I’ve been meaning to write a review of John McGowan’s American Liberalism: An Interpretation For Our Time
Liberalism, both as a contingent historical fact and as a matter of its most fervently held principles, is a response to pluralism. We reach here the closest liberalism ever gets to metaphysics. By metaphysics, I mean a claim to have identified an unalterable and universally present fact about the universe. (pp. 40-1)
I am turning all Rawlsian in my old age, so I find I am very much inclined to agree with that. (Just to be clear: McGowan doesn’t roll on and on about metaphysics. ‘Pluralism as metaphysics’ is a mildly hyperbolic gesture, to establish contrast. He settles down, sensibly, to talking about liberalism as a ‘political not metaphysical’ view, as Rawls would say.) But here’s my question. McGowan starts off, quite standardly, with the Reformation. “Liberalism originates as a loose set of responses offered to the problems attending social organization and authority after the demise of a single, unifying religion and as an alternative to arbitary and absolute power lodged in a monarch” (p. 11). And, as you might expect, he gets around soon enough to James Madison on the two ways of treating ‘the mischiefs of faction’: by killing liberty, which is no-go; or by mitigating its ill-effects. That’s the way.
But religious toleration is not, per se, pluralism. I think it might have surprised many early advocates of religious toleration to think they were advocates of ‘pluralism’ in any more generic sense. Pluralism, in other areas, wouldn’t seem like a salient political issue. Religion was the toleration issue, at least politically.
Likewise, a Madisonian sense of the inevitability of factionalism is not rooted in a sense that people will always be chasing different, irreducible ‘goods’ but that people will always be fighting over a limited stock of the same goods: money, power, status, the usual suspects.
It is, of course, easy to find expressions of appreciation for pluralism going way back, in a fairly generic sense: variety is the spice of life. When Plato complains that the multi-colored coat of democracy will seem attractive to those with bad taste, he is obviously grumbling about what he takes to be a common attitude. But I’m not sure how early we can find statements that affirm pluralism as a crucial, foundational political value – apart from the religion case. Variety, apart from that one hot-button issue, wasn’t something you engineered whole political systems to accommodate.
Take J.S. Mill in On Liberty. Obviously he’s a pluralist. I think it’s safe to say he feels to his very bones that variety and idiosyncratic individualism are ethical ends in themselves. But that’s not actually how he sells his view. He advertises the great good of variety with a rhetoric of experimentalism. People need to try out different styles of life because we have to figure out which ones work, which goods really are good. I don’t think Mill seriously expects all this experimentation to converge, ideally, on some one unified, experimentally confirmed theory of the good. But he sort of tends to talk that way. He doesn’t say: because pluralism, that’s why we’re going to let everyone do their thing.
‘Pluralism’ as a centerpiece of liberal rhetoric seems to come in with James – A Pluralistic Universe – which, I confess, I have not read. So my opinions about that work should be taken with a grain of salt. And, even later, Berlin, who hauls ‘pluralism’ into the limelight in academic philosophy terms. In practical politics, I’m not sure ‘pluralism’ had any real pull before the 60’s. (Damned hippies and all that.) Tristero has a really great post up, in case you missed it.
It says something that, as late as the 50’s, conservatives like Russell Kirk claimed to be the advocates of the ‘plural mysteries of existence’ (can’t remember the exact phrase). The idea was that liberalism tended to a certain callow, rationalized, managed homogeneity. But this was, in effect, a duel between Feudal nostalgia and anxiety about the Lonely Crowd, the Man in the Gray Flannel Suit, etc.
Anyway, I’m unsure where I’m going with this because I’m unsure about this: the history of pluralism as a salient political value. It seems suspicious that we should regard something that is so late to arrive on the scene as the closest we get to metaphysics. Still, like I said, I more or less nodded agreement when I read that bit from McGowan. What do you think?
{ 126 comments }
HH 05.31.08 at 6:22 pm
There is no metaphysical basis for political philosophy, because it is organized behavior driven primarily by adventitious evolutionary events. Dawkins is a much surer guide to political philosophy than Plato.
The fundamental polarity in political orientation is pragmatism vs. dogma. In times of social stasis, dogma prevails. In times of rapid change, pragmatism prevails. Neither pole reflects any immutable laws of metaphysics. Each pole is a successful genetic survival strategy for a particular environmental extreme.
ox 05.31.08 at 6:38 pm
you seem to be going back and forth between pluralism as a sociological fact and pluralism as a value. which one is it?
Dave 05.31.08 at 6:42 pm
Political Philosophy is organised behaviour? You’ve obviously never sat in a graduate seminar.
Jonathan M 05.31.08 at 6:51 pm
Was JS Mill a pluralist?
Sure he’d allow for people to find what makes them happy but I seem to remember that the idea of different people getting the greatest happiness out of different things was quite tricky for consequentialism and required all kinds of elaborate post-hoc rules.
abb1 05.31.08 at 7:02 pm
Sure, it’s a response to pluralism and it’s about mitigating ill-effects, but one can imagine many different responses to pluralism and many different ways to mitigate ill-effects. Liberalism seems to be a fairly specific response, the one with the main focus on preserving property rights.
HH 05.31.08 at 7:34 pm
“Political Philosophy is organised behaviour?”
Yes, political philosophy is the distilled and bottled essence of successful organized behavior. Unlike space, time, or mass, it does not exist apart from human affairs. That is why the political philosophy of Confucian china is different from the political philosophy of Periclean Athens.
Political Philosophy is utterly meaningless considered apart from the event stream of human affairs. It is emergent, organized behavior, and its fossil record is what we read in Aristotle or Locke.
To ascribe to a school of political philosophy some independent metaphysical force is voodoo magic. No branch of political philosophy survives without demonstrated utility in the minds of its adherents, and that utility is demonstrated in the successful regulation of human affairs.
Walt 05.31.08 at 8:10 pm
hh, dave’s comment was a joke. Note the “graduate seminar” quip that follows.
john c. halasz 05.31.08 at 9:14 pm
“Yes, political philosophy is the distilled and bottled essence of successful organized behavior.”
And that statement is not metaphysical how?
As to the main issue, I think you should go back to Max Weber and the ever-increasing structural-functional differentiation of modern societies, with corresponding conflicts between “value spheres”, to gain a purchase on the issue, though that might not be the sort of liberalism you’d prefer. Still, pluralism is less of a distinctive value of liberalism than a structural “necessity” of modern societies, to which normative political liberalism is just one response. All viable modern political views or positions must one way or another, implicitly or explicitly, take account of such differentiation/pluralization. The fact that political liberalism thinks itself privileged through its attempt to paper over conflicting differences suggests that maybe it actually hasn’t fully grasped their import or else hasn’t fully taken account of itself as a specific mode of organizing power.
Ben M 05.31.08 at 9:36 pm
James wrote “A Pluralistic Universe”, not “The Plural Universe”.
corrected. – JH
Slocum 06.01.08 at 1:26 am
Likewise, a Madisonian sense of the inevitability of factionalism is not rooted in a sense that people will always be chasing different, irreducible ‘goods’ but that people will always be fighting over a limited stock of the same goods: money, power, status, the usual suspects.
Regardless of whether that’s an accurate assessment of Madison, it does seem an accurate description of the modern liberal view (“…people will always be fighting over a limited stock of the same goods: money, power, status, the usual suspects.”).
And that view strikes me as antithetical to a belief pluralism as seen here in Will Wilkinson’s response to Henry Farrell:
http://www.willwilkinson.net/flybottle/2006/10/31/the-great-chain-of-status/
Wilkinson argues for pluralism:
“…there is no cap on the number or kind of races. The greater the number and variety of races, the more likely it is that everybody will be able to find one in which they can win, place, or at least show.”
And Farrell argues that this apparent pluralism is a mirage and there’s really only a single dimension:
“…Even if you’re king of your own mountain, you’re likely to be quite well aware of the other mountains around you that make yours look in comparison like a low-grade class of a gently sloping foothill, or perhaps even a slightly upraised knob in the middle of a steep declination. You’re similarly aware of those less well-advantaged foothills or knoblets whose owners you can look down upon…. In short, people are highly aware of the relative rankings of their obsessions.”
I think that Wilkinson has the far stronger argument, but that aside, it seems clear that the libertarian rather than liberal position is the one that believes in and values pluralism.
Ted 06.01.08 at 1:58 am
Madison emphasizes that conflict is rooted in human nature, and that we will always find *something* to fight about – we might have been limited in the subjects we’ve found to fight about so far, but we’re clever enough to find new ones if need be. (Which end of the egg to crack, perhaps, or whether to eat our bread with the butter side up or the butter side down).
John Holbo 06.01.08 at 1:59 am
“you seem to be going back and forth between pluralism as a sociological fact and pluralism as a value. which one is it?”
Pluralism as a value in response to pluralism as an (alleged) fact.
John Holbo 06.01.08 at 2:36 am
“Madison emphasizes that conflict is rooted in human nature, and that we will always find something to fight about”
Hmmm, it’s been a long time since I read Madison. But certainly the view that pluralism is a function of a more basic drive to generate conflict is rather non-standard, as pluralisms go these days.
