Rational Secular State -- Introcution Continued

In at least one sense, this gap between liberty and agency was the problem Marx confronted.  Unless the gap were narrowed, even closed, the problem of liberty was not solved, even with the state-sanctioned guarantee of rights -- perhaps especially with a guarantee of rights, particularly property rights.  State-sanctioned liberty, insofar as it guaranteed the rights to property and agency in the use of that property, allowed the continued oppression of those without.  In some respects, or so it appeared in the early days of the Marxist experiment that came to dominate the latter half of the twentieth century, the Marxist state seemed to hold the potential for the first fully rational state, a fully justified state.  It promised, at one level, to recreate all men as equal, not in some metaphysical sense, but in the only sense that mattered -- in the material conditions of their existence -- and insofar as the material conditions of one's existence determined one's potential as a human qua human, the project to recreate all men as equal was, in effect, a moral project aimed ultimately at the redemption of mankind.  Marx, in effect, addressed the gap between liberty and agency by reducing the wholly public condition of the former to the latter, and he did so by subsuming what had hitherto been the private condition of agency, a matter of individual will, into the public concerns of the state, a matter of collective will represented by the fully communist state.  The initial strength of the Marxist argument was its apparent scientific rationalism -- an argument based on the minute and perceptive examination of the inherent contradictions of the capitalist state -- an argument that specifically repudiated as well the theocentrism that historically had at once provided public justification for economic disparities and a palliative for private despair in the presumptive moral superiority of and the next-life rewards for those who suffer the indignities of this life.  The communist state promised a fully just state, and that moral promise fully justified the actions of the existing state.  That the actions of the Soviet state were no less brutal than the actions of the inquisition should have been no surprise.  While the brutality of the emergent police state bespeaks the Machiavellian desire of those in power to remain in power, it also bespeaks the power of any state sanctioned purpose, any governing intentionality that would subject the individual subjectivity to a collective and ultimately utopian imperative, to justify the most horrific acts.  As Aron put it, "ministers, commissars, theorists and interrogators," all those engaged in effectuating the purpose of the state, "will try to make men what they would spontaneously be if the official philosophy were true."     

Rational Secular State -- Introduction Continued

The difficulty, of course, was the emergent difference between liberty and agency.  To grant liberty, and to protect it as a universal right through legal restrictions placed on the state itself, did nothing to guarantee agency.  The freedom to act did nothing to guarantee the capacity to act.  I say 'emergent difference,' in part because the American continent provided a unique set of circumstances that, for a while at least, made the necessary condition of liberty seem wholly sufficient.  Within the largely agricultural and mercantile economies of the colonies, coupled with the open land to the West free from hereditary holdings, the guarantee of liberty gave men a "new sense of power over their own fate, the belief in the unbounded possibilities of improving their own lot," to borrow a phrase of Hayek, a belief buttressed by the "the success already achieved among men."  The narrow gap between liberty and agency was brought about by a unique set of historical contingencies, by colonization and the fresh green breast of the new world, a land not only commensurate with man's capacity to wonder, but also a land open to those willing and able to exploit it.  If the individual was no longer subject to the subjectivity of the state, if they were no longer limited by the subjectivity of the public sphere, they were limited only by those attributes of character always relegated to the private sphere -- what Franklin and others, were they alive today, might describe as their 'work ethic.'  Their fate was not contingency-imposed, but the self-imposition of one's conscientiousness, one's industriousness, one's courage, one's imagination and intelligence.  The gap between liberty and agency had always been wider elsewhere, and with the emergence of the industrial capitalist economy, wider on the American continent as well.  It was not immediately apparent, in part because the industrialization of the US fueled and made possible the westward expansion, a contingency that continued to blur the class distinctions that were more visible in the motherland of Britain, but the capacity to act depends upon the means available, and in the capitalist economy, those with means were clearly more liberty to act on behalf of their interest than those without.  If 'the rich were different,' and it seemed clear enough to most as the industrial capitalist economies matured that the rich were in fact different, a good deal of that difference lay in the accumulation of 'means.'  Those with means were clearly more at liberty to act than those without, and as the gap between the have's and the have-not's widens, so too does the gap between those who are and those who are not at liberty pursue their private interests.  Again, however, it was not immediately apparent, in part because the anecdotal exception, the rise from rags to riches, seemed at least possible (though perhaps always a bit implausible) as a matter of romantic self-assertion -- if one exercised diligence, if one worked-hard, if one took risks, especially if one were clever, then one could rise above the contingency-imposed limitations and acquire the means to pursue one's private happiness.  One suspects, however, that contingency more often than not disappointed the hopes of the aspirant.

