book, for example, Shavit carefully avoids even using the word “Nakba.” In such a book, this cannot be an accident but rather a conscious decision: the refusal to name the occurrence is a refusal to recognize it as history....not mentioning the Nakba is in line with Shavit’s later argument, which is to concede the expulsions and massacres happened and to embrace that hard truth for the sake of Israel. Thus, he writes, “if need be, I’ll stand by the damned”—referring to those Israeli war criminals who are responsible to Lydda. “If it wasn’t for them,” he explains, “the State of Israel would not have been born. . . . They did the dirty, filthy work that enables my people, myself, my daughter, and my sons to live.”
Despite appearances, this isn’t a courageous confession of Israel’s existential tragedy. On the contrary: such statements are designed to disarm the tragedy’s impact on Israeli consciousness—dismissing its relevance to current Israeli concerns or the future of liberal Zionism. To think otherwise, we are told, is to yield to political correctness. Far from incorporating the Nakba into liberal Zionist consciousness, Shavit transforms that into the consciousness of the right, which has never had any need to repress the facts.
The left’s relation to memory and tragedy is relatively easy to distinguish from that of the right. Being on the left consists in the understanding that a people must change, sometimes radically, in order to come to terms with the tragic past. By contrast, being on the right consists in endorsing your people’s history and tragedy as givens—embracing them as the inescapable preconditions of who you are. Under a pretense of liberalism, Shavit does just that. “The choice is stark,” Shavit concludes: “either reject Zionism because of Lydda, or accept Zionism along with Lydda.” Somehow, the one reasonable possibility remains unmentioned: that Zionism need not be rejected because of Lydda, nor ever, absolutely never, accepted along with it; that confronting Lydda, and Haifa, and Deir Yassin, and Safsaf—and so many other names of places in our country and our past—means that Zionism must be transformed.
Susie Linfield, in an interview she conducted with Shavit, gets to the root of his confusion. Shavit is “essentially arguing,” Linfield points out, “that war crimes can be committed even in the course of a just war.” The war’s justness “is not erased by such crimes; conversely, the criminality—the barbarism—of the acts in question cannot be mitigated by the justness of the cause.” That’s how Shavit would like his argument to be seen, but we must ask what he considers to be a just war. For Shavit the Nakba is about Israel’s survival, but this is misleading—misleading in the same way that not mentioning the Palestinians in the 1944 Atlantic City Resolution was. As Arendt knew then, what’s at stake isn’t bare survival, but ensuring the ethnic Jewish majority that’s necessary for a Jewish democracy. In other words, and Shavit is clear that this is Zionism’s “dark secret,” the violent mass expulsions of Palestinians did not just happen in the course of the war. They were intrinsic to the war’s aims, yet still he deems them just. Hopefully the future’s liberal Zionists will look at this reasoning and refuse to budge: if you’re willing to accept ethnic cleansing as a just cause, no doubt you will end up thinking that your war’s “justness” isn’t diminished by war crimes committed in its midst. Logically, this is consistent, but this is the logic of the right—the violent far right even—rather than of what anyone would recognize as the left.
But Shavit will have none of it: that is all “political correctness,” or what Zangwill, a hundred years earlier, dismissed as “grandmotherly
sentimentalism.” With the demise of the two-state solution, the “dirty, filthy” work Shavit justifies as a necessary part of Israel’s past may now be invoked as necessary to secure its future. The chauvinist willingness to dismiss human conscience as grandmotherly sentimentalism threatens to degrade Zionist politics into a form of barbarism.--Omri Boehm (2021) The Haifa Republic: A Democratic Future for Israel, pp. 118-123,

Last week (recall), I explored Menachem Begin's (1977) ill-fated plan for a kind of confederation involving Jordan, Israel, and a Palestinian Council at the instigation of Boehm's extended pamphlet, The Haifa Republic. And while Begin's plan has some genuine limitations, it has been, to the best of my knowledge, the only truly liberal peace plan rooted in individual rights and individual choice (and if you are unfamiliar with it go read that Digression first). But inspired by it, Boehm (a leading scholar of the history of philosophy) proposes an outline (not a blueprint) of a "one-state" bi-national "single federation." (150) And it is worth exploring the details of Boehm's plan before long.

But before I get to that, in this post, I address some features of Boehm's argument. One important strain of the argument is about the nature of historical memory (and forgetting) in nationalism, Zionism in particular. Here he draws on Renan and Yehuda Elkana. Some of his views on this are hinted at in the excerpt (paragraph 5) quoted above from chapter 3 (aptly titled "Remembering and Forgetting: The Nakba"). But the second strain of this argument is that these views are inscribed in a polemic -- as the quoted passage reveals, from "the left" -- against what Boehm calls 'liberal Zionism.' That Boehm is interested in this polemic is familiar to readers of this blog (recall) because I wrote on it back in 2016. 

Now, to put some of my cards on the table, 'liberal Zionism' is primary an American (and formerly British) construction. (As regular readers know, I  claim that Zionism is the effect of the failure of liberalism (and this is why it's interesting to political theory) and that there never was a truly liberal Zionism in Israel ((recall here and here), especially here and here; and here),) By this (that is, "construction) I mean its audience is Anglophone public opinion (not just exile Judaism, but also gentile editorialist and politicians). To be clear, it does not just have merely propaganda value, but it also plays a role in the never ending public relations debates (and fundraising) that surround nearly all discussion of Israel and Zionism in leading American outlets. Within the history of Zionism and Israeli political life, liberal ideas played a marginal role (recall this post on Franz Oppenheimer), primarily associated with Chaim Weizmann (the first President of Israel). Yes, there have been liberal Zionist intellectuals and some small parties that are liberal in some broad sense. I actually suspect Boehm agrees with this observation (see his comment about The New Yorker and The New York Times in the quoted passage above). And this is one reason why I stressed the uniquely liberal characteristics of Begin's "Home Rule" plan.

Now, it's worth noting that my claims are illustrated by Shavit's position, which even leaving aside his views on the Nakba, are markedly illiberal. Self-criticism is the life-blood of liberalism; and the focus on relative demographic strength between groups completely ignores the moral priority of individual rights and choices. As critics of liberalism never tire of complaining, liberalism's focus on minority rights, proceduralism, and legal review are mechanisms by which the majority is tamed. The whole point of having a liberal institutional structure is that one does not have to fear the majority--in fact, one can be absent from political life (so maddening to many of its critics). The obsession with demography is, in fact, nearly always a sign one is dealing with illiberal arguments. Finally, it is constitutive of liberalism to reject zero-sum frameworks and the glorification of open-ended war ("only by the sword can Jews survive in the Middle East").* What does happen, alas, is that Israelis (like Shavit) that reject settlement programs and that are, in some sense, pro-peace tend sometimes to be lionized as 'liberals' abroad.

The claim "only by the sword can Jews survive in the Middle East" is a self-fulling prophecy (and self-justifying of many crimes) that dooms Zionism to failure. What's needed, both for the health Zionism and to give liberalism a chance in Israel, is a program that gets Israel's borders recognized and peaceful. (I think Boehm and I agree about this.)  The constructive ambiguity over Israel's final borders that has been so characteristic of Israeli political life for so long creates and sustains the conditions for open-ended warfare.

I do not mean to suggest that Boehm is wrong to take Shavit (and Benny Morris) to task for the consequentialist justification for ethnic cleansing (Boehm also uses 'expulsion' and 'transfer politics') during the Israeli War of Independence. One of the great merits of Boehn's Haifa Republic, is its relentless unwillingness to let many of Israel's most cherished public intellectuals, who have enabled a culture of silence surrounding the Nakba, off the hook for their participation and construction of a culture of silence. Again, as Boehm notes the culture of silence is only partial, and given the dominance of Israel's Right, not very successful. But Shavit is no liberal, so (ipse facto) no liberal Zionist.

A much more liberal approach -- which the German Federal Republic recognized in a treaty with Israel -- is to recognize Palestinian claims on property and lives lost, and pay out generous compensation to individuals and their offspring. In practice, Israel has sometimes recognized this fundamental fact, but often in the context of pushing (the legitimate) claims of Jews who had to flee Arab (and Persian) lands, and often in the context of demanding a final settlement. In my view such compensation should be offered ahead of a final settlement, and regardless of Arab reciprocity, especially because living claimants will not live forever. (It would also unfreeze a lot of discussions among Palestinians, and show good faith.) Notice that such compensation does not imperil Israel or changes facts on the ground.

