Eric Schliesser's Blog, page 27

The Threat of Violence, Republic 1, and the Grounding of Philosophical Exchange

One oddity of Republic 1, is the ever-present threat of violence that hangs over the very existence or possibility of the conversation. This starts explicitly with Polemarchus' insistence that he will not listen to Socrates' persuasion and that he does not need to do so because he outnumbers Socrates (327C). And so Socrates is roped into a banquet at Cephalus' house. And while one may be tempted to treat this as an innocent joke, the initial exchange with Polemarchus can also be treated as an unflattering, structural analogy of the ways pure or direct democracies might treat minorities, and rational deliberation.*

Once alert to the possibility, I noticed that violence of some sort both keeps people (temporarily) out of the conversation and in it. So, Thrasymachus is literally prevented from speaking at first (336b), and then prevented from leaving (344d). And, of course, much of discussion itself, especially after Thasymachus joins, is presented in terms of -- if not lethal then -- a dangerous contest (leaving aside the fact that reputation, honor, money are all said to be at stake).

Now, let's leave aside, or pretend to leave it aside, the manner of the discussion, and renew focus on its partial grounding in the decisions of unnamed many to prevent and promote some to speak. Again, it is tempting to treat this as an analogy of the way pure/direct democracy behaves.  Since most of the 'restrainers' and 'promoters' are left nameless in Socrates' description of these events, they function very much like the choir in a Greek tragedy. We might be clever and notice that Thrasymachus' account of justice (in which the ruling element of the regime legislates law on its own behalf) kind of offers a theory for what is left as analogy earlier. And that Socrates himself claims (recall) that civic violence is the effect of injustice.

Even so, what I am really interested in here is the thought that some kind of non-trivial (ahh) nudging and silencing may be a pre-condition to philosophical exchange. That such speech-policing is a kind of ground of philosophical life. Now, some readers of Plato may object that the exchanges between Socrates and Cephalus/Polemarchus and Socrates and Thrasymachus are not really philosophical exchanges. There is a hermeneutic tradition that Plato withholds from us Socrates' interaction with a philosophical equal (say Plato). But I don't belong in that tradition (for I think the exchanges with Protagoras and Parmenides are the real deal). And while the exchange with Thrasymachus is hostile and unsatisfying, it is not without intrinsic interest nor is obvious that Socrates really gets the better of Thrasymachus (at least by the end of Book I).

Another line of concern (mixing Stoic and Enlightenment ideas, which can be  traced back to Socrates) is that true (sage-like) philosophers are autonomous givers, receivers, and evaluators of reasons or arguments; that the policing (and canceling) element I have noticed is heteronomous to our beloved activity better left to the market place or spectator sports (etc.). I don't want to take this line of concern lightly. It obviously represents a noble normative ideal, especially when so many of us find ourselves threatened to be sacked or merged away by politicians, demagogues, and bean-counters with little interest in any such ideals, but all-to0-aware of the threats our seminars pose to their (possible) rule.

Even so, it's possible that Plato presents us with the idea that important philosophical contests have to be arranged or structured in ways inimical to the desires of the philosophers themselves. And before you protest this possibility, remember that one of the main claims of the Republic (anticipated in the very discussion of Book I) is that philosophers have to be forced to rule. It's not such a big step from that to they have to be forced and restrained from engaging with each other. 

Let me make this concrete: when there exist rival philosophical schools or traditions it is very tempting to disengage or to vilify or mocking without true engagement. The vilification prevents people from reading works produced in other schools and helps schools to be(come) more unified just reinforcing the benefits from not engaging. And often the opportunity costs of engaging are quite great, while engaging on shared terms is efficient, productive, progressive, etc. (In our intellectual universe it's also fruitful for the parceling out of jobs.)

Of course, there is a cost to non-engaging. And that's that one both misses insights discovered in a different vernacular and that many shared commitments in the in-group/school are never seriously questioned at all. 

The previous two paragraphs are, of course, a metaphor for the analytic-continental (etc.) divides we live in. And I do regret that David Lewis never sought out (say) Deleuze, or was pushed into it (just as circumstances made Carnap a very astute reader of Heidegger). I would admire some leading figures of my analytic tradition more if they weren't obviously so limited that they can only talk to each other. (Yes, I know the young kidz have changed all of that!) And I honestly feel sad that some billionaires give gigantic prizes to philosophers, but do so little to get philosophers to engage with each other. 

To put it in modeling terms, the moment one entertains the idea that the market in philosophical ideas is not efficient, then the possibility that heteronomous-to-philosophy forces can structure that market is not so far-fetched. Now, speaking in my own voice (go back to reading my old digressions), I reject the idea that the market in philosophical ideas is efficient. Of course, it's not unlikely that these heteronomous-to-philosophy-policing-of-speech forces do more damage than good. 

I could stop here. But I am reminded that when we parent and educate, we often police the choices of our wards (in a curriculum, a syllabus, etc.). In fact, even our most noble aspirations, the ones that may involve not knowing the full nature of these aspirations ex ante and not understanding all the ways/mechanisms that lead to them (go read Callard's book, or my digressions about it) are structured by such forced choices. Of course, in such cases the end justifies the means. And perhaps -- no, I am not confident -- that's also true of the policing required to get Socrates and Thrasymachus, like puppets in a wonderful play, to engage. 

 

* Of course, that Polemarchus, the son of a wealthy arms dealer, sent his slave ahead, suggests that we are not far removed from other forms of violence and the sources of profit (and oppression) they bring. 

Spinozism, Oppenheimer, and the Communism of Zionism

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

 

*For the claim about R��stow, see The Birth of Austerity, Edited by Thomas Biebricher and Frieder Vogelmann, p. 137.  

+Glossner, Christian Ludwig, and David Gregosz. The formation and implementation of the Social Market Economy by Alfred M��ller-Armack and Ludwig Erhard: incipiency and actuality. Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung eV, 2011.

