Eric Schliesser's Blog

Transitioning D&I

As regular readers know, I have moved any new digressions of D&I to Substack (here) a while ago. There you can read nearly all my pieces for free, but commenting and accessing the (evolving) archive requires a membership.

With Typepad going out of business later this month, I thought it prudent to put the archive of the pre-Substack D&Is at Wordpress here: https://digressionsnimpressions.wordpress.com. Unfortunately, the migration process is imperfect and the links inside pieces will be broken at the new site. But at least the pieces will be available. Alas, I have been unable to migrate either the old Typepad or the new Wordpress site to Substack (despite exaggerated claims by Substack of the ease of it).

Animeauxnationalism: ���they are eating the pets��� [Guest post by Sanne Van Oosten]

[This is an invited guest post from Sanne van Oosten, Postdoctoral Researcher, University of Oxford���ES]

Donald Trump once again shifted the attention back to himself after weeks of 'Kamalamania.' While it might seem tempting to dismiss this as a silly burst of attention-seeking behaviour, promoting animal rights, particularly for pets, is actually a typical feature of far-right nationalism (of course not limited to it). This tactic is used to claim the moral high ground over supposedly 'backward' immigrants. Here I explain how far-right parties and politicians promote nationalist ideas whilst maintaining a veneer of civility���because, after all, 'truly civil' people take good care of their pets. I call this phenomenon Animeauxnationalism: the instrumental use of animal rights in order to discredit cultural others.

Backlund and Jungar (2022) examine how animal advocacy is incorporated into the ideological framework of radical right parties, dating back to the nineties, focusing on the Sweden Democrats (hereafter: SD). The SD claims that immigrants are more likely to be cruel to animals, tying animal mistreatment to their anti-immigration stance. They argue that respect for animals reflects cultural and racial differences, citing practices like halal slaughter as examples of cruelty (p. 9). The SD's animal advocacy is paternalistic, asserting that animals should be protected not because they are equal to humans, but because they depend on humans (p. 10). This approach sets them apart from egalitarian animal rights movements, who are more likely to claim that animals should be free from dependency on us. Rather, the radical right asserts that dependency on humans is the basis of our human obligation to take good care of them, in an effort to create a more distinct boundary between cultures in which it is normal to keep pets (���ours���) and cultures in which it is not (���others���). In the Netherlands, we see this echoed by Geert Wilder���s regular posts of pictures with him and his pets online, as well as an item the Dutch children���s news in which they interviewed Geert Wilders while he is cuddling with kittens. ���We��� have pets, ���they��� do not. They only see animals as food.

Similarly, radical right parties have framed themselves as protectors of women���s rights in the last decades, particularly in opposition to Muslim immigrants, whose cultures are depicted as inherently misogynistic (Backlund & Jungar, 2022, p. 3). This framing positions Western civilisation as progressive and feminist, in contrast to a supposed foreign illiberalism. The concept of femonationalism, coined by Farris (2017), examines how political actors instrumentalise gender equality to justify exclusionary practices in the context of immigration, but also to justify war. For example, Western intervention in Afghanistan post-9/11 was partly justified by the narrative of rescuing Muslim women from oppressive regimes (Farris, 2017). Veiling, genital mutilation, and sexual violence have been applied to this rhetoric, reinforcing anti-Muslim sentiments by equating Muslim cultures with sexism (Frey, 2020; Korteweg & Yurdakul, 2021; Yurdakul & Korteweg, 2021). The strategic use of gender equality to garner support for anti-immigrant policies blurs the line between supporting women���s rights and endorsing xenophobia (Rahbari, 2021).

Homonationalism, a term introduced by Puar (2013), highlights how LGBTQ+ rights are similarly weaponised to support exclusionary ideologies, particularly Islamophobia. Politicians in the Netherlands and France, such as Pim Fortuyn and Marine Le Pen, have leveraged the perceived homophobia of Muslim immigrants to contrast Western liberalism with foreign backwardness (Puar, 2013; Backlund & Jungar, 2022, p. 3). This narrative positions gay rights as a hallmark of ���civilised��� Western societies while presenting Muslim-majority cultures as inherently homophobic. By invoking LGBTQ+ rights, homonationalist rhetoric reduces the stigma of opposing immigration and facilitates everyday discrimination against cultural newcomers, in a similar vein as is done with materialist rhetoric about immigrants ���stealing��� jobs, houses and social security (Creighton, 2023). In the Netherlands, this discourse gained prominence in the early 2000s following the legalisation of same-sex marriage, aligning progressive values with anti-Muslim sentiment (Mepschen & Duyvendak, 2012; Bracke, 2010). More recently, this narrative has expanded across Europe and North America as part of broader civilisationist discourses that juxtapose Western values of equality with non-Western intolerance (Turnbull-Dugarte & Lopez, 2023; van Oosten, 2022).

I coined the term Judeonationalism (van Oosten, 2024b), to refer to the instrumentalisation of antisemitism to discredit Muslims, mirroring other exclusionary strategies such as femonationalism and homonationalism. Political actors invoke antisemitic narratives to present themselves as defenders of Jews while simultaneously framing Muslims as antagonists. This strategy, particularly evident in discussions around the Israel-Palestine conflict, uses accusations of antisemitism to stifle debate and discredit Muslim voices (van Oosten, 2024a). While antisemitism is rising globally, especially in the wake of the 7 October attacks in Israel, its instrumentalisation often serves to obscure genuine concerns about Jewish safety and instead justify anti-Muslim prejudice. This tactic is further supported by research showing that, on average, Muslims in Western countries are more likely than Christians to hold antisemitic views, which fuels existing prejudices (van Oosten, 2024c). However, the question remains whether political leaders��� denunciations of antisemitism are genuine or a means to further Islamophobic agendas, a pattern seen in broader civilisationist rhetoric that pits Western tolerance against supposed non-Western intolerance.

What makes femo-, homo- and Judeonationalism so appealing? Chantal Mouffe's concept of the democratic paradox offers a lens for understanding the appeal of exclusionary ideologies such as femonationalism, homonationalism, and Judeonationalism. According to Mouffe (2000, 2005), liberal democracy is defined by an inherent tension between its liberal principles of universal equality and its democratic principles of defining a demos���an exclusive group that determines who belongs and who does not. This dynamic is central to the instrumentalisation of values like gender equality, LGBTQ+ rights, and opposition to antisemitism in order to justify the exclusion of certain groups, particularly Muslims.

Femonationalism and homonationalism exploit liberal values, using gender equality and gay rights as a litmus test for inclusion in the demos. By framing Muslims as inherently sexist, homophobic or antisemitic, political actors reinforce the notion that only those who adhere to liberal values can truly belong, thus excluding Muslims from the demos (Farris, 2017; Puar, 2013; van Oosten, 2024abc). This exclusionary use of equality to define the boundaries of the demos illustrates the conflictual nature of politics that Mouffe emphasises; the principle of equality is weaponised to enforce inequality. Values that are ostensibly inclusionary���such as gender equality, gay rights, and opposition to antisemitism���are selectively applied to justify exclusion. This focus aligns with Mouffe���s (2000) view of politics as a site of struggle, where the clash between inclusivity and exclusivity defines the boundaries of the political community. Understanding this dynamic is essential to uncovering how discrimination is legitimised through the instrumentalisation of progressive values.

What Trump is doing with animals is similar, yet different. Human rights, and animal rights, as part of Mouffe���s conception of liberal democracy, are still being used to exclude some from the demos. Indeed, animal rights are invoked to shape the boundaries of the demos, serving as a moral benchmark to distinguish between those who belong and those who do not. The instrumentalisation of animal rights parallels the way femonationalism, homonationalism, and Judeonationalism utilise equality and human rights to exclude Muslims, immigrants and cultural others. Enter: Animeauxnationanlism. Pointing towards maltreatment of animals, particularly pets paints a bright boundary between ���us��� and ���them,��� an inherent tenet of political conflict according to Mouffe. We, civilised Westerners, have pets, they do not. They, cultural others, only see animals as food. This isn���t the first time we see the plight of pets being used to discredit cultural others, and it will not be the last.

Long Covid Diaries: Downs and Ups

It���s time for another long covid diary entry. (For my official "covid diaries" see here; here; here; here; here; here; here; here; here; here; here;  here; here; here;  here; here; here; here; here; here; here; here; here; here; here; here; here; here; here;  here;  here; here; here; here; here; here; here; here; here; here;  here; here; here; here; here; here; here; and here) As usual it���s a mixed bag.

I was so disheartened a month ago I didn���t want to do another ���diaries update.��� To recap: the main remaining long-term effect of my long covid is the onset of migraine when I am socially overstimulated or cognitively multitasking, exercise (alas), and when I have lack of sleep. (Undoubtedly stress is a contributing factor.) I have been getting Botox shots in my neck every 12 weeks to combat this. It usually takes about 9-14 days for the Botox to make a noticeable difference. And then I am migraine free for about five to six weeks. Not ideal, but more manageable.

I got my last Botox shot around the time of my last update (the middle of December). And by January it was pretty clear that it was not working as usual this time around. In addition, we had rented a lovely home for the holidays, but it was located alongside the fairway of a tropical golf-course. And so every morning the mowing machines woke me and made a droning noise for a few hours. Even ear-plugs did not help much to cancel the noise and discomfort. I spent most of the holiday with a migraine or taking anti-inflammatories.

When we returned from holiday, I had my annual blood check. And my kidney functions looked dubious (a known side of effect of my anti-inflammatories). I wondered whether I was heading toward an awful choice between kidney failure and structural migraine.