As an aside, I admit I am taking no stance on the question of bare survival. Unlike Boehm, I don't think it was completely foregone conclusion that Israel would survive war with the Arab Legion and Egypt simultaneously. Boehm does not mention, I think, that Jews were expelled from the West Bank -- some of which very long standing Jewish settlements -- and the Old City conquered by the Arab Legion during the war of Independence.

A consequentialist may wonder why I sided with Boehm against Shavit. Why not see -- with a nod to Kant -- such ethnic cleansing as the necessary unsocial sociability that drives history? As it happens here I do not object to what we may call secular theodicy as such. But there are two important features of Shavit's argument that make me side with Boehm. First, as Boehm notes Shavit's stance is basically a carte blanche for war crimes (including these in the future). The problem isn't just the brute fact of war crimes, as Boehm notes, but also (and here I echo Plato (recall) and Kant (recall)) that the way one fights a war also signals something about one's attitude toward peace (or lack thereof). An unwillingness to acknowledge the Nakba and to pay compensation for its misdeeds, signals a fundamental unwillingness to consider true peace to one's enemies. This point does not require any wishy washy views about human nature but is ground in self-interest and realpolitik.

Second, it's an important constraint on secular theodicy that those that are harmed by progress or one's political goals are victims on your own side. (I am not sure what to call this principle.) There is nothing wrong with glorifying those that freely sacrificed or martyred themselves (in some sense) on your behalf. Of course, in practice there can be a lot wrong this, but that's generally because of the manner of glorifying or remembering the sacrifice. But sacrificing or harming others on your behalf turns a problem of evil into (ahh) a legitimacy of evil. The fact that people like Morris and Shavit miss this really simple distinction is evidence of the corrosive effect of their nationalism on their judgment.

Again, what I am saying is orthogonal to the question of dirty hands (or even Left/Right distinctions--reading Lenin is not for the faint hearted). I am not suggesting that dirty hands can be avoided in political life. Rather, I am suggesting that if one takes the problem of dirty hands seriously (qua liberal, but not just a liberal), one must also accept the need for atonement and reparations and a way to find a place for one's injustices in one's historical memory. As noted, Boehm has intriguing proposals on how to do this, and to these I will turn next (and then conclude my series by looking at his political proposal). To be continued.

 

The Haifa Republic and the Future of Liberal Zionism, Pt: 1

1. The administration of the Military Government in Judea, Samaria and the Gaza district will be abolished.

2. In Judea, Samaria and the Gaza district administrative autonomy of the residents, by and for them, will be established.

3. The residents of Judea, Samaria and the Gaza district will elect an Administrative Council composed of eleven members.

4. Any resident, 18 years old and above, without distinction of citizenship, or if stateless, is entitled to vote in the election to the Administrative Council.

5. Any resident whose name is included in the list of the candidates for the Administrative Council and who, on the day the list is submitted, is 25 years old or above, is entitled to be elected to the Council.

6. The Administrative Council will be elected by general, direct, personal, equal and secret ballot.

7. The period of office of the Administrative Council will be four years from the day of its election.

8. The Administrative Council will sit in Bethlehem.

9. All the administrative affairs of the areas of Judea, Samaria and the Gaza district, will be under the direction and within the competence of the Administrative Council.

10. The Administrative Council will operate the following Departments:

• a. The Department of Education;
• b. The Department of Religious Affairs;
• c. The Department of Finance;
• d. The Department of Transportation;
• e. The Department for Construction and Housing;
• f. The Department of Industry, Commerce and Tourism;
• g. The Department of Agriculture;
• h. The Department of Health;
• i. The Department for Labor and Social Welfare;
• j. The Department of Rehabilitation of Refugees;
• k. The Department for the Administration of Justice and the Supervision of the Local Police Forces; and promulgate regulations relating to the operation of these Departments.

11. Security in the areas of Judea, Samaria and the Gaza district will be the responsibility of the Israeli authorities.

12. The Administrative Council will elect its own chairman.

13. The first session of the Administrative Council will be convened 30 days after the publication of the election results.

14. Residents of Judea, Samaria and the Gaza district, without distinction of citizenship, or if stateless, will be granted free choice (option) of either Israeli or Jordanian citizenship.

15. A resident of the areas of Judea, Samaria and the Gaza district who requests Israeli citizenship will be granted such citizenship in accordance with the citizenship law of the State.

16. Residents of Judea, Samaria and the Gaza district who, in accordance with the right of free option, choose Israeli citizenship, will be entitled to vote for, and be elected to, the Knesset in accordance with the election law.

17. Residents of Judea, Samaria and the Gaza district who are citizens of Jordan or who, in accordance with the right of free option will become citizens of Jordan, will elect and be eligible for election to the Parliament of the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan in accordance with the election law of that country.

18. Questions “arising from the vote” to the Jordanian Parliament by residents of Judea, Samaria and the Gaza district will be clarified in negotiations between Israel and Jordan.

19. Residents of Israel will be entitled to acquire land and settle in the areas of Judea, Samaria and the Gaza district. Arabs, residents of Judea, Samaria and the Gaza district will be entitled to acquire land and settle in Israel.

20. Residents of Israel and residents of Judea, Samaria and the Gaza district will be assured freedom of movement and freedom of economic activity in Israel, Judea, Samaria and the Gaza district.

21. These principles may be subject to review after a five-year period.--December 15, 1977, HOME RULE, FOR PALESTINIAN ARABS, RESIDENTS OF JUDEA, SAMARIA AND THE GAZA DISTRICT (Top Secret; Sensitive) in FOREIGN RELATIONS OF THE UNITED STATES, 1977–1980, VOLUME VIII, ARAB-ISRAELI DISPUTE, JANUARY 1977–AUGUST 1978 [Hereafter: "Home Rule"]*

In Omri Boehm's short book, an extended pamphlet really, Haifa Republic: A Democratic Future for Israel, Begin's "Home Rule" plan -- quoted in its entirety above -- plays a crucial role (see pp.143-150). And as Boehm notes, the plan is usually treated as "a step on the way to Oslo's failed Palestinian Authority." (150). However, Boehm (recall also this digression) would like to treat it "as a step beyond Oslo." Crucially, "the plan did not offer the Palestinians a sovereign state, but something unimaginable today--and this [is] why we must heed it: it offered fully citizenship to every Palestinian, every one whom would "entitled to vote for, and be elected to, the Knesset." To Israelis it guaranteed full freedom of movement and economic liberties in the West Bank and Gaza, conceding likewise that Palestinians would be free to live, settle, work, and purchase land on the full territory....Begin's plan could just as well have been known as the One-State Program." (144)

The "Home Rule" document is presented alongside the discussion that prime minister Begin had with President Carter and Secretary of State Cyrus Vance about the plan, and so it is very much worth following the link to it. For, it makes clear that the question of sovereignty was deliberately postponed because of incompatible claims (by Israelis and Palestinians) and because of security concerns by the Israelis. Unlike some (see this editorial in the New York Times), I think Begin is willing to conceive of de jure sovereignty for the Palestinians downstream. But the discussion with Carter also makes clear that part of the point of the plan is to prevent a Palestinian military buildup on the West Bank (so de facto an attenuated sovereignty). 

Here, I want to postpone detailed discussion of Boehm's important book. Boehm goes beyond Begin's Home Rule by envisioning a genuine confederation (my word not his--he describes his own plan as a one state "federation" (p. 150) or a binational federation) between Israelis and Palestine. But before I get to that in a series of follow up posts, I want to reflect a bit on "Home Rule." Somewhat naively (but hopefully not mistakenly), I'll treat the record of the discussion between Begin and Carter as background to it.

It is worth noting from the outset that "Home Rule" makes demands on Jordan, and creates certain faits accomplis relative to it. In particular, it would require Jordan to give up its claims on the West Bank, and it would require that it would grant Palestinians political rights in Jordan even thought they would be living outside its borders. As "Home Rule" notes in understated fashion this still needed to be negotiated, and this was not on the direct horizon then. 

I don't think we should treat "Hume Rule" cynically in light of the foregoing. For we should note that at some point some Palestinians would have had a choice to become citizen of one of two states and have to choose for which of the three parliaments/council they would claim political rights. Interestingly enough, when Jordan and Israel did end up making their peace (without any Palestinian involvement) in 1994, it was far less favorable for individual Palestinian freedoms. 

Another important feature of "Home Rule" is that it sets up a department for the rehabilitation of refugees. This suggests that Begin was willing to accommodate a principle of return of Palestinian refugees. Begin's response to Carter on the matter of immigration (and de facto return of refugees) is most illuminating:

President [Carter]: Who would control immigration?

