on Glory Liu on Milton Friedman (and George Stigler) and the Invisible Hand.
Though they were both students of Knight and Viner, Milton Friedman (1912-2006) and George Stigler (1911-1991) had very different views about the nature and purpose of economics — and hence, of Smith — from their predecessors. For Friedman and Stigler, economics' scientific power came from its ability to predict outcomes based on two central insights, both of which could be found in "The Wealth of Nations." The first was self-interest, or what Stigler called the "crown jewel" of "The Wealth of Nations." According to Stigler, Smith's idea of self-interest was so powerful that it was "Newtonian in its universality" and had unlimited explanatory power.
The second was, of course, the invisible hand. According to Friedman, Smith's master metaphor represented "the way in which voluntary acts of millions of individuals each pursuing his own objectives could be coordinated, without central direction, through a price system." Taken together, self-interest and the invisible hand represented the core axioms of scientific economics. The political implications were clear. Once individual behavior was reduced to utility-maximizing self-interest, promoting Smith's invisible hand of the market — and restraining the heavy hand of government — was the ultimate goal. Few economists were as successful as Friedman in spreading this interpretation of Smith's ideas to the public. In numerous op-eds in major news outlets, speeches and public television (where he sometimes sported an Adam Smith tie), Friedman popularized this interpretation of Smith's invisible hand for an overtly conservative political agenda.--Glory Liu, "How the Chicago School changed the meaning of Adam Smith's 'invisible hand," The Monkey Cage, Washington Post
The quoted passage is by the exciting young scholar, Glory Liu, who published an important scholarly paper on the reception of Adam Smith in the Chicago school (see here). Liu's WP editorial is a nice introduction to the more complicated larger argument. And I agree with her conclusion that "Smith's relevance has always been political" (although I would add not only political). Her editorial nicely introduces a larger public to the complex intellectual evolution of the Chicago school, drawing an important (and scholarly well grounded) generational contrast between Viner and Knight (who didn't agree about everything important) and two of Chicago's Nobel laureates, Friedman and Stigler (who also didn't agree about everything important). It's a clever idea to use their treatment of Smith to reveal the contrast.*
Here I want to focus on Liu's treatment of Friedman in her editorial and her piece. For, while Liu is primarily interested in the reception of Smith (and the political ways in which the Chicago schools used him), she does take a stance on Smith's position. I quote the relevant paragraph (from the editorial):
At the same time, political theorists and historians like me have argued that the Scottish moral philosopher didn't just stand for free markets and that, in fact, [A] Smith's invisible hand wasn't a warning about state intervention but state capture. Rather unlike the caricature of Smith who espouses unchecked economic growth, they've also argued that [B] Smith was deeply worried about the moral consequences of growing inequality.
The first reference [A] is to a 2018 Aeon piece by another rising scholar, Paul Sagar. The second is [B] to an essay by a leading (more senior) scholar, Dennis Rasmussen writing in the Atlantic in 2016. (That second piece was, in turn, anticipated by Deborah Boucoyannis in her LSE blog, which introduced the findings of her important 2013 paper, and several papers by Lisa Herzog (see, for example here and here).) It's notable how much public attention Smith is getting! As it happens I agree with [B] and so I leave that aside here. But the story about [A] is more complicated. Let me first quote Sagar before I respond to him and Liu:
Indeed, Smith's single most famous idea – that of 'the invisible hand' as a metaphor for uncoordinated market allocation – was invoked in precisely the context of his blistering attack on the merchant elites. It is certainly true that Smith was skeptical of politicians' attempts to interfere with, or bypass, basic market processes, in the vain hope of trying to do a better job of allocating resources than was achievable through allowing the market to do its work. But in the passage of The Wealth of Nations where he invoked the idea of the invisible hand, the immediate context was not simply that of state intervention in general, but of state intervention undertaken at the behest of merchant elites who were furthering their own interests at the expense of the public.
So, first, I agree with Sagar and Liu that Smith cared deeply about state capture by mercantile interests. But it is worth noting Milton Friedman also agreed about this. In the very (1977) essay that Liu quotes, Friedman writes:
There is a great misunderstanding about Adam Smith, a serious misconception of his role. Because he is known as the father of laissez-faire, because of his emphasis on the "invisible hand," and because he explained the virtues of the price system, Smith is ordinarily regarded as if he were a defender of the status quo, a representative of the existing institutions, part of the establishment. He was anything but that. Smith was a revolutionary, one of a small minority who attacked the existing order of things. At the time he wrote in the late eighteenth century, Britain was a mercantilist state, in which the government was exercising almost as great a control over economic affairs as the United States government does now. It was a state of affairs in which there were restrictions on imports and exports, there were remnants of the guild system of the middle ages, and so on down the line. Adam Smith attacked this system. His book was a tract for reform, calling for a revolution in the way in which economic affairs were conducted.--Milton Friedman (1977) "The Invisible Hand"
What Friedman writes here is all correct (except, perhaps, the claim that in 1776 "the government was exercising almost as great a control over economic affairs as the United States government does"in 1977). In fact, as I have noted before (recall here and here) it is a key theme of Chicago economists to worry about state capture. These days regulatory capture is entrenched within the critique of neo Liberalism. But the idea of regulatory capture was developed by the Chicago economist, George Stigler [recall this post, too], and is also strongly associated with the so-called public choice literature associated with the Virginia school of (other Chicago trained economists) Buchanan and Tullock and law economics (see this classic article by Coase). That is to say, the intellectual framework of regulatory capture was developed to help understand and criticize the effects of the New Deal and became influential in the aftermath of understanding the successes and limitations of the Great Society by market-friendly economists.
As it happens, in his 1962 presidential address to the AEA, Stigler credits the idea of state capture to Adam Smith! However, he does so, in part, to complain that Smith fails to "demonstrate" empirically "that the state is normally the captive of "partial interests." (3; Liu does not mention the piece in her more scholarly article.) So, Stigler and Friedman agree with (and anticipate) Liu and Sagar that Smith was interested in and worried about state capture and rent-seeking.
Second, Sagar and Liu are correct that the invisible hand (in the version presented in the Wealth of Nations) is offered in the context of Smith's criticism of state capture by mercantile interests. I agree with them that Stigler and Friedman tend to ignore this when they write about the invisible hand.
Third, while it is true that Friedman and Stigler both thought that assuming self-interested agents could be predictive,+ I doubt, as Liu suggests (this is not in Sagar), they thought that positing the invisible hand helped them make "predictions." Since this claim is not (defended) in Liu's original essay in Modern Intellectual History, I am inclined to chalk this error up to the difficulties of condensing a major scholarly achievement into a popular presentation.
Fourth, I disagree with Sagar and Liu that in the Wealth of Nations, the invisible hand is itself a warning about state capture. Rather as I argue in my recent book, the phrase 'invisible hand' captures circumstances when (i) an agent produces unintended consequences that (ii) are unknown to him or her; but, (iii) the consequences are, in principle, knowable to the right kind of observer (theoretically informed)** at the time, and (iv) in fact, the agent should have known better. (As an aside, invisible hand processes tend to be short term in Smith and to be contrasted with the more typical unintended consequence explanation/process given by Smith.) In fact, one of the the key underling points is that (mercantile) ideology masquerades as science and, thereby, confuses even those who benefit from the ideology.++
Now, I agree with Liu that Friedman's interpretation of the invisible hand -- Adam Smith was all the rage in 1976-7 due to bicentenary of Wealth of Nations -- as a master metaphor representing the way in which voluntary acts of millions of individuals each pursuing his own objectives could be coordinated, without central direction, through a price system is incorrect. But as an interpretation of Smith, even the passage in which the invisible hand as a phrase occurs, it's not wholly false either: the subsequent passage (the very next paragraph in Wealth of Nations) does claim that government should not direct industry or mercantile agents (as Sagar also notes):
"What is the species of domestick industry which his capital can employ, and of which the produce is likely to be of the greatest value, every individual, it is evident, can, in his local situation, judge much better than any statesman or lawgiver can do for him. The statesman, who should attempt to direct private people in what manner they ought to employ their capitals, would not only load himself with a most unnecessary attention, but assume an authority which could safely be trusted, not only to no single person, but to no council or senate whatever, and which would nowhere be so dangerous as in the hands of a man who had folly and presumption enough to fancy himself fit to exercise it."
