Eric Schliesser's Blog, page 31

Seneca on Freedom (Letter 51)

I have set freedom as my goal [Libertas proposita est]; and I am striving for that reward. And what is freedom, you ask? It means not being a slave to any circumstance, to any necessity [necessitati], to any chance; it means compelling Fortune to enter the lists on equal terms. And on the day when I know that I have the upper hand, her power will be naught. When I have death in my own control, shall I take orders from her?--Seneca, Letter 51, Translated by Richard Mott Gummere (with minor corrections).

When, in a moment of sadness, I decided to return to Seneca, I was hoping for wisdom. My first response in reading Letter 51 is disappointment. The letter understands itself as a polemic/litigious [litigavimus]; and it is clearly written by a man out of sorts, in deep turmoil. We are informed near the start of the letter that he left the luxury resort town, Baiae, the day after he reached it. More importantly, for an author, he can't even keep straight who he has been reading "Messala, ��� or was it Valgius." And his inner turbulence is matched/echoed by the description of the near omnipresence of volcanoes, "many regions belch forth fire" [cum plurima loca evomant ignem]. 

We don't have to be Freud to discern Seneca is aware his time is nearly up (see also the quoted passage above suggests). There are lots of hints in the letter that he is holding up the modesty of Scipio in political defeat/exile as exemplar to himself. And the reader is left to wonder in what sense Seneca understands his own political retirement as leading to suicide or death. There is, in fact, an interesting historical question, hinted at by Plutarch, whether Scipio committed suicide (admittedly Livy gives no hint of it).*

We know that Seneca found it very difficult to give up his luxury. For some this marks him as a hypocrite. I don't think I am engaging in himpathy when I say that I find more interesting the fact that his inability to live up to his ideals does not make him change his ideals; and his struggles with adhering to his ideals -- the rapid succession of arrival and departure from Baiae are comic and tragic at once -- allow him also to be instructive even persuasive about the challenges to achieve them. The best witnesses against vice are not the saintly preacher, but (as most rehab centers recognize now) former alcoholics. 

And yet, above I quote the more philosophical passage. Is freedom really a kind of inner state or, better yet, a disposition? A disposition that allows one to be immune from even necessity (that is, death). I recognize that immunity from external causes is an attractive thought during a pandemic. 

When I connect the threads of the letter, it's clear that Seneca is trying his hand at inner exile (political and emotional), and aware he is failing. And failing badly; his travel habits and his inner emotional life (those bursting flames) tell another story.+ This gives the start of the letter -- "Quomodo quisque potest" translated by Gummere as 'everyone does his best'; I think I prefer 'each according to his abilities'  -- a double-edged sword. He is falling, and it gives his teaching a harsh quality. 

It is not easy to write these lines, recognizing my own teaching fails. And yet, it is difficult to feel compassion for Seneca, the stern lecturer of the worldly-successful Lucilius; Seneca, the exorcist of pleasures.  

Looking back at the sentence before the one quoted at the top of this post,** what's lacking is not Seneca's desire for pleasure or his fear about his political fate. No, what's missing in the description of Seneca's inner exile is the acknowledgment of his sadness or, if it that is too modern, of his disappointments his frustrated ambitions. This is mirrored in his treatment of Scipio's downfall/ruin [ruina], which is centered on Scipio's management of his manly honor/nobility [honestius].

Of course, the modern desire for psychological realism bumps up against the ancient rules of decorum. It is too easy, perhaps too lucrative, to turn Seneca into self-help or compassion with his sadness; he is quite clear that "if any vice rend your heart, cast it away from you; and if you cannot be rid of it in any other way, pluck out your heart also."

I wanted to stop there, but I noticed on re-reading that this evisceration of the self is a kind of second-best (perhaps third-best) therapy. In fact, Seneca suggests that in order to destroy the vices, passion needs to be set against passion ("Above all, drive pleasures from your sight. Hate them beyond all other things,"). To eliminate (or strangle [strangulent]) the pleasures, they, or their objects, must be hated; and to habituate such self-betterment, this killing off of bad temptations, location matters. 

And just before I press 'publish,' and, think how Christian Seneca sounds, I ask myself why is he reading "Messala...or Valgius?" These are, after all, in addition two significant authors, also two great political survivors of the turmoil of the late republic and early empire. Messala, in particular, was adept at adapting to changed circumstances.

I don't mean to suggest that we should read Seneca's use of freedom in republican terms here. But rather to remark that if freedom is a disposition that allows one to be immune from all circumstance (etc.), it does not follow that one has to be passive in the face of changing fortunes and retreat into an untouchable (and sadness denying) inner citadel. And while it is foolish to think one can escape death (necessity), one may well be able to influence its circumstances and other goods of fortune. I linger on the thought; maybe Scipio is an anti-exemplar here.

It would be a sublime comedy if the very text that is assumed to teach a form of resignation, the killing off of last remnants of pleasures, is really a manual for political survival by a man still hoping for reversal of fortune. Oddly, this cheers me up.   

 

 

 

*There is also a not-so-subtle contrast drawn between Scipio, his critic Cato, and the three leading generals who helped destroy the Roman republic in a series of civil wars, "Gaius Marius, Gnaeus Pompey, and Caesar," (Sulla unmentioned, perhaps because he had no villa in the hills above Baiae).

+Seneca has, at various times, clear contempt for Cicero's late political activity, and one wonders if he is not recognizing himself in his previous judgments.

**"The soul is not to be pampered; surrendering to pleasure means also surrendering to pain, surrendering to toil, surrendering to poverty. Both ambition and anger will wish to have the same rights over me as pleasure, and I shall be torn asunder, or rather pulled to pieces, amid all these conflicting passions."

David Hume, Ibn Khaldun, on Cult of the Leader (and a comment on Hume on race)

I have mentioned parties from affection as a kind of real parties, beside those from interest and principle. By parties from affection, I understand those which are founded on the different attachments of men towards particular families and persons, whom they desire to rule over them. These factions are often very violent; though, I must own, it may seem unaccountable, that men should attach themselves so strongly to persons, with whom they are no wise acquainted, whom perhaps they never saw, and from whom they never received, nor can ever hope for any favour. Yet this we often find to be the case, and even with men, who, on other occasions, discover no great generosity of spirit, nor are found to be easily transported by friendship beyond their own interest. We are apt to think the relation between us and our sovereign very close and intimate. The splendour of majesty and power bestows an importance on the fortunes even of a single person. And when a man���s good-nature does not give him this imaginary interest, his ill-nature will, from spite and opposition to persons whose sentiments are different from his own.--David Hume "Of Parties In General" 

In chapter 2 of The Liberal Archipelago: A Theory of Diversity and Freedom (2003), Chandran Kukathas draws on Hume's essay, "Of Parties in General," to offer an account of the fundamental motives of human nature rooted in a distinction among interest, affection, and principle. For Kukathas principle is key because in his account of liberalism conscience, and so freedom(s) of association, are central to living a life of integrity. (The intended contrast is with liberalism(s) that privileges justice and/or autonomy.) Since I didn't quite recall Hume linking principle to conscience (he doesn't), I decided to re-read Hume's essay. What follows is unmoored from Kukathas' discussion.

Before I get to the paragraph quoted at the top of the post -- it's the closing one in Hume's essay --, I want to call attention to a different paragraph. It is pertinent to the recent, renewed interest in Hume's racism. It is a paragraph that is devoted to illustrating Hume's idea that "Men have such a propensity to divide into personal factions, that the smallest appearance of real difference will produce them." Some of these appearances are  "trivial" (such as "colour of livery" and another "in horse races"). Hume goes on to offer more such examples, including ones that "have begun upon a real difference, continue even after that difference is lost." He then turns to the following example:  

The civil wars which arose some few years ago in Morocco, between the blacks and whites, merely on account of their complexion, are founded on a pleasant difference. We laugh at them; but I believe, were things rightly examined, we afford much more occasion of ridicule to the Moors. For, what are all the wars of religion, which have prevailed in this polite and knowing part of the world? They are certainly more absurd than the Moorish civil wars. The difference of complexion is a sensible and a real difference: But the controversy about an article of faith, which is utterly absurd and unintelligible, is not a difference in sentiment, but in a few phrases and expressions, which one party accepts of, without understanding them; and the other refuses in the same manner.

Now, a racialized civic war is, in some sense ridiculous. But Hume's point is that European religious wars are far more ridiculous than an ethnic civic war. And the reason for Hume's point is that European civil wars are, at bottom, rooted in disputes over unintelligible disagreements; whereas for Hume differences in skin color "is a sensible and a real difference."