Prime Minister [Begin]: This Council. Going back to Resolution 242, there is no contradiction. On immigration, this is a problem that the Administrative Council could deal with, but only reasonable numbers of new immigrants could be accepted. We could only accept new immigrants up to the point where our own security would not be affected 

At the time, there were 350,000 refugees (by Begin's lights--that number may be controversial). It's a bit of shame Carter does not follow up at this point to clarify whether Begin's concern with security here means that he would like to have some means to keep out PLO fighters (see also below) or whether he means that beyond some point the numbers of refugees cause a demographic threat. Interestingly, enough in the follow up discussion Begin suggests that he hopes some Palestinians might go to Kuwait. (In context that's wishful thinking.)**

It's unfortunate that there is no mention of compensation (of lives and property) to Palestinian victims of 1948 and 1967. This would show, I think, enormous goodwill and also provide genuine recognition for the victims. (It also might allow Israelis who were forced to flee many Arab lands after 1948 also claim some compensation.) It would be odd for the State of Israel to decline this because it is willing to accept compensation from Germany for Nazi crimes.

Even so, as Boehm notes, by creating freedom of movement, freedom of settlement, freedom to buy and sell land, and a whole range of individual political freedoms :Home Rule" has been the most liberal political plan that has circulated in the long, torturous history of Israeli-Palestinian relations. In particular, the underlying vision gives all individual Palestinian non trivial rights to determine their own social and political future. In addition, it gives the Palestinian council authority over lands under its jurisdiction including the right to  "expropriate land"--something clarified by Zbigniew Brzezinsk. And this really would have undermined further expansion of Israeli Settlement program (in occupied territories).

Begin has had a bad press among the intelligentsia inside and outside of Israel. And Boehm (who is by no means a Likudnik, as we will see in future posts) is right to stress that Begin is, as Begin said to the Knesset defending "Home Rule," motivated by "fairness to all men of goodwill...here we proposal total equality of rights--anti-racialism" (p. 149). And that Begin clearly and explicitly wants to avoid ending up in a situation like Rhodesia then characterized by white minority rule and a form of Apartheid. And "Home Rule" really is one of the rare occasions where liberal principles were proposed to start a genuine road to peace and true equal rights.

However, "Hume Rule" also has some obvious drawbacks. This becomes clear when one realizes that the capital of the elected Palestinian council is supposed to be in Bethlehem. Begin's explanation is that there shouldn't be "two capitals" in Jerusalem. He does not explain why, but presumably because he does not want to share sovereignty of it. He then adds for good measure that Nablus is also ruled out (without any explanation, but perhaps because he did not want to help Mayor (and pro PLO) Bassam Shakaa's then rising influence), but that Ramallah is an option.

This is notable for two reasons: first, this suggests that while Begin could explicitly imagine giving up sovereignty over the the West-bank (and Gaza), he was unwilling to contemplate the same over East Jerusalem. The fact that there could not be two capitals in Jerusalem also suggests, second, that he did not conceive of Hume Rule as a federation of equals. Of the three entities involved in it -- Jordan, the Palestinian council, and Israel -- Israel was supposed to be and remain pre-eminent West of the river Jordan. 

This is also clear by an important omission in "Home Rule." Namely the overall responsibility for security. At one point Begin clarifies:

Concerning security, we may have to add the idea that Israel will remain responsible for public order as well as security. The Administrative Council will be able to deal with all problems of daily life. Israel has to be able to deal with problems in the event that the PLO tries to take over. Israel must have reserved for itself the right to deal with public order.

We think that this is a fair proposal because it did not decide on sovereignty.

While the Palestinian council will have jurisdiction over police forces, Israel will have a near monopoly on real firepower. So, of the two parliaments Israel and the Palestinian Council, only one will have a real military power. And the point of that was to keep out those that rejected Israel's right to exist (then the PLO) and their firepower. To be anachronistic, this would be a confederation of un-equals. And part of the strategic point is to divide the Palestinians between those willing to accommodate themselves to Israel and the rejectionists. Unlike the negotiations with Sadat, when it comes to the Palestinians, Begin is unwilling to negotiate with the enemy. 

And while I personally do not doubt Begin's good will and earnest desire for peace -- even if the occasion for "Home Rule" was prompted by a desire to provide President Sadat with something he could "he take credit for his trip"--, in a way Home Rule's drawbacks do anticipate some of the the crucial underlying problems of Oslo: by excluding some Palestinians from the political process, the rejectionists on the Palestinian side had sufficient arms and veto power and an incentive to doom Oslo from the start, which, in turn, brought the Israeli rejectionists to power for a generation. 

So, to sum up, I agree with Boehm that many of the principles of Home Rule are essential to a future liberal Zionist program. As regular readers know, that despite my own skeptical liberalism, and my mitigated Zionism, I have long claimed that Zionism is the effect of the failure of liberalism (and this is why it's interesting to political theory) and that there never was a truly liberal Zionism in Israel ((recall here and here), especially here and here; and here), except as a very small minority (recall here). So, "Hume Rule" is the exception to my position. The question to which I turn in a future post, is whether the argument and underlying vision of Boehm's Haifa Republic can really avoid the obvious problems with "Home Rule" and to what degree it is a promising vision for the future now that conditions have changed dramatically. To be continued.

 

 

 

On Professor Melamed, Rabbi Serfaty, and entry into the Snoge

My colleague, and friend, Yitzhak Melamed got denied entry to the Snoge (or Esnoga) to do some filming for a documentary on Spinoza by an eloquent Rabbi. (See below for the letter.) Looking at the wording of the letter, I suspect the Rabbi (who despite Amsterdam being a small village, I have never met) kind of calculated it would go viral. For his letter is needlessly insulting.

It is not insulting, to be sure, in calling Spinoza an 'Epicouros.' While the word is undoubtedly derived from 'epicurean' in so far as Epicurus believed that the Gods took no interest in people's affairs.** Now, it is generally applied to all heretics and so Spinoza fits the bill (regardless of what exactly the learned Rabbi has in mind--it would have been nice to know if he has Maimonides' meaning in mind or a more generic use.)

It is needlessly insulting not just because there is no reason to believe Spinoza ever set foot in the Snoge (which was built long after he left Amsterdam.) It is insulting because he declares Melamed "persona non grata" in the Snoge. This is peculiar given that the Snoge welcomes tourists without distinction from all walks of life, even keeping that in mind when setting its times for prayer; and has let an Epicouros like myself attend bar mitzwahs there. This is why I suspect some ambition and opportunism in the Rabbi's stance. He is now a very public defender of the faith. But only some opportunism. Let me explain.

Most of our friends have joined in the ridicule of the actions of the Rabbi, when they don't denounce it more strongly.* And here, much to my own annoyance, I wish to defend the Rabbi's stance. In these matters I tend toward the Lockean-Marxian (Groucho not Karl) in my sensibilities: as I suggested in a different context (recall the Tuvel/Hypatia-affaire): I am all for minority groups to have the right to decide on their often illiberal and sometimes immoral entry-requirements, not just membership, but also including their houses of worship (as long as Exit is relatively straightforward). The Portuguese Jewish Community of Amsterdam is very small, decimated by the Holocaust and emigration. It doesn't just have every right to avoid facilitating a movie that however intelligent and sober still will aid in the glorification of its greatest Heretic, but in many ways it has a duty to do so.

As an aside, in an article that deserves careful scrutiny, "Freedom of Speech and Philosophical Citizenship in Spinoza's Theologico-Political Treatise," Julie Cooper has argued persuasively that Spinoza was a critic of philosophical/intellectual celebrity. That is, in fact, one of Spinoza's lines of criticism of Descartes. And it is pretty clear that the celebration of Spinoza -- which is, in fact, a big politicized deal in Amsterdam -- goes very much against the spirit of his political philosophy. So, somewhat ironically Rabbi Serfaty is in some respects defending Spinoza from his admirers here.

Melamed himself is often a critic of Spinoza, and in my presence has criticized Spinoza's (what we may call) moral philosophy in no uncertain terms. So, it is a bit odd the Rabbi thinks that the study of Spinoza is problematic. We are, in fact, far removed from, say, the spirit of Rabbi Soloveitchik, who was a learned reader of Spinoza. 

UPDATE: It turns out that the Rabbi has no legal right to refuse Melamed entry to library Ets Chaim. (I basing myself here on a report in Dutch (here). HT: Mum.)  This library is open to researchers from all over the world. And since there is government money sponsoring the foundation that runs it, the Rabbi can't treat Melamed as "persona non grata" there. But in re-reading the letter by the Rabbi, I think it's pretty clear he intends to keep Melamed only out of the Snoge.+ [End OF UPDATE.]

