Eric Schliesser's Blog, page 37

Newton, Comets, Life

For just as the seas are absolutely necessary for the constitution of this earth, so that vapors may be abundantly enough aroused from them by the heat of the sun, which vapors either���being gathered into clouds���fall in rains and irrigate and nourish the whole earth for the propagation of vegetables, or���being condensed in the cold peaks of mountains (as some philosophize with good reason)���run down into springs and rivers; so for the conservation of the seas and fluids on the planets, comets seem to be required, so that from the condensation of their exhalations and vapors, there can be a continual supply and renewal of whatever liquid is consumed by vegetation and putrefaction and converted into dry earth. For all vegetables grow entirely from fluids and afterward, in great part, change into dry earth by putrefaction, and slime is continually deposited from putrefied liquids. Hence the bulk of dry earth is increased from day to day, and fluids���if they did not have an outside source of increase���would have to decrease continually and finally to fail. Further, I suspect that that spirit which is the smallest but most subtle and most excellent part of our air, and which is required for the life of all things, comes chiefly from comets.--Newton, Principia, Book III, proposition 41, translated by Cohen & Whitman  (1999) p. 926.

The quoted passage is among my most favorite bits of the Principia. It is pretty nearly the close of the first edition of the Principia. And as I note elsewhere, it contributed to the reception of Newton as a kind of modern (mathematically inclined) Epicurean--something the General Scholium attached to the second edition helps correct. To be clear Newton here does not embrace the Epicurean notion of seeds as the source of human life.
 
In this account comets play a vital role in the economy of the universe. They bring a life-giving spirit from the outer reaches of the universe to our solar system. During the seventeenth century, 'spirit' is a term for a kind of refined fluid (the term is still to be noticed when we use 'spirits' to refer to liquor.) What Newton has in mind is made explicit in the final sentence of the Book III (which I think was itself only added to the second edition): "And the vapors that arise from the sun and the fixed stars and the tails of comets can fall by their gravity into the atmospheres of the planets and there be condensed and converted into water and humid spirits, and then���by a slow heat���be transformed gradually into salts, sulphurs, tinctures, slime, mud, clay, sand, stones, corals, and other earthy substances." (Newton, Principia: 938)
 
I have to admit that if people didn't keep telling me that Newton was a rather heterodox Christian, and we didn't have abundant manuscript evidence of his interest in true Christianity, I would read him here as offering an entirely naturalistic account of the cosmic origin and sustenance of life of a sort that, say, Ibn Tufayl hints at in his account of the rationalizing intellectuals' reconstruction of the site and mechanisms of creation. In any case, we shouldn't be surprised that Leibniz  mischievously, perhaps, reads Newton as a kind of crypto-Spinozist.
 
My reason for returning to Newton's account of comets was prompted by a remark by Chris Smeenk after my recent post, where, while interpreting Whewell, I treated Herschel's (1802) discovery that binary star systems obey Keplerian motion as analogous to the claim that satellites of Jupiter and Saturn obey Keplerian motion and, thereby, showing that Newtonian's gravitation is indeed a universal quality of bodies. For, despite the existence of Newton's third rule of reasoning, which encourages the researcher to take the law of gravitation as a universal (but not essential) quality of systems of matter, Newton only has evidence about bodies in a small region of the visible universe (our solar system). And, in fact, I called attention to a Query in which Newton allows that there may be regions of space where matter is differently constituted and so obeys different force laws. (So much for quick summary.)
 
In response, Smeenk noted that Newton shows that comets also obey Keplerian motion (that is the point of Proposition 40 of Book III of the Principia). It is worth spelling out  the implications of this a bit because they point to an interesting ambiguity in Newton's theory of comets that connects up to the question of the evidence for the scope of law of gravitation. 
 
First, Newton is pretty clear that comets we can see in the sky have Keplerian motion around our Sun: "Those who banish the comets almost to the region of the fixed stars are, therefore, entirely wrong; certainly in such a situation, they would not be illuminated by our sun any more than the planets in our solar system are illuminated by the fixed stars....likely that the comets descend far below the sphere of Saturn," (1999: 892) So comets are part of the solar system and their Keplerian motion is due, in part, to the attraction of our Sun. Of course, some of the orbits of regularly returning comets go to the furthest reaches of the Sun's gravitational field. 
 
But Newton also recognizes that some "comets are not restricted to the zodiac as planets are, but depart from there and are carried with various motions into all regions of the heavens," (937; from proposition 41; emphasis added). And, in fact, this is what he assumes when comets bring spirits and vapors from the outer cosmos to our little planet. 
 
So, lurking in Newton's argument is an open research question: when comets enter the solar system, before they are captured by the Sun's gravitational field (or the gravitational field of the outer planets, etc.) are they obeying Keplerian motion? For, prior to the kind of work that Hershel (and Bradley) could do with their more powerful telescopes, it is difficult to establish what kind of force laws matter obeys far away in different regions of space. It should be noted that Book I of the Principia, presents us with a whole class of possible force laws and motions in accord with such alternative possibilities; so Newton has already developed the tools to answer that question.
 
But, and perhaps this is what Smeenk had in mind, the mere fact that cosmic wanderers do, once they enter or interact with the solar's gravitational field, obey Keplerian motion suggests that they would do so elsewhere, too. And that's because on Newton's (more speculative view articulated in the Queries (quoted on Monday) the laws of motion are themselves ground in the nature of matter--so if you obey Keplerian motion here, you do would do so there, too. (That's compatible with the thought that elsewhere in the universe there is also fundamentally different kinds of matter that might obey additional laws.) So, that the existence of intergalactic wanderers is some evidence for a possible fundamental univocity of matter. In the first edition of the Principia Newton had embraced this explicitly (as a hypothesis) -"Every body can be transformed into a body of any other kind and successively take on all the intermediate degrees of qualities," (198)- , but he had officially dropped it in later editions perhaps because he became more enchanted with a dappled universe (or because he recognized that the univocity he needed -- inertial mass -- was a thinner and more abstract quantity than the transformation thesis requires).*
 
The fact that light also passes among different regions of the universe, also provides evidence for the thought that the universe is unified (as opposed to dappled). I mention this because in the General Scholium, Newton had used the immense distances of solar systems, and their inability to interact with each other (and so fall upon each other catastrophically) as a kind of evidence of God's benevolent design. So, that a dappled universe may well be thought in accord with His wishes.
 

 


 
*I am also addressing Alan Nelson's interesting question.

