Reading Samuel Freeman’s review of conservative philosopher Roger Scruton in the latest NYRB, I had a mini-realization about my own work on conservatism, which features Scruton a fair amount.
In the mid-1970s, conservatism, which had previously been declared dead as an intellectual and political force, started to gain some political life (its intellectual rejuvenation had begun long before). As it did, conservatism began to have an impact on liberalism. Politically, you could see that influence in the slow, then sudden, retreat from traditional New Deal objectives, culminating in the election of Bill Clinton. What that meant was a massive turnaround on economic issues (deregulation, indifference to unions, galloping inequality) and a softer turnaround on so-called social or moral issues. While mainstream Democrats today are identified as staunch liberals on issues like abortion and gay rights, the truth of the matter is that in the early 1990s, they beat a retreat on that front (not only on abortion but also, after an initial embrace of gays and lesbians, on gay rights as well).
Among liberal academics, the impact of conservatism was equally strong. Not only in the obvious sense that conservatism became an object of increasing scholarly interest, particularly among historians. But also in a deeper sense, as the categories of traditional conservative concern, like religion, came to assume a greater role in scholarly inquiry.
The impact was especially dramatic in the world of liberal political theory. Where a generation of Rawlsian political theorists had cut their teeth on the economic questions of redistribution and the welfare state, suddenly the main question of liberal democracy was how to deal with intractable differences of religion, cultural identity, and morality, whether and how men and women could argue over fundamental questions of “the good” rather than hide or subsume their disagreements under more seemingly neutral rules of “the right.”
You could see this shift most visibly in the Rawlsian turn toward political liberalism (or at least certain iterations, beyond Rawls himself, of political liberalism). In the earlier work, “difference” meant the Difference Principle, which was a Rawlsian rule about whether to accept economic inequalities in the polity and how they might be arranged. Now “difference” came to be associated with religious and cultural differences, deep disagreements over questions like sexual morality or other cultural practices that liberals had previously thought belonged to the realm of private belief and practice. As David Miller declared in the very first paragraph on the very first page of his book on nationality, which came out in 1995:
It matters less, it seems, whether the state embraces the free market, or the planned economy, or something in between. It matters more where the boundaries of the state are drawn, who gets included and who gets excluded, what language is used, what religion endorsed, what culture promoted.
It wasn’t just Rawlsians and liberals who felt the impact of this turn; so did more radical and left theorists, for whom questions of difference and deeper modes of pluralization began to loom large.
Since its inception, as I’ve argued, liberalism has always faced off against the left and the right. But throughout the first two-thirds of the twentieth century, liberalism was pushed primarily by the left. From which we got, at least in the United States, the liberal welfare state and the Difference Principle. In the last third of the twentieth century, liberalism was pushed from the right. From which we got the DLC, the Clintons, and political liberalism. The point here is not that liberalism became conservative, though it did; it’s that liberalism’s agenda was increasingly set by conservatism.
One of the reasons I wrote my book on conservatism was less to engage with or contest conservatism as an idea—which is why some of the criticisms of the book seemed so off-base to me—than to engage and contest this turn within liberalism. In that book, I wanted to get liberals (and leftists, too) to take a step back, to show how the landscape in which they were making their arguments had been shaped, deeply shaped, by conservatism, often in ways they did not understand. Where academic liberals and leftists had accepted the simple distinction between economic and social conservatives—as did I, for a very long time—and had believed that the social conservatives were driven by moral questions of a particular sort, I wanted to show that conservatism was, yes, a deeply moral and ideological praxis, only that it rotated around a different set of principles and beliefs from the ones liberals seemed to think the right held dear.
The real axis of rotation, I claimed, was domination and hierarchy, particularly in the private realms of power, and it was that axis that united social conservatives, economic conservatives, and national security conservatives. (I had already begun to broach some of these questions of domination in my first book on fear, which tried to use the liberal interest in fear and emotion more generally as a way of inching the left toward a more robust engagement with questions of social domination in the family and the workplace, but since that was written in shadow of 9/11, these underlying themes got little traction or play.)
To be clear: domination and hierarchy are not, to my mind, non-moral issues, neither for the left nor the right. They’re deeply moral. Only they are also part of a social and material practice. We cannot and should not separate the moral from the economic in conservatism any more than we would in socialism.
While I believe my account can help us understand conservatism across the ages, it would be nice to think that it is also suited to explain the right today, not only in the Age of Trump but also in the Age of Bernie. Increasingly, we’ve seen, these questions of social domination and economic hierarchy are coming to the fore. As the left begins to move into a position where it can not only get a clear view of the ideas it is fighting against but also to take aim at them—at both the hard right revanchism of the GOP and the soft neoliberalism of the Democrats—my hope is that a generation of academic political theorists, who learned their trade against the backdrop of a certain view of conservatism, might now begin to see the conflicts of the day in a different light.
Indeed, judging from what I see among younger theorists, I believe that turn has already begun.
{ 105 comments }
LFC 04.03.16 at 12:15 am
Istm one can read recent political history from a different, though not necessarily completely opposed, angle. (This comment doesn’t much address developments in academic political theory.)
It would go roughly as follows: at least part of the left (or liberal/left) has always been concerned with issues of economic inequality and hierarchy. Taking the U.S. context, since that’s the OP’s focus, when Senator Fred Harris ran for the Democratic presidential nomination in 1976 he made economic inequality his centerpiece issue. “What we’ve got to have is a fairer distribution of wealth and income and power” was his campaign theme. He wasn’t successful, obviously. Carter’s election in that year could be seen as presaging the turn to “soft neoliberalism” (to use the OP’s phrase) among some Dems.
Fast forward to 2016. In terms of its central theme, Bernie Sanders’s campaign is basically a reprise of Fred Harris in ’76. (The labels might be different: Harris, iirc, preferred ‘populism’, Sanders ‘democratic socialism’, but the theme is the same.) One of the reasons Sanders has been so much more electorally successful than Harris is that economic inequality in the U.S. has increased greatly over the past several decades. The objective conditions have changed and the issue/problem of inequality is more prominent.
When Harris ran on inequality 40 years ago, it appealed as an issue to people who were ideologically committed to egalitarianism. Now it appeals as an issue to a much broader range of people, including those who have never considered themselves leftists of any sort, partly because it’s seen as having a fairly direct impact on a lot of lives.
So while the rise of ‘soft neoliberalism’ and the rejuvenation of conservatism are important, I think it’s somewhat misleading to suggest that the left, in response, stopped being concerned with economic inequality and turned to questions of identity/boundaries/difference/etc. That might have happened in some corridors of academic political theory and in *some* parts of the left. But much of the liberal-left has always been concerned with inequality. The growth of inequality, the prolonged crisis (for lack of a better word) of capitalism basically from the early ’70s on, plus the financial crisis of ’08/09 and its fallout, have made that concern with inequality resonate with more people than it did 40 years ago.
Dean C. Rowan 04.03.16 at 12:59 am
Almost completely OT, but relevant at least to Freeman’s review, this tasty irony: a blurb on the jacket of Scruton’s 1986 book, “Sexual Desire: A Moral Philosophy of the Erotic,” reads, “An unprecedented philosophical inquiry … which will command far-reaching and serious response.” The author? Then a professor at Wesleyan, Dr. Judith Butler.
bob mcmanus 04.03.16 at 1:24 am
1) I checked, but Thurow’s Zero Sum Society came out in 1980.
2) Almost completely OT…Dr. Judith Butler.
I’m not sure if it is OT. I am struggling to connect Robin’s history here to the one that ends in the “Theory Wars.” The “Historical Turn in Social Science” whatever, I can’t tell if the feminists, critical race theorists, postcolonialists etc that came to the fore in the 70s and 80s were encountering resistance from the Republican dominators and hierarchialists in American academia, or were themselves early quasi-conservatives (Butler!; there are some who take off from Foucault’s lectures on biopolitics and admiration for Becker and write a narrative of Theory as reaction; and there is a Kristin Ross writing on France post-68) ), or…pause.
Never sure if Robin is writing about America social science, American political science, or American politics. I’ll read the post again and again, wait and hope for comments more informed than mine to teach me. I do find his project…interesting.
RNB 04.03.16 at 1:42 am
Nice to clarify the different meanings “difference” has had in political theory. Boltanski and Chiapello tell a story of how “liberation” has two meanings (one as emancipation from a specific alienation often connected to what they call social critique; the other as emancipation from a generic alienation) and how the second form of liberation from any form of necessity came to be associated with an artistic critique of capitalism. But this critique was then appropriated, leading to a new form of capitalism justified in terms of flexibility and networks. The recuperation of the system depended crucially not on conservative defenses of it but the appropriation, selection and redirection of critical energies.
See here http://tinyurl.com/gulohwh
LFC 04.03.16 at 1:55 am
@bob mcmanus
Seems to me the OP has to do with the impact of conservatism on liberalism (in the contemp. mostly U.S. sense), both in politics and “the world of liberal political theory.” I’m not sure I entirely agree with the narrative, at least w/r/t politics, but that’s a separate point.
