The Cambridge philosopher Miles Burnyeat says that Plato is ?good to think with? (pdf, p. 20) I believe the same of Dante, which is why I chose to write a book about current moral issues by interpreting sections of the Divine Comedy. Like Plato?s dialogues, the Comedy is a concrete story in which abstract ideas appear as statements by embodied characters in specific historical circumstances, who attempt (to various degrees) to live by what they say. In both works, the question of irony arises. Plato is not Socrates, and Dante-the-poet is not Dante-the-pilgrim. It isn’t clear what the author thinks of his main character’s views.

It is not obvious why we should use old literary works to think about current moral issues, especially if the authors of those texts refused to say straightforwardly what they believed. However, the humanities are premised on the idea that we should ?think with? novels, dialogues, and other narratives.

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In a comment on last Thursday’s post, Michael Weiksner argues that political theorists employ a “high risk/high return” strategy for social change. They develop comprehensive, sometimes radical arguments that can be used in public debates. Mostly, such arguments have little influence, if only because there is no organized constituency or institution with the capacity to realize them. “But every now and again, you have Machievelli or JS Mill or Rawls, and their frameworks impact society for decades or longer.” In contrast, Michael says, people like me take a “hedged position.” We work closely with practitioners and communities. This strategy increases our odds of making a small difference but rules out any major effect. For instance, as a result of the projects I’m involved in, some day there may be better civics courses in high schools. There will definitely not be a new social order.

One problem with the high-risk strategy is that it may achieve catastrophically bad results. From Plato through Calvin to Marx, many of the most influential theorists have been, in my opinion, disastrously wrong. They have been wrong precisely because they have not been anchored in practical experience.

But there are also drawbacks to the low-risk strategy. Some thinkers who are deeply immersed in practice suffer from narrow horizons or excessive caution. John Dewey was an exemplary “engaged scholar,” yet he made some spectacularly bad calls (applauding World War I and opposing US entry into World War II, for instance). In any case, there is nothing dangerous about most of today’s highly abstract political theory. For example, Elizabeth Anderson’s arguments against natural property rights, posted on left2right, were what originally got me thinking about the role of political theory. If Anderson were somehow to influence popular opinion, no harm would follow–perhaps some good.

Nevertheless, I’m against the high risk/high return strategy for a different reason, one that’s specific to our time. Mainstream political philosophy has long been consumed with questions of distribution–who should get what goods and rights. For most liberals, property should be redistributed (to some limited degree). For most libertarians, existing property distributions should be left alone. I suppose that on a completely theoretical level, I lean the liberals’ way. But I see two problems with this whole debate:

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I?m a moral particularist. I believe that some words and concepts have moral significance, but we can only tell whether they are good, bad, or neutral in particular cases. Abstracted from any specific context, they have indeterminate significance. Examples include love, loyalty, pleasure, courage, and generosity. These words and concepts are indispensable. We cannot replace them with ones that have determinate and predictable significance without oversimplifying morality. Therefore, moral judgment ought to be about whole situations, not about abstract concepts.

I?m also a cultural particularist. I believe that people have large sets of values, experiences, preferences, and opinions that jointly constitute their ?cultures.? Often, many people who live at roughly the same time and place share a lot of ideas, values, etc., and then we say that they belong to the same ?culture.? However, there is usually no single perspective, worldview, premise, or foundation that defines or underlies their culture. Thus there may be no precise boundary to a culture; and we can often classify one person as a member of several cultures at once. Some philosophers have argued that the various cultures of the world are fundamentally incompatible or unable to comprehend one another. But every member of a complex, reasonably free society will have slightly different ideas, experiences, and values, so each person can be described as having his or her own ?culture.? This is a reductio ad absurdum; it suggests that there can be no deep incompatibility among cultures (or else no one could understand anyone else). If everyone in a society does share exactly the same set of values, then we suspect that they are deprived or politically repressed.