This gets me to the final point. Liu notes in her conclusion that,
What makes the Smith of Milton Friedman and George Stigler so interesting — some people might say problematic — is not that they aligned Smith with a particular political agenda. It's that they "economized" Smith in a way that obscured if not precluded the relevance of his moral philosophy and political theory. Stigler once famously quipped that "the correct way to read Adam Smith is the correct way to read the forthcoming issues of a professional journal." In other words, Stigler believed that you had to read Smith as if he were a modern, 20th-century economist, not (as Smith originally was) an 18th-century moral and political thinker. What's more, the power of Friedman's version of the invisible hand derived from the seemingly objective scientific authority of its author, the "father of economics," Adam Smith. It's clear, however, that impulse to portray economics — even Smith's version of economics — as an objective science is deeply embedded in the history and politics of the discipline.
Much of this is right. But there are two potentially misleading and connected features to this quote. First, Stigler's famous quip is offered in the context of an extended argument about the purpose of history of economics (it is a passage that long ago caught my eye): "The purpose in seeking to understand the man's theoretical system is not to be generous or malicious toward him, but to maximize the probability that his work will contribute to scientific progress. Only if the analytical system is well defined and cleansed of irrelevant digression and inessential error may we determine whether it is a worthy addition to the corpus of the science, or at least a line of investigation that ought to be expslored further." (Stigler "Does Economics Have a Useful Past?" 1969: 221) Now, one may think there are other ways to make the past usable to scientific progress or, perhaps, other purposes for the past. (I think that's compatible with Stigler's position here, but this post is too long already.) Stigler's position does not entail that one need to efface the relevance of Smith's moral and political theory. For Stigler thinks that in addition to the corpus of (progressing) economic science, there are two different projects -- which both he and Friedman call 'normative' economics and the 'art' of economics. From the start of his professional career, Stigler takes these other two projects very seriously so much so that he famously, perhaps infamously, contested welfare economics's claim to being an objective science from his earliest publications onward (recall here; here, here, and here).
And, in fact, Stigler (not Friedman) shared with Smith the idea -- now unfashionable -- that the knowledge that economics produced was knowledge of comparative institutional development and analysis. As Stigler puts it in his AEA address: the "competence" of economists "consists in understanding how an economic system works under alternative institutional frameworks." (2)*** This has many pertinent implications for normative projects associated with political theory, including the possibility and appropriateness to act as an adviser to government. Stigler's immediate example is, of course, Adam Smith, but he criticizes Smith for insufficient evidence for his claims.+++
The reason for Stigler's dismissive attitude is not hard to find. Stigler (1971) thinks that "Smith's attitude toward political behavior was not dissimilar to that of a parent toward a child: the child was often mistaken and sometimes perverse, but normally it would improve in conduct if properly instructed." ("Smith's Travels on the Ship," 273) The problem is not Smith's tone, but rather, according to Stigler, the giving of policy advice "without taking account of the political forces which confine and direct policy. In the absence of knowledge of these political forces, the advice must often be bad and usually be unpersuasive." What this reveals is that according to Stigler, Smith was a normative, political theorist. ("Political science had been a normative literature for 2300 years before Smith wrote and has continued to remain normative to the present day.") It's just that according to Stigler a different kind of policy relevant political theory is required; Stigler thinks that the art associated with turning empirical economics into normative economics involves taking into account the political forces which confine and direct policy. He claims Smith failed to do so, so qua political theorist, Smith is not an exemplar worth taking seriously according to Stigler.*****
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Posted at 06:24 PM in Adam Smith, Chicago Economics, Knight, Milton Friedman, Tullock, uncertainty | Permalink | Comments (0)
On the Demise of Feministphilosophers
Many of us, myself included, have become increasingly pessimistic about the potential for internet-based discussions of difficult issues to help us make philosophical and real-world progress. And if I don't think blogs are a good place to discuss stuff, it becomes a little odd to keep a blog going. Not all of us agree with this, and there may be spin-off blogs by some of our more optimistic members, which we'll link to. But this site will soon no longer be hosting blog posts. I feel OK about this, and really good about what we've accomplished, but I think the time for this blog is now past and we've all got other projects underway.--Jennifer Saul, "Closing down FP" Feministphilosophers.
I dislike mono-causal explanations for social affairs, but it would be no exaggeration to say that the portfolio of websites hosted by or associated with Feministphilosophers (see also the genderedconferencecampaign or 'what is it like being a women in philosophy?) transformed public perceptions of professional philosophy. They didn't just create a whole range of #metoo moments (before the term was invented) in professional philosophy, but they generated a discipline wide discussions (activism, conferences, etc.) about a whole range of professional and philosophical issues that percolated through the profession and made headlines in the international press. What seemed like a culture of silence (recall) frozen eternally, suddenly became an avalanche of bricks in the wall crumbling to dust. As this process unfolded it generated an intense set of public and more subterranean reactions many of which unsympathetic to the (diverse) aims of feministphilosophers, which changed the incentive structure for public speech. (Recall this post.) Philosophy generated its own dark web and with the frisson associated with dangerous thoughts it became a permanent, dissonant even intimidating counterpoint to feministphilosophers.
Before i comment on Saul's remarks (see also Yap), I turn to Brian Leiter's post which quoted remarks by one of my favorite scholars, Paul Russell:*
There is, in any case, little or nothing about the debate concerning Lenin/Bukharin/Gramsci et al in the SEP. What this shows is that there are significant movements and developments in philosophy (e.g. Marxism) that are still sorely neglected in the SEP. Despite its considerable merits and achievements, the SEP has a rather narrow and contentious conception of what 'philosophy' is. It is arguable that this reflects a deeper problem, with what could be called the "APA outlook". This is an outlook that includes a rather crude understanding of how philosophy can and should be politically "active". It is heavily focused on "professional" issues (and interests) and it is largely disconnected from real world politics and history - lacking any credible understanding of the role that philosophy has had and that it might play outside its narrow academic/professional concerns.
It is notable that a perfectly sensible point -- that SEP's coverage of the Marxist tradition is rather thin and unbalanced -- got submerged into a broader polemic. One could have made that point by noting that G.A. Cohen is discussed more frequently than Lenin or Luxemburg (who is curiously missing in Russell's remarks) in the pages of SEP. The SEP is a public treasure, but this kind of thing is not uncommon--there are huge path dependencies and the effects of idiosyncratic views that have shaped its development. (Just recently I noticed that a student or professional interested in the godfather of formal philosophy, and himself a pioneering feminist, Condorcet was badly served by SEP.) The nice thing about SEP is that they welcome corrective feedback and encourage new entries. It is an unfolding encyclopedia not a monument to a fixed view. So Profs. Russell and Leiter could have simply made their point and helped the editors of SEP coordinate a robust number of invitations to develop entries that provide a better coverage of Marxism and its complex development and history.
But this perfectly sensible criticism is presented by way of contrast with the rich coverage of feminist themes in SEP and not, say, Bayes (which is discussed in huge number of entries many more than feminism). If I had followed Russell's (and Leiter's) style of argument, I would have said (in line with my priors), that the SEP's fondness for Bayes represent an APA outlook (they even use "APA appratichiks"--this gave me the giggles) that favors technocratic (or scientistic) governance, etc. (Sadly no entry on Feminist Bayesianism yet.)