Rational Secular State -- Introduction Continued

Any theory that sets aside any possibility of the utopian, the end to end all ends once and for all, sets aside as well any possibility of 'progression.'   Progress must be progress toward something, and the 'more perfect union' must be progress toward an idea of the 'perfect union.'  The notion of social progress found its natural ally in scientific progress, which was at once a notion of historical progress, but in its epistemology a self-consuming historicity.   We know more today than yesterday, in part because one labors to extend and to correct the knowledge of our predecessors, but its epistemology was predicated first and foremost on a reality that is, so to speak, 'out there' -- a Kantian 'ding an sich' that can be apprehended, but can be apprehended only imperfectly by a single subjectivity.  If science fails to fully comprehend the truth, the failure lies not in science, per se, but in the singularity of the single subjectivity, its imperfect comprehension of reality, an imperfection that is corrected (if never quite entirely) by the social nature of science.  It is not simply the observed truth, which leaves room for the singular revelation, but a truth verified by in its observation by others.  A single individual might be mistaken, might see a ghost in the shadows, but the confirming question, 'did you see that?' sets aside (if never quite entirely) the possibility of the ephemeral.  Scientific progress, of course, is not entirely without its tenants of faith, one being that the reality 'out there' is orderly, that it obeys certain 'laws,' and those 'laws' in turn can be accurately and objectively represented in a way free from any subjective bias, an accuracy and objectivity achieved, as it were, through peer review.  Although there is ground to question these tenants of faith, they nevertheless allowed science to model progressive thought, and those same tenants of faith -- that there is as well a human reality, that it is orderly and obeys certain laws, and those laws can be refined and improved through a collective process of verification -- informed the opening words of the American constitution -- "in order to form a more perfect union, we the people ... "

As one might have gathered, although the tenants of faith have been broadly challenged on a number of fronts, I nevertheless feel compelled to offer some defense of 18th century scientific rationalism, and its progressive optimism for a couple of reasons.  First, of course, it provides at least a point of departure for what concerns me most.  The challenges to scientific rationalism are fundamental, and if not fundamental, then at the very least significant challenges as well to an American way of being in the world.  My concern stems perhaps from the sheer pressure of contingency.  I am American, and the American way of being in the world is my way of being in the world.  Though I have spent time on both ends of the globe, in Europe and in Asia, I cannot say what it means to be either European or Asian, but I can say what it means for me to be an American.  I can only speak from my contingency, and that contingency provides both my insight and, without doubt, my blindness.  Nevertheless, second, I believe the 18th century thinkers got it mostly right -- mostly.   Although something of an over-simplification, the bone in the craw of the modernist and post-modernist thinkers comes down to the matter of 'truth' and what constitutes 'truth.'  It seems each human attempt to apprehend 'truth' and articulate it within a comprehensive doctrine has failed.  The most pointed failure has been religion.  While the western tradition that gave rise to the likes of Locke and Jefferson could perhaps get some consensus around the notion of Christianity as the one true religion, there was clearly insufficient consensus among the Christians to form the basis of a state, and if a state were to be had, it must seek its legitimacy elsewhere.  The turn from the theo-centric state had many salutary effects, but it was a rather significant break from a long preceding history where the sovereign received legitimacy either as a god or from god.  It vested legitimacy in the people, and reified what had hitherto been a philosophical abstraction, the social contract, within the American constitution, creating a wholly secular state.   It left unanswered, however, the question 'to what end?'  If John Winthrop could cite Matthew 5:14, and characterize the Massachusetts Bay Colony as a 'city on a hill,' with every expectation that the purpose of the colony transcended the merely commercial as instrument in the fulfillment of God's will and God's plan for them, the Constitution left open the question of purpose as a matter of public governance and relegated it to the private sphere.  The state itself existed for no grander purpose than to insure that people were free to pursue their private purposes, to include their religious purposes, with only those restrictions imposed by general civility and safety.