 

International Arbitration, and a forgotten precursor to Liberalism

Suppose for instance that peace is signed to-day, that it is published to the whole world: how do we know that posterity will ratify the articles. Opinions are changeable, and the actions of the men of the present time do not bind their successors. To put an end to this objection, it suffices to  remember what we have said about the causes of war, which not being considerable, for the reasons given above, there is nothing that can occasion the rupture of a peace. Nevertheless, to prevent the inconvenience of this, it would be necessary to choose a city, where all sovereigns should have perpetually their ambassadors, in order that the differences that might arise should be settled by the judgment of the whole assembly. The ambassadors of those who would be interested would plead there the grievances of their masters and the other deputies would judge them without prejudice. And to give more authority to the judgment, one would take advice of the big republics, who would have likewise their agents in this same place. I say great Republics, like those of the Venitians and the Swiss, and not those small lordships, that cannot maintain themselves, and depend upon the protection of another. That if anyone rebelled against the decree of so notable a company, he would receive the disgrace of all other Princes, who would find means to bring him to reason. Now the most commodious place for such an assembly is the territory of Venice, because it is practically neutral and indifferent to all Princes: added thereto that it is near the most important monarchies of the earth, of those of the Pope, the two Emperors, and the King of Spain. It is not far from France, Tatary, Moscovy, Poland, England, and Denmark. As for Persia, China, Ethiopia, and the East and the West Indies, they are lands far distant, but navigation remedies that inconvenience, and for such a good object, one must not refuse a long voyage.--��meric Cruc�� (1623) The New Cyneas, translated by Thomas Willing Balch, pp. 102-104 [page-numbers of modern translation].

The perspective of modern liberalism tends to be future oriented and too involved with the problems of governing, that liberals tend to forget key episodes from its own history of social activism. This, more than the framing by their Marxist critics, helps explain why Richard Cobden has become associated with the reductive label ���Manchester liberal.��� But even when liberals remember free-trade and the corn-laws as victories, the liberal tradition tend to ignore his anti-imperialism and his courageous anti-militarism. In addition, even within free-trade, he was creative and instrumental in making most favored nation status as a key device of a liberal trade order. And, finally, in opposing gun-boat diplomacy and militarism, he was an incessant advocate of international arbitration as an alternative to war.

While you, my dear educated reader, have at least heard of Cobden, I am pretty sure that  Cruc�� is almost certainly obscure to you (unless you paid attention to my recent blog post). But while it would be anachronistic to call Cruc�� a liberal ��� but perhaps less so than calling Locke a liberal --, Cruc�� definitely deserves attention for articulating many of the best features of a liberal program long before they were popular (religious toleration including non-Christians (pagans, Jews, Muslims, etc.)), the virtues of commerce, the significance of public works, and the rule of law, low taxes, etc. Cruc�����s larger program is founded on cosmopolitan principles of common humanity and sympathy.

Because I started this digression with Cobden, today I want to focus on one of the more technocratic devices, his idea of a truly international court of arbitration. The first thing to notice is that he includes non-Christian and non-European sovereigns in the process. This is very much untainted by the kind of racism that plagues so many of such (later) proposals. To be sure, at times Cruc�� expresses genocidal hatred of barbarians and savages. And while he may sound like Aristotle (���I place among beasts savage people who do not reason��� (52)), but, upon closer inspections, these only involve folk who refuse to play nice with others (and so Cruc�� is not inclined to treat one approach to political life as superior than others). In general Cruc�� loathes the admiration of conquerors in the European tradition, and wishes honor and admiration to accrue not ���by sackings, massacres, and acts of hostility, but by gentle government, a legitimate and regulated power.��� (48)

Cruc�� is not especially interested in the law. And I understand why lawyers have not treated him as one of their own because he asserts early in the book, ���Jurisprudence is also not necessary, and a good natural judgment is sufficient to finish lawsuits, without resorting to a multitude of laws and decisions that only con-fuse cases instead of simplifying them.��� (82) So, the arbitration council is, perhaps, better seen as an anticipation of the security council than the international court of arbitration.

The point is not so much to build up, and develop an international case law, but rather to prevent war and maintain peace among those ��� great powers ��� most likely to resort to war. And to achieve this, what���s required is not so much knowledge of the law, but good worldly judgment. This is also reflected in the composition of the international arbitration council of ambassadors.

Unlike the modern security council, in Cruc�����s arbitration tribunal great powers do not arbitrate their own cases. But like the modern security council, there may well be enforcement troubles. Cruc�� is probably too optimistic in assuming that collective security is possible if a great power is just adamant on going to war. But it is worth noting that that for the vast majority of states declining to obey the outcome of arbitration, and violate international norms, does tend to come with a steep price. An even know, EU member states have come in the habit of resolving all their disputes peacefully either by law, or very much in the spirit of Cruc�����s proposal (with ambassadors in Brussels). So, while he recognizes, repeatedly, that his proposal will be treated as utopian (Plato���s Republic not More is treated as the exemplary work), we ought to pause that we live, partially in such utopian world.

Unlike Kant, Cruc�� does not think such a scheme is only possible with suitably reformed states (who should be liberal republics with division of powers). From what he writes I suspect Cruc�� agrees with Kant that such states are more pacific. And much of the book (about which some other time more) is devoted to creating the conditions of peaceful public administration. But from Cruc�����s perspective, the urgency of his proposal is precisely that its absolute sovereigns that need to be constrained. This is why it���s clearly more important to have kings and emperors represented in Venice than republics.

I do think there is a democratic sentiment tucked into Cruc�����s proposal. For it is quite clear that one ground of inclusion in the arbitration council, is great populous-ness. Admittedly this is easy to miss because shortly after the passage quoted, Cruc�� addresses the worry about the relative rank of the ambassadors next at great length. But it���s pretty clear  this reflects the preoccupation with hierarchy of his intended audience more than his own sensibility. And one cannot help but think that part of his rhetorical strategy is to make such preoccupation seem like a ridiculous species of superstition. Even so, it is pretty clear that Cruc��'s proposal is a concession to realism; this is a feature not a bug of his proposal.

Anyway, I often intend my digressions as invitations to read the works discussed, but I hope this post has made you intrigued about Cruc�� to explore his ���little book��� (350) The New Cyneas (which is easily found on the internet).

Yes, the story is complicated because, as Duncan Bell has remarked, he may well have been more friendly to settler colonialism (which is a blindspot in liberal self-understanding).

It is striking that in 1622/23, the Dutch republic was not yet thought a great power.

On Being Praised by Students, (Seneca Letter 52)

How mad (dementia) is he who leaves the lecture-hall smiling simply because of the clamor from the ignorant (clamores imperitorum)!--Seneca, Letter 52. Translated by Richard M. Gummere (with modest modifications) 

In Letter 52, (by appropriating some remarks of Epicurus,) Seneca describes four kinds of students of philosophy. The first are autodidacts, they find their "way to the truth without any one's assistance, carving out their own path [via]." Socrates, Al-Farabi, and Ibn Rushd are fairly explicit this describes (true) philosophers.

The second kind are a species of heterodidacts -- a term I borrow from a moving and subtle essay by Agnes Callard --; these need the gentle guidance of a teacher. But once they have right direction, they follow willingly. Of course, (recall, say, Letter 30) in Seneca, such a guide/teacher is simultaneously an exemplar, something he emphasizes throughout the letter. Seneca hints that he aspires to be though as a member of the second class. (I return to this below.) 