7 March 1979: Foucault on The Price of Reality (XXIII)

A second reason for dwelling on these problems of neo-liberalism is what I would call a reason of critical morality....
These two ideas, which are close to each other and support each other��� namely, [first], that the state has an unlimited force of expansion in relation to the object-target, civil society, and second, that forms of state give rise to each other on the basis of a specific dynamism of the state���seem to me to form a kind of critical commonplace frequently found today. Now it seems to me that these themes put in circulation what could be called an inflationary critical value, an inflationary critical currency. Why inflationary?
In the first place, it is inflationary because I think the theme encourages the growth, at a constantly accelerating speed, of the interchangeability of analyses. As soon as we accept the existence of this continuity or genetic kinship between different forms of the state, and as soon as we attribute a constant evolutionary dynamism to the state, it then becomes possible not only to use different analyses to support each other, but also to refer them back to each other and so deprive them of their specificity.
For example, an analysis of social security and the administrative apparatus on which it rests ends up, via some slippages and thanks to some plays on words, referring us to the analysis of concentration camps. And, in the move from social security to concentration camps the requisite specificity of analysis is diluted. So, there is inflation in the sense of an increasing interchangeability of analyses and a loss of specificity.
This critique seems to me to be equally inflationary for a second reason, which is that it allows one to practice what could be called a general disqualification by the worst. Whatever the object of analysis, however tenuous or meager it is, and whatever its real functioning, to the extent that it can always be referred to something which will be worse by virtue of the state���s intrinsic dynamic and the final forms it may take, the less can always be disqualified by the more, the better by the worst. I am not taking an example of the better, obviously, but think, for example, of some unfortunate who smashes a cinema display case and, in a system like ours, is taken to court and sentenced rather severely; you will always find people to say that this sentence is the sign that the state is becoming fascist, as if, well before any fascist state, there were no sentences of this kind���or much worse.
Finally, I would say that this critique in terms of the mechanism and dynamism of the state is inflationary inasmuch as it does not carry out a criticism or analysis of itself. That is to say, it does not seek to know the real source of this kind of anti-state suspicion, this state phobia that currently circulates in such varied forms of our thought. Now it seems to me���and this is why I have laid such stress on the neo-liberalism of 1930���1950���that this kind of analysis, this critique of the state, of its intrinsic and irrepressible dynamism, and of its interlinking forms that call on each other, mutually support each other, and reciprocally engender each other is effectively, completely, and already very clearly formulated in the years 1930���1945. At this time it was quite precisely localized and did not have the force of circulation it has now. We find it precisely localized within the neo-liberal choices being developed at this time. You find this critique of the polymorphous, omnipresent, and all powerful state in these years when, liberalism or neo-liberalism, or even more precisely, ordoliberalism was engaged in distinguishing itself from the Keynesian critique and at the same time undertaking the critique of New Deal and Popular Front policies of state control and intervention, of National Socialist economics and politics, of the political and economic choices of the Soviet Union, or, in a word, of socialism generally. It is in this context, in this German neo-liberal school, and taking things in their narrowest or almost petty form, that we find both this analysis of the necessary and as it were inevitable kinship between different forms of the state, and also this idea that the state has a specific, intrinsic dynamism which means that it can never halt its expansion and complete takeover of the whole of civil society.--- Michel Foucault, 7 March, 1979,  translated by Graham Burchell, Lecture 8, The Birth of Biopolitics, 187-189.

Much of lecture 8 is devoted to the French uptake, and re-invention, of neoliberalism, including the development of ideas surrounding negative income tax, in the 1970s. Foucault is rather apologetic about this (cf. "bore" 203). But in passing, he explains one of his main reasons for spending so much time on (German) neo-liberalism, which, it turns out, is distinct from its impact on public policy. Simply put, according Foucault a form of neoliberal thought has had an outsized impact on a certain kind of intellectual discourse that understands itself as moral, even on the right side of history, and yet simultaneously does not recognize and grasp its own sources of social criticism and, in a certain and more important way, its futility as a form of social criticism. That is to say, according to Foucault the road-to-serfdom thesis has become so influential among the educated that it has become a species of fantasy incapable of generating needed distinctions; of describing or learning from reality.

It is important to be clear that Foucault is not here criticizing the original road to serfdom thesis.1 Nazism and Stalinism are real phenomena which developed out of and, to be explained by earlier historical and political events. But the road-to-serfdom also fed into other habits of thoughts, which gained wide currency beyond ordo-austrian-libertarian circles. The inability to make distinctions and grasp essential features of reality creates circumstances when demagogues and cynical authoritarians  are turned into purported fascists and nazis (or where protests -- which are disproportionately petty to the threat of nazism -- are turned into riots or uprisings and other acts of resistance). 

What Foucault is diagnosing, I think, that the road-to-serfdom thesis, once unmoored from its historical specificity becomes an instrument for manichean thinking that infects commentariat that presents itself as learned and intellectually savvy. It is not just among intellectuals, because Stateside it influences, "if not a mass movement, at least a widespread movement" (193; he has in mind the shaping of libertarian ideals on the right). And what Foucault recognizes that this form of thinking is not limited to what are now known as classical liberals, but it becomes predominant across the intellectual spectrum (even if the terminology sometimes shifts from uncontrollable growth of the state to uncontrollable growth of elites). 

That is to say, the unmoored-road-to-serfdom thesis becomes a species of populist thought in which all states morph into each other and each is, say, an election away from fascism and/or the renewed continued control of unaccountable elites. And the problem Foucault confronts is that if you deny the unmoored road-to-serfdom thesis (because these rightwingers are not leading us to fascism; or this social policy is worth the cost), then you are thought an enabler of fascism or an apologists for stalinism. It would be tempting to repeat the exercise for every work that markets itself as against the rise of fascism or denounces today.

In reading Foucault here, we should note that he is not ruling out that fascism increases.* But in so far as this growth exists, it is due to the implosion or erosion of the state. And that's because Foucault locates fascism in parties, and perhaps cults of personalities, that are at odds with state independence and fill the gap once state power has collapsed.* 

That is to say, Foucault agrees, in his own voice, with a core feature of the ORDOs--that a key bulwark against fascism is the independence of the state against would be particular (party) interests  or cults of personality who tame the state's independence.  And, again following Weber, he claims that it is the 'governmentality of the party' that undermines state independence and so opens the door to fascism.** But, once one refuses to engage in Manichean thought, it does not follow that any strengthening of parties automatically leads to fascism; party elites and primary voters have something to say about this, too. 

Strikingly, and I close with this, Foucault does not ask why or how a kind of fantasy critique stays so attractive and why it persists, despite its anodyne quality, decade after decade. That is to say, it is clear that Foucault thinks it undermines what he calls 'critical morality.' But it is left unclear why, after diagnosing the problem, he thinks a fundamentally -- recall the Freudian themes of lecture 1 -- neurotic, infantile intellectual culture can persist and metastasize on itself in democratic life. That is to say, Foucault diagnoses the effects of mechanisms that prevent the reality principle from being practiced and exercised.+ But Foucault does not explicitly spell out the underlying causes because, I surmise, to do so would overstep the bounds of prudence, that is, break necessary taboos of democratic life. And so he leaves that effort to an audience he simultaneously indicts. 

 

 

 

1. By original, I mean pre-1943. For Foucault, once R��pke & Hayek develop it to analyze the Beveridge plan it gets transformed into something else (p. 189).

* Foucault writes, "we should not do is imagine we are describing a real, actual process concerning ourselves when we denounce the growth of state control, or the state becoming fascist, or the establishment of a state violence, and so on. All those who share in the great state phobia should know that they are following the direction of the wind and that in fact, for years and years, an effective reduction of the state has been on the way, a reduction of both the growth of state control and of a ���statifying��� and ���statified��� (��tatisante et ��tatis��e) governmentality. I am not saying at all that we delude ourselves on the faults or merits of the state when we say ���this is very bad��� or ���this is very good���; that is not my problem. I am saying that we should not delude ourselves by attributing to the state itself a process of becoming fascist which is actually exogenous and due much more to the state���s reduction and dislocation. I also mean that we should not delude ourselves about the nature of the historical process which currently renders the state both so intolerable and so problematic. (191-192; emphasis added).

