Eric Schliesser's Blog, page 26

The Ship of State again, Democratic Elites, and Populism

One of the attractions, which is simultaneously one of its great dangers, of blogging is that there are no referees (and editors) to warn you against a serious mistake. Since these digressions are by and large ephemeral, and since I tend to discuss abstruse topics, the stakes are pretty low -- the worst that can happen is that my balloon-ish reputation is deflated even more -- so by and large it's worth acquiring some freedom for the risk of letting a howler slip through. Besides, howlers also slip into the august pages of our best journals, and I often have friendly readers that offer quiet or more notable corrections. I often quietly correct factual and typographic mistakes in the first day of 'publishing' an Impression. And when I am wrong about something substantively, I alert the readers to my corrections in the original post and/or leave em standing with the hope that some nerdy scholar, running on lots of terabytes, who has decided to use my pieces as a window into 'the decadent phase of late capitalism's philosophical scene' will find my mistakes amusing.

So, it's all a bit embarrassing that my (2018) piece on Plato's ship of state (here) has attracted more than 17,400 page-views. (My hunch is that these are undergrads looking for help on their term paper in some way.) Even by my standards that's not a shabby number of page-views. In this case, I don't gloat about this because the piece contains a glaring mistake. Remember that the analogy starts with this sentence (now quoting Reeve) "The shipowner is taller and stronger than everyone else on board. But he is hard of hearing, he is a bit short-sighted, and his knowledge of seafaring is correspondingly deficient. The sailors are quarreling with one about captaincy."

In my commentary at the time, I reject the (correct) idea that the people are the ship-owner, and claim (incorrectly) that the ship-owner reflects the propertied class. This is bad enough, but because of this mistake I fail to mention that in the analogy the sailors are supposed to be the political elites of a democracy. This is, in fact, hard to miss because Socrates says it explicitly at 489c. (And some of my own students reminded me of this.)

Somewhat surprisingly much of what I said in the post is not actually much undermined by this mistake. But what the piece ends up missing is that the point of Socrates' criticism of democracy in the ship of state analogy is to be especially scathing about democratic political elites. And, in fact, there is a tempting way to read Socrates as a true democrat because in the ship of state analogy the people are the victims of their elites. (Of course, this also exhibits a strain of elitism because it kind of denies the agency of the demos.)

What's worth noticing about this today is that Socrates' critique of democratic political elites anticipates the tenor of contemporary so-called populist criticism of liberal democratic elites, who don't represent the interest of the people and who by their bickering undermine unity and flourishing.* He later suggests they are composed of the useless drones, a parasitic rentier class (564c).

That Socrates anticipates the populists becomes even clearer when one recalls his first law of political science/unity:  "[T]he simple and unvarying rule, that in every form of government revolution takes its start from the ruling class itself, when dissension arises in that, but so long as it is at one with itself, however small it be, innovation is impossible" (Republic, 545d, translated by Shorey). For the populist this empirical-conceptual regularity is actually encouraging because if they can nudge such disunity along, political rule is within reach. 

I don't mean to suggest that contemporary populists are (despite the fondness of some of them to quote classical sources) promoting a kallipolis. Nor do I mean to deny that from Socrates' perspective such populists are in fact the intoxicant who eat and drink up the ship's cargo and become would-be tyrants (565e).

At this point one might think that I could have saved my initial argument back in 2018 by saying (as contemporary critics of our democracy are won't to do) that the people are to blame for their leaders. And there is a sense in which Socrates also, eventually, makes a claim like this later in Book 8 (in 562cd &  563d), suggesting that the people will reject leaders who won't give them what they want which just is license and live from moment to moment (561c). Interestingly, the main examples of such license are extreme sex-equality and (near) abolitionism of slavery (563b), and relatively open borders to immigrants (562e/563a). {I love hearing folk saying that such ideas are modern inventions.}* 

Now, more is worth saying about how when democracy was revived in recent centuries some of the criticisms of Socrates were internalized in different ways in different liberal democracies. But that's for another time. I have decided not to delete the earlier post on the ship of state. What gives these diaries their charm, if any, is that they reflect my howlers, too. But I will add a disclaimer to it to check out this post, too, for corrections to it. And, yes, it's possible I will need to that again.

*While populists tend not to be cosmopolitan, contemporary populists divide on this: some wish to promote a reaction and restore gender hierarchy and a pure ethnic unity; others wish to protect hedonism (and ethnic unity) against religious fundamentalists. 

 

 

Nancy Bauer vs Timothy Williamson (I)

    The point is that anyone who takes an interest in the Sorites paradox is going to do so not because life calls for a theory of vagueness but for reasons that are completely internal to a certain way of proceeding in the practice of philosophy. Despite its ancient history, however, the reasons people worry about the Sorites are not as deeply entrenched as philosophy students these days may be led to believe. It may surprise those who find the Sorites and other problems and paradoxes of vagueness unavoidable to learn that we find no discussions of these issues throughout most of the history of Western philosophy, from Aristotle until the early twentieth century. (I will not speculate about the reasons for this absence but will point out only that it indicates that the problem of vagueness did not exercise humankind for at least two of it���s 2.5 millennia existence.)
   Williamson���s agenda in his Mars paper renders unsurprising the revelation that what revivified the problem was the development of predicate logic, which allows you to cast the following argument in formally valid terms (and in various forms of those terms):

Premise: One grain of sand does not a heap make.
Premise: If x grains of sand do not a heap make, then x + 1
grains do not a heap make.
Conclusion: Therefore, 100,000 grains of sand do not a heap make.

The conclusion here seems obviously false. But where does the argument go wrong? The first premise seems indubitable. But if we reject the second premise, then we are committed to the implausible claim that there is some precise x such that x ��� 1 is not a heap but x, x + 1, x + 2...x + n are. A nonphilosopher might find this problem to be of a certain intellectual interest. But for a contemporary philosopher of language, it constitutes a threat. The reason is that the contemporary philosopher of language is interested in coming up with a formal theory���that is, one that works with predicates with precise extensions���that explains how natural languages do what they do. Because there are lots and lots of vague predicates in language, the Sorites looms everywhere. So if we can���t solve the Sorites, then the theorizing enterprise appears to be threatened.
    The early logicians���Bertrand Russell in particular���did not feel this threat because they had more modest aspirations than do contemporary philosophers of language. Frege and Russell had no interest in generating a formal semantic theory of natural language. Their goal was to use logic to develop an ideal language. In his 1923 paper ���Vagueness,��� Russell says,

In an accurate language, meaning would be a one-one relation; no word would have two meanings, and no two words would have the same meaning. In actual languages, as we have seen, meaning is one-many. (It happens often that two words have the same meaning, but this is easily avoided, and can be assumed not to happen without injuring the argument.) That is to say, there is not only one object that a word means, and not only one possible fact that will verify a proposition. The fact that meaning is a one-many relation is the precise statement of the fact that all language is more or less vague.

    For Frege and Russell, then, the Sorites problem was a nonissue. Of course (thought they) expressions of natural language are vague. But if you aspire to use logic to come up with a general theory of natural language, then the Sorites will loom large for you.
    This brief discussion of the Sorites suggests that for contemporary philosophers of language the interest in the vagueness problem is a function of a deeper interest in the project of using formal logic to generate a general theory of natural language (and not a function, that means, of various particular real-world interests in the history of Mars, the age of consent, hirsuteness, and so on). But now the impatient person that Williamson has in mind has reason to ask why he or she ought to find this project interesting. Nancy Bauer (2015) "What is to Be Done With Austin?" in How to do Things With Pornography, pp. 111-112.

The quoted passage is the end of chapter 6 of Bauer's lucid, adult, and all-round excellent book, which has a surprising amount of meta-philosophical meat. I know it's par for the course in feminist writings, but I did not expect it in a book with 'pornography' in its title (my bad). 

