November 7, 2011
The Ethics of Derren Brown
Over the past decade the illusionist, magician and psychological manipulator Derren Brown has produced some of the most consistently entertaining and provocative television available. But my appreciation extends beyond mere entertainment, and well into the professional.
A large part of my research consists in understanding the foundations of the major western schools of moral philosophy. To simplify rather a lot, probably the two most influential and important approaches to moral philosophy in the modern Anglophone tradition are as follows. First, that which locates our moral commitments and beliefs in the operations of sentiment and emotion and relegates reason to the role of handmaiden. Second, that which privileges reason and makes rationality foundational.
David Hume remains the great proponent of the first, “sentimentalist” tradition. For Hume, “reason is, and ought only ever to be, the slave of the passions”. Moral codes are built on patterns of emotional reaction to our peers, developed over time, and heavily influenced by custom as we sympathetically identify with each other to build bonds of psychological commitment. Our moral judgements originate in our inner sentiments. They are brought by us to the world we experience and which we “gild and stain” with the passions; they are not found there by some faculty, or revealed to us by the operations of reason alone.
The alternative, rationalist, view receives its most sophisticated formulation in the work of Immanuel Kant. Simplifying terribly: Kant proposed that each rational agent could discern universal moral laws founded in the operations of reason by applying a test of universalizability to any proposed action. In essence, a highly sophisticated extrapolation of the principle that you should not do to others what you would not have done to yourself, but now on pain of fundamental contradiction as an agent engaged in practical reasoning, inviting moral failure by the transcendent and immutable standards of reason and logic. (It is a not-insignificant fact that Hume preceded Kant, and that the apparent limitations of the Scotsman’s project were a motivation to that of the East Prussian’s. And although Kant wasn’t Anglophone, his influence on English-speaking philosophers has been enormous.)
Derren Brown’s output surely lends support to some species of the Humean position (though it may generate a darker view than the great optimist Hume himself entertained). Take Brown’s latest series, “The Experiments”. In week two, a crowd thinking they were taking part in a comedy game show systematically voted, by clear majorities, to inflict ever more unpleasant events on a hapless, unwitting target. From having this unsuspecting man falsely accused of sexual assault in a bar, they then framed him for shoplifting, ordered somebody to enter his flat and smash his TV, then voted for him to be kidnapped by a masked gang and thrown into the back of an unmarked van. All in under an hour.
The power of reason was conspicuously lacking there, as the passions of mob-mentality rapidly took over. In previous series, Derren has performed a range of stunts, from manipulating ordinary people into committing armed robberies, to directing them to pick seemingly random objects and “predicting” this in advance, to getting strangers in the street to hand over their wallets and keys just by being asked. Brown’s work consistently shows just how malleable we are; not only in our behaviors, but in our reactions to each other and in particular to figures in authority.
Of course, proponents of Kantian positions will say that this is all besides the point: “out of the crooked timber of humanity, no straight thing was ever made”, as Isaiah Berlin famously embellished. That human beings are in fact prone to manipulation, and that reason is frequently over-ridden by their passions, is allegedly irrelevant to the question of what they should do, and whether a more fundamental moral law does exist. Maybe so. Though perhaps one might wonder what the point of such a law is, if it seems to easily ignored, assuming it’s ever even discovered by any human being in the first place.
Rgardless, the implications for politics (as distinct from abstract moral theory) are surely different. Politics absolutely is about what will happen, and not merely what it would be nice in an ideal world. Yet the evidence from Brown, handily available online at 4OD, is that rationality and reason are just about the last things governing most of us. Not only are we buffeted about by our passions, but more worryingly, those who understand how to manipulate those passions can buffet us in directions they choose. This was something well known to Edward Bernays, nephew of Sigmund Freud, and now variously credited with the invention of both modern political propaganda and mass consumer advertising.
Kantian political philosophies that emphasise the rationality of citizens as the primary loci for discussions of (for example) what more just and equal societies might look like, may thus be barking up two wrong trees simultaneously. Firstly, if rationality is not be the primary matter of political action and reaction, taking it as one’s starting point may well doom one’s conclusions to parochialism and irrelevance. Secondly, waxing hypothetical about what a more just or equal society would look like risks missing what really matters in politics: working out who controls who, how they do it, and making sure they do it in ways that are less nasty than others. To spell the point out: the symbiotic relationship between Fox News and the Tea Party, with the specter of the 2012 U.S. Presidential Election now firmly on the horizon, surely does not reflect well on the dominant trend for rationalist political philosophy in many North American and British universities.