The intersting thing about Wilkinson/Farrell is that they both agree about the need for ‘winning’, which is a fairly monistic, if flexibly applicable, value. (At least Wilkinson seems to be assuming this. And Farrell is granting it at least for the sake of argument, I think.) We wouldn’t call someone who wants to win at poker and tennis and at the office, etc. as a ‘pluralist’. We’d say he values winning.
vivian 06.01.08 at 3:17 am
This thread cries out for links to Hilary Putnam.
seth edenbaum 06.01.08 at 5:12 am
Henry Farrell’s argument is more or less a defense of neoliberalism: that since we all love to shop, freedom is the ability to buy different things.
What defines pluralism in relation to democracy is an acceptance of a formalized means of conversation and argument concerning our different beliefs. Prosecutors may not “believe in” the same things that defense attorneys “believe in” (the guilt or innocence of the accused) but they accept the mediation of the justice system. Christians Jews and Atheists, shopkeepers and academics may not…
But wait, academics and small shopkeepers do believe in the same things these days. Neoliberalism is the defense of the Petit Bourgeois by Ph.D’s.
Neither liberalism not libertarianism understand how democratic society functions, or needs to. Monoculture is a danger. Unanimity and collaboration at the level of belief is a danger, if it goes beyond unanimity in defense of formalisms. The failure of the press vis-a-vis Iraq was a failure of adversarialism. Mcclellan says he was doing his job as a flack. The job of the press was to defend their prerogatives, to distrust and dig. They failed. Does a prosecutor share the values of a defense attorney? Yes, and very much no. One needs the other, just as art needs commerce, just as the market needs people who are indifferent to wealth: who are immune, but who left to their own devices would float off into cloudcookooland.
There are plenty of people who would be perfectly happy doing jobs that would make me put a bullet in my brain; but they want a little respect. Not everyone’s a genius, but everyone wants to fit in somewhere. Even a square peg needs a round hole to prove itself different. We can only see ourselves in relation to others just as we only measure speed by reference to distance and time.
Democracy is organized discord. Without both it fails. The failure of the press has been a failure, in the sense of a sin, of self-importance. A responsible, moral, press is a sign of weakness in a democracy. If the “serious” press had treated George Bush the way the “unserious” press treated Britney Spears, we’d all be better off. Liberals are serious people, I can’t fucking stand them. But Libertarians are worse.
bad Jim 06.01.08 at 7:20 am
Cromwell’s was arguably the first pluralistic polity in our common heritage, tolerating even Jews. (This assumes that Persia and Italy &c are outside our common heritage, of course). Perhaps few would consider Cromwell liberal, but he did chop off the head of his king.
Liberality has long been popular in homogenous populations, not least since inequality is ubiquitous. Obversely, pluralism certainly requires liberalism and provides its most enjoyable introduction. Guacamole, anyone?
Jeroen 06.01.08 at 8:17 am
“Pluralism as a value in response to pluralism as an (alleged) fact.”
John, you seem to jump to easily from ‘is’ to ‘ought’. Pluralism as a ‘fact’ has to be legitimized over and over again. Defending pluralism as a value should imply enshrining it in a broader political philosophy, e.g. pluralism is preferable because it leads to more peaceful societies, to a higher possibility of social mobility, to more freedom for individuals to develop themselves (liberalism?), to the empowerment of the underprivileged, etc. Why do we cherish pluralism?
Pluralism as a ‘fact’ might be over reversed by a convincing monistic philosophy …
abb1 06.01.08 at 8:28 am
…pluralism certainly requires liberalism…
Come on now… ‘Pluralism’ and ‘individualism’ are two different concepts. I can see how individualism might require a high degree of liberalism, but mere pluralism certainly doesn’t.
It’s like arguing that egalitarianism requires communism.
John Holbo 06.01.08 at 11:18 am
“John, you seem to jump too easily from ‘is’ to ‘ought’.”
I’m just thumbnailing the position, not offering an argument. It is true that liberal political philosophers – John Rawls, for example – think the appeal of their position is, in part, that it fits with certain facts about the human condition. That’s not naively getting ‘ought’ from ‘is’ because the move isn’t simple. It would be rather extreme if one’s normative theory involved no ‘is’ claims whatsoever.
Ben Alpers 06.01.08 at 11:39 am
In practical politics, I’m not sure ‘pluralism’ had any real pull before the 60’s.
This seems at least two decades too late to me.
During World War II, the United States presented itself as essentially pluralistic (especially in ethnic and religious terms) and as promoting a pluralistic world (though the Atlantic Charter and the United Nations, as the allied countries were usually called ruing the war). Even the Soviet Union was presented as pluralistic, at least in terms of nationalities issues (a convenient way to spin Stalinist nationalities policies in such a way as to make an potentially uncomfortable alliance look more pleasant). In contrast, the Axis countries were presented as brutally promoting homogenization of power and nationality.
A great example of this kind of rhetoric can be seen in World War II combat films, where the multiethnic, multiregional combat unit represents the U.S. Even at war, these films suggests, Americans retain and promote pluralism.
SG 06.01.08 at 11:49 am
couldn’t pluralism be seen as a natural, unplanned political and social response to the increasing importance of information in managing economic affairs? As effective use of information becomes more important in the pursuit of economic gains, increasing awareness of the heritage and views of other groups becomes more useful, because they might know something you don’t. Religious tolerance helps you to understand the physics of the heavenly bodies, therefore to navigate, therefore to conquer new territory. Racial tolerance means better trade opportunities and advantages in conquering new territory, etc. Obviously this is irrelevant when your society doesn’t have the means to conquer or the scientific and artistic development to use the new information, but once you reach that stage you need a certain amount of pluralism to become richer.
Which might also explain the constant tension in many “pluralistic” societies between, for example, the wealth benefits of migration and openness, and their supposed threat to the way of life of the “original” inhabitants.
praisegod barebones 06.01.08 at 12:17 pm
If being a regicide makes Cromwell a liberal, then liberalisms a broad church…and when you look at the biographies of the other English regicides, the claim looks even more imp[lausible. The English civil war was a religious war as much as anything else.
Should we think that Robespierre was a liberal too?
HH 06.01.08 at 4:20 pm
I find it ridiculous that participants in this thread treat “pluralism” and “liberalism” as though they are stable and crisply defined concepts. Their meanings obviously shift from one post to the next in this thread and even from one sentence to the next. The lexical trappings of scholarly discussion do not make that discussion rigorous or useful.
There may well be a periodic table of behavioral phenomena underlying the social sciences, but liberalism and pluralism are as useful in explaining political phenomena as alchemical concepts are in explaining chemistry.
seth edenbaum 06.01.08 at 4:47 pm
“The fundamental polarity in political orientation is pragmatism vs. dogma. In times of social stasis, dogma prevails.”
No. In times of social stasis extant systems suffice.
You attempt to exempt Dawkins’ ideas from the scrutiny of history by the promulgation of those ideas as dogma.
Your arch self-importance is as historically determined, is as much a knee-jerk response to ambiguity as his. Call it: Late Modernism.
“I find it ridiculous that participants in this thread treat “pluralism†and “liberalism†as though they are stable and crisply defined concepts.”
True enough: the world exists in events not concepts. But crisply defined concepts are what you defend.
Sam C 06.01.08 at 5:02 pm
Interesting post, but I don’t buy this:
Even just in On Liberty, two themes are central:
1. the good – that at which all rational action aims – is happiness. But Mill doesn’t define happiness as Bentham did, as a simple, pleasant mental state. He’s much more Aristotelian: happiness is a cluster of activities making use of developed capacities and sensitivities. It importantly includes the activities of rationally directing our own lives and expressing our own potentials (that’s what OL chapter 3 is about). Mill doesn’t say much about how many such activities, or how many possible combinations of subsets of them into good lives, there are. He’s certainly a pluralist in the sense that he thinks the answers are ‘more than one’ in both cases.
2. Institutions are important for the explanation and motivation of behaviour. Social forms which put control of, and responsibility for individuals’ lives in their own hands, have good results, just as the institutions of science have truth-directed results.
Once you add in the recurrence of these themes in (for instance) A System of Logic, Utilitarianism, and essays like ‘Civilization’ and ‘Bentham’, I think the case is overwhelming that Mill really means what he says. ‘Variety and idiosyncratic individualism’ are indeed good, but instrumentally good – good for humans, being the kind of creature we are, not good in themselves. (In fact, it further supports this reading that Mill doesn’t even think that all humans benefit from liberal institutions: they do good only for a certain kind of educated community capable of citizenship.)
That is: Mill is not a neutralist liberal prefiguring Berlin and Rawls. He’s a perfectionist liberal, and much closer to Kant and to the British Idealists than to the particular kind of liberalism McGowan describes. I have a slightly more important point than just Mill geekery (although I’ll happily play at Mill geekery all day). It’s that neutralist liberalism is just one, rather recent kind of liberalism.
HH 06.01.08 at 5:04 pm
“You attempt to exempt Dawkins’ ideas from the scrutiny of history by the promulgation of those ideas as dogma.”
Not at all. I hold them to the same scrutiny and find they have superior elegance, utility, and predictive power. Newton’s laws and Copernican astronomy are not dogmatically equivalent to competing explanations of the relevant phenomena. They are accepted scientific explanations because they are validated and useful.