I would never personally argue that Rabbi Serfaty is obliged to keep the film crew out of the Snoge. (Plenty of politicians have been filmed there for events.) But there are grounds to suspect such a film would be a mechanism to help later day critics of the community (to which I never belonged) litigate against it, and certainly to treat the Cherem as a colossal mistake and a sign of backwardness. In fact, Rabbi Serfaty is acting here in the spirit of Rabbi Toledano who, in rejecting a revocation of the ban, argued that it would mean that "we in our synagogue should spread the denial of God's existence to the extent that it destroys our heritage and the pillars on which Judaism rests."  If you take that line of thought seriously, and he gets paid to do so, Rabbi Serfaty's position is common sense even though it lacks warmth and what my people call, menschlichkeit.

 

Covid Diaries: stagnation and memorial

It's time for a covid update. (For my "covid diaries," see here; here; here; here; here; here; here; here; here; here; here; here; here; here; here; here; here, here;  here; and here.) I am now in my tenth month of my illness and partial sick-leave. Under Dutch law my salary is cut now. It's a pay-cut of 30%. (That's starts after nine full months and runs until the end of the second year of medical leave.) Because I formally work part-time, the cut will be about half of that. In the middle of November, my occupational physician will give guidelines to my department and me what to expect from me second semester. I continue to be pleased with reaping the fruits of past generations' activism. 

First, the good news: I am physically quite mobile. I try to walk about 8-10 kilometers a day. And there are no signs of untriggered fatigue. 

Second, in light of the occupational physician's guidance my department reduced my teaching load and made sure that the seminar style course I would teach -- a course on Utopia/Dystopia I have taught several times before -- would have capped enrollment of 16 students. The other section of the class is taught by another instructor, who is formally also my back-up in case I can't do my duties. The students are aware of my condition, and have been very understanding and empathetic. 

The course meets once a week week for three hour sessions (with two breaks). After five sessions, I have not needed to ask for back-up. I have very fine students, who clearly enjoy being back in live circumstances. They always show up early, come to class well prepared, and diligently followed masking guidelines. (After group consultation, we have dropped these now.)

Because of my cognitive limitations -- more about that below --, I come to class better prepared, and have adjusted my teaching style. I prep more, improvise less, and teach with much lower energy level (less joking) and with more in-class assignments. Rather than relying on charisma and instinct, I now teach from a more vulnerable place. 

The previous paragraph is a bit mysterious, so let me come to the point: unfortunately, my recovery is stagnating. The lectures themselves are -- despite breaks, good organization (with group assignments, etc.)--, completed by the skin of my teeth. Usually I collapse somewhere during the second hour of class, when I have to withdraw for a while. (I then put them to work.) More important, after class I usually need 36-48 hours (!) to recover: I have headaches, sleep badly, and not infrequent nausea. This did not happen once (after the third lecture). Because I prepare class on Mondays and Tuesdays (and grade/comment on the students' weekly writing assignments), I don't really get around to do much else. I read a lot (de facto mainly feminist theory because I am still scheduled to teach in Spring). Because my family is in London, I live alone in Amsterdam and mostly chill. (I will spend two weeks in October with them.) I limit my modest social life to week-ends and Mondays. 

In a broader sense, I can't really handle more than 45-90 minutes of social interaction, and certainly not in a context of multiple stimuli at once (so zoom and cafes are worse, etc.) I didn't realize I was this limited in my social ability during the summer because I actually had a very quiet life in London with lockdowns.

De facto all this means that I can hardly do research during teaching periods, and that I am very reluctant to go to meetings and committees. I had to withdraw from all my supervision and admin duties, including work on a big grant that I am PI on (and in which I will now effectively be a bystander). Because I am 2nd/3rd author on some projects, and my pipeline was pretty full, proofs drop by regularly. So whatever 'research' I do is completing work I have done. But the projects I started over the summer have now come to a standstill despite my low teaching load. I don't expect to do new research until class ends. 

In November I will receive quite a bit more specialist medical attention in London and Amsterdam, and the occupational physician and I have been looking for therapeutic interventions that can make me more resilient cognitively. Unfortunately, the one promising practice we found only has a spot open in January. 

On Tuesday I met my occupational physician and my chair (a few hours apart). Both are wise and supportive. Even so, by the end of the day, I was aware that I should not expect much from myself the remainder of this academic year. And because of the sense of stagnation, I am less optimistic I will recover fully in the fullness of time.

While I was talking to my Chair (and sealing decisions about my department and grant duties etc.), I suddenly realized that I was disassociating from the ambitions that had characterized my professional identity. I spent the last ten years writing (near) daily these digressions (and scholarship), which also were a means of self-therapy and grounding. And while I always had periods of relative quiet, I lived from one (missed) deadline to the next. I know and understand that person quite intimately, but it's clear I don't quite identify with him. During the past weeks there were a number of occasions where he would have written an editorial or started a new paper. I even didn't write a few polemical digressions because I knew I could not be around for the possible push back.

Because of the rain, I stayed in the office a bit longer than I intended after the meeting with the Chair. So, when I left the building the area was quiet, and I could enjoy the Autumn colors (see above). And following the Sunset, I took a slightly different route home. (Rather than cycling, I use my walks to and from the office as part of my daily exercise.) And after five minutes I suddenly found myself face to face with the new Holocaust memorial designed by Liebeskind. It was so quiet that I decided to walk down a few steps and enter it.

It mostly consists of walls with unadorned bricks with the names, birth-dates, and ages when murdered of all 102,000 Dutch Jews, Roma, and Sinti. There are some mirrors, but the overall atmosphere is quite (fittingly) austere. Because my paternal grandpa, grandma, and dad arrived in 1939 and survived the war at Westerbork, and because my maternal grandpa arrived in 1938 and, after a period of imprisonment (the Dutch were no kinder then to refugees than now) soon left for the States; I knew there would be no family names on these walls. And when I thought about it, as I went into the quiet maze, I assumed that I would experience the kind of awe I had at the granite, Vietnam memorial in DC. Besides, I thought, I was too self-absorbed with my own troubles to feel much.

But as I walked and saw the family names of whole clans wiped out, I frequently recognized the distinctive surnames of my classmates of my Jewish day school, the last names of my dad's and mom's bridge-partners, the familiar family names of the officers of the synagogues, Zionist movements, the Jewish weekly, and what my academic self would call the civil society of Dutch Jewry. I was struck by the fact that most of my childhood was immersed in a world where almost every one I knew had uncles, aunts, nephews, nieces, and grandparents on these walls. (I was reminded of this, of course, by their updates on social media these past few weeks since the opening of the memorial.) 

I knew I was crying, when I bumped into another visitor. I felt a bit guilty because I was not mourning anyone in particular on that wall. More likely, I was mourning my past academic persona or, perhaps, my childhood.  

It took the Netherlands 75 years to build a proper memorial to its own citizens. Enough time, I thought bitterly, for all the collaborators and sly opportunists who profited from the killing and looting to die. I write these words not on Tuesday but now (Friday) just after I read a summary written by the Dutch judiciary about its own judges who between 2010-2019 in 16,753 cases (impacting almost 35,000 parents) mistakenly and cravingly sided with the government against mostly poor and frequently darker-skinned fellow citizens who were generally unfairly treated as fraudsters by tax authorities and backed up by the judiciary and the council of state. Only one court showed any independent judgment.

The judiciary report's main recommendation is to encourage judges to show more empathy for citizens.* That judges will continue to act primarily as functionaries of state authority rather than as impartial (ahh) judges is not likely to change without systemic change. I regret I lack the energy to write that editorial.

The next day (Wednesday), we explored Book 1 of Utopia with its great debates over the proper functioning of the rule of law and the kinds of aspirations and opportunities experts might have in truth-telling to rulers and people alike. During the discussions I thought about, but didn't mention the walls with their rows of names just a few hundred yards away. I wondered if my silence was a kind of cowardice. But my restraint was rewarded because when we talked about the three (non-Utopia) fictitious countries  -- the Polylerits, the Achorians, and  the Macarians -- that Raphael Hythloday describes, one of my student groups noticed (in their discussion) that they represent a stylized discussion of the proper functioning of the three elements of the trias politicas: the rational ordering of the law of the Polyterits, the independent judgment of the people of the Achorians against the tendency toward conquest of the sovereign, and the self-limitation of the functions of the sovereign by the Macarians. And despite the temptation toward self-pity, I felt lucky and grateful that I keep learning from my students. 