In these respects, Derren Brown offers important materials for thinking about both moral and political philosophy, at least for those willing to accept that dusty tomes and wise authorities do not have a monopoly on insight. Of course, it may be replied that there’s nothing in Derren Brown that can’t be found in the properly peer-reviewed experimental psychology literature. Don’t we know all of this from Milgram and the Stanford Prison experiments? Actually, this simply raises another host of questions. Because in his latest series, Brown has been conducing “experiments” that would never pass a modern academic experimental ethics committee.
Take his latest offering: The Guilt Trip. In this special feature, Brown systematically manipulated a totally unsuspecting man, Jody, into feelings of guilt, whilst inducing situations which caused him to repeatedly doubt his own memory. Over the course of a weekend, Brown – working behind the scenes – used systematic deception and manipulation to maneuver Jody into confessing to a murder he did not commit. Jody was subjected to increasing stress over a series of days, and his every move was filmed without his knowledge (including the use of cameras in his hotel bedroom). During his first interview with the “police”, and in the interval between this interview and his walking to the local police station to hand himself in for a murder he did not commit, Jody exhibited high levels of stress, confusion and panic. He consented to none of this. Given how uncomfortable this was as viewing “entertainment”, one can easily imagine how it felt to be Jody. And to know one would not like it.
I say that this “experiment’” would not have passed an academic ethics committee. How do we know? Because by the standards of modern experimental ethics committees, no academic department would now permit the Milgram or Stanford Prison experiments. (Indeed it was partly because of these experiments that the rules on what you could and could not do to volunteers were dramatically tightened). Yet, arguably at least, judging by the standards of prolonged distress and acute anxiety – not to mention systematic manipulation, deception and unwitting surveillance – what Brown did to Jody was worse than, say, what Milgram had his subjects think they were doing to other people.
But does this simply mean that vital psychological experimentation can now only be conducted outside of the academy? Brown’s results in his latest series – pace any discrediting hidden trickery – are fascinating. Getting a hypnotized man to think he’s shot Stephen Fry; directing a masked television audience into advocating the kidnap of an unsuspecting man; manipulating an innocent into confessing to a murder he did not commit. These “experiments” stand to tell us not just about our psychologies as individuals and groups, but about the moral and political philosophies compatible with those internal workings. Has academic science now become so restricted that truly important work has to be done in the intellectual wild west of television?
That’s a difficult question. But it wasn’t the one that bothered me the most when watching a traumatised Jody agonise about whether he had been capable of murdering a man with a croquet hammer, and not even remembering he’d done it. What most truly disturbed me was the feeling that Brown had simply gone too far this time. My sympathetic identification with Jody ensured I spent most of the hour wanting this “experiment” to stop. Here was a man being put through hell, and not primarily in the name of science (let’s be honest), but for mass entertainment.
When it comes to science, questions of the benefit some potentially harmful experiments might yield versus the rights and welfare of the individuals affected are notoriously difficult to settle. Was the insight gleaned from Stanford sufficient to justify the abuse the “prisoners” went through at the hands of their “guards”? Do utilitarian benefits trump some of the rights of some individuals? Given the value of scientific and intellectual advance, those are genuinely difficult questions. What seems more clear cut is that framing a man for shoplifting (with corresponding “arrest” by “police”), or getting another to think they have killed another human being in cold blood, simply in the name of Friday-night-fun, is not acceptable.
But then, Brown has a strong reputation for looking after the psychological wellbeing of his subject (victims?) after the show is over. And in the case of Jody, several minutes were dedicated to his personally enthusing after the event about how great the experiment had been. Cue numerous shots of Jody immediately seeing the funny side of it all, laughing along with not-a-little relief. By pulling the emotional heartstrings so adeptly, Brown dramatically lessened the sense of viewer guilt that what had been done to this man was wrong. All’s well that ends well. Right? And who’s to say whether Brown was wrong to so manipulate us viewers – isn’t that part of what you accept when you tune in to this sort of show? And if – and it’s a big ‘if’ – we actually learn from Brown’s “experiment”, does that make it OK? Even when bearing in mind that what he ultimately gets paid for is the provision of our entertainment?
June 12, 2011
On Writing, and Myself.