**: it is "at the historical origin of something like totalitarian regimes, of something like Nazism, fascism, or Stalinism." (191)

 

Whewell, Newton, Kant, and Hershel's Double Stars

We may observe, however, that the law of gravitation according to the inverse square of the distance, which thus regulates the motions of the solar system, is not confined to that province of the universe, as has been shown by recent researches. It appears by the observations and calculations of Sir John Herschel, that several of the stars, called double stars, consist of a pair of luminous bodies which revolve about each other in ellipses, in such a manner as to show that the force, by which they are attracted to each other, varies according to the law of the inverse square. We thus learn a remarkable fact concerning bodies which seemed so far removed from us that no effort of our science could reach them; and we find that the same law of mutual attraction which we have before traced to the farthest bounds of the solar system, prevails also in spaces at a distance compared with which the orbit of Saturn shrinks into a point. The establishment of such a truth certainly suggests, as highly probably, the prevalence of this law among all the bodies of the universe. And we may therefore suppose, that the same ordinance which gave to the parts of our system that rule by which they fulfil the purposes of their creation, impressed the same rule on the other portions of matter which are scattered in the most remote parts of the universe; and thus gave to their movements the same grounds of simplicity and harmony which we find reason to admire, as far as we can acquire any knowledge of our own more immediate neighbourhood.--William Whewell Astronomy and General Physics, Considered with Reference to Natural Theology, 1864, (Bridgewater Treatise, "New Edition, with New Preface"),pp 229-230 [HT David Haig]

I quote from the edition of Whewell's Bridgewater Treatise in which he adds a new preface in order to respond to Darwin's Origin (which he quotes, but doesn't name). In the preface, Whewell makes a point of associating Darwin with the system of Epicurean chance, which at the cosmogenic level is to be associated with the nebular hypothesis as developed by Kant and Laplace. In the Bridgewater Treatise Kant is not mentioned only Laplace. (I suspect that Whewell, who was one of the greatest historians of science of his age, was not unfamiliar with the Kantian provenance because he alludes to it in his treatment of copernican turn of the critical philosophy elsewhere.*) So, arguments against one (the nebular hypothesis) reinforce the arguments against the other (Darwinism), and vice versa. 

One may wonder why, after after the empirical success of the Principia, and its Rule 3, anybody would have doubted the universality of the law of gravity. But, as a matter of fact, Newton himself had opened to the door to this possibility, in the 1706 Latin edition of the Opticks which ultimately ended up in Query 31 of the later English edition.+ It reads:

Since Space is Divisible in infinitum, and Matter is not necessarily in all places, it may also be allowed that God is able to create Particles of Matter of several Sizes and Figures, and in several Proportions to Space, and perhaps of different Densities and Forces, and thereby to vary the Laws of Nature, and make Worlds of several sorts in several Parts of the Universe. 

Newton sometimes uses ���world��� in a metaphysically neutral sense, to mean a solar system or, more generally, a closed (or virtually closed) system of interacting celestial bodies. In the above passage, however, ���world��� is a metaphysically richer notion. A world in this sense is constituted by the kinds of particles and forces it contains, particles and forces that are ontologically prior to the world they constitute. Moreover, the above passage suggests that within ���worlds��� of this kind particles and forces are prior, in some sense, to the laws of nature.

For Newton laws are clearly contingent. They are not grounded in God���s immutability (as Descartes���s were), but depend on God���s will. Their contingency stands in stark contrast to the necessity of Newtonian space and time. For Newton, space and time could not have been otherwise and are a consequence of God���s necessary existence. As he writes in the General Scholium to the Principia, ���by existing always and every where, [God] constitutes Duration and Space . . . ���Tis allowed by all that the supreme God exists necessarily; and by the same necessity he exists always and every where.��� Physical laws do not possess such necessity. (Although Newton���s laws are contingent, they are necessary in relation to God���s will. Given God���s edicts, they could not be otherwise. ) As Roger Cotes wrote in the editor���s preface to the second edition: ���From this source [God], then, have all the laws that are called laws of nature come, in which many traces of the highest wisdom and counsel certainly appear, but no traces of necessity��� (Newton 1999: 397; the denial of necessity distances Newton from the charge of Spinozism and its attack on design arguments.)

In the above passage, the contingency of Newton���s laws is also coupled to the claim that they may not be universal. They may hold of some worlds (in the metaphysical sense), but not all. Their variability has at least two consequences. First, a universe with metaphysically distinct worlds entails causal disconnectedness among (some of) its parts. This disconnectedness appealed to Newton, because it could prevent different solar systems from collapsing in on each other. It thus supports the argument from design of the General Scholium. 

So, while in the eighteenth century the Huygensian claim that the law of gravity only held for celestial bodies in our solar system was defeated by the stronger claim that it held throughout the solar system, including terrestrially, it was not obvious it would hold in other solar systems throughout the galaxy. Huygens (recall here; here) and Newton seemed to posit a universe with tenuously connected solar systems (light could pass among them), even though Newton encouraged us to take or hold true the laws universally in context of inquiry. 

In 1802, Herschel wrote (in the Transaction of the Royal Society):

If, on the contrary, two stars should really be situated very near each other, and at the same time so far insulated as not to be materially affected by the attractions of neighbouring stars, they will then compose a separate system, and remain united by the bond of their own mutual gravitation towards each other. This should be called a real double star; and any two stars that are thus mutually connected, form the binary sidereal system which we are now to consider. (Vol. 92, 481)

Herschel's language here is conditional. But on p. 486 he goes on to claim there is overwhelming empirical evidence for the reality of binary systems. Interestingly, on. p. 485 Herschel claims that Binary systems are themselves causes by law of gravity because their production and the phenomena they give rise to cannot be the effect of "casual situations" that is, chance.

So, from the point of view of physical astronomy, Herschel's discovery of binary systems was analogous to the seventeenth century discovery that the satellites of Jupiter and Saturn obeyed Keplerian motion. But from a cosmological perspective, Herschell provided empirical evidence for the hitherto unavailable "simplicity and harmony;" whatever else might be discovered, Hershel showed "a remarkable fact" that the motions of bodies obeyed at least one law or set of laws. This claim which was taken for granted by Descartes on metaphysical grounds, and left open empirically by Huygens and Newton, could now be taken as established, or at least "as highly probable." 

Let me close with three observations. First, Whewell clearly thinks that (strong evidence for) the actual university of the law of gravity points to a single, unified cause of the universe. In itself that does not settle the debate with the systems of necessity and chance, in favor of theism. But it does burden shift in one non-trivial way against the system of chance (but not the system of necessity). 

For, Whewell thinks, not entirely unfairly, that the system of chance must assume that the present laws of nature are themselves the effect of historical evolution. That's the "supposition that the universe has gradually approximated to that state of harmony among the operations of its different parts," (p. 30).** For, the system of chance has, if it accepts the principle of sufficient reason (which it may not, of course) no right to positing, without further explanation, the existence of natural law that governs motions of bodies.++ (The system of necessity gets this posit for free.) 

Second, and this is the burden shifting against the necessitarian, if one accepts the principle of sufficient reason, the now universal law of gravity appears without foundation at all: "no [sufficient] reason, at all satisfactory, can be given why such a law must, of necessity, be what it is." (216) In particular, while gravity is a universal quality of matter there is no reason to think (here Whewell explicitly disagrees with Newton's editor, Cotes) it is a necessary quality (p. 222).

Third, while Whewell's language is still voluntarist ("ordinance"), Whewell changes the character of God's voluntarism. For Newton, theological voluntarism is compatible with God choosing different laws of motion for different parts of the universe. Newton allows the genuine possible that God settled for a dappled universe. Whewell's nature, by contrast, obeys a single ordinance/decree by God, who could choose differently in different parts of the universe, but did not.

 

 

 

 

*Of course, Kant himself rejects the association with the Epicurean system of chance, although he recognizes that some readers might be tempted to attribute it to him. My own view is that Kant embraces the (Spinozist) system of necessity in his early cosmogony. 

+What follows draws on joint work with Zvi Biener.

**In context Whewell is discussing plant adaptation. But if we follow the guidance of new preface we should be willing to recycle arguments from cosmological to terrestrial contexts and vice versa.

++If I recall correctly, in Darwin's Dangerous Idea, Dennett grants that if we apply the universal acid to cosmology, we might be tempted toward a view of eternal creation and destruction of universes selecting toward universes that appear more fine tuned, etc.