 

Spinozism, Oppenheimer, and the Communism of Zionism

The third fundamental aim is that the land must irrevocably and for all time be the property of the community. "Mine is the land, saith the Lord, and ye shall work it for Me". In modern dress we must restore the primeval agricultural laws of Israel, which allocated the land for all time to the tribe or village community, which for its part only possessed it in fief from the nation as a whole.

The ancient world knew no other means of maintaining that equality of land tenure, which it fully recognized as the only possible foundation of a sound national life, than to return every piece of ground sold or pawned to the heirs after a certain period: at the year of jubilee. Only because the return could not be effected on account of the power of the big landowners being strong enough to prevent the application of the law, only because of this did Israel fall like Sparta and Rome; that in the last resort is the cause of all Ahasver's sufferings.

p.74 We must forfend this evil, and 2000 years of history have provided us with a better means than the year of jubilee. The individual colonies possess their land corporately under the overlordship of the whole nation; and every individual colonist is only hereditary lease-holder within his community, paying a fixed sum which may not be raised. He cannot be given notice to leave as long as he fulfils his civic obligations to the nation and his economic and communal obligations to his community.

This way of holding land, imperfectly carried into effect under all the old systems of Common Law, insures all the advantages of individual land property and is free from its worst shortcomings. It grants complete security of possession, it bestows the home feeling in the fullest sense and forges this indissoluble link with the soil which roots the soul of the peasant in the field he tills; but it precludes the mortgaging of the soil, which deprives the peasant of the fruits of his labour throughout all the countries under Roman Law and throws them into the lap of the landlord. Further, it precludes that breaking up of agricultural holdings here and their accumulation there which divides the village community into an unfriendly aristocracy and proletariat, and thereby destroys that community of interests which alone, as the history of the world testifies, can make it invulnerable.--Franz Oppenheimer (1903) "Extract from his address at the sixth Zionist Congress in Basle," "Translated by E. I. M. Boyd,

A sympathetic discussion of the sociologist Franz Oppenheimer by Raymond Aron in his (1936) German Sociology, got me interested in the relationship between Oppenheimer (who seems to have been a left-Liberal inspired by Georgism) and Ordoliberalism. Indeed, Oppenheimer seems to have been the doctoral supervisor of Ludwig Erhard (and perhaps Röpke).+

And indeed Oppenheimer was a social liberal (or liberal socialist) who believed, "in the evolution of a society without class dominion and class exploitation which shall guarantee to the individual, besides political, also economic liberty of movement, within of course the limitations of the economic means. That was the credo of the old social liberalism, of pre-Manchester days, enunciated by Quesnay and especially by Adam Smith, and again taken up in modern times by Henry George and Theodore Hertzka." (The State (1908), chapter 7, translated by John M. Gitterman) And while Röpke would not self-identify as a social liberal (let alone a liberal socialist) or a Georgist, the quoted sentence describes Röpke's program in the 1940s very well (and these form the basis of Foucault's interpretation of ordoliberalism).

Much to my surprise, I then learned that not Röpke, but Oppenheimer coined the term 'the third way' in 1933. And then I suddenly realized that this Franz Oppenheimer was the same Oppenheimer as the one time Zionist Oppenheimer who co-founded Altneuland (1864-1943).

This Oppenheimer was one of the guiding lights behind the cooperative (now Moshav) Merhavia (מֶרְחַבְיָה) not far from Afula, which even received publicity from the New York Times at the time. Unlike other settler-colonists, Oppenheimer did not assume that Palestine was empty, but rather he hoped for collaboration between Zionists and local Arabs. So plenty of reasons to take a look at Oppenheimer's writings.

Today's digression is focused on one of his Zionist texts. On Oppenheimer's view, the first two aims of Zionism are (i) self-help or independence; (ii) and that agrarian development should be prioritized. He then quotes Leviticus 25:23, and returns to the recently much discussed passage of the Jubilee in the same chapter of Leviticus in order to provide the third aim.

And Oppenheimer then claims that the fall of biblical Israel was due to the undermining of the institution of the Jubilee not from without, but from within: the ordinary functioning of the property arrangements allowed for temporary concentrations of wealth. But these riches became the source of the power of large landholders to resist the Jubilee and so prevent the rule of law. Oppenheimer implies that this either undermined national solidarity and/or fatally weakened the military capacity of biblical Israel which now could not rely on on independent citizenry. There are, thus, lurking in Oppenheimer republican and limitarian commitments.

Now, it is worth noticing that Oppenheimer's diagnosis of this material and its relationship to the biblical Israel's decline is not far removed from Spinoza's account of this fall in the Theological Political Treatise, 17.106, p. 320. This is also, as Beth Lord has argued, rooted in growing inequality and, in my view, the growing accompanying appetite for luxury of the wealthy (and so accompanying lack of focus on martial virtues, etc.)

In fact, I think Oppenheimer's solution to the diagnosed problem is probably inspired by a proposal in the Political Treatise by Spinoza. For in the context of describing the best monarchy, Spinoza writes, 

The fields, and all the land, and if possible, the houses too, should be public property [publici iuris sint], i.e. subject to the control of the one who has the Right of the Commonwealth [ius civitatis habet]. He should lease them for an annual rent [annuo pretio] to the citizens, or to the city residents and farmers. (TP 6.12)

Now out of context it may seem that Spinoza is advocating a dependence of citizens on the King, but, in broader context, it is clear that the whole point of Spinoza's set up is to create a community of interests among rulers and citizens. (It's pretty clear that for Spinoza the leases cannot be abolished at will.) Oppenheimer achieves the same end by substituting the whole nation (the one with Right of the commonwealth) for royalty. 

Now I am not claiming that Spinoza must be the source of Oppenheimer's approach. There are, after all, plenty of nineteenth century utopian projects that have similar schemes. But I do think it likely that Oppenheimer was aware the connection. Throughout his System of Sociology he cites and quotes Spinoza's Political Treatise (a work by no means widely read or fashionable).

 

 

Marx on Ideology Critique and Social Explanation in the Jewish Question

Nevertheless, North America is pre-eminently the country of religiosity, as Beaumont, Tocqueville, and the Englishman Hamilton unanimously assure us. The North American states, however, serve us only as an example. The question is: What is the relation of complete political emancipation to religion? If we find that even in the country of complete political emancipation, religion not only exists, but displays a fresh and vigorous vitality, that is proof that the existence of religion is not in contradiction to the perfection of the state. Since, however, the existence of religion is the existence of defect, the source of this defect can only be sought in the nature of the state itself. We no longer regard religion as the cause, but only as the manifestation of secular narrowness. Therefore, we explain the religious limitations of the free citizen by their secular limitations. We do not assert that they must overcome their religious narrowness in order to get rid of their secular restrictions, we assert that they will overcome their religious narrowness once they get rid of their secular restrictions. We do not turn secular questions into theological ones. History has long enough been merged in superstition, we now merge superstition in history. The question of the relation of political emancipation to religion becomes for us the question of the relation of political emancipation to human emancipation. We criticize the religious weakness of the political state by criticizing the political state in its secular form, apart from its weaknesses as regards religion. The contradiction between the state and a particular religion, for instance Judaism, is given by us a human form as the contradiction between the state and particular secular elements; the contradiction between the state and religion in general as the contradiction between the state and its presuppositions in general. Karl Marx (1843/1844) On The Jewish Question, Proofed and Corrected: by Andy Blunden, Matthew Grant and Matthew Carmody, republished at marxists.org.

I returned to the early Marx of Zur Judenfrage after nearly thirty years because of a discussion in my department about the nature of ideology critique. And I did so because in the intervening years I had picked up somewhere that it is the original Marxist ideology critique. And indeed it anticipates, as Jo Wolff notes in his SEP entry, a standard criticism of liberalism: that the political project that is supposed to emancipate us both presupposes and promotes our separation and, thereby, promotes a false view of life (that is, greed) and a false (Hobbesian) view of freedom (that is, security from threats). It also anticipates the line of argument that liberal democracy just is a species of applied or debased christianity. I leave to others to trace the link of influence from this piece to Max Weber, Nietzsche, Freud, and Carl Schmitt and all the luminaries of modernity.

In re-reading the argument I was struck by the claim that the "existence of religion is the existence of defect, the source of this defect can only be sought in the nature of the state itself." In particular, the causal claim this presupposes -- viz., social defects are the effects of the nature of the state [hereafter: the causal claim] -- can be made best visible "where the political state exists in its completely developed form." It is no surprise that Marx quotes The Social Contract further down, because this kind of causal claim that deviations from human flourishing in social life can be explained by social even political causes is articulated in The Social Contract.+

The United States is then the main instance of such complete development because it, or at least some of its states, allows pure freedom of religion even granting that all political rights (including holding office) can be gained without a formal religious requirement.* Marx does not deny that the causal claim operates in other (post-Feudal) political contexts, but in those contexts there are interfering social mechanisms (so Marx is intuitively thinking of the causal claim in terms of its instantiation of a law with ceteris paribus conditions). 