“And therefore, Reader, I myself am the subject of my book: it is not reasonable that you should employ your leisure on a topic so frivolous and so vain.” – Montaigne, Essays
I’ve often thought about trying to write about depression. But when you’re depressed, there’s no point in writing about it. Everything, after all, is pointless. Most especially your own meditations on your own pointlessness. And when you’re not depressed, well, you don’t want to write about being depressed. It’s depressing.
So I’m not going to write about being depressed. I’m going to write about not wanting to write. In which I am of course being slightly dishonest. Because if I really didn’t want to write, I wouldn’t be writing at all. (Though actually everything turns on what you take by “really”. And the way you take to – or reject – various putative paradoxes in human psychology and the philosophy of mind. But I’m not going to write about those.)
I used to love writing. It was my hobby. Even before I started blogging,* I used to adore producing vast reams of turgid, tedious, self-involved prose. Most of it was crap, even by the standards of whatever age I was then. But it served a purpose beyond the GCSE/A-Level/Degree study I was officially engaged in. It was in itself therapeutic. Challenging. Entertaining. And quite often actively fun. I used to write for fun. And that made studying all the easier – and guaranteed that deadlines were never a problem for me.
But now I don’t love writing. Now I (almost) hate it. I get anxious before I have to do any. I dislike the process when I’m doing it. I’m dissatisfied with the end products. All of it bores me. And it’s not fun. It’s not exciting. It’s not even a good mental work-out anymore.
What happened? I’m not really sure.
I stopped enjoying writing sometime last March. I know it was around March, because in February I wrote 13,000 words on the interminable bore and 3rd rate moral philosopher, Francis Hutcheson (yes, he of the weird chicken fetish).
I detest Hutcheson’s writings, but regardless I wrote that piece at nobody’s behest and for nobody’s benefit (though what the hell, here’s an upload). The thing is, I still enjoyed writing it. It allowed me to work out a few conceptual moves, and in terms of keeping track of Hutcheson’s “arguments” (I use the term loosely), it was more efficient than a series of notes that, if unearthed in two years, would mean nothing.
Right now the prospect of doing anything like that again fills me with horror. Indeed I thought about writing a review of Jonathan Wolff’s new book Ethics and Public Policy for this blog. It’s quite a good book. Accessible to beginners, but cleverly addressing more interesting philosophical issues as it goes along. But frankly, I can’t face telling you anything more about it. The prospect appalls me.
So OK. I don’t like writing anymore. Boo hoo for me. So what?
Well this is my party, and I’ll gaze at my reflection in the glittering pool if I so choose.
Number one: if I’m going to be an academic, not liking writing is something of a problem. Writing is going to be a big part of my job. Career-satisfaction does not appear to loom. Nasty.
Number two: this apathy and dissatisfaction is worrying. What is wrong with me? Have I permanently changed? Can people even change that dramatically and suddenly? Is this symptomatic of a wider, growing apathy with intellectual pursuits more generally? I don’t know, and I don’t like it. But I don’t really give enough of a fuck to write to you about it.
Number three: bringing together the above considerations, if I don’t write, will I get stupid? All the cleverest people write all the time, even if it’s just in vast piles of unpublished notebooks. When I used to write regularly, I stayed sharp. Literally, a sort of mental workout. Does giving it up mean a one-way ticket to cognitive obesity?
Dear readers, I’d like to explore this further. Except I wouldn’t, because as I said, I can’t be fucked. I started with a quote from Montaigne – prolific writer that he was, the bastard – so I’ll end with one too. “Everyone thinks his own fart smells as sweet as apples”.
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* Some 4 years ago now, though the early efforts have thankfully been dispatched into the abyss.
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May 8, 2011
A Reply to My Critics?
I’ve not much time for blogging these days, as on balance I find reading novels and cycling are far better ways to waste my life.
Nonetheless, it has come to my attention that I am rather unpopular with some sections of the Cambridge activist community. Apparently I have the wrong views about political violence, the nature of capitalism, the inevitable proletarian-student revolution, or something.
I thought I might do a post drawing on some of the finer thinkers of the 18th century. Specifically David Hume, Adam Smith, Edmund Burke, and the problem of political “enthusiasm”. Or as we would now call it, fanaticism.
The manner in which self-righteous, self-assured political conviction so easily takes hold over people’s minds. And then drives them to do terrible, murderous, destructive, and often outright evil things. Because enthusiasts are convinced that they have all the answers. And that everyone else is either too blind, or too morally twisted, to see their truths.