The third kind is also a heterodidact, but this kind needs what we might call tough love or "who can be forced and driven into the right path," (qui cogi ad rectum compellique possunt). Interestingly, Seneca stress the point by using 'coactore,' that is, one who compels often a tax-inspector. So, the teacher is here compared to someone who extracts wealth and indirectly returns something greater (the proper path, truth) to the unwilling student. 

The opening of Seneca's 52nd letter suggest that most of us need such tough love because we tend to be very inconstant (Fluctuamur inter varia consilia; nihil libere volumus, nihil absolute, nihil semper.) And, in fact, we are extricated from our inconstancy by education (and Seneca plays on the idea that extraction, elevation, and education share a similar root in Latin).

And, to echo Socrates, where is the fourth? Seneca implies some students confuse their desire for entertainment with the path to wisdom. And among these many wish to be flattered. And, in turn, the students flatter their teacher by their adulation. It's tempting to recognize in Seneca's remarks Socrates criticism of Agathon and Aristophanes, and the more general problem of demagoguery. And on some days this would be the moment to discuss the insidious ways Deans and program coordinators incentivize the fourth kind of student in the way they frame, word, and use student evaluations and promote valorisation or public facing activity by their faculty. The fourth kind of students may be credentialed, but are intrinsically non-didacts. 

Now, being a good gentle teacher (of the second kind of student), that is being at ease with one's vulnerability, is no easy matter. But as Seneca hints, helping the third kind of students overcome their own weaknesses and extract wisdom (ad sapientiam se non perduxit sed extraxit) is much more difficult for these students (and by implication for the teachers).

There is an interesting question, left hanging, if the same instructor can teach the second kind and third kind of teacher at the same time. To return to Callard's essay, which is excellent on the interactive nature of true teaching, it would like speaking to two kinds of souls at once with divergent effects and, in turn, receiving their feedback in one's own teaching (and instruction). 

I was led to the thought in the previous paragraph when I reflected on Seneca's suggestion he might be counted among the second kind of student. At first, I thought he was engaged in a false modesty -- 'don't confuse me with the natural or self-actuating wise' --, but then I wondered if the same sentence couldn't be read as flattery of Lucilius (who, we have learned, often needs tough love (recall Letter 49 and no small amount of flattery). It's not impossible that the four kinds of students are ideal types, and that in reality we often exhibit features of each (or most).

One reason why I thought Seneca might be engaged in false modesty here is that while he warmly recommends reading and studying the "ancients" as friends in our heterodidactic journey, fundamentally for him we must choose our teachers among the living. Now this might be due to the fact for Seneca true teaching is being the right sort of lodestar or exemplar in integrity and heterodidacting (those "who teach us by their lives...who tell us what we ought to do and then prove it by practice, who show us what we should avoid, and then are never caught doing that which they have ordered us to avoid.") And so certain kind of book-learning is out. But it also conveniently eliminates other options, except those few at hand.

In this context Fabianus Seneca mentions as a proper exemplar in living memory. Fabianus seems to have courted, and more importantly cultivated, a proper philosophical audience, namely one capable of and becoming capable of self-control (modeste). (Seneca implies young men are least capable of this.) But, as is clear from Seneca's description, Fabianus' audience members were not merely passive receptacles, but (as in Callard's descriptions) active co-constituters of joint learning.

When I read Seneca's letters my thoughts often wander off to my own teaching. And I was about to write something here about my apprehension about returning to the classroom after my long, covid-induced absence (and the relative lack of safety precautions by my employer) and to what degree I would be able to guide anyone at all, when it occurred to me that I was ignoring the surface fact that the conceit of the Letters is that these are (well) letters. And so that in some sense they are intrinsically a contribution to a kind of heterodidact teaching in which the interaction of the teacher and student is both partially imagined and intrinsically delayed--a bit like a very bad Zoom connection.

And, of course, in so far as Seneca's Letters are meant to be read by unknown students and even, as he himself often suggests, by those of us in posteriority (recall, say, Letter 21), the work of imagination (by the implied author/teacher and implied student/reader) and delay is only made harder. And, of course, the real author does not really allow his readers to judge independently from his self-presentation the character of the implied author.

My interest here is not in Seneca's purported hypocrisy (a favorite evergreen in folks writing about Seneca). But rather that like a painter he projects a whole complex universe of true education and teaching onto his letters and so simultaneously flattens the dimensionality of that world into one we can write and discuss. And he is so good at presenting this flattening of this interaction between student and teachers onto the written surface, that we easily forget (qua reader) that his (imagined) projection is, in fact, not alike to our own engagement with his work. And not for the first time, I realize that when Seneca describes the true nature of the skill involved in education he is simultaneously engaged, behind the scenes as it were, in a kind of enchanting artifice. And he leaves it to use decide whether such magic is an essential ingredient of true teaching, or its negation.  

Adam Smith, Plutarch, Foucault, Leibniz, and a Forgotten Utopian.

Wherever prudence does not direct, wherever justice does not permit, the attempt to change our situation, the man who does attempt it, plays at the most unequal of all games of hazard, and stakes every thing against scarce any thing. What the favourite of the king of Epirus said to his master, may be applied to men in all the ordinary situations of human life. When the King had recounted to him, in their proper order, all the conquests which he proposed to make, and had come to the last of them; And what does your Majesty propose to do then ? said the Favourite.--I propose then, said the King, to enjoy myself with my friends, and endeavour to be good company over a bottle.--And what hinders your Majesty from doing so now? replied the Favourite. In the most glittering and exalted situation that our idle fancy can hold out to us, the pleasures from which we propose to derive our real happiness, are almost always the same with those which, in our actual, though humble station, we have at all times at hand, and in our power. Except the frivolous pleasures of vanity and superiority, we may find, in the most humble station, where there is only personal liberty, every other which the most exalted can afford; and the pleasures of vanity and superiority are seldom consistent with perfect tranquillity, a the principle and foundation of all real and satisfactory enjoyment. Neither is it always certain that, in the splendid situation which we aim at, those real and satisfactory pleasures can be enjoyed with the same security as in the humble one which we are so very eager to abandon. Examine the records of history, recollect what has happened within the circle of your own experience, consider with attention what has been the conduct of almost all the greatly unfortunate, either in private or public life, whom you may have either read of, or heard of, or remember; and you will find that the misfortunes of by far the greater part of them have arisen from their not knowing when they were well, when it was proper for them to sit still and to be contented. The inscription upon the tomb-stone of the man who had endeavoured to mend a tolerable constitution by taking physic; 'I was well, 1 wished to be better; here I am; may generally be applied with great justness to the distress of disappointed avarice and ambition.--Adam Smith The Theory of Moral Sentiments, 3.3.31, pp. 150-151.