The way Marx traces out the argument suggests something like the following: that there continue to be religious individuals is the effect of the liberal state's promotion of capitalism and individualism (since it does not promote a religion). Their religiosity is essentially a byproduct of this. And because religious association is constituted by individual choice it generates not community, but growing difference and differentiation (and so, as Weber notes, value pluralism). Now, in context this fact is used to criticize Bauer's argument that Jewish emancipation is only possible on the condition that Jews give up their Judaism. While the main criticism of Bauer is that he has an incomplete understanding of emancipation, the conceptual argument is that Bauer aims for the impossible (because the liberal state effectively promotes religious diversity). 

While Bauer's argument is developed in a Prussian context (where relations of subordination are christianized), Marx's criticism of Bruno Bauer remains of interest in light of the militant secularism of French laïcité (which is effectively anticipated by Bauer), which is the true Atheist state described by Marx. (More than the United States, France evacuates traditional religiosity from the public sphere.) From a Marxist perspective, even more than the US, French secularism (which presupposes our separateness in civil society) is doomed to fail in virtue of its effective tendency to promote religiosity among (sovereign) individuals, and simultaneously to insist that the French state itself is the only legitimate political tie in common.

But the proposed site of religiosity, civil society, is incapable of being truly heavenly according to Marx because it presupposes our separateness and promotes our greed. But because our religiosity has not been extinguished, it has in fact been stimulated, its only effective site is the state (which presents itself as striving for eternality). Thus, the state is effectively an idol not just from the perspective of the Marxist, who recognizes that the state continues the (essentially Christian project of) estrangement of abstract citizens from themselves (by secular means), but also from the perspective of those citizens who reject an individualist (i.e., protestant) conception of religion (and state).

In fact, if we think about the causal claim it is accompanied by a further claim (which Marx explicitly asserts): "the imperfection even of...politics [in the perfected state] becomes evident in religion." So, the presence of religious fundamentalism among citizens of a state that understands and presents itself as atheist, is indicative of the fact that the state itself has taken on the character of a supreme idol. So, rather than seeing fundamentalism as something archaic or atavistic it is a distinctly modern effect of a society that is capitalist and with a secular public sphere. 

Let me return to the building blocks of Marx's argument: his causal claim presupposes a proper functioning view of human nature. In his account of the effects of history this proper functioning is deformed/undermined by economic practices which are, in turn, secured by state power. (Again, note the echo of Rousseau here.) So, Marx here already anticipates features of his later view (recall) that is more articulated in (say) The Communist Manifesto and the Critique of the Gotha Program. Crucially, Marx's argument (in terms of social defects) in The Jewish Question does not get off the ground without such a proper functioning view of human nature. 

Now one may well wonder why from the perspective iof such a proper functioning view of human nature religion is a defect. Presumably because it is seen to undermine an authentic, communal life that belongs to our essence. It is possible Marx could allow that a non-individualistic religion -- one that glories our communal life in shared joyful activity (recall Plato's natural religion) -- wouldn't be thought defective. But perhaps he treats all religion as instances of superstition (there is language in the Jewish Question that suggests this). I am not sure.

Let me wrap up. Recall that for Mill ideology is the product of a system of hierarchy or domination in which the ruling classes promote falsehoods which justify their rule. Along the way this ideology undermines the proper functioning of the moral sentiments of the rulers and the ruled. In general the ruled see through these falsehoods, even if at times the ideology effectively promotes servility. What makes something ideological is not just that it is false and corrosive of our nature, but (and here Mill echoes Smith) that it serves a particular (factional/class) interest. (This sounds, in fact, like the kind of thing one would expect from a vulgar marxist.) So, we may say that the liberal idea of ideology requires the false to serve ruling faction and undermine our capacity to political and moral judgment. From a liberal perspective, one can always smell/rat out the existence of ideology if we ask 'cui bono?' and follow the trail. 

One attractive feature of the liberal conception of ideology is that the victims of it can see through it (and this eventually leads to standpoint epistemology). They generally do not need ideology critique to learn the truth of their situation. In this liberal conception if we could make our ruling ideas more impartial and reinforce our natural capacities, ideology can be overcome. And one natural route, although not the only one, to the undermining of ideology (and this (recall) anticipates Jason Stanley) (and here) is according to the liberal the flattening of hierarchy, which would undermine the 'demand' for such false justifications (and also undermine its supply by making it less profitable). Another route is to make sure that people flourish within a liberal polity.

If we go beyond Bauer's own aims, we can see that in Zur Judenfrage Marx, in effect, criticizes this liberal idea of ideology as itself a species of ideology. And Marx's main point is not that it serves the interest of capital (although clearly this is implied). But rather because the political emancipation implied by impartiality in the context of liberal state is, while worth having if you lack it, itself a defective ideal of emancipation. It is emancipation into a fragmentary and inauthentic life, and so no genuine emancipation at all.++ 

The explicit role of the Jews in Marx's analysis is, as is well known, not too flattering to Jews (or Christians). But the role they play in his analysis is also to show that on Marx's account it is by no means obvious that the subordinated victims of an ideology will see through the ideology. And so we see here already the rudiments of the need for a project of consciousness raising. That is to say, ideology critique takes on the shape of unmasking so that the victims of ideology can be oriented to a better ideal. This clearly has, although Marx does not alert his reader to it, the character of a kind of religious conversion.

I do not wish to try to settle the debate between Marx and liberalism. I just note that modern liberals may claim that such an ideology critique misses the mark. After all the proud modern liberal is, when legislating public reason, agnostic about the good life; this only works if the defectiveness of modern life is not widely felt. Such agnosticism does not tempt the older perfectionists like Smith and Mill, who have a conception of human flourishing that is a partial rival to Marx's. But I have gone on long enough today.

 

 

Arendt on Equality and Political Collapse

The breakdown of the feudal order had given rise to the new revolutionary concept of equality, according to which a "nation within the nation" could no longer be tolerated. Jewish restrictions and privileges had to be abolished together with all other special rights and liberties. This growth of equality, however, depended largely upon the growth of an independent state machine which, either as an enlightened despotism or as a constitutional government above all classes and parties, could, in splendid isolation, function, rule, and represent the interests of the nation as a whole. Therefore, beginning with the late seventeenth century, an unprecedented need arose for state credit and a new expansion of the state's sphere of economic and business interest, while no group among the European populations was prepared to grant credit to the state or take an active part in the development of state business.--Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, Part 1 (Antisemitism), Chapter 2 ("The Jews, the Nation-State, and the Birth of Antisemitism"), paragraph 1 ("The Equivocalities of Emancipation and the Jewish State Banker")

The passage caught my attention because Arendt's position reminded me (recall) of a feature of ordoliberalism. The ORDOs thought it normatively desirable to conceptualize the state as an 'independent state machine' above the parties. This naturally feeds into conceptualizing (recall also this post on Walter Lipmmann) the state as a kind of umpire who sets and enforces the rules and, where necessary, keeps score. The problem with this conceptualization is that it turns real politics explicitly into a problem because political agents will naturally pursue interests that may end up tilting the state machine into one direction or another. And it is no surprise the ORDOs spent considerable intellectual energy devicing different means to tackle the problem. 

One thing that Arendt makes explicit about the possibility of an 'independent state machinery' is that it requires independent revenue. As her larger argument makes clear during the broad centuries between the fall of feudalism and the introduction of the bureaucratically administered income tax,* the independent state machinery was financed primarily by credit. Presumably once the income tax is instituted, which often involves strengthening democratic representation and oversight, and thereby elevates the significance democratic politics, the possibility of keeping politics at arm's length starts to evaporate. 

Obviously, the previous paragraph obscures that the maintenance of the independent state machine now becomes coextensive with maintaining good credit. And, so this means that the politics free state machinery automatically serves the class of creditors which become coextensive with the "interests of the nation as a whole." This only works if the state machinery is run by children of the creditor class (so on a quasi caste system) or has extraordinary esprit de corps.  And, to simplify, this means there is a bias against inflation and an incentive to secure property rights. In addition, among the public goods that are produced by the independent state machinery are the rule of law (or formal equality).

