Category Archives: philosophy

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?

Vaclav Havel

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I think my fondness for the late Vaclav Havel (1936-2011) can be explained partly in generational terms. He became world-famous when I was young–the Velvet Revolution occurred the year I graduated from college as a student of political philosophy–and Prague turned into the European destination for young Americans, supplanting Paris. Images of the president of Czechoslovakia walking to his office in the Prague Castle in jeans, leather jacket, and backpack were icons matched only by photographs of Nelson Mandela from the same years.

Havel in 1990, visiting the prison where he had been incarcerated, via Columbia Journalism Review

I was going to write some substantive comments about Havel’s political thought, but I find that I’ve already noted the main points here. In short, his genius was to understand that politics need not be about trying to reach some kind of outcome that matches your values or interests and that can be codified in laws and politics. (He called that a “technological” understanding of politics, taking the terminology from Heidegger.) The alternative is politics as open-ended dialogue and caring interaction with other people, moving not toward a known goal but rather embodying an authentic community.

The limit of Havel’s thought was his inability to bring that kind of “antipolitics” with him into power. The dissidents who opted out of Communist society constructed an authentic community–because they had no ability to make decisions binding on others. Once Havel was thrust, like some fairy-tale character, into the Castle made famous by Kafka, regular politics took over and the magic was gone. His country literally split in half against his wishes, and the “other Vaclav,” Vaclav Klaus, steered the rump Czech Republic in a neoliberal direction. But Havel never lost his personal compass nor his sense of irony, humor, and compassion.

If we could learn how to preserve the ethic of a dissident movement after it achieves power, we would find the key to the deepest afflictions of modernity. Meanwhile, we should salute Havel as one of the few who courageously and skilfully tried.

(By the way: Vaclav is pronounced VATZ-lav. It sounds better that way and it’s correct. Fittingly, it means Wenceslas: the Good King and the quasi-legendary father of the Czech people.)

teaching evolution, creationism, Intelligent Design

At yesterday’s Berkman Center forum on Civic Education in a Connected World, Jonathan Zittrain proposed that we should teach the controversy about evolution in science classes as a form of civic education–to teach kids to deal with disagreements.

That’s actually a proposal that I have made on the blog. It means introducing students to the perspectives held by their fellow American citizens: evolution, creationism, and Intelligent Design. It is a controversial suggestion from several angles. It implies teaching students that something is a controversy when it’s not controversial among academic scientists. It means subjecting all three theories to critical review, which could be detrimental to Intelligent Design. (I presume that creationism is somewhat immune because it can rest on faith and revelation.) Finally, it means introducing two theories whose basis is theological into public school classrooms, notwithstanding the First Amendment.

But I think the alternatives are worse. We can restrict all discussion in schools to evolution, implying that the state is committed to a scientific way of thinking about the world, and the state’s agent (the teacher) is unable to respond to arguments in favor of alternatives. Or we can legally require the schools to teach that evolution is correct and creationism and Intelligent Design are false, thus taking a side in a basic debate about faith. Among the other unfortunate consequences of that strategy would be alienate large numbers of people from the public schools.

Yet another alternative is to keep creationism and Intelligent Design out of science classes but introduce them in social studies/civics. Indeed, that is a trend.* I don’t think it solves any problems (because the distinction would be lost on most students) and it creates the problem that social studies teachers would have to deal with yet another hot button topic for which many are are not well prepared.

One colleague at the Berkman event said that to teach creationism as a controversial theory would be like teaching astrology as an option for students to consider. I’d offer a different analogy. If you start with the assumption that schools should teach science and deprecate all supernatural explanations of natural phenomena, then you should conclude that schools ought to teach atheism.

Hardly anyone cares about astrology, whereas large majorities are committed to theistic religions. Clearly, large majorities can be wrong, and students should learn the truth. But if people have moral standing as fellow members of our community, then the fact that many of them hold a given view is a reason to discuss it with some respect. To say that students should only study and discuss the truth in public schools is all very well–if you are certain you have the truth. Fundamentalists are prone to think in those terms, and we denounce them as uncivil.

One could develop a curriculum that was entirely scientific, meaning that everything to be discussed had or could have strong naturalistic evidence. In that kind of curriculum, we would not teach creationism or Intelligent Design (or theism). Nor would we teach that human beings have rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness–for what evidence do those rights rest on?

I am not a moral relativist or moral skeptic: the ethics of the Declaration of Independence are far superior to the ethics of the Fascist Party. But I am also not a naturalist who believes that everything true can be based on observation and experiment. Moral worldviews seem to me complex networks of commitments, emotions, traditions, and beliefs. Some of the worthy worldviews are theistic: a story about God plays an important role. The ones that are not theistic have their own faith commitments. We ought to teach ethics and we certainly ought to encourage the discussion of ethics in schools. But if that’s true, we cannot have a curriculum reduced to science.

In a subtle and thoughtful essay on the same topic, the University of Virginia biologist Douglas Taylor recalls an episode from one of his college classes. He had just presented very strong empirical evidence for evolution and remarked:

I found it difficult to understand how given such clear narrative evidence, anyone could doubt the existence of the evolutionary process. “Of course,” I reassured the students, “I am not insulting those among you who don’t believe in evolution,” But then I paused and said, “Wait, what am I saying, yes I am!”*

Taylor thinks scientists should boldly teach evolution as superior to the alternatives. That implies open discussion of the issue, but no neutrality on the teacher’s part. He rejects stereotypes of rational, intellectual academics versus the ignorant public, noting that universities act badly, and in any case, stereotypes would violate the scientific spirit. He tries to steer a course between two false ways of teaching about evolution and other important issues: “I have the answer” and “There is no answer.” The former is a misconception of science, which is about creativity, skepticism, and change. The latter emerges “from within the intellectual establishment,” which has supported various invidious forms of relativism and skepticism.

Taylor writes, “It is neither plausible nor desirable to make everything and everyone scientific, but an appreciation of reason and evidence as means to arrive at one’s convictions is part of the basic skill set for an enlightened culture.”  Right, but “skill sets” can be used for good or evil. Knowing the good is not itself a scientific achievement; and therefore not everything we teach can be science. That doesn’t imply that we should introduce creationism into high school biology classes, but it suggests that the issue is at least complicated. And therefore maybe we should let our kids wrestle with the complications.

*Hess, Diana, “Should Intelligent Design Be Taught in Social Studies Courses?” Social Education 70, no. 1 (January/February 2006).

**Douglas Taylor, “Science, Enlightenment, and Intellectual Tensions in Higher Education,” in Ellen Condliffe Lagemann and Harry Lewis, What is College For? The Public Purpose of Higher Education (Teacher’s College Press, 2012)