Looking at political phenomena as an evolutionary system swarming with competing memes is a much more fruitful model than pretending that vague abstractions like liberalism and pluralism are Platonic ideal shapes into which we must mold the uncooperative data of human activity.
John Holbo 06.01.08 at 5:15 pm
Thanks, Sam C. Yes, yes: good old “man’s interest as a progressive being”, as opposed to mere ‘happiness’.
I think I’ll buy ‘good in themselves for humans being the kinds of creatures we are’ as what I meant to say in the post.
You write: “Mill doesn’t say much about how many such activities, or how many possible combinations of subsets of them into good lives.” That’s sort of my point. That there is surprisingly little emphasis on this, given how important I sense it is for Mill. But I’ll grant the point that neutralism is a more recent development, and perhaps the emphasis on pluralism is most readily made explicitly central by this form.
John Holbo 06.01.08 at 5:23 pm
hh, you don’t seem to grasp the difference between normative political theory, or political philosophy, and explanatory scientific theories. There is a difference between is and ought, after all. No one is proposing ‘liberalism’ or ‘pluralism’ as a predictive model of human behavior. How would that even work?
And for damned sure, if you are going to go getting all high and mighty against ‘vague abstractions’, then cut it out about ‘swarms of competing memes’. Sheesh.
Ozzie Maland 06.01.08 at 5:26 pm
You set out this quote:
“Liberalism originates as a loose set of responses offered to the problems attending social organization and authority after the demise of a single, unifying religion and as an alternative to arbitary and absolute power lodged in a monarch†(p. 11).
I beg to differ — “Liberalism” originated as a class response to a centralized church and state. The upper middle class, seeking to gain power from the ruling class, needed a rallying cry — “Liberalism.” Once that upper middle class layer was co-opted into the ruling regime, Liberalism (as in “free trade” etc) came to embrace doctrines such as pluralism that serve to increase, not decrease, central authority. The value of “pluralism” to central authority is its fostering smallish groups which are then easier to rule (the old divide-and-conquer politics), accomplished through emphasizing different languages, religions, skin colors, beliefs in UFOs, single assassins, 9/11 conspiracies, Zionist protocols, etc.
—
Aloha ~~~ Ozzie Maland ~~~ San Diego
bi 06.01.08 at 5:29 pm
SG seems to be onto something…
– bi, Intl. J. Inact.
PersonFromPorlock 06.01.08 at 6:00 pm
If being a regicide makes Cromwell a liberal, then liberalisms a broad church…
Posted by praisegod barebones · June 1st, 2008 at 12:17 pm
Well, it is. The essential characteristic of Liberalism is the use of the state to march sinners to virtue to at bayonet’s point, and that’s Cromwell to a ‘T’.
HH 06.01.08 at 6:09 pm
“hh, you don’t seem to grasp the difference between normative political theory, or political philosophy, and explanatory scientific theories.”
Normative theories are aimed at human conduct, and they are premised on efficacy. Nobody codifies and elucidates a political theory with pernicious intent. Thus, political theory is hopelessly entangled with the events of the world, arising from and influencing those events. Marxism was not originally an amusing topic for academic conversation; its origin is an urgent quest to remediate human misery.
“No one is proposing ‘liberalism’ or ‘pluralism’ as a predictive model of human behavior. How would that even work?”
Not so. Many political leaders avocate “liberal” policies and seek to implement “pluralistic” principles with the expectation that their application will materially improve the lives of their constituents. Judges and legislators are constantly attempting to apply the best principles of political philosophy to the questions and problems at hand, with a view toward efficacy.
“And for damned sure, if you are going to go getting all high and mighty against ‘vague abstractions’, then cut it out about ‘swarms of competing memes’. Sheesh.”
“swarms of competing memes” is not offered as a competing candidate for glorious “ism” status in the pantheon of ill-defined generalities. I used the phrase as a pointer to Dawkins’ work.
The application of greater rigor to political science would be of great practical benefit to mankind, and this benefit would vastly outweigh the burden of transitional adjustments falling upon established schools of academic thought.
abb1 06.01.08 at 6:20 pm
The value of “pluralism†to central authority is its fostering smallish groups which are then easier to rule…
Nah, as far as the central authority is concerned nationalism is way better than liberalism.
Liberalism is merely a toned-down form of libertarianism, step back from the abyss of unrestricted individualism. If it wasn’t for the great depression, there would’ve been no need for modern American liberalism; the roaring 20s – yeah, way to go! When it became clear that the system is about to self-destruct – a new, more moderate ideology emerged. Its rather obvious goal is to preserve as much ‘liberty’ (freedom to control your property) as possible while ‘mitigating the ill-effects’ by making some painful concessions, compromises, but no more than absolutely necessary.
The ‘pluralism’ angle seems rather uncontroversial – everybody is for pluralism – as long as it presents no danger, of course. And when it does – send the National Guard, now. And then keep doublethinking for fifty years that the phrase ‘states rights’ literally means ‘we hate the blacks’.
seth edenbaum 06.01.08 at 6:21 pm
hh,
Dawkins’ argumentation is awash in moralizing and you say there’s no place for metaphysics? Hire an actor to read aloud what you’ve written here and maybe you’ll recognize yourself as a pompous ass.
Then feel free to tell us about the pomposity meme.
It’s getting chilly down here, I’m agreeing with J Holbo.
HH 06.01.08 at 6:52 pm
“Hire an actor to read aloud what you’ve written here and maybe you’ll recognize yourself as a pompous ass.”
I may be a pompous ass, but that does not render the spectacle of grown men fiddling with bits of silly putty called “liberalism” and “pluralism” any less ridiculous.
This word game of fruitless discussion of ill-defined generalities is an intellectual fraud, and is the cause of the scorn heaped upon this style of teaching social sciences.
In an age awash in information, computational power, and instantaneous communications, a pompous ass asks if it is too much to ask for greater rigor and UTILITY in the study of ideas that govern the welfare of billions of people?
Ben A 06.01.08 at 7:14 pm
It’s that neutralist liberalism is just one, rather recent kind of liberalism.
This seems about right. Many early liberals — Hobbes, Mill, had a strong republican strand to them: the idea that certain civic virtues enable a liberal project, and that (thus) these virtues must be endorsed and taught for the liberal project to succeed. Of course, once we’re in the virtue-inculcating business, pure neutrality goes by the boards. Pluralism, then, just means acceptance of the set of values that harmonize with the liberal project.
Of course, it may still be a benefit of liberalism that it favors a broader pluralism than some other doctrines, but the concept of a liberalism ‘neutralist’ in principle seems illusory.
seth edenbaum 06.01.08 at 9:04 pm
In dreams begin responsibilities.
Sidestepping questions of free will vis-a-vis simple physical causality and sticking merely to questions of social determinism, the logic of/for individualism is pretty thin.
The question becomes whether it makes sense to defend an illusory right of “freedom” as opposed to one of respect, or equal protection? Natural law and rights are metaphysical claptrap, and society is artificial, republican forms especially so. Most people are not interested in personal freedom, being less desirous of getting ahead of others than they are worried about falling behind.
It’s common to equate the Enlightenment with the rule of law when in many ways it’s come to oppose it. The rule of law is the rule of society over the individual, but in republican forms of government the community as a whole is left to debate the rules that govern its members. The primary rules are rules of debate, of process not result. There is no “truth” beyond that which ensures the continued functioning of the community. With this in mind the primary personal right is not of speech but of inquiry.
hh argues more from rationalism then empiricism, pretending his imperatives derive from utility when derive from a very specific moral philosophy. He “values” a certain form of reason. But Dawkins et al. are impatient with democracy. They think there’s a light at the end of the tunnel and they want us to get there. Elitism is a value, but not one I share, at least to the extremes of Dawkins and Dennett.
Individualists are all alike: like cookie-cutter klub-kids hell bent on expressing their distinctiveness but ending up bumbling, inarticulate and unable to describe their relation to anything; capable only of describing their need to be different: the ultimate rationalists living only for the present.
Again disregarding physical determinism, we should be fostering the sort of intelligence that does more than act on reflex. Individuals can only become self-aware in the context of community. But self awareness, any sense of irony not concerning others but oneself is frowned upon.
Narcissism is the position equally of someone who never looks in the mirror as it is of one who spends his entire day in front of it. Democracy is not well-founded on stoned ravers and geeks.
HH 06.02.08 at 12:30 am
“Democracy is not well-founded on stoned ravers and geeks.”
Um, yes. But what makes Democracy some sort of privileged end state? Teilhard de Chardin imagines a global superorganism of dazzling and radical novelty. The future of political structure may well be the nervous system of this collective being, and something entirely discontinuous with any political forms we know.
We are just at the beginning of the acceleration of the evolution of human social and governmental structures, and some scholars act as though the catalog of political forms is complete. Man is now actively augmenting his own evolution by artificial means, and this suggests the advent of emergent political phenomena, and the reconfiguration of existing political systems. Indeed, the failed political theories of several centuries will require reappraisal as economies shift from atoms to bits.
The value of seeing political science through the lens of Dawkins’ genetic model is that it leads to fruitful and expanding exploration of new possibilities. The current collection of vaguely defined “isms” preserved under glass in political science texts will appear as distant and dated to the political philosophers of the next century as the works of the alchemists appeared to the pioneers of chemisty.