I seem to recall, though I haven’t read the NYT obituary yet, that Thurow had an earlier book called Generating Inequality. (The relevance of the pub. date of Zero-Sum Society is what, exactly?)
Dean C. Rowan 04.03.16 at 2:22 am
Your last paragraph @3, bob mcmanus, exactly captures my thoughts. Terry Eagleton penned the foreword to a subsequent book by Kristin Ross. Eagleton came to mind as I read the Freeman review. I would love to read his thoughts on the review or Scruton’s latest itself.
Freeman mentions Searle’s “devastating criticism” of Derrida. Searle ain’t all that. I am entirely sympathetic to academic resentment of the ascent to celebrity of Derrida and the Yale mafia, even to accusations of charlatanism leveled against Derrida as a philosopher. His writing is often coy and evasive and unpleasant. But sometimes it isn’t. As Freeman points out, Derrida’s reception in the US was primarily via literature departments. This should signal to critics as well as fans that philosophy was not the discipline his work was used to explore. By now this is pretty much water under the bridge. I’m left like you, bob mcmanus, wondering whether the events to which I was attentive at the time leading up to the Theory Wars, etc., are at all meaningful reflections of Corey’s thesis. Or were they more or less universally perceived as distractions, hence the general disdain they provoke?
Dean C. Rowan 04.03.16 at 2:36 am
Good to see the lively discussion at Corey’s personal blog: http://coreyrobin.com/2016/04/02/a-very-brief-intellectual-autobiography/#comments
RNB 04.03.16 at 3:00 am
As the quotes from Freeman belong make clear, the meaning of “liberation” is deeply contested. As already suggested, the more radical meaning of liberation as liberation from any necessity or determination was implicated not in a radical assault on markets, private property, the money motive and capital accumulation but its recuperation and reconfiguration. That is, Boltanski and Chiapello seem to be arguing that Scruton does not understand the paradoxically “conservative” role the radical ideal of liberation played in capitalism reconfiguring and justifying itself as a flexible system of networks making possible a life of multiple projects.
‘Conservatism does not, according to Scruton, require unthinking commitment to the status quo. But “allegiance to what is established is…a given, from which social criticism departs. It is…a form of immersion in the institutions to which one’s identity is owed.†Liberalism, by contrast, whether free market or progressive, regards individual freedom and individuality as fundamental values, he says, and thereby threatens to undermine the institutions that are the source of individuals’ identity as well as the bonds of their community. ‘
‘Conservatism does not, according to Scruton, require unthinking commitment to the status quo. But “allegiance to what is established is…a given, from which social criticism departs. It is…a form of immersion in the institutions to which one’s identity is owed.†Liberalism, by contrast, whether free market or progressive, regards individual freedom and individuality as fundamental values, he says, and thereby threatens to undermine the institutions that are the source of individuals’ identity as well as the bonds of their community. ‘
‘The idea of liberation that Scruton says is central to leftist thought has not had a major part in American liberalism, other than its brief appearance in the women’s liberation movement of the 1970s, many of whose aims are now widely accepted, even by most conservatives, and in “gay liberation,†which is now far more tolerated than in the past. Rather than liberation from oppression and domination, liberals argue for constitutionally expanding personal rights and liberties such as freedom of expression, association, and rights of privacy, including abortion, a right to die with dignity, and same-sex relations. Liberals also call for increasing educational opportunities for historically disadvantaged minorities through affirmative action programs’
LFC 04.03.16 at 3:04 am
Even if one accepts Corey’s argument (from Reactionary Mind and in the OP) that conservatism rotates around the axis of “domination and hierarchy, particularly in the private realms of power,” it shd probably be noted (and Corey himself has no doubt noted it) that some conservatives have been good at skirting, hiding or burying the domination/hierarchy theme.
In Before the Storm, which I happen to be reading, Perlstein describes the intro of Goldwater’s (ghost-written) Conscience of a Conservative thusly:
Freedom, autonomy, authenticity? Is this Barry Goldwater or Charles Reich?
RNB 04.03.16 at 3:12 am
@8 correction
As the quotes from Freeman BELOW make clear,
phenomenal cat 04.03.16 at 4:13 am
“(Butler!; there are some who take off from Foucault’s lectures on biopolitics and admiration for Becker and write a narrative of Theory as reaction; and there is a Kristin Ross writing on France post-68) ), or…pause.” mcmanus @3
I’m not sure one can connote Foucault’s treatment of Becker as “admiring.” Perhaps it is “sympathetic” in that Foucault had clearly read Becker closely and well. It seems to me that Foucault’s lectures might express some delight (read: admiration) in Becker simply b/c Becker so clearly articulates the palpable, but still yet vague historical dynamics underway–Thatcher and Regan are relatively new phenomena at this point in time. In short, I read Foucault as saying roughly, “Oh shit, that’s it! That’s what this new conjunction’s about.”
As for theory as reaction…I think there may be something to that notion, fwiw. It seems to me after the 60’s the left has been in steady retreat, especially on any question pertaining to the political economy. The right or conservatives or whatever have held the epistemological high ground at least since Thatcher/Reagan and probably before–very much in the way Corey is arguing that conservatism colonized liberalism in defining the conditions and setting the terms on which most any political debate has taken place. And as much Theory as I’ve read and pondered, as much time as I’ve given to it (in other words, full disclosure), I have had an increasing sense over the last decade that there is something obviously scholastic, musty and medieval about it–like monks retiring to their cloisters to argue about the structure of the world while hordes of lively and energetic barbarians are out gleefully roaming the countryside, remaking and ruling it.
And yeah, there’s definitely some quasi-conservative impulses in those streams of theory you mention above. Does it define them? Probably not. But if for the sake of argument we use Corey’s working definition of conservative as being primarily concerned with the maintenance of hierarchy and power…well, you’ve read Nietzsche. You know the score.
Dean C. Rowan 04.03.16 at 4:33 am
As I mentioned in an earlier recent post, I am a librarian. I am thus inclined to appreciate the “scholastic, musty and medieval” quality of theory, of thinking in abstract, sometimes idealistic terms about what we’re supposed to do next. The right sure as hell doesn’t approach matters in this way, largely because its proponents–see Scruton–are intellectually or constitutionally incapable of doing so. My take, however, is to let them remake and rule as they see fit. Meanwhile, we true conservatives–nobody is more conservative than a librarian–will continue to work insidiously. Librarians work daily with “les mots et les choses,” the “order of things.” We keep track of their availability. We know where to find them. Can we help you?
Keith 04.03.16 at 4:53 am
Does any one take Roger Scruton seriously? I mean he is from a lower class background who embraces fox hunting and hippie punching? A class traitor and ass licker?
From a temporary problem of inflation of prices in the 1970s a whole superstructure has been erected which is unjustified and goes much further than is warranted. The success of Keynes has been perverted to justify far right policy that is irrational. From excess Demand to permanent deflation. From Liberal/ libertarian laissez-faire/ to New fascism in a single decade.
Scruton is a shrill for big business and a man who publishes books attacking left wing Philosophers on the basis of ad hominem arguments. While deploring news papers who expose his willingness to lie for pay on behalf of tobacco companies.
Come on. Conservatism has no integrity. It is self serving selfishness dressed up as Political Economy and Philosophy!!!!
Sebastian H 04.03.16 at 8:31 am
“The real axis of rotation, I claimed, was domination and hierarchy, particularly in the private realms of power, and it was that axis that united social conservatives, economic conservatives, and national security conservatives.”
This is confusing. You make it sound like this is a feature which distinguishes the left from the right, but that would ignore huge swaths of the history of the left so I assume you must mean something else?
Hidari 04.03.16 at 8:54 am
@11 When I hold my nose and wander through the websites of Richard Dawkins and other ‘New Atheists’ it’s amusing (and interesting) to see that to them (and, perhaps, only to them) ‘Postmodernism’ is still a ‘live topic’. Perhaps only the New Atheists, alone on planet Earth, still see Postmodernism as a Threat To Our Way of Life.
In reality of course, the ‘Postmodern Moment’ is long gone. not just because the sociocultural event (the collapse of radical Marxism) that engendered it is not only over, but also because the shockwaves from that event (so to speak) have finally subsided.
If one chooses Lyotard’s definition of postmodernism: ‘Incredulity Towards Metanarratives’: we live in one of the least Postmodern ages ever.
We are not incredulous towards metanarratives, not at all. Indeed, there is one metarranative that almost all of us accept (and by ‘all’ I really do mean ‘all’ here). It has no name, but we all know what it is. It is partly Thatcherite ‘There Is No Alternative’ (i.e. to capitalism), partly The Whig View of History, partly a highly Eurocentric version of History (with a capital ‘H’). Probably the book that most clearly states it (or something similar to it) is Fukayama’s The End of History and the Last Man.
