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Public Goods, Private Goods.
Much political thinking today, particularly that influenced by liberalism, assumes a clear distinction between the public and the private, and holds that the correct understanding of this should weigh heavily in our attitude to human goods. It is, for instance, widely held that the state may address human action in the ''public'' realm but not in the ''private.'' In Public Goods, Private Goods Raymond Geuss exposes the profound flaws of such thinking and calls for a more nuanced approach. Drawing on a series of colorful examples from the ancient world, he illustrates some of the many ways in which actions can in fact be understood as public or private.
The first chapter discusses Diogenes the Cynic, who flouted conventions about what should be public and what should be private by, among other things, masturbating in the Athenian marketplace. Next comes an analysis of Julius Caesar's decision to defy the Senate by crossing the Rubicon with his army; in doing so, Caesar asserted his dignity as a private person while acting in a public capacity. The third chapter considers St. Augustine's retreat from public life to contemplate his own, private spiritual condition. In the fourth, Geuss goes on to examine recent liberal views, questioning, in particular, common assumptions about the importance of public dialogue and the purportedly unlimited possibilities humans have for reaching consensus. He suggests that the liberal concern to maintain and protect, even at a very high cost, an inviolable ''private sphere'' for each individual is confused.
Geuss concludes that a view of politics and morality derived from Hobbes and Nietzsche is a more realistic and enlightening way than modern liberalism to think about human goods. Ultimately, he cautions, a simplistic understanding of privacy leads to simplistic ideas about what the state is and is not justified in doing.
The first chapter discusses Diogenes the Cynic, who flouted conventions about what should be public and what should be private by, among other things, masturbating in the Athenian marketplace. Next comes an analysis of Julius Caesar's decision to defy the Senate by crossing the Rubicon with his army; in doing so, Caesar asserted his dignity as a private person while acting in a public capacity. The third chapter considers St. Augustine's retreat from public life to contemplate his own, private spiritual condition. In the fourth, Geuss goes on to examine recent liberal views, questioning, in particular, common assumptions about the importance of public dialogue and the purportedly unlimited possibilities humans have for reaching consensus. He suggests that the liberal concern to maintain and protect, even at a very high cost, an inviolable ''private sphere'' for each individual is confused.
Geuss concludes that a view of politics and morality derived from Hobbes and Nietzsche is a more realistic and enlightening way than modern liberalism to think about human goods. Ultimately, he cautions, a simplistic understanding of privacy leads to simplistic ideas about what the state is and is not justified in doing.
- GenresPhilosophyPolitics
152 pages, Hardcover
First published August 1, 2001
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About the author
Raymond Geuss
50 books86 followersRaymond Geuss, Emeritus Professor in the Faculty of Philosophy, University of Cambridge, is a political philosopher and scholar of 19th and 20th century European philosophy.
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Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews
May 3, 2017
This is how you write creative political philosophy. Raymond Geuss, ever the iconoclast - albeit the most erudite iconoclast you'll ever come across - turns to history to tackle the distinction between the public and private, showing it for the cobbled together and multidimensional difference that it in fact is. Which is to say, certainly not something to underwrite certain liberal theories of politics in any substantial way. Making his case through three exemplary instances of Western antiquity - Diogenes' masturbation in the public square, Caesar's decision to cross the Rubicon (against orders from the Roman senate), and Augustine's spiritual withdrawal from the world - Geuss hammers home just how messy the public/private distinction can really be.
While on its own not quite enough to unravel the threads of liberalism, Geuss's little book does pull at just enough wool to sting - no one in its wake would, at the very least, be able to take the distinction for granted, and even then, one would have to tiptoe around the coals cast upon it by this work. Otherwise though, this is just a marvelously fun read. Geuss is at least as much a classicist as he is a philosopher, and to be furnished by his insights into say, the nature of shame in ancient Greece, the etymology and concept of the res publica in the Roman empire, and the role of love in Augustine's religious epistemology, is to be edified by one the of sharpest intellects writing in the English language. If not for the critique of liberalism, for those tidbits alone would this be worth one's time (and not much of it at that).