John Holbo 06.02.08 at 2:32 am
hh, so which is it: is our problem that we refuse to embrace bold metaphysical speculations like yours (don’t bother trying to pretend this is science, please), or is our problem that we speculate too boldly on the cloud cuckooland of liberalism, rather than confining ourself to the solid earth of Teilhard de Chardin’s global superorganism?
John Holbo 06.02.08 at 2:49 am
ben a, that does seem right. Pluralism as virtue supplants various notions of republican virtue. So it is best to think of pluralism-based liberalism as a recent strand. But, importantly, it’s more or less a subvariety. Liberalism has always been a ‘virtue ethic’, in a sense. And pluralism remains that.
Returning to the Madison point: the counterpoint to his cynicism when it comes to ‘faction’ is a belief that a certain sort of republican progressivism is basically viable. (But again, it’s been a while since I read Madison.)
Ben A 06.02.08 at 3:29 am
Liberalism has always been a ‘virtue ethic’, in a sense. And pluralism remains that.
That’s a great way of putting the point.
seth edenbaum 06.02.08 at 3:48 am
From individualism to ultimate unity, from The Selfish Gene to Global Superorganism, from geek to raver.
For a dimestore sociologist, I ain’t that bad.
josh 06.02.08 at 8:03 am
If you’re interested in the lineage/chronology of expressions of pluralism, you might give this a look:
http://berlin.wolf.ox.ac.uk/lists/pluralism/index.html
Still, I think that if one is to discuss pluralism, one needs to define it more precisely than it has been thus far. James advanced pluralism as both a normative outlook, and a theory about epistemology and metaphysics. In political science/theory, the early 20th century British Pluralists depicted (and championed) a society made up of independent, self-governing private bodies, as opposed to a monolithic state; a similar, but less (explicitly) normative picture was presented by mid-20th century American (descriptive, political science) pluralists such as Robert Dahl. Berlin advanced value or ethical pluralism – the view that there exist a plurality of valid, unsystematisable (sorry for that word) values — as did several now-forgotten philosophers in the inter-war period (and, arguably, Weber right after WWI). This is a different thing from Rawls’s appealing to the social fact of a plurality of opposing doctrines (Charles Larmore has a good essay on this point, I’m afraid I forget where), and also different from Berlin’s friend Arthur Schlesinger Jr.’s celebration (following Madison) of the plurality of competing interests and political groups. Berlin’s pluralism arguably owes much to the methodological pluralism advanced by German neo-Kantians and by Dilthey (and, Berlin claimed, by Vico and Herder before them), but not to the political pluralists. And then there’s Hannah Arendt’s pluralism, which is yet another matter, and which I’d try to categorize if I could figure out what exactly it meant (other than a recognition of the plurality of individuals).
All of this does seem to coalesce, more or less, in the post- WWII period, when pluralism becomes part of the Cold War definition of Western liberal democracy against totalitarianism. But pluralism as a buzzword, and various sorts of pluralisms as theories, had been making advances before that. My own suggested explanation: the break-down of Hegelianism as a philosophical master-synthesis, coupled with social unrest and, eventually, the Great War which shattered belief in social harmony and progress. And also, of course, the rise of anthropology, and with it a conscious of cultural diversity.
It’s pretty late. I’m not sure if any of that made sense.
jholbo 06.02.08 at 9:43 am
thanks josh, that’s very helpful.
J Thomas 06.02.08 at 12:14 pm
Ah, pluralism.
When it’s wasteful to kill people then we should learn to live with them.
When there are more people than the land will support then some of them will die off. Then it isn’t nearly so wasteful to kill them. In that case I want the people who share my genes to at least maintain their frequency among the survivors. I want lots of surviving genetic variation too because that’s important for survival for future generations.
I’m less interested in survival for people who’re committed to not mixing with my people. If I thought they could actually manage that then I’d have no more interest in their survival than I do for tigers and endangered reptiles and such, but it’s rare that such people actually manage to keep themselves separate much.
When it’s wasteful to kill people (most of the time) then we have to accomodate them. Small groups must mostly accomodate the large groups. Let them do what they want provided it doesn’t get too much in the way. That’s what my small group does and must do.
Large groups must accomodate each other because it would be too difficult to choose one to intimidate and then coerce them. But if one large group is too hard to accomodate then the others will try to coerce it anyway.
This is sheer practicality. We can graft whatever ethical imperatives we want on top, but people will mostly act from the practical side.
HH 06.02.08 at 1:37 pm
“hh, so which is it: is our problem that we refuse to embrace bold metaphysical speculations like yours (don’t bother trying to pretend this is science, please), or is our problem that we speculate too boldly on the cloud cuckooland of liberalism, rather than confining ourself to the solid earth of Teilhard de Chardin’s global superorganism?”
You are making a false equivalence between speculation that invites new methods and welcomes emergent phenomena with speculation about vague generalizations that treats them as settled and tractable concepts. The former is a call for new rigor and the latter is a defense of false rigor.
One need read no further than this thread to see that there is no workable consensus on the meanings of the terms “liberalism” and “pluralism.” Relating liberalism to pluralism is about as useful an exercise as relating Phlogiston to the Holy Grail.
seth edenbaum 06.02.08 at 1:39 pm
Pluralism found no home in the Cold War, nor does it find one in academic economics, in neoliberalism, nor in Dawkins’ fundamentalist, Platonist, “new atheism.” Pluralism (lets have fun and say pluralisms) and methodological individualism are in contradiction.
“and, eventually, the Great War which shattered belief in social harmony and progress.”
And the Soviets? The Bauhaus and the Nazis? The American ideology of optimistic intervention?
The war made that belief stronger, to the point of desperation.
Over-determined, panicked, intellectualism is still the biggest vice.
HH 06.02.08 at 2:15 pm
“Over-determined, panicked, intellectualism is still the biggest vice.”
No, Ismism, is the biggest vice. Reification of vague abstractions leading to fruitless discussion, and sometimes murderous conflict, over isms is far more pernicious than the search for genuine knowledge.
Claude Shannon’s famous definition of information is “that which reduces uncertainty.” Discussions of the relationship between liberalism and pluralism fail this test spectacularly.
Sam C 06.02.08 at 2:36 pm
hh: Neither ‘liberalism’ nor ‘pluralism’ have straightforward definitions, and it wouldn’t be worth imposing such definitions on them. They’re useful shorthand for complex historical entities (traditions, modes of thought, epistemes, call them what you like) which manifestly have important effects. The conversation John Holbo started is an attempt to get clearer about the nature and interactions of these entities, and to think about what we should do in the face of them (since escaping them isn’t a option). One way of doing so – the one I’m expert in – is to read and argue with texts. There are plenty of other ways. (Incidentally, I think your best bet in the face of JH’s smackdown at 39 is to say ‘ouch, got me’ and back off. You’re looking a little silly now.)
seth edenbaum 06.02.08 at 2:37 pm
And the definition of kitsch is “extremely wishful thinking.”
HH 06.02.08 at 3:09 pm
“The conversation John Holbo started is an attempt to get clearer about the nature and interactions of these entities, and to think about what we should do in the face of them (since escaping them isn’t a option)”
Escaping them is most definitely an option. We can escape the unproductive isms of political science just as easily as we escaped from discussions of angels dancing on the heads of pins centuries ago. All that is required is a decision that this is fruitless discourse.
How has this thread helped us get “clearer” about the nature and interaction of these “entities?” Are we any LESS UNCERTAIN about their meanings at message #50 than we were at message #1? Obviously not.
Liberalism and pluralism are not philosophically tractable concepts. One does not progress by attempting to treat them as building blocks of understanding. They are ragged, amorphous, poorly defined NOSTRUMS that have somehow become subjects of respectable academic discourse.
If you disagree, please lay out for me the steady advancement of man’s understanding of liberalism or pluralism. Please cite the landmark works that narrow and sharpen our understanding of these terms such that the community of scholars has converged on a stable consensus. There is no such progression; there is just an endless fog-shrouded merry-go-round of miscommunication.
seth edenbaum 06.02.08 at 4:03 pm
“Liberalism and pluralism are not philosophically tractable concepts.”
Not easy, no. Nor are they are tractable historically, but thats why we have such discussions.
What’s interesting to me is that your arguments concerning politics track closely those of Franco Moretti on literature. And Moretti, to my annoyance, has plenty of fans on this page. The thought that we study literature to study ourselves, unlike say, how we study rocks and trees, seems as incomprehensible to Moretti as discussion of liberalism is to you.
Moretti is no pluralist but he claims his is the new model.
HH 06.02.08 at 4:18 pm
“The thought that we study literature to study ourselves, unlike say, how we study rocks and trees, seems as incomprehensible to Moretti as discussion of liberalism is to you.”
If you wish to make Political Science a branch of literature, then what you say makes sense. We can have splendid discussions about stylistic effects, emotional responses, and minor eddies around the whirlpools of genius. But I don’t think Mr. Holbo is talking about literary analysis.
Similarly, if you wish to reduce the work of Freud to a literary opus, you may crank down the tennis net of scientific validity considerably, but I don’t believe that this would be the fondest wish of Freud scholars.
