Eric Schliesser's Blog, page 16

Yolton's Polemics with Strauss, PT 1

I learned a few days ago -- [HT Michael Kremer] -- that (see here) Gilbert Ryle was the supervisor was of John William Yolton (1921-2005). This made me decide that I should treat Yolton as 'analytic.' That he is an analytic philosopher is by no means obvious when one reads his (1955) "Criticism and Histrionic Understanding" (Ethics (65):3) with its learned references to Hegel, Collingwood, Santayana, Croce, and Cassirer even if one allows that, unlike so many other Analytic partisans, Ryle was himself widely and deeply read in non-analytic philosophy of the age, especially (as Ami L. Thomasson (2002) summarizes) the phenomenological tradition. 

In the 1955 article, Yolton explicitly takes on a claim that he (not implausibly) attributes to Strauss' (1953) Natural Right and History (hereafter: NRH):

For Strauss, there are just two alternatives: either we are able to ground moral criticism in natural rights, or we are faced with moral nihilism. By extension, the same alternative could be posed in aesthetics and social criticism. While Strauss's defense or plea for natural right seems anachronistic, the fears which he expresses are genuine. But though genuine, they are misplaced, based as they are upon a misunderstanding of both the implications of the relativistic analysis of criticism and of the possibilities of criticism in general. There is nothing in cannibalism or civilization, in communism or democracy, which compels us to accept either. Every critical point of view rests upon certain accepted values which are valuable because they are accepted. But to urge that such a view opens the danger of moral chaos is simply to overlook the nature of moral conviction as well as to misunderstand the relation between criticism and values. (206)

That Yolton was familiar with Strauss' NRH, even a critic of it, surprised me greatly. And it is worth explaining why. This post is part of a series -- (recall here; here; here; especially this one; here; and here; here; here) -- on the reception of Strauss by analytic philosophers in the post WWII era (triggered by an invite by Sander Verhaegh). The (1952) dissertation Ryle supervised, was clearly the basis for Yolton's influential book (1956) John Locke and the Way of Ideas (OUP). In its "preface" Ryle is explicitly thanked for his "many critical suggestions" and guidance (p. x).  

I didn't recall any mention of Strauss in the book, so I went back to search for it and found none. Since Strauss' interpretation of Locke is so important to the argument of NRH, and Yolton clearly was highly familiar with it, I was rather puzzled by the situation. Even more so, because Yolton's key claim about Locke's Essay (highlighted in the preface), it that "its philosophical doctrines were almost always directly related to the moral and religious disputes of the day." (viii) And that is Strauss's territory (especially the first two chapters of Yolton's book which deal, inter alia, with the law of nature).

One hypothesis I entertained was that Yolton had decided he didn't need to engage with NRH after (say) reading the highly critical (1955) review of Strauss' NRH in The Philosophical Review 64(2) by John Plamenatz (1912���1975). Plamenatz was (quoting Berlin's entry in ODNB) "trained in the use of the methods of such British thinkers as G. E. Moore, Bertrand Russell, H. A. Prichard, C. D. Broad, and W. D. Ross which dominated the Oxford scene in the 1920s and early 1930s."* And, Jo Wolff includes Plamenatz in his influential survey of the history analytic political philosophy. In his review (which, to be sure, is not only critical), Plamenatz had claimed that "Dr. Strauss's assertion that Locke's conception of natural right is fundamentally the same as Hobbes's is easily refuted." (p. 301). In fact, Plamenatz closes his review with a swipe at Strauss' method:

In several places Dr. Strauss suggests that one or other of the philosophers discussed by him was exercising caution in keeping his real opinions hidden from the vulgar, and that that is why he has been misunderstood. The reader is given the impression that he is being taken into the confidence of some of the greatest thinkers of the past. Whether he finds this impression flattering will depend on what he thinks of Dr. Strauss's book. (302)

But, of course, that a reader is flattered -- and surely Plamenatz is right about the effect of Strauss' writing on some -- is not itself an argument that Strauss' hermeneutics is unreliable or that the interpretations are false.

Anyway, my current guess is that Yolton's book went to the press before he read NRH. But that Yolton recognized Strauss' views were an alternative to his own, and worth refuting, is indisputable. For, in 1958, Yolton published "Locke on the Law of Nature" in The Philosophical Review 67(4). In it, Yolton explains that one of the main reasons "a reappraisal of Locke on the law of nature is" needed is in virtue of "the violently distorted interpretation recently advanced by Leo Strauss." (p. 478; he then cites NRH.) In his (1958) paper Yolton draws on his own book. And, in fact, the 1958 article is one long argument that Strauss' method is bogus and his reading of Locke (as, inter alia, a kind of Hobbesian) utterly misleading.

My current view is that Yolton's 1958 essay, marks a sharp distinction in the reception of Strauss by analytic philosophers.** Although its impact was really felt, only after Peter Lasslett's edition of Locke's Two Treatise, which strongly condemns' Strauss' reading of Locke and appeals to Yolton's essay, started to circulate widely. (Yolton's essay is itself barely cited before the mid 1970s.) I return to this paper in a follow up digression.

Okay, with that in place let's return to Yolton's earlier (1955) engagement which is much more respectful and also, de facto, an immanent critique (and also one that kind of anticipates Gadamer's philosophy).

Let's grant on Yolton's behalf  that his position embraces a circularity ("Every critical point of view rests upon certain accepted values which are valuable because they are accepted.") It's not a vicious circularity because the value is, in part, to use anachronistic language that accepted values help solve coordination problems; knowing the wide acceptance of certain values helps predict behavior and also helps organize political life. (This is among the reasons why they are valuable because they are accepted.) This is a kind of Humean point (although Yolton doesn't cite him here.) My reason for mentioning Hume should be clear below.

Okay, how does Yolton respond to Strauss? (Much of the article is a working out of Yolton's own view on the complex relationship between relativity of one's values and possibility of mutual criticism.) Here's what he says after developing his own views (which can be intuited from what I quote which is the final closing paragraph(s) of the paper):

Then it is time to set forth with boldness and firmness the criticism entailed in our position. Histrionic understanding, while being an indispensable condition for worth-while criticism, does not (as it first seems) render criticism impotent; rather it discloses its only valid habitat.

The bias and externality which are provincial and objectionable without histrionic understanding lose their discreditability [sic] when combined with a careful, sympathetic understanding. For some time now the critical problem has been resolved by the historicist emphasis upon the relativity of understanding viewed as conditioned by one's time and place. Such emphasis is obviously overstated since we can transcend our cultural context and understand other points of view internally. Criticism needs to be harnessed to such histrionic understanding, but it is necessary also to free ourselves from the either-or position of assuming, as Strauss does, that either criticism is based upon some absolute, such as natural right, or we end in moral nihilism. The kind of criticism which we make of other points of view is controlled by the kind of values inherent in our own position. Once the other position is understood intrinsically, our own commitments compel us to criticize. Since all criticism must be thus rooted in a point of view, the kind of placid change into cannibalism suggested by Strauss will be avoided simply by vigilance, by speaking and acting in defense of our own point of view. Criticisms cannot be made in vacuo; we must look to some set of values, to some basic convictions in order to determine what criticisms are appropriate in any given situation. Such a recognition of the intimate, dependent relation between accepted values or convictions and criticisms will not, of course, take care of the other problem that bothers Strauss: how can we say that our position should triumph over cannibalism? But the problem here is ill-stated, and the anticipated solution frustrating. The only solution for this problem tolerated by Strauss is some totalistic or some indisputable point of view which can legislate between right and wrong, while itself being immune to such ethical decisions. The desire to solve the issue of such moral and social tensions is urgent and important. But if we assume, as has been done so often in the past, that the solution of this problem must either be justified philosophically (in the sense of finding some absolute basis from which to resolve the conflict) or else degenerate into brute force or moral nihilism, we have misconceived the nature of this particular problem. The resolution of such moral or social conflict cannot be done in the manner required by Strauss simply because it is not a dispute which has that sort of solution: there is no point of view which is itself immune from criticism. Important as this area of ideological tension is, it cannot be solved by theory. We can only trust to reason and the council table for a peaceful coexistence. (211-212)

If I understand Yolton correctly here, his solution to the dilemma posed by Strauss, is to deny that it is capable of philosophical resolution (" it is not a dispute which has that sort of solution.") This has a Humean sensibility. I believe this is also Strauss' all things considered point of view. But rather as understanding that as a concession to Strauss, Yolton thinks it is an alternative and he opens the door to wise statecraft: "we can only trust to reason and the council table."

It suspect that Yolton means here to invoke the United Nations' Security Council. But it might be also understood as a metaphor for either great power discussions (this is how I understand what he is saying) or be understood for more general commitment to civilization as peaceful coexistence, that is, (recall this post on Khan; this one on Coetzee) of keeping the conversation going (rather than resort to arms). Either way, while philosophy may not be absent around the council table (recall 'reason') in the end it's a kind of prudence and skill -- Locke might see this as part of the 'art of government' - that maintains co-existence between incompatible viewpoints. While I have some practical sympathy for Yolton's position (and by no means hostile to his kind of relativism), having a seat at the table cannot be taken for granted in the manner he does. To be continued.

*Interestingly enough Berlin goes on to insert Plamenatz into a much wider intellectual current (which I think Berlin himself identified with):

Plamenatz believed in, and rigorously practised, careful, rational analysis: he examined the meaning, implications, presuppositions, internal consistency, and validity of each and every view he discussed, and did so in exceptionally clear language, free from rhetoric or the use beyond absolute necessity of technical terms���the prose of a rational man intending to be understood by other equally rational, critically minded readers. This was in the tradition of British political thought before and after its late nineteenth-century Hegelian phase, and Plamenatz fitted into it perfectly. 

Of course, it's possible that Yolton was aware of NRH, and decided to give it a separate treatment rather than try to fit into the structure of his monograph.

**Regular readers may be surprised by this claim because Ernest Nagel's (1961) Structure engages with Strauss's arguments. And so my claim is not intended as an exception-less law. 

This is hinted in his treatment of Weber: "Philosophy, the life devoted to the quest for evident knowledge available to man as man, would itself rest on an unevident, arbitrary, or blind decision." (NRH 75)

On Tyranny and Method: Vlastos vs Strauss

I noted a few weeks ago that near the end of his career, in (1991) Socrates: Ironist and Moral Philosopher, Vlastos praises "Irwin's brilliant review of Leo Strauss." (I noted, too, that Irwin's review is nothing of the sort--it's a non-review, and would be thought scandalous if professional philosophy weren't also, at times, political in character.) Vlastos makes this claim in note 71, which is about the "shortcomings of Xenophon's perceptions of Socrates as a philosopher." Note 71 is attached to the following passage.

One could hardly imagine a man who in taste, temperament, and critical equipment (or lack of it) would differ as much as did Xenophon from leading members of the inner Socratic circle. The most important difference, of course, is that people like Plato, Aristippus, Antisthenes, Euclid, Phaedo were philosophers with aggressively original doctrines of their own, one of them a very great philosopher, while Xenophon, versatile and innovative litterateur, creator of whole new literary genres, does not seem versed nearly as well as they in philosophy or as talented in this area.'71 This is the first thing we need to understand about him, if we are to use his witness about Socrates, as we must, for we cannot afford to neglect a single scrap of first-hand testimony, as Xenophon's no doubt is.--"The evidence of Aristotle and Xenophon," p. 99.

The reason, then, that Vlastos needs note 71, is to block the idea that [a] Xenophon was a very good or able philosopher in order support Vlastos' claim that [b] Xenophon is the odd man out of the leading people in the inner Socratic circle. Vlastos (1907-1991) goes on to claim in the note that "For what can be said on Xenophon's behalf by a spirited, intelligently non-Straussian defender, see Morrison, 1987: 9-22." What follows from this, then, is that Vlastos recognizes that the Straussian (and Strauss) accepts something like [a] and denies [b].*

This post originates in my interest in finding critical engagements with Leo Strauss within analytic philosophy in Strauss' lifetime during the post-WWII era (triggered by (recall here; here; here; especially this one; here; and here; here) an invite by Sander Verhaegh). And it's clear that by the time of Irwin's (1974) review of Strauss' Xenophon's Socrates in The Philosophical Review which appeared within a year after Strauss' death (1973), the convention within analytic circles of disparaging Strauss and Straussians in print was established.