I didn���t feel like sharing any of this because just the idea of writing it all up was disheartening. And I didn���t want to sound pathetic while so many other folk have far worse struggles. I also had a simmering irritation with my employer that after being on disability for two years, I had ended up teaching hundreds of hours above my assigned contract hours. But due to a combination of factors,the actual work load was even more than registered. (It���s not uncommon in my university, and so I knew it was not directed at me personally.)

At some point I pulled a muscle in my back ��� it hurt so much for several weeks ��� that I thought I had a hernia or pinched nerve. (My GP eventually disabused me of this.) With all of that going on I wasn���t sure I should head off to California for a week-long conference, "Is Philosophy Useful for Science, and/or Vice Versa?" at Chapman University. But the day before I left, I was an examiner for an external Viva at Cambridge. I ended up also meeting a number of academic friends for coffee there. Much to my surprise, I did not collapse and saw no need for any medication to pull me through.

When I arrived in California after a long day of flying, I was locked out of the (lovely) home assigned to me and needed the (very nice) campus security officer to let me in. All week I struggled with my back and with horrible jet lag. Unsurprisingly I started the week with a migraine. Yet, the day at Cambridge also had given me hope a corner had been turned, and I held on to that.

Then I received news that a new blood test showed that my kidneys are functioning fine. And, somewhat oddly, while I shuffled around Old Orange (I got myself a massage that made things worse) without sleep, the feared-for collapse didn���t occur. Rather, the Sun and the conference comradery evidently gave me a huge boost. Because I was scheduled as the final talk of the event, I allowed myself a fairly wide-ranging set of provocations (see here for the video recording).

When I returned to Amsterdam, jet-lagged and limping, for my large lecture course (this year 340 students), part of me wondered whether this would be my last semester teaching full time. In addition, I was very taken aback that during my first two lectures the students, while respectfully listening and showing their appreciation with an applause after, were not asking questions from the floor. It felt like lecturing to a wall.

Yet, it���s a month later and I have had no reason to take any anti-inflammatories since. I have had no migraines at all. I am sleeping soundly; for the first time in more than three years, I am not waking up every ninety minutes to three hours. During the last few weeks there have been only two mornings when I awoke thinking, ���urrgg it���s back;��� but with meditation, a hot shower, and espresso the migraine or whatever was back would dissipate without meds. Luckily the students have also become much more lively.

I miss my family, but otherwise I am rather optimistic about life again. When possible, I keep planning carefully with plenty of rest-moments in between activities. I also try to avoid multi-tasking too much on a single day. So, I wouldn���t claim that I am where I was before I got sick. But I have a rich social life; still enjoy teaching; and am also more willing to accept lecture invites.

Because of my growing confidence about my health, I also have less anxiety before busy periods in my schedule. This week-end I am returning to the Ghent philosophy department for the first time to give a talk since I left there almost a decade ago. Next week, I���ll get another round of Botox shots, but I have wondered whether I should cancel. All in all I am clearly much better than three months ago. If the relentless Amsterdam grey weather wouldn���t indicate otherwise, I would say that ���'Spring is in the air.���

Long Covid Diaries: On Gaukroger (RIP), Jongbloed (RIP), and Margaritaville

[This post was first published at: digressions.impressions.substack here. To receive new posts and support my work  consider becoming a paid subscriber at ]

One of the great joys of academic life is that, if you are receptive to it, you meet interesting new people. These are generally also younger than you ��� any campus is a steep pyramid in which the young vastly outnumber you at any age ��� and so you can avoid the slow vanishing of landmarks and shared habits that are so characteristic of natural aging and decay.

I mention this because on Friday, while at a lunch to mark the bittersweet departure of my co-author Federica Russo who landed a professorship in Utrecht {and so reminded me of the persistent dysfunctionality of my home university], I met bright young scholars with inspiring projects in the philosophy department. (It was my first encounter with the department in almost four years.) I was also reminded that these long covid diaries are sometimes read by more distant acquaintances. (For my official "covid diaries" see here; here; here; here; here; here; here; here; here; here; here;  here; here; here;  here; here; here; here; here; here; here; here; here; here; here; here; here; here; here;  here;  here; here; here; here; here; here; here; here; here; here;  here; here; here; here; and here.)

As I walked home over the bustling Rokin I was in a reflective mood not just because of the lunch. Earlier that day I had visited the practice of my dad���s foot reflexology therapist, Dorine van Saanten-Daane, who had grown into one of his friends. She had invited me to visit shortly after his death (recall), in part to mourn together and in part for me to experience what her therapy was like. I resisted at first because while I mourned my dad I didn���t want to have to navigate her sense of bereavement. And then lockdowns and my long covid got in the way.

As an aside, many years ago (in 2018), a student came up to my after a seminar. She turned out to be a friend of one of the children of Dorine���s long-time business partners. My student informed me (after establishing I was indeed the same Eric Schliesser that wrote Adam Smith: Systematic Philosopher and Public Thinker) that my book was proudly on display next to some memorabilia of my father���s in the practice. Back in the day when I asked Dorine about it she informed she had bought it after my dad���s death because he was so proud of me.

I think I decided to take her up on her invitation because on Monday I had told my GP about a tremor I have in my hands. My wife (a surgeon) increasingly noticed it. While it doesn���t hinder me at all in daily life (and don���t have any fixity), I do have a tendency to spill ground espresso beans when I try to put them in my Mocha. My dad used to have it, too. I always assumed it was a kind of effect of trauma with a childhood in a concentration camp. But I now think it runs in the family. (My sister revealed hers on Friday.) It seems to have only started after the onset of long covid, so it may have been triggered by it in me.

So when I visited the practice on Friday morning I discretely checked for the presence of my book. (Didn���t see it.) But later during our session Dorine did show me a tasteful collage of pictures and drawings/memorabilia connected to my dad placed on her desk. (In my mind I called it a ���shrine.���) After some catching up I did receive a foot reflexology session which was divine although I missed most of it because I slept through it.

As regular readers know, my sister taught me a modest meditation technique that almost unfailingly puts me to sleep. Luckily Dorine took it as a big compliment seeing in it my trust and receptivity toward her. I suspected my sleep also had to do with the fact that I had been sleeping badly again because of my return to Amsterdam and the impending start of the academic year on Tuesday, my life had become more demanding with more socializing, multitasking, more meetings, and also more triggers of modest anxiety and organizational decision-making.

On the Rokin, as I was thinking of the invisible threads that still connected me to my dad���s life, I decided to write a post about Jan Jongbloed (1940-2023) an icon of my youth. Jongbloed���s passing didn���t go completely unnoticed, but it wasn���t a major event. Yet, Jongbloed was the goalkeeper in the two lost finals of 74 and 78. Unusually, even then, he played without gloves and he anticipated the ���modern��� goalkeeper who is very much as much as the last defender as the first link in attack. He had incredible reflexes, was fearless, and had a sense of showmanship by making his saves look spectacular. (Go check it out on youtube.)

Jongbloed���s international career was incredibly long-lasting but erratic. He was never thought of as the best keeper of his era, and never played for a ���big��� club. I saw Jongbloed play in for FC Amsterdam in a relatively empty Olympic stadium in one of the first professional matches I ever witnessed. (I believe we were taken there with the youth teams of AFC, where I played.) FC Amsterdam (then a relatively new creation that has united the professional activities of many of Amsterdam���s traditional neighborhood clubs) was, then, the other Amsterdam team. I liked listening to interviews of him because of his independence, and he spoke in the typical Amsterdam accent that was already disappearing when I was kid. FC Amsterdam soon relegated and folded.

When I was home I called my GP because I had not received a referral yet. As regular readers know, in England since May I get semi-regular botox shots in my neck in order to combat the side effects of migraine. I would like to get those in Amsterdam so I can reduce the number of visits to London while I am teaching. One of the most frustrating features of a ���new chronic illness��� are the recurring, emotionally and physically exhausting efforts of having to get care when you are most vulnerable even after it���s been established it���s useful for you (and you are willing to pay out of pocket). In general, I don���t have libertarian sympathies, but the system of rationing and rules that structure all modern health systems does remind me of the enduring germ of truth in that philosophy.

As an aside, the initial impact of botox was spectacular. For about six weeks all my migraine related symptoms including cognitive fatigue and recurring tinnitus disappeared altogether. Unfortunately, in the second week of July, I got a modest flu on holiday and then about three weeks, the symptoms returned including the headaches. But since the second week of August, things have improved again. I do get bouts of cognitive fatigue (which is the first phase of migraine according to the neurologists at NHS��� long covid clinic in London), but I usually spot it before the headaches start and by meditating and modest rest/pause I don���t go through the next cycle of headaches. I want to continue with the botox, or at least give it a few more chances, because if I can avoid the headaches my quality of life is massively better.

The next morning I arose to news Jimmy Buffett died. I had never heard of Buffett when I stepped on Tufts��� Medford campus in the Fall of 1989. But several of my dorm-mates were from small towns in Massachusetts and Parrot Heads, and I tagged along to Great Woods to see and hear him. I loved the tailgating ��� a new experience ��� and (as we say now) the vibes. (Undoubtedly the smell of thousands of spliffs reminded me a bit of Amsterdam.)

During my sixteen years stateside, I endlessly listened to Songs You Know By Heart, especially after I got my convertible with my first pay-check (and mom and grandma���s help). I eat sliced mango nearly every day, and I always get a chuckle, then, humming a few bars from Last Mango in Paris. In fact, Come Monday (a surprisingly subtle ballad������subtle��� one should not overuse around Buffett,), is one of my favorite songs.

In it there is lyric that goes,

Remember that night in Montana
When we said there'd be no room for doubt

Which unfailingly reminds me of my own road trip during the Fall of 1993, and uttered some such words myself in Missoula. I honor the memory of that night (the romance didn���t last), in part, by using ���nescio��� as my email handle (and also the pen-name of one of my favorite writers).

