Quibbling while the world burns

by Chris Bertram on April 14, 2006

I linked to a piece by Steven Poole last week, and here he is again with “a terrific review of recent books”:http://unspeak.net/C226827506/E20060412142020/index.html by sages left and right. That whole “Enlightenment” theme is given some attention:

bq. Take your seats, ladies and gentlemen, for a clash of incompatible fantasies. According to the conservative essayists in Decadence, a misty golden age of “genuine virtue” has passed, to be replaced by bogus slogans and psychobabble. This is all the fault of the Enlightenment. But here comes Frank Furedi in Politics of Fear, arguing that conservatives no longer appeal to tradition, and that the problem is that we have turned our back on the Enlightenment. Evidently, both these views cannot be right.

Read the whole thing, as someone-or-other often says.

{ 28 comments }

1

soru 04.14.06 at 7:07 am

‘Evidently, both these views cannot be right.’

That doesn’t seem to follow, unless you are imagining the world to be a much simpler thing than experience would suggest.

The two postulated changes of conservative rhetoric need not have happened in the same time and place. For example, an American conservative appealing to tradition would be talking, largely, about Enlightenment traditions, those established along with the nation, and codified in the 19C. A UK one probably wouldn’t.

As it happens, it looks like they are both largely wrong, but that doesn’t imply they are contradictory.

Perhaps nitpicky, but it a pet hate of mine when people do that, as if no argument about right or wrong, about facts, could be as persuasive as some simplistic logical trick.

2

Steven Poole 04.14.06 at 7:27 am

Eh? Read it again.
One person is saying that our modern problems stem from the Enlightenment.

Another person is saying that our modern problems stem from turning our backs on the Enlightenment.

They are both British writers, talking about the same Enlightenment.

So plainly, they cannot both be right.

3

soru 04.14.06 at 8:23 am

Evidently, such tricks are, annoyingly, persuasive.

Whatever the Enlightenment was, it was not some simple atomic thing with a single effect.

For the sake of argument, heres’s a ‘just so’ story:

Before the Enlightment, tradition matched rhetoric, which matched reality. The preacher would say ‘as your father did, do whatever your rightful lord says, or you will die’, and they would be right.

After the Enlightenment, those three things no longer matched up, which was bad.

So a new set of rhetoric was consciously created, which did better match the new reality. So the essayist would say ‘do the right thing, don’t waste next years seed money on booze, or you will die’. After a few generations, this became a new tradition, in the 19C codification of the Enlightenment.

Later in time, the Enlightenment idea of changing the rhetoric to match the times was used again, creating ‘meaningless psychobabble’ like ‘do whatever makes you feel self-empowered’. But (in the view of conservatives) the underlying reality hasn’t changed correspondingly, so this is bad.

So essayist #1 says the Enlightenment traditions are right, and rejecting them causes problems.

Essayist #2 says that the enlightenment _idea_ of changing traditions is the source of the perceived problem, it would be better to simply do as Father did.

See, for example, Thatcher evoking the memory of her father:
http://www.mdtaxes.org/NEWS-Stories-2004/newsMax.jeremy.bradshaw.paul.johnson.bush&thatcher.7.5.04.htm

But it was her father, Alderman Roberts – who was active in local politics in Grantham, Lincolnshire – who was the biggest influence on her.
“He taught her to follow a mix of Adam Smith and the Ten Commandments. The result was that Thatcher followed three guiding principles: truthfulness, honesty and never borrowing money.

Now, obviously all that is a massive oversimplification of the real world. But it is still complex enough to allow both #1 and #2 to be compatible descriptions of it.

And for them to be both argued against, and perhaps refuted, by evidence and logic, not sophistry.

4

jet 04.14.06 at 8:38 am

Heh, that book review was a hoot. Just about every complaint it decried of those 4 books, it did itself in their review. It would be easy to point out 10 instances of hypocracy, sometimes making the same error the review accused the book of making in the same sentence. For instance, the superficial and reactionary response to the bit on Global Warming.

Someone should give the Guardian a towel to wipe the blood off their hatchet.

5

abb1 04.14.06 at 9:30 am

Oh, man, it’s too easy. Making fun of pseudo-conservatives is like shooting fish in a barrel.