RIP: Arthur Wijnschenk (1971-2020); On Caravan Camp Sollicitude

This morning my sister informed me that she had learned from Maureen Wijnschenk (his sister) that my distant distant cousin, classmate, and friend, Arthur Wijnschenk died. I have known Arthur, and his family, my whole life. Before his coming out he dated my oldest living friend, Liora the youngest daughter of my father's best friend (Chaim), in high school. (I sat next to Arthur at her wedding.) We were not mates in high school, but each in our own way, we tried to escape our childhood environment by fleeing into the wider world--Arthur more boldly and with more panache. But despite cultivating a bad-boy, go-happy, work hard, party harder image, he was loyal to his roots and kept in touch. From my distant perspective, he was one of the early hackers; then let himself be paid by financial firms to protect them from attack; serial entrepreneur (including his favorite, Barcelona Car Tours), moving among Rotterdam, Los Angeles, Madrid,  Barcelona, and even our Amsterdam in restless fashion celebrating each trip with a champagne toast in first class. Even so, he would always track me down all over the world and, when I was broke or trying to make ends meet on an academic salary, would treat me to lavish meals in fancy restaurants always just before they were to become famous.  Often at the end of a night, as I went home, the night would start for him. Sometimes I saw pictures of his adventures in the clubs on social media the next day before he went to the gym.

When my family moved to London a few years, I learned I was not his only regular on his itinerary. There were other distant relatives he kept track off, happily being drawn into their family milestones--giving and accepting nurture along the way. 

I tell you about Arthur, dear readers, not just because I can't think of anything else right now, but because he is one of the proximate causes for my blogging. A decade ago, when I was trying to turn myself into a Dutch public intellectual, I mentioned to him I couldn't get a piece published by any of the main newspapers. Arthur asked to read it. Then told me he had created a website and started advertising the piece on Google up to ���50 per day. The effect was shocking: I got an endless stream of hate mail, threats, including death threats, and for many years you could find my name denounced on far-right websites.* To me this was eye-opening because I recognized that one didn't need mainstream media to find an audience; and this helped me reconcile myself to my failure as a public intellectual and develop into this different kind of authorial persona. 

You can read a translation (by his friend Brian Gross) of the piece on NewAPPS. If you look at the NewAPPS archive, you'll see it is one of the very first pieces I published at NewAPPS when it was just a week old (and we had a few dozen daily readers).  Arthur read nearly all of my blogs, always welcoming the pieces in which I dropped my scholarly guard and shared my views in forthright manner. Sometimes, he would send me a quick note thanking me for the occasional, lucid paragraph in the middle of a digressions. 

Eventually Arthur stopped advertising my piece, and discontinued the webserver that hosted it. The right-wing websites that polemicized against it mostly disappeared (today I could only locate one that notes its existence).

Recently, after I won a grant to study debt, just before the corona-lockdown, I was contacted by a leading Dutch banker to come meet with her and discuss. I thought she had read about the grant in the newspaper, but it turned out Arthur had nudged her into meeting me. During our last dinner, a few weeks ago on the back balcony at ���Bickers a/d Werf��� during one of the endless corona-Summer days, he told me he knew her since his membership of the JOVD, the youth wing of the Dutch main right wing party, and that they had stayed in touch. 

To my delight I found a splendid essay by him (1993) in the JOVDs zine, railing against the internal shenanigans and lack of internal democracy at the JOVD's annual conference -- the article makes clear he was a regular --, and in it he unmasks self-serving careerism and opportunism and he pleads for one-man-one-vote. Anyway, behind the bad boy, there was true engagement. I dont think Arthur had much formal education, or that he was especially bookish, but, not unlike our classmate Arnon Grunberg, he had the gift of an excellent polemicist.+

I mention Arnon not just to name-drop; as it turns out that for a few years we had an intense three-way email correspondence, which started with a note by Arthur to Arnon in September 2000.**  The note congratulates Arnon on his literary success and implies that Arthur is earning money as a porno-producer.*** In our letters we recognized ourselves as prisoners/wardens of 'caravan camp sollicitude' (woonwagenkamp de eenzaamheid).

Because Arthur and I traveled a lot, we started talking about Corona in January. We were both mystified, even outraged by the utter lack of care and reaction by national authorities. We found the role of the WHO mysterious. I tried to nudge him into developing mobile and airport testing capacity. Corona has been very tough for him. It hurt his businesses and undermined his life-style. He was (quite rightly) angered by the ways governments supported better connected businesses than his own. But most importantly it threw him back onto himself.

In response, while he tried to keep his businesses afloat, he checked in almost daily, including with my mom--they both would express concern for the other to me. (Early in the lock-down with PPE shortages everywhere, he surprised her with state of the art face-mask.) I found their mode of contact reassuring, perhaps too re-assuring. 

Arthur and I came from families shaped by the Holocaust, by betrayal and by great acts of compassion and rectitude. It would be tempting here to write something about our shared sense that all of that was not an aberration, that we're sleepwalking into more disaster. So often he would ask me what we could do.

I wish I were better at capturing the cocktail of survivor guilt, perseverance, love, and hardness of those we grew up with; the focus on money-making, the impatience with official delusion; the moving between many different worlds at once; the sense of connection with distant relatives who had to stand in for never-born cousins and uncles/aunts. But we rarely talked about the past; we were immersed in a present haunted by omissions and ellipses. Adult friendship is the art of tactful silence. And during the last few years, after my dad died, and as he quietly become a more regular fixture in my life, I learned from him to be more accepting of good fortune as our lives glide too closely alongside the precipice.   

Arthur's mom, (like my own) youthful when she had her first child, died early at the age of 45 from cancer. My heart goes out to his dad, and Maureen. 

 

*It also generated some interesting correspondence with articulate supporters of the new Dutch far right which helped me understand them far better.

+Through google, I also found a politically incorrect satire on women's lib from 1991 prefiguring Incel themes.

**As an aside, in re-reading our correspondence from this period, I notice that Arnon had left me a few hints (I was too self-absorbed to notice) about unfolding Marek van der Jagt episode.

***This is eminently plausible, and certainly not intended to shock. But it was surely also a reference to some of  Arnon's then literary productions (including, say, Liefde is Business).

On Extending a Self onto an Organoid

An organ-on-a-chip is a microfluidic cell culture device created with microchip manufacturing methods that contains continuously perfused chambers inhabited by living cells arranged to simulate tissue- and organ-level physiology. By recapitulating the multicellular architectures, tissue-tissue interfaces, physicochemical microenvironments and vascular perfusion of the body, these devices produce levels of tissue and organ functionality not possible with conventional 2D or 3D culture systems. They also enable high-resolution, real-time imaging and in vitro analysis of biochemical, genetic and metabolic activities of living cells in a functional tissue and organ context. This technology has great potential to advance the study of tissue development, organ physiology and disease etiology. In the context of drug discovery and development, it should be especially valuable for the study of molecular mechanisms of action, prioritization of lead candidates, toxicity testing and biomarker identification.--Sangeeta N Bhatia & Donald E Ingber Nature Biotechnology, 32, pages, 760���772(2014).*

Organ-on-chip research has been promoted for a decade now (see this Scientific American article from 2011). And in recent years, it has become a staple of medical research, and now is entering clinical practice or, if not already, foreseeably so. There is, in fact, increasing public and philosophical interest in cerebral organoids because of their potential for consciousness. See for recent work by Koplin & Savulescu here, who claim that "brain organoid research raises ethical challenges not seen in other forms of stem cell research."+ Let me stipulate that Koplin & Savulescu are right about this. Even so I also think that when reflecting on the ethical and social challenges generated by organ-on-a-chip research, exclusive focus on such mini-brains, understandable and urgent though it may, may also lead to inattention to other interesting issues related to non-brain-organoid research. I would like to sketch some of these. 