Now, it is not entirely clear if form Hume there is a further implied contrast between "polite and knowing part of the world," that is civilization, and barbarism here (recall). The reason for my hesitation is that (a) it is possible to read Hume's "polite and knowing part of the world," as dripping with satire (given that people are killing each other over unintelligible principles) and (b) it is possible that here Hume thinks the Moroccan Moors are just as civilized as the Europeans. But on (b) there is evidence to think not because in a companion piece, "Of the Refinement in the Arts," Hume treats "Moor or Tartar," as the barbarous contrast to "civilized" (a word he uses here) "French or English."  So, it seems, then, that Hume think that when 'barbarians' have ethnic warfare this is more intelligible than when civilized have religious warfare.*

Ethnic differences are, then, for Hume real enough. And, in fact, Hume uses the Moorish civil war as an example of a real difference giving rise to differences of affections.+ (I don't think there is historical connection between the current conflict between Morocco and Polisario Front; but happy to be corrected.) And affection can itself be the effect of social differences that have had political significance ("they contract an affection to the persons with whom they are united, and an animosity against their antagonists"). So, affection is a social mechanism that facilitates group loyalty in possibly existing social group(s).**

Of course, some politically salient social groups are themselves rooted in affection, that is attachment to a person or family. Hume here is in the territory usually (recall this post) associated with Ibn Khaldun's discussion of 'Asabiyyah or 'asabiyya (Arabic: ���������������, ���) or group feeling. Humean affection is one of the mechanisms (like sympathy) that generates or facilitates or reinforces group feeling. 

The reason I mention Ibn Khaldun is that he anticipates Hume in noting that in political life, affection as a form of group loyalty presupposes a form of self-subordination that is not obviously rooted in self-interest or even shared principles/conscience and often cannot be truly explained by these. It is clear that Hume thinks that affection may itself be caused by a kind of aesthetic ('splendour') or dramatic identification of the sort we have with Dramatis personae on a stage or a screen. (I think Ibn Khaldun would agree, although he has a tendency to emphasize more the significance of blood-lines/houses.)

Now, crucially, as Hume notes in the passage quoted at the top of this post, Hume is explicit that such attachments, we might call them personality-cults, are generally, or more likely, accompanied by violence. That is to say, if affection is the main source of group loyalty/cohesion, then on Hume's account violence is a more natural byproduct (because un-tempered by interest or principle). I wouldn't be surprised if Hume were thinking of blood feuds among clans. And this points to the other context or reason in which or why affection can turn violent is that in already polarized contexts affection amplifies contrasting life-styles ("spite and opposition to persons whose sentiments are different from his own.")

Now, Hume's own broader interest in his discussion here may well be due to his concern for lingering affection for the Stuarts among Tories and Scottish Highlanders. (This is clear from earlier versions of a companion essay, "Of The Parties Of Great Britain.") So I don't want to suggest his discussion is completely disinterested.

Okay, let me wrap up. One might have thought that as parliamentary regimes evolve and become more democratic with a broader franchise that affection reduces in significance. This is especially so once one is accustomed to see political parties either as aggregation of interests (as Madison and rational choice theory encourages) or as rooted in principle/ideology as (recall; and here) Burke has emphasized. But it is notable that even in the age of mass democracy, and open primaries, democratic political parties themselves give rise to family dynasties (Kennedy, Bush, Gore, Trudeau, Gandhi, etc.). It is an empirical question, that my comparative colleagues may be able answer, to what degree affection increases/decreases with more democratic primaries and selection mechanisms. What Hume alerts us to, is that personality-cults -- I know I have an oblique eye on the news -- may have fewer internal checks on turning violent not just in virtue of the nature of leadership, but also, and perhaps especially, in virtue of the form of identification and self-subordination (and spite toward others) of the followers.

 

 

 

*There is another tricky question lurking here. As is well known Hume has a very dismal picture of the possible intelligence of "negroes." It is unclear to what degree Hume treats "black" Moors as negroes or not.

+To what degree Hume is presupposing familiarity in his readers with the nature and fate of the so-called 'black guard' I leave aside here.

**My alertness to this strain in Hume is due to reading Avital Hazony's excellent dissertation-in-progress on Humean loyalty. To the best of my knowledge she has not engaged with this essay (yet).

Scientific Pragmatism Confronts Political Realism (Nagel vs Morgenthau)

Mr. Morgenthau's positive proposals as to how social problems ought to be approached exhibit an irresponsible romanticism. He rejects "scientism" because its universalist conception of social laws is allegedly unhistorical--though already J. S. Mill, for example, was entirely clear that the principles of Ricardian economics are applicable only under certain historical conditions. But what is sauce for the goose is evidently not sauce for the gander, for as the passage cited above shows, Mr. Morgenthau has no scruples in affirming "eternal" laws, provided that "more-than-scientific" man asserts them. There can be no mistaking Mr. Morgenthau's low opinion of what controlled inquiry can contribute to the understanding of social processes, or his enthusiasm for men of "higher insights." He has the courage to say that "There is no indication that the trained social scientist as actor on the social scene is more competent than the layman to solve social problems, with the exception of technical problems of limited scope"; and he does not hesitate to assert that "while fundamental social problems are impervious to scientific attack, they seem to yield to the efforts of ill-informed men who, while devoid of scientific knowledge, possess insights of a different and higher kind." Advances made through institution of rational methods of inquiry into such matters as public health, treatment of the insane, administration of the law, or education of the young, are apparently insignificant and merely technical achievements in his eyes! Just what social problems exist which are not specific and technical, is not clear from Mr. Morgenthau's rhetoric. And it is worth at least passing mention that the high esteem he exhibits for the daemonic "ill-informed" man endowed with a "higher kind" of wisdom, involves a fundamental surrender of critical intelligence to dogmatic authority. For to accept an insight simply because it is claimed to be a higher wisdom, is to declare as out of bounds the demand for a critical public appraisal of policies arrived at by such insights.
The pinnacle of political wisdom, Mr. Morgenthau contends, is recognition of the tragic character of life. Life is necessarily tragic, according to him, simply because all action is inherently "sinful" and "evil"-sinful and evil, since the springs of action are "irrational" forces, and the consequences of our actions can be neither calculated in advance nor controlled. However, political success must be measured by the degree to which one can and increase his power over others; and accordingly, "To know that the political act is inevitably evil, and to act nevertheless, is Mr. Morgenthau does not realize that his supposition that inherently irrational is intelligible only on an anthropomorphic nature. For the term "irrational" is meaningful only if the term is-and how is one to conceive of "rational forces" if not on the hypothesis an over-all plan and design? Indeed, Mr. Morgenthau's entire conception human nature is built squarely on Calvinistic foundations, though benefit of Christian theology. He defines the good life (with, despairing "alas!") in terms of domination over others; but he himself of any basis for evaluating political behavior except successful assertion of power. His political ethics is thus inherently and in his conception of things the anguish of those who have the struggle for power must simply be accepted as part of the sinful character of the world. That Mr. Morgenthau should think higher wisdom is certainly good reason for adopting a tragic view.

Mr. Morgenthau has misconceived the issue which those who see in the extension of scientific method to social problems regard emphasis is on intuition and insight as sources of political wisdom, to think proponents of scientific method wish to exclude religious experiences as contexts in which inspiration and belief But what is at stake in the debate between himself and "scientism" question concerning the sources or origins of political ideas and is at stake is the question how claims to knowledge and wisdom The recommendation to use scientific method is the recommendation of a way for deciding issues of factual validity and adequacy; it is not the recommendation of an exclusive way in which the universe may be confronted and experienced. Until Mr. Morgenthau recognizes this difference between questions of validity and of origin, he will be fighting with wind-mills. And until he proposes a better and more reliable method for establishing claims to knowledge than the method of science, his eloquence in behalf of "more-than scientific" man will count as eloquence in behalf of intellectual obscurantism.--Ernest Nagel The Yale Law Journal, May, 1947, 56(5): 908-909 reprinted in Logic Without Metaphysics.

Morgenthau's Scientific Man vs Power Politics is one of the founding documents of the so-called realist stream in international relations theory. IR theory has a kind of shadowy existence within contemporary analytic philosophy. In so far as there is any engagement with it, it tends to come through a Kantianized global justice perspective (with more recent work on ethics of immigration, global justice, global environmental ethics, human rights law, etc.) or various utilitarian approaches. I have found, for example, no mention of Morgenthau in Rawls, who is incredibly well read, in Nozick, or Amartya Sen.* Unsurprisingly, Shklar does cite Morgenthau.

I don't wish to claim that the hostile review Nagel gave of Morgenthau can explain such a pattern of silence. But it may be instructive for the mutual indifference. It also opens a window into Nagel's larger political theory. A key part of Nagel's response to Morgenthau is to claim that Morgenthau is criticizing "the dead duck of 19th century individualistic liberalism;" Nagel agrees with Morgenthau that it had a "shallow optimism" and "tidy rationalism of what is essentially the philosophy of the Enlightenment." Nagel agrees that mere "appeals to reason" won't solve humanity's problems. (LWM 378). Much of the best parts of Nagel's review expose the dated (implicit) philosophy of science of Morgenthau.  