In order to avoid confusion, Bauer does not deny that in "real-life" vagueness is often very important.  What she denies is that a generic treatment of the sort that Williamson advocates will be salient in "real-life." Williamson here stands in for those who pursue philosophy as a theoretical, scientistic enterprise--those that "attempt to describe and explain phenomena systematically in internally consistent way that mandates or predicts what should will happen in relevant future cases." (106) And Bauer takes on Williamson's exemplary question whether "Mars always [was] either dry or not dry?" (108)

In his paper, Williamson calls this the 'original question.' And indeed Williamson treats it as a proto-philosophical question, and he stipulates that "a philosophical account of vagueness that did not tell us how to answer the original question would thereby be incomplete." And he later informs us that people "under the influence of the later Wittgenstein" are his targets. So, it's not wholly surprising that Bauer (who might be said to be shaped by later Wittgenstein in some sense) responds.

But it is worth noting that nothing Bauer says turns on (I am still quoting Williamson) "a premature and slightly facile pessimism" about the possibility of a formal semantics as such. Bauer might well grant, for the sake of argument, that a complete formal semantics of natural language is possible and worth developing. Her point, if I understand it, is two-fold: (i) drawing on Austin, she argues that such a formal semantics always leaves something out in the manner of language use (and while this is partially captured by pragmatics it is not wholly so captured). And (ii) the Williamson justification of formal semantics on offer is blatantly inadequate: that we really don't need to formal semantics to answer the original question. For, according to Williamson in order to answer that original question we must develop logical or metalogical theories (or, to use Williamson again, "complex, technical, metarepresentational theories"). 

In my view Bauer is right to criticize Williamson's claim that formal semantics is necessary to answer the original question. And she is also right to criticize his "contempt" for those that disagree with him. (108) He does not make a good faith effort to meet the concerns of those influenced by later Wittgenstein (note that this does not involve me--I have always been unmoved!) And I think a lot of folk who admire him for good reasons tend to offer equally bad arguments in the vicinity of this area (treating metaphilosophical critics of Williamson as if they are continental philosophers). And she is right to criticize the idea that somehow philosophy could be justified when it can offer formal semantics as a gift or exemplar to non-philosophers. On Bauer's views cases of vagueness are resolved in "real life" not by generic theoretical improvements, but are "invariably specific" (109) and often relatively arbitrary (110); thinking "about vagueness in general gets us nowhere." (109) However, I don't think Bauer needs these particular claims in this extreme form (not to mention that she is helping herself to "real life" without much argument). She could easily concede without undermining her argument that in some scientific or technical areas, the formal semantics of vague predicates may be very useful or could with minor adjustments be tailor-made to be very useful. (These areas may not count as sufficiently 'real-life' for her.)

Now, I have to admit I was a bit surprised by her claim that the Sorites paradox was (ahh) a dormant philosophical puzzle for very long stretches of philosophical history. In her excellent entry in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Diana Raffman places the revival of interest slightly earlier than Bauer does: "the paradox attracted little subsequent interest until the late 19th century. Marxist philosophers in the neo-Hegelian tradition, like Plekhanov (1908 [1937: 114]), cited the paradox as evidence of the failure of ���customary��� logic and the utility of the ���logic of contradiction���." Even so, Raffman, too, notes the dormancy.

But it does not follow that phenomena that instantiate a Sorites paradox are not common in the history of philosophy. This is, in fact, in accord with Bauer's insight that problems of vagueness are not treated as generic problems of vagueness or a general Sorites paradox. So, I have argued in print that some elements in Hume's description of the missing shade of blue actually turn on a Sorites style paradox, and one can find other places in the history of philosophy and science where Sorites paradoxes are lurking but without them being treated as a general paradox. In my own case, I learned about the structure of Sorites paradox from Poincare (writing in late 19th century) before I ever took a class in metaphysics or sementics.

More important, one can agree with Bauer that something goes badly off the rails in Williamson's defense, while still granting (as I would, but she not) that (i) Martian history buffs could be made to see and find interesting that the original question is an instantiation of a general philosophical problem (108); (ii) that formal semantics is worth doing for intrinsic philosophical reasons; and (iii) that not all generic theories are equally bad. That is to say, while I think Bauer is right to think that certain kind of philosophical theories are being oversold with poor justification, it is not true that generic theories don't have a fruitful place in bringing philosophy into contact with all kinds of areas of special application. 

As regular readers know (recall here; here; here), I am a fan of a species of generic theories, synthetic philosophy, by which I mean a style of philosophy that brings together insights, knowledge, and arguments from the special sciences with the aim to offer a coherent account of complex systems and connect these to a wider culture, policy, or other philosophical projects (or both). Now the generic theories of synthetic philosophy (I have used as examples game theory, information theory, Darwinianism, actor-network theory,  etc. ) are developed within and in conversation with special sciences and need not be topic neutral in a general way. Yet, these generic theories are not just useful in the special sciences, but often can be made action guiding in non-trivial ways. In fact, given Bauer's feminist desire to transform the world (xi, 11 (etc.), she should not wish to throw out such generic theories. But I have gone on long enough, TBC.

 

 

 

 

 

On Comedians that Punch Down (Srinivasan/Cowen, and yes Chappelle)

One of the great jokes of the political circumstances of our age is that comedians are the great political commentators of the age. And while it would be silly to claim that David Letterman is solely responsible for the political ascendancy of Donald Trump, it's also true that he helped turn Trump from a New York city character into a national celebrity by repeatedly giving him space for -- I say this with the benefit of hindsight -- test-running his campaign massages. Belatedly, around 2010 Letterman himself grew uneasy about this, calling Trump a racist and sharply demarcating the "circus" (in which Letterman and Trump were both starring (ahh) freaks) from the political arena. The point of the contrast in Letterman's shtick then is to proclaim Trump unfit for office. (The interview with Dr. Phil is still worth re-watching; Jason Zinoman's 2017 New York Times article gives useful background, although does not mention Trump's role in the Central Park five.)

Letterman's underlying instinct that there is a contrast between comedy and politics is an important one. It's no less important than the difference between work-place harassment and comedy. What's  funny and worth having in one context, is oppressive in another.

I am thinking of these matters not just because Plato implies that Aristophanes is responsible for the accusation (and so eventual execution) of Socrates, or the predictable controversy about Dave Chappelle's latest special, and (recall) my struggle with the implications of my admiration for Norm Macdonald, but also because the topic frames the relatively recent, fascinating discussion (or interview) between Tyler Cowen and Amia Srinivasan. 

So, let's first look at how that exchange commences:

COWEN: You���ve described yourself as a utopian feminist. In your vision of utopian feminism, how much room is there for what I would call compartmentalization? Just to give a simple example, if you look at, say, stand-up comedy, a lot of it is sexist or racist, or even if it���s not, it���s perceived as such. What happens to that in the utopia? Do we just compartmentalize and let it continue? Or how do you treat it?

SRINIVASAN: I���m not sure about room for compartmentalization. I do think there���s a lot of room for context. For example, when you���re thinking about the violence in rap lyrics, an obsession that began in the conservative pearl-clutching in the ���80s, you���ve got to think about what those invocations of violence are doing performatively in a piece of art, that is, rap music. It���s not the same thing as someone standing up in the middle of the town square, trying to deliberately incite violence against people.

Not even speaking about the utopia, just speaking about how we should think about performative utterances right now, I think we need to address them with a great deal of contextual sensitivity and think about, in general, what is happening in these particular cases. What seems to be problematic might not be. But then, let���s be honest, if you���ve spent any time in a comedy club���������and I recently did that when I was last in LA���������there is just a lot of quite naked sexism there.

It���s pretty shocking���������despite the fact of this feminist revolution in comedy���������just how much stand-up comedy is really quite comedically boring and sexist. Now, there���s this question about���������I take it that one of the thoughts you have is something like humor������

COWEN: Right, which has a brutal element to it. How humor fits into utopia is a long-standing puzzle because humor is often brutal, right?

SRINIVASAN: Yes. Look, I don���t think the utopia or the post-revolutionary world is a place without any form of brutality, and it���s certainly not a place without humor. It���s going to have disappointment and heartache and tragedy and tragicomedy. Human foibles will still exist. Heartbreak will exist. With all of those things, you have humor.

What is very limited is the thought���������and I���m not suggesting that you���re advocating for this thought���������but the thought that you basically need structures of organized political oppression like racism to have humor. The Greeks had humor without having racism. They had other systems of domination, but they had a great and advanced sense of humor, often directed at intellectuals and philosophers, who, I think, are often very much a worthy target.

