Category Archives: philosophy

blaming the individual, blaming the war

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“The government is going to want to blame this on an individual rather than blame it on the war” — John Henry Browne, defense attorney for the US staff sergeant accused of murdering 16 Afghans [NY Times].

I have lately been dwelling on the question of human agency versus social context or structure. It is a major theme in Cathy J. Cohen’s book, Democracy Remixed: Black Youth and the Future of American Politics, which I am in the midst of reviewing. And it came up explicitly in committee work last weekend.

We were discussing standards for civic education, and the question arose whether to make “agency” (probably not by that name) a core educational value. In practice, this would play out in settings like a history class on slavery. The older historiography emphasized structure: slavery as an overwhelming influence on the victims. Recent historiography has recovered the agency and creativity of slaves. The danger in a k-12 classroom would be teaching kids that slavery was basically OK because the victims were still agents and made choices.

The staff sergeant accused of the Afghanistan massacre made a choice that vast numbers of other US soldiers have not made and would not make. To deny his responsibility for what he allegedly did is to deny his agency and that of his fellow soldiers–it would make them all seem like automata or victims instead of responsible professionals. At the same time, he wouldn’t have done what he did if he hadn’t been sent for the third time, against his will, into a bloody counter-insurgency war halfway around the world. So the context or structure matters.

That is an extreme case, for which the word “evil” seems appropriate, but the same logic arises when kids drop out of high school or have  unprotected sex. These are acts that involve both context and agency. How we weigh the two will affect how we respond.

In my view, we should not simply aim to make structures better (e.g., get out of Afghanistan or improve schools). Those are valid goals, but people should also have agency. Institutions and policies will turn out better if we all help shape them; also, actively shaping the world is an aspect of a flourishing human life. In concrete terms, that would mean not only reforming education so that kids have better outcomes, but enlisting youth in reforming education. At our best, we now strive to enhance the human capital or market power of young people. We rarely even try to enhance their political agency.

We should also recognize agency wherever it does emerge. Even in extreme cases, like prisons and war zones, people are agents as well as objects. Dismissing their action as the mere product of structure or context diminishes them. On the other hand, to assess the limits and constraints on their agency is a precondition of enhancing it. If you think that kids are simply choosing to drop out of high school and are not in any sense being pushed out, you will diagnose their situation wrong. Likewise, it’s naive to think that American soldiers in Afghanistan have been placed in situations where they are free to do a lot of good.

Dickens and the right to be loved

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It’s a philosopher’s cliché that every right implies a “correlative duty.” If I have a right to live, you have a duty not to kill me. If my kid has a right to an education, someone has a duty to pay for it–whether that’s me or the people of my town, state, or nation.

One of our greatest needs as human beings is to be especially loved by someone else: first as a child, then as a partner or a close friend. The need for partial or exclusive love may vary somewhat, but it is strong and widespread.

Alas, in many cases, no one has a duty to love a particular person. If you have a serious need but no one is required to meet it, you do not have a right. When people have unmet needs without rights, that is a genuine tragedy. It is an example of a problem that may not be solvable politically, i.e., that might still trouble an ideal society.

Dickens’ Great Expectations (which I just finished reading to my aforementioned child) provides an extraordinary number of cases in which it is debatable or problematic whether A has a duty to love B. For instance:

  • Pip is orphaned and raised by his sister, who does not love him and perhaps resents the obligation. But her husband loves Pip–despite having a questionable obligation to do so–and later Pip fails to reciprocate. Presumably, Mrs. Joe acquired a duty to love Pip against her inclination, and Pip is obliged to love Joe just because Joe loved him beyond duty.
  • Compeyson has an obligation to Mrs. Havisham to love her because he wooed and promised to marry her, but he has no intention of fulfilling his duty.
  • Estella is orphaned as a baby and given (with her assent) to Mrs. Havisham, who does not love her and who teaches her to be unable to give love.
  • Magwitch loves Pip (or the idea of Pip as a gentleman) in a way that puts Pip under a most unwelcome obligation. But Pip comes to love Magwitch because of the latter’s need.
  • Pip loves Estella, and she acknowledges a kind of right to be loved in return, but she insists she cannot give it.
  • Mrs. Havisham’s family becomes Pip and Estella, yet she does not love either until late in the novel.
  • Pip and Herbert love one another (Platonically) as friends, even though they begin by physically fighting over Estella. Pip secretly assists Herbert in order to love him without conferring an obligation.
  • Pip assumes that Biddy will love him as a wife once he settles for her, but he has no right to marriage. His willingness to accept her friendship indicates his moral progress.