The mention of Mill, above, signals that for Nagel liberalism can take on board not just a more historicized understanding of social explanation/science, but also, romanticism's insights into human need and individuality. That is to say, against Morgenthau's "irresponsible romanticism" (indebted to Nietzsche), Nagel places a more responsible romanticism indebted to Mill.** 

In fact, the previous paragraph alerts us to the fact that for Nagel, liberalism itself has changed character. In a companion review  of a political history (of A Generation of Materialism: 1871-1900) by Carlton Hayes it becomes clear that Nagel shares in the liberal self-understanding (familiar from people as broadly apart as Hobson, Mises, Hayek, and Lippmann) that "traditional liberalism" (LWM 383) was defeated by the rise of "neo-mercantilism" and "imperialism" amongst other isms (not the least racialized eugenics) at the end of the nineteenth century. And while Nagel's own views should not be confused with the neo-liberalism that can be traced back to the 1938 Lippmann colloquium, he understands his own liberalism as new, too. And while it is tempting to call his pragmatist liberalism, I am going to use 'scientific liberalism' as a term of art for Nagel's version.

Unlike other liberal friends of technocracy, Nagel's scientific liberalism is not oriented toward (possible) consensus. As I have noted (recall) it embraces pluralism, and this pluralism is rooted in a pluralist metaphysics in which no single perspective is ultimately privileged. In addition this metaphysics provides a kind of template for society: each individual has objective existence, but is simultaneously socially embedded. For Nagel, science is exemplary for, and instrumental to, how societies can progress in light of an be responsive to reasoned criticism. This is echoed in the criticism of Morgenthau's great man politics, when Nagel hails the "advances made through institution of rational methods of inquiry into such matters as public health, treatment of the insane, administration of the law, or education of the young." (LWM 380)

Now, much can be said about Nagel's diagnosis that Morgenthau's anthropology is de facto Calvinist. And that the recognition of a tragic character of life is no more than a mild cover for treating domination over others as the true end of politics. It is a tricky question to what degree this is a misreading. 

Nagel clearly thinks that a scientific politics ground in rational methods of inquiry is possible. And the implication of his argument is that Nagel thinks this is also possible in international affairs. It is unclear, however, whether Nagel believes that this is so because the international arena is not characterized by "the ineliminable struggle for power" (LWM 378) or whether he thinks, more likely I think, that rational methods of inquiry are also capable of properly analyzing such a struggle.

Somewhat surprisingly, part of Nagel's response to Morgenthau is to claim that Morgenthau confuses what may be called the context of origin/discovery from the context of validity/justification. And Nagel is happy to grant Morgenthau that non-scientific methods can be good sources of, what we may call, political nous. But Nagel denies that we should ground policy on them. Public policy should be guided by claims/theories have has survived the stringent testing and experimentation of science. 

It is a bit of shame that Nagel does not say a bit more about how scientific practice can develop experimental knowledge of international affairs. And one wonders to what degree he has developments at the Rand Corporation in mind. But let's leave that aside. While one can heartily embrace Nagel's #noheroes. Nagel's argument against Morgenthau is weaker than he may have realized, even on its own terms.

For, science is by its very nature a slow and at times frustrating process. Even if one grants that science is the only "reliable method for establishing claims to knowledge," it does not follow that the knowledge one would like to be guided by is ready at hand. (I am also leaving aside the question to what degree the values of public policy are aligned with the assumed values in the scientific community.) International crises and emergencies, or new technologies or diseases may cause new circumstances, that may unfold more rapidly than science can handle at first. As we have learned this year, fast science may create its own political challenges that call for forms of ungrounded- decisions. In conditions of radical or even moderate uncertainty it is possible that Morgenthau's statesman have to rise to  the occasion. To say that is not to slide into the dark side of obscurantism, but it is to recognize the possible present imperfections of our best forms of knowledge.

 

 

 

*Sen did give the Morgenthau Memorial lectures. Even Pogge barely engages with Morgenthau.

**This is not the place to explore how fair Nagel's reading of Morgenthau is. Given Morgenthau's obvious debts to Max Weber, the question of responsibility is much more complex than Nagel allows.

On the Polemics against Religious Philosophy in Analytic Philosophy

The views which have been noticed thus far attempt to limit the scope of scientific methods on the basis of considerations that are at least nominally scientific in character. The criticisms of science to which attention must next be directed do not even pretend to adduce scientific grounds for their claims, and are frankly based upon explicit theological and metaphysical commitments for which no experimental evidence is invoked. The chief burden of their complaints is that science offers no ���'ultimate explanation��� for the facts of existence; and their chief recommendation is the cultivation of ���ontological wisdom��� as the sole method for making ���ultimately intelligible��� both the order of the cosmos and the nature of the good life.

Some citations from recent writers will exhibit more clearly than would a paraphrase the unique mixture of pontifical dogmatism, oracular wisdom, and condescending obscurantism which seems to be the indispensible [sic] intellectual apparatus of this school of criticism. Ernest Nagel (1943) "Malicious Philosophies of Science" reprinted in Sovereign Reason, 37.

One of the sad spectacles of our age is to see otherwise mild-mannered and virtue-seeking religious philosophers cheer on the at times intemperate polemics of, say, Anscombe, Geach, and Plantinga. To say that it not to deny their philosophical contributions and skill in many contexts. And since I am not a stranger to polemics (and willing to grant I make fewer contributions to philosophy), even ill-tempered ones on the role of religion in philosophy, I am not casting stones that couldn't be thrown harder at me! 

It took me a long time to recognize that the championing of philosopher-brawlers (which is still endemic in wider analytic philosophy despite moves toward niceness), and the not infrequent closing of factional ranks, was itself a reflection of the sense of beleaguered-ness. And the reason I found it so hard to enter into that mind-set is that it seemed so self-evident to me that in the wider culture, Stateside, Christianity was by no means going extinct. But in riper age, I have come to recognize that behind all the aggressive political bluster, Christianity today exhibits all the signs of a world-historical implosion in the wealthier parts of the world. (That's compatible with phenomenal growth of Christianity elsewhere on the Planet.)* If I were Hegelian, I would say that the recent joyous flowering of analytic Christian, metaphysics is a sign of this! 

But I am not Hegelian. One oddity, however, is that if one goes over the classics of analytic philosophy, there is little explicit engagement with the status of theology and the role of religion in philosophy. Even Russell, who clearly was no friend of organized religion, claims, in a surprising moment of candor (not the least for the willingness to admit to an esoteric/exoteric distinction), that were he "speaking to a purely philosophic audience I should say that I ought to describe myself as an Agnostic, because I do not think that there is a conclusive argument by which one prove that there is not a God." ("Am I An Atheist Or An Agnostic? A Plea For Tolerance In The Face Of New Dogmas," 1947.)

And while I do not deny that verificationism undoubtedly also had an anti-Christian element to it, it was, as philosophical doctrines go, short-lived. Even so, it may well have reflected a broader climate that was very slow to disappear. One telling data-point for this thought, and to get a sense of that philosophical climate, it is notable that G��del never published his ontological proof even after safely ensconced at the Institute for Advanced Studies. 

Okay, with that in place, I return (recall) to Nagel's "malicious philosophies of science." (See also, this post on the role of its companion piece, "Recent Philosophies of Science," in the displacement of dialectical materialism.) The role of 'malicious' in the title of the paper, gives a sense of its tenor. 

Nagel's paper itself has many virtues. He shows that many philosophical discussions -- which are still familiar -- about the purported gulf between mind and world; or how to make the qualitative nature of experience compatible with the purportedly mathematical character of modern science; or  the ways in which mechanistic (and/or deterministic) and physicalist science are taken to be incompatible with an orientation toward (emergentist) life or mind, all tend to rest on impoverished conceptions of the nature of science and the practice of experimentation in which much of science is rooted. 

But, it is notable, in the quoted passage above, that Nagel simply assumes that "experimental evidence" is required to ground or justify "explicit theological and metaphysical commitments." And while one can grant Nagel that science itself need not offer "ultimate explanation" for the "facts of existence" -- and, perhaps, in his day wisely does not try to do so [modern cosmology is frequently not so self-limiting] --, it follows straightforwardly from the undeniable possibility that experimental evidence may not settle all philosophical questions.+

The previous paragraph is not to excuse pontifical dogmatism or oracular wisdom. It's Thursday, and I carry my analytic membership proudly today. Nagel goes on to quote a number of eminent neo-Thomists (Gilson, Maritain and, although no neo-Thomists, Whitehead). I have to admit I do not find what they say especially puzzling or obscure. (But you may disagree.) What these positions have in common is a demand for (i) forms of explanation that go beyond efficient causes; (ii) an ultimate ground for existence beyond experience; (iii) and some connection between (i-ii) that conforms to cannons of intelligibility and a PSR.

The more interesting point I wish to make is that when Nagel shows, correctly, that science itself often goes beyond efficient causation, and even offers answers to 'why' questions, he himself notes that these (tentative) scientific answers are not themselves based on direct experiment: "in science the answer to the question "why" is...always a theory, from which the specific fact at issue may be deduced when suitable initial conditions are introduced." (SR: 29) And Nagel grants that these initial conditions are going to be arbitrary or brute in some sense on so at odds with (iii). (In addition, the theory may well go beyond the experimental evidence that helped generate and confirm it.)