The charming exchange between The King of Epirus and his favourite receives a note by the editors of the Glasgow edition of Adam Smith's works; they helpfully point to Plutarch, Lives, Pyrrhus, x4. And then add, "The king was Pyrrhus, the favourite Cineas." The passage is introduced by what we may call an axiom of status quo bias: "Wherever prudence does not direct, wherever justice does not permit, the attempt to change our situation, the man who does attempt it, plays at the most unequal of all games of hazard, and stakes every thing against scarce any thing."

The latter part of the axiom is reminiscent of Pascal's wager, but then in reverse. The axiom basically suggests that only in the context of the established rule of law (that's how I am glossing 'justice' here), and then only when one acts prudently, can it be sensible to try to change one's situation. At this point it is easy to get caught up in the circular nature of the axiom because presumably it is only prudent to play games of hazard when the odds are favorable.

But notice that there is a more important point lurking here -- one pertinent to the exchange between Pyrrhus and Cineas -- that outside the rule of law, one should not act from honor, ambition, spirit of revenge, or desire for plunder at all. That is, one should not go to war unless one is sure to win (and, if there is established internal law, within one's right). Since one is rarely sure to win in war, Smith's axiom is quite anti-militaristic. And this fits with Smith's much broader criticism of mercantilism (which exhibit a warlike spirit). I don't mean to deny that the axiom also fits his criticism of projectors/speculators (who are over-optimistic and over-ambitious). The passage also links up with other themes in Smith (about the nature of true happiness, and the tendency of our imagination to delude us).

Now, as it happens, the axiom is not in Plutarch.

Recently, I noticed that in a lecture of 22 March 1978, Foucault directs attention to a now forgotten work called The New Cyneas. The author was a man called ��meric Cruc�� (1590���1648). While I am only a third way in, The New Cyneas is an amazing work. It's relative obscurity is a reminder that as a society we are keener on remembering the conquerors, the Clausewitzes, and the liberators, than creating statues of the true friends of peace. I will blog a bit about the book when I can. 

I do not mean to suggest he was always obscure. As others have noticed, Leibniz had read the work as a young man and told others about it (see here; here). Interestingly enough, on one such occasion Leibniz repeats the anecdote from Plutarch:

When very young, I came to know a book titled the New Cyneas, whose unknown author counseled sovereigns to govern their states in peace and to resolve their differences through a tribunal; but I can no longer find this book and no longer recall any details. We know that Cyneas was a confidant of King Pyrrhus, who advised him to rest [and rejoice] first, since it was his purpose (as he confessed) when he had conquered Sicily, Calabria, Rome and Carthage.--Leibniz to Leibniz to Saint Pierre, 4 April, 1715. (The Abbot Saint Pierre wrote a famous proposal for European pacific Federation, which also inspired some work by Rousseau (recall))

In Leibniz there is no hint of Smith's axiom.

However, and unterestingly enough, we find a predecessor to Smith's axiom at the start of The New Cyneas. After pointing out that wars are usually fought for honor, profit (plunder), or revenge, and then dismissing the idea that they are fought for religious purposes (which "serves most often as a pretext), Cruc�� goes on to write that the ordinary fruits of war is a bunch disasters. He proposes as a fine lesson to Princes,

[T]o learn that there is more dishonour to fear, than glory to hope for in war. For the bad comes often [in war]  than the good; and if it is considered a folly to leave the certain for the uncertain, princes should guard their honor, without risking it [sans le mettre au hazard] for the appetites and promptings of those who nourish them with hopes, and hold out to them what they can gain and not what they can lose.--Translated by Thomas Willing Balch (1909)

Now Cruc�� wrote before Pascal and Fermat had their celebrated exchange. I do not want to claim that he anticipates all the details of Smith's axiom. But I hope it is fair to say he anticipates its spirit. As I hope to show soon, Cruc�� anticipates quite a bit more in Smith. 

 

On Srinivasan, Firestone, and The Young

Now that I am a professor, I confess that some of these arguments don't grip me in the way they once did. Not because I think they are wrong -- I still think they are right -- but because I no longer feel them to be, in a sense, necessary. As a teacher, I see that my undergraduate students, and in some cases my graduate students, for all their maturity, intelligence and self-directedness, are, in an important sense, still children. I don't mean this as a claim about their legal or cognitive or moral status. They are perfectly capable of consent, and have the right to determine the course of their lives just as I have the right to determine the course of mine. I simply mean that my students are so very young. I didn't know, when I was in their place, how young I was, and how young I must have seemed even to those professors who were kind enough to treat me like the fully fledged intellectual I mistakenly thought I was. There are plenty of people my students' age, most of them not in university and will never be, who are adults in ways that  my students simply aren't. My students youthfulness has much to do with the sort of institutions at which I have taught, filled with the sort of young people who have been allowed, by virtue of their class and race, to remain young, even as many of their peers have been required to grow up too quickly.--Amia Srinivasan "On Not Sleeping With Your Students," in The Right to Sex, pp. 147-148.

The vagueness, even repetitive circularity of the passage -- what it is to be "young" or "youthful" is merely  gestured at -- is very uncharacteristic of Srinivasan (an incredibly clear writer). I think the last sentence suggests we're supposed to interpret such youth as innocence (recall 'still children') or privilege (to be contrasted by those who have to grow up too quickly). Part of the problem is that is the "maturity" these young have is meant to be a kind of intellectual sophistication that somehow does not give them what they need in the art of real living. And this is because, and I now I link it up to a broader theme hinted at in Srinivasan's essay, they have been failed by the educational institutions at which Srinivasan teaches. To be sure, being outside these institutions may be worse in other ways (notice that "too quickly.")

I read Srinivasan's Right to Sex just after my first encounter with Firestone's The Dialectic of Sex. [If you reader lack time/patience, please skip this paragraph and next the three until "at this point."] As it happens, Firestone comes off rather badly in The Right to Sex. (To be sure I don't think Srinivasan has a particular animus against Firestone--among philosophers a willingness to criticize is a sign of respect.) Firestone is treated as the exemplary white feminist who "facilitated the resurrection of the timeworn myth of the Black rapist" (p. 11, Srinivasan quoting Angela Davis approvingly.) The Dialectic of Sex "falters critically in its treatment of race and rape." (p.11)) In a different context and in a different essay/chapter, Srinivasan introduces Firestone as one of the Redstockings "pro-woman feminists," who are portrayed as racially insensitive (if not worse) and who had "on the whole little interest in defending the legitimacy of desires beyond the confines of heterosexuality." (78) 

As an extended aside, I think these charges against Firestone are rather uncharitable even if they also reveal something troubling about how she sets up some of her arguments and a pattern of oversights. For example, the passage from Dialectic of Sex, that Davis quotes as evidence (and quoted by Srinivasan) is explicitly about "the black man's feelings about white woman."  These are said to have "intense mixture of love and hate; but however he may choose to express this ambivalence, he is unable to control its intensity." (emphasis in Firestone. In my (2015) edition of Dialectic of Sex this is on p. 100 not p. 110 as Davis suggests.) In so far as black on white rape is being discussed in context it is treated primarily as a *fantasy* and the effect of their dependence. 