To borrow an epigraph from Werther:

“Pseudoconservativism is among other things a disorder in relation to authority, characterized by an inability to find other modes for human relationship than those of more or less complete domination or submission. . . . The pseudo-conservative is a man who, in the name of upholding traditional American values and institutions and defending them against more or less fictitious dangers, consciously or unconsciously aims at their abolition. . . . [He] sees his own country as being so weak that it is constantly about to fall victim to subversion; and yet he feels that it is so all-powerful that any failure it may experience in getting its way in the world . . . cannot possibly be due to its limitations but must be attributed to its having been betrayed.”

Richard Hofstadter, The Paranoid Style in American Politics and Other Essays, 1965.

6

SW 04.14.06 at 9:45 am

Oh dear. One might recommend that you read the review again. Poole is not arguing that different understandings of the Englightenment are _necessarily_ incompatible (although it remains possible that some are). Rather, he is pointing out that these writers are conjuring up very different “cartoons” and “fantasies” of the Enlightenment, for rhetorical purposes, and, although they draw similar conclusions, these very “cartoons” and “fantasies” are incompatible:

“Everything’s gone to pot,” says one, “because we ignore the lessons of the glorious Enlightenment [fawning fantasy cartoon of Enlightenment]”
“Everything’s gone to pot,” says another, “because we have been spoiled by the faults of the Enlightenment [damning fantasy cartoon of Enlightenment]”

Poole is not saying much about the Englightenment itself; he is pointing out how these figures are the ones who have reduced the Englightenment to fawning or damning cartoons and fantasies, through which they can draw glib, convenient conclusions about today. The fawning and the damning are incompatible; it is specifically because it is less about the Englightenment than “our” relationship to the Enlightenment, that the authors thought they could get away with their glib reductionism.

7

SW 04.14.06 at 9:52 am

I always worry when people tell me that they have ten examples for something, or a hundred, or a thousand, and then don’t give even one.

8

Tom 04.14.06 at 10:27 am

Didn’t Polonius come before the Enlightenment?

9

fifi 04.14.06 at 10:48 am

The Enlightenment is a sacred relic from the esoteric past. Our dominant ethos is capitalism.

10

Martin James 04.14.06 at 11:37 am

Fifi,

If “Our dominant ethos is capitalism.”, then why are most of our children taught by unionized teachers employed by the state?

11

Maurice Meilleur 04.14.06 at 12:03 pm

Steven:

Since you’re reading these comments, I’ll ask here: did you really read Anderson’s book? I just did, for a review, and:

(1) While it may be true that all too often, people draw a spectrum of ideas in order to position themselves in the sane middle, this is not what Anderson does at all in Spectrum; he explicitly identifies himself with those on the left–indeed, it’s one of the weaknesses of the book that with the right and the center, his tone is one of external criticism, while with the authors on the left, it is one of cooperation.

Also, (2) Anderson does not lump together those thinkers–Strauss, Schmidt, Oakeshott, Hayek–into one category. It was one of the surprising strengths of the book that the essay on those four thinkers was careful to point out the differences between them–where they diverged as well as overlapped.

12

soru 04.14.06 at 12:38 pm

“Everything’s gone to pot,” says one, “because we ignore the lessons of the glorious Enlightenment [fawning fantasy cartoon of Enlightenment]”
“Everything’s gone to pot,” says another, “because we have been spoiled by the faults of the Enlightenment [damning fantasy cartoon of Enlightenment]”

And, as explained above, either, both, or neither of those could easily simultaneously be true.

This is pretty dumb stuff, at the level of: ‘those scientists, some of them say the Earth is round, others say it goes round the Sun. How can they both be right?’

Are there really people who are honestly impressed, convinced or persuaded by that kind of rhetorical trick?

13

Michael Dietz 04.14.06 at 12:38 pm

Martin James: If “Our dominant ethos is capitalism.”, then why are most of our children taught by unionized teachers employed by the state?

Er, because the one isn’t actually incompatible with the other?

Or, more precisely: because “dominant ethos” does not mean “sole existing or permitted form of economic activity.”

14

dale 04.14.06 at 1:48 pm

martin james (10): not the children of the moneyed. which seems to support fifi’s point.

15

fifi 04.14.06 at 2:07 pm

Why wouldn’t there be unions in a state-run market economy? Where else would they be? And capitalism thrives best in a powerful state which provides for education, defense, healthcare, and so on. Some other things that don’t appear in Acme’s ledgers are the cost of roads for Acme’s trucks to roll across, a legal system to enforce Acme’s contracts, and so on.