That Nagel recognizes the significance of (iii) is itself made clear when he insists that the appeal to causa sui is itself "mystery." (SR 30) And while I have some sympathy with Nagel's point -- which echoes, in a curious reversal, Clarke's Newtonian response to Spinoza -- that there is something unsatisfactory, especially to those familiar with science's ability to explain surprising difference makers in the world, about the fact that "no matter what the world were like, no matter what the course of events might be, the same Ultimate Cause is offered an "explanation,"" (SR 30) it is a mistake to charge this 'explanation' with mystery. That something is relatively bad at explaining particulars does not make it oracular or mysterious. 

I do not mean here to re-litigate Nagel's polemics. But it is easier to understand that in an intellectual milieu dominated by ideas like, and presumably influenced by, Nagel's a certain kind of counter-polemic may have been welcome. 

Now, so far I have done little to make the animus behind Nagel's position intelligible. But there is no mystery there. Nagel fundamentally objects to two ideas: first, that "only one conception of spiritual excellence is valid." (SR 33) And Nagel clearly believes, not without reason, that his targets promote such (ahh) spiritual monism. And, second, he rejects the dogmatism about such spiritual monism ground in a kind of intellectual hierarchy. The second point is more implied (but see what he says about Maritain).

For, Nagel the two ideas he rejects have no standing because they are not "based upon objective measures of well-being." (SR 33) And such measures must, according to Nagel be ground in careful experimental practice. To be sure it is in virtue of his commitment to this that he lets the reader grasp that shares with the neo-Thomists a rejection of the utilitarian tendency toward eugenics (SR 32). So, unlike many friends of science and experimental practice, Nagel does not deny that science is implicated in many contemporary problems. But he believes that a kind of anti-scientism, "rejects the one instrument from which a resolution of these difficulties may reasonably be expected." (SR 33)**

Of course, even somebody sympathetic to Nagel, like myself, may note that he has no experimental (or historical/conceptual) ground to suppose there is just "one instrument" that can offer such a resolution. He smuggles a lot into what is 'reasonable' to expect. 

Let me wrap up. So while Nagel's heart is in the right place -- after all in line with (recall) his pluralism, he is defending the diversity of spiritual excellence! --, Nagel's argument goes off the rails because he thinks that the neo-Thomists (and other fellow travelers" unfairly take advantage of the fact that in "���in the midst of actual and impending disaster��� and in ���period of social crisis, when rational methods of inquiry supply no immediate solution for pressing problems��� people are to listen to those that disparage or stress the limitations of the sciences. (SR: 18; see also ���the mounting economic and political tensions of our age,��� further down the page). That is to say Nagel echoes the epicurean and Humean polemic against superstition that it takes advantage of fear. But we don't need to be Yoda, to recognize that countering polemic with polemic is no path to wisdom.

 

 

 

*This seems to have generated a racial/ethnic anxiety among the remaining faithful, but that's for another time.

+I leave aside here the question how capacious one may be able to use 'experimental.' 

**The closing passage of the article may also be worth quoting: "Those who disparage the application of scientific methods to the evaluation of human goods, on the ground that those methods exclude the exercise of a sympathetic imagination, are not only mistaken in their factual allegations; they are also well on the road to identifying the sheer vividness and the emotional overtones of ideas with their validity." (SR 35)

21 March 1979: Foucault Returns to Ordoliberalism (XXXII)

Let���s go back to the theme of German liberalism, or ordoliberalism. You recall that in this conception���of Eucken, R��pke, M��ller-Armack, and others���the market was defined as a principle of economic regulation indispensable to the formation of prices and so to the consistent development of the economic process. What was the government���s task in relation to this principle of the market as the indispensable regulating function of the economy? It was to organize a society, to establish what they call a Gesellschaftspolitik such that these fragile competitive mechanisms of the market can function to the full and in accordance with their specific structure. Such a Gesellschaftspolitik was therefore orientated towards the formation of a market. It was a policy that had to take charge of social processes and take them into account in order to make room for a market mechanism within them. But what did this policy of society, this Gesellschaftspolitik have to consist in for it to succeed in constituting a market space in which competitive mechanisms could really function despite their intrinsic fragility? It consisted in a number of objectives which I have talked about, such as, for example, avoiding centralization, encouraging medium sized enterprises, support for what they call non-proletarian enterprises, that is to say, broadly, craft enterprises, small businesses, etcetera, increasing access to property ownership, trying to replace the social insurance of risk with individual insurance, and also regulating all the multiple problems of the environment.
Obviously, this Gesellschaftspolitik includes a number of ambiguities and raises a number of questions. There is the question, for example, of its purely optative and ���light��� character in comparison with the heavy and far more real processes of the economy. There is also the fact that it entails a weight, a field, an extraordinarily large number of interventions which raise the question of whether they do in fact correspond to the principle that they must not act directly on the economic process but only intervene in favor of the economic process. In short, there are a number of questions and ambiguities, but I would like to emphasize the following: in this idea of a Gesellschaftspolitik there is what I would call an economic-ethical ambiguity around the notion of enterprise itself, because what does it mean to conduct a Gesellschaftspolitik in the sense this is given by R��pke, R��stow, and M��ller-Armack? On one side it means generalizing the ���enterprise��� form within the social body or social fabric; it means taking this social fabric and arranging things so that it can be broken down, subdivided, and reduced, not according to the grain of individuals, but according to the grain of enterprises. The individual���s life must be lodged, not within a framework of a big enterprise like the firm or, if it comes to it, the state, but within the framework of a multiplicity of diverse enterprises connected up to and entangled with each other, enterprises which are in some way ready to hand for the individual, sufficiently limited in their scale for the individual���s actions, decisions, and choices to have meaningful and perceptible effects, and numerous enough for him not to be dependent on one alone. And finally, the individual���s life itself���with his relationships to his private property, for example, with his family, household, insurance, and retirement���must make him into a sort of permanent and multiple enterprise. So this way of giving a new form to society according to the model of the enterprise, or of enterprises, and down to the fine grain of its texture, is an aspect of the German ordoliberals��� Gesellschaftspolitik.
What is the function of this generalization of the ���enterprise��� form? On the one hand, of course, it involves extending the economic model of supply and demand and of investment-costs-profit so as to make it a model of social relations and of existence itself, a form of relationship of the individual to himself, time, those around him, the group, and the family. So, it involves extending this economic model. On the other hand, the ordoliberal idea of making the enterprise the universally generalized social model functions in their analysis or program as a support to what they designate as the reconstruction of a set of what could be called ���warm��� moral and cultural values which are presented precisely as antithetical to the ���cold��� mechanism of competition. The enterprise schema involves acting so that the individual, to use the classical and fashionable terminology of their time, is not alienated from his work environment, from the time of his life, from his household, his family, and from the natural environment. It is a matter of reconstructing concrete points of anchorage around the individual which form what R��stow called the Vitalpolitik. The return to the enterprise is therefore at once an economic policy or a policy of the economization of the entire social field, of an extension of the economy to the entire social field, but at the same time a policy which presents itself or seeks to be a kind of Vitalpolitik with the function of compensating for what is cold, impassive, calculating, rational, and mechanical in the strictly economic game of competition.
The enterprise society imagined by the ordoliberals is therefore a society for the market and a society against the market, a society oriented towards the market and a society that compensates for the effects of the market in the realm of values and existence. This is what R��stow said in the Walter Lippmann colloquium I have talked about: ���We have to organize the economy of the social body according to the rules of the market economy, but the fact remains that we still have to satisfy new and heightened needs for integration." This is the Vitalpolitik. A bit later, R��pke said: ���Competition is a principle of order in the domain of the market economy, but it is not a principle on which it would be possible to erect the whole of society. Morally and sociologically, competition is a principle that dissolves more than it unifies.��� So, while establishing a policy such that competition can function economically, it is necessary to organize ���a political and moral framework,��� R��pke says. What will this political and moral framework comprise? First, it requires a state that can maintain itself above the different competing groups and enterprises. This political and moral framework must ensure ���a community which is not fragmented,��� and guarantee cooperation between men who are ���naturally rooted and socially integrated.���-Michel Foucault, 21 March, 1979,  translated by Graham Burchell, Lecture 10, The Birth of Biopolitics, 240-243

The quoted passage, really a mini-essay, is Foucault's attempt to set up one side of the comparison between the German Ordos and the Chicago-school variants of neo-liberalism. In broad outlines Foucault is summarizing his earlier interpretation of the ORDOs, and we may see in this, just sound pedagogic repetition. Even so, this return to Freiburg, and the earlier Lippmann colloquium, also allows Foucault to be more precise in his own analysis and to deepen his treatment of the relationship between the Ordos' conception of Gesellschaftspolitik and their approach to Vitalpolitick. Foucault had touched on this, briefly, in his sixth lecture on 14 February (see p. 148). But clearly he felt the inadequacy of his earlier treatment. So, the repetition is not merely restatement, but also needed improvement in light of, I submit, the larger theme of the lecture course (that is the liberal art of government in relation to biopolitics).