I am not ready to let go of the ball and allow Political Science to be rendered unaccountable to reason and progress.
Martin James 06.02.08 at 4:22 pm
I grabbed this definition of pluralism.
“Belief that reality ultimately includes many different kinds of things. Thus, in ethics, the supposition that there are many independent sources of value and, in political life, acceptance of a multiplicity of groups with competing interests. Epistemological pluralism is a common feature in postmodernist thought.”
So John, where is the dividing line between the weak Madisonian pluralism of different mixes of the same competing goods and a more robust version which would celebrate incommensurable goods and as many non-reality based communities as possible?
Sam C 06.02.08 at 4:27 pm
hh:
This is the mistake I was trying to correct in the comment you’re responding to. You seem to have the idea that either (1) ‘liberalism’ names a natural kind like water, and the only progress in understanding it is analogous to the discovery that water = H2O; or (2) ‘liberalism’ is a meaningless term and discussion of it is a waste of time.
But those aren’t the only options. There are a huge range of worthwhile ways to understand and engage with politics and with human life generally, and only some of them are even slightly analogous to natural science.
For example: many philosophers, including me, think that we can get somewhere by reading and arguing with texts by geniuses. In this particular case, the relevant texts are part of a tradition – a real, causally effective historical phenomenon – which is usefully labelled ‘liberalism’. We’re not trying to define that term, or to discover some essence which all the things we call ‘liberal’ share. We’re trying to talk with some interesting people about some interesting topics, like how we should live together, and to understand the conversation we’ve joined.
The landmark works you ask for include Locke’s Letter Concerning Toleration, Mill’s On Liberty, Berlin’s Four Essays on Liberty, and Rawls’s A Theory of Justice. All of these help us understand, not what the essence of liberalism is (because there isn’t one), nor how to turn ‘liberalism’ into a scientific term like ‘hydrogen’ (because that wouldn’t suit our purposes), but how we might live together. In particular, how we might live together given that we disagree strongly about the best kind of life.
seth edenbaum 06.02.08 at 5:36 pm
“If you wish to make Political Science a branch of literature.”
Political “Science” is the modernist reworking, as a synchronic “logic”- of political history, as sociology is the same for ethnography. As far as Freud is concerned I feel like I’m arguing through a time portal with someone in 1974. Strange.
And Rawls does not at all help us to understand how we might live together. He builds air castles on the theme of Liberalism. He writes an abstract, and arid, philosophical poetry. Freud by comparison was a great literary empiricist.
geo 06.02.08 at 5:50 pm
I’m with hh. Political (and every other kind of) philosophy seems to me a charming will-of-the-wisp. I’d like to know, though, hh, whether you don’t think Rorty has said this already, and pretty well.
seth edenbaum 06.02.08 at 7:27 pm
Rorty was a wimp: the sort of reformer within an academic field who like similar ones in the political one is unwilling or unable to be uncivil to his fellows or his leadership. He served his king out of loyalty more than moral commitment. The more I read of him, the more he annoys me.
Political philosophy is a discussion of what and how we value. If you’re an idealist and want to say it’s a discussion of “Truth” then you can pull categories out of your ass and call it what you want.
hh makes claims he backs up with explicit reference to theology [and Catholic to boot!] and he complains about me?
It’s all too Colin McGinn, another Catholic who pretends to be an atheist.
It’s silly.
Historians will look back and learn about us what we did not know about ourselves. That’s how “progress” works. It’s never worked any other way and though there hasn’t been much of it, there has been some. Rationalists and theoreticians pretend otherwise and we all pay the price for their idealism.
I’ll take a lawyer who defends his client over a philosopher in search of truth, any day of the week. That’s the basis of my political philosophy.
geo 06.02.08 at 8:07 pm
That’s the basis of my political philosophy.
What is your political philosophy?
HH 06.02.08 at 8:38 pm
“I’ll take a lawyer who defends his client over a philosopher in search of truth, any day of the week. That’s the basis of my political philosophy.”
For once, we agree – because a series of legal cases and their outcomes follows a bounded course answerable to real events. For political science to be responsive to the workings of the world it must engage problems in an accountable manner, not pirouette on abstractions.
I am not arguing against generalizations and theory, but I am protesting unproductive lines of inquiry and logically fruitless paths of discussion. The test of value in such discourse should always be: “does this understanding give us predictive power?”
HH 06.02.08 at 8:54 pm
“I’d like to know, though, hh, whether you don’t think Rorty has said this already, and pretty well.”
From the little I have read of Rorty, he seems to have found philosophy defensible mainly on aesthetic grounds. That may be, but political philosophy, and especially political science, cannot so easily avoid the call to pragmatic duty.
Enjoying political philosophy for purposes of intellectual amusement, while six billion people starve, suffer, and die for want of pragmatic political structures strikes me as tasteless, at a minimum.
HH 06.02.08 at 9:04 pm
“All of these help us understand, not what the essence of liberalism is (because there isn’t one), nor how to turn ‘liberalism’ into a scientific term like ‘hydrogen’ (because that wouldn’t suit our purposes), but how we might live together. In particular, how we might live together given that we disagree strongly about the best kind of life.”
So Liberalism is now the monad that reflects all of political philosophy and is merely a “guide to how we might live together?” That certainly dissolves the definitional problem.
This is a sleight of hand that won’t work. In a rigorous discussion, you can’t use a term as a token or “shorthand” when it represents different bundles of complex ideas to different people.
seth edenbaum 06.02.08 at 9:33 pm
A lawyer is a tradesman, playing a role that demands not objectivity but skillful bias. Philosophers these days see craft and rhetorical sophistication as an indulgence, when its a methodology: the most important methodology in the life of the republic. People are actors, and it’s useless to pretend to be reasoning observers watching from off stage, when history has always shown us caught up, embedded, in our time. There are no exceptions.
Orators do not hector. They are not pedants.
After the failure of pseudoscientific Freudianism and pseudoscientific Marxism, pseudoscientific rationalism has nonetheless taken of over the humanities. Contemptuous Platonism, the rationalism of (supposedly) free monads is seen as the counter-force to no-nothing barbarism; but barbarism though not my preference is the richer moral world. Idealist scholasticism is a symptom and a dead end. hh is both a hippie and a geek, exhibiting the sensibilities of both preadolescence and adolescence: a proud monad and a seeker of final unity.
He doesn’t even aspire to adulthood.
HH 06.02.08 at 10:31 pm
‘it’s useless to pretend to be reasoning observers watching from off stage, when history has always shown us caught up, embedded, in our time. There are no exceptions.”
Are you saying that as an exceptional observer, seth?
john c. halasz 06.02.08 at 11:28 pm
“So Liberalism is now the monad that reflects all of political philosophy and is merely a “guide to how we might live together?†That certainly dissolves the definitional problem.
This is a sleight of hand that won’t work. In a rigorous discussion, you can’t use a term as a token or “shorthand†when it represents different bundles of complex ideas to different people.”
At last, hh, whose been spouting thoroughly retrograde fantasies of Comtean positivism, while imagining, in a weirdly historicist projection, that it’s the new dawn heralding the inevitable wave of the future, inadvertently makes an iota of sense. “Pluralism”, as the inevitable coexistence of rooted differences between ways of life, socio-political orientations or “values”, based on different castes and classes, ethnic/racial groups, religions and ideologies, etc., which are possibly incommensurable and don’t admit of any singularly harmonized integration, and maintain the permanent potential for conflict, whether explicitly violent or not, is a political fact of life, to which liberalism is just one possible response, by no means inevitable or monopolistic. The political concerns the public organization of power, “authority” and their “legitimation” to sustain the cooperative basis of inevitably collective human existence, within the equally basic potential for conflict over an inevitably shared potentiality for being, (which is why the political, as a projection of futural prospects always exceeds any givenness). In other words, the political concerns the public mediation, resolution, and containment of endemic human conflict in the generation, distribution and exercize of power. Which is a matter of practical reason, in the pre-modern Aristotelean sense, as opposed the the mistaken modern project of converting it into a matter of theoretical reason, (“pure reason made practical”). That “pluralism” would be a distinctive value to be promoted, under the guise of tolerance or inclusiveness, states a problem for liberalism, not a “solution”, since the conflict potential is thereby denegated and the “balance” of conflicts can not somehow simply be adjudicated in advance via some supposedly neutral juridical medium. (The appeal to the third party juridical, i.e. non-participatory, stance in liberal theorizing amounts to its prime epistemic fantasy). At any rate, speaking as a republican, not a liberal, liberalism historically is saddled with a privatistic/individualistic orientation, (which, by defining the public in negative terms, is to that extent anti-political and evades the collective question of the organization of power), an economistic orientation toward the pursuit of “interests”, and an elitist or anti-democratic bias. Overcoming those faults would be the real political test for the viability of liberalism vis-a-vis the “problem” of pluralism, as opposed to self-complacent academic theorizing.
hh’s archaic technocratic fantasy that there would somehow be discoverable, fixed, ahistorical, deterministic laws of social organization that could then be administered by a self-appointed
“scientific” elite without any need for or benefit of political legitimation is totalitarian in Arendt’s sense, insofar as her notion of totalitarianism is that it amounts to the political apotheosis of the anti-political, in contrast to her conception of the political as “definitionally” involving coexistence in public community with the plurality of others, who are not simply likenesses or alter egos, and the generation of power/legitimacy through speech/action oriented towards such co-existence. For all his denunciations of useless “abstractions”, he utterly fails to recognize his own fantasies of reified abstractions, which amount to an inverted form of metaphysics, lending credence to Edenbaum’s charge of “Platonism”. Yes, hh, ideas are complex, which does make them fun to play with, but they are complex precisely because they are not imply abstractions or unbounded generalizations, but capture specific features of (the historical experience of) reality. And ideas have applications, without which they are indeed useless and futile abstractions, and they derive part of their complexity from the complexities that accrue to in their contexts of application. Even hh in his excessive zeal to deny and reduce the excessiveness and complexity of the political can not avoid inadvertently bumping into that very excess.