While on its own not quite enough to unravel the threads of liberalism, Geuss's little book does pull at just enough wool to sting - no one in its wake would, at the very least, be able to take the distinction for granted, and even then, one would have to tiptoe around the coals cast upon it by this work. Otherwise though, this is just a marvelously fun read. Geuss is at least as much a classicist as he is a philosopher, and to be furnished by his insights into say, the nature of shame in ancient Greece, the etymology and concept of the res publica in the Roman empire, and the role of love in Augustine's religious epistemology, is to be edified by one the of sharpest intellects writing in the English language. If not for the critique of liberalism, for those tidbits alone would this be worth one's time (and not much of it at that).
July 21, 2014
What does public masturbation, Adam's capacity to invoke an erection in the Garden of Eden, and Julius Caesar's dignity have to do with liberalism? Quite a lot it turns out.
Geuss' central thesis is that the public/private distinction essential to Liberalism is not some single unitary concept and normative primitive, but rather multiple and often conflicting ideals. One one account, public & private describe facts about ontological and epistemic privilege; on another, public & private are normative claims concerning what behaviour should or should not be displayed to others; while on another still, public & private describe the subjects of benefit and harm for particular actions.
An argument by anecdote, Geuss skilfully weaves a tail from historical example to contemporary liberal political theory. His logic is focused and his writing is lucid, although there are many assumptions made about the readers familiarity with political terms in greek & german that lack translation or explanation. This book is probably not of much interest to those who do not work in political theory but it makes a distinctly enjoyable change from typically dry analytic philosophy.
Geuss' central thesis is that the public/private distinction essential to Liberalism is not some single unitary concept and normative primitive, but rather multiple and often conflicting ideals. One one account, public & private describe facts about ontological and epistemic privilege; on another, public & private are normative claims concerning what behaviour should or should not be displayed to others; while on another still, public & private describe the subjects of benefit and harm for particular actions.
An argument by anecdote, Geuss skilfully weaves a tail from historical example to contemporary liberal political theory. His logic is focused and his writing is lucid, although there are many assumptions made about the readers familiarity with political terms in greek & german that lack translation or explanation. This book is probably not of much interest to those who do not work in political theory but it makes a distinctly enjoyable change from typically dry analytic philosophy.
April 4, 2025
The central thesis of the book is that there is no clear distinction between public and private. In fact, it is stronger than that. Geuss writes: ‘[some] ways of seeing the world… seem irresistibly plausible…to some members of certain groups, although outsiders can see in them only tissues of delusion or theoretically ad hoc constructions. The public/private distinction is such an ideological concretion’. Ultimately, though, I’m not sure Geuss does enough to really support such a bold and provocative claim. The general argument of the book takes us through different historical conceptions of the distinction (through Diogenes, Caesar, and Augustine) and this culminates in the observation that none of these historical conceptions map on to our modern notion. But so what? That doesn’t establish that the distinction has nothing going for it, philosophically speaking.
A standard way of drawing the distinction between public and private is to designate a sphere of life ‘private’ when the state cannot justifiably interfere with that domain. Citing privacy considerations, therefore, has the force of impugning a state’s legitimacy. The public sphere would, then, be that domain where state interference is legitimate. What is wrong with this standard story? Geuss’ response would seem to be that it relies on a prior principle or normative argument: “It is not that we discover what the distinction is between the public and private and then proceed to determine what value attitudes we should have to it, but rather that given our values and knowledge we decide what we think needs regulating…and then stamp them “public”’. So ultimately, his claim is this: the designation “private” has meant different things in different times and places and by itself does not carry any genuine normative weight. If this is the thesis, however, it is a bit deflating. Despite the grand promises to break free of the distinction, we end up with an injunction to be more reflective in our use of it — that merely calling something private is not the end of the story. But who ever thought it was? Mill’s defence of privacy was tied up with ideals of personal perfectibility, social progress, and the harm principle. Thus, who is this book for other than the most bone headed liberals who believe the word “private” is somehow magical?