And the key point Foucault wishes to make is that in one crucial respect, or at least a major theme in, the ORDOS' thinking is that it is not centered on let's say context-free, individual choice at all. But rather on embedding individuals into, and constructing the preconditions for, what we may call umwelts suitable to the needs and scale of humans. (We may call this the Protagoras commitment in Ordoliberalism.) The point then is to create environmental/social conditions such that meaningful choice is possible. And one way meaningfulness is operationalized by the ORDOs is by the circumstance of meaningful feedback mechanisms between choices (as causes) and their effects ('the individual���s actions, decisions, and choices to have meaningful and perceptible effects,").

In addition to creating the conditions of meaningful choice -- which echoes Adam Smith's conception of liberty --, the ORDOS favor, second, social circumstances in which the individual cannot be dominated by large businesses (and other institutions). That is to say, it must be possible to have meaningful exit options in the market place and other important social orders.

Somewhat surprisingly, and as I noted in commenting on lecture 5 (of 7 February), Foucault does not remind the audience that this second circumstance echoes and reinforces the ORDOS' political understanding of the, quoting now (recall) Mestm��cker, "restraining power" purpose and mechanisms of anti-trust policy, which is designed to prevent concentration of political power, and rent-seeking, by corporations and other favored social institutions through vigilant promotion of competition in the market place. 

That is to say, the commercial enterprise is supposed to be vulnerable to exit from below and horizontally from competitors. In both cases the independent state has responsibility to create these umwelt conditions. Foucault is right to wonder to what degree one can expect the state to have the will and competence to get this program right. 

Now, for those habituated in reading political thinkers of the past in terms of 'left' and 'right' (etc.), there is no doubt that the vitalpolitik of the ORDOS has distinctly illiberal socially conservative overtones connected to corporatist, even catholic traditions of social thought. And in light of the American experience of the conservative-libertarian alliance over (the policing of) family values, so ably documented (recall here; here) by Melinda Cooper.

I don't think this is how Foucault is reading them. But in the lecture he has a strange reticence to explain what the political purpose of their vitalpolitick is. So what follows is a bit speculative, but it is informed by Foucault's analysis of the ORDOS response (in lecture 5 and here) to liberal defeat in the 1930s. And, what I want to claim is that the justification for their vitalpolitik shares, and to some degree anticipates, Hannah Arendt's analysis that totalitarianism was made possible by, to simplify greatly, the mechanisms of alienation and isolation, reinforcing a stifling loneliness or solitude (personal and spiritual) characteristic of modernity. And on this picture totalitarianism is a kind of gigantic rein of the false that becomes a coping mechanism for this fragile existence.*

So, that's to say, the ORDOS choices becomes fully explicable if we see them not just as addressing the problem of how to design countervailing institutions that allow the individual to make meaningful choices and prevent corporate rent-seeking, but also, and primarily, as grounded in their analysis of, and a response to, the rise of totalitarianism. And while I do not want to ignore the ways in which the ORDOS are indebted to Marxist ideas of alienation and Republican ideals about non-domination, we cannot understand their analysis if we remove from it the lived reality of the democratic victory not just of caesarianism, but totalitarianism.

And so, while strictly speaking, Foucault is not wrong to say that the "enterprise society imagined by the ordoliberals is therefore a society for the market and a society against the market, a society oriented towards the market and a society that compensates for the effects of the market in the realm of values and existence;" what gives the ORDOS project its urgency and also its political salience, is the specter of totalitarianism.  The point of the ���warm��� moral and cultural values is not just to put a humane face on Homo Oeconomicus, but it is to prevent, to create inoculation against (viz., the road to serfdom) the rise of Hitlerism, which is what happens in the dissolution effectuated by wrongly directed, that is, monopolistic competition.

I should stop here. To offer this interpretation of the ORDOS is not to ignore the down-side risks of and instabilities (Foucault's "ambiguities") in their approach. But it is to note that Foucault's comparison between the ORDOS and Chicago is hampered by the fact that the latter, but not the former, take, as Foucault himself noted (recall) in lecture 9, the survival of liberal political life for granted. And while Foucault is clearly indifferent to that, we cannot afford that luxury.

 

 

*Walter Lippmann had come very close to grasping this point already in Public Opinion, and it is lurking in various places in the The Good Society, which gave raise to the Lippmann colloquium. But in the latter work, he decides, or so I claim, to make liberalism itself a kind of spiritual enterprise.

David Hume's unusual (Lockean) argument for free trade

Nothing is more usual, among states which have made some advances in commerce, than to look on the progress of their neighbours with a suspicious eye, to consider all trading states as their rivals, and to suppose that it is impossible for any of them to flourish, but at their expence. In opposition to this narrow and malignant opinion, I will venture to assert, that the encrease of riches and commerce in any one nation, instead of hurting, commonly promotes the riches and commerce of all its neighbours; and that a state can scarcely carry its trade and industry very far, where all the surrounding states are buried in ignorance, sloth, and barbarism.

It is obvious, that the domestic industry of a people cannot be hurt by the greatest prosperity of their neighbours; and as this branch of commerce is undoubtedly the most important in any extensive kingdom, we are so far removed from all reason of jealousy. But I go farther, and observe, that where an open communication is preserved among nations, it is impossible but the domestic industry of every one must receive an encrease from the improvements of the others. Compare the situation of Great Britain at present, with what it was two centuries ago. All the arts both of agriculture and manufactures were then extremely rude and imperfect. Every improvement, which we have since made, has arisen from our imitation of foreigners; and we ought so far to esteem it happy, that they had previously made advances in arts and ingenuity. But this intercourse is still upheld to our great advantage: Notwithstanding the advanced state of our manufactures, we daily adopt, in every art, the inventions and improvements of our neighbours.--David Hume "Of the Jealousy of Trade"

Of the Jealousy of Trade presents itself as a companion piece to "Of the Balance of Trade," and is easily overshadowed by it. That's a shame because Hume's particular argument is still timely, as I look at the news reporting on Brexit talks. Unlike the more familiar Smithian ('absolute advantage') and Ricardian ('comparative advantage') arguments,* Hume's here is focused on what we may call the epistemic effects (or positive externalities) of trade. I assume this is familiar in the literature, but I had not noticed it before.

For Hume trade exposes us to innovations of others and induces imitation, learning, and what he calls "emulation" from them. And the effect of this is enhanced technology and productivity ("we daily adopt, in every art, the inventions and improvements"). I don't want to overstate the originality of Hume's argument not just because I may be unfamiliar with relevant contemporary authors, but also because it is pretty clear that Hume is extending an important argument by Locke.

Recall that in Locke's art of government (in sections 41-42 of the chapter 5 of "Two Treatises") and in his (1695) "Further Considerations Concerning Raising the Value of Money," Locke advocates for policies that would grow the population and simultaneously grow their skill/productivity. This argument was noticed and emphasized by Toland in his argument for Jewish emancipation (recall). And, in fact, Hume' echoes one of Locke's key arguments. Hume writes, shortly after the passage quoted above, "But if our neighbours have no art or cultivation, they cannot take them; because they will have nothing to give in exchange. In this respect, states are in the same condition as individuals."

In section 43, of Chapter of the Two Treatises, Locke had made the same conceptual point in terms of the American Indian being unable to benefit from the same amount of labor in land as the European because he lacked wealthy neighbors. Locke's point here is often missed because scholars and critics are more focused on debates about his labor theory of value and to what degree these passages support colonialism. But it would be very surprising if Hume had not noticed the point. After all, this is treated as axiomatic by Hume in this essay ("it is obvious, that the domestic industry of a people cannot be hurt by the greatest prosperity of their neighbours;").

I do not mean to ignore the significance of pro-European free trade argument ("a British subject, I pray for the flourishing commerce of Germany, Spain, Italy, and even France itself") lodged at the end of  the little essay. But I have already discussed it in the context of Foucault's arguments of 24 January 1979, lecture 3, The Birth of Biopolitics. 54-6.

 

*To be sure later in the essay Hume articulates a version of the absolute advantage argument; and an argument from portfolio-management/risk spreading due to trade diversification.

On Caesarian Democracy

For these are inherent in plebiscitarian Caesarism, or so-called 'Caesarian democracy', with its direct appeal to the masses: demagogical slogans; disregard of legality in spite of a professed guardianship of law and order; contempt of political parties and the parliamentary system, of the educated classes and their values; blandishments and vague, contradictory promises for all and sundry; militarism; gigantic, blatant displays and shady corruption. Panem et circenses once more and at the end of the road, disaster.--Lewis Namier (1958) "The First Mountebank Dictator" in Vanished supremacies, 55.