It is worth noting that Vlastos didn't need to appeal to Irwin for the denial of [a]. He always thought that Xenophon had a "pedestrian mind" who probably couldn't "rise to such [platonic/philosophical] refinements." (Vlastos reviewing On Tyranny by Leo Strauss with a preface by Alvin Johnson (1951) The Philosophical Review, 60(4): 593.)+ I am quoting a bit out of context, but the point stands. In fact, Vlastos' 1951 review of Strauss' (1948) treatment of Xenophon's Hiero is a much better review qua the platonic form of a review than Irwin's (although that low bar turns out not to be cleared by much). Vlastos' (1951) review starts as follows:

Xenophon's Hiero turns to the much debated question whether the tyrant can be happy and answers it with an emphatic affirmative. The tyrant Hiero concedes that what ruins his chances of happiness is mainly the distrust and hostility of his subjects. The poet Simonides replies that this is just what can be fixed; he offers a recipe of skillful and generous statesmanship which will make him loved and, therefore, happy.

Professor Strauss cannot bring himself to believe that a pupil of Socrates could have condoned tyranny to the extent of assuring tyrants that they can be happy and showing them how. So he argues, against the general view, that the "tyrannical" teaching of Simonides in this dialogue is not Xenophon's own; to get at the latter one must "add to, and subtract from Hiero's and Simonides' speeches" (p. 50). The plusses and minuses to the text with which he seeks to redeem Xenophon's Socratic virtue would have astonished the retired colonel who was nothing if not plain spoken and straightforward. Short of its subtleties, the argument boils down to the question: Are the views of Simonides here demonstrably at variance with those we can certainly ascribe to Xenophon on the strength of his other writings. (592)

This passage does not assert the denial of [a], but the way Xenophon is described [c] "the retired colonel who was nothing if not plain spoken and straightforward" contributes to it. The problem with [c] is that Vlastos should have known better. As he notes in 1991 (quoted above), whatever else he was, Xenophon, was a [d] "versatile and innovative litterateur." And while it's possible to reconcile [c] with [d] in all kinds of ways that preserve Vlastos' position (and make it coherent in the technical sense), the much more natural interpretation of Xenophon is, once one recognizes him for the "versatile and innovative litterateur" that he is acknowledged to be, that [e] Xenophon sometimes presents himself as plain spoken and straightforward, but that this is part of his larger literary skill. Notice that strictly speaking [e] is completely agnostic on [a] and even on the right interpretation of the Hiero.

Now, at this point it would be natural to evaluate Vlastos' criticism of Strauss' reading of the Hiero on its merits. But it is worth noting that here Vlastos does not object to Strauss' methodology (with its willingness to engage in esoteric readings) as such. Rather he thinks it badly suited to Xenophon, who is simply claimed to be not that kind of thinker. In fact, it would be wrong to treat Vlastos in 1951 as an anti-Straussian (avant la lettre) or even a fierce critic of Strauss. Here is an excerpt from the final paragraph of the review:

Those who have read and admired Professor Strauss's earlier book on Hobbes will be disappointed in this monograph. The author's learning is still considerable, the agility of his mind exceptional; the weak ness of this work can be traced directly to his present addiction to the strange notion that a historical understanding of a historical thinker is somehow a philosophical liability. If the author had used, instead of spurning, the historical method (surely not to be confused with "historicism"), he would have seen two clues out of the problem raised by the Hiero's lessons in happy and virtuous tyranny. For one thing, the historical Xenophon was not just a shadow of Socrates. He was an upper-class Athenian, an ardent admirer of Sparta, and most of all a successful military commander, bent on generalizing the art of efficient man-management from the army camp to all areas of human relation ships, political, domestic, and economic. (593)

Vlastos' admiration of Strauss' (1936) The Political Philosophy of Hobbes is, I suspect, sincere. (In it, Strauss had put Hobbes in context with great detail to Hobbes' development.) And, in fact, Vlastos treats Strauss as having switched methodology between 1936 and 1948 from the 'historical method' to the method of 'plusses and minuses to the text.' In order to avoid confusion (with historicism), let's call the historical method which aims at historical understanding, 'contextualism.' 

However, it is pretty clear that whatever Strauss is up to in On Tyranny, it's not merely historical understanding. This becomes obvious from the 1954 (French) and 1963 (English) editions expanded with the material of the Strauss Koj��ve debate (recall my post on Pippin's three essays). The correspondence between Strauss and Koj��ve  makes clear that Strauss actively sought out Koj��ve's review.** And in light of the debate, it's quite impossible to ignore the fact that On Tyranny is also an intervention in contemporary philosophy (and, perhaps even, the political atmosphere). [I am not alone in noticing this; see the then contemporary review by Robert D. Cumming in JPhil.]

To be sure, one may  well argue that contextualism and its output, historical understanding, are capable of preparing the way for an intervention in contemporary philosophy. But they are not the same thing. 

And, in fact, I am not guilty of prolepsis here. Because Strauss is quite explicit about of his official intentions for the book on the first page of his analysis: "tyranny is a danger coeval with political life" and this is why he submits it to "political scientists." He goes on to claim:

The analysis of tyranny that was made by the first political scientists was so dear, so comprehensive, and so unforgettably expressed that it was remembered and understood by generations which did not have any direct experience of actual tyranny. On the other hand, when we were brought face to face with tyranny-with a kind of tyranny that surpassed the boldest imagination of the most powerful thinkers of the past-our political science failed to recognize it. (Expanded and Revised (2002) edition, pp. 22-23--all my quotes of Strauss are from this edition.)

So, Strauss is clearly trying to instruct and correct a manifest failure of contemporary political science, and by retrieving Xenophon (who seems to be treated as a 'political scientist') to (and to be cheeky) correct for a Kuhn-loss. And, in fact, Strauss immediately makes an important categorical distinction between two kinds of tyranny: (i) the 'elementary natural form of tyranny' of classical periods; and (ii) the (what we might call) 'monstrous' (or totalitarian) tyranny of our age which can draw on a "science applied to "the conquest of nature" [and] ...popularized and diffused," (23) that is the Enlightenment project. What they have in common is that they are an "essentially...faulty political order." (66)

Vlastos' reading of Strauss' work is, thus, actually quite puzzling. (Also in light of Strauss' motto from Macaulay.) It completely and rather comically misses the stated point of Strauss' book. To anticipate my conclusion: it fails as a book-review. Again, to assert this is not to take sides in the debate over [a].

What is, curious, however, is that Vlastos explicitly recognizes that Xenophon was a kind of expert in 'man-management' and so may well have something to teach in what one may call the art of government even if it is limited by the fact that his art primarily is derived from the army camp. That is, even if one were to grant that one shouldn't read Xenophon in order to understand (say) liberal democracy, I think it's pretty obvious that Vlastos himself should have been able to grasp that from his own commitments about Xenophon, he might well be worth reading on tyranny (if this is understood, say, as the art of efficient 'man-management' on the plan of an army camp.)

Let me wrap up. According to Vlastos, Strauss is wrong to claim [f] "that the "tyrannical" teaching of Simonides in [Hiero] is not Xenophon's own." (592) Most of Vlastos' review is really about contesting this claim (and the denial of [a] is in support of [f].) However, what is most peculiar about Vlastos' presentation of Strauss' position is that Strauss actually explicitly denies that Simonides fully endorses tyranny: "to see the broad outline of Simonides' criticism of tyranny at its best, one has only to consider the result of his suggested correction of tyranny..." (68)

It gets stranger; recall that Vlastos claims that "Professor Strauss cannot bring himself to believe that a pupil of Socrates could have condoned tyranny." But this, in fact, is what Strauss explicitly does allow. He assert that "While Xenophon seems to have believed that beneficent tyranny or the rule of a tyrant who listens to the counsels of the wise is, as a matter of principle, preferable to the rule of laws or to the rule of elected magistrates as such, he seems to have thought that tyranny at its best could hardly, if ever, be realized." (75, emphasis added)

To put this in anachronistic terms: Strauss explicitly diagnoses in Xenophon a preference for what we might call the ideal type of benevolent dictatorship as an ideal worth having. (To say that is not to claim that such benevolent dictatorship is the best kind of rule for Xenophon, or that absent the influence of the wise, tyranny has anything to say for it.)  So, it is a mistake to claim that Strauss deviates from the "general view" of the interpretation of the Hiero as such.

To sum up: Vlastos's review fails to convey accurately what Strauss' book is about, and fails to convey properly Strauss' views. What Vlastos does properly convey is that Strauss' interpretation of Xenophon deviates from contextualism and relies on a method of interpretation that would be a source of ongoing controversy about Strauss. And eventually this controversy of his method, in turn, has functioned as a mechanism (for the allocation of scarce jobs and) not to engage with the underlying ideas of Strauss. (That's compatible with these being false or worse.) But, as we have seen in this series of posts, Vlastos' (1951) stance was still the outlier. Through the 1950s and early 1960s Strauss was debated on the merits of his arguments by analalytic types. And in my next post I turn to Yolton's (1955) reflection on Strauss' Natural Right and History, which in many ways is the most serious 'analytic' response to Strauss on record that I have been able to locate. To be continued.

 

*One problem with [b] is that it rather quickly rules out other problematic characters (not the least Alcibiades, Critias and Charmides) by definition. And so it also sides against the Athenian people on the charges against Socrates.

+Alvin Johnson is himself a fascinating character (a former president of the American Economics Association), who as the head of the university of exile did much to save the lives of Jewish refugees. In later editions of Strauss's On Tyranny, which incorporate material from Strauss'  debate(s) with Koj��ve and Voegelin, this preface is omitted and this fact is never mentioned, although it can be inferred from an editorial note to a letter by Strauss to Koj��ve (22 August 1948).

**To be sure, I am not claiming debating Koj��ve was always the intention.

Mediating between Strauss and Dewey: the forgotten radical liberal Arnold Kaufman

In this paper political theory is regarded as properly serving an instrumental function. This view is elaborated, then defended against the criticisms of Professor Leo Strauss...
Political theory should be a guide to action. The political philosopher should provide those who make policy with principles which will aid them in the attempt to cope with specific sociopolitical problems. Instrumental theories of this type should have two roughly distinguishable components: (1) an ultimate ideal; (2) intermediate ideals in their relation to specific policy recommendations.--Arnold S. Kaufman (1954) "The nature and function of political theory." The journal of philosophy 51.1: 5-22.

This post originates in my interest in finding critical engagements with Leo Strauss within analytic philosophy in the post-WWII era (triggered by (recall here; here; here; especially this one; here; and here) an invite by Sander Verhaegh). The topic intersects with my continuing reflection (recall here; here; here; here; here; here) on Katrina Forrester's In the Shadow of Justice, which convincingly shows that Rawls' Theory of Justice creates a kind of light-cone which does not allow us to discern events behind it. In fact, Forrester mentions Kaufman's work (in the 1960s) on civil disobedience, and treats Kaufman as "the New Left philosopher and intellectual founder of the ��� teach-in.��� (p. 52; see also p. 56; 61--in her footnotes she also alerts the reader to his views on Black reparations and participatory democracy.)