This is all set up because I just received word from Helen Irving that Stephen Gaukroger (1950-1923) just died. I had my last lunch with Stephen outside at the Wells Tavern in Hampstead a few days before he was diagnosed with an aggressive brain tumor. Because it was my turn to treat, he had come up the hill down from Belsize Park where he and Helen owned an apartment. During our lunch he was unaware of his tumor, but in between academic gossip and talking about our work we did discuss his health because several other serious conditions required treatment after his Summer travel plans. I did share a sense of foreboding with my wife because I had noticed he was not planning any new major projects (see below).

I tend to think of Stephen as one of the great scholar of seventeenth century natural philosophy. His work on Descartes and Bacon helped inaugurate and participate in ���the contextual turn��� of the study of history and philosophy of science. Because he was in distant Sydney, my first meeting with him was relatively late in my academic development. I suspect we first met at a HOPOS event about twenty years ago. But we first got to know each other at a small workshop Dana Jalobeanu had organized in Bucharest while I was in Leiden (so around 2007 or so). It was a consequential event for me because I first met several of my future PhD students, but also spent a long time talking with Stephen about the Leibniz and Huygens relationship while we were waiting for a delayed flight at the gate.

Not long after, my department was undergoing a merger and foreseeable budget cuts and Stephen invited me to apply for a position at the department he was building at Aberdeen alongside Catherine Wilson. This itself was a memorable trip because I first met the late M.A. (���Sandy���) Stewart, who had retired but picked me up at the B&B I was staying at and we promptly got lost driving around an Aberdeen suburb looking for a fish restaurant. It was a tremendous opportunity, and I gave one of my best job talks ever. My better half couldn���t imagine living and being happy in Aberdeen (which she found too grey), and so I went to Gent and commuted for six hard year.

I got to know Stephen more personally only relatively recently in July 2016 when I arrived early for my first visit to Sydney because I was co-organizing the Hume Society event at the university. Stephen and Helen lived right near campus and I was invited to their lovely home filled with art. That Brexit Summer my family moved to London, and since we saw each other quite regularly on their visits to Belsize.

I knew Stephen primarily as a mild-mannered gentleman scholar who was touchingly in love with Helen whose achievements and impact he admired and he was incredibly proud of their daughter, Cressida (an accomplished Hume scholar in addition to her many other literary talents). In all my interactions with him you could tell he felt incredibly blessed with his life, his travels with Helen, and his career.

In formal retirement he has been incredibly productive, including a major series of enormous works, The Emergence of a Scientific Culture: Science and the Shaping of Modernity, 1210-1685; The Collapse of Mechanism and the Rise of Sensibility: Science and the Shaping of Modernity, 1680-1760; The Natural and the Human: Science and the Shaping of Modernity, 1739-1841; Civilization and the Culture of Science: Science and the Shaping of Modernity, 1795-1935 all with Oxford University Press. This was a man who didn���t only write about the work ethic, but also instantiated it. Over lunch at the Wells, he admitted that this huge project was a way to stay busy while satisfying his curiosity. A ���bit like my blogging��� I said, and we both laughed heartily.

I sometimes envied Stephen not so much for his ability to complete books, but for his un-flappable nature and his general sunny disposition. However, this did not prevent him from having strong opinions. One of his last academic interventions was a polemical review in TLS. And while I increasingly believe that most polemics are unfruitful (and so unnecessary), his review had gratified my greatly (about that, perhaps, some other time). We discussed it, and Stephen told me with a relish wholly unexpected by me of how he was galvanized into writing it, and he was not at all perturbed even pleased by the polemical reactions it generated. I saw a glimpse of more fiery elements in him previously unknown to me. I will miss him, his mentorship, and our regular meals and talks. I have made a mental note to read his The Failures of Philosophy later this Fall.

On Tuesday classes start, including a new lecture course that I should be preparing. My occupational physician taught me that I should not compare my health on a day to day basis, but over longer stretches. Compared to this day two years ago and even last year, I am massively better despite being down from the glorious symptom-free heights of June. I am a bit nervous about teaching two new courses in a rather full load of three courses (one semester long, two half-semesters) this Fall. I am a bit sad that these diaries have not concluded yet.

But I visited campus earlier in the week. I saw all the students on orientation boasting to each other in their nervousness; met with the tutors, Anna and Aris, who will co-teach one of my lecture courses, and had dinner with my exciting new colleague, Kevin Pham. Come Tuesday I start my lecture on Hobbes���s social contract with a discussion of excerpts from Plato���s Crito and Manegold���s Ad Gebehardum liber, and I am so excited to invite my students along on intellectual discovery to explore jointly the roots and nature of concepts that are authoritative today. Maybe the connections we���ll forge will develop in enduring conversations between us or among them, or play an unexpected role in their lives.

This first appeared at: <On How to Teach Old Books, Burnyeat vs Strauss, Part II (substack.com)>a reader supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

On Stebbing on Social Injustice

[This post was first published at: digressions.impressions.substack here. To receive new posts and support my work  consider becoming a paid subscriber at ]

I have noticed, in passing (recall), that in Ideals and Illusions Stebbing is without being a utilitarian quite favorably disposed to Mill's philosophy. In fact, to be more precise, Stebbing is rather dismissive of Mill's "ill-expressed and ill-planned pamphlet Utilitarianism" which she also (elsewhere) dismisses as "hastily written." She much prefers Mill's "pamphlet On Liberty" which shows "clearly what his ideal was; these writings provide the most effective criticism of his Utilitarianism." She reads On Liberty (to simplify) as able exposition of the democratic creed articulated in the preamble of the American Declaration of Independence in favor of individual happiness and freedom, and opposed to human suffering.

In the first chapter of On Liberty, Mill and Taylor (whom Stebbing does not mention) make it clear that in conditions of domination and subordination, reigning moral views will tend to favor the self-interest of the ruling classes: "Wherever there is an ascendant class, a large portion of the morality of the country emanates from its class interests, and its feelings of class superiority." Among the examples they give are slave societies and patriarchy. It is, thus (recall), not far-fetched to see in Mill and Taylor theorists of what is now known as ideology.

Now, contemporary analysists of ideology tend to claim that in addition to justifying the interests of the ruling class, it also creates a form of ignorance among the ruling class. While the former is quite plausible, the latter claim has always struck me as quite odd because it would entail that elites don���t realize how they benefit from the status quo or what social mechanisms maintain class privileges and security. (I am equally mystified by the interest in tacit bias.) If that were so, one would see ruling classes give up their privileges and sources of power willingly (or at least by accident).* However, this rarely occurs. And the one time it manifestly did ��� the warm embrace of the early stages of the French revolution on the Enlightened part of the nobility ��� it ended so badly that it has been a stark warning ever since reinforced by many facts of our liberal arts education.

For Mill and Taylor, ideology produces a deformation of ���the moral feelings of the members��� of the ruling class, and they emphasize (this is a bit surprising), ���in their relations among themselves.��� I call it ���surprising��� because one would have expected them to emphasize the maltreatment of the subordinate class (a topic that is of genuine interest to them). To be sure, I don���t mean to suggest this is missing from their analysis.

Echoing Hume (and Smith), and anticipating Dicey, they go on to claim that ���the likings and dislikings of society, or of some powerful portion of it, are thus the main thing which has practically determined the rules laid down for general observance, under the penalties of law or opinion.��� So for Mill and Tayler a society���s laws and norms always express to a considerably degree the interests of (at least a part of the) ruling classes and these, in turn, do not merely secure ruling class hegemony, but they come at a cost of a corrosion of the moral sensibility of the ruling class. This seems quite plausible.

In On Liberty, Mill and Taylor don���t really explore the nature of this deformation of the ruling classes��� moral sentiments except, perhaps and non-trivially, that it produces conformism. In the context of a critical discussion of Clive Bell���s (1928) book Civilization (hitherto unknown to me), Stebbing does take up the issue (in Chapter V). She first quotes Bell and then comments as follows:  

What interests me most in Mr. Bell���s pronouncement is his uneasy and unwilling admission that [among the elites] ���a sensitive and intelligent man cannot fail to be aware of the social conditions in which he lives.��� If only he could shut himself up in an ivory tower how delightfully and valuably he might pass his time. But a ��� civilized man ��� must be sensitive and intelligent, so, as Mr. Bell is reluctantly forced to admit, either he must harden his heart or be discomforted. It is very unfortunate, but that is how things are. How satisfactory would it not be for a civilized Nero, if only Rome were not burning? But it is burning, and he cannot, if sensitive and intelligent, be unmoved by its plight. To-day, although Rome is not burning, not a few of the cities of Europe are, or have been, in flames��� deliberately set on fire. What does it matter to us, if we be sensitive and intelligent men, provided that our own city is not in flames or, if it is, if we can take refuge in California and there produce masterpieces, or at least enjoy the masterpieces of others? Mr. Bell has, I think, given us the answer. We cannot remain unaware of what is happening; we may escape the danger and the discomfort; we may still, far removed to a safe place, continue our civilized pursuits; but we do so at a cost���the cost of callousness or a sense of discomfort.

Before I continue it is worth noting that Stebbing herself goes on to note that there is something really wrong with Bell���s position; he ignores the Kantian dictum that we should treat people as ends not merely as means. The fundamental problem with social hierarchy is not its side effects on the social elite, but the maltreatment of the have-nots and the militarism it licenses. (She is writing in the immediate context of WWII.)