Perhaps I simply have not read clearly enough. Perhaps I am missing something. But the general argument, if you can call it that, seems really weak.
However, I did really enjoy some parts of the book. Especially the first three chapters. Though the digressions can get annoying when one is trying to follow the general argument of the book, they lead to some really entertaining vignettes and astute observations. (There is a particularly enlightening discussion of Augustine on self knowledge that I profited from — indeed, I want to read some more Augustine now!)
The twin influences of historicist political theory and analytic philosophy sometimes make for a great combination (especially for those of us trained in both disciplines from the British context), namely, dazzlingly clear histories of ideas connected up to contemporary notions. Yet at other times it is an awkward combination leading to pedantic taxonomies where they do not feel needed.
This isn’t my first time reading Geuss and I always feel ambivalent when I read his stuff. He’s bursting with interesting observations and erudite reading and he’s so good at connecting up disparate traditions. He has such a good eye for cracks in our thinking — but he never quite applies the chisel.
A standard way of drawing the distinction between public and private is to designate a sphere of life ‘private’ when the state cannot justifiably interfere with that domain. Citing privacy considerations, therefore, has the force of impugning a state’s legitimacy. The public sphere would, then, be that domain where state interference is legitimate. What is wrong with this standard story? Geuss’ response would seem to be that it relies on a prior principle or normative argument: “It is not that we discover what the distinction is between the public and private and then proceed to determine what value attitudes we should have to it, but rather that given our values and knowledge we decide what we think needs regulating…and then stamp them “public”’. So ultimately, his claim is this: the designation “private” has meant different things in different times and places and by itself does not carry any genuine normative weight. If this is the thesis, however, it is a bit deflating. Despite the grand promises to break free of the distinction, we end up with an injunction to be more reflective in our use of it — that merely calling something private is not the end of the story. But who ever thought it was? Mill’s defence of privacy was tied up with ideals of personal perfectibility, social progress, and the harm principle. Thus, who is this book for other than the most bone headed liberals who believe the word “private” is somehow magical?
Perhaps I simply have not read clearly enough. Perhaps I am missing something. But the general argument, if you can call it that, seems really weak.
However, I did really enjoy some parts of the book. Especially the first three chapters. Though the digressions can get annoying when one is trying to follow the general argument of the book, they lead to some really entertaining vignettes and astute observations. (There is a particularly enlightening discussion of Augustine on self knowledge that I profited from — indeed, I want to read some more Augustine now!)
The twin influences of historicist political theory and analytic philosophy sometimes make for a great combination (especially for those of us trained in both disciplines from the British context), namely, dazzlingly clear histories of ideas connected up to contemporary notions. Yet at other times it is an awkward combination leading to pedantic taxonomies where they do not feel needed.
This isn’t my first time reading Geuss and I always feel ambivalent when I read his stuff. He’s bursting with interesting observations and erudite reading and he’s so good at connecting up disparate traditions. He has such a good eye for cracks in our thinking — but he never quite applies the chisel.
March 17, 2018
كتاب روان و خوش خواني بود و ترجمهرمناسبي داشت.
به بحث عمومي و خصوصي از سه منظر متفاوت زيست اجتماعي (بي شرمي و سپهر عمومي)، مصلحت عمومي و خصوصي (رس پوبليكا) و زندگي شخصي (امر روحاني و خصوصي) پرداخته.
فصل رس پوبليكا نكات جالبي راجع به مصلحت مطرح مي كنه و موضوعي رو تحت عنوان "دغدغه" پيش مي كشه كه قطعا خواندن اين فصل براي حقوق خوانان عمومي و اهالس فلسفه سياسي مورد نياز ه.
به بحث عمومي و خصوصي از سه منظر متفاوت زيست اجتماعي (بي شرمي و سپهر عمومي)، مصلحت عمومي و خصوصي (رس پوبليكا) و زندگي شخصي (امر روحاني و خصوصي) پرداخته.