In Dickens’ original ending, harmony was restored among Pip, Joe, Biddy, and Herbert, but Estella and Pip were never united. I assume that was because they had no right to each others’ love, having acted badly. Bulwer-Lytton persuaded Dickens to change the ending so that they were united, although the last sentence is slightly ambiguous as to their future. Presumably, Dickens was persuaded that they deserved each other. But even with its more conventional happy ending, the novel still makes one wonder: Who has a right to the love of whom?

how much of a constraint is conscience?

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I recently asked students to discuss Seamus Heaney’s poem, “A Republic of Conscience.” When the narrator departs from that republic, he is offered dual citizenship; he is authorized to speak “on [the republic’s] behalf in my own tongue”; and he is installed as an ambassador who can never be “relieved.”

The Republic of Conscience is a metaphor. But when Heaney imagines it as an actual place, he presumes that it would have a government, including customs and immigration officials, ambassadors, and “public leaders” who, “at their inauguration … / must swear to uphold unwritten law / and weep to atone for their presumption to hold office.”

Evidently, this is a minimalist state, a “frugal republic.” Its leaders are very gentle and accommodating. But it still has borders, officials, and laws. Is that the right way to think about conscience?

We might say that in a hypothetical place where everyone fully obeys his or her conscience, there would be no need for restraint or coordination. Conscience would constrain individuals’ will and opinion to the point that all our thoughts and behavior would be in full harmony. As Hamilton writes in Federalist 51, “If men were angels, no government would be necessary.”

A different view holds that we are irreducibly diverse in our backgrounds and perspectives. Conscience constrains us a bit, but two people of excellent conscience can still hold legitimately different and even contrary views and desires. Since citizens of the Republic of Conscience would disagree and conflict, they would need some system for decision-making and adjudication: a government.

At its deepest level, this is the question whether there is a right thing to do in each particular situation. If there is a right choice, then people of ideal conscience would know it and act accordingly. If there is not a right decision–if it’s a matter of opinion–then one can ask why doing right matters (or why right is better than wrong).

Other views are available. For example, one might argue that there is a right thing to do in each case, but we cannot know it by conscience alone; knowing what is right also requires information and prediction. Equipped with perfect conscience but imperfect reasoning ability, people in the Republic of Conscience would legitimately disagree. In short, if people were moral angels with human-sized IQs, they would need a government.

That conclusion depends on a particular definition of “conscience.” If it means good will or altruistic intent without any cognitive element, then it can accommodate deep disagreement. But that view is problematic, at least if taken to an extreme. Hannah Arendt portrayed Adolf Eichmann (the bureaucratic leader of the Holocaust) as a man compelled by a sense of duty that constrained his natural inclinations, yet a profoundly stupid man unable to see things from other people’s perspectives–to a loathsome degree. Can we say that he had a conscience, and his only defect was cognitive? I would say he was responsible for his failure of understanding, and therefore his conscience was appallingly bad even though it constrained his will. That reading pushes us in the direction of the idea that conscience requires seeing what is right, and therefore everyone with perfect conscience would act in harmony and there could be an Anarchy of Conscience.

Ron Paul’s appeal to young men

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In Libby Copeland’s Slate article about Ron Paul’s appeal to young men, I say that this demographic group tends to be “interested in simpler, more abstract and pure philosophies.” I am sure I did say that, but I am not sure I like what I said.

  • I didn’t really have evidence from developmental psychology for my empirical claim that young men are drawn to simpler, more abstract, and purer philosophies.
  • I haven’t made a close enough study of Ron Paul’s positions to know whether he in fact represents a simple, abstract version of libertarianism.
  • I generally don’t like to make psychological generalizations about people who hold political views, especially if the generalizations are critical and the views are opposed to my own. That rhetorical style seems un-deliberative: it rejects a position as a character flaw instead of taking its reasons seriously.
  • I don’t necessarily think that libertarianism is simpler or more abstract than other political philosophies; that depends on the flavor of libertarian thought.

But I have observed all my life that Ayn Rand-style libertarianism appeals to a subset of young men. Thus Ron Paul’s 8,800 young voters in Iowa may not reflect a historical change or a growth of  libertarianism. Rather, a subculture that I remember vividly from the 1980s recently had an opportunity to make a splash in a low-turnout, multi-candidate election.

Also, to my very core, I am a moral pluralist, in the tradition of Isaiah Berlin. I believe that human foxes are more mature than human hedgehogs–that every situation requires a different response. Thus I am willing to say that some versions of libertarianism (just like some versions of liberalism and socialism) are more mature than others, the measure being how many valid but conflicting principles they can accommodate and how sensitive they are to context.