A few weeks ago, I read Marx's The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Napoleon. (One of the few works by Marx I warmly recommend!) A book I publically bemoaned I had wished I had read it before. In discussion on social media, Michael Rosen, I think, encouraged me to seek out Namier's short essay partially quoted above. This essay is like Marx's focused on Louis Napoleon/Napoleon III. Namier (a historian) himself is, as the first sentence suggests, indebted, in more ways than one, to Max Weber, who had also used Napoleon III as an example of plebisciarian Caesarism. 

While thanks to modern media, caesarian democracy is a risk in all democratic systems, as Weber argued, it is especially a danger in political systems where there is an elected president who has broad executive powers, and with norms that allow for even broader extra-constitutional powers in emergency circumstances. I tend to think of these presidential systems (e.g., France, Brazil, Russia, the United States, etc.) as approaching elective monarchies with serious downside risks lurking in the background of devolving into dictatorships/tyrannies. For, once power has been legally obtained, usurping more power, and destroying or corrupting the would be countervailing powers, is not unachievable if the circumstances permit and there is a ruthless will.

Namier offers three important observations: first, the plebiscitarian Caesar is generally most underestimated by those that know him best: political rivals and intellectual/business elites. We might say that a certain kind of functional distance enables the plebiscitarian Caesar. By this I hope to capture the thought that for those whose business it is to judge functional and what we may call situational competence, the would be plebiscitarian Caesar tends to underwhelm. (Often, these elites share an anti-democratic tendency.)

But that is compatible with the further thought that such a would be leader may have the image of good leadership qualities from, as it were, a distance--even if, due to effects of mass modern media, this is not felt as distant at all. And in fact, the rejection by the cadres, intelligentsia or clerks or functionaries and other elites of the would be plebiscitarian Caesar may well be treated as a proxy for good leadership by the larger electorate.

Of course, and this gets me to Namier's second and connected observation, "modern dictatorship arises amid the ruins of an inherited social and political structure, in the desolation of shattered loyalties it is the desperate shift of communities broken from their moorings." (54) The connection between these two observations is that rejection by the cadres/elites (etc.) starts to be a signal in the would-be-plebiscitarian-Caesar's favor once the trust and even legitimacy of existing elites is endangered or broken (by revolution, financial crisis, public health disaster, defeat in war, religious crisis, hyper-inflation, famine, etc.).

To be sure, Namier allows that dictatorship can arise in other ways (he is discussing a particular "modern" kind). And what he says is also compatible with the thought that would-be-plebiscitarian Caesars can be defeated before they rise to power and, perhaps (although Namier does not explore this), even after they have so risen. Namier leaves it unclear how desperate and how broken the community needs to be.

There is a third, more subtle and helpful observation lurking in Namier's analysis. On his view the would-be-plebiscitarian-Caesar re-activates the past in highly "peculiar" ways. There is a particular kind of "imitation" of the past "engendered by historical memory." In contemporary scholarly discussion this is often treated in terms of nostalgia, but I don't think that's quite right. For there is a real desire to repeat the past,  but a past that has been now sanitized or, as Namier notes, influenced by legend or myth and without complexity.

Now, rather than closing with commentary on contemporary politics/politicians, I want to close with a concern. I often notice in my best students the following reflex: many of today's real problems (unfolding environmental disaster, redistributive monetary policy, etc.) are theorized and understood in terms of a lack of democracy or imperfectly functioning democracies which are taken to thwart the will of the people. But when I note, say, that most of the problems they diagnosed have been generated by liberal democracies -- including some they admire greatly --, we reach a stale-mate. There is very little room for suggesting that the people can get it wrong or that our ordinary democratic functioning may be the problem without simultaneously becoming or sounding genuinely anti-democratic (or elitist in various ways).

But Caesarian democracy is always a latent possibility. And it is a possibility in virtue of features of ordinary democratic life. For, ordinary democratic politics cannot prevent major economic and natural disruptions to the social order. It can at best mitigate the effects of these, but as we have learned in the last decade, it will do so in ways that are generously described as 'messy.'  And while the conditions under which caesarian democracy will achieve victory may not be regular, they are frequent enough that they should be a constitutive feature of democratic theorizing. But that requires we theorize democracy without self-serving myths; denying such myths may not be welcome.

 

 

 

21 March 1979: Foucault Diagnoses American Analytic Philosophy (XXXI)

The second interesting use of these neo-liberal analyses is that the economic grid will or should make it possible to test governmental action, gauge its validity, and to object to activities of the public authorities on the grounds of their abuses, excesses, futility, and wasteful expenditure. In short, the economic grid is not applied in this case in order to understand social processes and make them intelligible; it involves anchoring and justifying a permanent political criticism of political and governmental action. It involves scrutinizing every action of the public authorities in terms of the game of supply and demand, in terms of efficiency with regard to the particular elements of this game, and in terms of the cost of intervention by the public authorities in the field of the market. In short, it involves criticism of the governmentality actually exercised which is not just a political or juridical criticism; it is a market criticism, the cynicism of a market criticism opposed to the action of public authorities. This is not just an empty project or a theorist���s idea. In the United States a permanent exercise of this type of criticism has developed especially in an institution which was not in fact created for this, since it was created before the development of the neo-liberal school, before the development of the Chicago School. This institution is the American Enterprise Institute whose essential function, now, is to measure all public activities in cost-benefit terms, whether these activities be the famous big social programs concerning, for example, education, health, and racial segregation developed by the Kennedy and Johnson administrations in the decade 1960���1970. This type of criticism also involves measuring the activity of the numerous federal agencies established since the New Deal and especially since the end of the Second World War, such as the Food and Health Administration, the Federal Trade Commission, and so on. So, it is criticism in the form of what could be called an ���economic positivism���; a permanent criticism of governmental policy.
Seeing the deployment of this type of criticism one cannot help thinking of an analogy, which I will leave as such: the positivist critique of ordinary language. When you consider the way in which the Americans have employed logic, the logical positivism of the Vienna School, in order to apply it to scientific, philosophical, or everyday discourse, you see there too a kind of filtering of every statement whatsoever in terms of contradiction, lack of consistency, nonsense. To some extent we can say that the economic critique the neo-liberals try to apply to governmental policy is also a filtering of every action by the public authorities in terms of contradiction, lack of consistency, and nonsense. The general form of the market becomes an instrument, a tool of discrimination in the debate with the administration. In other words, in classical liberalism the government was called upon to respect the form of the market and laisser-faire. Here, laissez-faire is turned into a do-not-laisser-faire government, in the name of a law of the market which will enable each of its activities to be measured and assessed. Laissez-faire is thus turned round, and the market is no longer a principle of government���s self-limitation; it is a principle turned against it. It is a sort of permanent economic tribunal confronting government.--Michel Foucault, 21 March, 1979,  translated by Graham Burchell, Lecture 10, The Birth of Biopolitics, 246-247 [emphases added]

It's difficult to leave the riches of lecture 9 behind without exhausting all possible angles of comment, but it it is clear that in lecture 10 Foucault starts harvesting the fruits of the first nine lectures. This lecture contains two great set-pieces: (i) the comparison between the neo-liberalism of ORDOs and Chicago-school in part to explore the contrasting analysis of the relationship between market/state and market/society; (ii) the evolution of what we may call law and criminality since the Enlightenment in light of Becker's approach. So, it may strike you as a bit perverse that today's post zones in on an apparent aside. 

So, the emphasized passage is odd because it is by no means obvious that Foucault's audience ("one") will have thought of this particular analogy. As I have noted throughout my comments, Foucault is constantly assuming a kind of Bien pensant marxism in his audience. I don't want to make too much of the grammatical structure of his thought -- and I am not conformatible in the French [On ne peut pas ne pas penser, en voyant s'exercer ce type-l�� de critique �� une analogie que je laisse encore une fois sous la forme d'analogie], but it is notable that the (analogical) thought is inevitable (and that Foucault represents his own thought in such disassociated way, and being so analogical) while Foucault takes responsibility for conveying it in the (analogical) manner he has the thought. 

Before, I get to the substance of Foucault's claim, a bit of context is useful. First, I would not be surprised if the possibility of visiting Berkeley (which starts the following year) was not already on Foucault's horizon. As we know he was visiting California from the mid 70s onward. Second, Foucault would have tracked Derrida's confrontation with analytic philosophy, first in the brilliant, and oddly neglected, (1973) The Archeology of the Frivolous. This book is ostensibly about Condillac, but it is simultaneously (recall this post) a critique of Foucualt's earlier practice of archeology and a clever exploration of the nature of analysis. I would be amazed if Foucault were unfamiliar with it because I think it can help explain some important shifts in Foucault's method(s)/stance(s). And then in the infamous exchange with Searle (Foucault's future colleague) that unfolded through the 1970s.* I assume that Foucault would have been familiar with this 'event'. So, perhaps, for Foucault, a possible personal confrontation with American analytic philosophy would have made the thought inevitable.