But she is clearly intrigued by the fact that even somebody who defends the possible worth of social hierarchy (in terms of aesthetic and hedonic qualities) has to concede, first, that those at the top are not unaware of the conditions that produce their social privileges and, second, that this awareness generates permanent unease and cruel disregard (���callousness���) to others among (at least a part) of the social elites, and, third, encourages forms of escapism among the elites. She repeats these points multiple times in immediate context. She notes that ���there is some slender ground for hope in this discomfort.���

In fact, and to reiterate, there is no doubt that Stebbing wants to draw on more capacious social, psychological, and ethical resources than this slender hope; in addition to Kant���s dictum, she also discusses the significance of cultivating the sympathetic imagination (she cites Hume, but sounds like Adam Smith) in the same chapter. And, as I noted recently, in Thinking to Some Purpose she clearly argues that considerable social-economic leveling is required.

Even so, it may be worth a brief reflection, in closing, why Stebbing dwells on the existence of elite discomfort. Part of the answer can be found in the next chapter when she writes that ���Only a deep dissatisfaction with our present mode of life combined with a definite hope for the not distant future will make-this destruction of Europe endurable.��� We can discern in this passage a hint of a kind of secular theodicy. (She is clearly no Christian.) Perhaps, ���theodicy��� is too strong, but she clearly believes that a democratic faith requires some hope that present suffering can be overcome in the future if at the end of the road there has been a definite social change (for the better).

For Stebbing, democratic hope presupposes that at least some of the social elites have to be willing to buy into minimal change. (She is no advocate of violent revolution.) And they will do so, she thinks, when some of them recognize, as they inevitably will, that the existing social hierarchy harms them psychically in various ways. That from the perspective of social elites, in democratic life social change, thus, need not be understood exclusively in terms of the risk of loss of privilege, but that it also may bring not just better social relations with the existing have-nots but also better self-relations (among elites and individually). Thus in drawing out Mill���s and Taylore���s ideas on the perversion of morality in social hierarchy, there is lurking here a commitment to the claim that social elites will recognize themselves in the Socratic doctrine that when one harms others, as social hierarchy inevitably entails, one really harms oneself and this will reduce resistance to social reform.

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*To be sure, and to avoid confusion, I do not deny that academic literature in the social science and humanities or that press reports may exhibit such strategic ignorance.

On How to Teach Old Books, Burnyeat vs Strauss, Part II

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As I noted yesterday, in his famous polemical 1986 NRYB essay, Burnyeat treats Leo Strauss as a charismatic (he uses "inspiring") teacher, who founded a school. He quotes Coser to emphasize the point that Strauss "alone among eminent refugee intellectuals succeeded in attracting a brilliant galaxy of disciples who created an academic cult around his teaching." But Burnyeat notes that inspiration is not sufficient to explain the nature of the school and he implies that there is something about the manner of teaching texts that can help explain not just the devotion of Strauss' students to their teacher, but also to the influence these have on their students (and indirectly on policy).  

This is worth reflecting on because even within analytic philosophy we are not immune to the charms (and vices) of school formation (I could list half a dozen in the Harvard, Pitt, Chicago triangle). Here, I focus on the teaching of (historically and culturally distant) texts. So I am leaving aside the teaching of methods and arguments, although in practice all these can blend into each other.

Burnyeat structures his critique of Strauss' teaching by way of a sharp contrast, which I treat as kind of ideal types in what follows. I have taken courses with Burnyeat (who was a spectacularly exciting seminar leader) and some of Strauss' inspiring students, and their ways of proceeding is, in practice, not so different as the ideal types suggest. 

First, let's look at how Burnyeat describes the method of teaching he favors (we will call it 'analytic pedagogy'). He writes:

When other teachers invite their students to explore the origins of modern thought, they encourage criticism as the road to active understanding. Understanding grows through a dialectical interaction between the students and the author they are studying.

Anyone that comes to analytic (history of) philosophy from other (more philological or historicizing) approaches will recognize what Burnyeat is gesturing at. There is a refreshing -- a term I often hear in this context -- lack of distance between student and text, and the students are encouraged not to treat the assigned material as eternal truths or authoritative, but as material to cut their teeth on in analytic pedagogy. Of course, Burnyeat himself is committed to the pedagogical thesis that we learn by way of criticizing what we're reading and discussing in class. And once this is properly structured -- notice the interaction between students and author is implied to go both ways, and so is dialectical -- this is supposed to produce understanding, although it is not entirely clear what the understanding is understanding of (the ancient texts, of the origin of modern thought, of the distance between us and the old texts?).

One way to think about analytic pedagogy is that philosophy students will seek out the arguments they can recognize in the text, and, if necessary, reconstruct them by looking for premises in the text. Often there are suppressed premises that will make an argument valid and these can be found elsewhere in a text. One can then explore to what degree the argument is sound and this may lead to lovely exploration for the reasons behind the premises and to what degree these stand up to scrutiny in light of an author's other comments. Even when Burnyeat's approach encourages what we might sometimes call an uncharitable attitude of 'fault-finding in a text,' with a skilled instructor and inquisitive students initial (and anachronistic) criticism need not be the end of the matter. 

Before I move on it is worth noting that Burnyeat frames his way of presenting his favored approach in terms of exploring 'the origins of modern thought.' At first sight, this is a peculiar move by Burnyeat, especially in the context of his polemic with Strauss. Let me make two observations, first, I find it peculiar he claims it because there is no reason to believe that the understanding that is yielded by the method Burnyeat defends should or would lead to better genetic understanding of modern thought. I am not claiming this method would hinder one from doing so (although I suspect it), but the dialectic Burnyeat describes doesn't get you there through engagement with texts unless the instructor has deliberately shaped the syllabus to do so (often by inscribing the syllabus in a narrative of progress or unfolding). Oddly enough, what may feel as independent criticism by the student is really, then, a carefully orchestrated (and predictable) march through history. This can still be riveting to the novice, but otherwise best not repeated.

Second, in the context with the polemic with Strauss, Burnyeat's phrasing is rather revealing (and so structures this post). Because Burnyeat explicitly presupposes that it is understanding modern thought that is the telos of pedagogy. Given the details of his criticism of Strauss, one cannot help but suspect that this enterprise becomes a kibd of vindicatory understanding of modern thought. To be sure, even there the means toward understanding will be critical, but it will be pursued with (what one might call for present purposes) shared 'modern' premises. This very much suggests that in the dialectical pedagogical process Burnyeat defends 'we' who are beneficiaries of progress are in a superior position to the authors studied in a number of (moral and technological) ways.

To be sure, there are ways of construing Burnyeat's phrase 'origins of modern thought' more innocently and without some of the baggage I am attributing to him. Feel free to do so, if you think that's right. But do remember that we're supposed to be dealing with an important contrast (and as, you shall see, is made explicit by Burnyeat). And, in fact, Burnyeat explicitly presents his own "task here" (not to be the polemical vanguard of analytic philosophy, but rather) "to tell readers who are interested in the past, but who do not wish simply to retreat from the present." (emphasis added) So, Burnyeat explicitly sees himself as, in some sense, providing an apologetics for a certain kind of modernity.

Strauss' proposed teaching method (hereafter 'Straussian pedagogy') is said to be constituted by a kind of immersion such that the student ends up (empathetically and intellectually) identifying with the author. I quote Burnyeat's summary:

Strauss asks���or commands���his students to start by accepting that any inclination they may have to disagree with Hobbes (Plato, Aristotle, Maimonides), any opinion contrary to his, is mistaken. They must suspend their own judgment, suspend even ���modern thought as such,��� until they understand their author ���as he understood himself.���

Self-understanding is notoriously difficult and we're especially likely to fail to be aware of our own blind spots, so this will be a fraught enterprise. Before I get to Burnyeat's criticism of this way of doing things it's worth noting that the evidence Burnyeat cites on Strauss' teaching (from one of Strauss' students), doesn't merely require such sympathetic identification with an author, but also the embrace of the idea that what they say is "simply true." (emphasis in Burnyeat's text.) That is, the texts studied are treated as if they are a kind of revelation and in which no textual detail is unworthy of attention. Lurking here, thus, is a form of (or a variant on) the joint study Chavrusa (literally, fellowship) one may find in a Yeshiva. (Strauss was, I believe, never enrolled in a Yeshiva, but he may have encountered the practice when he boarded with a cantor in Marburg.)

Learning to suspend judgment is an important skill, one that guards against some non-trivial epistemic vices, especially common among philo-bros (fill in your favorite example). It is a bit of shame that Burnyeat did not pause to let him and his readers reflect on the significance of this. So, Burnyeat is correct to claim that for Straussian pedagogy, "it would be presumptuous for students to criticize ���a wise man��� on the basis of their own watered-down twentieth-century thoughts. Let them first acquire the wise man���s own understanding of his wisdom." And all I am pointing out in response is that even if one admires analytic pedagogy, it has down-side risks that the Straussian pedagogy internalizes. 

For, there is also no doubt that bracketing -- I use this phenomenological term in part because of Strauss's debts to that tradition --- the superiority of one's own intellectual culture will allow not just a more sympathetic engagement with the text (this is explicitly noted by Burnyeat), but also puts the student in the position to let the text criticize some of the student's (often tacit) commitments (say, about how certain social arrangements naturally are) immanently. (And while this may not be expected at first, it seems more plausible once one has gotten in the habit of treating multiple authors in this way.) This is quite salutary practical wisdom to acquire for educated elite (recall yesterday's post), or to put it more democratically, the public-spirited citizen.

At this point, I should note an important potential confusion in or caused by Burnyeat's argument. He correctly notes that understanding an "author ���as he understood himself��� is fundamental to Straussian interpretation" and "that it is directed against his chief bugbear, ���historicism,��� or the belief that old books should be understood according to their historical context." Burnyeat kind of implies that Strauss, thereby, proposes a-historical interpretation of old books, for he quotes Strauss as recommending "listening to the conversation between the great philosophers." This would, by implication, involve Straussian pedagogy in a kind of conceptual confusion because if one wishes to understand an author as she understood herself one needs to have a sense of how she understands or wishes to shape her context (and what that context might be.) In fact, if one goes to the primary text (of several) that Burnyeat cites (On Tyranny, p. 24) Strauss does not advocate an a-historical stance, rather he opposes historicism to what he calls "true historical understanding."*

It should be readily clear why Strauss rejects obtaining an understanding of old books from, as it were, the outside in that is, by appeal, to historical context. For, this is a mechanism to impose conformity on a text by way of assumptions about how a particular age must have or only could have thought. This is especially so because the historicist tends to assume that the past involves cultural unities (as a kind of organic whole.) In addition, the historicist student assumes she has a privileged methodological, asymmetric position relative to the past texts often constituted not just by this historical sense, but also by the progress achieved since.