And almost everyone buys into it, from Beijing to Baghdad, from Tokyo to Teheran. Don’t get me wrong. People (especially in those places) say they oppose it. But as the Marxists say, at the only true level, at the level of praxis, we all (or almost all) buy into it. We all wear business suits, not kimonos or Mongolian national dress. In all of these countries, people accept (and try desperately to learn) English as the global language of business. No one, not really, questions American hegemony. We must remember here that we must (as we always should) ignore the hysteria of the American and European Right and remember that radical Islam is not and never could be as much of a threat to the ‘European/American way of life’ as Communism/socialism was (sic). Osama Bin Laden was a wealthy businessman. Unremarked upon by the world, the regime in Iran has been privatising like mad and introducing the ‘free market’ into civic life. Downtown Teheran looks pretty much like downtown Shanghai nowadays, which is to say, it looks like every major city, everywhere.
The ‘Communists’ in Vietnam and China have ‘free market’ systems that are in many ways ‘to the right of’ many Northern European countries.
When I was growing up, I used to meet real genuine Marxists everywhere. Nowadays it’s almost inconceivable that one might meet someone under 40 who really and genuinely wants the complete overthrow of the capitalist mode of production. Indeed most people under 40 don’t really understand what that might mean.
So Postmodernism is long gone (you can tell this even from the literature courses that still teach it: most of the postmodern classics are 30 or 40 years old now). And who are the new postmodern thinkers? Derrida is dead. Foucault is dead. Baudrillard is dead. Badiou survives but he is much better interpreted as a radical Marxist, i.e. not a postmodernist at all (indeed, fundamentally opposed to postmodernism). And he is in any case an old man.
So if you want to know why much ‘modern’ Theory has ‘something obviously scholastic, musty and medieval’ about it: that’s why.
Hidari 04.03.16 at 9:29 am
On a different note, Scruton’s politics make no sense because, despite his protestations, he downplays the extent to which one simply cannot be a Conservative in any meaningful sense, and a free market pro-capitalist. These two political positions are antithetical. (Scruton does sorta acknowledge this, but as noted above, he downplays the fact that ‘true’ conservatives and ‘true’ freemarketers are not ‘on the same side’ but are, and must be, bitter ideological enemies).
Capitalism is an inherently radical and anti ‘reactionary’ force. ‘All that is solid melts into air, and all that. Capitalism recreates itself every few years. It tears down old buildings and replaces them with skyscrapers. It builds ‘new towns’ on green spaces. It innovates, in technology, in science. It has no time for ‘folk wisdom’ except insofar as this can be commodified. A capitalist doesn’t care if you are gay or straight: what matters is how much money you have and whether you can consume. Many capitalists are relatively sexist, because of their class background, but if women need to be brought into the labour force to boost profits, so what? You can’t buck the markets. It homogenises (a McDonalds in every town). Traditional social relationships can only justify themselves insofar as they support, financially, the existing staus quo. If they can’t: too bad. Into the dustbin of history they go.
Conservatives, of course, must of necessity oppose all of this, and not just to a certain extent, but in toto and bitterly.
If you want to read what a true Conservative sounds like (and I’m not endorsing this article) read Peter Hitchens.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-3520932/PETER-HITCHENS-Privatisation-Free-trade-Shares-great-ruined-Britain.html
Peter T 04.03.16 at 10:24 am
If the great challenge of the next few centuries is not human welfare as an end in itself, but the welfare of the planet as a whole, then current political theory has little to offer. The alternative to the dominant There is No Alternative line is not a different analysis of costs and benefits, nor another fight over distribution, but a sense that cost-benefit analysis is essentially irrelevant to the critical problems. The people who protest for every remaining patch of green are the ones to watch.
MikeN 04.03.16 at 11:07 am
I remember watching a Scruton video production on the horrors of modern art (weird and contradictory in itself- the video, that is) that ended up showing his old stone house in the countryside, and contrasting it with the desecrations inflicted on beauty by the modern age by showing him glumly sitting on the base of a…wind turbine.
Now, of all the architectural violatioms of the face of Britain, it seems strange to pick a wind turbine- actually rather beautiful things in themselves- rather than, say, a coal tip or Sizewell or Bankside ( it’s a twofer!). Then of course you remember that all these messages of gloom from Scruton are produced for right-wing think-tanks or subsidised magazines and other forms of wing-nut welfare- he woudn’t want to bite the hand that feeds him.
Rich Puchalsky 04.03.16 at 11:56 am
Hidari: “If one chooses Lyotard’s definition of postmodernism: ‘Incredulity Towards Metanarratives’: we live in one of the least Postmodern ages ever.”
I just re-read James C. Scott’s _Seeing Like A State_, and I think there’s a useful distinction between high modernism and plain modernism. The kind of “There Is No Alternative”, we-all-speak-English world order that we have now is modernist, but not high modernist. When e.g. Greece is in crisis, we supposedly can’t do anything about it because there just isn’t anything that can be done, not because we need to implement some expert plan. The whole point of “There Is No Alternative” is hostility towards the very idea that solutions are possible.
It’s in that sense that postmodernist incredulity towards metanarratives has affected the shape of modernism. (Or rather, since it’s doubtful whether postmodernism itself affected things directly, both it and the current shape of the world order are concurrent symptoms.)
Robert Cottrell 04.03.16 at 11:57 am
Is there any truth in Scruton’s claim that Longman panicked over the 1985 reaction to “Thinkers of the New Left” and (per Freeman) “withdrew” the book? I know the book was remaindered, but that is not quite the same thing. Scruton was a noted reactionary and an adept self-publicist well before 1985. It could have been no surprise to Longman that many reviewers greeted “Thinkers of the New Left” with affectations of shock and horror. That, surely, was part of the point.
Hidari 04.03.16 at 12:14 pm
‘Is there any truth in Scruton’s claim that Longman panicked over the 1985 reaction to “Thinkers of the New Left†and (per Freeman) “withdrew†the book?’
@21 No it’s obvious and self-evident bollocks. I had a huge post about this in my brain, so to speak, but I decided that were I to post it the internet might self-combust due to its tediousness. Suffice to say, one of the key charmless tropes of right wing intellectuals is that they all have to pretend that we do not, in fact, live in capitalist societies, that the governments in these countries since (roughly) about ’67 do not, in fact, ‘lean to the right’, and that this is partly because since that time the Right has seized the intellectual high ground, based on its army of think tanks, paid-for intellectuals, right wing journalists, the corporate media etc. etc. etc.
To be right wing since, roughly, 1971, therefore is to be absolutely in the mainstream of modern intellectual thought. It is not in any sense an anti-establishment or a ‘dissident’ opinion. And if anyone denies this, think of the bottom line. What hit to Scruton’s wallet did taking his (allegedly) controversial intellectual opinions cost him? Did he at any point live in grinding poverty, as Karl Marx did? Was he sent to prison or threatened with it (as happened to Bertrand Russell or the Soviet dissidents)?
Incidentally google ‘Scruton’ and ‘The Guardian’ and see how gently he is reviewed and interviewed in the ostensibly ‘hostile’ Guardian. And remember also this: for a long while Scruton was a paid columnist (the wine reviewer) for the New Statesman, the premier left wing non-academic journal in the UK.
Imagine you were a young journalist and you went to your bank manager. And you said to him: ‘I want to be a journalist. I also want to make as much money as possible. Should I write for right wing papers, or left wing papers? Should I flatter Jeremy Corbyn or David Cameron/Tony Blair?’
What do you think your bank manager would recommend?
LFC 04.03.16 at 12:22 pm
Sebastian H @14
No, the basic commitments of the left, however parsed, do *not* include “domination and hierarchy, esp. in private realms of power”. That some regimes claiming to be leftist have devolved into dictatorship doesn’t alter the pt. Yr comment here sounds more like something the commenter cassander wd write. It’s waving the flag of ‘but what about … autocrat X/Y/Z?’ The emphasis on private realms of power means looking at family and workplace, and seeing whether the right or left has historically upheld hierarchy and domination in those domains. I think the answer is pretty clear.
LFC 04.03.16 at 12:29 pm
Keith @13
Does any one take Roger Scruton seriously?
I realize this is a rhetorical question but the answer is obvs yes. Reviewed in ******* NYRB by S. Freeman. If these U.S.-centric references don’t mean anything to you, then substitute British equivalents.
UserGoogol 04.03.16 at 4:27 pm
I don’t see what’s conservative about “there is no alternative” other than the person who popularized the phrase. Conservatives believe history is shaped by individuals, the left believes history is shaped by society. Conservatives believe in leadership and manly action, in the big man theory of history, and that people can pull themselves by their bootstraps. They believe that conflict is what changes history, the strong dominating the weak. Liberals and leftists reject that. We are products of our society, our actions are determined by the various social, cultural, and biological factors that build us. Social structures are not fixed, but the forces that cause society to restructure are social forces. Whether it’s Karl Marx talking about dialectic or Nate Silver talking at poll numbers and demographics it’s the same thing. People are just cogs in the machine.