Or as Max Weber put it, describing a very similar thing:
“One cannot prescribe to anyone whether he should follow an ethic of absolute ends or an ethic of responsibility, or when the one and when the other. One can say only this much: If in these times, which, in your opinion, are not times of ‘sterile’ excitation–excitation is not, after all, genuine passion–if now suddenly the Weltanschauungs politicians crop up en masse and pass the watchword, ‘The world is stupid and base, not I,’ ‘The responsibility for the consequences does not fall upon me but upon the others whom I serve and whose stupidity or baseness I shall eradicate,’ then I declare frankly that I would first inquire into the degree of inner poise backing this ethic of ultimate ends. I am under the impression that in nine out of ten cases I deal with windbags who do not fully realize what they take upon themselves but who intoxicate themselves with romantic sensations.”
But I have neither the time nor the heart for such exertions. And indeed, political philosophy is perhaps an unfruitful place to start. I gather that English Literature is the modern revolutionary’s Oxbridge degree of choice. Several thousand years of cumulative wisdom – helpfully captured in books now available at paperback prices – from the most intelligent people to have walked the earth, is all irrelevant. Art and deconstruction will fuel the revolution, which is itself unquestionably a good thing. Or so I’m told.
So let’s instead start from some putative common ground. Philip Roth is surely one of the great literary figures of the 20th century, and perhaps America’s finest novelist in the post-war era. For what it’s worth (basically nothing), I think that if we’re going to be political litterateurs, then we should begin with Roth’s blindingly brilliant I Married a Communist.
Here’s a short passage, from the culmination of a genuinely profound work:
“You control betrayal on one side and you wind up betraying somewhere else. Because it’s not a static system. Because it’s alive. Because everything that lives is in movement. Because purity is petrification. Because purity is a lie. Because unless you’re an ascetic paragon like Johnny O’Day and Jesus Christ, you’re urged on by five hundred things. Because without the iron pole of righteousness with which the Grants clubbed their way to success, without the big lie of righteousness to tell you why you do what you do, you have to ask yourself, all along the way, “Why do I do what I do?” And you have to endure yourself without knowing.”
If you don’t understand what that short passage is saying, the rest of the book will explain. I would recommend it as seriously worthwhile reading for anybody who is particularly sure of their convictions.
February 6, 2011
Notice to Serve
If there’s one thing more boring than blogging, it’s blogging about blogging. Nonetheless, I will try and say something interesting.
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My self-imposed blogging sabbatical is not entirely due to a lack of time. I’ve been busy in the past, and that has never stopped me before. There are two, more fundamental reasons I’ve opted to cut back – or perhaps, two facets of one more fundamental problem.
Firstly, blogging about politics – for that is what this website has been dedicated to for over two years – increasingly bores me. At one level, this is because daily politics – and the bulk of blogging reaction to it – is boring.
Each day and week brings a superficially fresh piece of outrage perpetrated by the Conservative Party/the DailyMail/some idiot celebrity/the Government/some idiot rightwing blogger or commentator/the police/whatever [substitute leftwing alternatives to suit preference]. On the surface at least, the issue prompting comment is usually in some way different to whatever happened the week before (“selling off the woodlands”/ “destroying the NHS”/ “being a horrible bigot” / “lying and abusing positions of power”). But the game of political blogging is tiresomely repetitive.
The predictable daily reaction is to get into an outraged indignant lather of denunciation. Or to sarcastically mock with varying degrees of cynicism. Or to dissect at tedious length in predictable detail why The Enemy is wrong (and usually evil). All these reactions share a common feature: total practical impotence and wider irrelevance. No doubt, for a couple of years this has sustained me, and I’ve found it interesting to watch others do the same. Increasingly I feel I’m living in electronic groundhog day.
What I’m really complaining about is quite simply most political bloggers’ hobby. People go on and on, expressing the same outrage and indignation at the Daily Mail/Tory Party/Richard Liddle-Phillips [substitute left-wing alternatives to suite preference] day-in-day out, because they enjoy it. Rather like many people enjoy campaigning for a political party, or going to big political conferences. It’s about tribalism, and the fun of political group-think and purported engagement. But it bores me more and more with each passing day.
Quite self-consciously, this blog has attempted to do something a bit different for at least the past 18 months. Namely, to analyse political events through the filter of an academic training I’m lucky enough to still be receiving. For a while this has served at least two purposes. One, it helped me get clearer on my own ideas by applying them. Two, I liked to think of it as public-service pedagogy; the dissemination of interesting ideas for those who might be interested in them but who lack my privileged background.