It is, of course, an open question whether reality ever approached this near enough.  Later in part 1 -- I treat Part 1 as a kind of distinct monograph --, Arendt discusses the collapse of this fiction. I quote passages a few pages apart. 

It is characteristic of the period that a miscarriage of justice could arouse such political passions and inspire such an endless succession of trials and retrials, not to speak of duels and fisticuffs. The doctrine of equality before the law was still so firmly implanted in the conscience of the civilized world that a single miscarriage of justice could provoke public indignation from Moscow to New York....

[S]uspicion of the republic itself, of Parliament, and the state machine....Down to our times the term Anti-Dreyfusard can still serve as a recognized name for all that is antirepublican, antidemocratic, and antisemitic. A few years ago it still comprised everything, from the monarchism of the Action Francaise to the National Bolshevism of Doriot and the social Fascism of Deat. It was not, however, to these Fascist groups, numerically unimportant as they were, that the Third Republic owed its collapse. On the contrary, the plain, if paradoxical, truth is that their influence was never so slight as at the moment when the collapse actually took place. What made France fall was the fact that she had no more true Dreyfusards, no one who believed that democracy and freedom, equality and justice could any longer be defended or realized under the republic.

I deleted passages pertaining to antisemitism. On my reading of her that is the mechanism by which the collapse is focalized and accelerated, but itself not itself a root cause. Of course, it becomes central to what follows on the ruins of this collapse (recall here and here).

So, once the income tax and democracy start to predominate, the stability, even survival, of the state state machinery rests not just one the good opinion of the public, but in a particular belief that belief that the republic makes possible, or at least facilitates the plausible hope, that "democracy and freedom, equality and justice" can be realized  could under "the republic." And, in larger context, Arendt has no doubt there are two key features that make this collapse likely: first unpunished, endemic graft and corruption among the ruling classes. Second, widespread, potentially competing explanatory frameworks that emphasize the selfishness of agents such that talking or acting on public spirit is understood as either ideology or delusion. 

I will stop here. Some other time, I'll explore if Arendt has solutions on offer to prevent the dissolution of faith in democratic life. That the victory of fascism does not require  the numerical strength of fascism is (recall) a 'paradoxical' point also made by Karl Polanyi (and echoed by his brother Michael). If Arendt is right, the previous paragraph should frighten us.

 

 

On Eichmann in Jerusalem (II); On Crimes Against Humanity and International Law

None of the participants ever arrived at a clear understanding of the actual horror of Auschwitz, which is of a different nature from all the atrocities of the past, because it appeared to prosecution and judges alike as not much more than the most horrible pogrom in Jewish history. They therefore believed that a direct line existed from the early anti-Semitism of the Nazi Party to the Nuremberg Laws and from there to the expulsion of Jews from the Reich and, finally, to the gas chambers. Politically and legally, however, these were "crimes" different not only in degree of seriousness but in essence.--Hannah Arendt (1963; [Revised and Enlarged Edition, 1965]) Eichmann in Jerusalem: the Banality of Evil, p. 267

Let's grant, for the sake of argument, that Arendt has privileged understanding of the situation. My present interest is in trying to grasp what she takes to be the 'essential' feature or difference she is pointing to and why she thinks this is significant. And I take it that the Nuremberg Laws are on one side of a dividing line and "the actual horror of Auschwitz" and the "gas chambers" on the other. She clearly states in the sentences before the quoted passage that genocide is "the unprecedented crime." She repeats variations on this point throughout the "epilogue:" so, for example, she writes, "Nothing is more pernicious to an understanding of these new crimes, or stands more in the way of the emergence of an international penal code that could take care of them, than the common illusion that the crime of murder and the crime of genocide are essentially the same, and that the latter therefore is "no new crime properly speaking." The point of the latter is that an altogether different order is broken and an altogether different community is violated." (272) And also:  "Expulsion and genocide, though both are international offenses, must remain distinct; the former is an offense against fellow-nations, whereas the latter is an attack upon human diversity as such, that is, upon a characteristic of the "human status" without which the very words "mankind" or "humanity' would be devoid of meaning." (268)

Arendt presupposes here (and explains in Eichmann) that while victims are interested parties, fundamentally a crime is an offense or harm against a community or, more abstractly, an order. And because she insists on this distinction between victim and community, what is characteristic of Nazi genocide as a crime is not its murderous antisemitism directed at particular Jews, but rather its attack on "human diversity as such." So, what makes this crime essentially different is a violation of (let's grant) a fundamental principle.* By 'crime' here Arendt does not mean a violation of existing law or even the retrospective law Eichmann was tried under. But rather an offense against a more fundamental law that will have to figure into a future (positive) "international law" (273) For it is such a developing, as of yet "unfinished nature of international law" (274) that will be legal guarantor of offenses against the community of mankind. 

These remarks help us understand the purpose and significance of Arendt's analysis of the essential difference between genocide and other crimes. As I noted yesterday, for her the function of a trial, the meting out of justice, is not just, although this is central, to sit in judgment of a person, and, as she would emphasize (recall) in "truth and politics," ascertain the truth, but also a mechanism to channel and placate the moral indignation victims and spectators ought to feel at the sight of crimes done to fellow humans.

But according to Arendt, a trial can also be the occasion to help develop the as of "yet unfinished nature of international law," so she claims it "has become the task of ordinary trial judges to render justice without the help of, or beyond the limitation set upon them through, positive, posited laws." (274) To be sure, she recognizes that this task was not so understood by the district judges nor assigned them by Israeli (positive) law. That is to say, for Arendt the Eichmann trial turned into a missed opportunity to go beyond the Nuremberg Tribunal and its successor trials in order to help develop, from the bottom up as it were, the legal framework or "international penal code" that could take care for the internal order, that is, the community of mankind.  This is why claims that "had the court in Jerusalem understood that there were distinctions between discrimination, expulsion, and genocide, it would immediately have become clear that the supreme crime it was confronted with, the physical extermination of the Jewish people, was a crime against humanity, perpetrated upon the body of the Jewish people, and that only the choice of victims, not the nature of the crime." (269)

With that in place, I think Arendt should not have suggested that it is "Jewish history" that made the Israeli polity and other Jews miss this point. By this I do not mean the more critical observation that she fails to acknowledge that her aims for the trial risk instrumentalizing victims into tools for the development of international law. Even if one is receptive to the development of such an international penal code, it is no small matter having to acknowledge that the antisemitism in the Nazi genocidal antisemitism is a contingent feature of the crime and not essential to its nature.+ Even if genocide is also a crime against humanity, against "mankind in its entirety," (276) it does not follow it is primarily a crime against humanity from the perspective of the victims and their communities/community 

For, even if one grants Arendt the possible existence of a world order, it is from a political and legal point of view not obvious such a possible community would have to take precedence over existing orders and communities. That is itself a political (and legal) question. Part of the explicit polemic of the book is directed against Ben Gurion not just because Arendt thinks he created a show-trial, but more fundamentally that he who the spokesperson for particularity. When he is quoted, in response to the demand of an international tribunal, as saying, "Israel does not need the protection of an International Court" (272) he is not presented as merely stating an empirical fact, or making a prediction, he is being held up as an exemplar of the rejection of a certain "ideal" standard. (273)

Now, what I find interesting here is that it is characteristic of genocide that is essentially (according to Arendt) a crime against human diversity--underneath it there is a murderous desire for homogeneity, the "elimination forever" of "certain "races"" (277). But it is precisely that very particularity international law is supposed to serve that on the principle of humanity has to grant the legal precedence of the global order over  the particular. This need not be a conceptual tension, but it is obvious that attachment to local orders may be stronger or even practically necessary for the global to come into being. In Eichmann Arendt does not resolve these complexities.

I could stop there. But as it happens Arendt does offer an argument for why her perspective should predominate:

It is essentially for this reason: that the unprecedented, once it has appeared, may become a precedent for the future, that "all trials touching upon "crimes against humanity" must be judged according to a standard that is today still an "ideal." If genocide is an actual possibility of the future, then no people on earth - least of all, of course, the Jewish people, in Israel or elsewhere - can feel reasonably sure of its continued existence without the help and the protection of international law. Success or failure in dealing with the hitherto unprecedented can lie only in the extent to which this dealing may serve as a valid precedent on the road international penal law. (273)++

Before I close on a note of criticism; I agree with her that because the unprecedented, once it has appeared, may become a precedent for the future, the only response to it must -- given the enormity of genocide -- be structural. Her fear has, alas, been amply vindicated. This is, in part, why Eichmann remains an urgent book. 