Our dominant ethos is capitalism because our social order preserves the right to property. It weighs that right more heavily than quaint notions of compassion and conscience and the idea pre-rich people should be treated as ends rather than the means to increased wealth.

Yeah I can see why some people might think the SCOTUS wrestles daily with the categorical imperative. And the ubiquitous ticker tape that scrolls across our TV screens? Let me guess, it calculates in real time the greatest good for the greatest number. Come on. Kant’s Enlightenment project died a long time ago.

16

Martin James 04.14.06 at 2:29 pm

Michael Dietz,

I actually meant it as a puzzling question rather than a proof by contradiction.

In other words, if the dominant ethos is capitalism, and it might be reasonably expected that indoctrination of children is a component of ethos perpetuation, why is it so common for education to be provided by employees of the state?

Why are privatization schemes and voucher plans so politically difficult?

Furthermore, if you measure the hours spent per day of the population of a typical rich country, including the USA, the number of hours spen working in a truly capitalistic enterprise is a well-represented ethos but not a Dominant ethos.

Whether is be government employees or not-for-profit employees or non-workers or even for-profit workers in sectors where capital other than human and organizational capital is a minor influence ( say trial lawyers for example) there is a large and growing segment of the economy that is not “capitalist” in the old sense of the term.

If one is using capitalist as a proxy for “the money economy” then I’d say that ethos is more dominant than “capitalism” in its historical sense.

Let’s take US Presidents for example and let’s take Nixon and Clinton as paradigmatic cases of the politico-lawyering classes that didn’t come from money. And the question is did they rule in their own class interests or the interests of capital, I am inclined to put the odds (60-40) that their dominant ethos was more about what’s good for us meritocratic upstarts than it was about how can I best serve capital to claw my way to the top. But admittedly its a tough call.

To tie back to Fifi’s comment, I am inclined to agree that the enlightenment is a Sacred Relic that has been antiquated by our thorough-going moneygrubbery, but I disagree about about moneygrubbery being primarily capitalistic.

We are more about “institutional and social access capital” than just old-school capital.

Furthermore, I would argue that its the identity economics that drives the identity politics.

The action in claiming the enlightenment is that one one is trying to claim “ownership” of rich economies. Its not about religion versus atheism. Its about a chian of reasoning that goes “the enlightenment led to political and economic power, therefore those that own the enlightenment own the political and economic power.

Its a way to get ahead of the argument that the welfare state programs led to wealth therefore those that own the welfare state own the politcal and economic power.

However, so far no takers on this theory.

17

Martin James 04.14.06 at 2:48 pm

Fifi,

What you say makes sense.

If I understand correctly you are saying that SCOTUS held that one has a right to abortion and sodomy because its good for business.

You may be right,but I’d put it more 60-40 that people like Judge Kennedy who, while wealthy in income terms, have insignificant property holdings, are more about what represents their meritocratic-lawyering class values than about property.

To give another example, take the increase in federal taxation over the 20th century in the USA.

It went from next to nothing to a big chunk. Again there is a good case that this is all good for business stability, workers to exploit etc.

But would you really argue that the taxation structure is designed to optimize the return to private property?

Maybe, but I’m arguing for a more holistic human capital recognizing dominant ethos.

This is the major beef with Bush. Its not that he’s giving everything to the property interests, its that his irrationalism questions the value of meritocracy.

I mean look at the General going off on Rumsfeld.
They are bascially saying “Look at how his is mishandling our human capital. He is not an Expert.”

Its the very fact that we notice that Bush is somehow odd – even possibly a crackpot – that shows that there is more to capitalism than just the property.

18

lemuel pitkin 04.14.06 at 3:25 pm

Soru is right.

I’m a huge fan of CT in geenral, but not of the fondeness several contributors have for scoring debating points instead of making real arguments.

See the post a couple up from this one, where Henry’s response to a Economist article saying that Europenas need to suffer before they’ll support “reform” is to say that it resembles something cliche-marxists are supposed to have said. Does Henry think liberalziing European economies is a good idea, why or why not? Who knows — but he’s scored his zinger!

19

Kevin Donoghue 04.14.06 at 4:17 pm

Lemuel, Henry dealt with your comment in the relevant thread. What do you mean by saying Soru is right? It seems to me he is saying that a pair of contradictory statements can both be true. Are you happy with that?