Let's return to the emphasized bit in the quoted passage from lecture 10 above. And to avoid misunderstanding, Foucault here is not discussing ordinary language philosophy. Earlier, in Lecture 4 (see p. 76) Foucault had noticed the significance of the movement from Vienna (and Freiburg) of certain intellectual practices to the States.** And this point gets amplified by Foucault's surprising organicist commitment in lecture 8, that when ideas travel from their origin, they are radicalized/amplified in new environments. (We may call such intensification in a new ecological niche a law of memetics!) So, on Foucault's view, we may say that what starts out as possible source of emancipation in Left Vienna, is turned into a form of speech policing Stateside.+ 

And Foucault is explicit that the policing speech is not just directed at ordinary speech, but also at scientific and philosophical speech. The significance of this is that Foucault interprets the (ahh) tools and practices of this branch of analytic philosophy in terms of technologies of control.

As an aside, it is worth noting, and a kind of historical irony, that Foucault here is kind of tracking the general atmosphere of victory of Quine-ean regimentation and, especially, a wider naturalizing program(s) over the Carnapian explanation, which had explicitly limited itself (recall here; and here) to artificial speech. I use 'general atmosphere' because what Foucault is describing (as theoretical virtues and non-virtues "contradiction, lack of consistency, nonsense",) while undoubted familiar in some sense, is surely not Quine-ean regimentation (with its own specialist clarified language)--this is a diffuser form of score-keeping familiar from polemics and classroom instruction.

So, I use 'general atmosphere' for another reason. Because the analogy itself is I think itself intended to point to what happens when certain practices leave the rarified technical discussion in elite journals and seminar rooms, and become a more general mode of thought. For, as a disciplinary practice of deploying (philosophical) technologies of speech control that American analytic philosophy is used as an elucidatory analogy for the fact of what happens when think tanks deploy techniques developed by the Chicago school to try to score and police government policy.

This is not to say one can avoid mentioning Quine. For Quine's (rather juridical) tribunal of experience is now transformed (by way of the magic of analogy) "into permanent economic tribunal confronting government."  That is to say, as the ideas of the Chicago school leave Hyde Park and are institutionalizes by well financed interests, a democratic-republican government is now made to account itself not to the voters, and their representatives, or the press, or supreme court judges, but to an intellectual edifice that deploys (protected) theoretical speech. And this edifice represents itself a strand of the liberal tradition that, as Foucault argued in lecture 9, is itself one of the animating principles of the constitutional order. 

I return to the previous paragraph in subsequent digressions on Birth of Biopolitics. Foucault leaves hanging what to make of his view of American analytic philosophy. It's important to realize that the analogy is not a moralizing criticism. If I understand Foucault's larger meta-philosophical (political) position, he thinks that the development and application of technologies of control have a kind of inevitability to them. And it is not impossible -- but here i speculate -- that he believes that (the philosophical politics of) philosophical speech itself is (given the significance of the law of non-contradiction to its way of being) also, always, constituted by technologies of control. And what may be novel here, is unusual clarity and zest of the Americans in deploying such technologies of speech control.

 

 

 

 

*I call it infamous because the reception of it has been so partisan. Enough said today.

**"to political exiles who, from 1920, 1925 have certainly played a major role in the formation of contemporary political consciousness, and a role that perhaps has not been studied closely. An entire political history of exile could be written, or a history of political exile and its ideological, theoretical,
and practical effects... I think twentieth century political exile, or political dissidence, has also been a significant agent of the spread of what could be called antistatism, or state-phobia." (76)

+Foucault anticipates the Icy Slopes of Logic thesis!

The Case Against Hume (II)

Hume���s notorious footnote may not have been widely known about until now. For my part, I have a fairly distinct memory of encountering it in the library of the University of Bristol when I was an undergraduate. I also remember being struck by the passage from Kant���s The Observations on the Feeling of the Beautiful and Sublime (see Tommy Curry���s post) at around the same time. My memories of the precise effect that these readings had on me are less firm. I will try to reconstruct something. The inculcation of a passion to study philosophy seems to go along with an aspiration to join in with the conversation of these ���mighty dead���, to be a symposiast at Plato���s table, and so forth. Hence I had a sense of disappointment, even betrayal, that these two philosophers, Hume and Kant, who I had been encouraged to admire in the course of my philosophical education, would have marked me out as ineligible to participate in their virtual salons. This moment of realisation was more troubling for being a private one. The discovery of these philosophers��� denigration of people like me was one I made independently, since none of my teachers had ever mentioned these texts, nor given me reason to think that my personal sense of disappointment could have much legitimacy or relevance to my education. At minimum, we do our current students a service by giving them an unfiltered picture of these figures.

What happened next is that I decided in my own mind that the racist statements of Hume and Kant were tangential to my initial reasons for reading their works, and I got on with my life (but not without a residual feeling of alienation, on which I will say more at the end of this post). Now, over twenty years later, I am far less convinced about the detachability of the racism from the ���good ideas���. This is not the place to try to make the case in full. I offer a brief indication. Hume���s influence is not more greatly felt than by the fact that naturalism is the most widespread and orthodox approach in contemporary anglophone philosophy. About eighteen months ago I wished to get clearer in my own mind about what I am committing myself to when I subscribe to the naturalistic methodology. The long and short of it is that naturalism is difficult to pin down, except that it abjures reference to the ���supernatural���. What then is the supernatural? It is at this point that the collective unconscious of philosophers dredges up examples of ���superstitious��� beliefs and some, like Wilfrid Sellars, even tell stories about the emergence of a modern, secular, scientific worldview out of a primal state in which ���primitive man��� believed in a world populated by spirits and demons. Hume is important because he tells this story to great effect (see ���On Miracles���). In that text he writes that, ���it forms a strong presumption against all supernatural and miraculous relations that they are observed chiefly to abound among ignorant and barbarous nations.��� One need not be the most paranoid kind of hermeneuticist of suspicion to think that something is up here. Africans, we must remember, are one of the ���barbarous��� kinds of people in Hume���s world, and they are inferior by constitution, moreover. They, believe in silly things, we do not ��� Hume invites us to think. The question we contemporary philosophers need to ask ourselves is whether there is a legitimate notion of the ���naturalistic worldview��� that does not require, for its own self-definition, a contrast with the ���superstitious worldview��� of the ���primitive��� other. We need also to ask seriously whether the unreflected notion of what is a naturalistic, and hence intellectually respectable explanation, is still being used to de-legitimise explanations offered by various indigenous peoples concerning events in the natural world, events which include the symptoms of an ever more crushing ecological crisis. Such accounts are still regularly categorised as ���spiritualistic���, and with that certain voices are still summarily dismissed, as expressed by the M��ori individuals interviewed in this news report of a mass whale beaching.

...

I conclude with a remark on my lingering feeling of alienation. Francis Williams was the black man Hume referred to as being ���admired for very slender accomplishments, like a parrot who speaks a few words plainly.���** Hume, mocker of the credulous, directs his scepticism against those who might have thought Francis Williams capable of having an original thought. I think that it is under-appreciated how often black students who are educated in majority white societies find themselves in the position of Francis Williams vis a vis David Hume. Which is to say, confronted with the implacable scepticism characteristic of racial prejudice, the voice inside the head of the educator that whispers, doubtfully, ���accomplished, really?���, ���has potential, really?���. Philosophy, as a profession, is absurdly reliant on performative smartness but takes no account of how the negating experiences of black students during their educational careers might affect their willingness to engage in such performances, at least for white audiences. One of my biggest disappointments, since becoming a professional philosopher, has been finding that decisions affecting career prospects still in some quarters turn on whether a committee deems a student or candidate ���smart���, aside from their tangible achievements. To the detriment of some, and benefit of others.--Mazviita Chirimuuta,  1st October 2020, @EDINBURGH PHILOSOPHY ��� VOICES ON HUME

I noticed a steady trickle visitors visiting my digression, "The Case Against Hume," originating at the Edinburg.edu blog. That very Humean emotion, vanity, got the better of me and I decided to investigate. I rediscovered five sophisticated, moving essays by admired colleagues at University of Edinburgh engaging with the circumstances of the renaming of David Hume Tower.

I often (recall here; here) find it useful to have my thoughts be guided by Chirimuuta. Her idea of 'performative smartness' resonated (recall 'boy wonders') because I have long recognized that one non-trivial reason I wanted to become a professional philosopher was to be part of the club of such smart folk, who somehow could put even the knottiest issues in precise words with crystal clarity. A lot has been written on the (sometimes gendered) nature of this desire to participate in and allow for performative smartness, and its costs (see also these two recent pieces by Agnes Callard here; here). 

I have at times alluded to (recall here; here) the emotional deformations that are an effect of participating in such performative smartness. But while it is pretty clear that clarity is often thought to be a democratic element in the society of philosophers, I rarely see any description of the emotional need that may make clarity and precision in our expressions so attractive.* Clarity is often conjoined with surgical images (we make precise and careful distinctions; offer razor-sharp arguments, etc.) Surgeons, as we know, work in sterile environments. And I suspect part of the implied contrast is that our clarity keeps the turmoil and  turbidness of our emotional life at bay. At least, for me our joint commitment to clarity also represents a possible escape route from my most painful imperfections. 