But it is not obvious that the development of international penal law, even if welcome, is the the right ideal. For, Arendt claims on the very same page that "punishment" has never possessed "enough power of deterrence" (273). So, she has de facto granted that even with international penal law no people can feel reasonably sure of its continued existence. Moreover, she offers no other argument for her claim that "success or failure in dealing with the hitherto unprecedented can lie only in the extent to which this dealing may serve as a valid precedent on the road international penal law." 

And so, while the liberal internationalist may feel joy at discerning in Arendt a surprising ally, the sober student of politics may feel not without some justification that, even if international law is perfected, the cause of Justice may sometimes be better served by fiercely defended, imperfect parochial laws.

 

 

 

On Eichmann in Jerusalem (I); on Indignation

It is more noteworthy that [Ben Gurion] had not foreseen, or did not care to mention, that Eichmann's capture would trigger the first serious effort made by Germany to bring to trial at least those who were directly implicated in murder. The Central Agency for the Investigation of Nazi Crimes, belatedly founded by the West German state in 1958 and headed by Prosecutor Erwin Schüle, had run into all kinds of difficulties, caused partly by the unwillingness of German witnesses to cooperate and partly by the unwillingness of the local courts to prosecute on the basis of the material sent them from the Central Agency. Not that the trial in Jerusalem produced any important new evidence of the kind needed for the discovery of Eichmann's associates; but the news of Eichmann's sensational capture and of the impending trial had sufficient impact to persuade the local courts to use Mr. Schüle's findings, and to overcome the native reluctance to do anything about "murderers in our midst" by the time-honored means of posting rewards for the capture of well-known criminals.
The results were amazing. Seven months after Eichmann's arrival in Jerusalem - and four months before the opening of the trial - Richard Baer, successor to Rudolf Höss as Commandant of Auschwitz, could finally be arrested. In rapid succession, most of the members of the so-called Eichmann Commando - Franz Novak, who lived as a printer in Austria; Dr. Otto Hunsche, who had settled as a lawyer in West Germany; Hermann Krumey, who had become a druggist; Gustav Richter, former "Jewish adviser" in Rumania; and Willi Zöpf, who had filled the same post in Amsterdam - were arrested also; although evidence against them had been published in Germany years before, in books and magazine articles, not one of them had found it necessary to live under an assumed name. For the first time since the close of the war, German newspapers were full of reports on the trials of Nazi criminals, all of them mass murderers (after May, 1960, the month of Eichmann's capture, only first-degree murder could be prosecuted; all other offenses were wiped out by the statute of limitations, which is twenty years for murder), and the reluctance of the local courts to prosecute these crimes showed itself only in the fantastically lenient sentences meted out the accused.--Hannah Arendt (1963; [Revised and Enlarged Edition, 1965]) Eichmann in Jerusalem: the banality of evil, 13-15.

There has been so much journalistic and scholarly polemic surrounding Eichmann in Jerusalem (hereafter Eichmann) from even before its publication that it may come as a surprise that some of the most significant, even polemical arguments in the book have received scant attention. But since these involve unresolved issues in political life and political philosophy, I hope, dear reader, you will forgive me for ignoring the familiar issues as I return to Eichmann. 

The quoted passage above introduces the second main theme in the book: this is the failure of West Germany to prosecute its own war-criminals in a serious fashion after it was founded in 1949. And Arendt notes that one of the unintended and highly welcome effects of the illegal kidnapping of Eichmann was that it created the legal and political will to start holding major "mass murderers" to account. No less important is that it created mass publicity around their deeds.  For, one of the main themes of Eichmann is the failure of justice in Germany (and some other countries, including the Netherlands). 

Of course, Arendt is not hopeful that justice will be served in Germany. Most trials of the mass murderers end in ridiculously low sentences in West Germany. One may suspect this was due to the failure of genuine denazification in West Germany: 

There is little hope that things will change now, even though the Adenauer administration has been forced to weed out of the judiciary more than a hundred and forty judges and prosecutors, along with many police officers with more than ordinarily compromising pasts, and to dismiss Wolfgang Immerwahr Fränkel, the chief prosecutor of the Federal Supreme Court, because, his middle name notwithstanding, he had been less than candid when asked about his Nazi past. It has been estimated that of the eleven thousand five hundred judges in the Bundesrepublik, five thousand were active in the courts under the Hitler regime. (16)

And, in fact, as early as 1950 Arendt has written perceptively on the moral and political failures of denazification in Commentary.+ But Arendt leaves no doubt that the underlying problem is not a lack of political will from, as it were, the top down thwarting a more authentic democratic sensibility, but rather that the political leadership of West Germany (Adenauer) reflects the underlying sensibility all too well: "The attitude of the German people toward their own past...could hardly have been more clearly demonstrated: they themselves did not much care one way or the other, and did not particularly mind the presence of [these] murderers at large in the country." (16)* Arendt thinks this indifference blameworthy (recall her "fantastically lenient").

This naturally raises the question what the citizenry ought to feel and why this matters.  Somewhat surprisingly** Arendt thinks moral indignation is the proper response. She repeatedly calls attention to its absence where it should have been apt: first, she notes explicitly that the  conspirators against Hitler were "not inspired by moral indignation or by what they knew other people had been made to suffer." (100) A second, more striking occasion occurs, in the context of criticizing an argument by Martin Buber, in the final chapter of the book. (This reinforces my point that the theme discussed here frames the argument of Eichmann.) Buber had claimed in opposition to the death penalty that the execution of Eichmann would "serve to expiate the guilt felt by many young persons in Germany." Arendt is polite enough not to say that Buber is, thereby, treating Eichmann as a christ like figure whose execution thereby becomes a mechanism of atonement for those  entirely unrelated to (the events leading to) his conviction. Arendt's response is instructive:

The youth of Germany is surrounded, on all sides and in all walk  of life, by men in positions of authority and in public office who are very guilty indeed but who feel nothing of the sort. The normal reaction to this state of affairs should be indignation, but indignation would be quite risky - not a danger to life and limb but definitely a handicap in a career. Those young German men and women who every once in a while - on the occasion of all the Diary of Anne Frank hubbub and of the Eichmann trial - treat us to hysterical outbreaks of guilt feelings are not staggering under the burden of the past, their fathers' guilt; rather, they are trying to escape from the pressure of very present and actual problems into a cheap sentimentality.) (251)

There are a number of central issues lurking here. First, the absence of felt indignation by elder and younger Germans is evidence that the "moral collapse" which according to Arendt was omnipresent during the Nazi years has not ended with the end of war. (This is with the use of those words also a major theme of the 1950 Commentary article mentioned above.) That is to say, the effects of moral collapse become visible in the failure to feel and express relevant moral emotions. This is connected to Arendt's main criticism of the Eichmann trial: its failure to "put before the eyes of the world in its true dimensions, because it offers the most striking insight into the totality of the moral collapse the Nazis caused in respectable European society - not only in Germany but in almost all countries, not only among the persecutors but also among the victims." (125; see also the remarks in the postscript on p. 297 ) I return to the nature and causes of such moral collapse in future posts.

So, second, the function of a trial, the meting out of justice, is not just, although this is central, to sit in judgment of a person, and, as she would emphasize (recall) in "truth and politics," ascertain the truth, but also a mechanism to channel and placate the moral indignation victims and spectators ought to feel at the sight crimes done to fellow humans.++ This reactive attitude is to be distinguished from the many various failures to take on the position of another recounted in Eichmann.  The lack of such expressed indignation is a measure of the fact that what we may call the social conditions of very possibility of true justice are absent even in political and legal practices/circumstances where the form of the rule of the law is present (as exhibited by the sentencing practices in West Germany). 

Third, and finally today: Arendt's comment on the youth of West Germany may strike some as unfair.  She treats them as careerist (no better in a sense than Eichmann, who is revealed as a base careerist throughout Eichmann). But while it would be too simple to connect the many trials prompted by Eichmann's kidnapping and, perhaps Eichmann, to the student movement in Germany of the 60s and 70s, there is some such connection. For, while the student movement was, in one dimension an international affair, there is no doubt that along another dimension the triggers and content varied locally (as she put it in an interview in 1970, "the national differences" of the student movement "are very great"). Arendt recognized the "conspicuous moral coloration of the movement," although she also thought that remnants of nationalism were visible in it.

In West Germany part of the grounds of social unrest among the student protestors is that so many positions of authority were being held by former Nazis. (I have not found a comment by Arendt on this alas.) And so from this perspective they provide hope that a moral collapse can be reversed over time. But I don't intend to end on such hope. Rather, this student movement also turned, in part, violent eventually;*** this suggests that the inability  or incapacity to express moral indignation is a problem not just for justice, but also politics.