Rational Secular State -- Introduction Continued

Some ways of being in the world, individually and socially, privately and publicly, are better than other ways of being in the world, and it is possible to choose one over the other rationally.  A great deal is implied in that statement, and there is an historical discussion of rationality and what it means to decide rationally that I could not hope to detail in a single monograph.  Let me just suggest that rationality of a rational act is predicated on the ends it serves, and the fundamental challenge to any notion of rationality is the question of 'ends' or 'purpose,' both in the pragmatic sense (an act is more or less rational if it has instrumental utility to a given end) and in the moral and ethical sense (an act is more less ethically rational if it can be justified relative to a given end).  While the second parenthetical remark has been roundly challenged in the folk wisdom -- the ends, or so we want to say, do not justify the means -- we are left with the question, 'what then does?'  It is folk wisdom invoked when the ends themselves have been abandoned, not when they are being served.  The initiating political question -- how best to live among others? -- elicits the answer -- well it depends -- and it depends upon the ends we predicate for ourselves, privately and publicly.  In that shoulder shrug, 'it depends,' the contemporary contribution to the discussion of rationality derails itself in a humanist theory of relativity that seems to be the final word on the matter because it denies that there can be a final word on the matter.  The rationality of an act depends upon the ends we predicate for ourselves, individually and socially, privately and publicly, and in the absence of a final end, once and for all, then the rationality of an act depends upon the ends we set for ourselves within the various contingencies within which we find ourselves.  Adolf Eichmann was not inherently irrational or evil.   The banality of Eichmann's acts resides in their utter rationality relative to the 'purpose' the Third Reich had set for itself, and his acts were not brought into question within the context of the Third Reich itself, and might never have been brought into formal question had the Third Reich somehow prevailed.  They were brought into question only from without, only when the Third Reich and the ends it served were vilified.  Given the urgency of the demand, the initiating political question, or so it would seem, is less the instrumental question of 'how best to live among others,' more the intentionality question of 'what ends do we serve?'  If indeed our choice of ends arise out of contingency, affect contingency, and sink back into contingency -- if indeed there is no position outside contingency from which to view contingency -- then in what way do we decide upon the ethical and moral efficacy of our acts? 

The Rational Secular State -- Introduction

I should probably confess from the outset that I have no utopian goals in mind, not simply because I lack ambition, but because I do not believe utopia is possible.  My reasons will become more and more apparent as we go along, but the state cannot be perfected for mankind, nor can mankind be perfected for the state.  the utopian vision, the imagined perfection, inevitably ends up denying that which is most essential to our being human.  The utopian vision always gives precedence to the public over the private, and at the extreme, denies the private altogether.   It would sublimate the subjectivity of the one subject, the individual, to the public imperative, and in doing so the imagined perfection always denies freedom, substituting a single public morality for the possibility of individual moral agency.  One is subject to a single mechanistic possibility that forecloses all other possibilities once and for all, and if the foreclosure is not death outright, then death is an ever present possibility for those who cannot bring their subjectivity into conformity with the public imperative, particularly so for those who must insist upon themselves not only as moral beings within the privacy of their own thoughts, but as moral agents within the public sphere, and the protagonist in the utopian epic, from Metropolis to the Matrix, is always the antagonist, the one who must insist upon himself or herself as a moral agent, even if his or her insistence is conceived in suffering and rewarded with death.