Don't misunderstand me, Russell and Leiter are right to ask us to reflect on the ways (recall) the steep economic and prestige hierarchies of professional philosophy, as other academic enterprises, reflect, reinforce, and help recycle (ahh) the superstructure of society. But it is a bit peculiar that they do so in the name of encouraging more focus on "real world politics and history" by complaining about encyclopedia entries about another philosophical movement. It's especially odd because feminism has been a means to advance and develop many marxist projects. (That's actually pretty clear from quite a few entries in SEP! Standpoint epistemology, say, is indebted to marxism.)
It's not that they don't have a point: I checked the number of entries on "social activism" and "political activism" (both negligible. By contrast the number of entries that mentions 'politics' is huge). No to put a fine point on it, and I am pretty bourgeois myself, it strikes me that the interests of capital are served just fine by marxist-feminist infighting over crumbs of online space. Why, if one wishes to advance the demise of capital, one would encourage such zero-sum infighting is one of the mysteries of life that elude me. Anyway, as I have argued, with the shift of global capital toward Asia, philosophical fashions and trends, even identity, will shift, too.
Be that as it may, it's possible that the brief effervescent age of the group philosophy blog is over. Quite a few group blogs have folded, and few new ones, it seems, are breaking out. There are three challenges to such blogs: (i) a lot of coordination time is lost to maintain minimal unity of the group; (ii) it is really difficult to remain fresh (and not to keep returning to same issues over and over again); (iii) because of the prevalence of online harassment and the relative slowness of blog discussions (compared to twitter), folk are increasingly unwilling to leave comments at blogs.
Plato says somewhere that all created things must perish. So, c'ést la vie. Even so, I worry that Saul's point -- she is "increasingly pessimistic about the potential for internet-based discussions of difficult issues" -- may reflect the success of the war of attrition against feministphilosophers waged by (what above I jokingly called) the dark web. But perhaps her new projects, and those of her collaborators , will prove to be as influential and stimulating to philosophical self-awareness.
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Posted at 01:31 PM in analytic philosophy, blogging, Brian Leiter, In Memoriam, Meta-philosophy, Philosophical Enforcers, Philosophical Traditions, Political Economy of Science, women in philosophy | Permalink | Comments (1)
On Transition Costs: Reflections inspired by Khader's Decolonizing Universalism (II)
Changes from any set of social conditions to another, the kinds of change that feminism requires, demand that those invested in existing conditions bear costs or unless those costs can be offset. Many of the those rendered most vulnerable by such investments are women. Feminists should care about the costs women have to bear as parts of transitions to greater gender justice, for several reasons...we can note that strategies for change that require women to make major well-being sacrificed are unlikely to be effective, that there are moral reasons not to expect women to sacrifice their basic well-being for changes that are risky and long term, and that transferring the costs of change disproportionally onto vulnerable women can itself constitute an injustice...One way Western feminisms are particularly likely to go wrong is by ignoring the costs of change.--Serene Khader (2019) Decolonizing Universalism: A Transnational Feminist Ethics, p. 71.
Economists often complain that philosophers ignore opportunity and transition costs. Khader's terrific new book (she has published an earlier, excellent one on adaptive preferences)[recall also here]) shows how you need to pay moral and political attention to transition costs of vulnerable populations before you insist they conform to your ideals. She shows how very easy it is, in fact, to slide from well meaning advocacy to be (a sometimes accidental) handmaiden of imperialism. Khader is herself a feminist -- in the sense of opposing women's oppression -- and so her criticism is ultimately immanent to feminism and a reform project.* As regular readers know, I don't think the problem identified by Khader is unique to feminist reform projects; many well meaning liberal interventions flounder for related reasons (recall here).
Recall that (here, here, and here), I understand the transition problem, as how to move from an unjust status quo to an ideal (or vastly improved) state and, in particular, with a population raised under bad institutions (or, if one conceives this [as I would not] in eugenic terms, bad breeding). What I now see, after reading Khader is that there are (at least) two species of the problem: the first version really turns on the challenge of finding or developing the right sort of people (with the right education or dispositions, etc.) to get us from here to there and then to have the skills and temperament to make the new circumstances work out well. The second version is that a population raised under bad institutions may rationally prefer a bad status quo if getting to the better state involves high costs to them.+
Notice that the economists' preferred solution to the second problem -- monetary compensation -- does not quite work here. For as Khader documents, it is often the case that the Western feminists' agenda involve economic empowerment of vulnerable populations.** Khader is no critic of such empowerment. The problem is, however, that in many circumstances the pursuit of women's economic empowerment or abilities to exit local communities means that in order to acquire more money, the vulnerable women have an objectively diminished quality of life: with more paid and unpaid work, less community/solidarity (and social trust) and, sometimes, even more free-riding by men. The extra gain in possible income is accompanied by considerable more risk and fragility and other (more incommensurable) would-be-harms (isolation, longer hours, etc.)
A skeptic may suggest that the problem here is insufficient monetary compensation. There is clearly some truth to this thought. (Khader does not really explore how she would tackle the problem of transition costs, but I don't think she is a priori against more money for the vulnerable.) Providing vulnerable populations with serious monetary transfers, or a basic income, during a transition would undoubtedly allow them to tackle some of the challenges of it. In addition, many features of the welfare state are designed to lower, maybe eliminate transition costs that involve transition of informal networks to cash nexus.
That's to say -- this previous paragraph -- that if one takes transition costs seriously (and a harm principle alongside some even minimal version of Principle of All Affected Interests), one needs to be willing to address quite a bit of structural background conditions that lower the many kinds of costs involved to the most vulnerable. Suddenly, what looks like a fairly focused intervention related to gender inequality or sex-subordination may require considerable political and financial resources in order to develop a systemic response to the challenges of transition. I take this insight as a standing challenge to well meaning gradualists and (trial-and-error-style) incrementalists like myself. Sometimes, the targeted and small scale intervention is really worse than more ambitious projects++ or, as the conservative will claim, no projects at all.
Of course, the previous paragraph ignores one of Khader's key insights. Acknowledging transition costs to vulnerable others as an effect of exporting one's ideals, could be the starting point to question one's ideals for them and, perhaps, for oneself. But about that more soon.
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Posted at 06:16 PM in economics, political philosophy, Quran, Racism, women in philosophy | Permalink | Comments (0)
Is Platonic Feminism, Feminism? (On giving Feminism its History) Reflections inspired by Khader's Decolonizing Universalism.
One intuitive and widely held conception of feminism is neither ethnocentric nor justice monist. It is the conception, articulated in the early work of bell hooks, of feminism as opposition to sexist oppression. Oppression, according to Marilyn Frye is a social phenomen wherein disadvantage systematically accrues to members of certain social groups relative to members of others. Systematicity and group-based disadvantage are necessary conditions for oppression....Sexist, or gender, oppression is systematic disadvantage that accrues to a person by virtue of a membership, or perceived membership, in a gender--or as a result of a system of gender. Serene J. Khader (2019) Decolonizing Universalism: A Transnational Feminist Ethics, p. 37.