I think there can be this view on which ending forms of domination and oppression somehow drains life of all that is special and textured about it: humor, love, intimacy, friendship. I just don���t think that���s true. I think, in fact, what the end of domination would do is release us more fully into the specific things that make human life worth living, including humor.

Now, it's quite possible that Cowen surprised Srinivasan with this line of questioning. I recently read (and discussed) Srinivasan's The Right to Sex, and, while she does self-describe as a 'utopian feminist,' and mentions Louis C.K's misdeeds, I don't recall comedy being especially important to her arguments. Having said that Cowen did his homework and seems to have been aware of the fact (as I was not) that Srinivasan has a serious background in theater (as she affirms later in the interview). I hope to return to the meat of the interview some other time.

I was, however, taken aback by Srinivasan's comments that I have just quoted. For, if a post-revolutionary world, feminist or not, cannot do without "brutality," then it is not obviously worth having. Of course, she leaves unclear what 'form of brutality' she foresees, and without further specification there is not much more to say here.*

Second, she thinks that "intellectuals and philosophers" are worthy targets of comedy. Since she is talking about ancient Greece, and is one of our leading philosophers, one might say she forfeits Plato's/Socrates' "ancient quarrel" (Republic, 607b) against Aristophanes on behalf of the rest of us. She does not explain why, but given her comments in context, I assume this is so because the "intellectuals and philosophers" are not at the bottom of the dominance hierarchy and, one might argue, can wield the pen (or feather/keyboard) as sharply as the comedian. I suspect, then, she thinks it's kind of a fair fight that old quarrel between philosophy and the comic poets.

Fair enough. Although it's worth noting -- as the fate of Socrates suggests --, it's not wholly a fair fight because the comedian can attract a much wider audience than the philosopher, and may well be much better at political and social rhetoric (this is one of the sub-themes of the Symposium, after all.) And the consequential afterlife of such public rhetoric can be quite unpredictable. Aristophanes' Clouds may well have been thought harmless to Socrates when it first was performed, but after a plague, disastrous imperial overreach, a civil war and murderous dictatorship, context shifted dramatically. I mention these historical facts because what Letterman himself clearly thought initially was harmless entertainment, became politically potent after a great financial meltdown and a bailout of the rich and connected.

So, lurking in Srinivasan's comments, which, as I suggested, may well be entirely improvised, is the idea that humor, even brutal humor, is fine as long as it does not reinforce a structural hierarchy of some sorts. In addition (I take this from what she says about rap), comedy should not incite violence. 

Now, one natural way to read Srinivasan is that while comedy may not be art (like some rap is), comedy is, in fact, self-justifying. It's just one of those things that make a good life good. And because I agree with her about this (that comedy is self-justifying), and her suggestion that even in a very well ordered (albeit brutal) society there would be comedy, I do not want to exaggerate our differences.

But it does not follow from this that in addition to being good in its own right, comedy serves no social purpose in a disordered, hierarchical society like ours. For, comedy also offers society a mirror, even if it is a crooked or distorted mirror. And, not unlike great utopian fiction, it reflects back to us -- in exaggerated fashion, perhaps, -- the way laws, norms, and mores operate and the effect of them on all of us or some of us. In fact, Aristophanes Lysistrata has an important role to play in combining comedy with the birth pangs of feminist utopianism (if I don't have enough street cred for you to say this, this is the place in which I invoke the authority of De Beauvoir). Much of the old Chappelle's Show on Comedy Central (now available on Netflix) was about offering society a mirror on racial relations that with the benefit of hindsight looks prescient in light of black lives matter. 

Of course, Chappelle's recent special on Netflix, taped in Detroit, has gotten a lot of attention for its explicitly pro-TERF stance and its many transphobic jokes (also a theme in his earlier 2019 special). But if you watch his shows, there is a broader more complicated position. I want to introduce my defense of that claim by first mentioning another theme unrelated to transgender issues. A set of Chappelle's jokes (this is in his earlier 2019 show) is about Michael Jackson's child victims. And some of the jokes clearly minimize the harm done to the children (and others suggest Chappelle does not believe all the allegations). But the set is itself explicitly framed by Chappelle mentioning the fact that 50% of the audience members have probably experienced sexual harassment or worse. And while each of his punchlines can be construed as a belittling of the problem, the overall point is that there is a horrid epidemic of sexual harassment (and it should not just focus on celebrities). 

I think something analogous happens with Chappelle's orientation to transgenderism. This is an issue he has gotten flack for in the past, and some of that criticism is part of the narrative. (I don't mean to suggest he is fair to his critics or actually responds well to them.) So, for example, there is a series of jokes about how on a road-trip a car, which includes a transgender person (a 'T'), can't make bathroom stops in four states. What's interesting about these jokes is that Chappelle is clearly not at all oblivious to the fact that many states make it inordinately difficult to be transgender; and his sympathies are clearly with the transgender against the states that wish to police bathroom behavior. 

After watching Chappelle's special and his (2019) Sticks & Stones, it seems pretty obvious to me that his underlying political outlook is live and let live (as long as Chappelle can make fun of you). I don't know whether Srinivasan thinks Chappelle is one of the "boring" comedians, but plenty of his jokes are not just transphobic, but also sexist.** (He recycles and repackages Norm Macdonald's sexist jokes about the WNBA. He also repurchases MacDonald's Jacques de Gatineau joke which is not sexist at all.) It would be disingenuous to say that he is merely representing or providing a window on sexism in society. He is also reenacting it.

But I don't think Chappelle is reenacting his transphobia merely for the purpose of putting his finger in the eyes of his critics. For the recent special culminates in a narrative about his relationship to Daphne Dorman a transgender (part-time) comedian, who ended up committing suicide. What's interesting about the narrative is not that Dorman (and later her family) defended Chappelle or that Chappelle set up a trust fund for Dorman's daughter, or that he has had a transgender friend and offered her professional opportunities, or even that Chappelle thinks white transgenders use their racial privilege in ways he rejects. But rather that Chappelle hoped to speak with Dorfman's daughter someday and that he wants to say to her (and now I quote from memory) that he "knew her father. And he was a hell of a woman.��� (See here for slightly different rendition.) And whatever else Chappelle is implying with this joke, he is telling his audience that if even a transphobe -- and if you listen to his set he does not present himself as a moral exemplar at all -- like him can recognize and see Daphne Dorman's gender, anyone can. The implicature of the special is, thus, that the transphobes who act on their transphobia politically and economically are the real problem, and that if one recognizes one's own imperfections one can rise above them.

For Chappelle, we are all flawed none of us is really without sin. And his best jokes (and impersonations) have or exhibit, and now I echo Norm Macdonald's considered views about all good comedy, compassion for their targets.

The underlying point is that by being the object of a joke one can also, simultaneously, be humanized. Of course, this is not always true. But even jokes that are experienced as offensive and entrenching subordination also bring the outcasts into the community and into a larger conversation. (This is Chappelle's own defense in the special.) Not all purported jokes or the sets they are part of do this, of course. And my judgment here is fallible. And I also don't think Chappelle's humor is always that funny. (I never found Chappelle's Show on Comedy Central especially funny, but I also recognize that this may be colored by the realization that people like me were its target! Yet, some of the sketches are etched in my memory.)

But let's say I am wrong about all of this. Maybe his transphobic stance (funny or not to some) is simply beyond the pale, and maybe there are no positive consequences from punching down at all in comedy.  I would still argue that when performing, comedians should have an artistic license to mock and insult on par with the academic freedom of academics in academic life. 

For, it's healthy for society to have a place where none of us is above the joke. I don't just think this because it creates a privileged space for politicized or social commentary and for presenting the effects of our follies and foibles. Because of workplace rules and polarization, there are, in fact, few places where controversial and potentially obnoxious views can be aired at all in relatively heterogeneous company (outside echo chambers). And it is not like comedians can say anything. They, too, are regulated by public opinion and the views of their audience. So, the social utility of comedy is not just that it offers us a window into (the effects of) a lot of our social norms and practices, but also that they do so -- despite audience fragmentation and filtering -- in a way that is accessible to a relatively heterogeneous (and potentially large) public. This is, after all, one of the reasons why despite their lack of authority, they are important politically. 