RNB 04.03.16 at 5:33 pm
“The suspicion of tonality, like Marx’s suspicion of private property, should be seen for what it is: an act of rebellion against the only way we have of making sense of things.” Scruton quoted by Kathleen Higgins in the Music Between Us who is critical of the claim.
LFC 04.03.16 at 7:35 pm
RNB @26
That’s a pretty amazing quotation.
bruce wilder 04.03.16 at 8:11 pm
UserGoogol @ 25: I don’t see what’s conservative about “there is no alternative†. . .
Really?
It does seem to me that the reactionary conservative typically wants to deny that there is any responsibility for the design of political society or for the efficacy of policy. “There is no alternative . . .” represents the endpoint of reactionary subversion of liberal and social democratic ideas about designing and managing the economy. In a sense, a deflationary Euro, for example, reproduces in more modern dress, the gold standard of the late 19th and early 20th century, with a similar tying of the hands of democratic government.
Chris Bertram 04.03.16 at 9:10 pm
“suddenly the main question of liberal democracy was how to deal with intractable differences of religion, cultural identity, and morality, whether and how men and women could argue over fundamental questions of “the good†rather than hide or subsume their disagreements under more seemingly neutral rules of “the right.—
The final section just seems wrong to me as an account of Rawls’s political turn. Rawls never gave up on the priority of the right over the good and the overlapping consensus makes possible a shared language of right that doesn’t put any of those controversial commitments into play in the public sphere. David Miller, who can perhaps be thought of as a conservative in social democratic clothing doesn’t seem to me to exemplify any current or turn within liberalism at all. There was, of course, the liberal-communitarian “debate” in the 1980s, and the communitarians (Macintyre, Sandel, etc) did put substantive notions of the good at the centre of their attack, but they lost.
PatinIowa 04.03.16 at 9:50 pm
Hidari @ “Nowadays it’s almost inconceivable that one might meet someone under 40 who really and genuinely wants the complete overthrow of the capitalist mode of production. Indeed most people under 40 don’t really understand what that might mean.”
They exist. The ones I’ve met typically have been grad students. The effect is somewhat similar to when my friend who used to work at a zoo sends me a stilltrap video of the last remaining tiger in some desolate area of Sibera.
Brett Dunbar 04.03.16 at 9:51 pm
To some extent Fukayama was right. If a specific solution obviously works better then it tends to be copied. The liberal democratic market economy state flatly works better. So by a purely evolutionary process it gradually squeezes out the alternative approaches. Other types of state fall behind economically and politically and are left with no real alternative but to copy what we are doing. I’m just glad that the type of state that is the most economically successful is also the sort with the greatest level of personal freedom lowest level of violence and the richest poor people. You don’t have to chose between liberty and having nice stuff.
The left and right continue to disagree about many things, economic policy mostly ceased to be one of them. The right won there, while in social policy the left mostly won.
UserGoogol 04.03.16 at 9:59 pm
bruce wilder: Conservatives constantly talk about responsibility, they just don’t like to claim responsibility themselves. On the social scale, blaming “bad people” for social ills is a really constant theme in conservative-reactionary attitudes. Conspiracy theories, blaming minorities, the liberal media, lots of different flavors. And of course on the individual scale, responsibility is a key factor in supporting the social hierarchy Corey keeps talking about. They say bad things happen either because of individual villains, or because the victims deserve it because of their own actions, instead of viewing it as just one big systematic issue.
Of course, I concede that I am to a certain extent equating the left with my own eccentric more-liberal-than-leftist-but-not-entirely-mainstream-either tendencies. Obviously there’s a significant segment of the left which has traits I’m attributing to the right, they’re posting in this thread right now. But the right does it quite a lot.
Dean C. Rowan 04.03.16 at 10:05 pm
RNB @26: That is a curious remark, and I’m not sure I get what Scruton means by “suspicion of tonality.” The analogy suggests he is referring critically to a hermeneutics of suspicion, a view–such as Marx’s toward property–that questions the assumed fundamental nature of tonality to music or property to society. In a 1983 article, “Understanding Music,” collected that year in a book, The Aesthetic Understanding, Scruton writes of tones that, unlike meaning-bearing language, they have “implications in these three dimensions”: harmony, melody, and rhythm. He goes on, “There are musical traditions without melody in our sense (the Javanese), without rhythm in our sense (the Japanese Gagaku), without harmony (much of the music of Southern Asia). But in all these (with the possible, and highly curious, exception of the Gagaku) there are tones, and it is from the idea of a tone that I shall begin.” Thus, tones are fundamental…except for that last parenthetical, which serves as a possible example supporting a legitimate “suspicion of tonality.”
bruce wilder 04.03.16 at 10:06 pm
In biological evolution, the emergence of homogeneity is often a prelude to extinction.
bob mcmanus 04.03.16 at 10:14 pm
Bertram: …the communitarians (Macintyre, Sandel, etc) did put substantive notions of the good at the centre of their attack, but they lost.
I love this. I guess where they lost is the only intellectual community that matters, probably Anglo-American political philosophy in elite universities or something, or that the consensus said community has arrived at is the only true scientific truth, and those who still dispute the consensus are the barbarians and superstitious.
You recognize Empire by its form.
Brett Dunbar 04.03.16 at 10:21 pm
Only if the environment changes suddenly and you are too specialised to change. It can often be an example of stabilising selection. If there is an optimal solution to a problem once you get there any change makes you less effective so you stay there. For example there is an optimal solution to being a crocodile. That is why Phytosaurs, Choristoderes and Crocodilians all look pretty similar despite being only distantly related.
LFC 04.03.16 at 10:31 pm
Chris Bertram:
Rawls never gave up on the priority of the right over the good and the overlapping consensus makes possible a shared language of right that doesn’t put any of those controversial commitments into play in the public sphere.
I was going to say something like this, b.c from what I’ve read about R’s ‘Political Liberalism’ it was an attempt (among other things) to show how the theory cd be compatible w differing fundamental conceptions (or some such phrase) of ‘the good’.
The reason I decided not to write the comment was that I noted Corey’s parenthetical phrase here:
You could see this shift most visibly in the Rawlsian turn toward political liberalism (or at least certain iterations, beyond Rawls himself, of political liberalism).
Still, perhaps not as clearly put as it might have been.
I also took Corey, w the ref to “cultural identity,” to be gesturing at the debate/discussion of multiculturalism that did start to occupy some liberal theorists, or such is my (non-professional, outsider’s) impression (Kymlicka and J. Levy wd be two names that come to mind, I’m sure there are a lot of others). Plus, say, Appiah’s Cosmopolitanism which I wasn’t all that impressed by, as evidenced by the fact that I can remember, at most, only one or two of the pts. (Of course, that cd just be me.)
LFC 04.03.16 at 10:57 pm
@Dean Rowan:
It’s pretty clear just from a reading of that sentence that Scruton is intending to say that tonality and private property are both necessary “to make sense of things.” That’s vague, but it’s clear he’s not impressed w critiques of either one. But it’s weird b.c there *is* atonal music. (Whereas no one has yet succeeded in abolishing private property, esp not at the level of basic personal possessions.) Now maybe he’s not talking about what’s generally referred to as atonal music. I don’t know b.c I don’t have the context.
LFC 04.03.16 at 10:59 pm
p.s. your quote does suggest he’s not talking about ‘atonal music’ but about “tones” in a more fundamental sense. (Meaning he doesn’t count Cage’s famous ‘four minutes 33 seconds’, or whatever it’s called, as music.)
Dean C. Rowan 04.04.16 at 12:32 am
@LFC: I think you are right that he is talking about tones as the atoms of music. He writes, “[W]hen I hear a tone, I hear a sound imbued with musical implications.” Never mind the circular reasoning. I agree that he likely would not count that particular Cage piece, among perhaps several others, as being real music. But Gagaku? The music doesn’t sound Western, but it’s not bereft of tone. Even a brief passage carries musical implications. So perhaps he does hear atonal music as being constructed without tone, which is absurd. Jan Swafford proclaims that, in a way, “Wagner invented atonal music.” Yet Scruton can be quite protective of Wagner. All of which leads me to believe that for Scruton the musical “sense” to be made of things consists of a narrow range of legitimate possible conclusions, and the means for reaching those conclusions consist of a narrow range of legitimate productions of “tone.”
Chris Bertram 04.04.16 at 1:10 am
@bob mcmanus Obviously I’m not unaware of the sociological fact that, wrt a bunch of issues (climate change, the labour theory of value, the communitarian critique of liberalism) there are plenty of holdouts. But plenty of people (Guttman, Kymlicka, Pogge) demonstrated conclusively at the time that eg Sandel’s reading of Rawls was based on pretty egregious misunderstandings. The impartial spectator has reached a verdict, even if you don’t like it.