For, even without being exposed to Dilthey (et al), students often come with some such sense of superiority toward the texts and they are often really surprised to find really smart people in the distant past. One need not be a Straussian or a conservative to appreciate this. In the Dawn of Everything, Graeber& Wengrow attack some such historicism because they, too, want to undercut a kind of self-satisfied eurocentrism and get their readers to appreciate the intelligence of those culturally and historically distant agents they discuss. To be sure, I doubt analytic pedagogy is itself intrinsically wedded to historicism. But by privileging criticism is may fall into similar traps. 

Okay, be that as it may, Burnyeat quotes Dannhouser (one of Strauss' students) as claiming that Strauss' pedagogy also involved the maxim that "one ought not even to begin to criticize an author before one had done all one could do to understand him correctly." So, this suggests that the Straussian student does get to criticism but only at a much later stage. So on Straussian pedagogy, sympathetic identification with an author is then necessary, but not sufficient to complete ones understanding. 

Interestingly enough, Burnyeat denies that one ever gets to the critical stage in Straussian pedagogy, because "It is all too clear" that completion of the first stage is an "illusory goal" given the constraints of university education ("the end of the term.") Again, it is worth noting that Burnyeat is so eager to criticize that does not pause to reflect on the possible benefits of practice in such incomplete identification--that learning to see the world from a diverging perspective is hard and requires effort and skill, may well be thought a useful democratic insight in a complex, multi-cultural society if not for the gentleman, then, for the citizen! (One can recognize this without embracing a natural aristocracy as the proper end of education.)

As an important aside. I met Burnyeat through Ian Mueller, who was much more of an eclectic than either Burnyeat or Strauss (and also much more willing than Burnyeat to let ancient commentators and differing scholarly traditions teach him something about Plato), actually taught (despite clear focus on discerning and rationally reconstructing arguments) in the manner I have called 'Straussian pedagogy.��� For the students that stayed, the effect was always a skeptical Aporia, but also a real appreciation of the difficulties of any interpretation. (For the details, see Stephen Menn's In Memoriam.)

Even so, Burnyeat worries that in virtue of the never-ending process of sympathetic identification with an author one's critical faculties are atrophied and that one ends up surrendering to the text or the teacher (and, if the latter, so a school is formed). As Burnyeat puts it surrendering the "critical intellect is the price of initiation into the world of Leo Strauss���s ideas." Let's stipulate that Burnyeat gets something right that the Straussian pedagogy risks under-developing certain critical skills.

To put some clothes on this claim: in Strauss' writings one repeatedly is directed to the idea that (to paraphrase one formulation) to philosophy means to ascend from public dogma or opinion to knowledge. But one is rarely shown what such knowledge is or the practice that might constitute it. As Burnyeat puts it, correctly, there is much talk in Straussian writings about the nature of ���the philosopher��� but no sign of any knowledge, from the inside, of what it is to be actively involved in philosophy. In fact, one would never guess from Strauss' writings that he was a student of Cassirer, Husserl, Heidegger who would have been in a position to advance any of their (ahh) programs. To put this as a serious joke: Strauss voluntarily abandoned his place on the philosophical research frontier, and his school never returned to it (except, perhaps, in the study of certain figures).

Burnyeat also observes this, "Certainly, neither Strauss nor Straussians engage in the active discussion of central questions of philosophy which is characteristic of Plato, Aristotle, Kant, and modern philosophy departments. They confine themselves to the exposition of texts, mainly texts of political philosophy���not, for example, Aristotle���s Physics or Kant���s Critique of Pure Reason." In so far as they even care about old texts (and most do only in a very mitigated sense), nearly all my friends in analytic philosophy will agree vigorously with Burnyeat here.

But, of course, part of the issue here -- and I am baffled Burnyeat of all people misses this -- is what counts as "central question" or what is first philosophy. If one thinks that 'how should one live?' is central, then political philosophy becomes (at least closely related to) first philosophy and encompasses the rest. While, by contrast, structuring one's education around the so-called 'core' [Logic, Language, Epistemology, and Metaphysics], and to model ethics/meta-ethics on the principles popular in the core, becomes then criminally irresponsible if not to oneself then to society. The recurring inability to even think that responsible speech might be worth thinking about is, thus, symptomatic of the effect of analytic pedagogy. 

Finally, is peculiar that Burnyeat thinks that Straussian pedagogy leads, as described, to "initiation into the world of Strauss'" ideas. In fact, in nearly all the courses I attended taught by Straussians, Strauss was never mentioned, and that even was a kind of running gag about such courses. So, except for the Straussians (now quite aged) who studied with Strauss himself, his ideas could only be accessed through his texts. Unsurprisingly, Straussians themselves don't agree on his views and their own project (with East coast, West coast, Claremont approaches, etc.). At best what the class-room teaching does is whet an appetite to read his texts in the manner that he may wished to be understood. But the more likely impact of the Straussian pedagogy is to whet an appetite for more close reading of texts.

I don't mean to suggest that Burnyeat lacks an argument for his initiation claim. But it's important to see that the argument for this does not reside in the details of what I have been calling 'Strausian pedagogy.' Rather it resides in the purported power of a kind of indirect implication. For to get at Straussian content (of Strauss' own views or the views he attributes to the texts he discusses), "much labor is required to disentangle its several elements from his denunciations of modernity and the exegesis of dozens of texts." That is the Straussian hermeneutic (as distinct from Straussian pedagogy) reads texts as incredibly complex puzzles that can only be solved by a kind of capacious reading and multi-dimensional puzzle-solving. This requires certain dispositions most of us (even in the old-text studies niche of the universe) lack. And so the initiation through the hermeneutics selects on a certain set of dispositions and practices.

But we're left with a kind of weird puzzle here: if (and it is a big if) Burnyeat get Strauss' initiation practice right, and so has properly understood Strauss' teachings, how come it fails to work its magic on Burnyeat, who is singularly unpersuaded? (Persuade and its cognates are the key word in Burnyeat's essay.) This suggests that at best Burnyeat has uncovered a necessary condition, but not a sufficient condition. One might think that Strauss mistakenly assumed a unity of the virtues thesis -- and given how often we are told about the need to return to the Ancients -- this assumption may seem plausible. But since Strauss is much exercised by the conditions under which philosophical teaching fails (Strauss likes to point at "rash Alcibiades"), and certainly is personally familiar with Heidegger as an exemplary case of a conspicuous lack of such unity, this assumption does not pass the smell test. At this point one may be tempted to claim that only exposure to Straussian pedagogy and exposure to Straussian hermeneutics is jointly sufficient to breed Straussians. But this can't be right because, as intended, and in fact, this is not so. (Even Burnyeat notes this because it's only a "few" who fall for it.) I leave it here, but will suggest -- I don't know where this inspiration comes from! -- that the nature of the "power of persuasion" in the Republic is a key to make progress on this very question.  

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*This is p. 25 in The University of Chicago (2009) edition

Burnyeat vs Strauss, Again

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In a famous polemical essay (1986) in NYRB, my (recall) teacher, Myles Burnyeat, distinguished between two ways of entering Strauss��� thought: either through his ���writings��� or ���one may sign up for initiation with a Straussian teacher.��� That is, as Burnyeat notes, Strauss founded a school ��� he quotes Lewis Coser���s claim that it is ���an academic cult��� -- with an oral tradition. In the 1986 essay, Burnyeat spends some time on the details of Strauss��� teaching strategy and style that he draws from autobiographical writings by Bloom and Dannhauser[1] as well as by aptly quoting Strauss��� famous (1941) essay "Persecution and the Art of Writing." Somewhat peculiarly, given what follows, Burnyeat does not comment on the surprising fit he [Burnyeat] discerns between Strauss��� writing and teaching!

Burnyeat goes on to imply that without the oral tradition, Strauss��� writings fall flat, or (and these are not the same thing, of course) lack political influence. I quote:

���It is the second method that produces the sense of belonging and believing. The books and papers are freely available on the side of the Atlantic from which I write, but Strauss has no discernible influence in Britain at all. No one writing in the London Review of Books would worry���as Stephen Toulmin worried recently in these pages about the State Department���s policy-planning staff���that Mrs. Thatcher���s civil servants know more about the ideas of Leo Strauss than about the realities of the day. Strauss has no following in the universities where her civil servants are educated. Somehow, the interchange between teacher and pupil gives his ideas a potency that they lack on the printed page.���

I want to draw out to two themes from this quote: first, I���ll focus on the reception of Strauss in the UK. And, second, on the way governing elites are educated. So much for set up.