These two forms of particularism are independent and separable, but they go together well. The combined position has implications for moral reasoning and the humanities. I?m spelling out the implications in my book on Dante, which is nearly finished.

However, I recently realized that there is a phenomenon that particularists have difficulty explaining: coherence.

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Near the end (p. 227) of Anne Fadiman?s The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down (which I discussed on Monday), there?s a dialogue between a doctor and psychotherapist. They have been talking about Lia Lee, the Hmong girl whose treatment for epilepsy violated several basic Hmong beliefs. I?ve reformatted Fadiman?s paragraphs into a mini-dialogue:

Physician: You have to act on behalf of the most vulnerable person in the situation, and that?s the child. The child?s welfare is more important than the parents? beliefs. You have to do what?s best for the child, even if the parents oppose it, because if the child dies, she won?t get the chance to decide twenty years down the road if she wants to accept her parents? beliefs or if she wants to reject them. She?s going to be dead.

Psychotherapist (tartly): Well, that?s the job you have taken on in your profession.

Physician: I?d feel the same way if I weren?t a doctor. I would feel I am my brother?s keeper.

Psychotherapist: That?s tyranny. What if you have a family who rejects surgery because they believe an illness has a spiritual cause? What if they see a definite possibility of eternal damnation for their child if she dies from the surgery? Next to that, death might not seem so important. What?s more important, the life or the soul?

Physician: I make no apology. The life comes first.

Psychotherapist: The soul.

The psychotherapist mentions beliefs about the after-life, which are especially thorny because no one can know what happens after death?there is no empirical evidence. If a treatment saves lives but causes damnation, then one should certainly forgo the treatment. However, just because parents believe that a treatment will put their child?s soul in peril of eternal torture, that doesn?t make them right. Parents do not own their children. As I argued earlier in discussing the Amish, there is a profound conflict between children?s freedom and parental freedom. I believe that a liberal state should protect children against their parents, although it is harrowing to read about California?s unjust and harmful decision to take custody of Lia Lee.

In any case, the Hmong don?t believe in eternal damnation. Although Lia?s parents were concerned about what would happen to her reincarnated soul if her blood were drawn (violating a taboo), that was not the main problem. The main problem was their belief in the efficacy of traditional Hmong healing and their skepticism about the effects of Western medicine. In short, they thought that a Hmong shaman could cure their daughter, while American doctors were making her worse. Fadiman argues that there was some limited truth to this; the physicians made serious errors, whereas Hmong shamans are non-invasive healers who work only on the spiritual level and often get good psychological results. They would have done Lia no harm and might at least have helped her parents.

But ultimately, Western medicine is going to work better than Hmong shamanism for a lot of diseases. Hmong people are learning this; some are even becoming doctors. Thus their traditional culture is bound to change. Even if they preserve shamanistic medicine, it will have a new meaning for them. They will either use it to fill gaps left by Western medicine (especially psychiatry), or they will choose to preserve it because of its cultural significance. But a ritual performed because it is traditional is fundamentally different from a ritual performed because it cures a disease.

Cultural institutions address problems and must change when they are no longer effective. Sometimes there is a lag, because people understandably cling to what they know; but there is no way to stop history. Contrary to the racist articles that described Hmong immigrants as moving out of the ?Stone Age? when they reached America, they had been part of history all along. In fact, they had participated in high-tech battles and suffered a holocaust during the Vietnam War. Some had learned to fly fighter jets. And this was by no means the first time that they had adjusted to a changing world.

The argument against preservationism also applies to cases in the West. For example, some people want to preserve jobs for Yorkshire coal-miners and the Chesapeake Watermen. But their ways of life no longer make sense. Coal is expensive and bad for the atmosphere; crab-trapping doesn’t pay. Preserving these traditional jobs and cultures would require state subsidies or new ?business models? based on tourism instead of commodity sales. A tough, blue-collar culture must change fundamentally if its function changes. It cannot be ?preserved,? because its traditional values included efficiency and self-sufficiency, and those are gone. The only way is forward.