20

soru 04.14.06 at 5:17 pm

‘It seems to me he is saying that a pair of The contradictory statements can both be true.’

My claim is that distilling two general theses so that they end up using the same word in an apparently contradictory way is not a valid technique of argument.

Otherwise you could argue, only slightly more obviously, that Russia cannot be a capitalist country:

The USSR was undeniably communist, or at least not capitalist. Capitalism definitely gives capital a different status from Soviet communism.

However, Moscow is still the main city, meaning there has been no change in the status of the capital since the days of the USSR.

QED: claiming that contemporary Russia is capitalist is a contradiction.

It is perfectly legitimate for one work to refer to the idea of ‘Enlightenment’ as in a way that can be summarised as ‘the time the traditions changed’, and another to use it in a sense close to ‘the traditions after they were changed’.

What is bad is to have the same work mix definitions, but the authors never claimed to collaborate.

Were you really fooled by the trick? I honestly thought people here were smarter than that.

21

Uncle Kvetch 04.14.06 at 5:33 pm

It is perfectly legitimate for one work to refer to the idea of ‘Enlightenment’ as in a way that can be summarised as ‘the time the traditions changed’, and another to use it in a sense close to ‘the traditions after they were changed’.

And how is this different from simply saying that the term “the Enlightenment” means whatever the person using it wants it to mean?

22

soru 04.14.06 at 5:51 pm

‘And how is this different from simply saying that the term “the Enlightenment” means whatever the person using it wants it to mean?’

That is one of the reasons authors write books, instead of a single paragraph followed by a lot of blank pages.

Of course, if they still don’t manage to convey to the reader what they mean over the course of a whole book, then at least one person involved is pretty thick.

23

Steven Poole 04.14.06 at 5:59 pm

Dear Maurice,
If, in preparation for your own review, you had carefully read the book that you cleverly insinuate I did not read, you cannot have failed to notice that:
1) Anderson does in fact shunt Rawls into the “centre” in order to abuse him.
2) Anderson does in fact write that Strauss, Hayek, and Oakeshott are all members of something he calls the “radical right”. That is a direct quotation, as I thought was adequately signalled by my use of quotation marks.
Regards,
SP

24

SW 04.14.06 at 6:00 pm

As I understand it – and to use Soru’s earlier example – Poole’s review doesn’t argue that the roundness of the earth is incompatible with its trajectory around the sun, or that differing views on the Enlightenment are necessarily incompatible. Rather, Poole argues that the Enlightenment has been reduced to a simplified sound-bite (a cartoon), from which convenient conclusions are drawn (the overall fantasy). Like all cartoons, there is a kernel of truth in the image; like all non-absurdist fantasies, there is an intelligible narrative running through it. These kernals of truth and intelligible narratives may be conflicting or complementary, in varying degrees (this, I think, is what Soru keeps pointing out). But the rhetorical work being done – and this is what Poole is critiquing – ignores such distinctions and nuances in the first place, which is partly _why_, as fantasies, they end up as incompatible.

If somebody thinks that nobody falls for this claptrap, and if someone thinks that the stakes for this discussion are low, consider the case of WMDs in Iraq. The idea that Saddam Hussein was feverishly plotting to unleash WMDs imminently on the US, UK and Israel and so deserved to be overthrown is a fantasy that has resulted in some rather serious consequences, to say the least. This fantasy is not compatible with another fantasy, that Saddam Hussein was cooperating with inspectors, benignly hoping for a diplomatic resolution, and the victim of an unprovoked assault by the West. Here we have two incompatible fantasies. The differing prevalences of these fantasies is causing massive global turmoil – again, to say the least. There may be aspects of each that are true, but that is not here the point. The point is that the rhetoric leading up to the Iraq war was sufficiently weighted towards the first fantasy, stoked with fear-mongering and fueled by lies, that the opposition was left waving placards in the street. This happened partly because of political speech setting up these incompatible fantasies, leading to “either/or” positions, which are common rhetorical traps forcing people – as Poole says – to choose between cartoons. To argue this is not to say that therefore Harold Pinter in his Nobel Acceptance speech or Christopher Hitchens just about anywhere is completely right or wrong; it is not to argue that there is no truth in the cartoon of Saddam Hussein as a tyrant or a mass murderer; it is not to argue that there is no truth in the description of nefarious, bumbling machinations in the White House and 10 Downing Street. Rather it is to point out that people do get caught up in these either/or fantasies, specifically constructed as incompatible – and the consequences are serious.