Kaufman died, June 6, 1971, aged 44 when his airplane collided with a military jet while traveling. Oddly, his supervisor at Columbia, Charles Frankel, who in the 1960s served the LBJ administration that Kaufman was battling from the left, died a few years later in an armed robbery in his home in Bedford Hills. In fact, while at University of Michigan, Kaufman was at the center of things at the founding of SDS and the Port Huron Statement (as Tom Hayden acknowledges), and was, as Forrester hints, alongside Marshall Sahlins and Rapaport one of the Michigan faculty key to organizing the first teach-in on the Vietnam War. (Sahlins was the supervisor of Graeber, who in some respects, is the heir to Kaufman.) Later, while at UCLA, he was (despite their non-trivial political differences) one of the most outspoken defenders of Angela Davis' appointment at UCLA and freedom to teach.

The (1954) piece I quoted at the top of this post was published before Kaufman completed his dissertation (on Hobhouse). It situates itself between Dewey, who is the advocate of instrumental political theory (but of whom Kaufman is also critical), and Strauss, and also wishes to draw from both. (How Kaufman draws from Strauss I leave aside here.)

One might well wonder why I treat Kaufman as an 'analytic' philosopher. I have two reasons for this: first, the later work from the 1960s is very naturally read as analytic philosophy.* Second, the early work I discuss here bears the imprint of Ernest Nagel (who was then at Columbia) because it anticipates some of the methodological claims of Nagel's 1954 presidential address (while still advocating a more activist stance).

While, in this post I can only leave this second reason as a promissory note, it's worth noting what Kaufman's two main criticisms of Dewey are: first, on Kaufman's  view there ought be also "a concern with theory, with logical interrelatedness, with the generality of political principles which would be anathema for Dewey." (21) In particular (and this very much echoes Nagel), Kaufman claims (while drawing on the analogy between natural and social science), "there is considerable evidence that attention to conceptual adequacy, to logical interrelatedness, and to the connections between a verbal structure and the events it was designed to help human beings control, will yield a rich reward." (22) And second, Dewey's political theory is too "programmatic in character. His formulations were extremely abstract and he always shied from the difficult task of linking those views to the "concrete" situations of which he was so fond of talking." (22; Kaufman acknowledges, of course, that Dewey also acted quite nobly in concrete situations of which he talked.)

While an older generation of political theorists and intellectual historians is definitely familiar with Kaufman, and there is some scholarship on him, to the best of my knowledge analytic philosophy has completely forgotten him in the post Rawlsian era. For example, in Jo Wolff's authoritative and fascinating survey, "Analytic Political Philosophy" (in the OUP volume on the History of Analytic Philosophy), Kaufman goes unmentioned (presumably because he made no impact on those collected in the series in Philosophy, Politics and Society. This is a shame because Kaufman quite clearly anticipates and pioneers the revival of advocacy (which is an important theme in Wolff's article). 

Kaufman recognizes that Leo Strauss is a fierce critic of the instrumentalist stance.** (He quotes Strauss' Review of Dewey 's German Philosophy and Politics, in Social Research.) And pieces together from scattered remarks in Strauss' writing an argument against the instrumentalist approach. Kaufman writes this before the publication of Natural Right and History (but he is aware that it is about the appear and hopes that in it Strauss will spell out some of the details of the argument that Kaufman attributes to him (see note 17 on p. 19)). Here's Kaufman's reconstruction of Strauss' criticism of instrumentalism:

[Strauss] argues (1) that it is possible and necessary for the philosopher to search for an objective political philosophy; (2) but one cannot be objective unless he escapes the influence of opinion; and, finally, (3) the instrumentalist, because he regards himself as a guide to action instead of as a discoverer of an objective external order, is influenced by opinion. Therefore, the instrumentalist cannot be objective and is unable to embark on that investigation which alone constitutes political philosophy.
This is the skeleton of the argument. (16)

Let's call this reconstruction of Strauss's position the 'contamination argument.' In my view it's quite plausible to attribute something like this position to Strauss. A weakness in the contamination argument is that it's quite possible for somebody to hold an instrumentalist view of theory without oneself engaging in action, and so creates an instrumentalist theory for others to use from the ivory tower arm-chair. And it is not obvious that such a theorist is necessarily influenced by opinion even if, let's grant this for the sake of argument, she must take it into account in how to move from principles to successful policy. (I don't quite return to this below, but see my final paragraph.)

Kaufman recognizes that (1) is connected to Strauss' criticism of relativism (historicism, positivism, etc.) and the Weberian fact-value distinction. He treats (1) as common ground between him and Strauss, and even Dewey by claiming that "Dewey does believe we can discover moral truths, these truths are relative to specific conditions." (17) It's left unclear if Kaufman actually agrees with Dewey's style of relativism. (Strauss would reject Dewey's position as stable.)

Most of Kaufman's criticism focuses on (2) & (3), which he treats jointly. A key issue is what is meant by 'objective' and why it's impossible to attain for the instrumentalist theorist. And Kaufman settles on the view that according to Strauss "no one engaged in political activity is in a position, no matter how carefully he attempts to make his investigations impartial, to acquire an understanding or a knowledge of political fundamentals, to determine the nature of the best regime." (18) In Strauss' terminology in the 'cave' no real knowledge is possible.+

At this point, Kaufman goes on the offensive because rather than trying to figure out what would make the contamination argument stick (if that's possible), he starts criticizing (not unfairly) the lack of specificity in Strauss' position who leaves underexplained how 'understanding or knowledge of political fundamentals [is] acquired.' And Kaufman concludes his method that it is very unlikely that Strauss' method "is continuous with that of the empirical sciences. This constitutes a decisive objection to his underlying theory." (19: emphasis added. Along the way, Kaufman implies that Strauss has no adequate response to Mill's criticism of relying on nature as a standard of adequacy.) 

Kaufman here instantiates what I call "Newton's Challenge to Philosophy," that is to argue from the authority of science to some criticism of an opponent. But this begs the question against Strauss who does not recognize that authority in political philosophy.

In fact, Kaufman has many astute and telling criticism of the details of Strauss' philosophy (including on Strauss' better known criticism of the distinction between facts and values). Kaufman is at his best, in fact, when he channels Hume to point that nature sometimes is itself a source of ungrounded action (this is the argument that eludes Oppenheim when he discerns that Strauss is relying on the PSR (recall here; here)). It is a shame (if you were to care about such matters that) for the reception of Strauss, that to the best of my knowledge no sober debate about these criticism ensued subsequently because unlike many criticism of Strauss they go to the heart of Strauss' project. And unlike a later generation of analytic critics, there is no lazy dismissal.

As should be clear from my comments, I do not view Kaufman's response to the contamination argument as fully adequate. He basically claims not to understand some of its key terms (and does show that Strauss has not clarified them properly), and so ultimately sets it aside. This is unfortunate because Strauss' criticism of the instrumentalist position has been echoed in recent times by analytic philosophers who claim that, say, feminist philosophy (and other 'activist' philosophies) is not really philosophy. (In fact, many of Strauss' apparently substantive positions have been quietly adopted by analytic philosophers in later generations.) Such claims against the instrumentalist conception have been met by vigorous rebuttal from (say amongst others) Dotson and in a number of papers, Srinivasan. But the recent analytic critics rarely dare to put their criticism explicitly in the elitist terms of Strauss (and generally fail to reflect on the nature of political philosophy). This matters not because one must agree with Strauss' return to natural right (and the ancients), or  his elitism, but rather because the most realistic interpretations (and justification) of our imperfect liberal democracies (as one can find in the writings of, say, Hume, Smith, Madison, Kant, and, say, more recently, Arendt) crucially suppose that political life is indeed ruled by opinion and so, if the argument isn't met, that such contamination appears to be inevitable for democratic theorists (broadly conceived). 

Kaufman himself falls in the wide gap between Marxism and Rawlsianism (even its leftist incarnation). With the demise of the New Left and the lack of students to take up his program it is no surprise that he left little mark on post Rawlsian philosophy. Yet, many of his papers from the 1960s have, given that they are the product of immersion in political activism, a sense of freshness and immediacy that I hope to share with you in later digressions. While I do not share in his politics or even his philosophic sensibility, one cannot help but be saddened that his life and career were interrupted just as he was developing his own systematic conception of what a liberal philosophy might be. To be continued.

*This was, in fact, also Steve Darwall's judgment (personal communication) on a 1963 paper on Ability (published in JPhil). This paper features an acknowledgment of Donald Davidson. His 1962 paper in Mind, critical of Isaiah Berlin, acknowledges Frankena.

**To the best of my knowledge, Quentin Skinner is the only that has noted Kaufman as critic of Strauss in print. See his famous (1969) article "Meaning and Understanding in the History of Ideas" footnote 49 on p. 13.

+As Kaufman notes, attributing this to Strauss is by no means entirely straightforward because Strauss also claims that "the historical setting of one particular philosophy [might be] the ideal condition for the discovery of the political truth." (quoted on p. 18) This is from Strauss' (1949) "Political Philosophy and History" (JHI) p. 41. In context, Strauss is criticizing the historicist for not being able to rule out this possibility. Since it echoes Socrates' position in the Republic, Kaufman's hesitation is astute. Having said that, and this is a more general problem in reading Strauss, in criticizing some position X, he is rarely straightforwardly endorsing the negation of X.

The reason I mention this is because one of the most telling criticisms by Kaufman of Strauss is this: 

Strauss fails to realize that though one may have a conception of the best political order, yet, because of the uneliminable [sic] affective element implicit in the commitment to any political theory, there may be disagreements which rational mediation will not, on the psychological level, resolve, and to which rational considerations have not, on the logical level, any relevance. (21; emphasis in original)

My own view is that this, is in fact, Strauss' all things considered position and one of his grounds to claim that all such conceptions bottom out in faith or a decision, or at least that the question of what the best political order is, is not settled decisively yet (hence my treatment of him as a skeptic). Rather than arguing this here, I cite Steven Smith (2009) here. I have some sympathy for Strauss' zetetic skepticism, but not other features of his stance.

 

With Cameos by I.J. Good and Carnap; Felix Oppenheim vs Leo Strauss, pt 2.

(C) Non-Cognitivism and Value-Commitments. Non-cognitivism does not maintain that value-words, even in the intrinsic sense, are meaningless, but only that they have normative, evaluative, directive, rather than cognitive meaning. Natural law theorists are therefore mistaken when they claim, as e.g., Leo Strauss does, that the denial of natural law implies "the prohibition against value judgments in social science," (p. 50) [note to: Leo Strauss, Natural Right and History (Chicago, 1953), p. 52.]

....

(d) Non-Cognitivism and Rational Choice. Some natural law theorists have reacted to this as follows: admittedly, non-cognitivism does not deny cognitive status to extrinsic value-judgments or to other empirical statements but only to intrinsic value-judgments. Admittedly also, the denial of natural law neither precludes value-commitments nor entails any particular normative system. However, if valuations are but the expression of subjective value-feelings, all preferences are therefore capricious, all choices irrational, and all behavior irresponsible. Thus, according to Leo Strauss, the denial of natural law implies that

we cannot have any knowledge regarding the ultimate principles of our choices, i.e. regarding their soundness or unsoundness; our ultimate principles have no other support than our arbitrary and hence blind preferences.... We cannot live any more as responsible beings. [Note to: Leo Strauss, op. cit., pp. 4, 6.]

And John Wild criticizes the "extreme irrationalism" of the

noncognitive or emotive theory of ethics which reduces the whole phenomenon of obligation to the subjective compulsion of raw appetite or desire.

To deny the natural law thesis is not to deny that the criteria of rationality are applicable to choosing and acting as well as to thinking. Conversely, rational decision-making does not presuppose that intrinsic value-judgments have cognitive status. It would be paradoxical indeed, if rational behavior depended on belief in a mistaken epistemological theory.