فصل رس پوبليكا نكات جالبي راجع به مصلحت مطرح مي كنه و موضوعي رو تحت عنوان "دغدغه" پيش مي كشه كه قطعا خواندن اين فصل براي حقوق خوانان عمومي و اهالس فلسفه سياسي مورد نياز ه.
June 6, 2022
When we say a person has a "right to privacy," we mean that person has a private realm that others ought not to intrude on. "Intrusion" can mean anything from interfering with (eg, arresting for sodomy) to learning about (eg, medical records). The "others" might be variously anyone, non-intimates, strangers, or government officials.
Raymond Geuss is a historically-minded political philosopher, and he doesn't think much of the right to privacy. There's something to it, he thinks, but not that much. This book contains two arguments, one philosophical and one historical. I'll start with the historical. Geuss goes forward through time, but I'll tell the story backwards because I think it's clearer that way.
--- HISTORICAL ARGUMENT ---
Basically, the timeless-seeming idea of the "right to privacy" appeared on the scene in 1890 when "a rich society lady, deeply disapproved that newspapers were publishing reports about the parties she gave, and her husband set about concocting a reason for imposing restrictions on such reporting." The husband was Louis Brandeis, later appointed to the US Supreme Court.
If we set aside the "right to" part, we can go further back in time to find the earliest concept of a private realm recognizable as such. The exact criteria Geuss uses for identifying it aren't clear to me, but it is something like this: "a realm of action accessible to all individuals that is valued for its not being susceptible to intrusion by others." In the Western philosophical tradition Augustine might have been first (it's unclear if Geuss is claiming this) with his "inner" realm of "private" thoughts and desires, valued highly because because through discipline a proper relation to God can be attained.
Geuss doesn't think you get anything quite like the notion of a private realm before Augustine. There is a notion of a public realm, but it doesn't have a converse. This comes out starkly in the Roman Republic when the Senate demands that Caesar return to Rome as a "private citizen." This sounds like our distinction but is still a ways from it. The contrast is not between two realms but between the status of being a magistrate (charged with acting for the common good) and not being a magistrate. If you Google the etymology, you can confirm how far this is from the contemporary idea: the etymology of "public" is "pubes" (ie, ironically, what we call "private parts") because that is what indicates a male was physically mature, could bear arms, and thus counted as part of the people as it was then conceived.
Alternatively, we might try to locate our contemporary public/private distinction in the Roman idea that what was inappropriate about Caesar crossing the Rubicon was that he abused his magistracy by acting not in the public interest but in his private interest. That's closer, but not quite: the gripe at the time was that Caesar acted to enhance his "dignitas," which is essentially a public thing, not private.
Going back further to some of the earliest Western philosophical thought, it seems like the notion of a public realm with special rules was always there. As soon as we get spaces like the marketplace, in which strangers might rub shoulders, a principle emerges that individuals should take care not to draw undue attention to themselves there. Diogenes infamously violates this principle by masturbating in public; Socrates by arguing with others; etc. So there does arise a distinct notion of a public realm as far back as strangers have been behaving obnoxiously.
--- PHILOSOPHICAL ARGUMENT ---
The philosophical argument recaps and evaluates liberal political thinking on the subject. Geuss focuses on the philosopher John Dewey. He thinks Dewey has an especially clear formulation of how we should draw the line between the public realm and the private realm. The key insight is that we do *not* go looking for the bounds of the private realm, discover them, and then resolve not permit intrusion there. That's backwards.
Rather, the best liberal thinkers agree it's the other way around: we start with our values and knowledge about what sorts of things need regulating to promote the common good, and then we stamp those things "public." Whatever remains is stamped "private."