 

First, this is an extraordinary passage once we remember that already in 1937 Michael Oakeshott wrote an admiring and insightful review of Strauss��� ,The Political Philosophy of Hobbes: its Basis and its Genesis (1936) that is very much worth re-reading. (In his earlier, 1935, essay in Scrutiny on Hobbes, Oakeshott alerts the reader that he is familiar with Strauss��� (1932) French article on Hobbes.) It matters to Burnyeat���s empirical claim because while Oakeshott, who did have an impact British political thinking, certainly is not a slavish follower of Strauss, one would have to be confident that none of Oakeshott���s teachings weren���t taken from Strauss at all. Writing in the London Review of Books a few years later (1992), Perry Anderson alerts his readers to non-trivial differences between Strauss and Oakeshott (which is compatible with my claim), and more importantly for present purposes, treats Strauss as a major influence on the then newish resurgence of the intellectual right (although that can be made compatible with Burnyeat���s claim about Strauss��� purported lack of influence in the UK).[2]

 

But even when taken on its own terms, there is something odd about Burnyeat���s claim. For, even if we grant that Strauss has no following at all in British universities by the mid 1980s, this could have other sources than the lack of potency of Strauss��� ideas. After all, there had been a number of influential polemics against Strauss in the United Kingdom. Most notably, the so-called ���Cambridge school��� of historiography (associated with Pocock, Dunn, and Skinner amongst others) polemically self-defined, in part, against Strauss and his school; this can be readily ascertained by, for example, word-searching ���Strauss��� in Quentin Skinner���s (1968) "Meaning and Understanding in the History of Ideas."[3] One can also discern, as I have noted before, such polemics by reading Yolton���s (1958) "Locke on the Law of Nature" in The Philosophical Review.[4] Yolton was then at Kenyon, but he had been an Oxford DPhil student of Ryle���s, who supervised his dissertation on John Locke.[5] Polemic is simply unnecessary with writings one foresees would have no influence or potency at all. So, I am afraid to say that Burnyeat���s presentation does little justice to even the broad outlines of the early reception of Strauss in the U.K.

 

As I noted, there is a second theme lurking in the quoted passage, namely Burnyeat���s interest in how civil servants are educated at university. This theme is developed by Burnyeat as follows in the NYRB essay:

The leading characters in Strauss���s writing are ���the gentlemen��� and ���the philosopher.��� ���The gentlemen��� come, preferably, from patrician urban backgrounds and have money without having to work too hard for it: they are not the wealthy as such, then, but those who have ���had an opportunity to be brought up in the proper manner.��� Strauss is scornful of mass education. ���Liberal education is the necessary endeavor to found an aristocracy within democratic mass society. Liberal education reminds those members of a mass democracy who have ears to hear, of human greatness.��� Such ���gentlemen��� are idealistic, devoted to virtuous ends, and sympathetic to philosophy. They are thus ready to be taken in hand by ���the philosopher,��� who will teach them the great lesson they need to learn before they join the governing elite.

The name of this lesson is ���the limits of politics.��� Its content is that a just society is so improbable that one can do nothing to bring it about. In the 1960s this became: a just society is impossible. In either case the moral is that ���the gentlemen��� should rule conservatively, knowing that ���the apparently just alternative to aristocracy open or disguised will be permanent revolution, i.e., permanent chaos in which life will be not only poor and short but brutish as well.���

Burnyeat infers these claims from a number of Strauss���s writings in the 1950s and 60s which he has clearly read carefully. In fact, at the end of the second paragraph, Burnyeat adds in his note (after citing Strauss��� What is Political Philosophy? p. 113), ���where Strauss indicates that when this argument is applied to the present day, it yields his defense of liberal or constitutional democracy���i.e., modern democracy is justified, according to him, if and because it is aristocracy in disguise.���

Now, even friends of mass education can admit that modern democracy is an aristocracy in disguise. This is not a strange claim at all when we remember that traditionally ���democracy��� was associated with what we now call ���direct��� or ���popular���/���plebiscite��� democracy, whereas our ���liberal��� or ���representative��� democracy was understood as aristocratic in form if only because it functionally preserves rule by the relatively few as Tocqueville intimates. This fact is a common complaint from the left, and, on the right, taken as a vindication of the sociological ���elite��� school (associated with Mosca, Pareto, etc.). It is not limited to the latter, of course, because the claim can be found in the writing of Max Weber on UK/US party politics (which Strauss knew well.)  

Of course, what matters is what kind of aristocracy modern liberal democracy is, and can be. And now we return, anew, to theme of the education of the governing elite(s) as Burnyeat put front and center in NYRB. That a liberal education can produce a ���natural��� aristocracy is, in fact, staple of writings in what we may call ���the conservative tradition��� as can be found in Russell Kirk���s The Conservative Mind. The idea is given a famous articulation in the writings of Edmund Burke (1791) ���An Appeal from the New to the Old Whigs.��� (I have put the passage from Burke in a note.)[6]

So, as summarized by Burnyeat, Strauss simply echoes a commonplace about how Burke is understood by post WWII conservatives. What���s distinctive then is that Strauss is presented as claiming that the ancient wisdom he discloses is that trying to bring about a fully just society would re-open the Hobbesian state of nature/war, that is, permanent chaos. It won���t surprise that Burnyeat denies this is the unanimous teaching of the ancients (although when I took a seminar with him about fifteen years later he came close to endorsing this himself as a reading of the Republic). For, the closing two paragraphs of his essay, drive this point home:

���Strauss believed that civil society must, of necessity, foster warlike habits and make its citizens apply different rules of conduct to one another and to foreigners. The impossibility of international justice was a considerable part of what persuaded him that ���the justice which is possible within the city, can only be imperfect or cannot be unquestionably good.��� But Strauss spent his life extolling what he believed to be ���the truth��� on the grounds that it is the unanimous ���wisdom of the ancients.��� Hence something more than an academic quarrel is taking place when Strauss defends his eccentric view that Plato���s Socrates agrees with Xenophon���s in teaching that the just citizen is one who helps his friends and harms his enemies.

Plato���s Socrates attacks this very notion early in the Republic. No matter: Strauss will demonstrate that it is the only definition of justice from Book I which is ���entirely preserved��� in the remainder of the Republic. Plato���s Socrates argues passionately in the Gorgias for a revolutionary morality founded on the thesis that one should not return wrong for wrong. Strauss���s unwritten essay on Plato���s Gorgias would have summoned all his Maimonidean skills to show that Socrates does not mean what he says. Much more is at stake here than the correctness or otherwise of the common scholarly opinion that Xenophon, a military man, was incompetent at philosophy and did not understand Socrates. The real issue is Strauss���s ruthless determination to use these old books to ���moderate��� that idealistic longing for justice, at home and abroad, which grew in the puppies of America during the years when Strauss was teaching and writing.���

 

That Xenophon was incompetent at philosophy and did not understand Socrates is, in the context of the debate with Strauss, a petitio principii. That���s compatible with the claim that Burnyeat is right about this. But it's worth noting that this is characteristic of analytic historiography. For example, in his early (1951) review of Strauss, Vlastos also describes Xenophon as having a ���pedestrian mind.��� (593)

Even so, that international justice between states is impossible is not a strange reading of the Republic (or the other ancients). Plato and Aristotle are not Kant, after all. (Plato may have thought that Kallipolis could have just relations with other Hellenic polities, but I see no reason he thought that this was enduringly possible with non-Greek barbarians.) And if we permit the anachronism by which it is phrased, it strikes me that Strauss is right that for the ancients civil society must, of necessity, foster warlike habits and make its citizens apply different rules of conduct to one another and to foreigners (even if many foreigners could be treated in pacific fashion and in accord with a supra-national moral norms). Part of Plato���s popularity (recall; and here) in the nineteenth century was undoubtedly due to the plausibility of reading him as a pan-hellenic nationalist. It doesn���t follow from this, of course, that for Socrates whatever justice is possible within the city has to be attenuated or imperfect. It is, however, peculiar that even if one rejects Strauss��� purported ���great lesson��� and if one grants that Kallipolis is, indeed, the ideal city one should treat the effort to bring it into being as anything more than a dangerous fantasy; and while I wouldn���t want to claim that a ���just society is so improbable that one can do nothing to bring it about,��� it is not odd to wish to moderate those that try knowing, as we do, the crimes of the Gulag or the Great Leap forward, if that's really what Strauss taught.

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[1] ���Leo Strauss September 20, 1899���October 18, 1973,��� Political Theory 2 (1974), pp. 372���392, which Burnyeat commends, and Werner J. Dannhauser, ���Leo Strauss: Becoming Naive Again,��� The American Scholar 44 (1974���1975),

[2] Anderson, Perry. "The intransigent right at the end of the century." London Review of Books 14.18 (1992): 7-11. Reprinted in Anderson, Perry. Spectrum. Verso, 2005.

[3] Skinner, Quentin. "Meaning and Understanding in thef History of Ideas." History and theory 8.1 (1969): 3-53. (There is a huge literature on the debates between the Cambridge school and Straussianism.)

[4] John W. Yolton (1958) "Locke on the Law of Nature." The Philosophical Review 67.4: 478.

[5] Buickerood, James G., and John P. Wright. "John William Yolton, 1921-2005." Proceedings and Addresses of The American Philosophical Association. American Philosophical Association, 2006.

[6] ���A true natural aristocracy is not a separate interest in the state, or separable from it. It is an essential integrant part of any large body rightly constituted. It is formed out of a class of legitimate presumptions, which, taken as generalities, must be admitted for actual truths. To be bred in a place of estimation; to see nothing low and sordid from one���s infancy; to be taught to respect one���s self; to be habituated to the censorial inspection of the public eye; to look early to public opinion; to stand upon such elevated ground as to be enabled to take a large view of the widespread and infinitely diversified combinations of men and affairs in a large society; to have leisure to read, to reflect, to converse; to be enabled to draw and court the attention of the wise and learned, wherever they are to be found; to be habituated in armies to command and to obey; to be taught to despise danger in the pursuit of honour and duty; to be formed to the greatest degree of vigilance, foresight, and circumspection, in a state of things in which no fault is committed with impunity and the slightest mistakes draw on the most ruinous consequences; to be led to a guarded and regulated conduct, from a sense that you are considered as an instructor of your fellow-citizens in their highest concerns, and that you act as a reconciler between God and man; to be employed as an administrator of law and justice, and to be thereby amongst the first benefactors to mankind; to be a professor of high science, or of liberal and ingenious art; to be amongst rich traders, who from their success are presumed to have sharp and vigorous understandings, and to possess the virtues of diligence, order, constancy, and regularity, and to have cultivated an habitual regard to commutative justice: these are the circumstances of men that form what I should call a natural aristocracy, without which there is no nation.���

See also Kirk, Russell. "Burke and natural rights." The Review of Politics 13.4 (1951): 454.