To make a rational choice," the decision-maker must predict the consequences of each of the alternative courses of action open to him in a given situation. His decision will be rational provided these anticipations are based on the total evidence available to him. Such predictions are, of course, true only with a certain degree of probability, and a decision may be rational, yet unsuccessful, and vice versa. -Felix E. Oppenheim,  "The Natural Law Thesis: Affirmation or Denial?." American Political Science Review 51.1 (1957): p. 52

This post originates in my interest in finding critical engagements with Leo Strauss within analytic philosophy in the post-WWII era (triggered by (recall here; here; here; especially this one; and here) an invite by Sander Verhaegh). So, following up on a recent post (recall) I am interested in Felix Oppenheim's criticism of Leo Strauss. To the best of my knowledge, Oppenheim was one of the few and probably most prominent political philosophers working within analytic philosophy (alongside, perhaps, Margaret Macdonald and Thomas Dewar Weldon) in the 1940s and 50s. (Oppenheim lived until 2011, and his distinguished career continued well beyond these years.)

As I noted, in 1955 Oppenheim criticized Strauss for claiming that relativism about values leads to nihilism. Oppenheim and Strauss agree that in Oppenheim's relativism, the principles of our actions our bases on ungrounded preferences. (The ground for Strauss has to be something like the PSR.) And, Strauss argues (down a rather quick slippery slope), in virtue of these preferences lacking a proper ground, we cannot truly believe in them -- they become, as it were, random for ourselves, and so when we act on them we are, in a sense, play-acting or inauthentic, and -- more important -- we "cannot live...as responsible beings."

In 1955, Oppenheim understands Strauss' criticism as a psychological thesis. And so he refutes it by way of empirical-historical evidence. This also shows he is unconcerned by it because he understand his own moral relativism as an epistemological thesis.

Even if one is utterly unmoved by Strauss's argument (which is expressed rather concisely), it's pretty clear that Oppenheim has misjudged it. Strauss' claim is not a contribution to psychology, but existential. And the fact that that Strauss thinks our preferences lack ground means that for him they are fundamentally unexplained from the perspective of rationality. (This is why I initially guessed he is relying on the PSR here for argumentative purposes.)* So, Strauss's position is much more related to epistemology than Oppenheim allows.

I suspect Oppenheim himself felt something akin to the problem I have just diagnosed because in his 1957 APSR article, he returns to the debate with Strauss and quoted (in redacted form) the same passages as he did in 1955. But he offers a new response.

The response is basically Humean in character, although (following the authority of  I. J. Good: 1967) I think Oppenheim's terminology is ultimately derived from Carnap's 1947 ("On the Application of Inductive Logic.") Judging by Oppenheim's (1950) "Rational Choice" (published in JPhil), Carnap's 1950 book, Logical Foundations of Probability (which incorporates material from the 1947 article) was his source (see p. 343, note 3  in Oppenheim 1950). And, in fact, in the passage quoted from his 1957 APSR article above, Oppenheim is basically drawing on his own account of rational choice (e.g., "To arrive at a rational decision, it is sufficient to make warranted predictions about the significant effects of one's significant alternative potential actions." It's in his discussion of warrant that Oppenheim (1950) reflects on Carnap's account of total evidence, which he modifies slightly for his own purposes.)

I am going to ignore how compelling Oppenheim's view of rational choice is. Although it's notable  how thin the view is; there is no requirement here of internal consistency at a time or over time. It's not even obvious we're dealing with a species of instrumental rationality (because the predictions are in no way connected to the arbitrary preferences or principles on which choices are founded). Having said that, and glancing at his 1950 article, I am assuming that Oppenheimer is assuming a kind of instrumental rationality here, and that he intends to be describing how preferences can be satisfied in light of evidence and knowledge. 

What's important for present purposes about Oppenheim's new response to Strauss is that he blocks the claim that choices founded on ungrounded preferences are arbitrary altogether. They are now constrained by evidence and how it relates to genuine possibilities and one's knowledge of these (since they are based on predictions). In addition, these actions can be intelligible in an important way because a spectator (who becomes privy to the evidence and knowledge used) may well predict and perhaps even understand the choices made. In fact, this is really Oppenheim's point. He wants (looking ahead to his book Dimensions of Freedom) to provide conceptual tools for empirical science. And he understands his position as "an extrinsic value-judgment, namely the empirical hypothesis: whenever you want to bring about the state of affairs which, under the circumstances, will be most valuable (or least disvaluable) to you, apply the rules of rational decision-making." (53)

The Straussian rejoinder is not hard to guess. Such predictable choices or instrumental rationality in the serves of ungrounded or arbitrary ends may well exhibit a species of madness/sociopathy or evil. (That's to say the nihilism charge has not been blocked.) So, I doubt that a Straussian would be very impressed by  Oppenheimer's follow up. This is not to claim that a position like Oppenheimer's cannot be salvaged, but that's for another occassion.

PS You may wonder why I am ignoring the first quoted passage,  (C), above. To the best of my knowledge Oppenheim quotes Strauss out of context. In context Strauss is criticizing Weber's account of the separation of facts and values. 

 

*I put it like that because I actually hold that Strauss is himself a kind of skeptic.

Machery on Science and Philosophy

How can we be responsible and savvy consumers of science, particularly when it gives us morally and politically pleasing narratives? Philosophers��� fascination with the psychology of attitudes is an object lesson.

Some of the most exciting philosophy in the 21st century has been done with an eye towards philosophically significant developments in science. Social psychology has been a reliable source of insights: consider only how much ink has been spilled on situationism and virtue ethics or on Greene���s dual-process model of moral judgment and deontology.

...

Hindsight is of course 20/20, and it would be ill-advised to blame philosophers (including my former self) for taking seriously science in the making. On the other hand, philosophers failed to even listen and a fortiori to give a fair hearing to the dissenting voices challenging the relentless hype by implicit-attitudes cheerleaders. The lesson is not limited to implicit attitudes: the neuroscience of meditation, the neuroscience of oxytocin, the so-called love molecule, the experimental research on epigenetics in humans, and the research on gene x environment interaction in human genetics also come to mind.

Philosophers, including myself, have for decades been too credulous about science, being misled by scientists��� marketing and ignoring the unavoidable uncertainties that affect the scientific process: the frontier of science is replete with unreplicable results, it is affected by hype and exaggeration (COVID researchers, I am looking at you!), and its course is shaped by deeply rooted cognitive and motivational biases. In fact, we should be particularly mindful of the uncertainty of science when it appears to provide a simple explanation for, and promises a simple solution to, the moral, social, and political ills that we find repugnant such as the underrepresentation of women in philosophy and elsewhere and enduring racial inequalities in the broader society.--Edouard Machery "Implicit Attitudes, Science, and Philosophy" @Daily Nous

A few years ago (2014), Merel Lefevere and I coined ���The-Everybody-Did-It��� (TEDI) Syndrome, to discuss symptoms of collective negligence in science and other epistemic communities. We were, of course, not the first to identify group-think nor the first to note that an appeal to TEDI was used by participating individuals as kind of blanket get out of jail card (viz. Machery's claim it would be "ill-advised to blame philosophers"). I mention the date on that paper because it was published before the first study of the The Reproducibility Project was published. In our paper, we draw, en passant, on (1993) Feigenbaum and Levy to alert the reader that different scientific fields have very diverging practices when it comes to replicating results or sharing data and that there are well-known incentives and other formal and informal barriers against publishing replications or dis-conformations.* Our main epistemic point was that one cannot assume that scientific fields are perfectly functioning communicative communities (with a perfect market in ideas). 

This point was not a sudden revelation for me. In my very first (2005) article in the philosophy of economics a decade earlier, I drew on work by Deirdre McCloskey, who had been warning against the cult of statistical significance for a long time, to point out that often, in the absence of robust background theory, the use of statistical significance created the illusion of scientific rigor. I also argued that much of social science, including elite reaches of economics, had a confirmatory bias rather than (with a nod to Popper) what I called a 'stress-testing' attitude.**

In his piece, Machery simultaneously presents himself (and other philosophers) as victims ("misled by scientists��� marketing"), as na��ve ("too credulous"), and wishful thinking ("motivational bias") amongst other ills. While I applaud his willingness to take stock and derive lessons from the past, I would argue, by contrast, that Machery and his peers could have done better if he hadn't viewed himself as a "consumer" of science, but as a responsible [since we're in the realm of economic metaphors] co-producer of knowledge. My interest is not to score-keep, but to ensure that we learn the right lessons (some of which Machery also advocates). What do I have in mind?

The consumer model posits a deferential asymmetry between the expert specialist scientist and the philosopher. That's not altogether surprising because the expert is (ahh) an expert whereas the philosopher is not. And so lurking in Machery's narrative is a strict cognitive division of labor in which all philosophers need to do -- when they want to use some bit of social science for their own end -- is sample (say) abstracts and conclusions and then choose the right one that will satisfy their needs. The consumer on this (tacit) model is not or barely responsible for the quality control of the science she selects.

And that's because in the consumer model there is generally a commitment to the proposition that scientific communities have what we might call an efficient market in ideas. And this proposition tends to entail that quality control within science is thorough and rapidly arbitrages away any serious epistemic problems. Machery recognizes that this can't be quite right ("the frontier of science is replete with unreplicable results"), but his main solution (in the post), is to be suspicious of simple solutions for social ills, while undoubted salutary, leaves the consumer model in place.

Now, the previous paragraphs are a bit of caricature (not the least about Machery who has the skillset to engage on quite technical details of science), but treat the consumer model as a provisional ideal type. Here's another norm of science associated with a different ideal type (it's associated with Michael Polanyi's ideas about the republic of science and the role of adjoining disciplines in maintaining quality control in the whole chain of disciplines): when you use science in non-trivial fashion for your own epistemic ends, you re-do the calculations, learn to use the relevant models, and where possible check the evidence and arguments, etc.+ Obviously, that falls short of replicating experiments and being authoritative in the field. (But someone like Hasok Chang may well suggest, go replicate!) If philosophers had done their own forensic job in the uptake of (say) social psychology, the fragility of much of the work would have been transparent to them (or at least noticeable) and could have played a fruitful role in their discussions (and arguably in social psychology). Yes, that's very easy to say after the fact, but as I noted above I was saying some such stuff before the fact.***

Obviously, the kind of work I mention in the previous paragraph is time-consuming and also transforms the nature of expertise of those who use social science for their own ends. On this model philosophers who want to deploy social science for their own ends move from being consumers, who rely on external markers of quality control, to being co-responsible for the 'scientific' supply chain. Of course, there are some epistemic short-cuts (say by teaming up with others, getting advanced degrees in an adjoining field) each with their own risk and rewards, but there are no magic bullets. 

Obviously, there are fields (e.g., climate science, bits of neuroscience, epidemiology, etc.) where the underlying science draws itself on so many kinds of expertise and different kinds of evidence, that a lone philosopher is in a very bad position to do any forensic work. In my view, in such areas to be a responsible co-producer of knowledge requires joining either a research team, an interdisciplinary center with active research meetings, or to cultivate a wide area of diverging scientific 'informants' so that you familiarize yourself with the working discussions of such teams when they evaluate the evidence that the composite parts create and how they evaluate claims of other teams (etc.). 

One way to mitigate the possibility of TEDI, Lefevere and I argue, is to make sure that in epistemic communities dissenting voices are heard and credited. (We think that facilitating this, even seeking out and amplifying critics, is a special role of aggregators [Polanyi calls these (recall) 'influentials']--prominent figures in the field that also interface with other fields and policy areas.) So, I am pleased to learn that Machery agrees (although a bit sad he did not credit us, or Polanyi!) As Machery notes, another way to mitigate the possibility of TEDI, is to seek out directly critics of one's views. 

In a zero-sum (funding and jobs) contest it's not so easy to ensure that the dissenters are heard. I mentioned the Feigenbaum and Levy paper because I also learned (from Levy) that back in the day, they had trouble obtaining grants for follow up research. Unsurprisingly they switched research focus. 

Often nay-sayers and critics are shut up by demanding that they offer an alternative theory or alternative approach to solve some problem. (If one is shaped by Kuhnian ideas or cost-benefit analysis ignoring critics may well be thought rational.) This norm  asymmetrically rewards the most confident voices. But the burden of proof ought to be on the producers of knowledge not on the critics. 