Righteous Bubba 06.02.08 at 11:40 pm
hh’s archaic technocratic fantasy that there would somehow be discoverable, fixed, ahistorical, deterministic laws of social organization that could then be administered by a self-appointed
“scientific†elite without any need for or benefit of political legitimation is totalitarian in Arendt’s sense, insofar as her notion of totalitarianism is that it amounts to the political apotheosis of the anti-political, in contrast to her conception of the political as “definitionally†involving coexistence in public community with the plurality of others, who are not simply likenesses or alter egos, and the generation of power/legitimacy through speech/action oriented towards such co-existence.
Was this written by some kind of algorithm?
john c. halasz 06.03.08 at 12:24 am
Ya, it would be if you’re one of those computer literate illiterates who think Dawkins offers the final revelation of the truth about the universe. Otherwise, it’s a run-on sentence in plain English which offers a fair summary interpretation of one of the main thrusts of Arendt’s work, which you would only know or be able to contest if you’d actually read her work.
seth edenbaum 06.03.08 at 1:08 am
“…coexistence in public community with the plurality of others, who are not simply likenesses or alter egos”
Run-on or no, that’s a nice description.
HH 06.03.08 at 2:19 am
“Even hh in his excessive zeal to deny and reduce the excessiveness and complexity of the political can not avoid inadvertently bumping into that very excess.”
I would be the first to admit theoretical excesses and inadequacies, but this is the fate on anyone who attempts ambitious statements. My critique is directional, not an itinerary with destinations.
I assert that there are paths of discourse that allow us to deliver pragmatic theoretical utility and there are other paths that lead in frustrating and fruitless circles. One way of finding the useful paths is to learn from biological models of the kind Dawkins describes. This does not magically make political philosophy deterministic, positivist, or empirical, but it does act to pull it away from sterile discussions of the relations between nostrums like liberalism and pluralism.
Some the observations in #65 are astute, particularly the point that there will be members of the pluralistic ensemble that do not play well with others, as their goals are grossly incompatible with those of rival entities. One cannot imagine the Native Americans of the Western Plains functioning within a framework of property rights and deeded land transfers.
geo 06.03.08 at 3:07 am
John @ 67: plain English.
Yes? Then would you please offer an example of vague, obscure, clotted, nearly unintelligible English?
HH 06.03.08 at 3:18 am
The longest sentence in Henry James’ “The Golden Bowl.”
“She had got up with these last words; she stood there before him with that particular suggestion in her aspect to which even the long habit of their life together had not closed his sense, kept sharp, year after year, by the collation of types and signs, the comparison of fine object with fine object, of one degree of finish, of one form of the exquisite with another–the appearance of some slight, slim draped “antique” of Vatican or Capitoline halls, late and refined, rare as a note and immortal as a link, set in motion by the miraculous infusion of a modern impulse and yet, for all the sudden freedom of folds and footsteps forsaken after centuries by their pedestal, keeping still the quality, the perfect felicity, of the statue; the blurred, absent eyes, the smoothed, elegant, nameless head, the impersonal flit of a creature lost in an alien age and passing as an image in worn relief round and round a precious vase.”
seth edenbaum 06.03.08 at 4:02 am
Visions and revisions, and elisions and elisions, and more than a little philo-feminism [philo-femininity?] but not clotted in the least.
I could read it 50 times and still find something new, which is both the subject and the point; but why would I want to read a paragraph by Dawkins more than once?
geo 06.03.08 at 4:57 am
The James sentence isn’t clotted; and although it certainly is vague, obscure, and nearly unintelligible, I agree that it’s divine. But what did you mean, Seth, is “the subject and the point”?
seth edenbaum 06.03.08 at 6:11 am
So here we are, a carpenter and a building super, after work in the faculty lounge.
“she stood there before him with that particular suggestion in her aspect to which even the long habit of their life together had not closed his sense, kept sharp, year after year, by the collation of types and signs, the comparison of fine object with fine object, of one degree of finish, of one form of the exquisite with another”
The paragraph is a description of what it requires to appreciate it: connoisseurship. It’s a description of the communication of distinctions so subtle that they can be recognized and shared, in this case between intimates, a man and a woman, but not named.
SG 06.03.08 at 7:34 am
hh, I love your comment at 69. Your second paragraph reads like something hitler or stalin would say – yes, we had a few theoretical excesses and inadequacies but we, ah, overcame them, and at least our critique was, you know, ah, directional.
Then in your 3rd paragraph you engage in a classic bit of political science faffery, trying to argue for Dawkins as a viable model of anything. If it weren’t for your criticism of liberalism at the end of the paragraph, the two paragraphs joined together would make you a stereotype of the link between evolution and fascism. Brilliant!
Not to mention that your sudden dive into political science to excuse the shortcomings of your own supposed theory is a little bit hypocritical, no?
But I’m interested in the shortcomings of your political theory. You mentioned earlier that “grown men” [you’re the one using the sexist language, right?]
so I wonder, what is the solution to this problem which Dawkins offers that political science can’t beat? I’m guessing it’s somewhere along the lines of “let them eat cake”, but please, enlighten me.
HH 06.03.08 at 1:00 pm
“Your second paragraph reads like something hitler or stalin would say”
Ka-Boom! Godwin’s law kicks in after a strange delay, and the combative honor of this blog is once again restored. You have unmasked my unspeakable villainy just as I was planning the re-education camps for recalcitrant philosophers.
Dawkins does not offer a solution, and I do not offer a “theory.” I am suggesting that contemporary prospectors for knowledge and wisdom in political philosophy are more likely to find gold in the new intellectual territory of Dawkins and Wolfram than in the depleted ground of J.S. Mill. A world society that enjoys unlimited and instantaneous communication and information transfer is certain to display strikingly new emergent social phenomena, and I believe that analytical rigor is appropriate to the study of these subjects.
Many of you appear to be skeptical of the possibility of the advent of radical novelty in human society. But the shift of the foundation of society from atoms to bits is such an instance, and it is good news for all branches of philosophy, however reluctantly it may be received in the faculty lounge.
HH 06.03.08 at 1:10 pm
“The paragraph is a description of what it requires to appreciate it: connoisseurship. It’s a description of the communication of distinctions so subtle that they can be recognized and shared, in this case between intimates, a man and a woman, but not named.”
Uh, no, seth. Jame’s marathon sentence is a display of the mannered and bogus character of his writing, since an assertion of personal attractiveness based on evocation of the imputed perfection of the art works of antiquity is as profoundly false as thinking well of your girl friend because she looks like Marilyn Monroe.
Sam C 06.03.08 at 1:11 pm
hh said, in response to my comment 55:
I can only respond: please learn to read. I’m out of here.
HH 06.03.08 at 1:54 pm
“I can only respond: please learn to read. I’m out of here.”
What a pity that you are riding Zeno’s tortoise into the sunset. I was just beginning to grasp your revelation that there are infinite ways of chatting about philosophy that are all equally useful.
seth edenbaum 06.03.08 at 2:00 pm
hh,
…wow.
Here we get to the heart of the matter, the definition of a vulgarian: someone who says that if something is too small for him to measure by his preferred means, then that thing, object, sense, must not exist. My favorite vulgarian is Donald Davidson. Another version be to define it as someone who deals only in generalities. Ideas and names are generalities. I’m interested only in those things that exist between one idea and another, or between one definition or another. I can call Davidson a vulgarian but what I mean is that he’s an intellectual vulgarian, but then by way of explanation I would need to be more specific, and even more so until I’d written a book: a book that could no longer be distilled down into a one word accusation. If it were mathematics you could do that, but language is not number. The meanings of words change and communication, through space and time (the only way), is like a game of telephone.
How and why did liberalism come to undermine ideodiversity?
How did it become associated with the use of the single unit measure of the markets and marketing: a single measurement of desire, with: “instrumental” economic reason? How is Law and Economics not Vulgar Marxism as farce?!!
How is it possible to take yourself seriously as an intellectual and imagine the world being made up of your categories and descriptors? How is it possible to call yourself an intellectual and not be a connoisseur, in fact while arguing against its necessity or even its existence? How is it possible to be an intellectual and claim indifference to the changes in the meanings of words, the relation of words to yourself and to the world, only because their relation to one another is unchanged?
This site is written, by and large, by vulgarians for vulgarians. But you hh are on another level.
HH 06.03.08 at 2:41 pm
“This site is written, by and large, by vulgarians for vulgarians. But you hh are on another level.”