It's such a flexible formulation. Unfortunately, it's *so* flexible it doesn't rule out what we'd usually think is a paradigm case of invading privacy: "In Europe up to the eighteenth century the holding of heretical beliefs was one of the public crime par excellence 'through which the whole republic, city, or other community is harmed'; the suppression of heresy was therefore in everyone's interest." Liberal principles don't produce progressive policies on sexual and religious freedom until you stipulate that three-quarters of the pre-1700 sensational claims about the divine are false.
What surprised me is that Geuss doesn't think the private realm has to be completely empty or ill-defined. He notes that there is a tradition starting with Hobbes's observations about human nature ("That I do not immediately know what beliefs and values a stranger whom I encounter has, and also do not immediately know what his or her intentions are toward me...") and going through Hegel and then the Frankfurt School that try to build out private realm as a place "for a form of self-assertion that was not socially destructive." He notes that Axel Honneth's The Struggle for Recognition (1991) "has developed this line in a highly systematic way."
--- SUMMARY THOUGHTS ---
This is an interesting book, that points in a dozen different directions via suggestive remarks and intriguing endnotes.
I have to warn potential readers that the structure is frustrating. With the historical account its a conceptual genealogy that doesn't want to call itself that, and as a result the reader is left trying to "see around the bend," and it's really not apparent why we are making some of the turns we do until the journey is over.
There are seemingly five or six major themes running through this short book, many of which never culminated in anything I could recognize as a thesis (eg, something about disgust as a trans-historic biological fact that shapes theology (unclean lips, etc.) and the norms in marketplaces from ancient Greece through contemporary Europe?). Also I'd have liked to have three more chapters on that path from Hobbes through Hegel and the Frankfurt School -- "Big If True," as they say.
Even so, it is worthwhile read. Geuss jams more insights in a chapter than most people put in a book.
Raymond Geuss is a historically-minded political philosopher, and he doesn't think much of the right to privacy. There's something to it, he thinks, but not that much. This book contains two arguments, one philosophical and one historical. I'll start with the historical. Geuss goes forward through time, but I'll tell the story backwards because I think it's clearer that way.
--- HISTORICAL ARGUMENT ---
Basically, the timeless-seeming idea of the "right to privacy" appeared on the scene in 1890 when "a rich society lady, deeply disapproved that newspapers were publishing reports about the parties she gave, and her husband set about concocting a reason for imposing restrictions on such reporting." The husband was Louis Brandeis, later appointed to the US Supreme Court.
If we set aside the "right to" part, we can go further back in time to find the earliest concept of a private realm recognizable as such. The exact criteria Geuss uses for identifying it aren't clear to me, but it is something like this: "a realm of action accessible to all individuals that is valued for its not being susceptible to intrusion by others." In the Western philosophical tradition Augustine might have been first (it's unclear if Geuss is claiming this) with his "inner" realm of "private" thoughts and desires, valued highly because because through discipline a proper relation to God can be attained.
Geuss doesn't think you get anything quite like the notion of a private realm before Augustine. There is a notion of a public realm, but it doesn't have a converse. This comes out starkly in the Roman Republic when the Senate demands that Caesar return to Rome as a "private citizen." This sounds like our distinction but is still a ways from it. The contrast is not between two realms but between the status of being a magistrate (charged with acting for the common good) and not being a magistrate. If you Google the etymology, you can confirm how far this is from the contemporary idea: the etymology of "public" is "pubes" (ie, ironically, what we call "private parts") because that is what indicates a male was physically mature, could bear arms, and thus counted as part of the people as it was then conceived.
Alternatively, we might try to locate our contemporary public/private distinction in the Roman idea that what was inappropriate about Caesar crossing the Rubicon was that he abused his magistracy by acting not in the public interest but in his private interest. That's closer, but not quite: the gripe at the time was that Caesar acted to enhance his "dignitas," which is essentially a public thing, not private.
Going back further to some of the earliest Western philosophical thought, it seems like the notion of a public realm with special rules was always there. As soon as we get spaces like the marketplace, in which strangers might rub shoulders, a principle emerges that individuals should take care not to draw undue attention to themselves there. Diogenes infamously violates this principle by masturbating in public; Socrates by arguing with others; etc. So there does arise a distinct notion of a public realm as far back as strangers have been behaving obnoxiously.