I have gone on longer than is typical in such a Digression. And this reflects my awareness that perhaps I am all wrong here. So, I should stop here. But I wanted to add two more thoughts.

First, at one point, in an interview I think with Larry King, Norman Macdonald says in self-effacing manner, that stand-up comedy is no art. And this may suggest that Srinivasan is right in her implied contrast between rap (an art) and comedy (not an art) in her response to Cowen quoted above. For, Macdonald says, art is capable of multiple interpretations, whereas the job of a stand-up comedian is to make a room or a TV audience have the same reaction at the same time. What's funny about the comment, of course, is that Macdonald was quite capable of generating multiple reactions to his jokes over time (in the same audience). So, comedy is art, after all, but can only show (not say) it. Many of Chappelle's stories and jokes, too, also have multiple layers to them. He is not just creating laughs, but he is also inviting multiple interpretations. (This also suggests I should not be too confident in my own!)

Second, my partial defense of the fruitfulness of even potentially offensive comedy presupposes that comedy knows its proper place and stays in its lane. But as Letterman discovered that assumption is na��ve. When a clown is seen as a trickster or noble truth-teller, they can become quite powerful politically in times of instability even potential civil war. (For the contrast between a clown and trickers see this fine essay on Boris Johnson by Alan Finlayson.)  

My idea that comedy is an important social safety valve and sometimes an epistemically useful window in a democracy also entails that it may be socially dangerous (as dictators everywhere recognize). My cop-out response here is that thankfully Chappelle's critics have access to influential outlets so that their concerns are also heard. Unlike the popular representation of Mill (which, inspired by Jill Gordon, I don't think captures Mill's views), I doubt the truth prevails over time in the 'marketplace of ideas.' Rather, liberal democracy is also a project in forbearance in which we ought to try to minimize mutual inconvenience and harms. Comedy can produce genuine harms, but it also plays an indispensable social role in helping see a way beyond them.

 

 

 

*To be sure, I do think that if one advocates revolution (recall Srinivasan on Stanley here; Srinivasan on Nussbaum here; but see here for second thoughts) one has some responsibility for what follows

**I have seen on-line chatter that his 'space Jews' joke is anti-Semitic, but the underlying point is the tragedy that a people that have suffered so badly are now oppressing another. 

Covid Diaries: stagnation and memorial

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

*In fairness, there are other recommendations some of which might tilt the balance a bit more in favor of citizens.

More's Utopia and the Reform of Christianity

���People who have made up their minds to rush headlong down the opposite road are never pleased with the man who calls them back and points out the dangers of their course. But, apart from that, what did I say that could not and should not be said everywhere? Indeed, if we dismiss as outlandish and absurd everything that the perverse customs of men have made to seem alien to us, we shall have to set aside, even in a community of Christians, most of the teachings of Christ. Yet he forbade us to dissemble them, and even ordered that what he had whispered in the ears of his disciples should be preached openly from the housetops. Most of his teachings are far more alien from the common customs of mankind than my discourse was. But preachers, like the crafty fellows they are, have found that people would rather not change their lives to fit Christ���s rule, and so, following your advice, I suppose, they have adjusted his teaching to the way people live, as if it were a leaden yardstick. At least in that way they can get the two things to correspond in some way or other. The only real thing they accomplish that I can see is to make people feel more secure about doing evil.--Thomas More Utopia, Book 1, translated by Robert M. Adams

The quoted passage is part of the response by Raphael Hythloday to Thomas More's suggestion to use an "indirect approach" in one's attempts to offer expert advice to sovereigns, to use tact, and to try "what you cannot turn to good, you may at least make as little bad as possible." (37) I leave aside here the delicate question to what degree the character Thomas More stands in for the views of the author Thomas More. The character More (echoing Cicero) promotes a mitigation or amelioration strategy in contexts where one knows that there is no appetite for uptake of better, minimally decent courses of action.  

And Hythloday claims that the strategy advocated by More (the character) is a dangerous form of self-deception. Because one ends up legitimizing, even advocating true evil (even if -- one can stipulate -- it is less evil than it otherwise might be). And because More (the author) understands the problem and its complex temptations first hand, the issue is treated in timeless fashion. As I have noted before (recall; and here) the theme is pursued throughout Utopia.

But what I had not quite noticed before is that Hythloday uses the occasion to point out that speaking truth to power is as difficult as speaking truth to ordinary people (assuming, for the sake of argument, he believes in the truth of Christ's teaching). And not unlike the early Protestants who are just about to arrive on the historical horizon, Hythloday claims (in very Epicurean fashion) that the clergy have corrupted Christ's teaching in order for it to be acceptable by the people. (The point survives the further thought that on balance, Hythloday's pure religion is a rather Spinozistic Christianity [see here; here; and here.] He had made the same point -- the key role for the opinion and sentiments of the governed -- about the nature of royal authority in his vignette (recall) on the Achorians a few pages before. Interestingly enough, in both cases ordinary opinion dramatically constrains the ambitions of a ruling authority, in the case of royalty for the better (it makes it more responsible and pacific) and in the case of Christianity for the worse (it undermines the core teachings of the religion).

But the situation is a bit more complicated yet. As I noted when I was still writing at NewAPPS, earlier Hythloday contrasts, (i) Moses's legal code and the more gentle rule of Christianity. (Both are treated as mediation's of God's will.) And an implied contrast (ii) between the way one rules a barbarous people (recently liberated from tyranny) and the way one rules a more civilized people. The implied contrast (ii) effectively historicizes the Bible, whose commandments are now understood as fitted to a people at a particular time and place in need of strict rule. But in the passage quoted above, it becomes clear that the gentle rule of Christianity is in some sense felt to be too demanding for kings and people alike in the context of Roman empire and European feudalism.

Now, one way to go at this point is to look for a renewal of Christianity by a legislator with Moses' political skill. And it is not farfetched to see Utopus and (say Bacon's refounder of Bensalem, King Salomana) as an example hereof (recall here; here). And there are echoes of this project throughout the early modern period (up to Rousseau's divine legislator in the Social Contract).

Another way to go, if you think religions are in part a function of context and popular uptake, is to suggest that traditional Christianity has outlived its possibility. And that what is needed is a new kind of religion better suited for time and place. Comte is the best known example of an explicit attempt at this. But plenty of religious reformers between More and Comte can be said to fall in this category. I actually think an option like this is explored  in Book II of Utopia, but that's for another time.

At this point one may well wonder 'why religion at all?' Rather than treating the question as an anachronism, it is pretty clear that there is an answer to it in Utopia; where throughout religion is treated (anticipating Spinoza and Kant) as a regulator of moral life. And, as the quoted passage reveals, at least Hythloday believes strongly (anticipating Spinoza's eighteenth century critics) that without the restraint of religion people would be even more evil than we find that they are. People claiming to be Christians act in very unchristian fashion.

I will stop here. But I don't mean to suggest this exhaust the issue in Utopia. Of course, that people claiming to be Christians act in very unchristian fashion may also suggest that the problem is Christianity. Whatever else Book 1 of Utopia establishes (recall) is that people respond to incentives and that one must design and reform social institutions accordingly. It also establishes that monopoly power (in economic and political life) without countervailing powers is very dangerous to public or "common good." So, Book 1 also invites us to consider to what degree one needs religion to promote common good, and if one does, how it should be organized given a given material context. And if I understand More (the character) aright, this will be articulated in an indirect fashion.

 

 

Norm MacDonald, Lou Jacobi, and the Best Joke of All Time.

One of my imperfections that I have become aware of through marriage is my tendency to wisecrack at inopportune moments, especially during moments of vulnerable intimacy or awkward silences. And when I think I am funny, I'll repeat the wisecrack. I call this 'situational comedy' (although I realize that is confusing given the TV/Radio genre with the same name and probably should have settled on something more pretentious like 'fondness for the absurd'), and I sharply distinguish it from joking and punning. At some point, I decided that repeating the wisecrack -- a word that appeals to the skeptical philosopher in me -- would only enhance the joke; repetition is key to the gag. This tendency makes the awkwardness worse, of course. 