I should probably confess from the outset as well that I must distance myself as well from the radical individualism that gives all precedence to the private over the public.  No one I think denies that we live in a world with others, and that others are part and parcel of the contingency within which we must live our lives.  It is, in effect, the originating question of political philosophy -- how best to live among others -- a question that cannot be answered outside a web of mutually interdependent rights and obligations.  While I might be something of a singularity -- a subjectivity without experiential, only inferential access to another's subjectivity -- my singularity is nevertheless subject to the historical contingency of the here and now, and I can agree with Rorty and others when they insist that there is no privileged position outside the here and now from which to view the here and now.  No one I think believes they are wholly free.  We are all captive within public circumstances that are not wholly of our choosing.  We can be glad for our luck, or curse our fate, and we do have some immediate sway over both, but nothing can change the simple observation that we are a single human being, living a single life, within a single time and place.  Anyone who is living a life knows that we make choices, but those choices are the best one can do here and now, and the result of those choices ad to our mixed bag of suffering and happiness.  Our choices arise out of contingency, affect contingency, and sink back into contingency in ways that cannot be wholly predicted, and that unpredictability precludes not only the possibility of the imagined paradise, but also the wholly consummate individual qua individual.  We navigate, but do not create, our own contingency.

To be continued.

Ideology and Dialectic Concluded

in the end, however, it is not the hypocrisy of either party that concerns me, and there is plenty of that to go around.  The willful ignorance that seems to be a growing position within conservative ideology is much more a cause for concern.   Elitists condemning the elitism of other elitists has long been a staple of American politics, but Rick Santorum's attacks on education have an air of sincerity about them.  It is perhaps true that a collegiate curriculum is more liberal and encourages more liberal attitudes, if by a liberal education one means what has been traditionally been meant by a liberal education, "the interaction of individuals, possessing different knowledge and different views," to borrow a phrase of Hayek.  The values underlying a liberal education are clear enough, and it begins with the tolerance of an open mind, the willingness to engage in dialectic aimed at 'truth,' even if it is the provisional, instrumental truth of the here and now, a 'truth' that will be challenged and amended, but always fundamental to a liberal education is "the belief that it is desirable that men should develop their own individual gifts and bents," to again borrow a phrase from Hayek.  One suspects that it is precisely the values of a liberal education that Santorum rebels against, and one credits the visceral origins of his rebellion against those values, particularly when it comes to the development of women's sexuality and to "gifts and bents" that are, well, not straight.  Although Santorum is much more enthusiastic than Romney, both have fallen sway to the right's growing insistence on the purity of an inadequately comprehensive doctrine.  Both are vying for the title "true conservative," and the nomination for their parties lead seems altogether too contingent upon gaining the title of "true conservatism."  On the economic side, the motivation is clear enough.  One need only follow the money, and if one follows the money, it becomes less and less about the freedom of individuals qua individuals to exercise their discretion in the selection of goods and services within an open market, more and more about the "freedom of the corporation" to exercise their will without the regulatory impositions of the state.  On the social side, however, one strongly suspects that Santorum's recent diatribes in favor of "freedom of religion" are not quite what the framer's of the constitution had in mind with the first amendment.  It is not so much the individual's freedom to follow his bent and practice religion as one might please, but rather the "freedom of religion" to exercise its will through the two coercive instruments of employment and the state.  American conservatism ultimately is the party of coercion.  "To allay these suspicions and to harness to its cart the strongest of all political motives," to again borrow a phrase of Hayek's, American conservatism "began increasingly to make use of the promise of a 'new freedom,'" but it is ultimately not freedom of the American people to shape his or her destiny. 

Ideology and Dialectic Continued

The failures on the right are equally obvious, though I think Hayek's analysis here misses the mark.  Fascism is not a variation of the scientists' and engineers' habits of thought.  Although it is easy enough to read the bureaucratic state into the stereotypical German personality, and to see the banality of evil in the likes of a state bureaucrat like Adolf Eichmann, the Fascist state finds its validation, not in the apotheosis of planning, but in the apotheosis of the person. It is worth pointing out that fascism arose, not in response to a strong government, but within a weakened and ineffectual government as did the Napoleanic before it.  The bureaucratic banality of evil in the Nazi state was not ground from which the likes of Hitler sprang, but rather an organizational response to the presence of a overweening personality.   I confess to being essentially a Hobbesian when it comes to unfettered human nature.  One need observe a middle-school playground to know that people are not essentially kind, but are socialized into kindness and maintained within civility through the presence of strong governance, and the adult versions of the middle school playgrounds celebrated in shows like Survivor illustrate the point equally well.  The players in those games may well be sociopathic, but it is easy enough to imagine various Lord of the Flies scenarios that would emerge if the reality show were in fact real and there were no TV host to channel and mitigate their more malign impulses.  