--- PHILOSOPHICAL ARGUMENT ---
The philosophical argument recaps and evaluates liberal political thinking on the subject. Geuss focuses on the philosopher John Dewey. He thinks Dewey has an especially clear formulation of how we should draw the line between the public realm and the private realm. The key insight is that we do *not* go looking for the bounds of the private realm, discover them, and then resolve not permit intrusion there. That's backwards.
Rather, the best liberal thinkers agree it's the other way around: we start with our values and knowledge about what sorts of things need regulating to promote the common good, and then we stamp those things "public." Whatever remains is stamped "private."
It's such a flexible formulation. Unfortunately, it's *so* flexible it doesn't rule out what we'd usually think is a paradigm case of invading privacy: "In Europe up to the eighteenth century the holding of heretical beliefs was one of the public crime par excellence 'through which the whole republic, city, or other community is harmed'; the suppression of heresy was therefore in everyone's interest." Liberal principles don't produce progressive policies on sexual and religious freedom until you stipulate that three-quarters of the pre-1700 sensational claims about the divine are false.
What surprised me is that Geuss doesn't think the private realm has to be completely empty or ill-defined. He notes that there is a tradition starting with Hobbes's observations about human nature ("That I do not immediately know what beliefs and values a stranger whom I encounter has, and also do not immediately know what his or her intentions are toward me...") and going through Hegel and then the Frankfurt School that try to build out private realm as a place "for a form of self-assertion that was not socially destructive." He notes that Axel Honneth's The Struggle for Recognition (1991) "has developed this line in a highly systematic way."
--- SUMMARY THOUGHTS ---
This is an interesting book, that points in a dozen different directions via suggestive remarks and intriguing endnotes.
I have to warn potential readers that the structure is frustrating. With the historical account its a conceptual genealogy that doesn't want to call itself that, and as a result the reader is left trying to "see around the bend," and it's really not apparent why we are making some of the turns we do until the journey is over.
There are seemingly five or six major themes running through this short book, many of which never culminated in anything I could recognize as a thesis (eg, something about disgust as a trans-historic biological fact that shapes theology (unclean lips, etc.) and the norms in marketplaces from ancient Greece through contemporary Europe?). Also I'd have liked to have three more chapters on that path from Hobbes through Hegel and the Frankfurt School -- "Big If True," as they say.
Even so, it is worthwhile read. Geuss jams more insights in a chapter than most people put in a book.
June 25, 2017
compact nietzschean-foucauldian genealogy (in the recent british academic style) of 'the' public/private distinction aimed at a critique of liberalism, based on readings of (1) diogenes the cynic's acts of public shamelessness, (2) caesar's crossing of the rubicon contra senatorial decree for the sake of his own 'dignitas', and (3) augustinian spirituality as a form of self-knowledge of one's desires acquirable only through dialogue with god.
diogenes is read as a hellenistic rationalist (with the end of self-sufficiency; cf. typical readings of stoics, skeptics, etc. aiming at 'happiness'); geuss's discussion has social-theoretic nuance; and as he notes, 'to follow the cynic path is to be deeply unpolitical'.
the reading of augustine is surprisingly theoretically incisive, for such a short sketch.
diogenes is read as a hellenistic rationalist (with the end of self-sufficiency; cf. typical readings of stoics, skeptics, etc. aiming at 'happiness'); geuss's discussion has social-theoretic nuance; and as he notes, 'to follow the cynic path is to be deeply unpolitical'.
the reading of augustine is surprisingly theoretically incisive, for such a short sketch.
August 1, 2024
I would say, having read six of Geuss's books now, that it falls short of his absolute best ('History and Illusion in Politics' and 'The Idea of a Critical Theory'), but is resolutely worth reading.