Of course, Firestone's chapter as a whole does discuss rather critically the misogyny and abuse by the leaders of Black Power (and other social movements) of women in their movement. And so seems to lack much interest in the historical roots and causes of black nationalism. But the idea that black men want white women 'to be on top of their women' (Dialectic of Sex, p. 96) she attributes to the liberal establishment! (I do not mean to deny that Firestone often presents an extremely reductive and schematic/stereotypical view of black men, but that's a feature of her social freudianism and is true of all groups portrayed.)

Echoing Davis closely on this point, Srinivasan claims that for Firestone "the rape of white women by black men is the result of a natural Oedipal urge to destroy the white father and take and subjugate what is his." As I suggest, I deny Firestone actually claims anything this reductive. But in so far as she makes any claims about such urges, it is in the context of the more important claim she understands racism in "terms of the power hierarchies of the family." And these hierarchies are by no means natural for Firestone. In fact, these hierarchies (and the family-structure  they sustain) must be completely destroyed according to Firestone. For Firestone race is important culturally "only due to unequal distribution of power" in the family and in wider society. 

At this point the reader may wonder what this has to do with the original passage from Srinivasan I quoted above.+ As it happens the chapter on racism in Dialectic of Sex, is preceded by the chapter on childhood. Firestone's key claim in this chapter is that in our culture (both relative to other cultures in history as well as absolutely), children's dependence and subordination is tremendously accentuated. Our culture has created a 'cult of childhood' that serves patriarchy and that harms children and their caregivers (mostly women). And rather than seeing childhood, say, as a kind of apprenticeship into adulthood,* kids today must be happy. And the means to make them happy is to make them safe and provide for fun activities, and so inevitably dependent on the wills and money of their parents. And this is especially so in the modern upper-middle class family.

On Firestone's view, bourgeois kids are kept young (in the sense I think conveyed by Srinivasan) by the shelter and enrichment provided by loving parents. And, in fact, Firestone (rather too romantically) thinks that only "children of the ghettos and the working-class" escape this forced immaturity of the modern family (which she calls the "myth of childhood"). These kids "living on the street" escape. And while Firestone recognizes this escape is very partial (because they are still dependent and "oppressed as an economic class" oddly no mention of race). Given the reality of modern racialized policing and the carceral state (Srinivasan is excellent on this), Firestone undoubtedly was too optimistic (and probably shouldn't have tried to illuminate her theory by appealing to stereotypes and generic statements).

But the point here is about the youthfulness of our students. And here, Firestone is on firmer ground in chapter 4 of The Dialectic of Sex. One way kids are kept young, according to Firestone, is through the education system. In schools, kids are segregated by age from each other as well as the rest of society, and nearly constantly dependent on the approval and evaluation of an adult (or the age-specific peers). Learning is outer-directed (the age-specific curriculum) and "approval conscious." 

In reading Firestone, I was reminded of my son's intense dislike for some of his teachers (who ruined his interest in some topics). This is ordinarily invisible to me, but due to covid and home-schooling, some of his life is more accessible. When I enquired why this was so, he would report that the teachers were patronizing. And this was not just a matter of tone (using the kids-specific-voice), but also the great many arbitrary seeming rules that govern the in-class-room behavior and choice of topics. 

And much to my puzzlement (remembering my neighborhood adventures at age 11), playing with friends on the streets is not-done in his/our London bourgeois environment even when lockdown ended. Playdates happen, if they happen at all, at home under supervision of a parent (mostly mum) or a nanny. (The gendered workforce is alive and kicking.) Outside, on the streets, there is apparently a non-specific threat. (Perhaps life in the the suburbs are really different.) No wonder the multi-player, violent online game is where all the excitement is for him. (Firestone's chapter is very good on what we now call helicopter or protective parenting may generate violent fantasies.) 

In fact, many of the class-room rules that my son finds arbitrary clearly exists in order to control restless boys. (He goes to an all-boys school.) So, they accentuate the dependence felt. The best moment of his year was when he was given some responsibility as a camp councilor. 

As it happens the malicious, insufferable effects of dependence is the great theme of The Dialectic of Sex. For Firestone, the purportedly modern happy childhood, is one never ending humiliation (and shame) of their "dependence, economic and otherwise." (And in this respect structurally resembles women's subordination in the family, and is also structured by it.)  

And, going beyond Firestone, as contemporary colleges (more the ones I teach in, perhaps, than Srinivasan's) become more like giant high schools (often in the name of efficiency or bureaucratic impartiality and fairness) with frequent testing and exams as the main mechanism toward advancement (alongside many rules about how one ought to behave), this dependence, this enforced tutelage continues. (It is also welcomed by the majority of our students, who like the predictability of it.)

Given that Srinivasan also models her account of student-teacher dependence in part on the dependence of the patient on the psycho-analysist (which is structured by a code of ethics in a way that teachers tend to resist), I suspect Srinivasan agrees with Firestone that those kids that excel in our educational students are simultaneously infantilized in some important respects despite the opportunities our (elite) institutions provide them with. 

For Firestone, writing in 1970, this structural dependency was altogether disqualifying of the institution, which together with the other institutions that promote subordination and hierarchy should be abolished. (After the revolution very different kinds of educational institutions are required.) Since those days what she calls the "cult of childhood" has only intensified despite the fact that women's participation in the workforce and income inequality among the sexes has diminished. But she wouldn't be mystified by this because income inequality has increased dramatically, such that our society can be best characterized as oligarchic.

And even though I have a liberal's abhorrence of revolution, Firestone's criticism of the effects of dependency is persuasive (despite being colored by her struggle with Freudianism). As Firestone recognizes, educators are functionaries of extremely hierarchical institutions that for good and bad also extend the (ahh) immaturity of students (even though that is disguised by language that treats them as consumers). Some other time, I hope to return to Firestone's program to abolish the conditions of such dependency (e.g., basic income, abolition of the family, separating child-birthing from biology, using technology to replace drudgery, etc.) and reinterpret them as a liberal project. 