In my defense, there is a skill involved in being funny, to adlib in the moment; it is, in fact, true improv unlike the genre that has the name, which is almost entirely scripted and a really skilled profession. I mention this not to suggest that I have any expertise in jokes or comedy. I am, in fact, terrible at telling actual jokes. And unlike, say, my teacher the late Ted Cohen (recall), who could be funny at will, I lack a theory of why things are funny, or not, when they are.

That I am bad at telling jokes is actually surprising because at one point, in my twenties, I hung out regularly with Lou Jacobi (a family friend--about that some other time more), who would take my to Museums on the Upper East Side. (There is a fascinating short video about Lou.) Lou and I mostly talked about the art we saw, and his showbiz stories, but at one point, we were walking near Lexington, he asked me if I wanted to know the secret of joke-telling. His eyes lit up as he leaned over to me with a conspiratorial glimmer, and I wondered if he was violating some guild-protocol, he whispered, 'always remember the punchline!' And started crackling. 

There is, in fact, no easier way to remember the punchline if it is identical to the set-up. Norman Macdonald repeatedly asserted that the "perfect joke would be if the punchline and the set up were identical," or "almost identical." (I have heard him say different versions.) Macdonald, who died last week, loved this principle, and he used variants on it throughout his time at SNL (see below). 

I sometimes wonder whether it's news to most philosophers that 'A = A' can be funny and even is the structure, or the form, of the perfect joke. (It probably was old hat to Wittgenstein.) Part of the joke of identity is, of course, that the second 'A' (the repetition) is not the original; it's a copy.

After Macdonald died, and in order to forget my frustration over my slow recovery, I binge-watched (and listened) to clips of Macdonald and other comedians discussing Macdonald's craft. They (the comedians) routinely describe him, even before he died, 'as the funniest man I know.' (No, never 'funniest person.') It was odd for me to see that in the days after he died, these very comedians had also binge-watched the same clips I had been binge-watching. Most of them ignored the perfect joke, and would speak about the Bob Saget roast, the moth joke, the ESPYS, the Courtney Thorne-Smith/carrottop mockery, and being fired for joking about OJ Simpson. 

Macdonald has a bad reputation among contemporary moralists and increasingly became a red state hero. And it's true that Macdonald made a lot of fun of the Clintons, and over time became somewhat of a hater. But if you go back to the SNL days, nearly all of his jokes about them express his outrage over the fact that Clinton is a known, serial sexual harasser in plain sight and got away with it. (Something similar is on display in his repeated jokes about Michael Jackson's pedophilia.) His political comedy was moralistic.

I suspect Macdonald, who was incredibly well-read, later regretted that his initial fame was due to his political jokes because he came to deny that hating on others generated real humor. (For example, he loathed Alec Baldwin's Trump because there is no place for any fondness of Trump, but greatly admired Darrell Hammond's Trump.) Rather, in his interviews it's clear that while he dislikes confessional humor, he greatly admires those comics that can do jokes about ordinary life without showing their craft, especially Bob Hope, who could be very funny in virtue of extremely minor final or posture changes despites his jokes being rather bad. (This is something late Macdonald clearly tried to emulate in his final Netflix show, being funny with bad jokes.) 

In listening to the comedians talking about Macdonald, I realized that their world is not so different from professional philosophy. For, they have a strong norm against plagiarizing each other's jokes, although they allow some to do so as a form of (ahh) intertextual homage. (Macdonald was fond of this privilege, and used it not irregularly especially when roasting his friends in order to pay homage to Don Rickles, Rodney Dangerfield, and this, too, then also get remarked upon by the other comedians.)

As an aside, the moth joke was, I gather, apparently not Macdonald's, but a friend's (although I am sure it has a much longer prehistory). The joke itself is super-corny, and the set up has a rather classical structure of ascending woes, but because O'Brien interrupts a few times, Macdonald has to improvise. The brilliance of the moth joke is not the punchline, but the long-winded delivery of the set-up. This was, in fact, one of the reasons other comedians admire Macdonald because he could make the set up itself more hilarious than the punch-line. This kind of inversion is much harder to pull off than anti-humor. I just love listening and watching repeatedly to the set ups of Macdonald's Jacques de Gatineau joke, the polish joke, the professor of logic joke, and even the Andy Richter joke (which Andy Richter quite rightly did not find funny).  Not to belabor the point, but this focus on the comic potential of the set-up, is itself a key to the borsht belt humor in some of the best sketches on Jacobi's You Don't Have to be Jewish (e.g.,  a 'Call from Long Island'; 'The Reading of the Will'; 'James Bondstein'). 

Also, I noticed that among comedians it is a completely legitimate argument to claim that the fact that Letterman asked Macdonald to be Letterman's final (comic) guest proves that Macdonald is really the funniest. It's a bit like the honor philosophers show each other at a Fest. 

Let me wrap up: when I teach I often wisecrack to end awkward silences. The jokes are pretty bad, but the undergrads find my repetitions funny (I can demonstrate this with hundreds of student evals). What's neat about this is that what is objectively a personality defect --  the badly timed witticism that blocks intimacy with a loved one -- can be made functional in the classroom because it helps the students relax despite the fact that we're discussing very challenging and often politically polarizing material. It does so by marking off, as it were 'once upon a time,' the (cognitive) space in which we are super serious from the outside-world in which people come to blows over the same issues, but we pride ourselves on our detachment. Or, maybe, the students are just laughing at me. 

 

 

 

*I recently

A Small Puzzle About Cattle, Pigs, and Vegetarianism in Plato's Republic

Then we shall have to enlarge the city again. For that healthy state is no longer sufficient, but we must proceed to swell out its bulk [and population] and fill it up with a multitude of things that exceed the requirements of necessity in states, as, for example, the entire class of huntsmen, and the imitators, many of them occupied with figures and colors and many with music���the poets and their assistants, rhapsodists, actors, chorus-dancers, contractors���and the manufacturers of all kinds of articles, especially those that have to do with women's adornment. And so we shall also want more servitors. Don't you think that we shall need tutors, nurses wet and dry, beauty-shop ladies, barbers and yet again cooks and chefs? And we shall have need, further, of swineherds; there were none of these creatures in our former city, for we had no need of them, but in this city there will be this further need; and we shall also require other cattle in great numbers if they are to be eaten.--Plato, Republic 373b-c, Translated by Paul Shorey.

The quoted passage is part of the transition from the healthy, "true city" (372e5)-- thanks to Glaucon's intervention known as the "city of pigs" (372d3-4)-- to the luxurious or feverish city. At this point we learn that the city of pigs actually does not contain any real pigs because they were not needed in a city devoted to meeting our necessary needs.

At first, I thought this meant that pigs were taken to be luxury (a bit like salmon today). Even so, this puzzled me because pigs have been domesticated for more than 9000 years,  and seemed to have been an important food staple.

The last quoted sentence ("and we shall also require other cattle in great numbers if they are to be eaten,") implies that the inhabitants of the city of pigs are vegetarian. This is also implied in 372b: "for their nourishment they will provide meal from their barley and flour from their wheat, and kneading and cooking these they will serve noble cakes and loaves on some arrangement of reeds or clean leaves." However, as 373c implies, there is cattle in the city of pigs (which is explicitly mentioned at 370e1).  

So, given the presence of cattle (and sheep) it is by no means obvious that the city of pigs is vegetarian. True, the only function explicitly and originally ascribed to cattle is to plough (3701e1). Since the good folk of  the city of pigs don't go around naked (they will have weavers for clothes and cobblers for shoes 369d7-9), it is not a stretch to assume the cows also supply leather. In addition, in response to Glaucon's horror, Socrates admits that the cows also supply the necessary city with cheese (the latter explicitly mentioned at 372c3), and so presumably also milk. So, why not meat?

It would, after all, be a waste not to eat cattle meat. And since the city explicitly trades of luxury for population growth, it would make sense for them to eat meat. But if they do, why not also farm pigs? Since the city requires export commodities (370e-371a), one could argue that the cattle meat is used to pay for necessary goods from abroad. Of course, this kind of local vegetarianism is not especially principled. 