It may seem to exclude opposing forms of oppression beside sexism, such as racism, capitalist oppression, or imperialism--or to suggest that sexism ought to be prioritized over them. Indeed, because of such concerns, hooks later changed her definition of feminism from the one I have jst endorsed to include opposition to all intersecting oppressions. However, taking the fact of intersectionality seriously, and opposing other oppressions, does not require building opposition to other oppressions into the concept of feminism (and, in fact, many intersectional feminists do not take intersectionanility to be a definition of feminism). Something does not have to be part of the definition of feminism to be morally urgent. Moreover, there is a reason specific to the project of this book for not making opposition to imperialism and racism definitional for feminism. Incorporating opposition to imperialism into feminism defines away the possibility of conflict between feminist and anti-imperialist goals, a conflict that is endemic to transnational feminist praxis. Serene J. Khader Decolonizing Universalism: A Transnational Feminist Ethics, p. 41 (emphasis in original)
Regular readers know I am interested in platonic feminism. By this I mean the family or cluster of positions that often simultaneously (i) deny political equality (and so defend forms of aristocracy or elitism); and (ii) insist that any privileges /rights and obligations you give to men based on some quality/property must also be offered to leading women who have this quality/property. Platonic feminism often presupposes claims about (iii) natural/heritable inequality of talents, but need not require these. Often, platonic feminists rely on controversial claims about the distribution of talents within populations and the symmetry (or not) of these between the sexes. Finally, platonic feminism is compatible with (iv) commitment to moral equality of all. So, often Christian or Muslim platonic feminists embrace (iv), while pagan ones need not.
Platonic feminism so understood has a long history going back to at least Plato's Republic (hence the name; I would be thrilled to find a female anticipation to Plato, so we can change the name). Men and women have defended varieties of platonic feminism, including Ibn Rushd (recall), Christine de Pisan, Thomas More, Marie le Jars de Gournay (recall also), Anne Marie Van Schuurman (recall), Margaret Cavendish, etc. I do not mean to suggest that platonic feminists are beyond criticism: some platonic feminists have been eugenicists and racists.
The term -- platonic feminism -- is anachronistic and does not require the author's familiarity with Plato. There are at least five reasons to be interested platonic feminists: first, it allows for the recovery of the (frequent) aristocratic women whose writings were effaced from memory due to the masculine conception of mass democracy (which understood itself as a progressive enterprise)--recall these posts (here and here on Olympe de Gouges) on Eileen O'Neill's Disappearing Ink. Second, it makes visible key features of pre-history of feminism, which now turns out to have quite significant length. Third, it turns out that platonic feminists often have quite sophisticated analyses of institutions of oppression and the mechanisms of acculturation of gender. Fourth, those of us interested in emancipatory (including feminist) project may well learn from the successes and not infrequent failures of platonic feminism. So, for example, some versions of platonic feminism anticipate what we may call (after Sandberg) 'lean-in feminism.' Fifth, such an interest may be a fruitful remedy against the widespread assumption of moral progress. The claims of this paragraph are, in part, an invitation to read my other posts on platonic feminism and a promissory note.
The charge of anachronism, while maybe true, is not fruitful. (I doubt that it is true because it also presupposes that we already know what the history of feminism is.) Today, I want to respond to the charge/objection that platonic feminism is not really feminism because it shortchanges women who lack the requisite properties/qualities it is willing to advance/defend.* We may say on behalf of the objection that (at least the female partisans of) platonic feminism exhibit(s) an incomplete sisterhood.
So let me respond. As Khader notes in her excellent book (which I will be blogging more about soon): while opposition to all forms of oppression is welcome (even required, perhaps), feminism is about opposition to sexist oppression. Often platonic feminists live in aristocratic and hierarchical societies where there are many forms of subordination and hierarchy. In such contexts, women can be oppressed by many social mechanisms and institutions. The question from the perspective of feminism is to what degree they are oppressed in virtue of being a woman (because, say, patriarchy, religion, inheritance laws, economic prohibitions, medical views, etc.). As it happens some platonic feminists were quite radical about proposing alternative forms of (egalitarian) political organization, while others seem quite at ease with various other forms of hierarchy, including forms of hierarchy that ignore the lived experiences of many women.
Now, to be sure, not all objections to, say, patriarchy, are feminist in character. For example, Locke is a fierce critic of (Filmer's political conception of) patriarchy. But the criticism is (to the best of my knowledge) not offered in virtue of patriarchy's oppressive character toward women.
Yet, one may still think that this response does not get to the heart of the problem. Platonic feminists are, in practice, primarily interested in advancing the political and economic interests of meritorious women.+ Nearly all platonic feminists assume, in practice, that this will be only a (talented) subset of all women.** This may not be a feminism worth having. I think the objection contains a kernel of truth and certainly invites us to reflect critically on a system of privilege/hierarchy. But to me the objection does not seem fully persuasive.
Consider feminist defenses of pay equality in professional women's sports or funding (stateside) for female college sports.*** By definition these activities are elite activities. In the case of professional sports that's self-evident. In the case of college sports there are barriers to entry along athletic and scholastic (and often economic) dimensions. One may object to professional and college sports on many grounds, including, perhaps, that they reinforce a social system of hierarchy (and celebrity, and for the capitalist critics a variety of exploitation, etc.), including many forms of oppression that victimize women. But granted our imperfect conditions (and Khader is very much theorizing for non-ideal circumstances), opposition to gendered/sexed pay-inequality and funding seems feminist even if it does not exhaust feminism.++
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Posted at 01:07 PM in Plato, political philosophy, Racism, W.E.B. Du Bois, women in philosophy | Permalink | Comments (0)
On unadorned and plain Truth
3. Therefore, mark my words; that forceful manner of speech, rapid and copious, is more suited to a mountebank than to a man who is discussing and teaching an important and serious subject. But I object just as strongly that he should drip out his words as that he should go at top speed; he should neither keep the ear on the stretch, nor deafen it. For that poverty-stricken and thin-spun style also makes the audience less attentive because they are weary of its stammering slowness; nevertheless, the word which has been long awaited sinks in more easily than the word which flits past us on the wing. Finally, people speak of "handing down" precepts to their pupils; but one is not "handing down" that which eludes the grasp. 4. Besides, speech that deals with the truth should be unadorned and plain. This popular style has nothing to do with the truth; its aim is to impress the common herd, to ravish heedless ears by its speed; it does not offer itself for discussion, but snatches itself away from discussion. But how can that speech govern others which cannot itself be governed? May I not also remark that all speech which is employed for the purpose of healing our minds, ought to sink into us? Remedies do not avail unless they remain in the system.--Seneca, Letter 40. translated by Richard Mott Gummere
In an unusually long letter, Seneca appears to be conveying a relatively simple claim: true (philosophical speech) should be "unadorned and plain" [quae veritati operam dat oratio incomposita esse debet et simplex.] He contrasts such speech with speech intended for the market place aimed at ordinary folk (who, it is thought, are impressed by verbal pyrotechnics and, as he makes clear later in the letter, respect different national styles). The contrast is not absolute because Seneca thinks the unadorned and plain speech is also apt for ordinary rhetoric iff the point is to convince the multitude of the truth! But he clearly thinks that's not generally the aim.
That true speech should be unadorned and plain/simple is, of course, a recurring trope in ages that reject scholasticism and rhetorical flourishes. (It is unusual to see its elitism acknowledged.) The aim of philosophical speech for Seneca is (a) not merely to convey the truth, but in so doing (b) heal minds, that is, to be part of a philosophical emendation; and (c) by taking hold of their minds to govern others [rapere...regere]. Somewhat confusingly, at first, for us, who are used to thinking that the patient's autonomy is central, Seneca treats true speech of the philosophical healer/magister as a locus for self-governance.
Thus, even true speech is a means of control of another. This point is made explicit, somewhat rarely, when we say of a demonstration or inference that it compels assent; at such points disagreement, however voluntary, is often thought to be irrational. If you accept the premises, then you must accept the conclusions, etc. To make others accept premises is, thus, a means of control. To be made to accept true premises and a conclusion is, thus, a rational form, perhaps, of subordination,.
So, on Seneca's conception, a healthy mind, one receptive toward the truth, is in some sense under the control of, let's say, the party of truth. I put it this way because for Seneca (recall and here), (i) truths belong to all of mankind, and (ii) one is -- this clearly inspired/anticipated Spinoza -- least individual (and most eternal) when one's mind is filled with truths/apt remedies.