At present researchers are working to create 3D patient-specific micro-models facilitating individualized clinical disease prediction, prevention, and intervention. Simultaneously, a new kind of model-organism for basic research into the underlying disease(s) and efficacy of proposed therapeutics is, as Melinda Fagan pointed out in 2017, being created. (I warmly recommend Fagan's article.)** When I am focused on patient models, I use 'organoids;' when I am focused on model-organisms, I use 'organ-on-a-chip.' In what follows, I am interested in organoids/organ-on-a-chip for patients with defective or malfunctioning organs.*

Crucially, organoids resemble are generated from the patient���s own tissue; and so can blur the distinction where an individual begins and ends (this is, in fact, one of Fagan's main points). Since particular organoids may come to be linked to personalized treatment, it is reasonable to suggest that it will constitute their extended self. This is especially the case once the patient associates themselves, their identity, with their disease and/or when society treats their disease as a risk factor. This is, of course, not necessary.

But when a patient is in a hospital environment, a lot of attention is focused on their defective organs and the manner in which these defects constrain/inhibit/limit their lives. (Here i am influenced by, recall, Elizabeth Barnes' work on disability.) So, it is reasonable to expect that patients (and I now adopt Humean language) may project or spread themselves onto their organoids, which may represent or materialize their disease progress. It is, then, them in an artificial environment.

That organoids can be part of their extended self is not self-evident: they are often perceived as just a clinical tool on par with a blood sample or a X-ray. My suggestion is that in a clinical context such organoids will be more like prosthetics than X-rays (see here an interesting article by Hilhorst). I suspect this is especially natural to experience a 3D model as an extended self in the context of hereditary disease, where the ultimate therapeutic or clinical aim is not just to mitigate the effects from, but to modify or correct/repair the underlying genetic error. 

So, I speculate that organoids can become more than just a representation of a part of the patient; they can also play a role in their social identity, e.g. in their interactions with their physicians, care-givers, insurers, family, etc. I am especially curious if their moral phenomenology and language will shift. One relevant question is the extent to which partial identification with an organoid can influence the patient���s decision-making or well-being, even clinical efficacy.++ Another more ethical question is to what degree such identification should influence the role a patient's wishes for the organoid should trump others. 

Even so, organ-on-a-chips,  as model-organisms, must facilitate standardization and share-ability of research and function as epistemic tools of inquiry. The ethics and politics of treating humans, or their parts in artificial environments, as model organisms is, it seems, itself underdeveloped. (I started thinking about this in light of Sabina Leonelli's 2012 paper.) In particular, since stem-cells can be self-organizing and have lineage generating capacity, it is worth asking to what extent the current oversight and consent regulations that cover organ-on-a-chip research do justice to the possible sense of self of donors and patients may experience with their organoids. There may be all kinds of conflicts brewing.

 

*Full disclosure: my interest in the topic has been prompted by a team at Leiden University Medical Center, which invited me to join in a research project pertaining to hereditary diseases involving organ-on-chip. 

+I have benefitted from reading unpublished work by folk at UCSD, including Reuven Brandt, who has been very helpful. 

**Anya Plutynski recommended it to me on Facebook in this thread.

++Everybody has complex relationship with one's embodiment, but I may falsely be presupposing that for those with genetic disease this is more poignant.

***I thank drs. Valeria Orlova and Saskia Lesnik Oberstein for comments on earlier drafts of some of this material.

21 February 1979: Foucault on The Rule of Law (XXII)

Now, they say, how can we avoid the error of planning? Precisely by seeing to it that the tendency Schumpeter identifies in capitalism towards the organization, centralization, and absorption of the economic process within the state, which he saw was not a tendency of the economic process but of its social consequences, is corrected, and corrected precisely by social intervention. At this point, social intervention, the Gesellschaftspolitik, legal interventionism, the definition of a new institutional framework of the economy protected by a strictly formal legislation like that of the Rechtsstaat or the Rule of law, will make it possible to nullify and absorb the centralizing tendencies which are in fact immanent to capitalist society and not to the logic of capital. This is what will enable us to maintain the logic of capital in its purity and get the strictly competitive market to work without the risk of it ending up in the phenomena of monopoly, concentration, and centralization observable in modern society. As a result, this is how we will be able to mutually adapt to each other, on the one hand, a competitive type of economy, as defined or at least problematized by the great theorists of the competitive economy, and, on the other, an institutional practice whose importance was demonstrated in the great works of historians or sociologists of the economy, like Weber. Broadly speaking, according to the ordoliberals the present historical chance of liberalism is defined by a combination of law, an institutional field defined by the strictly formal character of interventions by the public authorities, and the unfolding of an economy whose processes are
regulated by pure competition.
This analysis, political project, and historical wager of the ordoliberals has, I think, been very important, forming the framework of modern German policy. And if there really is a German model, it is not the frequently invoked model of the all-powerful state, of the police state, which, as you know, has so frightened our compatriots. The German model being diffused is not the police state; it is the Rule of law (l�����tat de droit). And I have not made these analyses just for the pleasure of engaging in a bit of contemporary history, but so as to try to show you how it was possible for this German model to spread, on the one hand, in contemporary French economic policy, and, on the other, in a number of liberal problems, theories, and utopias like those we see developing in the United States. So, next week I will talk about some aspects of Giscard���s economic policy and then about American liberal utopians. Michel Foucault, 21 February 1979,  translated by Graham Burchell, Lecture 7, The Birth of Biopolitics, 178-179

Foucault closes his seventh lecture -- the midpoint of the series -- with a two-fold clear contrast between the realististic German Ordo-Liberals (ORDOs) and Schumpeter, who is the pessimistic outlyer toward the left, and the Chicago school American liberal utopians, which fuel, it seems, "a stubborn American extreme Right born in the Midwest" (174).* The key point vis a vis Schupeter is that for ORDOs capitalist monopoly and concentration is always the effect of a political process, or badly formed laws, that facilitate rents or high profits. So, a proper rule of law both aims to prevent that from occurring, or intervenes not by redistributing income (or wealth) directly, but by proper antitrust law, patent-law, property-rights, etc. And crucially, the latter must not be ad hoc, but ground in principles. In addition, there must be an investment in human capital, and even culture that can help shape an enterprising spirit. 

The nature of the rule of law then becomes crucial. The core of the lecture is, in fact, Foucault's analysis of the competing conceptions of the rule of law. In a crucial way, law must be capable of doing four things at once: first, (i) it must be a site where citizens (and corporations) encounter each other as relative equals and resolve conflicts peacefully; second, (ii) it must be a site where individuals can hold the state to account, the "possibility of judicial arbitration, by one or another institution,
between citizens and the public authorities," (171) ; third, (iii) it is a site where new social problems -- due to technological change and increasing growth, and so more mutual "friction" (175) -- are diagnosed and resolved. (Obviously, (i)&(iii) can blend in each other.) And (iv) "public authorities act within the framework of the law and can only act within the framework of the law" that is, there is no political or conceptual space for non-law-governed sovereign agency as is common in despotism or security-states. (169; this is why states of exception attract our notice.) 

Now, I call, following Lippmann and Rougier (recall here;  and Locke; here), the rule of law in (iii) the source of the 'principle of adaptation' that liberal society must instantiate if it is to survive in liberal fashion (164). One natural problem is that is by no means obvious that existing legal principles can survive the encounter with new sources of friction and technological change unscathed. So, (iii) will also be a source of legal innovation in the principles that are supposed to guide the framework (which I call principled rule of law). 