The Conservative Mind on Nemesis, and Liberal Imperialism

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It will probably discredit me in the minds of some, but I have to admit that I read Russell Kirk���s (1953) The Conservative Mind with a great deal of guilty pleasure, and admiration. Some time I would like to return to his defense of the liberal arts in the service of the cultivation of a natural aristocracy. But today I explore what I earlier (recall) described as a his ���call for a reformed more prudent imperialism.���

At first sign, Kirk���s work belongs to the tradition of American isolationism. It���s quite critical of imperialism, and one can quote many passages like the following (from the discussion of Irving Babbit in chapter XII): ���Imperialism is one aspect of man's ancient expansive conceit, which the Greeks knew would bring hubris, and then blindness, and finally nemesis.��� For Kirk (and Babbitt) it clearly means the divine punishment of hubris. Nemesis plays an important role in this chapter (and Kirk���s general argument).

First, the existence of nemesis is part of the argument against the false realism, and false empiricism, of Machiavellianism (I quote Kirk who partially quotes Babbit):

Yet Machiavelli and his followers are not true realists: "The Nemesis, or divine judgment, or whatever one may term it, that sooner or later overtakes those who transgress the moral law, is not something that one has to take on authority, either Greek or Hebraic; it is a matter of keen observation." With Hobbes, this negation of morality enters English political thought, and we continue to suffer from its poison.

Nemesis, thus, follows eventually and necessarily from an enduring transgression of moral boundaries. (I leave it to fans of Star Trek to draw the obvious connections.) Kirk���s claim is, part and parcel of, and supported by, the providentialism articulated throughout The Conservative Mind. But having said that, Kirk���s ���whatever one may term it��� betrays a hint of the need for new myths for a materialist (a point he ascribes to Santayana).

As an aside, while the main official target of this argument will be ���liberal humanitarianism,��� the quoted passage is clearly a swipe against Burnham, whose The Machiavellians, defenders of freedom had sought to offer anti-liberals a positive program. But Burnham���s new (managerial) elite is, in fact, dangerous because, like the modern Nietzcheans whose poetry it constantly emulates, it fails to recognize natural limits and so is itself an engine of destruction.

Second, in his own age Nemesis is exemplified and illustrated by Hiroshima and Nagasaki--a point reiterated several times throughout the book. Here it also sets up the argument against ���Liberal humanitarianism��� which ���in the United States found itself embarrassed, to put the matter mildly, when the Second World War was won-won at the expense of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and all they meant to the American conscience, won at the expense of consuming centralization at home, the maintenance of permanent armies abroad.���

No less eloquent than the Marxist critic or the Schmittian, Kirk evokes Liberal humanitarianism (with its self-confident standardization and consumerism) as the false imperialism throughout his argument. In fact, it is the task of the twentieth century conservative to tame this ���corroding imperialism more ominous even than those the Romans failed to resist after they had crushed Macedonia.��� It is precisely ���in victory��� that conservatism is required ���to redeem her from ungoverned will and appetite��� that is the product of two centuries of (Hamiltonian) expansionism. Kirk forcefully rejects the idea that American ���institutions��� can be imposed ���upon cultures which have as good a claim to respect.���

In fact, Kirk���s providentialism is informed by the near miraculous revival of conservative forces during the mid-twentieth century against the grain of progressivism. This revival he understands as a moral awakening due not just to Hiroshima and Nagasaki, but also to the horrors of the Gulag and many smaller examples of the excesses of planning.  

I don���t think Kirk advocates retreat from empire altogether. Rather, he councils national humility in preserving it, against what he calls ���the tremendous imperialistic instinct of modern democracy.��� Goes on to claim that it is an empirical ���error (as Mirabeau said) to suppose that democracy and imperialism are inimical; they  will hunt together in our time, as they did in Periclean Athens and Revolutionary France.���

Those of us long accustomed to an imperial presidency with its tendency toward plebiscitary democracy, the permanent multitude of US American bases around the world, and a number of disastrous foreign interventions in the name of humanity will have to judge Kirk���s exhortation ��� despite its truth ��� a failure. But no liberal can rejoice in this failure���rather it should be the foundation of more sober reflection on reform of our crass political culture, our weakening institutions, and empire.

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Ideals and Illusions, and the forgotten history of analytic political philosophy

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Ideals and Illusions, Susan Stebbing's (1941) moving wartime work, published while she and the Kingsley Lodge school for girls (of which she remained the principal in addition to being the first female British philosophy professor) had moved to the far end of Cornwall, aims to rectify the absence of an ideal that speaks to what one may call democratic and spiritual yearning in British public life.* In fact, Ideals and Illusions, deserves some mention in the history of political theory. While not wishing to ignore some of the limitations of the work, I list three reasons that, perhaps, invite you to read this book.

First, Ideals and Illusions decisively challenges an idea then promoted by political realists of her age (especially E.H. Carr) that debate between realists and democratic theorists within political theory is, and now I quote Hans Morgenthau (who explicitly cites Stebbing), "...tantamount to a contest between principle and expediency, morality and immorality." Morgenthau (1952) de facto concedes Stebbing point, and this led him to reformulate political realism (and its opposition to a kind of democratic idealism as follows): "The contest is rather between one type of political morality and another type of political morality, one taking as its standard universal moral principles abstractly formulated, the other weighing these principles against the moral requirements of concrete political action, their relative merits to be decided by a prudent evaluation of the political consequences to which they are likely to lead." (p. 988; see note 25) To what degree Stebbing would eschew paying attention to prudent evaluation of political consequences may well be doubted. (I return to that some day.)

But the important point here is that Stebbing's criticism of Carr shaped the development of the most influential articulation of post-war realism (in IR).+ And it it is worth noting that Ernest Nagel, who was a serious admirer of Stebbing (1885 ���1943), was (in 1947) quite critical of Morgenthau's version of such realism. There is, thus, lurking in the relatively early history of analytic philosophy a polemic, from the perspective of a democratic and liberal theory, with (so-called) political realism that has gone largely unnoticed. (I have discussed Nagel's polemic a bit here. )

Be that as it may, as is well known, in his autobiographic manifesto Liam Kofi Bright writes: "There is something within us that takes joy in the happiness of others, sees their misery as something regrettable, and compels us to act in solidarity and friendship with fellows." In an accompanying footnote, Bright cites (rightly) the fourth chapter of Stebbing's Ideals and Illusions. This chapter articulates a democratic creed that is explicitly indebted to the preamble of the American declaration. Stebbing connects this creed eloquently to Bentham's and Mill's frontal attack on acquiescence in human suffering.  Stebbing is by no means a utilitarian/Radical, but she recovers the enduring significance of the Radical program (which one wishes contemporary longtermists would heed).

But not unlike Jefferson, she inscribes her ideal in a republican political philosophy (while being more attentive to the ills of slavery). In fact, and this is my second point, she deserves to be re-inscribed in the genealogy of modern republicanism, for after claiming that her creed can be captured with the ethical principle, "all men alike ought to be free and happy," she writes:

The democratic ideal does not confine a man within the limitations of his own narrowly conceived self-interest; it widens his interests to include all men, so far as this is possible to the limited intellectual grasp and the groping imagination of a finite human being. To achieve this ideal we must make such political machinery as will enable every man to have his needs considered and to contribute to the working of this machinery according to his ability. No one must be slave to another nor subject to the arbitrary will of any of his fellows, whether he lead or be led. We must create such an economic order as to allow to every man the satisfaction of his primary needs and to permit the development of himself as an individual. (Chapter VII, "Conflicting Ideals," p. 157)

Stebbing clearly embraces the idea that being subject to the arbitrary will of another is a fundamental problem in political and economic life and should be combatted. While rejecting Marxist economics (and explicitly rejects Marx as "prophet"), she quotes The Communist Manifesto approvingly on the idea of "a community of individuals, each of whom counts, associated together in such a way that 46 the free development of each is the condition of the free development of all.��� (pp. 144-145) Stebbing's republicanism was already visible, and (as I discerned) presupposed, in her (1939) Thinking to Some Purpose, but it is much more subtly and carefully developed in Ideals and Illusions not as a normative theory in a post-Rawlsian sense, but as a living faith apt for her times. (I return to that below.) 

Third, one of the key theme among my friends in the ���'bleeding heart��� wing of contemporary libertarianism is the insight that the closed border regimes of our age are not just a frontal attack on the rights of outsiders or non-natives, but are a very sly and insidious attack on the rights and lives of citizens/insiders who often don't realize initially that many of their own liberties are undermined (often due to aggressive policing of border zones, but not limited to this). I first learned the point from Jacob T. Levy, and it���s a very important theme in Kukathas' Immigration and Freedom. (Levy and Kukathas are, thereby, developing an insight lurking in Mises but not as well developed there as one would wish.) I don't mean to suggest it's only a libertarian talking point; many (Foucault-inflected) scholars in security/immigration studies have developed a similar analysis (and as a skeptical liberal I will make it my own).