But if we philosophers are also knowledge producers, as I claim we are when we use science for our own ends, then we, too, must be willing to listen and seek out the critics of particular sciences within philosophy. In fact, lots of philosophy of special sciences house folk with critical attitudes toward reigning orthodoxy in a field they study without in any sense being anti-scientific (here are some examples, feel free to add your own): think of Stegenga's work on medical evidence, Femke Truijens (a former student) on clinical validity of clinical research in therapy, Jay Oldenburg and Anna Alexandrova on robustness analysis, Joel Katzav (and his colleagues) on the role of probabilistic assessment in climate science, and a whole range of philosophers of physics who helped develop challenges to 'Copenhagen.'

Even so, I suspects lots of professional philosophers worry that criticisms of particular ruling orthodoxy in science, slides into a kind of anti-science (familiar of now relatively dormant strains in continental/STS or in America's religious right), or might be co-opted by politically noxious forces. As Eric Winsberg, Neil Levy, and I warned, we saw this play out in the recent covid crisis.

In fact, riding on the coat-tails of hyped new science to tenure has been a rewarding rite of passage within analytic philosophy for a long time now. (No, I am not going to name names.) As Machery notes, it is kind of constitutive of "some of the most exciting philosophy" to do so.

We need to have more tools to think about the forensic role of philosophers as responsible co-producers of knowledge (when we are doing so), and the inductive risks involved. In my experience philosophers tend to resist wanting to internalize the inductive risk of our own work because we tend to model/understand ourselves as pure truth-seekers. The moment you critically introduce the incentive structure of the scientists or of the philosophers deploying that science, you are quickly accused of 'doing sociology' and somehow ignoring evidence or epistemic issues (it's an interesting fact that within philosophy and economics 'sociology' can still be used as a pejorative). About that some other time more (or just google 'methodological analytic egalitarianism'). But if we leave the consumer model in place, and the incentives for how we evaluate some of the most exciting philosophy, it is a means of making future generations of philosophers as credulous as ours. Perhaps, that's the human condition, but it would be nice if we could try to do better.

 

*Feigenbaum, S., and D.M. Levy. 1993. The market for (ir)reproducible econometrics. Accountability in Research 3(1): 25���43.1993. They were not alone in trying to alert the world to such problem: here's a twitter thread I did with a list of early papers on the replication crisis and problems with statistical significance. 

**Both of these papers have had negligible impact. I also had considerable trouble publishing follow up work, and basically decided to blog about my ideas rather than persist with the gate-keepers  and moved on to other interests.

***I wasn't saying it about tacit bias research. So, I don't blame those folk for not paying to me.:)

+ I learned to appreciate the point from George Smith when we studied the evidential arguments of the Huygens-Newton debate on universal gravity, George redid all their calculations. And that way we discovered that the standard narrative about the debate was highly misleading.

Belloc's Road to Serfdom thesis, Pt2

Substitute for the term ���employee��� in one of our new laws the term ���serf,��� even do so mild a thing as to substitute the traditional term ���master��� for the word ���employer,��� and the blunt words might breed revolt. Impose of a sudden the full conditions of a Servile State upon modern England, and it would certainly breed revolt. But my point is that when the foundations of the thing have to be laid and the first great steps taken, there is no revolt; on the contrary, there is acquiescence and for the most part gratitude upon the part of the poor. After the long terrors imposed upon them through a freedom unaccompanied by property, they see, at the expense of losing a mere legal freedom, the very real prospect of having enough and not losing it.
   All forces, then, are making for the Servile State in this the final phase of our evil Capitalist society in England. The generous reformer is canalised towards it; the ungenerous one finds it a very mirror of his ideal; the herd of ���practical��� men meet at every stage in its inception the ���practical��� steps which they expected and demanded; while that proletarian mass upon whom the experiment is being tried because, by the nature of the case, only landowners can be affected by the law, and landowners would be compelled by it to safeguard the lives of all, whether they were or were not owners of land.
    But the category so established would be purely accidental. The object and method of the law do not concern themselves with a distinction between citizens.
A close observer might indeed discover certain points in the Factory laws, details and phrases, which did distinctly connote the existence of a Capitalist and of a Proletarian class. But we must take the statutes as a whole and the order in which they were produced, above all, the general motive and expressions governing each main statute, in order to judge whether such examples of interference give us an origin or not.
    The verdict will be that they do not. Such legislation may be oppressive in any degree or necessary in any degree, but it does not establish status in the place of contract, and it is not, therefore, servile.
    Neither are those laws servile which in practice attach to the poor and not to the rich. Compulsory education is in legal theory required of every citizen for his children. The state of mind which goes with plutocracy exempts of course all above a certain standard of wealth from this law. But the law does apply to the universality of the commonwealth, and all families resident in Great Britain (not in Ireland) are subject to its provisions.
   These are not origins. A true origin to the legislation I approach comes later. The first example of servile legislation to be discovered upon the Statute Book is that which establishes the present form of Employer���s Liability.--Hilaire Belloc (1912 [2nd edition] The Servile State, Section Nine ("The Servile State Has Begun")

As I noted in my first post on Belloc (recall), Hayek mentions The Servile State approvingly in The Road to Serfdom. The book is is quite clearly one of the founding texts of what shortly thereafter came to be known as 'property owning democracy' (as Ben Jackson notes here.) In addition, Belloc does anticipate a road to serfdom thesis (although surely does not originate it--it's in Tocqueville and probably earlier), but it's not Hayek's (or Mises') version (Edward McPhail has a lovely paper explaining that it here). It's worth taking a look at because in some ways, Belloc's road to serfdom thesis is an attractive alternative to both the Austrian (Hayekian/Misesian) road to serfdom thesis, and the Marxist one (articulated by Karl Polanyi [recall]) which suggests that capitalism naturally leads to fascism (or worse).

The quoted passage should give a hint of why Hayek would have liked Belloc. It's pretty clear that for Belloc the road to serfdom is fatally initiated once liability law distinguishes citizens between two kinds: employers and employees. This breaks, for him, the symmetry of all contracts. And on Belloc's view, a whole range of legislation, which puts the onus on employers regardless of merits or responsibilities of individual circumstances is not ground in, say, the ability to pay of deep pockets or in considerations of duties of care or basic fairness or Christian charity (or recognition that some employees may have severely limited options between certain kind of work or starvation),* but rather in a modern kind of paternalism. Here's how Belloc puts it a few pages after the passage quoted above: 

Still more striking, as an example of status taking the place of contract, is the fact that this law puts the duty of controlling the proletariat and of seeing that the law is obeyed not upon the proletariat itself, but upon the Capitalist class.

But he sees in such paternalist legislation the start of a tendency, a fatal tendency, in which employers control the workers on behalf of a quasi-permanent status quo. The capitalist class will also help collect taxes for the state. (This is rather prescient--for in our times corporations end up collecting a good chunk of employees' taxes in the form of various withholdings.) For while at first paternalist legislation may seem to benefit the workers, at bottom the advantages to the state of corporations as tax collectors and agents of control of working classes -- and the very high costs involved in removing capitalists altogether -- will induce the state to help secure a relatively docile workforce for the the capitalist class in which collective bargaining will serve the interests of those at the negotiating table, but not those unrepresented. 

Writing a century ago (but in the wake of Bismarck's welfare programs), Belloc argues that over time the welfare state will evolve two permanent classes: rulers and ruled. And while the ruled will have their lives preserved and a kind of permanent employment guarantee, which will be "necessarily transformed into a system of compulsory labor" (or what is now known as 'workfare'). The workers can expect to experience state violence if they wish to challenge this permanent arrangement.

The end-state of this state of affairs is one in which property rights of the capitalist class are secured, in which the working poor are guaranteed a basic income if and only if they work, and in which only the capitalist class has full citizenship. Of the road to serfdom theses this one has non-trivial plausibility to be our future judging by many dystopiab Hollywood movies.

To be sure, Belloc does not think this outcome inevitable in all capitalist structures, but if the initial conditions for the rise of capitalism are oligarchic (as he thinks occurred in England as a result of Henry VIII's confiscation of the monasteries and distribution of these lands to a limited number of cronies) this particular outcome is necessary. So, lurking in Belloc's argument -- he is not shy about this -- is a kind of argument for limiting excessive income inequality. In the lingo of Ingrid Robeyns, Belloc is a limitarian. To be continued. 

*Belloc recognizes this point earlier in the text. He has a whole theory of biopolitics I return to some day.

Relativism and The Principle of Sufficient Reason; or Felix Oppenheim vs Leo Strauss

    Absolutists often adopt another line of attack against their relativist foes; they brand relativism as socially harmful if not outright subversive. Even if this were the case, this would obviously be no objection against the validity of the relativist thesis. To argue this way would be like questioning the validity of nuclear physics by pointing to the H-bomb.

    I myself would fall into a similar trap were I to say that relativism must be beneficial because it is true. While I share J. S. Mill's high regard for the propagation of knowledge, I realize that this endeavor may come into conflict with other social goals which I consider at least as important or even more desirable.

    To claim that relativism is harmful makes no sense unless one specifies: harmful to the pursuit of what goal? Curiously, but not surprisingly, absolutists tend to consider relativism incompatible with whatever goals they adjudge demonstrably valuable. Thus value-absolutists who are also political absolutists (i.e., who claim that the values underlying political absolutism are the "true" values) maintain that relativism is dangerous because it promotes democratic values. Absolutists who believe that the de way of life can be proved to be the best often hold that a subjectivist be a "true" democrat. The latter thesis is based on arguments such as the following: if good and evil is not a matter of objective knowledge, then everything is a matter of indifference. The relativist must therefore be tolerant of every ethical viewpoint, even of doctrines which command the overthrow of democracy. Or still worse: if there is no justice, it does not matter how one acts; so one may just as well climb on the bandwagon. Thus relativism becomes akin to nihilism, cynicism, and opportunism.8

    Actually, it is not relativism but a certain naturalistic brand of absolutism which leads to such conclusions. If what is considered just in a given society determines what is just in that society, then apartheid is demonstrably as just in South Africa as segregation is unjust in certain parts of the United States, while in other sections where opinion on racial issues is divided everyone may do as he pleases.

Relativism is an epistemological theory which denies that anything can be shown to be intrinsically good or bad - or indifferent. The relativist theory that science cannot determine whether racial discrimination is intrinsically just or unjust also denies the status of a scientific statement to the view that discrimination is right here and wrong there, or that it is neither right nor wrong. A relativist may, without inconsistency, favor discrimination or equality, and practice intolerance, tolerance, or over-tolerance.

At this point, absolutists are likely to shift the argument from the logical to the psychological level and maintain that it is psychologically impossible to commit oneself whole-heartedly to any set of values unless one is convinced that it corresponds to the objectively valuable.10 This thesis can easily be refuted by the evidence of the history of ideas. For example, while it is true that in England and the United States liberalism and even socialism have traditionally been linked to the value-absolutism of Protestantism and natural law, in continental Europe these same ideas have been promoted principally by relativists. Yet there too the values of liberty and human dignity have had their heroes and even their martyrs.

Perhaps most people have a healthy unconcern for philosophical problems. One tends to commit oneself to certain ultimate goals because one feels strongly about them, and does not ask whether they can be proved to be the "true" values.--Felix Oppenheim (1955) "In defense of relativism." Western Political Quarterly 8.3 (1955): 415-416.

After my last Digression, Daniel Dennett pointed out to me that Felix Oppenheim was the son of Paul Oppenheim of Hempel & Oppenheim (1948) fame. One might add Oppenheim & Putnam (1958) fame and (inter alia) Bedau & Oppenheim (1961) fame, too. The story of Paul Oppenheim's collaboration with those who passed through Princeton is worth telling. Turns out Felix Oppenheim had a son, Paul, who also went to Tufts and studied with Dennett (well before my time).