LFC 04.04.16 at 1:15 am
@Dean C. Rowan
Interesting; thanks.
js. 04.04.16 at 2:00 am
CB, how do you feel about Charles Taylor? Honest question, that.
js. 04.04.16 at 2:27 am
Just to be clear that I’m not “baiting” in any way: (1) I think it’s right to think that the Macintyre/Sandel versions of communitarianism lost (tho presumably one wouldn’t say the same about Walzer, no?), (2) I… don’t have a lot of time for communitarianism in general (essentially, none), (3) As he himself recognizes and stresses, Taylor is a sort of odd figure in this debate, and (4) next to Rawls, I find him the most useful theorist in this area (“Explanation and Practical Reason” is a philosophical masterpiece, e.g., as is his takedown of Berlin.)
Chris Bertram 04.04.16 at 3:00 am
Well, I don’t know about Taylor. I’ve sometimes found him very insightful, but one some level I just don’t connect with him.
js. 04.04.16 at 4:00 am
CB — Fair enough, and thanks!
RNB 04.04.16 at 4:02 am
As my 11 year old is explaining to me: In Bartok’s Divertimento (especially the third movement) you get B flat and C sharp notes in a C major scale; you get enough accidentals to stretch tonality into atonality. I am *guessing* that this is what Scruton may be suggesting is an assault on the only way of making musical sense?
RNB 04.04.16 at 4:04 am
Julian Baggini just reviewed a new book by Charles Taylor on language. http://www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/arts-and-books/how-words-shape-our-world?platform=hootsuite
RNB 04.04.16 at 4:09 am
A holdout: http://stumblingandmumbling.typepad.com/stumbling_and_mumbling/2015/03/economists-be-more-marxist.html
Dean C. Rowan 04.04.16 at 4:26 am
Tonality stretched into atonality doesn’t express “suspicion” of tonality. Accidentals don’t express “suspicion” of tonality. I suspect (heh heh) Scruton is wary of approaches to music that abandon tones. As challenging as his music can be, Bartok doesn’t do this. Yasunao Tone (ironically!) almost utterly abandons tones, and I’m confident Scruton would regard Tone’s work as brutal rebellion. He might think the same of Cecil Taylor’s most dense work. If I’m right, Scruton is missing out on a lot of profoundly expressive, moving music.
RNB 04.04.16 at 4:47 am
From what I am finding on the web, Scruton’s discussion of atonality focuses on Webern and Schoenberg and the crisis of the interwar years. Dvorak, I am guessing, can be understood as anticipatory of these developments; and my older kid was playing the movement I mentioned, so there was that.
RNB 04.04.16 at 4:52 am
Sorry Bartok who was composing in those interwar years. Did not mean Dvorak.
Brett Dunbar 04.04.16 at 9:22 am
Private property means that a thing that belongs to you continues to belong to you even when it isn’t in your possession and you can call on society to enforce that against another party who is more powerful than you. It isn’t an inherent concept, it is something which it is conceivable to have not be true. Territory and possession in non-humans are rather more limited. a Robin’s territory remains that Robin’s territory only as long as it is vigorously defended against all other Robins. Robins have no concept of property only territory.
ZM 04.04.16 at 11:37 am
Dean C Rowan,
“Meanwhile, we true conservatives–nobody is more conservative than a librarian–will continue to work insidiously. Librarians work daily with “les mots et les choses,†the “order of things.†We keep track of their availability. We know where to find them. Can we help you?”
Les Mots Et Les Choses (the words and the things) is taken from an 18th C Poem by Father Gabriel-Charles de Lattaignant. It is hard to find a good English translation
https://youtu.be/uPJjFO60Fyo
…
For you, I believe that with the word
You always see something else:
You say the word so gaily,
You deserve so much the thing,
What, for you, the thing and the word
Must be the same …
And, you did not say the word,
That is ready to thing.
But when I tell you that the word
Is for me more than anything
You must believe me, the word,
Few connoisseur of the thing!
Well, here’s my last word
And on the word and the thing:
Madam, give me the word …
I will pass you the thing!
ZM 04.04.16 at 11:37 am
https://youtu.be/uPJjFO60Fyo
ZM 04.04.16 at 11:50 am
Foucault looks at the main different epistemologies of Western thought, as he identifies them, with the last one being the Modernist Epistemology, which he seems really to be saying that it will defeat itself, with the death of [the idea of] Man.
I think in the Modern period there were particular big ideas and theories, which is what Foucault identifies as ending, as Hidari says in “If one chooses Lyotard’s definition of postmodernism: ‘Incredulity Towards Metanarratives’: we live in one of the least Postmodern ages ever.”
I don’t think Hidari is right about saying TINA or Fukuyama is a metanarrative, since they are not really very good theories as far as human science theories go. They are not positing some sort of mechanical view of society really, they are just rhetoric.
There was always rhetoric well before Modernism. Latour identifies that in his more recent work as well, saying that he envisions a Diplomatic Mode of Enquiry, where Diplomacy is older and newer than Modernism.
ZM 04.04.16 at 11:53 am
Actually, I think that might not be the right YouTube film clip not understanding French myself, I think this is the right one
https://youtu.be/ZwhGsYgDEVY
ZM 04.04.16 at 12:19 pm
Dean C Rowan,
“RNB @26: That is a curious remark, and I’m not sure I get what Scruton means by “suspicion of tonality.†”
@26 “The suspicion of tonality, like Marx’s suspicion of private property, should be seen for what it is: an act of rebellion against the only way we have of making sense of things.†Scruton
I think what he means by the suspicion of tonality is that he is saying it is the musical tones (rather than melody, rhythm, etc) which have some basic sense of meaning. Like if you listen to gamelan or mongolian music or African music you should get the sense of emotion from the tones used, despite the musical language being different from the western classical musical language.
This is where your The Words and The Things comment comes in as well, since the name of the book is taken from the poem where the pose of the writer is that he sees the words are not the same as the things, but the woman he is addressing sees the words as the same as the things.
In historiography this is called The Linguistic Turn, where there is a disconnection between language and the things it represents.
The Modernist epistemological basis of the human sciences is that the words and the things are the same.
Of course when this connection is severed in High Modernism, like The Man With The Blue Guitar by Wallace Stevens, or in Wittgenstein, this is the failure of the Modernist epistemology. And we are left with some other epistemology, which Latour says is a return to diplomacy, although I am not sure, since it must be an epistemology which copes with plural faiths etc but one climate science…
bianca steele 04.04.16 at 12:37 pm
bob m makes a good point! Whether methodological individualism needs to be tempered with historical and social considerations is a different question to whether Thatcher-style neoliberalism needs to be tempered with “communitarianism.” I don’t think anyone has said otherwise.
bianca steele 04.04.16 at 12:48 pm
“they lost”
My very, very remote observation and limited reading suggests that possibly if communitarians had “won,” a range of younger people would have made common cause with them and together made inroads into Anglosphere or analytic philosophy, but instead those people moved into “Continental philosophy” and “theory”, or maybe phenomenology. So, on the margins probably (and requiring a totally different set of background readings), but not at all entirely defeated.
ZM 04.04.16 at 12:49 pm
In terms of bob mcmanus comment of the connection between Corey Robin’s OP and what bob mcmanus calls the Theory Wars, I think the connection is that domination/power gains more ground over knowledge (thinking of Foucault’s grids of knowledge and power) if there is a disconnection between words and things.
Once the epistemology of the human sciences falls into relativism and constructivism with some post-positivism objectivist hold outs, knowledge loses ground competing in the public sphere with brute domination/power.
I’m not sure if that makes sense, but I think we have seen that in terms of the climate change science debate, where despite the science we haven’t seen a lot of progress…
ZM 04.04.16 at 1:39 pm
But I think this ties in with Corey Robin’s other OP on Bernie Sanders and young people, since I would say that the Post Modern period is pretty much over by now. The epistemological work I like at the moment is by Nancy Tuana which goes towards looking at social and environmental interactions, and I think is a lot more positive than deconstruction and doesn’t fall into relativism. I guess the counter point to someone like Foucault is like the woman in the poem, where the things are more important than the words.
ZM 04.04.16 at 1:46 pm
or possibly less that the things are more important than the words, but that there is a connection between the words and the things.
This is something Latour touches on as well, talking about how when some scholarly work tries “to reconnect scientific objects with their aura, their crown, their web of associations, when we accompany them back to their gathering, we always appear to weaken them, not to strengthen their claim to reality.â€
LFC 04.04.16 at 2:05 pm
bianca steele @60
My very, very remote observation and limited reading suggests that possibly if communitarians had “won,†a range of younger people would have made common cause with them and together made inroads into Anglosphere or analytic philosophy, but instead those people moved into “Continental philosophyâ€
Well, Adam Sandel, Michael’s son, wrote a diss., now published as a book, about the notion of ‘prejudice’ as used by Gadamer and some other Continental philosophers. So there is that data point, fwiw. I haven’t read the book. In terms of disciplinary lines, I think it is political theory (it was reviewed in APSR, iirc) not philosophy, but those lines are often sort of blurry…
LFC 04.04.16 at 2:10 pm
Adam Sandel, The Place of Prejudice (Harvard Univ. Press, 2014).
engels 04.04.16 at 2:14 pm
Nice to see Sandel Jr’s at Harvard too. I wonder if he’s written anything on Rawls’ principle of fair equality of opportunity…
bianca steele 04.04.16 at 2:27 pm
Wow, L., thanks for the correction! Always welcome, as you know!