While in some of her writings Srinivasan is receptive to revolution (recall Srinivasan on Stanley here; Srinivasan on Nussbaum here), when confronting the effects of the extended dependency of our students in The Right to Sex, and their teachers' tendency to "assimilate themselves to their students," she does not promote revolution, but advocates self-command, "one must stand back, step away and leave them to get on with it." (148)** 

I have to admit that while I endorse Srinivasan's stance (how could I not, given my own version of it here?), I find Srinivasan's position baffling (unless her previous flirtation with revolution is now reinterpreted as a symptom of her then youthfulness). In other places in The Right to Sex  Srinivasan castigates individualist, liberal responses to feminist criticism that leave the structures and preconditions of subordination intact.  But here, when it comes to our own vocation as teachers it seems Srinivasan recoils from revolution altogether. And, in fact, she even hesitates for many wise and judicious reasons about using the law to "guide culture." (146) 

Now, in re-reading Srinivasan's essay (before publishing this response), it occurs to me that it's possible I missed an important clue. Rather than writing as a revolutionary feminist, in this essay she is appealing to the enlightened self-interest of the professoriate. For given the "trend towards increased regulation of sex on campus," there is an "opportunity for professors, as a group, to think about the aims of pedagogical practice, and the norms of conduct appropriate to achieving them." (142) And in fact, as she reminds us "professors have a strong incentive to take these things serious." So, while still feminist, she is writing conditioned on or presupposing the continued functioning of the very institution (she is writing about and works in).

This, then, and now I am wrapping up, is very much an ameliorative feminism, one -- and now I am quoting the near final lines of the book -- that recognizes a feminism that "need not abjure power" and recognizes its "own entanglement with violence." (178) And while in context of this last essay, Srinivasan is talking about (socialist) proposals to displace the carceral state, we get a glimpse in these essays of an intersectional feminism that already assumes if not its own partial victory then at least its recognized "ethical authority." (178)

 

 

*Firestone is discussing the middle-ages (and echoing Plato).

+Perhaps, some other time I'll discuss Firestone's views on sexuality, which I read as an all out attack on heteronormativity. But since what she advocates is easily ridiculed and even criminal in some settings, I want to treat it separately.

**Strikingly, in addition to the many duties we have as teachers qua teachers, one of the grounds to do so is a kind respect for "our own past selves which are part of what it is to teach." Srinivasan's idea that there is a higher form of self-respect that grounds our duties is reminiscent of Adam Smith.

On American Foreign Policy

It's been almost thirty years since the United States has had a President, George H.W. Bush (41), who was skilled in foreign policy, and knowledgeable about the strategic and political challenges it faced. He had, in fact, served American governments abroad and in key strategic positions long before he became President. To say this is not to ignore his limitations or failures (or to approve of his policies). To observers of the nature of liberal democracy, it should come as no surprise that he has few genuine admirers among the citizens of that proud nation. 

Since, the foreign policy of the most powerful nation of the globe has been hijacked by war profiteers, adventurers of the liberal humanitarian, neo-con, and Christian kinds not to mention the outright corruption of the previous administration. Among the longer-sitting, elected senators and members of the House, there are few with the curiosity and background to help steward and steady foreign policy. One need not treat the Fulbright's, Nunns, Lugars,  Proxmires as saints or wise, to recognize they have no obvious counterparts today. It is not obvious they would flourish (recall the sad spectacle of Rex Tillerson).

The effect has been notable: a steady erosion of American alliances such that notionally American allies were aiding different sides of the Syrian civil war and undermining official American policy. Another notional ally, Pakistan, aided and abetted Bin Laden and the Taliban. Last I checked the assassination of a US citizen-journalist ordered by the leader of a key ally has had no consequence at all. Meanwhile there has been retreat from free trade (the Doha round has been languishing forever). Liberal democracy and human rights are in retreat (not infrequently cheerlead by the occupant of the White House). Until there is multilateral policy, we can expect covid to linger and cause problems. And American leadership in the most important collective action problem, the environmental crisis, is lacking for decades now.  (Feel free to add your own issues to the list.)

It's pretty clear that there is no institutional reason to expect this drift to change any time soon. Leaving foreign affairs to the military or the experts means competent stewardship, but de facto no real policy at all. For policy involves facing tough trade-offs and mobilizing support for long term aims. And because the many advantages the US enjoys on the world stage, it is doubtful that foreign policy challenges will become salient to informed American voters and party leaders any time soon.  

The shameful ending to twenty years American involvement in Afghanistan with betrayal of local allies and dependents is, thus, no accident.* It's been long known that insurgencies can outlast occupation when the occupier is a liberal democracy (and, to be sure, not interested in colonizing the occupied land). At some point, and often years too late, voters and their politicians simply lose interest. Even those that profit big time from continued occupation lose heart. 

There is another recurring pattern: that the salience of foreign policy is discovered by US Presidents after their initial domestic agenda has been defeated or frustrated. (It is, after all, an area in which they are less constrained than other policy areas.) But, by then they are in search of quick results, and so easy prey for advisers that promise too much and foreigners that can smell a good opportunity. And while this occasionally means a worthy deal, it rarely shapes long-term policy for the better. The net effect is not just drift, but also the capture of foreign policy by rent-seeking interests who have the expertise and financial focus to shape the highly technical features of international patent law and technological collaboration or localized military interventions.

Perhaps all of this is to be expected in a continent wide republic without a clear military threat or a dire emergency. But I suspect it's also the effect of the tendency to disregard the Constitution, which tries to provide a unified framework for domestic and foreign policy, when it comes to foreign policy (and war) during the last century--arguably since United States v. Curtiss-Wright Export Corp (1936)). The imperial, unchecked presidency has been a long time coming. But this lack of true checks on the American President (when it comes to  foreign affairs, border control, and the very grey zone of US illicit security activity abroad) has had the perverse effect of less government by discussion and more impulse decisions. 

Given that the US has military bases with rapid response teams spread around the world, and that it has military contractors pursuing profit under their protection, it is to be expected that the next foreign policy disaster will occur with the same stupidity and opportunity costs before long. Perhaps, it's unfolding already. 

 

 

*Full disclosure: I thought -- and still think -- that the Taliban made a legitimate military target for shielding and supporting Bin Laden. After the Battle of Tora Bora, a strategic withdrawal would have been advisable, especially because without clear Pakistani support none of the immediate aims were achievable I did not support any of the grander missions later.