The book's basic argument is simple: liberals think there is a coherent and ontologically stable distinction to make between the "public" and the "private" around which we should organize our political and social lives. However, Geuss argues, this liberal idea is really the confused conflation of at least three conceptually distinct ways to draw a division between "public" and "private." Geuss makes this argument by providing three examples from preliberal political life which demonstrate three separate ways to draw the distinction between "public" and private." The one weakness of the book is that Geuss then does not show as determinately as I would have liked that these three distinctions show that the specifically Liberal notion of the private/public distinction is confused. His discussion leaves open the possibility that the liberal concepts of publicity and privacy are perfectly coherent even if the semantic content of 'public' and 'private' in our everyday usage are eliding more than we would expect. For what it's worth, I think Geuss is correct about the Liberal concepts, but he doesn't really prove it.
That the central argument of the book doesn't come together may seem like a really serious caveat to make about a work of philosophy, but like the best of non-analytic philosophy, there is tremendous value to the book outside of its strict argument. It is replete with interesting observations and details about the historical developments of Greek and Roman political life. For example, Diogenes' conception of "cosmopolitanism" is totally different than the one we are accustomed to from contemporary thinkers like Anthony-Appiah and Amartya sen. Diogenes was a "cosmopolitan" because he rejected the idea that a society could ever warrant allegiance. It is not the positive vision of valuing a global society, but rejecting of the idea that any particular society could be valuable. The last main chapter, which discusses liberalism and the consequences of rejecting its Millian conception of the private and public offers Geuss an excellent venue to contrast Liberal views about political life with his preferred Nietzschean and Marxian ones. One of his most striking sections is assessing different ways to think about the idea of a "common good" given that there is no single "public" from which we can derive the idea of a common good.
Geuss is one of the few professional philosophers remaining who rejects central assumptions of the Enlightenment and liberalism, and therefore offers a perspective totally outside of the typical debates in analytic political philosophy. If you want to think about the world and the role of politics within it in a fundamentally different way, then you really can't do much better than 'Public Goods, Private Goods,' though 'History and Illusion in Politics' provides the more comprehensive picture painted somewhat abstractly here.
As a final note, make sure you pick up the paperback edition of the book. It includes a second preface to the book that provides both valuable methodological context for his argument (he's not trying to provide the deductive-style argument against Liberalism I faulted him for failing to provide, though I still think that is to the book's detriment) and offers the best articulation I have found of what Geuss finds valuable about genealogy as a form of criticism. His style of philosophical analysis is totally alien to people versed in Analytic philosophy and indirectly touches on some foundational topics when it comes to thinking about the world.
The book's basic argument is simple: liberals think there is a coherent and ontologically stable distinction to make between the "public" and the "private" around which we should organize our political and social lives. However, Geuss argues, this liberal idea is really the confused conflation of at least three conceptually distinct ways to draw a division between "public" and "private." Geuss makes this argument by providing three examples from preliberal political life which demonstrate three separate ways to draw the distinction between "public" and private." The one weakness of the book is that Geuss then does not show as determinately as I would have liked that these three distinctions show that the specifically Liberal notion of the private/public distinction is confused. His discussion leaves open the possibility that the liberal concepts of publicity and privacy are perfectly coherent even if the semantic content of 'public' and 'private' in our everyday usage are eliding more than we would expect. For what it's worth, I think Geuss is correct about the Liberal concepts, but he doesn't really prove it.
That the central argument of the book doesn't come together may seem like a really serious caveat to make about a work of philosophy, but like the best of non-analytic philosophy, there is tremendous value to the book outside of its strict argument. It is replete with interesting observations and details about the historical developments of Greek and Roman political life. For example, Diogenes' conception of "cosmopolitanism" is totally different than the one we are accustomed to from contemporary thinkers like Anthony-Appiah and Amartya sen. Diogenes was a "cosmopolitan" because he rejected the idea that a society could ever warrant allegiance. It is not the positive vision of valuing a global society, but rejecting of the idea that any particular society could be valuable. The last main chapter, which discusses liberalism and the consequences of rejecting its Millian conception of the private and public offers Geuss an excellent venue to contrast Liberal views about political life with his preferred Nietzschean and Marxian ones. One of his most striking sections is assessing different ways to think about the idea of a "common good" given that there is no single "public" from which we can derive the idea of a common good.