I prefer to consider myself a meta-vulgarian, but I do enjoy your writing, seth. It must truly infuriate you that stupid, pretentious, and unworthy bumblers can number among evolution’s blind discoverers. Is nothing sacred?
seth edenbaum 06.03.08 at 3:04 pm
no not discovers, just spandrels.
HH 06.03.08 at 3:11 pm
“no not discovers, just spandrels.”
At least, like you, I’m a cocky spandrel.
geo 06.03.08 at 4:39 pm
hh: an assertion of personal attractiveness based on evocation of the imputed perfection of the art works of antiquity is … profoundly false
Why? If someone were to say: “Hh looks as handsome as Michelangelo’s David and as wise as Michelangelo’s Moses,” would that be “profoundly false”?
seth: This site is written, by and large, by vulgarians for vulgarians
Humble thanks for bearing with us so long.
HH 06.03.08 at 5:06 pm
Why? If someone were to say: “Hh looks as handsome as Michelangelo’s David and as wise as Michelangelo’s Moses,†would that be “profoundly false�
Objectively false on both counts, but to your point:
The preening and self-congratulatory observer of the James sentence is lavishly congratulating his own fine taste in approving the looks of a woman who precisely meets his impeccable standard for the ideal female form. He is submerging this woman’s identity under his copious self-regard.
In modern parlance, we call this situation a man admiring his trophy wife, and it is as false a form of admiration today as it was in the time of “The Golden Bowl.” What is profoundly false is notionally praising your companion while actually praising your own acumen and taste.
Let me demonstrate. If I were to say “geo is an outstanding fellow because he exhibits subtle virtues that only my sophisticated temperament can discern and his intellect grows ever more powerful as he absorbs the full import of my wisdom,” I am delivering a false compliment.
geo 06.03.08 at 5:53 pm
hh: I don’t remember the context of the James quote; is it the Prince contemplating Charlotte? or contemplating Maggie? or Adam contemplating Maggie?
In any case, aren’t you being oversubtle? Why is the character “preening” and “self-congratulatory”? It is the narrator who’s describing the character’s appreciation, attributing to him these lofty standards, not the character himself. And there’s surely nothing wrong with the standards themselves — why shouldn’t one look at others with the entire history of European (and non-European) art in mind?
seth edenbaum 06.03.08 at 6:22 pm
hh,
So articulate expressions of opinion are a waste of time because they are only opinion and not the result of rational analysis in the service of concrete goals.
geo,
The above could also be said to define the underlying philosophy or ethos of this page, with the caveat that entertainment is defended as a fun way to spend the off hours. Discussions of film are joke posts about best and worst Photography is Flicker, Literature is Iron Council;
culture is to be studied as something other. The slightest mention of even the possibility of the shadow of determinism coloring the authors’ thoughts, as opposed to those of the peasantry in Iowa, Peshawar or the Beltway is responded to with silence.
Craftsmanship is a philosophical model of our relationship to one another and the world, and it’s the only model that has empirical foundation. Models that deny it are made of wishful thinking to the point of being Kitsch.
HH 06.03.08 at 6:51 pm
seth,
Attributing extreme positions to me is not the best way to clarify my views. Your colorful manner of dispensing diktat is amusing, but I doubt that it is intended to convince or instruct, which is unfortunate since you are clearly very learned and clever. More reasoning and less seasoning is my advice for your next tasty tidbit.
HH 06.03.08 at 7:01 pm
“It is the narrator who’s describing the character’s appreciation, attributing to him these lofty standards, not the character himself. And there’s surely nothing wrong with the standards themselves—why shouldn’t one look at others with the entire history of European (and non-European) art in mind?”
Correct. It is the self-delighted literary showboat Henry James who is laying out his supple silks and glittering jewels, and his poor characters are staggering under the burden of this finery. My vulgarian mind finds it unbearably artificial, cloying, and tedious.
geo 06.03.08 at 8:15 pm
“Self-delighted literary showboat” sounds more like William F. Buckley or Leon Wieseltier than Henry James. When Edmund Wilson, Lionel Trilling, and virtually every other eminent twentieth-century literary critic agree that James was among the greatest of prose masters in English, a brilliant psychologist and stylist (who occasionally, to be sure, went off the rails), perhaps you ought to give him another chance or three.
HH 06.03.08 at 9:18 pm
Henry James was a master stylist who was a neurotic mess. His convoluted and self-indulgent writing tells us much more than we want to know about fundamentally uninteresting people.
The work of Shakespeare, Austen, or Dickens remains as fresh, alive, and engaging today as when it was written. James’ work smells of museum dust and radiates neuresthenia.
geo 06.03.08 at 9:31 pm
Not sure how to resolve this disagreement, hh, beyond pointing out that a really overwhelming majority of people who know and care a lot about English literature disagree with you. Do you have any suggestions?
HH 06.03.08 at 10:18 pm
“Do you have any suggestions?”
Hell, yes! Make the Nobel Prize for literature awardable posthumously and award it to Nabokov and Borges. Unlike philosophy, literary discussion is largely a matter of taste and personality alignment, so I am sure I am displaying my own deficits in disparaging Henry James. I grant his stylistic virtuosity, but I just don’t find him profound. Your own mileage may vary.
geo 06.03.08 at 11:58 pm
No accounting, I guess. Seems to me that if there’s one celebrated writer to whom your description — “the self-delighted literary showboat … who is laying out his supple silks and glittering jewels, and his poor characters are staggering under the burden of this finery” –applies, it’s Nabokov. Not that that’s the last word about Nabokov, of course.
jholbo 06.04.08 at 12:08 am
I am going to advance a liberal theory of justice: seth and hh deserve each other.
geo 06.04.08 at 12:23 am
Aw, c’mon, jh. We wuz havin’ us a nice, sivilized conversation here …
s.e. 06.04.08 at 12:40 am
I’m still waiting for your post on Singapore John.
Or should I just say you deserve each other?
s.e. 06.04.08 at 12:54 am
“Nabokov and Borges”
Two control freaks. A high polish taken to to the level of fetishism; though Borges is the fascist. James is fey and snobbish, Nabokav more the kinky naturalist.
Makes sense.
jholbo 06.04.08 at 12:56 am
I didn’t say I haven’t been enjoying the thread, geo.
HH 06.04.08 at 1:26 am
Professor Holbo should be grateful for the emergent phenomenon of the blogs. The talented but maladroit students who would certainly be thrown out of his seminars and expelled from the university can be found loitering on CT and blurting out odd bits of overlooked insight.
Who knows what fruitful exchanges may yet result between respectable academics and the rude and ragged renegades that frequent these curious new forums. Indeed, the study of such new patterns of intellectual encounter might some day be dignified by philosophers with the serious consideration now reserved for such deeply serious topics as liberalism and pluralism.
HH 06.04.08 at 1:36 am
“Not that that’s the last word about Nabokov, of course.”
Imagining Henry James trying to write “Lolita” has made my day.
“Lolita, light of my waning, discerning, tasteful, and studious, yet ardent life, fire of that part of me distant from the mind, yet ever restless and seeking a firmer essence and a closer approach to possibly dubious fulfillment. My distant contemplation of what might be considered an unworthy approach to possible sin, were sin ever to be defined in appropriately elegant terms, my ever questing and restlessly self doubting, yet eternally self-bettering soul.”
s.e. 06.04.08 at 1:48 am
geo, you’re right: Bill Buckley. or maybe Joseph Epstein.
A heterosexual faggot.
john c. halasz 06.04.08 at 2:16 am
Ah, but the Dantean theory of justice is much deeper and makes for much more robust fantasies!
geo 06.04.08 at 3:04 am
light of my waning, discerning, tasteful, and studious, yet ardent life, fire of that part of me distant from the mind, yet ever restless and seeking a firmer essence
Not bad, actually. All right, let’s bracket The Golden Bowl and even The Wings of the Dove. You’ll admit, I hope, that The Portrait of a Lady, The Ambassadors, The Bostonians, The Princess Casamassima, The Spoils of Poynton, The Aspern Papers, and a dozen or so of the tales are masterpieces?
HH 06.04.08 at 1:22 pm
You’ll admit, I hope, that The Portrait of a Lady, The Ambassadors, The Bostonians, The Princess Casamassima, The Spoils of Poynton, The Aspern Papers, and a dozen or so of the tales are masterpieces?
I admit, to my shame, that I have been unable to flog myself through most of his longer works, but “The Turn of the Screw” is a brilliant story. James could never stay securely in the groove of his flawed genius. He wasted a lot of effort on plays that have sunk without a trace, fancying himself a dramatist. He is a mixed, and very heavy, bag, but a delight to his fanciers.
If the attainment in dispute is America’s greatest neuresthenic prose stylist of over-described minor conflicts, I freely award it to Henry James.
jholbo 06.04.08 at 3:34 pm
“If the attainment in dispute is America’s greatest neuresthenic prose stylist of over-described minor conflicts, I freely award it to Henry James.”
Who would have imagined hh would hide his light under a bushel, one spark of insight-wise, until the end of the thread. And would save that one spark to minutely cauterize Henry James? hh, we reasonably assumed you were a dullard for the first 104 comments. (Pardon us, but it was a perfectly reasonable assumption.) Why make us wait so long?