RIP: Noel Swerdlow (1941-2021)

My graduate school classmate at The University of Chicago, Matt Kerrigan Frank, alerted me to the fact that Noel Swerdlow recently passed away. (See this obit.)
I met Noel on one of the first days in graduate school back in September 1995. The seminar room was busy filling up with faculty and graduate students from philosophy and history of science for one of the many, weekly joint seminars I would attend during the next seven years. I was trying to impress David Malament with my knowledge of the Huygens/Newton debate which I had been researching under the guidance of George Smith (one of my undergrad gurus). An old crank -- I now realize he was then barely older than I am now-- interrupted my narrative to tell me that Huygens' objections to Newton's inverse law were primarily metaphysical. I tried to explain to the guy that Koyr��'s view had been refuted (by George and me). I never get a chance. I asked David, "who is that old man?" and he informed me it was Noel Swerdlow.
Over the next few years I saw Noel in action at the various joint seminars: often abrasive and impatient, but at times quite brilliant. Some of his exchanges with visiting scholars could be quite spirited. (His exchange with Motti Feingold was legendary, but they were or became close friends.)
My relationship with Noel evolved once he spent some time away at Dibner (where George had become director). After we met again on campus, he told me with a big smile "you could have told me about all the archival research that went into the Huygens paper [see here]. I thought you were just bluffing. It's really marvelous work--I love the argument with the maps." I meekly tried to say, "i tried." But something had changed, I was now on his good side. And to receive a compliment from Noel (or anyone in graduate school) was one of the highlights of my graduate career.
He was famous for his work on Babylonian astronomy (he was a student of the legendary Otto Neugebauer), but I have to admit that as a PhD student I loved learning about Copernicus and his (obscure to me) peers from Noel. I also have a memory of him playing piano, but I have not seen this mentioned in any obituary so maybe I am confused. We discovered our shared love for opera at the Lyric, and I always looked forward to seeing him there. (He was very learned on opera.)
When I was nearly done with my PhD, I had the luminous idea to ask him to read Adam Smith's posthumous "History of Astronomy" with me. This piece was central to my dissertation. I was delighted he agreed, and even more that he had never read it before. (I always assumed Noel pretty much had read everything.) I expected that Noel would be extremely critical of Smith as a historian (as the editors of the Oxford edition are). But Noel was, in fact, quite impressed with Smith's historical acumen and, more importantly, gave me a graduate seminar on all the possible sources Smith could have consulted during the 18th century. He also flattered my vanity in assuming that I was intimately familiar with all the works of Regiomantus, Riccioli, and Peuerbach. Often after our reading group at The Medici I had to go to special collections to figure out what he was saying. (This was before the age of google.books!)
Later, when I realized I had bombed out on the job-market first time around, he even helped me apply (and wrote a letter) for a project on Smith as historian of astronomy. But that was not funded.
At the time, i assumed it was normal for historians of astronomy to have a position in an astronomy department.  So, I later used that as an argument for my paper on "philosophy and a scientific future of the history of economics" But I have learned it is much less common (although archeoastronomy is sometimes practices by professional astronomers). 
That paper was part of a rather contentious symposium. organized by Paola Tubaro & Erik Angner. To be clear the symposium was lovely but our audience of established historians were underwhelmed. I think referees managed to prevent bublication of some of the papers.
Anyway, my core idea was that the history of economy theories could play an evidential role in present day economics as the custodians of the theories and data of the past. This was not well received at all. But it let to an invitation by Bertram Schefold to reflect on the possibilities and significance of economic history. I did not know much about the practice of economic history. But as I was musing about the invite, I wondered what the oldest economic data might be. The hunch being that if you have data very far apart this might help you to calibrate important measures.  So on a lark I googled (!) "Babylonian economics" and I was directed to Alice Louise Slotsky The Bourse of Babylon Market Quotations in the Astronomical Diaries of Babylonia, which I read and loved.
I was astonished to learn that the very clay tablets with astronomical data Noel had studied also had economic data on them! I started drafting one of the craziest and fun papers I ever wrote, "Prophecy, eclipses and whole-sale markets: A case study on why data driven economic history requires history of economics, a philosopher���s reflection." [published in Jahrbuch f��r Wirtschaftsgeschichte/Economic History Yearbook 50.1 (2009): 195-206.]
With some trepidation I sent an early draft to Noel. Rather than scolding me for my amateurishness (this was the initial response of some of my Leiden colleagues who were experts on ancient Mesopatamia--I think they really thought I was crazy), he wrote lengthy letters on the quality of the data that I wanted to use. (The published version of the paper includes excerpts from his letters to me. ) Nobody seems to have read this paper, but it was good enough for me that Noel (who called my attention to relevant other scholars) took it seriously enough to try to help me improve it.
In later years, Noel would always read works I sent him. Sometimes even my blog. Even when I relied on impeccable scholarship of others, he would correct mistakes that had crept into now famous scholarly works. My favorite letter, however, is this one-liner, "Take it down; it's nonsense!--Noel."

Chronic Covid

One of the most psychologically annoying features of long haul covid is that any new somewhat mysterious ailment generates the bewildering question whether it is part of the post-viral syndrome belonging to the aftermath of the disease or a sign of a new (potentially serious) problem. (For earlier installments in the series, see here; here; here; here; here; here; here; here; here; here; here; here; here; here; here; here; and here).

For example, since last week Thursday I suffering from a new kind of head fatigue. The fatigue disappears after a good night's sleep but recurs throughout the day. At first I thought it was an effect of too much intellectual ambition with me working on my Foucault manuscript. But the head fatigue also occurs when I am not on the laptop at all. I call it a 'new' fatigue because unlike the first five months of covid, this fatigue does not impact my ability to read intellectual stuff. It's not what other people call 'brain fog.' Rather, it is a feeling of tiredness combined with hunger (and irritability). 

As it happens last week I picked up new fancy, varifocal glasses. I had gotten them because, as I remarked before, during my long bed-ridden period of convalescence I was reading books without my eye-glasses on, but with one eye closed. My cognitive-scientist, vitreoretinal-surgeon better half had nudged me to the optometrists suggesting that better eye vision might facilitate cognitive renewal. I never had varifocal glasses before, and I had been warned that a transition period might be tricky. 

In particular, I was warned not to use the varifocals at first while driving. After wearing them for about twenty minutes I could see why. As you move your head to look at new objects, different parts of the visual field go blurry. The haze disappears quickly as your eyes look through the right part of the glasses and the world returns to focus. Over time you notice the blurry moments less and your eyes adjust more quickly to where they should look relative to your glasses. While I do have a driver's license, I don't drive in the UK. This decision was unrelated to Covid (or Brexit). I simply decided that I do not drive enough anywhere to trust my judgment driving on 'the wrong side of the road' in the UK.

But last week as the fatigue first hit me, I wondered, is this covid or the fancy glasses? A week later, I can't be sure but I have to assume it's covid. Because by now I barely notice the blurry moments. And I do, in fact, enjoy reading books and my mobile phone without taking off my glasses. 

Either way, after three excellent weeks in which I was feeling close to recovered with only a  minor, lingering issues, I now am at the stage where I am grateful for the good periods during the day. I was warned against such relapses by others in my long haul covid fellowship. But since I had read plenty of narratives about folk who had suddenly recovered fully, I had come to hope during the third week I might be one of the lucky ones.