This post originates in my interest in finding critical engagements with Leo Strauss within analytic philosophy in the post-WWII era (triggered by (recall here; here; here; and especially this one) an invite by Sander Verhaegh). So, here I am interested in Felix Oppenheim's criticism of Leo Strauss. For, as he notes himself in notes 8&10 (which I left in), Strauss' (1953) Natural Right and History (hereafter NRH) is the explicit target (alongside John H. Hallowell's (1954) The Moral Foundations of Democracy, which is identified in note 9). Strauss' NRH originates in the 1949 Walgreen lectures (delivered at The University of Chicago); some of these were published thereafter separately as expanded journal articles and then reincorporated into NRH.

But before I get to Strauss' position, and Oppenheim's criticism of it, it's probably useful to say a bit about the nature of Oppenheim's relativism. (Somewhat sadly, Oppenheim goes unmentioned in the SEP entry on relativism.)* In this 1955 essay, Oppenheim is committed to the claim that "words such as "good," "desirable," and "valuable" do not designate properties of things or events or actions, but express the speaker's subjective preferences." (411) To be sure his "relativism is opposed to value-objectivism, not to objectivism in science. If "objectivity" means possibility of objective, i.e., intersubjective, verification, relativism denies the objectivity of intrinsic value-judgments, but not the objectivity of empirical statements." (411)**

An auxiliary claim that matters a lot to Oppenheim's argument (and which is visible in the material I quoted above) is that "logically, there is no necessary connection between any particular value-judgment and either absolutism or relativism." (412) I suspect this is key to Oppenheim's argument against Strauss.

There is, of course, a lot to be said about the widespread popularity of a whole variety of kinds of relativisms mid-century within the golden age of analytic philosophy (and also without), and the subsequent demise in popularity of such doctrines among the professionals. But let's turn to Strauss. 

The whole quoted passage at the top of my post is from a section titled, "RELATIVISM Is NOT "SUBVERSIVE."" (I return to that title below.) In it, Oppenheim explicitly takes aim at two of Strauss claims. Both of these claims can be found in the "Introduction" of Strauss's NRH. It's important to mention that because in that context Strauss does not offer his detailed arguments for the claims (so they will seem rather arbitrary). And it is a bit peculiar that Oppenheim ignores here the rest of Strauss' arguments developed later in the book.

Even so, there is something interesting to be said about the state of the debate between Strauss and Oppenheim. The first Strauss passage [I] is quoted in note 8. 

[I] 8 "If our principles have no other support than our blind preferences, everything a man is willing to dare will be permissible. The contemporary rejection of natural right leads to nihilism - nay, it is identical with nihilism." [Oppenheim cites p. 5 from the 1953 edition NRH; in my 1965 edition it is p. 4]

It's worth noting that Strauss does not claim here that relativism leads to "cynicism or opportunism." Even so, it is not obvious why nihilism follows from the rejection of natural right of from thinking that our principles are derived from our preferences.

The second [II] is quoted in note 10:

[II] 10"Once we realize that the principles of our actions have no other support than our blind choice, we really do not believe in them any more. We cannot wholeheartedly act upon them any more. We cannot live any more as responsible beings. [Oppenheim cites p. 6 in the 1953 edition NRH; as it is in the 1965 ed.]

In fact, Strauss's second quote [II] helps start to explain why Strauss thinks nihilism follows from the kind of relativism somebody like Oppenheim defends. Obviously, it's not obvious why Strauss seems to be committed to such a dramatic slippery slope argument. But it becomes intelligible if we recognize that, fundamentally, there is a suppressed premise that something needs to ground the principles of our actions or these grounds (and so on) to halt the slide down the slope. So, lurking in Strauss' position is a kind of appeal to some version of the PSR.

That Strauss is committed to this is not obvious in context of the introduction to NRH. But later, in the long chapter 2 on his critique of Weber's account of the distinction between fact and values (which is the chapter that Ernest Nagel criticizes (recall here; here), in the context of ascribing to Weber the idea that "science or philosophy rests, in the last analysis, not on evident premises that are at the disposal of man as man but on faith" he goes on to claim: 

By regarding the quest for truth as valuable in itself, one admits that one is making a preference which no longer has a good or sufficient reason. One recognizes therewith the principle that preferences do not need good or sufficient reasons.--Strauss (NHR 1965 ed), p. 72.

There is much to be said about this account as a reconstruction of Weber, and as a diagnosis of the effects of Weber's position. But what does seem clear is that Strauss associated the rejection of what Oppenheim calls 'absolutism' with the claim that preferences are ungrounded or at least not grounded in sufficient reason. 

In fact, being alert to this feature of Strauss' position also helps explain the recurring use of "blind" in modifying "preferences" and "choice" in the passages Oppenheim quotes in the notes. (This use of 'blind' echoes the kind of language early modern critics of epicureanism would use.) Such preferences and choices are treated as unguided, and so de facto random. 

Interestingly enough Oppenheim agrees. Because Oppenheim claims that his flavor of "Relativism does not question the possibility of explaining or giving reasons for people's valuations; relativism denies the possibility of validating or giving grounds for them." (412; emphasis in Oppenheim) So, not unlike Russell, Oppenheim rejects the PSR (at least in the context of values). 

In fact, the first paragraphs quoted at the top of the post, which take on unnamed critics that de facto [III] diagnose an inductive risk from holding relativism (recall the denial that relativism is subversive in the title of the section), are also directed at something like Strauss' meta-philosophy. For one of the commitments that runs through Strauss' philosophy is a concern over the inductive risk(s) of philosophical positions.+ 

Because I have gone on quite a bit already, I leave it to the reader to evaluate Oppenheim's evidence as arguments against the bits of Strauss that Oppenheim wishes to tackle here. However, Oppenheim returns to his disagreement with Strauss in a 1957 APSR article, that I discuss before long. To be continued.

 

*Felix Oppenheim does get mentioned in SEP in other entries.

**He goes on to claim: "Relativism does not question the possibility of explaining or giving reasons for people's valuations; relativism denies the possibility of validating or giving grounds for them." (412)

+For evidence of this claim see, especially, the (very critical) chapter on Strauss in Stephen Holmes' (1993) The Anatomy of Antiliberalism,.

Analytic Political Philosophy Before Rawls with special attention to Morris, Naess, and Oppenheim

This post originates in my interest in finding critical engagements with Leo Strauss within analytic philosophy in the post-WWII era (triggered by (recall here; here; here) an invite by Sander Verhaegh). There is remarkably little of it preserved in historical memory, in part because there seems to be remarkably little of it within analytic political theory, it seems, in Strauss' life-time (I emphasize this because later there is plenty), despite Strauss' significance in political theory of the age and despite my growing up with recurring diss of Strauss (and Straussianism). This is all a bit puzzling in one sense because part of Strauss' fame rested on his thesis of persecution generating esotericism, and since Reisch' magisterial work, How the Cold War Transformed Philosophy of Science To the Icy Slopes of Logic, we know that such persecution was experienced by many in the founding generations of analytic philosophy. So, one might have expected some mutual affinity. One hypothesis would be there simply was no analytic political philosophy in the period so there was no felt need to polemize against Strauss (and Straussianism), or to absorb it.*

Thus, the topic intersects with my continuing reflection (recall here; here; here; here; and here) on Katrina Forrester's In the Shadow of Justice, which convincingly shows that Rawls' Theory of Justice creates a kind of light-cone which does not allow us to discern events behind it. She uses archive material and the responses by those whose views were already formed before Rawls to help guide us on Rawls and his reception. Another way to begin to do so is to read reviews and surveys of works blissfully unaware that a Rawlsian tidal wave is about to hit them. 

In 1965 Karl W. Deutsch and Leroy N. Rieselbach published a kind of state of the field, review article, "Recent trends in political theory and political philosophy," in a supplement of The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 360.1 (1965): 139-162. I don't know anything about Rieselbach (sorry), but Deutsch is a fascinating character, who is worth reading. Their survey suggests that in the mid 1960s the field of political theory/philosophy is incredibly eclectic and more heterogeneous than it is today. But in this Digression I want to use their review as a means to point us to the existence of pre-Rawlsian analytic political philosophy. 

Before I get to that, I should mention Jo Wolff's (2013) chapter "Analytic Political Philosophy," in a OUP volume on the History of Analytic Philosophy, edited by Michael Beaney. His strategy to get around the Rawls light cone problem I mentioned above, is two-fold: first, he goes through the series Philosophy, Politics and Society, which started to appear in 1956 (then edited by Peter Laslett). This is a clever choice because this series, which (mostly?) republished existing papers was de facto canonizing then recent work. (There is a peculiarity here that I will quietly skip in that Laslett himself was more of a historian.) This is especially evident if you look at the table of contents of the second series edited by Laslett and Runciman.

Second, and in a way it's the same as the first, Wolff uses as a method or criteria of inclusion of a work in analytic political philosophy that they become "part of a tradition of academic political philosophy." This is why Wolff ends up mentioning Popper, but not discussing his views.

My deviation from Wolff's approach is motivated by the fact that his gives slightly too much weight to the contemporary status quo (and our ancestors). And because I take so-called Kuhn losses rather seriously, and also because of non-trivial linguistic isolation (or linguistic imperialism) of much of the tradition, I am slightly more  permissive than him in that I wish to find work using methods of, say, ordinary language philosophy or those popularized by logical empiricism (etc.) even if ignored by the tradition.

Of course, since on my view it is constitutive of analytic philosophy that it sponge-like assimilates new techniques from other fields, there is a lot to be said for Wolff's approach. In fact, he observes that Rawls himself is an exemplary analytic philosopher in this greedy respect. But in virtue of this spong-like character, Wolff's stance generates historiographic challenges. For example, when it appeared The Theory of Games and Economic Behavior (1944) by von Neumann and Morgenstern, certainly did not belong to analytic philosophy. But you might be tempted to argue, as it was developed within political theory (Schelling, Riker, etc.) that game-theory also became assimilated by the analytic tradition after (say) Gauthier. By Wolff's standard we might well then at some point see von Neumann and Morgenstern's work as a key moment in pre-Rawlsian analytic political philosophy. Perhaps, my friend Ryan Muldoon might even be tempted to claim that! (Something like this has started to happen to Hayek as I discovered to my surprise.)

Anyway, Wolff's chapter is lovely. If for example, you want to know more about T.D. Weldon, who I mentioned in my digression last week on Riker's review of Buchanan and Tullock (because he was mentioned by Riker), you should check it out. But because of its reliance on the Philosophy, Politics and Society series, Wolff's chapter does have a modest bias to the English language even British philosophy. (The first series was explicitly insular in geographic/linguistic orientation.) And that can be seen if we read the survey by Deutsch and Rieselbach.

Analytic philosophy barely registers in their account. But the section on the "impact of communication studies," [sic!]closes with the following two paragraphs:

Insofar as the analysis of communications involves the analysis of messages, it leads to a concern with semantics. Insofar as it involves the analysis of communication channels and networks, it soon enters common ground with the theory of organizations. Logical analysis may be relevant for either of these two concerns, for logical analysis clarifies the content and meaning of messages and theories, and logical conjunctions and disjunctions-the "ands" or "ors" of logical discourse-often may correspond to the switching points or points of decision in communication networks or organizations.

Semantics has been developed in ways relevant to political theory and to the analysis of values by Charles Morris, Arne Naess, Charles E. Osgood, and in the semantic portions of the political writings of Anatol Rapoport. Symbolic logic has been used as a tool of political analysis by Robert Dahl in his A Preface to Democratic Theory and more recently by Felix E. Oppenheim in his Dimensions of Freedom. (153-154)

Sadly Weldon is absent, perhaps because he died in 1958.+  The two accompanying footnotes list the following works:

Charles Morris, Signification and Significance: A Study of the Relations of Signs and Values (Cambridge, Mass.: M I.T. Press, 1964) and his influential earlier work, Varieties of Human Value (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1956); Arne Naess, Democracy, Ideology and Objectivity: Studies in the Semantics and Cognitive Analysis of Ideological Conflict (Oslo and Oxford: Oslo University Press and Basil Blackwell, 1956); Charles E. Osgood, G. J. Suci, and P. H. Tannenbaum, The Measurement of Meaning (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1957); Anatol Rapoport, Fights, Games and Debates (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1960), Part III, "The Ethics of Debate," pp. 245-358; and Strategy and Conscience (New York: Harper, 1964), Part III: "The Two
Worlds," pp. 199-288. Robert A. Dahl, A Preface to Democratic Theory (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1956); Felix E. Oppenheim, Dimensions of Freedom (New York: St Martin���s Press, 1961).