There is a further feature of true philosophical speech that Seneca notes by way of a negative contrast (near the end of the letter). In the more spectacular and pyrotechnic style one must ignore the sense of shame that accompanies it and this can only be done by not listening to oneself speak. One would wish to criticize oneself if one would give oneself the opportunity.
Seneca suggests that being exposed regularly to one's own rhetorical fluff undermines this sense of shame in oneself. I am not entirely sure if Seneca thinks the poison is that one regularly hears oneself say silly stuff or that one regularly ends up suppressing the need for self-criticism in oneself (or both). Either way, Seneca clearly thinks that while a lack of shame facilitates one's complicity in spreading nonsense, it is the manifestation of a self-inflicted malady.*
It would be an anachronistic, of course, to treat Seneca as an anticipation of the now not uncommon thought that certain forms of public nonsense are instances/expressions of lack of mental health. I think the anachronism is only partially true here. Not because the concept mental health is absent in him, but because what Seneca would take to be a disposition or expression of a healthy and shame-sensitive mind is almost certainly not the statistical norm of health maintained by our clinicians.
Here I stop; for once briefer than Seneca.
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Posted at 01:33 PM in Seneca, Spinoza | Permalink | Comments (0)
On the Crisis of Liberalism IV: Can the History of Defeated Marxism Teach Liberals Anything?
[This is part of an ongoing series of occasion pieces on the crisis of liberalism, recall here, here, here; see also here--ES]
Some general facets can be discerned at once. Western Marxism, as we have seen, was progressively inhibited from theoretical confrontation of major economic or political problems, from the 1920s onwards. Gramsci was the last of its thinkers to broach central issues of class struggle directly in his writings. He too, however, wrote nothing about the capitalist economy itself, in the classical sense of analysing the laws of motion of the mode of production as such. After him, an equivalent silence typically shrouded the political order of bourgeois rule, and the means of overthrowing it, as well. The result was that Western Marxism as a whole, when it proceeded beyond questions of method to matters of substance, came to concentrate overwhelmingly on study of superstructures. Moreover, the specific superstructural orders with which it showed the most constant and close concern were those ranking 'highest' in the hierarchy of distance from the economic infrastructure, in Engels's phrase. In other words, it was not the State or Law which provided the typical objects of its research. It was culture that held the central focus of its attention.--Perry Anderson (1976) Considerations on Western Marxism, pp. 75-6. [A neat footnote on Sraffa and Gramsci has been omitted--ES.]
Anderson writes before the fall of the Berlin Wall. But his Considerations is a history of defeat in two senses: first, where the revolution occurred and succeeded (Russia and those countries conquered/inspired by it), Marxism itself (or true Marxism) was defeated by what Anderson sometimes calls 'Stalinism' and sometimes call 'bureacratization' (that is, the capture of the party by the bureaucratic interests and the suppression of worker freedom). Second, in lots of places -- including the 'Western' lands that are the focus of his Considerations -- the forces of capital (sometimes in alliance with fascism) were objectively stronger than the would-be-marxist forces. My interest here is not about the sources of defeat, but the sources of the inherent limitations of western Marxism diagnosed by Anderson.
For, Anderson's book is not meant to be defeatist. It is written after the events of 1968, and he has hopeful due to the "re-emergence of revolutionary masses outside the control of a bureaucratized party rendered potentially conceivable the unification of Marxist theory and working class-practice again." (95) This sentence makes clear what Anderson takes to be the source of these inherent limitations: the split between theory -- primarily developed (by philosophers) within the university -- and working-class praxis. (Gramsci is treated as a partial exception.)
It would be interesting to learn from more knowledgeable others which social movements today have managed to overcome the split between theory and practice. My lack of familiarity with the details with various social movements prevents me from pontificating on this (but recall this post on Dotson; and this guest post on Graeber.)
But Anderson's book did get me thinking about the shortcomings of liberalism of the last few decades. If Marxism became too much of an academic enterprise dis-associated from movement building (and too focused on epistemological and methodological issues), could the same be said about recent liberalism? Surely, the now stalemated debate over ideal/non-ideal theory reflects something of a similar unease.
From a historical perspective, in the first wave (recall) of liberalism (roughly, recall, 1776-1914), there were many major liberal thinkers who were also active in politics (one just has to mention Mill and Tocqueville, but the list is much longer). During the second wave (from 1945-2008), plenty of liberal thinkers were influential on policy through their status as professional economists or through their role in shaping jurisprudence. But even so, starting perhaps with Max Weber, the major political philosophers/theorists of second wave liberalism (Rawls, Nozick, Raymond Aron, Habermas, etc.)* were not especially active in government.**
One clear problem that liberals have is our inability to mobilize as liberals against the illiberal (nationalist, racialist, authoritarian) encroachment on liberal practices. This is no surprise because liberal political theory of the second wave is not just an academic enterprise, but one that is, by and large, a liberalism that (as its critics argue) assumes it's the only live option (even Rawlsian political liberalism assumes liberals are hegemonic). Now critics of liberalism have noticed that this has created the tendency of liberals of treating illiberal positions as fundamentally irrational. While I think this is a huge problem, today I ignore it. Rather, I want to call attention to three bad effects.
First, liberal theory has ignored the significance of leadership and mobilization. As I have noted before, modern liberals tend to dislike talk of leadership--we prefer rules, procedures, impartial laws, and public reason. But a lot of collective action and mobilization problems require some kind of organizing and leadership. In addition, the maintenance of a liberal public culture and institutions, even the transmission of power, also requires leadership (recall this post).
Second, because liberals prefer (emancipatory) rules, procedures, impartial laws, and public reason, we have too often ceded 'democracy' to populists and nationalists. (It has not helped that Stateside, one of the main parties, the Republicans, as Jacob Levy has argued, has also had undemocratic instincts when it comes to dis-enfranchisement, while the other party, the Democrats, has been eager to work with the courts when it could to achieve major policy ends.) This means that fundamentally illiberal conceptions of democracy in terms of unconstrained majoritarianism or 'the people' have been gaining ground.+ In so far as liberals have a theory of (voter) mobilization, it's a negative one in terms of rent-seeking/capture of special interests (recall here and here).
The two bad effects combine, third, in the tendency of second-wave liberalism to treat voters as ignorant and to embrace either (among mainstream liberals) technocracy or (among libertarian friendly types) markets (or both) as an alternative to democracy. It's hard to see how to make liberalism a popular political program if it insults those on whose good opinion and support it would have to rely in a crisis. This is not to deny that liberalism is (recall) rooted in the thought that political life requires institutional response(s) to human imperfection (including immorality). But each of these responses/institutions (rule of law, separation of powers, international treaties, role of markets, etc.) could be defended on positive grounds in terms of important values and consequences (without, as it were, reminding the voters of their own immorality/ignorance). In political practice, there is little defense of them.++
That liberals lost the political ability to defend their liberal values in the political arena has, I think, become most clear by the authoritarian and polarizing responses to the tendency of some Muslim citizens to radicalize. Rather than treating such radicalization as an invitation to reflect on the ways in which liberal society fails to due justice to the aspirations of its own citizens and falls short of its own ideals, we have welcomed a robust defense of 'Western' culture that through its various manifestations (war on terror, state of emergency, etc.) is increasingly encouraging rejectionism of liberal values by the electorate. We are routinely asked, in zero-sum fashion, to pick sides in a clash of civilizations, rather than (as the liberal sensitivity demands) looking for win-win futures.
Winning the cold war, and the passage of time, left liberalism unprepared for its own fragility. By this I do not mean that liberalism would be un-competitive in great power rivalry with, say, China. But rather, that liberal theoretical development became, in part, unmoored from liberal political practice (in so far as that liberal practice became too closely identified with economic theory/jurisprudence). And while such division of labor is itself a consequence of liberal success, I fear it has also encouraged the idea that we can muddle our way through, each of us doing our own thing.