If you are like me, you might wonder what the 'physicians' think of all of this? First the good news: I have had a battery of blood tests this past month. (For a while this showed in astounding black and blue marks thanks to a nurse's inability to find my veins.) The blood results all report that I am in fine health. The second bit of good news is that I am finally assigned an appointment with a long haul covid clinic. Sadly, that also contains the bad news, which is that the appointment is still seven weeks away. 

It's not that I expect much help from the long haul covid clinic. My GPs have tempered any expectation about breakthrough cures. Most of the folk who do benefit from medical intervention are showing symptoms much different than mine. But it would be nice to have some attentive, skilled medical attention beyond 'be patient, and don't push yourself too much.'

Anyway, it's now been six months. June was the best month of the year for me. It was the first month where I spent most of my time out of bed and active in various ways; I was very happy to be improved. I had been looking forward to my discussion with the occupational physician next week. While I am still hopeful I can return to normal teaching, say, in September at the start of the academic year, I now am considering the possibility that June was a harbinger of the possibility that my condition might be chronic; that I might be like the folks that have CFS/ME, and that I should expect good and bad periods to alternate.

When I started blogging about my long haul symptoms, a distinguished academic with CFS/ME told me s/he 'learned to become a fast writer.' (I have not asked her how s/he teaches.) Since I am a parent I write much faster, so I can relate. Even so, there is more to life than writing. As I contemplate this, I am wondering how I can be me with new constraints.  But now I must take my son to a physio appointment, for him.

 

On Baggini���s How the World Thinks: A Global History of Philosophy

[This is an excerpt of a commissioned book review that became a victim of the pandemic.--ES]

Julian Baggini���s (2018) How the World Thinks: A Global History of Philosophy is wonderfully written and provides a highly compelling comparative introduction to philosophy, including philosophical traditions rarely discussed. (It does suffer from gendered pattern of exclusion, alas.) Baggini, whose experience in journalism is apparent, has organized the book around his own curiosity, exploring alternative traditions all over the world. Because he has an eye for marvelous quotations, the book is a gem to read and re-read together. For example, in preparing this review I would often stop to read some quote to my (then) ten year old son. And these would always inspire further reflection by him. Throughout the work Baggini manages to appeal to our natural sense of wonder, and  I warmly recommend it.

But I do not recommend it unconditionally. And what follows articulates my growing unease as I reflected on the book. So before I continue, I want to stress that I admire Baggini's achievement. 

The underlying conceit of the book is that philosophies reflect the deeply embedded cultural values, the sediment of a major cultural tradition. (Baggini studiously avoid using ���civilization.���) Understanding the philosophy of another culture is then a way to see how to see the world differently as shaped by other intellectual assumptions and so a way to understand their culture. Underlying this approach is an idea of culture where philosophy trickles down to the masses and their less reflective practices. Baggini does not stop to investigate this (elitist) idea, which itself has a long history (some version of it can, for example, be found in Mencius, Al-Farabi, and Bishop Berkeley).

Baggini practices what he preaches and so travels all around the world talking to philosophers and artists alike. Baggini���s most fascinating passages are when he tries to get his head around ideas and cultures where there is a commitment to a relational self (Japan) or a metaphysics of no-self at all (Buddhism). The focus on Japan is itself welcome (Grayling ignores it), and Baggini manages to entice this reader to look up a number of fascinating Japanese art works that Baggini mentions to illustrate some of his claims about Japanese culture. 

However, at times Baggini���s willful neglect of ethnographic methods and anthropology also makes him come across as na��ve. At various moments it is quite clear that Baggini���s informants are recruiting him into essentially national even nationalist enterprises romanticizing sometimes lost organic and unified cultures (recall this post by Liam Kofi Bright; and my response). Even Bertrand Russell would not have been surprised that university professors peddle in such dubious wear.

Baggini shows no interest in the developing experimental research program of so-called X-PHI. This program increasingly explores in experimental fashion how people across the world make moral judgments. And while it sometimes finds genuine comparative differences it also finds commonalities among people���s moral evaluations and the process by which they reach them.

Often Baggini���s own eyes tell him such cultures do not exist anymore, but he does not seem to allow that culture may be more hybrid than he allows. At other times Baggini���s interest in other cultures is highly selective. For example, he is clearly and explicitly very taken by the meritocratic defense of social hierarchy to be found in Confucian thought.

But why the Confucian school is more authentically Chinese than the much more egalitarian Mohist school is never explained. That gentleman-scholars and rulers found it more congenial to promote Confucianism in all its demandingness than Mohism never seems to occurs to Baggini. Perhaps I found him to be unconvincing because I happen to read Baggini���s fond quotes of Daniel Bell on the merits of harmony over the value freedom while the citizens of Hong Kong were daily risking their careers and lives courageously defending their civil rights.  

Baggini does not really alert the reader that his book embraces a Kantian relativized a priori best known in the work of another great philosophical anthropologist, Cassirer (who goes unmentioned). Not unlike Cassirer, Baggini���s interest in other cultures is cosmopolitan in character.

The Kantianism in Baggini is not ad hoc. When confronted with Indian views that suggest that our linguistic understanding of the world are in non-trivially misguided and limited, and their practices to overcome such limitations, Baggini marshals a soft-Kantian defense of the idea that our cognitive capacities structure our experience of the world, which ���still has to come through the lens of human nature.��� This may be true, but it does not follow that the alternative is incoherent (as he argues). Baggini never confronts the possibility that he has reached the limits of argument. 

Be that as it may, it is peculiar and odd that Baggini identifies the Kantian position as intrinsically western, even though the position he ascribes to Buddhism has more than a family resemblance to Spinoza���s philosophy; not unlike the Buddhist thinkers Spinoza also treats the highest form of knowledge as a kind of immediate identification with or union with nature. Spinoza suspicious of the role of language in our thinking is already familiar in Plato���s Phaedrus and was widespread among early modern philosophers. Leibniz, who shared the suspicion, thought that Spinoza went too far by turning everything but God/Nature into transitory ephemera.

Baggini briefly treats Spinoza as an arch rationalist. It is hard to complain about that. But even so, even Russell noticed that Spinoza offers a philosophy capable of consolation to the cosmic loneliness in an infinite universe felt by an atheist in times of great distress.  The more important point lurking here is that Baggini does not live up to his own promise to use the encounter with other philosophical traditions to explore his own assumptions and the complexity of the tradition he has inherited. To travel with a firm sense of self unchanged through the trip is characteristic of tourism. For all his genuine inquisitiveness and sense of wonder, Baggini does not allow himself the risk of transformation.