There is an obvious problem here in how the principle of adaptation and the principled rule of law interact once they go out of sync. There seem three option: (a) for Lippmann (who is not discussed by Foucault) it is clearly the role of politics to do the mediation, but for this to succeed he requires from politicians that they do so in impartial, judicial faction. This strikes me as too far-fetched to expect in practice. For, (b) Hayek, who is discussed at length in this lecture, we must trust the evolving jurisprudence of the common law as a kind of bottom up discovery engine. It can only be such an engine, if economic agents can feel secure in the expectation that "the legal framework is fixed in its action and will not change." (173, Foucault paraphrasing Constitution of Liberty.)+ A fixed legal framework is uncertainty reducing, confidence inspiring, and allows for mutual coordination. This approach can allow existing principles to be reinterpreted, but as Lippmann noted, it can be abused as an instrument to preserve a status quo (which registers previous existing economic/social powers). So, it is not obvious that this allows for the transformation of legal principles where needed. As Hayek and with Hayek James Buchanan became more influential among ORDOs this more status quo friendly tendency is also visible among them.

Even so, as Foucault clearly recognizes, a third option (c), is visible among the (early) ORDOs. To be sure all ORDOs agree with Hayek that even soft forms of planning (associated with Keynes and New Deal) are to be rejected. But these early ORDOs recognize that intellectual and political leadership is needed to implement, and, where necessary, develop an apt legal framework. That is to say, an intellectual class must be nourished, students who combine/integrate law, history, economics, sociology and philosophy become the source of innovation in the principles that can guide the framework, or Gesellschaftspolitik. This class must, in particular, generate expertise in the workings of institutions within and among (legal, economic, social, etc.) orders as well as in their wider frameworks (see, especially, 167).

Admittedly, Foucault does not quite explicitly say (c), although his repeated quotes from Ropke and, especially, Eucken suggests indicate it. The problem, of course, is that (c) shades into views more commonly associated with Pareto and Schumpeter, an administrative technocracy/elite. But regardless whether the development of such a class was fully intended by Eucken (as I think it was), it is clear that is partially generated by the ORDO agenda  in light of (iii). And, I think, it is no surprise we encounter such a class in the institutions -- be it the 'Geneva' ones centered on internal trade and law, described by Quinn Slobodian or in the EU -- non-trivially influenced by ORDO thought.

I should close here, but I do want to note that the tension between (iii) and (iv) is characteristic of the European Central Bank's (ECB) problems during the 2007-2013 Euro-crisis. It needed new principles to act, but it felt constrained by a lack of legal mandate; and it lacked the intellectual class to supply it (and the political elites/democracies) with the principles to do so. From the perspective of the ORDOs, the ad hoc and upwardly redistributive nature of European monetary policy is clearly a threat to the survival of liberalism and rule of law, in terms of (i), if only because it has enshrined in law a class of economic agents (systematically significant banks) as privileged (because too big to fall). 

 

 

 

 

*To be clear, it is possible that Foucault wishes to distinguishes more sharply between the liberal utopians (by which he means Becker) from the American extreme right (if that right is nativist and authoritarian).

+It is interesting that Foucault does not treat Hayek as a liberal utopian here. As Pete Boettke notes the phrase is ued by Hayek in ���The Intellectuals and Socialism��� (1949).

Some dis-analogies between Two Basic Quantities (Space and Time) in Newton's Principia

Thus far it has seemed best to explain the senses in which less familiar words are to be taken in this treatise. Although time, space, place, and motion are very familiar to everyone, it must be noted that these quantities are popularly conceived solely with reference to the objects of sense perception. And this is the source of certain preconceptions; to eliminate them it is useful to distinguish these quantities into absolute and relative, true and apparent, mathematical and common.

Absolute, true, and mathematical time, in and of itself and of its own nature, without reference to anything external, flows uniformly and by another name is called duration. Relative, apparent, and common time is any sensible and external measure (precise or imprecise) of duration by means of motion; such a measure���for example, an hour, a day, a month, a year���is commonly used instead of true time.

Absolute space, of its own nature without reference to anything external, always remains homogeneous and immovable. Relative space is any movable measure or dimension of this absolute space; such a measure or dimension is determined by our senses from the situation of the space with respect to bodies and is popularly used for immovable space, as in the case of space under the earth or in the air or in the heavens, where the dimension is determined from the situation of the space with respect to the earth. Absolute and relative space are the same in species and in magnitude, but they do not always remain the same numerically. For example, if the earth moves, the space of our air, which in a relative sense and with respect to the earth always remains the same, will now be one part of the absolute space into which the air passes, now another part of it, and thus will be changing continually in an absolute sense.--Newton, Scholium to the Definitions, Principia, translated by Whitman & Cohen) 1999: 408-409).

My present interest is to articulate four dis-analogies in the paragraphs labeled, '1' and '2'.* For the purposes of analysis, I distinguish in Newton's thought between four basic quantities and three fundamental distinctions that Newton applies to these four basic quantities. The four basic quantities are ���time, space, place, and motion." The three fundamental distinctions are "absolute and relative';' "true and apparent;" and "mathematical and common.��� In what follows I focus only on basic quantities. Here I stipulate that such a quantity is abstract (see Smeenk & Schliesser 2017). And my interest here is primarily in the significance of the measures of two such basic quantities (time and space).

The first dis-analogy is related to the first sentence of each paragraph: ���true, and mathematical��� are present as modifications of (absolute) time and absent as modifications of (absolute) space. The second is related to the second sentence of each paragraph: that ���apparent, and common��� are present as modification of (relative) time and absent as modification of (relative) space. Katherine Brading (2017) and I (see here in 2013) have given different interpretations of the significance of these two dis-analogies, but I will bracket that today.

Third, there is an asymmetry in the measures Newton proposed. In order to measure time (an abstract quantity) Newton proposes to use the motion of bodies. However, in order to measure space (another abstract quantity) Newton proposes to use the ���situation��� of a part of space to another part. Crucially, the measure of space is identical in ���species and in magnitude��� to the thing it is a measure of (space). This identity (in species and magnitude) is omitted in the measure of time. Motions of bodies, even the regular motions of the solar system or pendulum clocks,  are not identical in species and magnitude to duration.

Brading (2019) explains what���s going on in the third dis-analogy. In her terminology, rods (that is, measures of space) are geometrical just as space is. Whereas clocks (that is, a regular motion of bodies) are, for Newton, dynamical systems. And whatever time ���in and of itself and of its own nature,��� might be it is not natural to think of it as a dynamical system. That is to say, there seems to be no possible gap between the measure(s) of space and space (Brading 2019: 160-161); there does seem a possible gap between the measure(s) of time and time (Brading 2019: 162).  

The reason why clocks are a dynamical system on Newton���s account is very nicely explained by Brading:

���It is central to the project of the Principia,��� she writes, ���that forces and the motions of bodies are inter-dependent. Newton emphasizes this in the Preface to the first edition:

For the basic problem of philosophy seems to be to discover the forces of nature from the phenomena of motions and then to demonstrate the other phenomena from these forces (Newton, 1999, p. 382)

This means that all clocks in the Principia are dynamical systems, because they are systems of bodies in motion, and motions and forces are inter-related,��� (Brading 2019: 162).���

That there is a possible gap between the measure of time and time in of itself is not just caused by the fact that the measure is a dynamical system and it seems odd to say this about time itself (where forces and bodies are absent), but also, and more important, because while time ���flows uniformly��� according to Newton���s stipulation (Brading 2019: 164), there is no guarantee that any measure, which is a natural process of bodies in motion, does so. And even when one constructs an artificial measure (a pendulum clock) or an abstract measure (a mathematical equation of time), there is no guarantee that its regularity and time���s uniformity are identical (Brading 2017: 34).

Now, it worth noting that Brading's use of "rods" is anachronistic because Newton uses "situations." Unfortunately, Newton does not explain what a 'situation' is. I think we can infer it is a kind of mental inspection or abstraction from other phenomenal details. Obviously, if you want to stabilize situations, rods are tempting instruments. 

As an aside, in his Essay, Locke, who I am treating here as an independent guide on contemporary use (not a source), treats 'situation' as an ingredient of complex ideas of (solid) bodies (2.23.9) and sometimes as a way to convey a relationship among sensible parts (2.4.4). 