There is a further more far-fetched hint that the inhabitants of the city of pigs were not vegetarians. When in Book 3, Socrates describes the lifestyle of the auxiliaries of the luxurious city when they are on campaign, he explicitly notes that soldiers prefer roasted meat because it is most easily available (404c2). If the inhabitants of the city of pigs would find themselves on a military campaign it's likely they would eat meat. However, (recall) Socrates explicitly denies that they go to war (372c). They maintain an optimal population to avoid poverty, luxury, and war. 

So, if the inhabitants of the city of pigs are vegetarians, as seems most likely (but not certain), it is odd that they keep cattle. But if they are not vegetarians it is odd that they do not farm pigs. Why are pigs only introduced in the feverish city. Perhaps, some classicist will inform me they had high status as a luxury item in Socratic Athens. But I doubt it.

One of my undergraduate students from a farming background* made the following plausible observation. Unlike cattle, pigs will eat almost anything. They thrive in environments such as the luxurious city with many forms of human waste. Whereas in the city of pigs, which, due to trying to maintain being on an equilibrium point of population growth, is constantly on the edge of hardship, it would require considerable and impossible effort to make sure that the pigs are adequately fed.  Since Plato's readers were gentlemen-farmers, it is not implausible they would have recognized this at once (unlike city-slickers like me).

I liked this hypothesis. But why does Socrates say that pigs are "needed" in the luxurious city? Why not use and expand existing cattle? Here my class proposed that pigs are more efficient meat producers than cattle. And so these are much better able to sustain a larger population without requiring ever expanding land something Socrates explicitly wants to prevent. For, territorial and population expansion of the territory of the Kallipos has to be governed not by population or farming pressures, but by the need to maintain (what we may call) social unity (423b). Unfortunately, I have no idea whether modern relative Feed Conversion Ratios (FCR) among animals match those in ancient times. But I'd like to think so.

 

*I believe it was Patrick van Oosterom. Apologies to all involved if I misremember.

 

Plato on Dangerous Truths

���When anyone images badly in his speech the true nature of gods and heroes, like a painter whose portraits bear no resemblance to his models.���...���There is, first of all,��� I said, ���the greatest lie about the things of greatest concernment, which was no pretty invention of him who told how Uranus did what Hesiod says he did to Cronos, and how Cronos in turn took his revenge; and then there are the doings and sufferings of Cronos at the hands of his son. Even if they were true I should not think that they ought to be thus lightly told to thoughtless young persons. But the best way would be to bury them in silence, and if there were some necessity for relating them, that only a very small audience should be admitted under pledge of secrecy and after sacrificing, not a pig, but some huge and unprocurable victim, to the end that as few as possible should have heard these tales. ���Yes, and they are not to be told, Adeimantus, in our city, nor is it to be said in the hearing of a young man, that in doing the utmost wrong he would do nothing to surprise anybody, nor again in punishing his father's wrong-doings to the limit, but would only be following the example of the first and greatest of the gods.��� ���--Plato Republic 377e-378a, translated by Paul Shorey [emphases added]

It is only natural, I suppose, that the noble lie (414c-415e, and anticipated at 382a-d) told by Socrates near the end of Book 3 is more attention grabbing than what we may call the doctrine of dangerous truths mentioned, really in passing, in 378ab.

In context, Socrates is articulating the best education of the guardians of the luxurious city. And he uses this as an occasion to both offer a critique of the standard stories told about the Gods by great variety of poets and to propose a kind of purification (even moralization) of public religion or theology (that is, the most important things). Hesiod's stories about Uranus, Cronos, and Zeus (the "son" of Cronos) involve castration, forced abortion, cannibalism of children, and parricide among the gods.

Hesiod's depiction is not just about the gods acting viciously with each other. It also involve a failure of orderly political succession. And so, while it is not unnatural to think that by 'the things of greatest concernment,' -- Shorey may be over-translating ����� ����������������, but given the repeated 'greatest' with 'lies,' it's not silly -- Socrates means here talk of the gods (especially if one is all in on Socrates' piety), it is not impossible that what he really means here is talk about the nature of (properly ordered) political life. Is theology or political philosophy the most important  topic? My more cheeky Thomist readers will quickly say, that's an unnecessary or false choice.

I mention the political reading of this material because -- and now I get to the heart of today's digression, I find it startling that at the start of 378b, Socrates is explicit that in the kallipolis that he and Adeimantus are founding, there will be no dangerous truths. And because of this remark, I read the doctrine of dangerous truths mention in 378a as confined to second (or n-th best) cities. 

Now, it's true that I think this -- that the doctrine of dangerous truths is confined to second-best cities -- because it seems to anticipate elements of the nocturnal council at 961B in Plato's Laws (a book that was important to me in graduate school). And part of the point of the nocturnal council is to try to help reform those of who have violated the laws on impiety in Magnesia. (Magnesia is a nth-best city.) Of course, I accept the tradition that suggests Laws was written well after the Republic, so I don't think this would settle the matter. 

However, it is important to recall that Socrates had articulated the idea of a dangerous truth in his initial exchange with Cephalus at 331D (recall here). There, it was used to undermine Cephalus' definition of justice (speak truth and repay one's death), which (to speak anthropologically) we may call the definition of justice apt for commercial society. And Socrates had explained that there are circumstances where, if one takes consequences seriously (as one is wont to do in commercial society) then one is not always obliged to repay one's debts or always to speak the truth.

Alex Douglas has treated the debt case brilliantly in his book (and recall), so I won't elaborate here. At 331D Socrates expects Cephalus to agree to the claim one should not always speak the truth to the mad. They are (to foreshadow Hobbes, Foucault, and Deleuze) to be placed not just outside the realm of valid contracts, but also outside the realm of (possible) persuasion (and so political life). I do not mean to suggest that Socrates himself agrees with Cephalus about any of this. I think it is really unclear to what degree Socrates has to affirm anything when he is engaged in immanent criticism.

While the doctrine of dangerous truth is explicitly rejected in the best city, the exchange with Cephalus shows that is part of the common sense or a natural extension of it of a commercial polity. So, given that, it is not so strange that in 2nd-Nth best cities Socrates permits some such doctrine. 

An impatient reader may well think, 'sure, Socrates used the doctrine of dangerous truths in his refutation of Cephalus, but there is no evidence here that he is thinking about anything other than the Kallipolis.' I have to admit that I don't have a knockdown argument against this. But notice that the select few who are allowed to be in on the dangerous secret, have to be not just among the aged, but also fabulously wealthy because they have to be capable of sacrificing something great and very scarce.*

Now, shortly after 378a, it becomes clear that there will be wealthy folk among the non-guardians in Kallipolis (419ff). But also that this should be clearly delimited (422a). So, that in 378a Socrates cannot be speaking of his own city, but only be referring about places where great riches are permitted and also where possession of such dangerous truth would not corrupt the person holding it because they are already corrupt in some non-trivial sense (and, hence, a nth-best city).**

I do not mean to suggest Socrates' position here is very attractive: that in an oligarchic context, only Jeff Bezos is, if he is willing to forfeit a non-trivial amount of his fortune, allowed access to dangerous, secret knowledge about the truth about the lack of morality or ethical grounding governing divine rule.  The very wealthy, who benefit from the status quo in n-th best cities, are not inclined to encourage a revolution in religious or political manners and so promote corrupting stories that threaten their influence. 

Why does this matter? I think it's one of the places in the Republic (recall 351-352) -- well before Book 8 -- where Socrates shows an interest in the permissible mechanisms or functioning of non-optimal states (which are governed by the interests of their ruling elements). These are by definition unstable. In such places there will, thus, be always some truths dangerous to their functioning. And so 378a articulates its corollary: the circulation of dangerous truths must be restricted to those with an interest not to act on, or share, them. We may call this doctrine (with a wink): Straussianism for those that benefit most from status quo.

 

 

* ������������� ��������� a very difficult to acquire offering. 