I hope you don’t turn out to be the troll of sorrow.
geo 06.04.08 at 3:45 pm
over-described minor conflicts
I suppose a true vulgarian would reply: “Oh yes, unlike the inner conflict of a erudite pederast, which is a major theme of twentieth-century life.”
Not sure what I’d reply myself, except to say that The Portrait of a Lady> is a great feminist novel and The Princess Casamassima a great political novel.
HH 06.04.08 at 4:15 pm
“Oh yes, unlike the inner conflict of a erudite pederast, which is a major theme of twentieth-century life.â€
Lolita is not about inner conflict: it is about a monster who is intellectually dressed as a literature professor. This is what makes it brilliant fiction. Humbert is wallowing in taboo sin and enjoying it immensely, while describing it all with playful ironic erudition. The combination of subject and treatment creates a dissonance shock wave that blows out the windows.
Revealing the full dynamic range of human identity, for good or ill, is a major theme of twentieth century art, and that is why the scope of James’ writing seems so compressed, restricted, and, yes, closeted, to many modern readers.
Reading Nabokov is like watching a trapeze artist do impossible quintuple somersaults while thinking “I can’t believe he just did that.”
HH 06.04.08 at 4:27 pm
“we reasonably assumed you were a dullard for the first 104 comments.”
To resume my career as a philosophical dullard, one of the arguments I am trying to make in this thread is that, in the Internet age, memes are baggage that flies separately from the great men and schools of philosophy.
A great aggregate of sparks from many wired dullards may provide greater illumination that the small steady flame of a notable. Perhaps social evolution will take us from a confederacy of dunces to an array of dullards. And in this sea of mediocrity may be found pearls of wisdom.
Before the analogy police put on the handcuffs, let me speak more plainly. Credentialization and the traditional apparatus of “greats” is increasingly irrelevant because an information rich society does not need to use positional status as a guide to knowledge value. Philosophical gold is now where you find it, and dullards may have a few nuggets.
Good luck prospecting.
geo 06.04.08 at 4:35 pm
Nicely put, hh. Oh well, I’d say you’re right as rain about Nabokov and wrong as … I don’t know what — sleet, I guess — about James. Do at least read The Portrait of a Lady and see if it doesn’t wring your heart.
geo 06.04.08 at 4:37 pm
PS – I meant that #108 was nicely put. It will take me a while to digest #109.
seth edenbaum 06.04.08 at 4:51 pm
“Humbert is wallowing in taboo sin and enjoying it immensely, while describing it all with playful ironic erudition.”
And Nabokov is doing the same, yet another step removed. Ironic perversity is still perversity. Even without an intimate knowledge of Russian literary history it doesn’t take long reading him to see Nabakov as the end of a line.
“a dissonance shock wave.” A moment of aphasia. Yes yes, we know (some of us at least)
I once read a defense of a preference for snapshots over “serious” photography based on that logic. The author was a tenured radish of the highest theoretical and moral seriousness. But I prefer my Stendhal syndrome attacks well earned. I’ve spent most of my life learning to outpace an incipient autism, maybe that’s why this all is so obvious.
The literature of synchrony, of collapsed time. Jesu Christu. Make the ganglia twitch. Mine eyes dazzle.
The needle Watson, I think I’m gonna plotz.
HH 06.04.08 at 5:11 pm
seth,
You have really perfected a steady state existence in Pynchon-space. Even when what you say makes zero sense, your upscale bricolage artistry is dazzling. I raise one eyebrow fractionally in tribute.
abb1 06.04.08 at 5:41 pm
Nah. Humbert is wallowing in nothing, there is no Humbert. Nabokov’s stuff is pure art, abstract painting, visual images converted to a sequence of words. The story line is coincidental, he could’ve as well written about chess or butterflies, but that would’ve brought much less money.
HH 06.04.08 at 6:36 pm
“there is no Humbert”
Whoa! You just killed off a lot of very interesting people, including:
Hamlet
Odysseus
Oliver Twist
Clayton Waxwing III
Batman
Cornelius Suttree
These people are more interesting to me than most of the individuals I have met.
seth edenbaum 06.04.08 at 6:54 pm
“… steady state existence in Pynchon-space”
Mostly lack of sleep. But yes I am Informally at least a student of a student of Nabokov. What can I say? After 20 years in the building trades I’m drawing a pension from TIAA-CREF.
I began earning it the day I was born.
abb1 06.05.08 at 5:38 am
There is Hamlet, but there’s no Humbert. Humbert is canvas. I remember Nabokov’s description of an old pencil stub somewhere. It’s two pages long, with nothing there but a description of a pencil stub found in a hotel room. Beautiful prose, but it has nothing to do with the subject of it; it’s a pure stylistic exercise. And so is Lolita.
jholbo 06.05.08 at 1:13 pm
“Credentialization and the traditional apparatus of “greats†is increasingly irrelevant because an information rich society does not need to use positional status as a guide to knowledge value.”
This actually gets at the reason I assumed you were a fool, hh. You waltzed into a discussion without demonstrating any understanding of what people were talking about. (Failure to grasp even elementary distinctions between different kinds of theory: not a good start.) So far, your sole argument for the superiority of your own position consists of you labeling it superior. That is, you were – and still are? – apparently content to argue exclusively by auto-credentialization.
But this is the internet, man. You need to give us a reason.
jholbo 06.05.08 at 1:31 pm
Oh, I’m just kidding, hh. I really shouldn’t be so passive-aggressive, especially after you turned all elegant on us. But the truth is: people reacted negatively to you because you didn’t argue.
abb1 06.05.08 at 2:12 pm
You waltzed into a discussion without demonstrating any understanding of what people were talking about.
Perhaps the misunderstanding is caused by your referring to “practical politics” and political sort of ‘pluralism’ in the post. Practical politics and academic philosophy are not well connected; naturally people start talking about different things and feel that the other group is missing the point.
HH 06.05.08 at 2:32 pm
“But this is the internet, man. You need to give us a reason.”
We are really back to the future in terms of Socratic dialog, or blogalog, so we have some trouble getting started with leveling assumptions and sorting out personalities. My apologies for bad manners, but I will keep trying to make myself understood.
I am basically pushing the view that the rise of the public Internet is a watershed event in intellectual life. Accordingly, I think a far-reaching reappraisal of political theory, political science, and political philosophy is in order. One consequence of this reappraisal will be a diminished reverence for abstract armchair political philosophy (e.g., contemplating relationships between liberalism and pluralism) and an increased appetite for more rigorous, novel, and engaged kinds of political study.
I think Kuhn’s idea about scientific revolutions applies to schools of philosophy as well, and a blog like this one is a good place to have a productive struggle. I will do my best to keep the conflict polite.
Perhaps a good orientation point would be Manuel Castells’ three books on the Information Age. He lays out a lot of evidence for what I would call the “Big Bang” view of the Internet.
I’m looking forward to a long and fruitful exchange of arguments.
geo 06.05.08 at 4:18 pm
Yikes, I completely misunderstood. I suppose I had better withdraw my ringing endorsement (#57) of hh’s position. I thought he was making a pragmatist critique of theory and advocating either imaginative appeals for solidarity, as Rorty does, or empirically grounded political criticism like Chomsky’s. Instead he seems to want new theories, only “rigorous,” “novel,” and “engaged” — as though traditional political philosophers didn’t profess to want exactly the same thing.
Ruskin, Morris, Kropotkin, Orwell, Macdonald, and Chomsky long predated the Internet. For all its virtues, I don’t see that the Internet makes it possible to do anything of value that they haven’t done.
Righteous Bubba 06.05.08 at 4:28 pm
For all its virtues, I don’t see that the Internet makes it possible to do anything of value that they haven’t done.
Consider: 2000 years ago I might have spent life bashing people over the head with a club. I can now bash people over the head with computer equipment, thus adding a handy measure of economic value to my chosen pursuit.
HH 06.05.08 at 5:22 pm
“I don’t see that the Internet makes it possible to do anything of value that they haven’t done.”
Would you have said this about moveable type? After all, books printed by the press are no different in their content from books written in the scriptorium. Internet society can do things that are novel. E.g., this blog medium is novel. It cannot be approximated by an exchange of letters or telephone conference calls. It has enormous potential for intellectual collaboration, because it can rapidly knit together contributions from the entire world.
When something radically novel arrives, it forces an appraisal of how that thing impinges upon other things. Politics will obviously change, and so will political philosophy. Of course, one always has the option to say “same as it ever was,” to which I would reply, watch and learn.
Dick Mulliken 06.05.08 at 8:54 pm
It’s interesting that thusfar we do not have the conservative perspective. My impression is that conservatives would accommodate pluralism; recognizing for example, that the dynamic tension between the clergy and secular power, or between the nobility and the king can be useful parts of a balanced society. Lberalism, on the other hand is simply a defense of liberty, freedom and individualism. Pluralism is nothing more than the unfortunate tendency of individuals to form gangs. We don’t like it, but we can’t avoid it.
seth edenbaum 06.06.08 at 2:40 am
That last lines were supposed to follow one about my love hate relationship with the academy and academicism, but that line got lost in the shuffle. still tired
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