The more important point, and here I am drawing on a note from Chris Smeenk is that "situation of the space with respect to bodies��� (August 28, 2020) involves bodies apart in some sense; because unoccupied spaces are invisible and so difficult to use as markers of situations. Now, Smeenk worries, I think, this reintroduces time or dynamics. If that is so, then the gap that Brading diagnoses on the measure of time vs time side, may also exist on the space vs measure of space side. 

The reason why I think that there need not be such a gap between the measure of space and space is that one can evaluate/inspect a situation at an instance if a situation is small enough. I say this for two reasons: (a) in the early modern period it is often thought that some ideas are secure, or adequate, if they can be inspected at once  or instantaneously (without intermediate relata).** And perhaps Newton thinks that some relatively small situations can function as foundational measures in this way such that situations and spaces are the same in "species and in magnitude." And (b) keeping situations small echoes the manner in which pendulums (a body in motion) can be a reliable measure of time (by keeping the arc small, as was well known to Newton and Huygens)

This (b) also helps qualify the nature of the gap between the measure of time and time diagnosed by Brading. (What follows is also indebted to Smeenk.) For, once the ideal time keeper has been mathematically articulated and shown to be possible, Newton can bound the amount of error associated with departures from this ideal case. In fact, from the mid 1680s Huygens shows how to start doing this for a pendum in practice. And so that the right thing to say here, and this is very much in the spirit of George Smith's teaching on Newton (which Brading, Smeenk, and I share as common ground), is that Newton also creates a research program of successive approximation into theoretically and empirically establishing the error bounds and methods for correcting them among our measures; in Smeenk's terms of "systematically improving time measurements to approach the ideal of a truly periodic system." (And so Newton helps initiate a research project into measure-theory.)+ And so, if there is a gap, there is also a forward-looking attempt to learn how to recognize and close it over (ahh) time.

The fourth dis-analogy is that the measure of time (bodies in motion) presupposes space or its measure while the measure of space (a situation) does not presuppose time (if the situation can be accessed at an instant). This point is clearly something Newton had reflected on. For in his earlier criticism of Descartes��� physics, Newton argues in De Gravitatione that in order to be able to conceptualize and analyze motion, one must make reference to some ���motionless being such as extension alone or space in so far as it is seen to be truly distinct from bodies,��� (Newton 2004: 35) One need not agree with Newton���s metaphysics here, to see that some fixed or ordered coordinate system, independent of the bodies, is required for the analysis of motion (with a starting place and a subsequent places, etc.).

 

 

*There are many more metaphysical dis-analogies between space and time in Newton's philosophy (see my 2013 handbook article; Gorham 2011; Gorham & Slowik 2014). 

**If they can't be inspected instantaneously, time and hidden commitments to simultaneity enter in through the back-door. This is something Smeenk worries about. Because I take Newton to be developing an idea of a 'temporal frame,' within which temporal relations are shared within the solar system, I am not worried here about Newtonian over-reliance on simultaneity. But it is clear that as situations become unstable or far apart it is by no means obvious that Newton can prevent a gap from opening up (of the sort that worries Smeenk).

+There is an unpublished presentation, "Indirect (i.e., derived) measurement and Evidence" by George Smith in honor of Patrick Suppes' 90th birthday that has influenced me directly.

On Adam Tooze, Ideology and Liberal Historiography

If Jamie Dimon quipped that to make sense of Dodd-Frank one needed the services of a lawyer and a psychiatrist, the same is no doubt true of the business of deciphering Donald Trump. But historians can contribute too.18 Trump offered to a bewildered present a throwback to an earlier era. Born in 1946, the same year as Bill Clinton, Trump would take office at seventy years of age, recycling a rancid version of the baby boomer narrative, which in the 1990s had still seemed fresh. Trump���s racial attitudes reflected the animosities of the era of civil rights, desegregation and New York in the 1970s. His boorish manners and sexism echoed the Manhattan party scene of the 1980s, when bond traders toasted one another as ���big swinging dicks.��� The sense of national crisis that drove his campaign was a reflux not so much of the recent past as of the first moment when modern Americans felt the world changing around them���the late 1970s and early 1980s. The trauma of defeat in Vietnam, America���s urban crisis and angry Japan bashing���thirty years on Trump was still harping on those fears, but now transposed onto new enemies: China, Islam and undocumented Latino immigrants.--Adam Tooze (2018) Crashed: How a Decade of Financial Crises Changed the World, 569.

One of the non-trivial sub-texts of Tooze's argument is the complacency of the Democrats and even the whole 'political class' in the face of the rise (and eventual) triumph of Trump. I don't want to claim that Tooze always or even often treats his targets as complacent, but it is a recurring theme in the book.* Now, interestingly, on Tooze's presentation, the complacent uniformly believe not just in technocratic skill, but also that by and large the present system is unavoidable (interestingly this flattens any difference between "the determinism of Thatcher and Merkel,"  and that this system is in some world-historical sense progressive ('progress' is repeated frequently in the book).

Tooze is very critical of the political class. Even so, as Perry Anderson notes (83ff.) in his by now (justly) famous review essay, Tooze also admires the complacents's skill which consist in, in part, in managing, so it seems, the irrationality that democracies naturally generate without undoing the liberal status quo (free trade, markets, glocal integragration, etc.) My interest in mentioning this is not Anderson's who is engaged in a polemic from the Marxist left against Tooze's self-proclaimed left-liberalism (p. 21 Crashed; p. 53 in Anderson).+

In fact, I quote the passage at the top of the post  because it is a place where Tooze alerts the reader to his own intellectual perspective (qua historian). And the way I read him, Tooze treats Trump as a kind of expression of atavistic sentiments and outlooks (e.g., 'throwback;' 'recycling;' 'reflux.' etc.) That is to say, just like the complacents, Tooze embraces, despite his sense of contingency, a notion of progress (in his terms an arc of  history) in which some ideas are modern and modernizing and others are old-fashioned or outright primitive. (Because of his progressive Marxism, Anderson can't really object to Tooze's stance here.)

To be sure, Tooze is doing multiple things in the quoted passage: first he explains, briefly, where Trump's ideas come from given Trump's social milieu and personal trajectory.  Second, he is conveying the sense of bewilderment of an establishment of having to confront these ideas and the manner in which they are performed anew. Third, he himself is judging these ideas/performance ("boorish," etc.) I don't think any of these three features are objectionable, and Tooze is transparent about them.

But, fourth, because Tooze treats these ideas as atavistic, he can't quite explain their nature (or their appeal) qua historian (or engaged citizen). So, while throughout the book, Tooze understands the grounds of popular dissatisfaction would with the status quo (the complacents), we're now left with a mystery why the progressive left could rarely capitalize on this dissatisfaction. For, and again Anderson is good on this, why did not ordinary citizens embrace the progressive Keynesian solutions Tooze advocates at the ballot box?

And, in my view, part of the problem for Tooze -- and this emblematic for much liberal thought in the broad sense -- is that he views the fears and desires Trump represents so well as atavistic to be overcome rather than as permanent possibilities of the human condition.** Now the moment one says this one draws the suspicion one is willing to slide into a normative defense of Trump and author authoritarian tendencies. (I have learned that to cast even minimum doubt on the reality of say, moral progress of humanity, is to invite opprobrium.)

But  the fact that those whose business is not to be bewildered were, as Tooze correctly notes, "bewildered" by Trump's rise (and Brexit, etc.) shows that there is a defect in the self-conception of contemporary liberalism. That's different from suggesting that there is a defect in contemporary liberalism that causes the rise of Trump and other authoritarian tendencies (that may be true, too). Since I care about liberalism's survival I think this is a defect in our self-conception worth addressing. The moment one respects what is taken as atavistic as a permanent possibility, one might govern and campaign (and communicate, and theorize, etc.) in a different fashion. For, even recognizing a possibility as a possibility allows one to better prevent it from happening and not treat it as mystery. It is also a start of a better explanation of why it did happen.