So one can become a libertarian because, like Hayek, one doubts that central planners can accumulate enough information to govern wisely; and because, like James C. Scott, one has observed horrible results when even idealistic leaders “see like a state”; and because, like Milton Friedman, one recognizes that human freedom is implicit in reciprocal exchange; and because, like Ronald Coase and many others, one believes that markets are maximally efficient, and efficiency yields human goods. One might look with real anger at cases like democratic India and Tanzania before they embraced market freedoms and draw the conclusion that liberalization is good for human flourishing.

But these are not the only valid or relevant insights. Even if states and planners can never see or know everything important, neither can markets. Even if freedom is implicit in exchanges, it does not merely lie there, for people are not only producers, traders, and consumers. Besides, even if freedom is infinitely precious, so is happiness, and that is more likely to come from belonging to a community than from having myriad choices. Even if markets are maximally productive, they also destroy people and nature.

So without sacrificing fundamental libertarian insights, one can develop a theory that encompasses a personal ethic of philanthropy, a positive stance toward communities and their norms, and policy proposals that direct their benefits at poor communities (such as government-funded vouchers for education, microfinance loans, or giving slum-dwellers land titles). And if these policy proposals don’t work out, one can adjust. In that case, a sophisticated, nuanced libertarianism emerges. Although it is not my view, I would never disparage its proponents’ personalities.

In contrast, there is a view that sees all obligations to assist or care for other people (other than honoring contracts) as burdens and threats to liberty. It opposes not only central planning but also ethical and emotional entanglements. To me, that is an immature theory, much as socialism is immature when it ignores the need for incentives and limits on power. I do not think that embracing the simplest version of libertarianism is typical of young people, but I do suspect that a certain type of young man who is hyper-confident about his own capacities and alienated by human entanglements is drawn to the simplest version. And I am willing to say that that is immature.

Mill’s question: If you achieved justice, would you be happy?

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In a bout of deep depression, the young John Stewart Mill asked himself:

“Suppose that all your objects in life were realized; that all the changes in institutions and opinions which you are looking forward to, could be completely effected at this very instant: would this be a great joy and happiness to you?” And an irrepressible self-consciousness distinctly answered, “No!” At this my heart sank within me: the whole foundation on which my life was constructed fell down. All my happiness was to have been found in the continual pursuit of this end. The end had ceased to charm, and how could there ever again be any interest in the means? I seemed to have nothing left to live for.

When, as a teenager, I first read Mill’s Autobiography, I jumped to a reductive interpretation. Mill had been overwhelmingly influenced by his father; he began to doubt his father’s doctrines; at the same time, he became depressed; and he recovered as soon as his father died. Even premonitions of the elder Mill’s death cheered him:

I frequently asked myself, if I could, or if I was bound to go on living,  … . I generally answered to myself, that I did not think I could possibly bear it beyond a year. When, however, not more than half that duration of time had elapsed, a small ray of light broke in upon my gloom. I was reading, accidentally, Marmontel’s “Memoires,” and came to the passage which relates his father’s death …. A vivid conception of the scene and its feelings came over me, and I was moved to tears. From this moment my burden grew lighter. The oppression of the thought that all feeling was dead within me, was gone. I was no longer hopeless: I was not a stock or a stone …

This all struck me (at age 18) as amusingly Oedipal. But now I think that Mill didn’t just hate his Dad; he was reaching a crucial insight about the importance of the inner life for politics, and vice-versa.

Mill was the son of a political theorist who gave him an influential position as an administrator of British India. Thus he had “what might truly be called an object in life; to be a reformer of the world. My conception of my own happiness was entirely identified with this object.”

Although not comparable to Mill in intellect or influence, I too have devoted most of my work life to political engagement. Like him, I am grateful that I’ve been able to think theoretically while wrestling with practical issues in real institutions. Mill recalls that “the opportunity which my official position gave me of learning by personal observation the necessary conditions of the practical conduct of public affairs has been of considerable value to me as a theoretical reformer of the opinions and institutions of my time.”

But his crisis emerged when he realized that, even if we could perfect the rules, institutions, and distribution of goods and powers of a society, we would achieve nothing unless people also knew how to be happy and free. (More on that here.) To tie your own happiness to the building of a just system would be ethical (in a self-sacrificial sort of way), but only if other people could benefit inwardly from the justice of the society you helped build. Otherwise, it would be a pointless exercise. Indeed, it might be just as helpful to develop and share ways of being happy and/or free. Mill says,

the important change which my opinions at this time underwent, was that I, for the first time, gave its proper place, among the prime necessities of human well-being, to the internal culture of the individual. I ceased to attach almost exclusive importance to the ordering of outward circumstances. …

For what it’s worth, I am also increasingly interested in “the internal culture of the individual.” Most interesting to me is how we should think and feel as individuals if we also take action on public matters under highly imperfect conditions. What kind of happiness can that sort of work afford? And what kind of happiness is appropriate if our political work has little success?