And so, is it “perfectly legitimate” to summarise the situation in Iraq by saying that Saddam was bent on attacking the West, or, alternatively, that Saddam was meekly complying with international demands, providing one is consistent with this claim?

25

Maurice Meilleur 04.14.06 at 6:56 pm

Steven:

I don’t agree with Anderson’s labels, myself, and I thought Anderson’s essay on Rawls was a hatchet job. It’s exactly what I expected of him, frankly. But you miss my point. The clear implication of your review was that Anderson considered indistinguishable the thinkers on the right whom he treats, a claim that what is actually in the book cannot sustain–as evidence, the essay on the four authors you mentioned yourself. Hayek, Strauss, Oakeshott, and Schmidt are all on the right, certainly, and all arguably radical–but Anderson does not “lump them all together.”

What he did with Rawls has nothing to do with what he did or did not do with thinkers on the right, though as far as that goes (and oddly enough, in context), in the essay on international relations he does give the thinkers of the center in the book the same consideration that he gave the authors on the right. Still, his attitude towards thinkers of both the center and the right is that of rejection, even when he’s discussing them fairly. With the thinkers on the left, though–Thompson, Hobsbawm, and the others–he clearly thinks of himself as a compatriot, and of his task as to carry their ideas forward. That’s a far cry from establishing a spectrum and then planting oneself in the middle.

Your point about having read or not read the book, though, is well-taken–that came off more snide than I intended, and I’m sorry for the remark.

26

soru 04.14.06 at 7:07 pm

Legitimate (to be precise, and at this rate I will have written a book soon: ‘not making a relevant semantic error’) is different from correct, of course. A valid argument can be wrong, and in fact remains so even after an invalid argument is used in an attempt to refute it.

A good example is the word ‘WMD’.

This sometimes means ‘weapons that can destroy a city’, i.e. nuclear weapons, hypothetical biological weapons, perhaps massed chemical weapons.

Other times, it means ‘any nuclear, chemical or biological weapon’, including normal artillery shells, crappy biological weapons that don’t really work, and perhaps even smaller things.

If you spot one person switching those terms on you behind your back, good on you. That was the killer point in Robin Cook’s resignation speach. ‘WMD are really really dangerous’, and ‘Saddam probably has WMD’ (as he thought) were true only for different meanings of the word WMD.

However, spotting that two different people use those terms differently is interesting and informative, but refutes neither.

You can make a similar point with ‘democracy’, which sometimes means ‘competitive elections happen’, and sometimes ‘rich, peaceful and ok place to live’. Watch out for people playing bait and switch with those.

if someone thinks that the stakes for this discussion are low

Of course, saying ‘it is really really important to refute these arguments, otherwise people will die’ is, everyone surely agrees, not in itself a valid form of argument?

If only because it is symmetric, and it is probably even more open to abuse when ‘people’ is replaced by ‘we’.

27

Uncle Kvetch 04.15.06 at 8:57 am

These kernals of truth and intelligible narratives may be conflicting or complementary, in varying degrees (this, I think, is what Soru keeps pointing out). But the rhetorical work being done – and this is what Poole is critiquing – ignores such distinctions and nuances in the first place, which is partly why, as fantasies, they end up as incompatible.

Thanks, SW. This is what I would have written, had I not been, as soru was kind enough to point out, too thick to do so.

28

soru 04.15.06 at 10:10 am

‘But the rhetorical work being done – and this is what Poole is critiquing – ignores such distinctions and nuances in the first place’

The thing is, that doesn’t actually seem to be the case.

Poole summarises Furedi (Mr. Revolutionary Communist Party) as saying ‘the problem is that we have turned our back on the Enlightenment’. However, the quote from him actually refers to ‘the ideas of progress associated with the Enlightenment’.

Taking out the distinction, implying that the sole effect of the whole enlightenment movement/era was to produce a single thought and then saying ‘there’s no nuance’ is pure trickery, a cheat on the reader.

As I said at the beginning, it’s all a minor point, but that kind of distortion of argument bugs me.

Comments on this entry are closed.