LFC 04.04.16 at 2:28 pm
@engels
Pt snarky, of course, but nonetheless well-taken — if you dig a tad deeper, you’ll see that his appointment is not the tenure-track sort, but it’s still a nice job for someone who has pretty recently finished his doctorate. For all I know he’s an excellent teacher, but obvs. his connections cdn’t have hurt, shall we say.
(Then too, he didn’t write about Rawls, did he? He wrote about Gadamer et al. :))
LFC 04.04.16 at 2:30 pm
Wow, L., thanks for the correction!
Bianca, it was not a “correction” — I don’t know how you possibly cd have read it in that light. If anything it was one piece of evidence in favor of what you said. Why don’t you try actually reading what I wrote for once?
LFC 04.04.16 at 2:32 pm
In fact you seem to think everything I write about you is critical, even when it is just the reverse. I don’t know what your problem is, frankly, but I’m sorry you seem to be incapable of actually reading what I write.
bianca steele 04.04.16 at 2:43 pm
LFC,
When someone expresses irritation with you, it’s often polite to back off. When you instead repeatedly comment on what they say, it looks like being deliberately annoying to them.
I don’t want to derail Corey’s thread, and he’s expressed irritation with me often enough, so I’ll leave it there.
Plume 04.04.16 at 2:53 pm
LFC @70,
It’s not just you. I think it’s now considered “sexist” by some if female posters are asked to elaborate on their posts, or questioned at all, or if they’re involved in the normal give and take on bulletins boards, which always have involved “corrections.” Guys do this to other guys incessantly, often aggressively, and sometimes downright viciously.
For some reason, if some women are treated as equals, it’s apparently “sexist” to some people. It’s not, of course.
Speaking just for myself, I’m rather tired of the pins and needles thing, especially as it applies to discussions of Sanders and Clinton, and especially from Hillary supporters, for whom virtually every explication of Sanders’ policies now (immediately) provokes the “berniebro” or “berniesplaining” retort. Personally, I begin all conversations assuming true equality between the genders, and more. More than just equal to. Not just that “women are equal to men.” But that we men obviously aren’t the standard of measure, and never were, so it’s not about them being equal to us at all. We are equal to them. They to us. With no privileged position to rise to or fall from. A natural equilibrium of value and rights is always already there, with neither gender being the determinant or key, etc. We’re just equal, naturally, together.
But that means if we men can ask each other for further elaboration, then it should be fine to ask women, too. It should be fine to question their assumptions, when men question the assumptions of other men all the time. It’s not “equality” if one gender is above criticism, questioning, the request for elaboration, etc.. Ironically, that’s actually sexist.
Of course, it goes without saying these questions, these requests for elaboration should be civil, polite, never condescending. But if they are done as they would be done, guy to guy, while still civil, it should not result in angry refusals or the accusation of sexism, etc., etc. That is, if we actually do want “equality” between the genders.
RNB 04.04.16 at 3:07 pm
Jeez, my impression remains that there has been very little discussion of how unready a lot of American men are for a women president and how this unreadiness is disguised in much of the criticism Hillary Clinton receives. There was some experimental work on how when men are primed about gender their support for Clinton drops precipitously. It was discussed for a day or two and then dropped. Also discussed for a day or two is how much more likely parents of daughters are to support Clinton. What are you sick and tired of? Jimmy Kimmel once satirizing man-splaining?
At any rate, Scruton the philosopher of aesthetics seems interesting–at least more so than the political philosopher of conservatism. I agree with zm that Scruton is passing judgment on many forms of non-Western music. But he seems also to have been concerned about the loss of melodic movement, harmonic tension and release and metrical pulse in the Western atonal music of the interwar years. His examples seem to be Webern and Schoenberg; I was adding Bartok’s second and third movement in the Divertimento.
LFC 04.04.16 at 3:07 pm
This will be my last comment on this. A fair, plain reading of my comment is that I was supporting and agreeing with what bianca said. She took it as criticism. It was not.
Bianca apparently wants me never to comment, in any way whatsoever, on anything she says. That seems unreasonable to me. Ok, I’m done with this topic.
engels 04.04.16 at 3:11 pm
Scruton the philosopher of aesthetics seems interesting–at least more so than the political philosopher of conservatism
Maybe, but best of all is of Scruton the philosopher of cancer sticks
Plume 04.04.16 at 3:12 pm
RNB @73,
I’ve been “ready” for a female president since the day I first became politically aware. As a kid, I thought it was weird that so few women held positions of power in the world. It made no sense to me. I suppose this is because I was raised by a strong, accomplished mother with a PhD, and was surrounded by strong, accomplished aunts, grandmothers, female cousins, etc. etc. But that’s how I was raised.
Again, I just assume equality. It’s not even something I need to get “ready” for. I honestly think it’s totally insane that women were ever kept off the world stage/oppressed/repressed, going back to the dawn of time.
engels 04.04.16 at 3:13 pm
http://www.ash.org.uk/media-room/press-releases/roger-scruton-high-priest-of-the-libertarian-right-defrocked-and-exposed-as-grimy-hack-for-tobacco-industry
Plume 04.04.16 at 3:15 pm
But back to Corey’s article.
Excellent work, and I’ve sent it to many for a look. I continue to see Corey as one of the very best critics of conservatism and the right overall. And I mean “critic” in the scholarly sense, etc.
bianca steele 04.04.16 at 3:16 pm
Plume, if it has anything to do with gender, it’s not on my part. I’ve asked LFC to tone it down in the past, elsewhere, and he’s decided not to. If you think it does, well, there’s a reason my pseud is an almost-anagram of “blank slate”. Online is fun stuff.
Plume 04.04.16 at 3:21 pm
bianca @79,
Fair enough. If I’m wrong about this, I apologize. It wouldn’t be the first time.
And, yes, “online stuff is fun.” I think mostly because it lacks close to 90% of typical communication between humans. The non-verbal, etc. etc. Emojis really aren’t enough to make up for all of that, so we get so much wrong. And then the repetition of this. We’re usually bringing outside baggage to the show and read that into the posts, too.
It makes for a great deal of misunderstanding.
Again, apologies.
Dean C. Rowan 04.04.16 at 3:33 pm
Like bianca, I don’t want to derail the OP, which I sorta did by going on about Scruton’s comments about music. Thanks, engels, for reminding us of the link to the tobacco industry. (Keith was alluding to this, too, @13, I’m pretty sure.) Scruton merely echoes Firesign Theater’s “Waiting for the Electrician, or Someone Like Him.” He’s not a *free* thinker. He’s expensive!
And thanks, ZM @58, for the poem. It’s a hoot. I’d like to think, although I know better, that the poet intended “thing” here as a verb:
“And, you did not say the word,
That is ready to thing.”
At the risk of distracting the thread: “The Modernist epistemological basis of the human sciences is that the words and the things are the same.” This just seems too simple to me. Isn’t Saussure a quintessential Modernist? Ezra Pound?
Plume 04.04.16 at 3:39 pm
Dean @81,
Or, with Wittgenstein, the meaning is the usage. William Carlos Williams: No ideas but in things. And Ezra Pound: Make it new.
Saussure, yes. Essential to the idea that everything is relative. He did his key work not too far removed from Einstein’s best, so that makes sense, too. It must have been “in the air.”
ZM 04.04.16 at 3:41 pm
Pound is a High Modernist, all the High Modernists were on the cutting edge of the failure of Modernism before it failed everywhere by the 60s.
I suppose Saussure is a High Modernist too, although he was a linguist. Do you know The Magnetic Fields song? It’s pretty funny
http://youtu.be/2vykJ7-UgNQ
Dean C. Rowan 04.04.16 at 3:48 pm
Not a Magnetic Fields fan, but the loose rhymes in that tune are wicked clever. Saussure, so sure, closure, bulldozer…damn, that’s good.
Contra Latour I want to say we have always and only been Modern. I don’t detect a failure. Occasional egregious abuse, sure, but not outright failure. How do we account for Laurence Sterne? Rabelais?
Plume 04.04.16 at 3:55 pm
Dean @84,
Rabelais and Sterne. Have you ever read The Dismemberment of Orpheus, by Ihab Hassan? Haven’t read it in a long time, though reread it a few times in the past. He would place those two in the PoMod camp, in a kind of back dating — if memory serves. Really great (well-written and enthusiastic) study of the shift to Post-Modernism and its roots.
ZM 04.04.16 at 4:10 pm
Although some High Modernism like Corbusier is different.
Perhaps the connection between an early modern like Francis Bacon and Modern like Marx and High Modern like Pound is to do with the use of knowledge as power to make and do things.