A further reason why her post resonated was because she put her finger on what one might call a conspiracy of silence in our teachers, or a looking away from material and patterns of exclusion that were hidden in plain sight accompanied by many self-serving myths ("since none of my teachers had ever mentioned these texts, nor given me reason to think that my personal sense of disappointment could have much legitimacy or relevance to my education.") It is strange to realize one wants to be part of, even be recognized as a contributing member, of a club and then recognize that this desire reflects, in part, one's own imperfections of looking away and lack of courage.

But as I was circling around these familiar, narcissistic thoughts, I re-read her essay, and I want to close by registering an important historical-conceptual point she makes. Naturalism as a metaphysical doctrine is not ethically or politically neutral in virtue of the fact that the supernatural is indeed coupled with myth, superstition, and, thus, civilizational backwardness. And, so in Hume, we find a rearticulation of philosophy's endemic (recall here; here) suspicion of rusticity (now called 'savage'/'barbaric'). And part of Hume's Enlightenment project is indeed to offer a model of civilization worth having that isn't just committed to the possibly violent expansion of civilization abroad, but also to combat barbarism (of feudalism, of superstition, etc.) at home. And again this shows up in quite a few places. For example, in Hume's History (recall) in discussing Agricola's conquest of Britain, he relies on a distinction between enjoyable chains (civilization) and fierce (animal-like) un-tamedness (barbarism), and he comes close to asserting that the 'uncivilized' or barbarous are interpreted as willingly choosing death and thereby marking themselves as worth killing. This chillingly echoes tropes of how terrorists are often described today.

It is in virtue of the fact that Hume's embrace of naturalism and civilization also underwrite some of the best parts of his philosophy that the serious challenge, thus, Chirimuuta rightly poses for would be naturalists (and skeptics like me), is how to construe and construct naturalism (and skepticism) that does not simultaneously reactivate narratives and thought experiments that reinforce and promote forms of social and political/cultural hierarchy. That's of course no easy matter in the context of oligarchic society and academic practices that may leave our students little space to spend time, and free thoughts, in libraries at all.

 

*I have done a series of posts on clarity within analytic philosophy (here; here; here).

Clarity, Analytic Marxism, and the Purported Sinking of dialectics (by Sidney Hook)

The only alternative to this procedure is to present one's own theory of dialectic....I shall argue that it would be best in the interests of clarity to let the term sink into the desuetude of archaisms; in fact, I shall try to show that this is the legitimate moral that can be drawn from any critical investigation of the assumptions and types of procedure most frequently designated as dialectical in the history of thought...

There are two generic conceptions of dialectic under which the various meanings of dialectic may be subsumed. The first is the conception of dialectic as a pattern of existential change either in nature or society or man where the "or" is not exclusive. The second is the view that dialectic is a special method of analyzing such change. Usually, but not always, it is held that the method of dialectical analysis in some sense "reflects" or "corresponds to" the dialectical pattern of change. In any case, there is always a distinction drawn, though with no great regard for consistency, between the dialectical type of change and other kinds. When the dialectic is identified with change as such, it is explicitly contrasted with some other natural or supernatural element which is regarded as undialectical, e.g., unchanging form or pattern. Similarly, with the conception of dialectic as method. Whether taken as a method of analysis or discovery or both it is always distinguished from other methods called undialectical, i.e., metaphysical, scientific, commonsensical, etc. This last distinction is of the first importance. For the alleged justification of the dialectic method consists in its power to lead us to the discovery of new truths or to a deeper and more adequate understanding of old truths, not accessible to us by any other method-- Sidney Hook (1939) "Dialectic in Social and Historical Inquiry" The Journal of Philosophy 36(14), 365-366.

A while ago (recall), I remarked with sardonic bemusement -- I am a liberal bourgeois intellectual, after all -- that analytic marxism is founded in an original sin, that is, an unearned dismissal of the dialectical method. That behind the brilliant rhetoric (recall) of G.A Cohen, Elster and the whole gang lies an appeal to clarity often linked to the stipulated superiority of the existing methods of social science. And while their embrace of clarity and rigor helped their careers in professional philosophy, and -- (let's stipulate) advanced academic discussion in a number of important scholarly fields -- it is by no means obvious they advanced marxism as a revolutionary doctrine to be feared by folks like me. For, while clarity is undoubtedly an important value that can be embraced by Marxists (see my treatment of Korsch's articulation of dialectics) it does not have, let's say, lexical priority over overthrowing capitalism.

In fact, I took considerable pleasure in pointing out that analytic marxists' dismissal of dialectics was unoriginal. For the rhetoric and whole style of pseudo-argument dismissing dialectics were anticipated by (recall here; and, for broader context, here and more recently here) the very bourgeois liberal philosopher, Ernest Nagel (who plays a non-trivial role in shaping analytic philosophy as such). But I noted that Nagel was, in turn, relying on Hook's efforts; and so it is worth looking at Hook.  

I often joke (with a note of ruefulness) that oblivion is the fate of all philosophers since the hegemony of analytic philosophy. But I was pleased to learn that our institutional collective memory, the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, has an informative entry on Hook, which treats him as a "leading interpreter and proponent of Deweyan pragmatic naturalism" and "polemicist." Hook was once one of the leading New York intellectuals. And, pertinent for us, Hook became after trying initially to synthesize pragmatism and marxism a leading anti-communists as time passes. (His anti-communism increasingly has a McCarthyite tendency.) A key step in Hook's attempted synthesis and eventual turn against marxism is his rejection of the dialectical method.

Now, if we look at Hook's "Dialectic in Social and Historical Inquiry" all dialectic is dismissed. But strikingly we find only a single explicit mention of Marx's dialectic in a footnote: "I have omitted specific discussion of Marx in this paper because, whether or not we regard his findings as valid, I think it can be shown that he made no distinction between the dialectic method, as he understood it, and scientific method as applied to the historical and cultural sciences." (370) The footnote is more informative than it may seem. 

For, Hook's main strategy is to compare dialectics to ordinary "scientific method" which has a "basic unity" (378), and to find dialectics wanting in comparison to scientific method (371-379). But oddly, when he does so, he takes for granted that the metric/measure of comparison are the cannons of success internal to that scientific method. And to give a flavor of these cannons, among the criteria he identifies are "piece-meal verification" (371) and "predicting as closely as we can the specific form of the institutions of to-morrow" (375). 

Now, I don't mean to remind you constantly I am no Marxist, but even I can see that Hook is rigging the comparison against the dialectician. For Hook presupposes, oddly, that the "alleged justification of the dialectic method consists in its power to lead us to the discovery of new truths or to a deeper and more adequate understanding of old truths." But while undoubtedly dialecticians make such claims, and from my bourgois perspective often exaggeratedly so, this is not what the dialectician, is fundamentally interested in. For she is, I quote, Korsch (recall) committed to articulating "a theory of social revolution." It is plausible that if that is one's aim, one may well find that at times one has deeper understanding of social reality than those with more, say, armchair sensibilities.

Even a bourgeois intellectual like me can discern that in/with the ordinary scientific method as embraced by Hook, revolution is at best an afterthought. The scientific method (which is good at describing and predicting states of affairs) then functions as a kind of input into a different process  (i.e., changing the world). But while nobody denies that in this way science can contribute to enormous social transformations, including many unanticipated ones, this way of conceiving it allows capital to have a more than fair shot at shaping these outcomes.+ People like me would consider that a virtue of Hook's approach! 

By contrast, a key methodological move the dialectician asserts to make revolution really possible,  is "the coincidence of reality and consciousness." This coincidence makes marxist dialectic often seem weird. But as Bertell Ollman shows in Dance of the Dialectic,* the weirdness merely echoes the kind of things one finds in the whole tradition of what he calls the 'philosophy of internal relations' -- with Spinoza as one of the paradigmatic exemplars --  which simply rejects what since Tarski has come to be known as the classical account of truth. And so it is, also, no surprise, again quoting Korsch, this is "bound to appear to [critics of dialectics] as theoretically false and unscientific."

I do not mean to suggest there are no other arguments in Hook. But while all of them land serious blows, none of them take 'conduciveness to the revolution' as a fundamental aim. So, I regret to say we have returned to where started. I ruefully conclude that those purportedly most in the know about marxist dialectics (Hook, the analytic marxists, etc.) have produced refutations that ought not convince the would be revolutionary.** And while I have no standing as a score-keeper on such matters, I report as a psychological fact that it strikes me as a true scandal that these purported refutations are so obviously (to use a technical term) Quatsch. 

 

 

 

 

 

+Hook knows this because he recognizes that "it is not the patterns of causality [discovered by ordinary scientific method] which the dialectic method uncovers but the patterns of destiny." (375) So, a fair comparison would be to explorer how ordinary scientific method stack up as a possible method of uncovering the patterns of destiny. 

*HT Arthur Schipper.

**Some other time, I explore the refutations of dialectics developed in left Vienna.