Not all of these works would be thought analytic philosophy today.** Of these there are really only three candidates for inclusion: Morris, Naess, and Oppenheim. Charles Morris was really one of the key figures in the scientific wing of pragmatism which welcomed the European exiles who helped bring analytic philosophy to the United States through the unity of science movement. (Today Morris has been disowned by pragmatists and analytic philosophers alike.) I don't know anything about Signification and Significance, but his Varieties of Human Value is explicitly situated in the unity of science program, albeit more towards the empirical end and without (alas) much attention to political theory or politics.

I don't think many people today associate Naess with analytic philosophy given his towering influence on deep ecology (and even a subtle branch of Spinozism), but if you would open up his (1936) Erkenntnis und wissenschaftliches Verhalte you would feel like you had entered a Borgesian world. It's clearly analytic philosophy, but at the same time uncannily unfamiliar because (to bow to Wolff's criterion) it has had no discernable impact on the tradition. (I bet there is a similar aesthetic experience to be had if you read some of the untranslated folk from the Lvov-Warsaw School, and you can read Polish.) 

Naess's book, Democracy, Ideology and Objectivity has rightly been rediscovered (I hope) by XPHI folk (a sub-branch of analytic philosophy, but not especially salient in political philosophy alas, I think, but definitely salient to ethics). It is one of the funkiest books ever with a weird mix of history of ideas and new kinds of snowballing survey techniques to elicit views on the context relative views (of experts) on the meaning(s) of democracy and ideology. (That sentence does no justice to it.) While it seems entirely off the wall to call this 'analytical', it's worth nothing it is pretty contemporary with (recall) Donald Davidson's & Patrick Suppes' and Sidney Siegel' (1957) Decision Making. An Experimental Approach. The early 1950s are really an age of philosophers jumping into doing empirical social science alongside conceptual work. And from that vantage point, Morris actually looks like very much of his age.

Oppenheim's book is really very much how one would imagine a behaviorist, logical positivist analysis (including lots of capital Xs and ordinary y's.) It aims to offer an analysis even explication of 'freedom' such that the concept can be used in, or operationalized for, empirical social science (while still being fairly close to ordinary usage). It also has a normative aim: to make wise discussions about freedom possible. I don't think it had much uptake in either end.

Oppenheim "taught at the University of Delaware (1946���57), was a visiting faculty member in Philosophy at Yale University (1951���52), Research Associate in Philosophy at Stanford University (1954���55), Visiting Lecturer in Politics at Princeton University (1960), faculty member at the New School for Social Research (1960���61), Visiting Professor of Political Science at Amherst College (1963���64), Visiting Professor at Instituto di Scienze Politiche of the University of Turin (1965), Visiting Professor of Government at Columbia University (1967), Visiting Fellow of Wolfson College, Oxford (1970), and Professor of Political Science at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst from 1961 until his retirement in 1983." So, in his day he was clearly not obscure. 

While I think Oppenheim's 1944 "Logical Analsis of Law" is the more fruitful original work, Oppenheim's book deserves a more detailed, second look. But I mention all of this here because with Oppenheim I have found an early, analytic critic of Strauss (aside from Ernest Nagel). The criticism is developed in two journal articles from 1955 and 1957. To be continued...

 

 

*Since Carnap was not (recall) above using oblique hints (recall also Liam Kofi Bright), it's also possible that Carnap didn't need Strauss since they both had read Nietzsche.

**Rapoport is legendary for tit-for-tat and his role in game theory and general systems theory; Dahl was one of the giants of twentieth century democratic theory, who certainly intersected with and took from analytic methods.

+Russel and Popper go unmentioned in this review. For reasons that Wolff's paper makes clear.

 

Riker on The Calculus of Consent; some Rawls and Strauss and the confused and unproductive state of Political Theory

As numerous writers have pointed out, political theory as a field of academic concentration has been in a confused and unproductive state for at least the last generation. Most of the academicians who have written about it have been either historians of ideas who speculated about the influence of writer A on writer B or literary critics who simply explicated and criticized the texts of A and B. Very few academicians have had the intellectual courage to play the role of A and B themselves; so that, in consequence, most contemporary political theory has been produced by politicians and journalists. Refusing thus to theorize themselves, most academicians have been limited to a consideration of intellectual primitives or of, what amounts to the same thing, the rantings and ideological tergiversations of half-educated modern pamphleteers. In almost no other field of study do the professionals thus abase themselves before the ancients and the amateurs.

    Not unsurprisingly, there has been much dissatisfaction with this state of affairs and in the last decade or so a number of writers have tried to reorient the study of political theory. Some, like Leo Strauss, have urged a return to the great tradition; but unfortunately the process of return, as it appears in the work of both master and students, has turned out to be an even more sterile historicism than that against which they revolted. Others, like T. D. Weldon and Carl Friedrich, have urged a close and systematic study of words; but again unfortunately, word-study, while a useful preliminary to theorizing, has produced no more than literary criticism and is not properly theory at all. Still others, the political behaviorists, have turned to the theories of contemporary psychology and sociology for a new start in theorizing about politics; and, while these writers have undoubtedly succeeded in generating descriptive theories that can actually be tested empirically, still their theories seem to have more in common with social psychology than with the traditional subject matter of politics. Furthermore, their positivistic character, wholly appropriate for descriptive theories, is far from satisfying to those who believe political theory should be at least partially normative. These three attempts at re-orientation have been useful in the study of history, philosophy, and behavioral science; but they have not added much to political theory itself. Indeed, if these three schools were all we had, it would be fair to say that political theory was no better off than before.

    There is still a fourth school, to which the book here reviewed belongs, which offers some hope of a really successful reorientation of political theory. Since its inspiration is more from economics than any other source and since economics is the social science closest to politics both in the nature of the events abstracted for study and in the process of abstraction, it happens that the works of this school are clearly political in nature. Since economics like politics has a long tradition of normative theorizing, these writings contain normative elements alongside of positive ones. Most important of all, however, they seem to be capable not only of reformulating traditional problems in a more sophisticated way but also of dealing with problems beyond the ken of even the great theorists of the past. Some of the main works in this fourth school of re-orienters of political theory are: Duncan Black, The Theory of Committees and Elections; Anthony Downs, An Economic Theory of Democracy; Morton Kaplan, System and Process in International Politics (although this work has its roots as much in sociological as in economic theory); Thomas Schelling, The Strategy of Conflict; and, as an important addition, James Buchanan and Gordon Tullock, The Calculus of Consent.--William H. Riker (1962) Midwest Journal of Political Science, Vol. 6, No. 4 (Nov., 1962) [Reviewing The Calculus of Consent. by James M. Buchanan and Gordon Tullock], pp. 408-409.

Because I am working on a side project (recall here; here) on the (non-)reception of Leo Strauss within analytic philosophy, I stumbled on this passage in Riker's review of The Calculus of Consent. I also want to situate the passage in the black hole in our collective narrative of what exactly political philosophy could be within analytic philosophy and its sister-discipline political theory pre-Rawls (which was re-opened for me by Katrina Forrester's In the Shadow of Justice: Postwar Liberalism and the Remaking of Political Philosophy (recall (recall here; here; here; and here). Somewhat to my own surprise these issues intersect with my interest in neoliberalism and the split between ('positive') economics and ('normative') philosophy.

I suspect most of my readers know who William Riker is (not to be confused with the Star Trek character). He is now widely seen as one of the founders of rational choice theory, and among other achievements introduced game theory and social choice theory into political science. He is, what in an earlier generation disparagingly would have been called (by the sociologist Talcott Parsons [recall]), an exponent of 'economic imperialism.' We call it 'intellectual arbitrage' now. He founded the so-called Rochester School that's associated with the 'behavioral revolution' in political science. When he published the review of Buchanan and Tullock, Riker had just published The Theory of Political Coalitions, which was a major contribution to orientation he promoted.

About half of the review is quoted above. And only after this set-up does Riker discuss the contents of the book. So, the review itself is self-consciously a methodological intervention and cannon creation. 

So, Riker distinguishes four approaches to political. First, there is return to classics which he (correctly) associates Strauss. This is treated -- much as Bacon treated final causes -- as sterile. Riker correctly represents Strauss's school as critical of historicism, but then misrepresents, either from confusion or from sincere insult, Strauss as instantiating historicism. (I am unsure he ever engaged with Strauss in substantive fashion.)

Second there is a school devoted to "a close and systematic study of words." Riker's criticism of it echoes Isaiah Berlin's (1958) criticism of ordinary language philosophy (recall). T.D Weldon I know primarily as a Kant scholar and as being the supervisor of Wilfrid Sellars. But he is also the author of The Vocabulary of Politics (1953), which in reviews is described as an attempt to apply ordinary language philosophy to politics. A book I, thus, have to read because it is clearly in the black hole of analytic political philosophy whose shadow Rawls has (ahh) blotted out.*

I have to admit that I am puzzled by Riker's inclusion of Friedrich in this category. Friedrich's approach is so eclectic, that I would think he would be hard to categorize. This is not to deny he sometimes focuses on words, too. But this comment (alongside the Strauss as historicist 'mistake') makes me wonder, if Riker actually had carefully studied the schools he is rejecting. Or whether his polemics derive from supreme confidence in his own (sophisticated!) methods. That confidence is not without robust intellectual foundation, but one does wonder if in his polemics with opposing schools there isn't an element of bluster and bluff. (This combination is not unfamiliar to us within analytic philosophy.) I actually suspect that Riker is confusing Friedrich with Felix Oppenheim (who can, perhaps somewhat unfairly, be slotted into this category.)

No exemplar of the third school is mentioned. I suspect Talcott Parsons (or those influenced by him) is one of the targets. This school is also engaged in intellectual arbitrage from other social sciences, but Riker finds them wanting. Riker's two criticisms of this approach (not very far removed from his own) are very interesting: first, they produce work that fits social psychology but is in some sense not properly political. One would have liked an extra sentence here because it would have illuminated his own stance toward the subject (or the discipline). Second, on Riker's view political theory ought to be descriptive/empirical (or at least fruitful in generating theoretically salient empirical generations and be an engine for theorizing) and normative/positive. So, the right kind of theory can help us study the political world and tell us how to improve it. (I return to this in the next paragraph.)

These two criticisms do not apply to the fourth school (which is Riker's own). From my perspective what is most interesting here is that Riker rejects the very firm distinction entrenched within economics (in word, less so in deed) since the time of Marshall, Sidgwick, and John Neville Keynes, and articulated by Lionel Robbins (and Milton Friedman) between the positive and normative projects.+ The final paragraph of the review actually explains Riker's own stance on this:

If it is assumed that most men are rational and that the appropriate rational behavior is transparently obvious, then the analysis is entirely positive. If it is assumed that rationality is a goal rather than a fact, then the calculus is normative. If it is assumed that the logic of the calculus is not obvious until it is deduced, then again the analysis is normative. (411)

Of course, the problem here is (to use scientistic terminology) how to think about circumstances of what is 'transparently obvious' to the theorist/expert may not be to (ahh) 'most men' and, more important, if, in a political context, the latter have to rely on the former for the deductions in the 'logic.' [As a slogan: Riker takes the relationship between theorist and theorized for granted.]