Bacon is probably an early modern with some ideas of nature as mechanical but also one for court intrigue, then with Marx being Modernist with a materialist take on society which sees society as mechanical in a sense in a contradictory sort of way both downplaying agency in society and making agency important in terms of having change to socialism, and then Pound is a dubious figure in some ways and he constructs work with abstracts and using techniques from Japan and so on.
So by Pound what you could see as the power Bacon identifies in gaining and using knowledge to manipulate and control nature, has turned into Pound and his cohort constructing their own culture with pieces taken from here and there or invented. A sense of continuity with tradition has largely been abandoned in this work and where tradition enters like in Elliot referring to the Fisher King it is fragmented.
de Saussure is sort of similar if you think of his illustrations with one person saying something and the other person hearing it and both of them thinking something different, although I don’t quite see how this is so modern since this is always in Shakespeare anyhow.
So High Modernism has a continuity with modernism but basically takes it to its limit ushering in post modernism.
I guess it is the Modernist period of something like Marx I was thinking of where words and things should be the same , not early moderns involved in court intrigue or high moderns constructing their own culture.
Dean C. Rowan 04.04.16 at 4:13 pm
That book, Plume @85, was a perennial on the shortlist of to-read volumes when I was browsing the stacks of my college library decades ago. Somehow I always skipped it in favor of, I don’t know, Ricouer’s Rule of Metaphor or something. I will read the essay to which you link. Skimming it I see this remark, which I read entirely out of context: “We live in an age of organized chaos, but we have more to fear from organization than from chaos.” I am reminded, first, of Wallace Stevens:
A. A violent order is disorder; and
B. A great disorder is an order. These
Two things are one. (Pages of illustrations.)
Second, I am reminded of the Freeman review of Scruton to which Corey linked, this passage in particular:
“Legal rules and institutions arise from innumerable actions and decisions that individuals and courts make, and, like free market outcomes, form a beneficial ‘spontaneous order’ that is not the product of government planning. The gradual evolution of common law, which eventually takes on the form of legislated law, preserves individual liberty, which otherwise is threatened by ‘social engineering’ by activist democratic legislatures.”
ZM 04.04.16 at 4:16 pm
Dean C Rowan @84
Yes I know what you mean, I did an essay on The Winters Tale and when I discussed the outline my lecturer wondered whether it would work since I was using post modern analytical concepts to analyze Shakespeare with the idea Shakespeare aligned with them
Historical periods are funny, it would be hard to confuse the work and periods of early moderns like Rabelais with High Moderns like Joyce, but there are definitely similarities
js. 04.04.16 at 10:13 pm
Man, I haven’t listened to the Magnetic Fields in over a decade. That song is brilliant tho—ZM, cheers.
RNB 04.05.16 at 8:14 am
Sorry I didn’t follow discussion to see how we got to Saussure. Just guessing: while Saussure says phonological peculiarities cannot be revealed through individual sounds but only by analyzing the differences and combinatorics characteristic of the individual phonemes, Scruton may be that tones are only meaningful with the differences and combinatorics characteristic of the Western classical tradition. Saussure’s linguistics does not seem tied to cultural imperialism or cultural conservatism though.
But it seems that Scruton’s thought reflects a kind of critique of musical multiculturalism that Robin spoke of in the OP. But I won’t have time to read his 500 page book on music. It would be interesting to see how he actually draws on the philosophy of language if at all and if at all in the way guessed above.
Robin:’ You could see this shift most visibly in the Rawlsian turn toward political liberalism (or at least certain iterations, beyond Rawls himself, of political liberalism). In the earlier work, “difference†meant the Difference Principle, which was a Rawlsian rule about whether to accept economic inequalities in the polity and how they might be arranged. Now “difference†came to be associated with religious and cultural differences, deep disagreements over questions like sexual morality or other cultural practices that liberals had previously thought belonged to the realm of private belief and practice.’
casmilus 04.05.16 at 8:31 am
Wyndham Lewis said it all, before everyone else.
casmilus 04.05.16 at 8:37 am
“Perhaps the connection between an early modern like Francis Bacon and Modern like Marx and High Modern like Pound is to do with the use of knowledge as power to make and do things.”
One of my old teachers, Edward Craig, did try to suggest a shift between early modern and later philosophy occurring around the time of Kant, as going from an emphasis on “God’s Eye” observation of reality, to stressing human action and creation as central. It’s in his book “The Mind Of God And The Works Of Man”.
I think he strains a bit in trying to bring out commonalities between Engels, William James, and Wittgenstein, but I suppose he’s picking up on the same resemblances that Richard Rorty was keen on.
casmilus 04.05.16 at 8:39 am
“Jeez, my impression remains that there has been very little discussion of how unready a lot of American men are for a women president and how this unreadiness is disguised in much of the criticism Hillary Clinton receives.”
Gee I guess they just need to man-up.
ZM 04.05.16 at 8:41 am
Dean C Rowan,
Freeman : “Legal rules and institutions arise from innumerable actions and decisions that individuals and courts make, and, like free market outcomes, form a beneficial ‘spontaneous order’ that is not the product of government planning. The gradual evolution of common law, which eventually takes on the form of legislated law, preserves individual liberty, which otherwise is threatened by ‘social engineering’ by activist democratic legislatures.â€
The problem with this formulation is there have been kind of statutory laws made since at least the 13th C after the process of law making became more codified than in Anglo Saxon Times, and also Common Law is not only about preserving liberties, it is about obligations etc as well.
I have only done planning law and out of interest studied the Public Trust Doctrine informally, but an early use of the Public Trust Doctrine in England was by Juliana the Washerwoman who asked King Edward I to stop John de Tytyng and others from preventing her scouring fabric in the Upper Brook.
King Edward assembled a jury and relied on Common Law to decide that the water has always been common. However, this was not the end of the matter. King Edward made some of the first environmental Statutory Laws in England and even all of Europe, by regulating what people could not put in the river so as to prevent pollution of the water.
This is what is called the Legal Principle of Coherence.
Statutory and Common Law should not be at odds with each other, which Freeman appears to see as being the case in your excerpt as if there is a great opposition between Statutes and Common Law, but there should be Coherence between the Common Law and Statutory Law.
There is a current case in the US Federal Court about this, with a group of young people calling the government to enact Statutory Law to preserve the climate as a common pool resource like water is http://ourchildrenstrust.org/sites/default/files/16.03.09TheNation.pdf
casmilus 04.05.16 at 11:59 am
@15
“When I hold my nose and wander through the websites of Richard Dawkins and other ‘New Atheists’ it’s amusing (and interesting) to see that to them (and, perhaps, only to them) ‘Postmodernism’ is still a ‘live topic’. Perhaps only the New Atheists, alone on planet Earth, still see Postmodernism as a Threat To Our Way of Life.”
I suppose the reason for that might be that, in his perambulations as a public speaker, the second biggest group of timewasters (after creationists) that Dawkins encounters are bores who heard something 20 years ago about “hegemonic discourses”, and have never understood what the problem was supposed to be about “the Sokal Hoax”.
“In reality of course, the ‘Postmodern Moment’ is long gone. not just because the sociocultural event (the collapse of radical Marxism) that engendered it is not only over, but also because the shockwaves from that event (so to speak) have finally subsided.”
Not that those “shockwaves” were felt everywhere in the first place. The collapse of Actual Existing Communist Regimes (a dateable event, occurring from 1989-91) did affect millions of lives, and continues to do so. Not all of its effects were positive, of course.
“If one chooses Lyotard’s definition of postmodernism: ‘Incredulity Towards Metanarratives’: we live in one of the least Postmodern ages ever.”
The biggest selling American book of the 70s was “The Late, Great Planet Earth” by Hal Lindsey. There was never any shortage of people who were credulous for old and new “metanarratives”, from 1968 until at least 2008. Only if you have a residual, unquestioned faith that western Humanities faculties are the central arena of human culture, could you be fooled otherwise.
engels 04.05.16 at 6:02 pm
OT, but worth reading in alongside the Scruton link above:
“The poor, the young, the black and the stupid”: Inside Big Tobacco’s plans to kill a billion people
phenomenal cat 04.05.16 at 8:00 pm
“I suppose the reason for that might be that, in his perambulations as a public speaker, the second biggest group of timewasters (after creationists) that Dawkins encounters are bores who heard something 20 years ago about “hegemonic discoursesâ€, and have never understood what the problem was supposed to be about “the Sokal Hoaxâ€.” casmilus @ 95
I’ll grant there could be something preternaturally numbing in listening to an associate professor of literature drone on about Lacan, but does this take into account how boring Dawkins, Coyne, and all the rest of the atheist white knights are? They’re task is absurd as Don Quixote, but they lack the redeeming virtue of being able to make a body laugh.