Here's Stebbing's version of a related insight:

[D]uring the Victorian age and up to the outbreak of the 1914-18 war there was considerable advancement in the direction of the ideal of the American revolution. It is convenient to call this the ideal of a civilized democracy. This ideal is far from having been accomplished. That, however, is not the point that is of main importance for my present purpose. The point is that it was an ideal consciously held and, on the whole, deliberately pursued. The moral significance of this period lies in the fact that there was a widespread conviction that there was an ideal worth pursuing, that there were high aims to the achievement of which a man might fittingly devote his life; to live strenuously for an ideal is more difficult and exacting than to be prepared to die for it. During the last twenty years this ideal has not only been explicitly denied and vilified in certain countries, it has further faded as an ideal even in those countries where the citizens continue to admire the sound of the word ��� democracy.��� For, it must be remembered, the democratic ideal is founded upon the moral principle that all men alike ought to be free and happy. It requires a temper of mind free from suspicion of others, from hatred of the foreigner, and from intolerance. It requires further an active sympathy with those who are oppressed. In all these respects the last twenty years have seen a serious deterioration. Before the last war it was possible to travel from one end of Europe to the other without a passport; during the last twenty years it has not been possible. This may seem unimportant; in fact, it is not. Its importance is that it is a symptom of the change for the worse that has befallen us. Each State in turn has tightened its restrictions upon the entry of foreigners. In a world which is economically so interdependent that it may be said to be a unity, certain of the most powerful States strive to be wholly sufficient in their economic requirements. The growth of economic internationalism is in conflict with an emotionally sustained nationalism. Hatred of others is fostered. (Chapter VI, pp. 112-113 [emphasis added���ES.])

What I wish to highlight here is that Stebbing discerns that a closed border policy doesn't just restrict the inflow of people, commodities, and capital, it also transforms the very ideals, the pattern of thoughts, and even morals of one's own polity. For Stebbing a 'temper of mind' -- we might say ethos -- is rather important to democratic life. With this diagnosis she is rather close to the liberal-realists explored (recall) by Cherniss in his recent Liberalism in Dark Times: The Liberal Ethos in the Twentieth Century.

Okay, let me wrap up. I leave you to discover her fantastic genealogical analysis of conscience, and her excellent critique of Bradley's political theory amongst other gems. I have suggested before (recall here; here etc.) that the narrative that there 'was no political philosophy within analytic philosophy' before Rawls is a lie that keeps us in a self-imposed tutelage. To be sure, this fact is difficult to see as a consequence of the division of labor in which (inter alia) economics and philosophy split, and political philosophers became specialists in normative theory and judge each other accordingly. From the perspective of contemporary philosophy, Stebbing���s book would seem to lack something.

But in so far as political philosophy aspires to educate the thoughtful citizenry in the reasons for its commitments (it should hold), Stebbing's book is, warts and all (and I have not developed my criticisms here), without parallel in early analytic philosophy. (No, I am not ignoring Popper or Russell's political essays!) Neurath insisted on the very point in 1946:

I clearly realized the tendency within our movement to deal with the actual life when I looked at Stebbing's "Ideas and Illusions", the preface dated Tintagel April 1941, where the school she and her friends had organized had been evacuated from London. Here she continued her fight against muddled arguing, as started in "Philosophy and the Physicists" and in "Thinking to some Purpose". But during the war also appeared her "A Modern Elementary Logic" which was intended to be a book for students, some of them in the army, without any guidance from a teacher. I speak of these details, because they clearly show, how persistent scientific life is.**

 

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*For a summary of the book, I recommend chapter 8 of  Siobhan Chapman. Susan Stebbing and the language of common sense. 2013. 

+For some further details see S. Molloy (2006) The Hidden History of Realism: A Genealogy of Power Politics, pp. 64-70. (Molloy treats Stebbing as a historian of science.) In a different work, Peter Wilson (2000) acknowledges the significance and cogency of Stebbing's criticism, but suggests she drew heavily from Leonard Woolf. (I have not been able yet to verify this.)

**This is also quoted in Chapman's book, p. 165.

Hume's odd footnote to Grotius, and Pufendorf

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Readers who come to David Hume through the Treatise may be forgiven for thinking that he wasn't an especially learned or scholarly philosopher deviating from the reigning tendency toward eclecticism. I include myself among these, until I heard a paper (which may still be unpublished) by Ken Winkler on the way Hume carefully edited his notes engaged with Locke through the successive editions of the Enquiries. In fact, Hume's long essay on population exhibits him as quite learned. So much for set-up.

After offering his famous definition of convention in the third Appendix to the Second Enquiry (paragraphs 7-8), Hume adds a note suggesting that this "theory concerning the origin of property, and consequently of justice, is, in the main, the same with that hinted at and adopted by Grotius," (De jure belli & pacis. Lib. ii. cap. 2. ��2. art. 4 & 5.) which he then quotes in Latin. There are four peculiarities pertaining to the passage from Grotius that Hume quotes.

First, throughout it his writings, Hume himself had explicitly denied that property had its origin in an explicit/verbal convention (that is, social contract), whereas Grotius explicitly allows that this is a possible source: "Simul discimus, quomodo res in proprietatem iverint; non animi actu solo, neque enim scire alii poterant, quid alii suum esse vellent, ut eo abstinerent, & idem velle plures poterant; sed pacto quodam aut expresso, ut per divisionem, aut tacito, ut per occupationem." (emphasis added.) Yes, Grotius does more than hint at his preferred account of tacit contract of property, so I am not suggesting Hume gets this wrong.

But, second, as readers of Hume would have been quite aware that's developed by Locke (and Pufendorf). In fact, I have been arguing that Hume completely effaces how much of the distinctive details his own definition of convention (including that of property) is already present in Locke (recall here; here; and see here for slightly more scholarly version).

Third the passage from Grotius cited by Hume is utterly banal. He could have cited any number of ancient authors here (from Plato's Laws to Lucretius) as one can readily see in Pufendorf's Of the Law of Nature and Nations, Book IV, chapter IV, paragraphs viii-X.

In fact, in Book IV, chapter IV, paragraph IX Of the Law of Nature and Nations, Pufendorf had partially commented the very passage from Grotius that Hume quotes. I quote Pufendorf in Basil Kennett's translation (from the fourth, corrected 1729 edition which includes Barbeyrac's notes): 

Thus far Grotius is in the right, that were the first negative Communion to continue, without disturbing the general Peace, Men must live with great plainness and simplicity, contented to feed on what they found, to dwell in Caves, and either to go naked or to cover their Bodies with the Barks of Trees, and the Skins of Beasts: Whereas, if they grew more inclined to a Life of Elegance and Refinement, the Conveniences of which must be acquired by Diligence; there was a necessity of introducing distinct Properties. But when he adds, That this Communion might have lasted, had Men lived under the Influence of an eminent Charity and Friendship towards each other; he confounds negative Communion with positive; such as was observed by the Essenes of old, by the primitive Christians inhabiting Jerusalem, and by those who now follow an Ascetic Life: For this can never be constituted nor kept up, except amongst a few Persons, and those endued with singular Modesty and Goodness. When Men are scattered into different places, and fixed at a distance from each other, it would be a foolish Labour to gather all the Provision into one Heap, and to distribute it out of the common Mass. And where ever there is a great Multitude of People, many must of necessity be found, who through Injustice and Avarice, will refuse to maintain a due Equality, either in the Labour required for the getting of the Fruit, or afterwards in the Consumption of them. Plato insinuates as much as this, when he makes only Deities, and the Sons of Deities, Members of the Republic where he would have this Communion absolutely obtain. But 'tis idle to believe, that when Men were divided into numerous Families, they neither actually established, or had any design to establish such a Communion. Lastly, it's a true Remark of Grotius, That things were at first turned into Property, not by the bare Act of the Mind, or by Thought and inward inclination. For neither could others know what any Person intended to keep for his own, to direct them in abstaining from it, and besides, it was very possible that many should be Competitors for the fame thing. There was need therefore of some external Act of the Mind formal seisin [sign?],* which, that it might be capable of producing a Moral Effect, or an Obligation in others to forswear what each Man had thus taken for his peculiar, must necessarily have depended on the force of some precedent Covenant: When things which lay together in Common were to be parted amongst many, then the Business was transacted by express Covenant. But a tacit Covenant was sufficient, when Men fixed a Property in things which the first Dividers had left for waste. For we must suppose them to have agreed, that whatever in the primary Partition had not been assigned to any particular Owner, should belong to him who first took possession of it. [emphases in original; modernized spelling by ES]+

What's neat, given my present purposes, is that Pufendorf praises Grotius for exactly the passage that Hume cites as the origin of his own theory. In fact, Pufendorf's criticism of Grotius here also kind of anticipates Hume's account because Pufendorf implies that Grotius theory is too na��ve: because Grotius' approach presuppose a too rosy picture of human nature ("singular Modesty and Goodness") and cannot scale up ("except amongst a few Persons"). That is, the question is, as Pufendorf shows, how can large-scale tacit social conventions be established among potentially self-regarding people? Pufendorf's own answer seems to be: through trial and error and habit/custom.

Building non-trivially on Locke (whose contribution is ignored), Hume's explicit answer is "through a sense of common interest; which sense each man feels in his own breast, which he remarks in his fellows, and which carries him, in concurrence with others, into a general plan or system of actions." This answer may seem to work if one allows, as Hume stipulates, that one generally benefits from the common interest.

However, Adam Smith recognizes that Hume's answer puts the cart before the horse, because it is not obvious how the common interest is recognized before the convention is relatively stable, and so Smith suggests that the convention itself originates in and is stabilized by drawing on our reactive attitudes (especially resentment and gratitude). But that story I have told elsewhere. 

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*A seisin is a possession of a fief. But it seems more likely that 'sign' is intended here in light of Pufendorf's account of the origin of social/moral entities.

+I thank Dario Perinetti for nudging me back to Pufendorf. And I thank Bart Wilson and Vernon Smith for emphasizing the importance (alongside Buckle and Haakonssen) of Pufendorf to the Scots.