That is to say, I think one of the problems in contemporary liberalism is the unstated assumption that certain forms of progress are permanent and that once achieved no back-sliding is genuinely possible. But an ideology that takes its own victories for granted (in being justified and secure), after the fact, really is an ideology.*** What I admire in liberalism is a willingness to learn from experience and self-correct; it strikes me this is a feature within liberalism we need to change, or, better yet, revert back to the wisdom of Judith Shklar and Karl Popper (here; here; here) and be willing to expect the worst.

 

*The admiring, even hagiographic interpretation of Varoufakis as agent against such complacency is characteristic (e.g. "the deliberate default on the ECB���s bond holdings planned by Varoufakis was supposed to puncture this complacency.") I will treat Tooze treatment of Greece some other time. 

+Anderson (pp. 82ff) and Tooze also present themselves as defenders of 'democracy' (without really pinning themselves down to what this might mean consistently). Yet, both have a tendency to ignore how the institutional status quo is in many places shaped by democratic processes.

**My own blogging from 2015 and 2016 reflected my recognition that as a phenomenon Trump represents a permanent possibility in liberal democracy.

***This one reason why Kuhn's work on paradigms was so controversial; because he undermined this self-conception of scientific progress.

Le Bon and the Road to Serfdom before Hayek, and Judith Butler

This progressive restriction of liberties shows itself in every country in a special shape which Herbert Spencer has not pointed out; it is that the passing of these innumerable series of legislative measures, all of them in a general way of a restrictive order, conduces necessarily to augment the number, the power, and the influence of the functionaries charged with their application.
These functionaries tend in this way to become the veritable masters of civilised countries. Their power is all the greater owing to the fact that, amidst the incessant transfer of authority, the administrative caste is alone in being untouched by these changes, is alone in possessing irresponsibility, impersonality, and perpetuity. There is no more oppressive despotism than that which presents itself under this triple form.
   This incessant creation of restrictive laws and regulations, surrounding the pettiest actions of existence with the most complicated formalities, inevitably has for its result the confining within narrower and narrower limits of the sphere in which the citizen may move freely. Victims of the delusion that equality and liberty are the better assured by the multiplication of laws, nations daily consent to put up with trammels increasingly burdensome. They do not accept this legislation with impunity. Accustomed to put up with every yoke, they soon end by desiring servitude, and lose all spontaneousness and energy. They are then no more than vain shadows, passive, unresisting and powerless automata.

    Arrived at this point, the individual is bound to seek outside himself the forces he no longer finds within him. The functions of governments necessarily increase in proportion as the indifference and helplessness of the citizens grow. They it is who must necessarily exhibit the initiative, enterprising, and guiding spirit in which private persons are lacking. It falls on them to undertake everything, direct everything, and take everything under their protection. The State becomes an all-powerful god. Still experience shows that the power of such gods was never either very durable or very strong.

    This progressive restriction of all liberties in the case of certain peoples, in spite of an outward licence that gives them the illusion that these liberties are still in their possession, seems at least as much a consequence of their old age as of any particular system. It constitutes one of the precursory symptoms of that decadent phase which up to now no civilisation has escaped. Judging by the lessons of the past, and by the symptoms that strike the attention on every side, several of our modern civilisations have reached that phase of extreme old age which precedes decadence.--Gustave Le Bon (1986 [1895] [Psychologie des Foules] The Crowd: A Study of the Popular Mind, pp. 136-7 (translation of second edition published by Dover)

As regular readers know, I have an interest in the pre-history of the road to serfdom thesis (hereafter RTST), which I take to entail that once one democratically switches to an extensively planned economy ('collectivism" in the terminology of the 1930s-40s), the needs of planning and stability will ensure that a dictatorship will follow. For example, I have noted that (recall) in 1938, when reviewing Lippmann's The Good Society, Frank Knight attributes the thesis to Lippmann (which I think is a mistake), but Lippmann, in turn, is inspired by Von Mises (who does endorse a version of RTST and this is familiar to Knight).*

Because Knight think government by discussion is constitutive of democracy, and so permit all kinds of political u-turns, Knight rejects RTST. What Knight, who did not attend the Lippmann colloquium, misses, as Foucault shows, is that for some neo-liberals RTST is not a prediction about the future evolution of political economy, but from the perspective of the ORDOs who lived through the 1930s historical fact in Germany. So, as an analytical tool it has already proved its mettle in shaping liberal self-understanding. (I return to this below.)

I had always assumed that RTST as an analytical tool, was invented by liberals for liberal purposes, even a liberal art of government of the sort that eventually became associated, somewhat narrowly, with Hayek's cold war political economy. But that's wrong because while Le Bon is responding to liberal hegemony (and Spencer's political economy) he is by no means a liberal himself.

We can discern in Le Bon a species, perhaps an ur-species, of RTST. In context Le Bon is interested in linking his analysis of crowds (recall especially juries and parliaments) with a natural even "inevitable" (137) cycle of rise and fall of civilizations. For Le Bon democratic assemblies inevitably create conditions under which they empower the administrative state's ""petty sovereigns." the term is (recall) Judith Butler's, (although I have noted that we find concern with their power in Adam Smith's criticism of Chinese and French centralized, government which empowers such petty sovereigns). And Butler would agree with how despotic such petty sovereigns are.** (Smith would, too, but thinks a corporate monopoly as sovereign is even worse.)

But what Le Bon notices is that the empowering of such administrative petty sovereigns can occur just as much from a democratic center as a more despotic center. This is not a bug, but a virtue of Le Bon's analysis. Because Le Bon rejects the primacy of the idea that institutions shape reality through incentives. Rather for him national culture (what he sometimes calls racial) shapes the function institutions. I hope to return to his important critique of the primacy of incentive-shaping-institutions-paradigm some other time.

While Le Bon is a critic of socialism, I think for him the RTST is a natural effect of any democratic even liberal ("equality and liberty ") parliamentary process. This is, in part, due to the fact that on his view parliaments are incapable of systematically beneficial outcomes guided by true technical expertise.+ Swayed by public opinion, demagogues, and venality, they become themselves like hypnotized automata (characteristic of crowds).+ But it is also due to the fact that in trying to facilitate social friction, their own legislation increases both the number and complexity of laws and simultaneously empowers a technocratic class that becomes unaccountable (and the only class not unfree).

We see here how the RTST is combined with the critique -- later embraced by both libertarians and theorists like Butler -- of the unfreedom of the administrative state which (and here there are republican roots) clothes itself in rule of law, but is excuse for arbitrary power. Strikingly for Le Bon, the rise of such fundamental unfreedom, is compatible with the more illusory sense of emancipation ("outward licence"). That is to say, Le Bon also anticipates the recent, gendered, conservative and neo-marxist criticism of the sexual revolution as a manifestation of neoliberal ideology. 

And because unlike Knight, Le Bon has no faith in the uptake of ideas critical of the fundamental commitments of an age, he has no hope (or interest) in warding off the civilizational collapse to come. Whatever Hayek may or may not have thought, for Le Bon the slippery slope has only one route, down.++

 

 

*This also helps explain Knight's sense that Hayek's RTST was old hat.

**It is an open and important question to what degree modern totalitarianism goes beyond the despotism diagnosed by Le Bon.

+For Le Bon this is partly because there is no genuine knowledge of general social complex. When parliament does pass sound legislation is generally due to lack of interest by most members such that localized specialist knowledge can prevail.

++I am unfamiliar with any references to Le Bon in the writings of Mises and Hayek, but  Rudolf and Walter Eucken as well as Walter Lippmann were careful readers of Le Bon; about that some other time.