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Posted at 04:12 PM in Chicago Economics, Foucault, Marxism, political philosophy, politics, Professional Philosophy, Rawls | Permalink | Comments (2)
On Eileen O'Neill, The Scandal of Philosophy, and the Angel of History
Let me begin with the latter model, which I shall term the "pure history" model. According to this historiographical method, evaluations of philosophical arguments and projects, while crucial to philosophy, are irrelevant to the history of philosophy. Scholars who use this model, like the nineteenth-century historian of ancient philosophy Eduard Zeller, see the history of philosophy as a dispassionate chronicling of every move in the dialectic of philosophy. Of course, for all their attempts at writing the "pure history" of philosophy, even the followers of Zeller omitted the women, who were seen as significant contributors to the field in their own time. This suggests that the particular interests and blind spots of the historian, and of the era in which the historian lives, will come into play—come what may. But, of course, the real issue is not what the history of philosophy is like, come what may, but which methodology we ought to take as our ideal—even if this ideal is never achieved. Still, it is not entirely clear what the point would be of chronicling every position in the endless dialectic (per impossible), in accordance with this first method. For this model might be characterized, as Walter Benjamin noted, as one "which despairs of grasping and holding the genuine historical image as it flares up briefly. Among medieval theologians it was regarded as the root cause of sadness." Eileen O'Neill (1997) Disappearing Ink: Early Modern Women Philosophers and Their Fate in History, pp. 39-40
It is uninformative to say that David Lewis was an excellent philosopher. After all he dominates our thinking. It is less often noticed that he was excellent at philosophical politics (in addition to his theoretical reflections on it, see the evidence that Graham Priests bequeathed to us). Within institutional life such politics are as inevitable as the Spinozistic necessity that governed Cavaillès' life and death. As the previous sentence suggests, perhaps too obliquely for some and too crassly for others, the connection between the philosophical politics within a profession and politics in the more ordinary sense can, while often obscured by inattention, be intense.
To be able to write simultaneously with assurance about the history of philosophy, its philosophical politics, and their connection to politics is the sure sign of being in the presence of a philosophical magister or magistra. Magister/magistra is the latin for teacher, but its etymological origins is from 'more' or 'great.'' (To be a magister/magistra, then, is to overflow with philosophy.) There are different styles of doing so. For example, Lewis often disguised his learning and his chess-playing on multiple boards at once.
The late Eileen O'Neill (recall here and here) is such a magistra. Her (1997) "Disappearing Ink" succeeds at all three tasks of rewriting the history of philosophy, its philosophical politics, and their connection to politics (even if the contents of the history of philosophy are served up as tempting morsels to be chewed over) without disguising her enormous learning. It is something of a scandal that the work's significance has been confined to those of us dedicated to rewriting the narrative of early modern women philosophers (recall also this post; and, especially, this one). For, at the heart of her argument is the politically explosive thought that rebirth of democracy in the fulcrum we call the French Revolution was a disaster for women philosophers. As she shows, in its long aftermath philosophy was re-institutionalized in universities and literally gendered male.*
It is explosive because the very period and political organization that prides itself on progress and emancipation, was de facto simultaneously an enormous silencing operation. To question progress is to invite hatred. O'Neill's point is not mere historical reconstruction; it was fully anticipated by Olympe de Gouges (recall), who lost her head by (recall) bravely warning against the unfolding disaster, and then was forgotten for several centuries. To put one of her points in familiar jargon, and so perhaps to domesticate it, there was a huge Kuhn loss for philosophy, when due to the ideal of philosophical progress, it became unable to see much of the richness of the preceding centuries as philosophy at all (and for democratic feminists to miss their less egalitarian, but platonic feminism, etc.).** It is most dispiriting to have to mark the conformist lack of curiosity about such matters by our own teachers and, for those with a semblance of democratic faith, to confront democracies' lack of generosity.
It is no argument against the primarily aristocratic and mystical women (or both) that their philosophizing was made possible by an unjust political order and so -- sotte voce -- had their obliteration coming. One injustice does not get canceled out by the next one.
In re-reading Disappearing Ink ahead of a memorial, my train of thought was interrupted by the presence of the quote from Walter Benjamin. His presence should not surprise because (recall) Benjamin has, not unlike O'Neill, a keen sense that official history tends to be history as told by the victor, that the narrative of progress creates the recurring astonishment that the things we are experiencing are "still" possible; and that the historian's task is, in part, to make alternative futures possible.
The passage she quotes (in my quote above) is from Benjamin's diagnosis that many historicist historians suffer (without acknowledgment) from empathy with the victor; a future historicizing, philosophical historian of sympathy may well wish to trace the connections and Abkunft between Manne's himpathy and Benjamin's analysis.
In the passage quoted by O'Neill, Benjamin contrasts the reformed historical materialism he favors with those historians who through great acts of sympathy and attention to detail wish "to relive an era" without the pretense of knowing what follows. O'Neill's contrast is with a heroic, almost Borgesian, historian who chronicles every position, This kind of chronicle is, in fact, coming within greedy, technological reach thanks to cheap computer power and data mining.+
There is another explicit reference to Benjamin at the end of an important passage:
Influential historians, like Tiedemann and Tennemann, each rewrote the history of philosophy, raising up certain figures and quickly passing over others. And typically they constructed their histories so that they conveniently "led up to" their pet philosophical projects, be it "Lockean sensualism," "Kantian idealism," or some other view. Indeed, most of the great philosophers themselves included elements of Geistesgeschichte in their own philosophical works, as a method of tying their arguments to the philosophical past. Consider Descartes's treatment of the Scholastics or Kant's depiction of himself as the synthesis of what is true in Leibniz's "noologism" (or, to transform the Greek into Latin, "rationalism") and in Locke's "empiricism." Philosophers sometimes called for a new Geistesgeschichte to be written, as a justification for a newly emerging philosophical canon. The historian Victor Cousin, in his 1828 Paris lectures to a crowd of two thousand gentlemen, said:
Let us hope that France, . . . which has already produced Descartes, will enter in her turn upon . . . the history of philosophy. . . . Every great speculative movement contains in itself, and sooner or later produces necessarily, its history of philosophy, and even a history of philosophy which is conformed to it; for it is only under the point of view of our ideas that we represent to ourselves the ideas of others.
This passage is interesting in what it suggests about the role that gender, class, ethnicity, and nationalism may have played in the actual constructions of modern histories of philosophy. But it may also lead us to wonder why we should not just abandon sweeping narratives that lead up to a particular set of contemporary interests. Critics have argued that it is misguided to turn to the philosophy of the past as a way of justifying one's present philosophical concerns, since past philosophers cannot do a better job than we at solving our current problems. And they argue that it is a mistake to construct history with an eye to the present, since this simply distorts the history of philosophy. To borrow the beautiful image from Walter Benjamin, the Angel of History is propelled backward into the future, ever keeping its gaze on the past.
It is tempting, in the face of the self-serving grand narratives or even the more modest (albeit shameless) legitimation projects of our own time,++ to rewrite the history of philosophy in the service of a new, unknown victor. I plead guilty to having giving in to temptation at times. The much harder task -- one that O'Neill invites us to -- is to write and rewrite with a roving eye on philosophical politics (she calls it "internal dialectics") and politics, in such a way that philosophical possibilities are constantly revived and re-opened. In part this is strategy against being enlisted in, and facilitate, new forms of subordination; in part, this is doing justice to truth that is abundant, and overflowing.