A question occurs to me regarding this thread. If one can plausibly take:
A. Sanders as indicating the “return of the repressed” on broadly defined political and socioeconomic justice issues and Trump as a sign of the disordered collapse of the epistemic agreements that have held the center/right together for the last 50 years and…
B. That Sanders and Trump are real symptoms, or actual phenomena, indicative of large, inchoate, but concrete shifts in the body politic…
then what follows from this? Perhaps the reemergence and re-energization of left political perspectives such that the “center” is colonized by those perspectives over time, or perhaps not–obviously a lot of eventualities are possible.
If the ground is really shifting, if these signs are actually tectonic and not just bubbly epiphenomena, then the old reliable sociopolitical categories of left/right and so on are likely to become increasingly useless, lacking content or reference.
Dean C. Rowan 04.05.16 at 8:15 pm
ZM @94: I largely agree with your take on Freeman’s account of Scruton, although I quoted it for the phrase “spontaneous order” as an example of orderly disorder or disorderly order. Channeling Scruton, Freeman depicts an intense adversarial relationship between statutes and common law. Yet we should strive for but perhaps not reasonably expect perfect legal coherence, inasmuch as legislation and judicial pronouncements are intended to impose countervailing forces, what we refer to as a system of checks and balances. Some statutes pass precisely because of problems created or highlighted by common law developments, and in some instances a subsequently enacted law abrogates the legal force of a case. But maybe Scruton would welcome this account, too, because it shows government reacting to incremental court rulings, rather than unilaterally imposing a legislative scheme based on “planning.” The inefficiency of the approach is pretty obvious.
Hidari 04.06.16 at 6:40 am
‘The biggest selling American book of the 70s was “The Late, Great Planet Earth†by Hal Lindsey. There was never any shortage of people who were credulous for old and new “metanarrativesâ€, from 1968 until at least 2008. Only if you have a residual, unquestioned faith that western Humanities faculties are the central arena of human culture, could you be fooled otherwise.’
This is absolutely correct. But for that reason, Lyotard’s statement makes absolutely no sense unless you realise that ‘metarranatives’, in pomo discourse, is a code word for ‘Marxism’.
This gives us the slogan ‘Postmodernism is incredulity towards Marxism (by mainly white academics in humanities departments at elite universities in the West)’, which is a much more accurate description of what pomo is really about.
Hidari 04.06.16 at 6:47 am
‘A question occurs to me regarding this thread. If one can plausibly take:
A. Sanders as indicating the “return of the repressed†on broadly defined political and socioeconomic justice issues and Trump as a sign of the disordered collapse of the epistemic agreements that have held the center/right together for the last 50 years and…
B. That Sanders and Trump are real symptoms, or actual phenomena, indicative of large, inchoate, but concrete shifts in the body politic…’
The absolute ticking time bomb here (to be fair Sanders has mentioned it, but no one else has) is AGW. Again, among public intellectuals, only Naomi Klein has really discussed this thoroughly, but ‘normality’ as all human beings have known it (i.e. since the arrival on the scene of homo sapiens sapiens) is really over. As we move into the anthropocene, it is very much a moot point as to whether our children and grandchildren will view neoliberalism as the best way to arrange their (increasingly bleak) prospects.
casmilus 04.06.16 at 8:36 am
And there was me expecting another pomo/anti-pomo sand-kicking exercise, a bit of light relief from thinking about current serious problems. Instead, Hidari just goes and agrees with me.
That’s a disruptive move in the whole discourse.
Frederick 04.06.16 at 9:15 am
Look at the benighted company that Roger keeps.
As far as I know The Ethics and Public Policy Centre is run by Opus Dei.
Both the Heritage (lies,lies and more lies) Foundation and the AEI have direct links to Opus Dei too. Even so, how could anyone who works for either of these two outfits possibly be called a scholar – propaganda hack is more appropriate.
The applied politics of these outfits is described in The Shock Doctrine by Klein, and by this essay too http://www.logosjournal.com/hammer_kellner (note the unspeakably vile sado-masochistic snuff/splatter movie being reviewed in this essay)
Roger also used to work for the Institute of Psychological Sciences which again as far as I know is run by or very closely associated with Opus Dei too.
He is sometimes (even regularly) featured in the ultra-reactionary right-wing “catholic” The American Spectator, which in turn is owned and operated by the same benighted ghoul that owns the Regnery Press – the publisher of wall-t0-wall lies.
All of the above people and outfits were very enthusiastic supporters of the very dark terrorist training outfit featured here: http://www.soaw.org
ZM 04.06.16 at 10:12 am
“Yet we should strive for but perhaps not reasonably expect perfect legal coherence, inasmuch as legislation and judicial pronouncements are intended to impose countervailing forces, what we refer to as a system of checks and balances.”
Out High Court Chief Justice said on a talk about Trusts and Statutes the laws should be interpreted according to the Principle of Coherence. He says this is a Herculean task but nevertheless it has to be done, since instead of quoting Wallace Stevens he quoted a legal scholar Atiyah who said without coherence the law is a shambles, and the Chief Justice then gloomily asked would it be one shambles or two if Trusts and Statutes were opposed?
So as you can see, it makes our Chief Justice here very gloomy and dissatisfied with the whole Law itself if you don’t demonstrate the Principle of Coherence in your interpretation of common law and statutes.
“rather than unilaterally imposing a legislative scheme based on “planning.†The inefficiency of the approach is pretty obvious.”
It is too great a task for any parliament to develop a whole legislative scheme based on planning. I don’t know how China managed it, apart from maybe Chinese people are so co-operative compared to Australians, as if our government tried to do that there would be no end of trouble and the Opposition would just campaign to rescind the whole legislative scheme next term of government.
Brett Dunbar 04.06.16 at 4:26 pm
China’s government is despotic. The elections are fraudulent theatrics not a genuine opportunity to replace the government. So it isn’t accountable to the people and their is no organised legal alternative government ready to take over if then policy fails. In a democracy you are perfectly free to organise an alternative government and have regular opportunities to convince the people that your alternative would be better. In a democracy you never need a revolution as you have real elections.
There are rules for dealing with what happens when laws conflict. It’s the implied repeal doctrine. When two statutes conflict then by implication parliament is assumed to have intended to repeal the older. When statute and equity conflict statute has priority. when statute or equity conflict with common law then the statute or equitable doctrine take priority. The European Communities Act 1972 is exempted from the implied repeal rule, it is assumed that unless parliament explicitly repeals some or all of it parliament did not intend to repeal it. That is done in order to make UK law comply with EU law.
ZM 04.07.16 at 2:09 pm
Brett Dunbar,
I don’t think you are correct, although perhaps what you have said is a rule of thumb so to speak.
Are you from England? Possibly it is a bit different for England as you seem not to have a High Courts that can nullify Statutes as being illegal, although I get bit confused about the interaction of the courts and parliament in England.
There was a recent article by Elise Bant on the Principle of Coherence in Australian law published last year.
“Following the recent High Court decision in Miller v Miller, there has been renewed emphasis on the principle of coherence as an overarching requirement of Australian private law.
Although the concept of coherence in this context is yet to be fully articulated, it clearly embraces the requirement that specific private law rules and doctrines should not be applied in such a way as to undermine or stultify an overriding legal prohibition or principle of liability.
Rather, rules and doctrines must be applied in such a way that supports or promotes coherence in the law, in particular by producing outcomes consistent with any overriding prohibition or principle. Determining what those overriding prohibitions or principles might be is no small task. Moreover, working out what coherence requires must be determined by reference to the individual context.
However, what is clear from the existing case law is that the presence of a statutory scheme addressing the impugned behaviour signals the need to consider the statutory purpose as part of the inquiry.”
She used an example of a case in England Baird Textile Holdings Ltd v Marks & Spencer plc. from 2001, and considered whether the ruling would be the same in Australia. In this case she thought that the Statutory Competition and Consumer Act and Australian Consumer Law and Fair Trading Act 2012 has changed the Common Law of Contract and thus contracting behaviour in Australia —
“These underlying norms differ significantly from the archetype of self-interested and equal autonomous contacting parties that underpin many traditional rules of commercial law, and arguably cases such as Baird Textile. In particular, they acknowledge ingrained and structural inequalities in the dealings and relationships between traders and consumers (including small business consumers) and, against that background, promote a protective and ethical environment that supports just commercial outcomes.”
So in this case Statutory law once enacted altered the application of Common Law as well as contracting behaviour so you can see the Principle of Coherence is maintained.
In the case of the Public Trust Doctrine I mentioned there are a number of Statutory Laws and Codes etc which recognise the obligation the government has to protect the environment. So there is not a conflict between the language of Statute and Common Law in this matter, instead the conflict lies in the policy realm and in the decisions of relevant authorities which are not in accordance with the preservation of a safe climate and means we are behind with taking action on climate change.
Brett Dunbar 04.08.16 at 3:06 am
Wales actually, not England. English law applies in both.
As far as possible laws are interpreted as compatible. Where this is impossible there are rules about which has priority. A newer statute will, by implication, repeal any contradictory aspect of an older statute or any rule of equity or common law.
The main difference is Australia has an entrenched constitution which would take priority over any statute. Otherwise it is pretty much the same.
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