**Another objection might be that Socrates is speaking metaphorically, and that those who are let in on the dangerous truths must sacrifice something very dear them. But I do not see how this fits the wording of the text.

On Revolutionary Leadership and Feminism (in early Islam)

I want to suggest here that during the years that interest us - from year 3 (the defeat at Uhud) to the beginning of year 8 (the conquest of Mecca) - the Prophet's project for equality of the sexes foundered because he refused to minimize the sexual aspect of life, to hide it, to consider it marginal or secondary. The Prophet was in a vulnerable position. His aims came to nothing because he always refused to separate his private life and public life. He could only conceive of the sexual and the political as being intimately linked. He would go to prayer directly upon leaving ~A'isha's bed, using the small door that linked her room to the mosque. Despite 'Umar's advice, he continued to go on expeditions accompanied by one or two of his wives, who, accustomed to being directly involved in public affairs, moved around freely and inquired about what was going on. One scene in al-Tabari depicts 'Umar as being beside himself at seeing 'A'isha strolling around the battlefront beside the trenches: "But what brings you here?" he cried out. "By my life, your boldness borders on insolence! What if a disaster befalls us? What if there is a defeat and people are taken captive?"--Fatima Mernissi (1987 [1991]) The Veil and The Male Elite: a Feminist Interpretation of Women's Rights in Islam. Translated by Mary Jo Lakeland, p. 162.

Mernissi's Beyond the Veil is, of course, better known than The Veil and the Male Elite. In fact, while scholar.google tells me that the latter book is cited plenty, I have never seen it discussed in high theory in political philosophy. This is a shame because in addition to the themes announced in its title and subtitle, it is a wonderful study in the challenges and trade-offs of revolutionary, political leadership. And while the narrative is not as gripping as, say, the masterpiece of the genre, Black Jacobins (recall here; here), it certainly held my attention through out while discussing key years of the Prophet Muhammad's early struggles and their significance to Islamic jurisprudence, historiography, ethics, and political life. 

As the quoted paragraph indicates, Mernissi treats Muhammad's original program for Muslim political life as fundamentally egalitarian. (The language of 'rights' in the sub-title is a bit misleading rights don't figure much in the book.) Throughout the book, she recounts his progressive views on women's inheritance, property ownership, and agency more generally. And she offers a plausible account how the history narrated in Qu'ran supports her argument.

In fact, in her hands Muhammad recognizes over thirteen hundred years before the second wave feminists that the political and the personal are intrinsically intertwined. And she shows this, in part, through a fascinating discussion of the spatial structure of the first mosque he built in Medina with 'A'isha's apartment having its own entry into the mosque. 

Now, for Mernissi later Islamic jurisprudence (Fiqh), which governs Islamic communal life in practice, was corrupted, in part, by some dubious Hadith (sayings) attributed to the Prophet (these were promoted by interested politicians);  and, in part -- and this is more interesting -- by a flawed empirical method that treats all the data on par without regard to the systematic and ethical principles that might unify the Prophet's vision. And without some such principles, the evidence that is shaped by pre-Islamic patriarchy (and aristocracy) and by the late years' tactical regressions has no counterbalance (despite clear evidence in the sources that these regressions were challenged by important political agents in the moment).

In her book, Mernissi never mentions the Islamic philosophers (Falsafa) or Ibn Khaldun. But with them she shares a treatment of Muhammad as a political leader who, unlike failed prophets, recognizes that without arms the ethical message may not have successful uptake. And with them, there is an implied criticism that The Prophet did not handle the problem of succession very well (although with them she recognizes that the way succession was initially handled for the rightious caliphs at least has democratic potential). Because his companions are left without the right sort of guidance and within half a century the Umayyad have re-established the contingencies of (monarchic) birth as source of succession (familiar from trival life) and shortly thereafter the battle of Karbala shatters the very possibility of a unified community committed to justice (forever, it seems).

Okay, with that in place, we can now make more specific the significance of 'Umar to her narrative/analysis. 'Umar was Muhammad's father in law, one of the leading companions of Muhammad, and later the second caliph after his death. And in Mernissi's analysis 'Umar becomes the archetype of a key element in Muhammad's political coalition: strongly attracted to Muhammad's vision on intrinsic moral and political grounds, which provides a chance to overcome political and social crises, but unable to let go of what we would call male entitlement or patriarchy rooted in (tribal) martial virtues.

For Mernissi 'Umar represents resistance to "Islam as a coherent system of values that governs all the behaviors of a person and a society, and Muhammad's egalitarian project, are in fact based on a detail that many of his Companions, led by 'Umar, considered to be secondary: the emergence of woman's free will as something the organization of society had to take into account." (184)* And she describes the political circumstances in which Muhammad has to tack toward 'Umar's commitments in order to ensure the survival of the Ummah.

Now, it is important to recognize that for Mernissi 'Umar is not merely a traditionalist who lacks understanding of a part of Muhammad's vision. For she grants that the crisis years at Medina were fundamentally unstable. And she recognizes that he is not all wrong that part of the cause of the crisis or disorder were the Prophet's women (and women generally), "we were objects of envy." (185) And she implies that this crisis not just due to the revolutionary internal regulation of Muslim communal life, but also to Muhammad's attempts to change the laws of warfare for his followers. In particular the abolition of using war as a means of enrichment and (sexual enslavement) if that meant turning fellow Muslims into booty (and slavery). (I was reminded of the issues surrounding Republic 470-1).Here's how Mernissi discusses the circumstances of the key decision at the height of the crisis:

In the circumstances of the military crisis in Medina in years 5, 6, and 7, the Prophet did not have many choices for coping with the insecurity in the city. He could either accept and live with this insecurity while waiting for the new source of power, God and His religion, to become rooted in the people's mentality, or he could reactivate the tribe as the police force of the city. The first option meant living with insecurity while waiting for God to show His power through military successes. With the second option, the tribe would assure security in the city immediately, but Allah and his community would disappear forever - at least in their original perspective. Muhammad's message - his dream of a community in which individuals are respected and have rights, not because they belong to a tribe, but simply because they are able to believe they have a link with a God - was dependent on the role that the tribe was called on to play during this transitory phase. Tribal power was the danger. Tolerating it, under any form whatever, as a means of control was a very grave compromise with the Muslim idea of a reasoning human being who exercises self-control. (187-188)**

But because tribal power is needed to make a successful transition from the crisis to Arab unification, 'Umar's more limited vision wins out. I don't mean to suggest that this all of Mernissi's analysis--she roots the ultimate decision also in the fragility of age (and declining sexual prowess) of The Prophet. So, on Mernissi's view what Islam became after the crisis years is an unsteady mixture between Muhammad's original vision and the demands of realpolitik. 

Structurally, these circumstances are analogous to the way the initial outcome of the French revolution was a victory for men, while simultaneously a step back for women's political participation (and an unexpected disaster for slaves). The underlying problem here is a more general feature of transition problems. Recall that (here, here, here, and here), I understand the transition problem, as how to move from an unjust status quo to an ideal (or vastly improved) state and, in particular, with a population raised under bad institutions (or, if one conceives this [as I would not] in eugenic terms, bad breeding). This is intrinsically challenging. But the problem is made all the more difficult when there are foreign enemies or when the war-economy is a central feature of the pre-revolutionary society. 

Mernissi's feminist reading of the history of early Islam is an invitation to her fellow religionists to reject a millennium worth of jurisprudence and for a renewal from within (in this respect she is not unlike the fundamentalists who would have little time for her). But it is also a reflection on the challenges or constraints that pre-existing practices and beliefs generate to or impose on even the most successful projects of revolutionary renewal. To put this poetically, no prophet of political society can truly emulate God's creation from nothing, but s/he has to work with materials that cannot be fully cleansed from the effects of history, at least not at once. 

 

*I hope somebody can check the French because I think Mernissi's argument only requires the claim that women have agency and moral/political standing not the claim about free will.