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Posted at 01:45 PM in analytic philosophy, David Lewis, Early Modern Philosophy, history of philosophy, Meaning of Life, standpoint theory, women in philosophy | Permalink | Comments (0)
On Toland's Veneration of Hypatia
Her Disciples entered into a strićt Tye of Intimacy with one another, stiling themſelves Companions, or, as in our Colleges Fellows; which was likewiſe the Cuſtom at Athens, and in other famous Seminaries of Learning. This commonly begot Effects of Benevolence thro' the whole Courſe of their Lives, and Hypatia was by way of Excellence named The Philoſopher, altogether as much on Account of her pro found Knowledge, as for her public Profeſſion of Teaching. Nor was any Profeſſor ever more ad mired by the World, or more dear to his own Scholars. Hers were as remarkable as numerous.--John Toland (1720) Hypatia, chapter V.
The distinguished scholar, Ian Leask, gave an excellent lecture last week in Dublin on John Toland as a (proto-)feminist. In addition to Letters to Serena, a key bit of evidence in his argument is Toland's (1720) Hypatia: Or, The History of a Most Beautiful, Most Vertuous, Most Learned, and every way accompliſh'd Lady, Who was torn to pieces by the clergy of Alexandria, to gratify the Pride, Emulation, and Cruelty of their Archbishop, com monly but undeſervedly ſtiled St. Cyril. Today I'll accept Lask's treatment of Toland as a feminist.* Toland (recall; and here), arguing from "common humanity" *Ch.XX) really believes that men ought to be collectively "ashamed" about here fate (ch. I). The subtitle also gives a clear sense of the anti-clerical animus of Toland's tract.
Today, I focus on a different angle, which I take to be the more significant theme of the brief tract: Toland's more critical treatment of Hypatia, who is praised for her skill in astronomy, mathematics, and expositor of philosophy, as a political leader. This feature is mentioned at once: she "succeeded" her father "in the Government of the Platonic School at Alexandria." In so doing she became a celebrity in her age (see above) in the center of learning that was, simultaneously, one of the most important imperial cities.
That the public impact, especially in legal affairs, of Hypatia matters is clear from this description: "that never Woman had a more unspotted Charaćter. She was held an Oracle for her Wisdom, which made her be conſulted by the Magiſtrates in all important Caſes; and this frequently drew her among the greateſt Concourſe of Men, without the leaſt Cenſure of her Manners." And, in fact, she became the center of political life: "That the Governors and Magiſtrates of Alexandria regularly viſited her, that all the City...paid Court to her, is a Diſtinction with which no Women was eyer honoured before," (Ch. XI).++
Toland hints at the theme slyly when he introduces his main character witness/authority, Synesius: "It was then that with greater Boldness than any of the Grecians (as he tells us himself) he pronounced before the Emperor that extremely fine Oration concerning Government, which, in a Country ſo juſtly fond of liberty as ours, I wonder has never been tranſlated. This defect I have ſupplied, and will impart it to the Public on a proper Occaſion," (Ch. VI, emphasis in original.) Unlike Hypatia, the "truth-telling" (Ch. VIII) Synesius is recorded as an author in political philosophy.+ While the work on Government (and its bearing on liberty) is only mentioned, Synesius' apology of philosophy, Dion, is discussed in more detail (Ch. VII); the bottom line being -- and here Toland's Synesius anticipates Hume -- that philosophy ought to be "useful" in the present world.**
Toland's selection of Synesius's portrait of Hypatia is somewhat less admiring than one would expect. Chapters IX-X reproduces plaintive letters from Synesius, who, after being promoted/banished to "the Biſhoprick of Ptolemais" was simply ignored by his former companions and teacher. Synesius writes to complain after hearing no word of sympathy or consolation from them after his wife and children had died. Hypatia is revealed as lacking in compassion for others and lacking sensitivity in earthly matters.
The key to Hypatia's downfall is her closeness to the governor of Alexandria, Orestes. Unfortunately, Orestes was hated by Cyril, who was politically ambitious and grew envious of their (political, even personal) intimacy. Cyril, who is presented as intolerant of religious dissent (and persecutor even banisher of the Jews, who had lived there for more than nine centuries since the age of Alexander), is especially focused on the "Unity of the Church" and any obstacle that "weakens the Government of the clergy. (Chs. XVI-XVII).
That is to say, Hypatia is presented as caught in the middle between a battle of political control between church and state. . For, Toland argues that clerical power in political affairs has predictable consequences (including depopulation, persecution, and economic decline). And the source of her death is that Orestes is incapable of maintaining law and order in Alexandria against the sedition of Cyril; Hypatia gets killed by a clerical mob during the disturbances (Chs. XIX-XX).
So, what then is the moral here? I think it's pretty clear, and not especially profound. Even a popular beloved philosophy (as Hypatia was) presupposes stable political authority, if not law and order. As he writes (recall, in Letters to Serena)
[T]he punishment of the wicked and the recompense of the good, not being contained in fables, but exhibited to our eyes, each party is every day put in mind of his duties; and by this custom there grows the best and most useful reformation of manners. Letters to Serena, Letter II, quoting Diodorus Siculus).
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Posted at 03:02 PM in Adam Smith, Plato, political philosophy, Toland, women in philosophy | Permalink | Comments (0)
Not for Long, Adorno & Horkheimer
In Book 22 of the Odyssey, there is a description of the way in which Odysseus' son punishes the faithless women who had reverted to prostitution. Emotionless, and with an inhuman composure rivaled only by the impassibilité of the major nineteenth-century novelists, Homer describes the movement of the nooses and coldly compares the women's appearance as they hang to that of birds caught in a net; the reticence and composure of the narration are the true marks of eloquence. The passage closes with the information that the feet of the row of suspended women "kicked out for a short while, but not for long" [Odyssey 22.473] The precision of the descriptive artist, which already exhibits the frigidity of anatomy and vivisection, [61] is employed to provide evidence of the dying convulsions of the subjected who, in the name of law and justice, were cast down into that realm from which Odysseus the judge had escaped. As a citizen reflecting momentarily upon the hanging, Homes assures himself and his audience (actually readers) that it did not last long--a moment and then it was all over. But after the "not for long" the inner flow of the narrative is arrested. Not for long? The device poses the question, and belies the author's composure. By cutting short the account, Homer prevents us from forgetting the victims, and reveals the unutterable eternal agony of the few seconds in which the women struggle with death. No echo of the "not for long" remains except the Quo usque tandem that the rhetors of the later period unwittingly devalued by themselves laying claim to the long-suffering attitude in question. In the narrative account of atrocity, hoever, hope attaches to the fact that it happened a long time ago. Homer offers consolation for the entanglement of prehistory, savagery, and culture by recourse to the once-upon-a-time device. Yet the epic is novel first, and fairytale after.--Theodor Adorno & Max Horkheimer (1947) Dialectic of Enlightenment, translated by John Cumming, p. 80 [emphasis in original]
Much of the so-called Excursus 1 ("Odysseus or Myth and Enlightenment") of Dialectic of Enlightenment -- is nearly unreadable unless one is steeped in the Gymnasium culture that marked the aspirations to Bildung of Wilhelmine Germany (and its European equivalents). The Excursus -- latin for digression -- is a lengthy re-interpretation of the Odyssee. It may seem peculiar to do so in exile in Los Angeles in the early 1940s, especially in a book with 'Enlightenment' (or Dialectic) in its title. But (with an explicit nod to Nietzsche) Homer is treated as "the basic text of European civilization." (46)
I had to memorize the opening lines of the Odyssee. I flunked the assignment initially. My latin teacher had me repeat the in the teacher's lounge (in front of her bemused colleagues) a few weeks later. I still remember the first line, but the second one required a check online:
ἄνδρα μοι ἔννεπε, μοῦσα, πολύτροπον, ὃς μάλα πολλὰ
πλάγχθη, ἐπεὶ Τροίης ἱερὸν πτολίεθρον ἔπερσεν:
That I associate the quoted passage with Gymnasium culture is not primarily due to this minor personal trauma, but due to the little puzzle Adorno & Horkheimer lodged in this text, their untranslated, Quo usque tandem. I recognized at once Cicero's opening lines of the first Catiline Oration: Quo usque tandem abutere, Catilina, patientia nostra? Quam diu etiam furor iste tuus nos eludet? How long will you abuse our patience, O Catiline...* And not for the first time I reflected on the curiosity of the centrality of that nouveau riche defender of aristocratic values in a decayed republic, Cicero, in the Latin curriculum of a Gymnasium in Amsterdam in the 198s0.