Be that as it may, lurking in the final paragraph that I quoted at the top of the post is the sense that the fourth school is generating a scientific revolution: "Most important of all...they seem to be capable not only of reformulating traditional problems in a more sophisticated way but also of dealing with problems beyond the ken of even the great theorists of the past." The fourth school has moved beyond the past and is progressive. (Such claims are common among economists of the age.) Interestingly enough the Nobel committee in economics has also recognized the contributions of this school (including, in addition to Buchanan, Schelling).

After the polemical first half, the rest of the review of Calculus of Consent "list[s] what are for [Riker] some of the most interesting notions in the essay." (409) One important point is that Riker treats Calculus of Consent (not unfairly) as an advance beyond Downs on the question of what the effect is "of differing intensities of concern about particular issues under the rule of simple majority voting." (410) From the vantage point of thinking about the nature and evolution of political theory at the middle of the twentieth century, the first one is actually rather important:

The main question the authors ask is: On what basis does a rational man, situated in a society created by unanimous agreement, consent to the transfer of a particular activity from private to collective decision-making? This question is, of course, a new and more sophisticated form of the question to which the theory of the social contract provided the answer. (409)

In the spirit of progress (we may say), Riker understands Buchanan and Tullock as having surpassed and made obsolete social contract theory. While the historian in me hesitates to disagree with such a well-informed contemporary of them,  Riker somehow misses (presumably for his own polemical purposes) that Buchanan and Tullock themselves present their own work, en passant (but not obliquely) as a contribution to social contract theory. For, throughout Calculus of Consent, they imply both that individuals cannot withdraw from the social contract, as well as (and  more important) that "Insofar as participation in the organization of a community, a State, is mutually advantageous to all parties, the formation of a ���social contract��� on the basis of unanimous agreement becomes possible." (ch. 17; the whole chapter is relevant, including for understanding why they use scare-quotes around social contract most of the time, but not always.)** So, the main question by Riker's lights is answered in terms of a social contract analysis according to Buchanan and Tullock. (The character of their social contract is worth exploring in a digression some time.)

Two final quick promissory thoughts connected to Rawls, since I click-baited you here with Rawls. First, there was a pre-Rawlsian political analytic philosophy. (Riker's second school.) Weldon is an example of this. (So is, perhaps, Felix Oppenheim.)++  And it was noticed by outsiders. But Rawls did not respond to it in The Theory of Justice.*** Oppenheim is cited once respectfully in TJ, and Weldon isn't mentioned. Rather, Rawls took the fourth school, the re-orienters, as his interlocuters and rivals. In fact, in TJ, Rawls also cites Black, Downs, Buchanan and Tullock, and Mancur Olson as authorities. And whatever else he is doing, he is also trying to offer an alternative to their project.+++ That's partially obscured to later readers because he doesn't name them much as targets. But it is worth nothing they inherited their own normative project from utilitarianism, which is Rawls' official target; and after the mid to late 1970s Rawls himself emphasized the normative project in Kantian terms and so it's much harder to see TJ as building on and in competition with Rochester and Virginia.

 

 

*Nikhil Krishnan uses Weldon to great effect in his "John Rawls and Oxford Philosophy" in his contribution to the recent effort to historicize Rawls in Modern Intellectual Inquiry, but does not discuss him. Forrester (see p. 45 n. 34 on p. 301) cites a more substantive aspect of Weldon's work once in the context of her discussion of obligation and disobedience.

+In practice, lots of economics is normative directly or on the sly. 

**As is well known by now, I hope, to my readers Buchanan saw quite some affinity with his own project and Rawls'.

++I do not mean to suggest this list is exhaustive.

***Weldon and Oppenheim are both cited Carl Friedrich is important to Rawls' milieu. As Rawls notes in TJ, Friedrich had edited one of Rawls's papers. But there is no substantive engagement with him. [I am ignoring those like Popper and Russell whose engagement with political philosophy was not central to their professional identity as such.] 

+++When I say this I don't mean to suggest that utilitarianism, Arrow, Knight, the long social contract tradition, etc. are irrelevant!!!

Liberalism after Ukraine, Part 2: Changing Perceptions on Russia and NATO

It's been more than 80 days since the renewed Russian invasion of Ukraine. And so it's time for some punditry outside my expertise. I do so because the war is clearly reshaping the fate of contemporary liberalism.

Because of a badly handled American retreat from Afghanistan, Putin clearly assumed America is weak. In addition, his regime seems to have believed its own propaganda about Ukraine and so did not anticipate the military and political resistance it has encountered. When one listens to American military analysts like Michael Kofman and Dara Massicot about Russian performance, they emphasize two things: (i) don't believe the narrative you see on social media--we're still in the fog of war; (ii) it's inconceivable to send a giant army into combat that it has not really been planning to fight while keeping it secret from most of the backbone of that giant army [the logistical planners, the local commanders, etc.], and yet that's what seems to have happened. And, in addition, (iii) America's spies seem to have known more about the plans than those within the giant army.

On (i) it is worth noting that Finland's rush to abandon neutrality and join NATO and become a protectorate as part of Pax Americana, which (recall) I understand as empire with liberal characteristics, is as clear a sign of Russian weakness perceived by those with the greatest existential downside as any. Finnish neutrality has always been a least bad option for them (which has worked out surprisingly well); one their ancestors earned on the battlefield with great, heroic sacrifice; neutrality is still a bad option for them.* But since the transition period between signaling and applying for membership is the greatest risk for them in the face of stated Russian 'military-technical' retaliation, the fact that they have been increasingly brazen in pursing this otherwise high stakes policy is the clearest possible evidence of perceived Russian weakness by those who have the greatest incentive to get the facts about Russia right. The actual Russian retaliation -- suspension of some energy delivery -- has caused minor inconvenience (and suggests Russia is weak).

To be blunt: the military failures in Ukraine have exposed that Russian is no great power (in the sense that Realists use it). My friend Joshua Miller suggested this already before the war. Yes, it's a dangerous country because it has enormous amount of nuclear weapons, is capable of many lethal special operations (including electronic ones), has access to enormous natural resources, and a political leadership that is not averse to gambling with other people's lives. But it has many of the worst weaknesses of dictatorships: secrecy, bad internal communications, corruption, an economy that is seeing huge brain-drain, and a demographic crisis with declining birthrates. Their military has been able to defeat even annihilate militias, but it has not really faced modern armies (and it has been conspicuously restrained around Israel and Turkey).

At the moment Russia clearly lacks the capability of executing large scale military campaigns in a somewhat organized fashion. In fact, what has been astonishing over the last 80 days is the fact that it seems to lack the capacity to learn from failure in the field--something that is pretty much a given for any functioning army given the existential nature of war. The only really well designed military tasks that have been reported are disciplined retreats.

To be sure, the professional military analysists are right to say that Russia is no paper tiger. It has enormous fire-power. And it has shown a willingness to use it. It may well hold on to parts of Ukraine indefinitely. It's important that the Biden Administration continues its caution and level-headedness in not crossing various red lines that might lead to nuclear warfare. It's been very wise to maintain its involvement as a sponsor of a proxy-war without escalating to direct contact.

Another clear sign of Russian's regional weakness: Turkey (a NATO member) has closed off the Bosphorus and Dardanelles straits to warships meaning that Russia cannot now reinforce its naval capabilities in the Black Sea Fleet. So far Russia has not even bothered to try to challenge Turkey, and I have found no sign of a formal protest. (Russia does not consider its invasion of Ukraine a war; Turkey's invocation of the Montreux Convention suggests it does.) 

Of course, Russia is blockading Ukrainian ports militarily and commercially. If and when this war, as seems likely, extends into the next harvest season, world food supplies will become much tighter. (Ukraine is a major exporter.) The FAO food index is a third higher than a year ago. (The real question is if a failed Fall harvest is already priced in or not.) And high food prices, alongside rising global temperatures, are politically explosive in lots of countries.

My guess is that China and India (who surely also expected a quick war) will come to regret their support for Putin once they are faced with the effects on food and energy prices of this conflict dragging on. Of course, a lot of the worst hit countries and individuals will be those with the least power to influence any outcomes. The failure of so many important states like China and Russia, but also others who prefer to focus on American and European hypocrisy, to ignore the need for collective security and the enlightened benefits of enforcing it will be one of the main lessons of this conflict. The longer they continue to support Russia, the longer they de facto support its blockade of Ukraine, the more local social unrest they should expect around the world.

Given the structural challenges facing the overstretched Russian federation, it is an open question if it can ever recover great power status. If anything, since its mineral wealth is concentrated in the relatively unpopulated East, one must wonder if it can maintain its de facto independence vis a vis China over the next few decades and avoid debilitating civil war once Putin leaves the scene.

The military experts all emphasize that a large part of Russia's military predicament is that the stated political objectives have not adjusted to the failure of its initial aims (capture of the main cities and regime change in Ukraine as a set-up to partial annexation). Crucially, it is not making the decisions to win a war of attrition. (And given Western sanctions its capacity to do so will weaken over time.) My own view is (going beyond the experts) that if the Russian regime continues to be unwilling to make a serious political offer to Ukraine, that is, to recognize it as a political equal, in order to settle the conflict on the negotiating table that might allow it to consolidate some of its earlier gains (especially Crimea), we may well see a total collapse of (what we may call) the Russian Ukrainian expedition force later in the Fall on par with the German collapse in the Fall of 1918. 

Meanwhile beyond the military tactics it's been a good few months for perceptions about American empire. American intelligence has been impressive (also aiding Ukraine on the battlefield). Its allies and dependencies have committed to increasing defense spending, a lot of which will end up filling American military contractors' coffers. The German establishment's generation long strategy to (a) play America and Russia off against each other, and (b) to normalize the Russian regime in return for cheap energy has resulted in failure. European elites are rushing to re-integrate into US led military alliance, and the political leadership of Hungary has made it clear there is no interest in defecting toward a more neutral stance.+

It's also been a good few months for liberal democracy as a species of war-time governance. The purported decisiveness and singlemindedness of dictatorship turns out to be hollow if good information (and a willingness to act on it) cannot reach the top, as it cannot in a kleptocratic regime, where submission to the leader is preferred over loyalty to the state or truth. The contrasting images between an isolating Putin at one end of his long table and a Zelensky surrounding by his team in wartime Kyiv under fire is going to haunt the dreams of all the friends and admirers of authoritarian, purported strong men. 

While there is huge amount of support for Ukrainian freedom across the European continent,  this has not made prior association with Putin truly toxic to European electorates. Orban got re-elected comfortably. And while Le Pen lost, she did make it to the second round and got an incredible 44% (more than doubling her dad's numbers a generation ago). It is by no means obvious if, say, NATO can survive a second Trump administration. 

One of the oddities of the last few weeks has been Sweden's political elites' rush to join Finland in membership application of NATO. Sweden's policy of neutrality -- while it involved some  deviations -- basically existed for two centuries prior to 2009. And while it has a whole bunch of recent mutual defense agreements, it has, as Professor Erik Angner has noted, avoided a large public discussion of the costs and benefits of joining the NATO alliance. (Swedish publish support for NATO membership only went over 50% after the Russian invasion of Ukraine.) This may well cause downstream trouble once it has to join NATO missions unpopular domestically.

My take on the Swedish elite decision is this: Sweden, which has to deal with tactical Russian naval and air incursions in the Baltics on a regular basis, has been an EU member for over twenty five years. Its political class has clearly come to the conclusion that a true intra-European defense capability is never going to be generated (perhaps one of the side-effects of Brexit). That is to say, it does not expect 'Europe' to find a way to match its economic power with independent military capabilities. And so it has opted for American protection now that it can sell the choice. America's empire may well last a while longer unless its political class falls into the self-inflicted precipice it's been dangling over.

+An early version mistakenly included Poland alongside Hungary. I thank Weronika Grzebalska for correcting me.

*The reason Finnish neutrality is bad is that it leaves Russia in control when to change the terms of their relationship.