**Yes, here Mernissi does does discuss political entitlements in terms of 'rights.'

 

 

Seneca (Letter 53), Long Haul Covid, and Impiety

I was suffering too grievously to think of the danger, since a sluggish seasickness which brought no relief was racking me, the sort that upsets the liver without clearing it. Therefore I laid down the law to my pilot, forcing him to make for the shore, willy-nilly. When we drew near, I did not wait for things to be done in accordance with Vergil's orders, until

Prow faced seawards

or

Anchor plunged from bow;

I remembered my craftsmanship [artificii] as an elderly [vetus] devotee of frozen water, and, clad as I was in my cloak, let myself down into the sea, just as a cold-water bather should. Whaat do you think I suffered [Quae putas me passum], scrambling over the rocks, searching out the path, or making one for myself? I understood that sailors have no  reason to fear the land [Intellexi non immerito nautis terram timeri]. It is hard to believe what I endured when I could not endure myself; you may be sure that the reason why Ulysses was shipwrecked on every possible occasion was not so much because the sea-god was angry with him from his birth; he was seasick [nausiator erat].--Seneca, Letter 53, Translated by Richard M. Gummere (with modest modifications) 

It seems likely that this letter was written during the last two or three years of Seneca's life, around AD 63, so, to be conservative side, when he was nearly sixty. I am just close enough in age to feel some himpathy for his scrambling over rocks in his cloak, while not obtuse to the comic nature of the scene. One can imagine the local villagers telling each other stories down the generations -- too bad there were no spyglasses or iphones to capture it -- about the fabulously wealthy, once powerful courtier and philosopher, famous for preaching "the incredible force of philosophy is to counter all the forces of chance" [Incredibilis philosophiae vis est ad omnem fortuitam vim retundendam], going onshore in panic and unsteadily.

Not unlike Aristophanes' hiccup, Seneca, who chooses to share the story so he is clearly not obtuse to the comedy of it all, realizes that our physical infirmity can undermine our dignity. Not to mention that Seneca may have originated the tradition of taking a new year's day dip in the sea. 

I do not mean to suggest here we're just in the realm of comedy. Seneca's impious naturalization of Odysseus's journey is not an isolated feature in the letter. For in context, the force of philosophy, especially in the hands of the wise [sapiens], is compared favorably to that of God (singular). The beneficial effects of wisdom are our own achievements, whereas God is, we might say, beneficiary of natural luck.

Before I get to the main point of the letter, I have to admit that the unsteadiness he describes at sea, hit a bit home this week. On Wednesday I taught my first in-person class -- fittingly on Book 1 of the Republic -- in over 17 months. I had divided the the three hour seminar into three, giving myself and the students a break every 45-50 minutes. In line of the advise of the occupational physician, my department had lowered my work-load by cutting the student numbers in half. They also tasked the teacher of the other half to be my back-up, in case I could not make it to class. (For my covid diaries, see here; here; here; here; here; here; here;  here; here; here; here; here; here; here; here; here; here, and here). 

The seminar starts at 5pm, and after lunch I developed an awful headache just as I was finishing up my hand-out. I usually just improvise my seminars, letting the conversation take us where chance directs (with a few sights I tend to wish to visit along the way.) But I had decided on the hand-out to take some of the cognitive load off my brain during the seminar. So, as I lay in bed, I contemplated initiating the back-up plan. Luckily, the painkillers worked and by three, I decided to bike the work. There I scouted the room, and even looked for a place outside in the heat. It was an evening for Plato under a tree, but sadly I could not find a quiet enough spot.

The students all arrived masked, and they turned out to be excellent. I was reminded again that even with inexperienced students in an introductory course, a seminar-style discussion is a site for mutual learning. A student's question led me to see that Polemarchus' attitude toward inviting Socrates anticipates Thrasymachus' understanding of justice. 

Unfortunately, in the second hour, just after I had gone through the course requirements, I felt my head go light (as if my sugar had dropped), and my legs went unsteady. In a moment of self-aggrandizing pity, I thought of the magicians that died on stage. Then I remembered Seneca's unsteady legs, and was comforted. Luckily, in my course plan, this was just the moment I had settled on a group assignment without my participation. So after quickly instructing and dividing them, I left the class room to get some fresh air and (against all my principles which forbid coffee after 5pm) an espresso. By the time I eased back into the class-room, I noticed I had not been missed and my head had settled.

My occupational physician has kind of settled on trying to convince me not to accept succor from medical science. But not to get too dispirited because while I am clearly not recovered, I am improved relative to some date months ago. More subtly, she tries to remind me that while my symptoms keep recurring -- weird memory loss, random headaches, what I call head-fatigue, lapses in concentration --, my recoveries of each seem fairly rapid.

And indeed, I managed to lead discussion in which we collected and analyzed the findings of the group assignment.  Because my students are so splendid, it was easy. But near the end I realized my brain was working at half speed. Good enough for the day. And not for the first time, I am reminded how lucky I am that, despite all the evils of the modern academy, I have landed in such a joy-producing occupation. (Of course, we'll see how many students show up for second class!)

There is a lot of interesting philosophy in letter 53. For example, Seneca insists that sometimes we know when we sleep that we sleep. And that there is an asymmetry in how we experience physical and mental/psychic pains.

But here I want to focus on the main point of the 53rd letter, which is Seneca's insistence that philosophy should be in some sense all-consuming (in context really, all conquering). Idem philosophia rebus omnibus: philosophy says to all things: "I am not going to receive at this time what was left over to you, but you will have that which I have rejected." ['Idem philosophia rebus omnibus: non sum hoc tempus acceptura quod vobis superfuerit, sed id vos habebitis quod ipsa reiecero'.] This claim is out of fashion for three reasons.

First, it goes against the popular idea that philosophy is the mother of the sciences, who become mature (or at least adolescents) when they break off from philosophy. Now, we tend to think of philosophy as the diminished remainder, of what is left over, from the more successful, more progressive, and better funded sciences. This is familiar enough from the recurring crises of identity within philosophy which claims for itself (not entirely convincingly) expertise in conceptual analysis in one decade, in inferential practices in another decade, in analyzing arguments in another decade (or two), in modal thinking in another decade, and so on (yes, I plead guilty for having peddled synthetic philosophy). 

Second, it goes against the increasingly powerful idea that there should be a work-life balance, or a proper integration of work-life. And this reflects the idea that somehow doing philosophy professionally is in need of containment. And those of us who recognize the mad, publication arms race in the context of limited jobs, may well come to agree that someone should impose limits or we will be all consumed by trying to publish and refereeing the attempts to publish. 

Third, the very idea that philosophy is a way of life that can benefit us is taken to be archaic. And in so far as someone should be busy with how to live, and how to ground intellectually our experiments in living, it is thought this is best left to religion (we hasten to add, Eastern or Western) or to popularizing psychologists, who can draw on the best scientific insights. (I would mention our historical rivals, the poets, but our culture has let them wither.)

It is worth noticing that in so far as one accepts the modern intellectual division of labor, in the complex world of our open society (with heavy government involvement), this only makes more urgent that there should be a site of disciplined reflection on how to live collectively and individually. Rather than being embarrassed by wisdom, or relegating it to footnotes, or ceding it completely to mystics, philosophy should be inviting to those that seek paths to wisdom. Luckily the roads to wisdom cannot be patented or be turned into a trade-mark or turned into private property. As Seneca implies throughout the Letters, philosophy is our commons.

The activities that give us joy, community, and energy should not be limited. If we need to be protected against overworking in philosophy, perhaps we should re-organize how we construe the content of our work? Yes, Seneca's unsteady stomach and legs and my headaches are a reminder that there are physical preconditions to joyful activity that may be fragile along multiple dimensions. If you want to preach revolution, you may add the many unnamed slaves in Seneca's entourage, and the precariat at my own university to those material preconditions.

Let me wrap up. As regular readers know, I am myself not convinced that Seneca is right that philosophy can conquer uncertainty. And, Seneca's idea that philosophy should "rule" our lives is easily mocked. Yet, during the months I spent in my sickbed this year, I realized that such mockery is itself a sign that not all is well. That behind the mockery there is no insight, that nothing grows in its meaningless void. Our lives are relatively short, do not delay, "let us, therefore, rouse ourselves, that we may be able to correct our mistakes" and each take our baby-steps in our perhaps occasionally intersecting paths toward wisdom and let these shape our lives.