Adorno and Horkheimer are a bit quick to suggest Homer prevents us from forgetting the victims. The twelve condemned women, on the testimony of Eurykleia (Odysseus's wet-nurse), are left nameless. Their 'crime' according to Eurykleia was to show her and Penelope no honor. It is notable that Eurykleia explicitly denies that Telemachos had been mistreated by them. For, Telemachos changes his father's sentence (from death by sword to death by hanging) in virtue of their lack of honor to him and for consorting with Penelope's suitors ('prostitution').** In Telemachos' treatment of the twelve nameless women -- they are hung after being forced to clean the mayhem subsequent Odysseus' murderous revenge on his wife's suitors+ -- there are gruesome anticipations of the fate of women who served occupying forces in the world war.
There is, I think, no consolation (or 'hope') in citizen Homer. After the gruesome deeds are done, there are rites of purification (and the cleaning up of the corpses, etc--now done by Odysseus), and life goes on without the nameless twelve women.
I had started this impression by wanting to write about a lost culture such that whatever Adorno & Horkheimer wished to say has become opaque. But my intentions are deflected by my train of thought. In the quoted passage, they treat the devaluation of language by political rhetoric as an accident ("unwittingly").++ But this -- appropriating another's lived experience, even of death -- is always a temptation of political rhetoric, Adorno & Horkheimer's not excepted.
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Posted at 01:54 PM in Aesthetics, art, poetry, WW2 | Permalink | Comments (2)
On Marxism and Normative Human Nature
But don't wrangle with us so long as you apply, to our intended abolition of bourgeois property, the standard of your bourgeois notions of freedom, culture, law, &c. Your very ideas are but the outgrowth of the conditions of your bourgeois production and bourgeois property, just as your jurisprudence is but the will of your class made into a law for all, a will whose essential character and direction are determined by the economical conditions of existence of your class.
The selfish misconception that induces you to transform into eternal laws of nature and of reason, the social forms springing from your present mode of production and form of property – historical relations that rise and disappear in the progress of production – this misconception you share with every ruling class that has preceded you. What you see clearly in the case of ancient property, what you admit in the case of feudal property, you are of course forbidden to admit in the case of your own bourgeois form of property.
"Undoubtedly," it will be said, "religious, moral, philosophical, and juridical ideas have been modified in the course of historical development. But religion, morality, philosophy, political science, and law, constantly survived this change."
"There are, besides, eternal truths, such as Freedom, Justice, etc., that are common to all states of society. But Communism abolishes eternal truths, it abolishes all religion, and all morality, instead of constituting them on a new basis; it therefore acts in contradiction to all past historical experience."
What does this accusation reduce itself to? The history of all past society has consisted in the development of class antagonisms, antagonisms that assumed different forms at different epochs.
But whatever form they may have taken, one fact is common to all past ages, viz., the exploitation of one part of society by the other. No wonder, then, that the social consciousness of past ages, despite all the multiplicity and variety it displays, moves within certain common forms, or general ideas, which cannot completely vanish except with the total disappearance of class antagonisms.--K. Marx & F. Engels (1848) Communist Manifesto, Chapter 2. Translated by Samuel Moore
It is often asked to what degree Marxism has a "moral foundation." For example, writing in the venerable SEP, Jonathan Wolff (Oxford) treats this as a "conundrum." I think part of the problem here is a post-Rawlsian artifact that influences Rawlsians and non-Rawlsians alike. For, what is meant by a moral foundation is often (mistakenly!) reduced to 'does Marx think capitalism is unjust? And since Marx seems thinks that 'justice' expresses the ideology of the ruling classes, he can't really think that. And if he did think that, he thought it -- paraphrasing Cohen -- despite himself. Moreover, one often hears that since historical materialism is supposed to be a scientific theory, there shouldn't be room for moral foundations at all.
Even so, again quoting Wolff, it "simply seems obvious that Marx's critique [of capitalism] is a moral one. One way to to go is to suggest that Marxism involves an immanent critique. But this strikes me as unpersuasive because the whole tendency of immanent critique is to reform the status quo not to overthrow it. (In political terms: think of the Rawlsian theory of civil disobedience.)
Another, more persuasive route, is to suggest that the ethically rich language we find in Marx's writings is supposed to work on our reactive attitudes and promote political action, even revolution. This seems clearly the case. But it would involve a kind of bad faith, if simultaneously these reactive attitudes are to be unmasked as themselves ideological.
A better way to go is to note that in some crucial ways Marx's thought is more akin to eighteenth century philosophy. In particular, he has a view of human nature that in our terminology is normative: he offers an account of (what we may dub) proper human functioning in which there are fundamental, even "essential" human needs that any society ought to meet. This is in Norman Geras' useful terminology the "ethical standpoint" of Marxism. That ethical standpoint is compatible with the thought that the content of these needs may be culture-relative, determined by historical forces, or trans-historical. (My own understanding of Marx inclines to the former, but there is evidence for the latter.) And the ethical standpoint is compatible with the thought, and seems to imply, the idea that when our essential needs are met human flourishing becomes possible.
This is akin to eighteenth century philosophy in three ways: (i) their science presupposes such an account of proper functioning. It is a mistake to project on to them the idea that science must abhor such a proper functioning account of human nature because (a) it is too Aristotelian, and they are known critics of Aristotle or (b) it mistakenly mixes facts and values. On (a): it is true they (and Marx) are critics of Aristotle in some senses, but proper functioning accounts can come in many varieties and even the ones influenced by Aristotle (need not inherit Aristotle's factual or normative mistakes). On (b): this is a species of pernicious anachronism. In addition, (ii) the idea that there are basic human needs which require development is, in fact, a core agreement between Marx and Enlightenment thought (which are both emancipatory; for references to wide variety of Marx's texts, see p. 85 of Geras' Marx and Human Nature: Refutation of a Legend).* And (iii) in proper functioning human nature, the reactive attitudes are indicative of a shared normativity.
So, while the ethical standpoint of Marxism is not exhausted by its theory of human need (grounded in human nature) this is one of its foundations. (It is not exhausted because there are also other normative commitments (recall)). This is not to say there are no tensions at all. Part of the (Marxist) drama of human history starts when production becomes the means of satisfying needs (Geras: 69).
Yet, the manner in which our needs are expressed as "wants" is determined by the constantly evolving production process. [There are, in fact, times where Marx comes close to suggesting all wants are adaptive (in the sense of Stockholm syndrome).] For Marx it is important not to conflate our objective needs with our socially developed wants. The adoption of the ethical standpoint mentioned above prevents this conflation in so far as our needs are objective (and objectively conducive to proper functioning, even human flourishing).
I would want to close here. But let me make two points: first, even if it is not grounded in a theory of justice, Marx's ethical standpoint is not beyond normative (or properly self-aware scientific) criticism. Second, this ethical standpoint is not far removed from ideals prevalent within liberalism, even the skeptical liberalism of bourgeois theorists like myself. I am not bothered by this, but that's because liberalism is an emancipatory, even revolutionary project.
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Posted at 01:39 PM in Adam Smith, economics, Frank Knight, history of philosophy, history of science, Marxism, Max Weber, scientific philosophy | Permalink | Comments (0)