I am suggesting, in brief, that the absence of teachers and TV hosts -- the absence of empowered  government -- allows for the ascent of one or another form of bully whose will (or whose whim, or whose psychosis) becomes the rule of law.  One sees a similar dynamic in contemporary America.  The current complaint against the government is not that it has grown too large, as such, but that it has grown ineffectual in addressing the conditions of basic human dignity.  How it might be strengthened is the question, and we want to believe, along with Hayek, that "so long as dissent is not suppressed, there will always be some who will query the ideas ruling their contemporaries and put new ideas to the test of argument and propoganda."  The best will emerge in the so-called "free market of ideas" just as the best products emerge in the "free market" proper, and to "deprecate the value of intellectual freedom because it will never mean for everybody the same possibility of independent thought is completely to miss the reasons which give intellectual freedom its value."  It is not, however, "the same possibility of independent thought," but rather being heard on a stage large enough to let that "independent thought" hold any sway.  

Civil discourse, not unlike any other form of behavior, demands good governance.  While it might be partially cowardice that causes us pause in speaking up against the bully, particularly when the threat of reprisal is real and immediate, and one need only look to the various forms of police state to see that dynamic at work, but it is not only cowardice.  One need not specifically prohibit dissent to render it ineffectual.  The recent supreme court decision of Citizen's United vs. the Federal Election Commission had two effects that should cause us caution.  First, it weakened government to regulate political discourse.  Prior to the decision, the Federal Election Commission limited the amount an individual could contribute to a PAC to $5,000.  That boundary was removed.  This may in fact seem a positive benefit, insofar as political discourse is protected under our first amendment rights to free speech, and limiting spending on speech limits the amount and the audience of speech.  Second, having said that, however, the same decision has significantly subverted "respect for the individual man qua man" that Hayek wished to preserve, and supplanted it with a notion of the corporation as a person, yet another form of collectivist thought, and often the collectivist thought of the emergent oligarchy, if not playground bullies, the next best thing.  If the right sees the threat of the left, the left sees the threat of the right, and you have Robert Reich asking in his blog, " Have you heard of William Dore, Foster Friess, Sheldon Adelson, Harold Simmons, Peter Thiel, or Bruce Kovner?  If not, let me introduce them to you. They’re running for the Republican nomination for president."  These individuals have contributed upwards of 10 million dollars to various PACs, which leads Reich to comment, " I know, I know. You think Rick Santorum, Newt Gingrich, Ron Paul, and Mitt Romney are running. They are – but only because the people listed in the first paragraph have given them huge sums of money to do so. In a sense, Santorum, Gingrich, Paul, and Romney are the fronts."  And he concludes, "bottom line, whoever emerges as the GOP standard bearer will be deeply indebted to a handful of people, each of whom will expected a good return on their investment."   That William Dore, president of the Dore Energy Corporation, gave one million to Rick Santorum, should not cause us pause on the possible sources of his antipathy to environmental science.  One wants to avoid conspiracy theories, the suggestion that there may be some grounds in the evidence to support a belief that Santorum is in cahoots with the energy companies to create a beautifully concocted scheme to increase the profits of Dore Energy Corporation.  One wants to believe that Santorum himself is sincere, but that he has a wide audience for his views, that he is in the running for President where he might effectuate those views, seems well backed by interests other than interests in "truth," where the "individual conscience" is the "sole arbiter of whether in any particular instance the evidence (or the standing of those claiming it) warrants a belief."