Geuss is one of the few professional philosophers remaining who rejects central assumptions of the Enlightenment and liberalism, and therefore offers a perspective totally outside of the typical debates in analytic political philosophy. If you want to think about the world and the role of politics within it in a fundamentally different way, then you really can't do much better than 'Public Goods, Private Goods,' though 'History and Illusion in Politics' provides the more comprehensive picture painted somewhat abstractly here.
As a final note, make sure you pick up the paperback edition of the book. It includes a second preface to the book that provides both valuable methodological context for his argument (he's not trying to provide the deductive-style argument against Liberalism I faulted him for failing to provide, though I still think that is to the book's detriment) and offers the best articulation I have found of what Geuss finds valuable about genealogy as a form of criticism. His style of philosophical analysis is totally alien to people versed in Analytic philosophy and indirectly touches on some foundational topics when it comes to thinking about the world.
July 9, 2012
The argument is that the public/private distinction isn't as clear-cut as we generally imagine. It's an interesting insight. He talks about human universals and cultural specifics, with an eye back to ancient Greece.
The author talks a lot about disgust: disgusting things are supposed to be private, and in public we're not supposed to call too much attention to ourselves (i.e. we are supposed to practice what he calls "disattendability").
Usually I enjoy esoteric wordplay, both for nuance and for beauty, but in this case I thought the language could have been a lot simpler. Referring to a common misconception about the birth of Christianity as a "unitary aboriginal Sinnstiftung" wasn't necessary; he could have just said the religion didn't spring up overnight. (Or maybe it wasn't necessary for me to try to read this book after midnight.)
The author also says in the 2003 preface that "this book is part of a large project of criticizing liberalism" but I cannot recognize his definition of liberalism. He makes it clear that he's referring to a European idea with its roots in the eighteenth and nineteenth century; it has something to do with protecting private life from too much government intrusion and tolerating others' opinions, but I think that's only a piece of it. He bothers to critique it because he thinks it's still influential in today's politics. However, I don't see exactly how this kind of liberalism is active today as a discrete ideology; it seems embedded in a lot of different ideologies. If it's evolved beyond recognition then maybe we need to move on to critique whatever it's morphed into. I am just a little unclear about the motivation behind the book.
The author talks a lot about disgust: disgusting things are supposed to be private, and in public we're not supposed to call too much attention to ourselves (i.e. we are supposed to practice what he calls "disattendability").
Usually I enjoy esoteric wordplay, both for nuance and for beauty, but in this case I thought the language could have been a lot simpler. Referring to a common misconception about the birth of Christianity as a "unitary aboriginal Sinnstiftung" wasn't necessary; he could have just said the religion didn't spring up overnight. (Or maybe it wasn't necessary for me to try to read this book after midnight.)
The author also says in the 2003 preface that "this book is part of a large project of criticizing liberalism" but I cannot recognize his definition of liberalism. He makes it clear that he's referring to a European idea with its roots in the eighteenth and nineteenth century; it has something to do with protecting private life from too much government intrusion and tolerating others' opinions, but I think that's only a piece of it. He bothers to critique it because he thinks it's still influential in today's politics. However, I don't see exactly how this kind of liberalism is active today as a discrete ideology; it seems embedded in a lot of different ideologies. If it's evolved beyond recognition then maybe we need to move on to critique whatever it's morphed into. I am just a little unclear about the motivation behind the book.
September 26, 2008
A readable extended essay, written by a Reader in Philosophy at Cambridge, interrogating the origins, coherence and implications of public/private distinctions in Western society.
[Second printing, and first paperback printing, with a new preface, 2003]
[Second printing, and first paperback printing, with a new preface, 2003]
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