But I only have so much in my repertoire, and the last few months have seen me falling into the trap of repetition. This bores me, to the point whereby it outweighs the appeal of offering any free pedagogical service. Not least because I have to question the extent to which this is really about sharing interesting ideas. Or about wanting people to think I’m clever, whilst advancing my career in various ways.
Which brings me to the second set of general considerations.
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I’ve also decided to cut back blogging because it has begun to feel like a duty, an obligation. Rather than writing just for pleasure, or to share ideas, or seek critical reaction, I increasingly write to secure my “status”, as an ever-more-popular blogger [see the sidebar]. That, and because I’ve been trying to build this blog as a personal tool of complementary professional development for so long that to abandon it feels like a major wasted investment.
And I really don’t like this situation. I am extremely adverse to the role of duty and obligation in most human life, in what philosophers narrowly define as “moral theory” and beyond. For most of the good outcomes secured by imposing duties on people can be achieved by alternative means: for example, by encouraging dispositions in people such that they want to do some action from their own volition, rather than feeling they must do so because they are beholden to some external power, sanction, condemnation or failure.
Duty is an unhealthy concept to be beholden to, a sort of moral pathology. Things should be done because they are in themselves good things to do, not because they are your “duty”. The concept and experience of duty creates and fosters a psyche of meekness, dependency, constraint and subjection to overbearing command. It also opens the door for the extraction of fulfilment. This can be done by others: those who perceive your failure of “duty” and coercively extract compliance, or inflict “justified” punishment. Or it can be done by your own self: the mechanisms of repression, guilt and self-loathing so easily generated in complex human animals. Nietzsche saw something very profound when he noted that Kant’s categorical imperative “stinks of cruelty”.
Morality and life is, of course, about other people. But morality and life is also about yourself. The criterion of how to live might be primarily ordered around the question “what is good for others?” – but the question “what is healthy for me?” should never leave the picture. And if we can secure the first by healthier means with regard to the second, then that ought to be done. It may be a fact about us that we cannot do without duty entirely. But that is no reason not to do without duty as much as possible.
To retreat from philosophy and come back to the manner at hand; for this blog – which started as a source of pleasure and enjoyment – to transmutate into a source of duty and obligation is something I’ve decided not to continue tolerating. Perhaps this will mean I’ve wasted two years of investment. But as they say to smokers, it’s never too late to quit.
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Not, actually, that I’m going to stop blogging. For despite the above, regular writing has a particularly important function in my life: it is a form of exercise.
I’ve decided I’m going to try and live off of my brain. And being ambitious, I’ve decided I’m going to go as far as that can possibly take me. So my brain needs exercise. You wouldn’t try and become a top athlete without regular training; the same goes for anyone serious about thinking.
Of course, most serious thinkers simply keep their written thoughts to themselves. And there’s much to be said for that – not least the face it saves. But I enjoy and benefit from (some of) the critical engagement frequent public writing receives. I also think there’s something interesting in the possibility of a fairly open and visible process of intellectual development, insofar as not many people have tried (or for contingent historical reasons, been able to try) this. And anyway, my amour propre outweighs my sense of shame; so why not see what happens?
What I need is a change of direction. If blogging about politics – or at least, blogging about politics in the way I and many others have been doing for the past couple of years – bores me, then I should blog about something else, or in a different way. Obviously, I won’t stop writing about politics tout court. But it’s time to see what else I can do.
The new status badges added to the side of this website indicate a statement of intent. I’ll mostly be trying to read things in those three domains, and to write accordingly. Of course, I wasn’t lying when I said I was busy. And I’m still on sabbatical for the foreseeable future. But let’s just see what happens, even if that turns out to be a healthy nothing.
January 28, 2011
Gray and Keys vs. the New Social Legitimacy
Andy Gray and Richard Keys have been removed from their positions at Sky Sports. This follows their sexist remarks about (assistant) referee Sian Massey, the emergence of derogatory off-camera “banter”, and a frankly bizarre rant by Keys on TalkSport radio.
The first thing to note is that nobody forced Sky Sports to get rid of these two. Neither did anybody threaten to coerce Sky physically, economically, or via the power of the state. Rather, we now live in a society which (finally) deems it unacceptable for public figures to speak in such outrageously derogatory terms about women. Public figures caught doing so are exposed to extreme normative disdain, and this can in turn lead to purposeful abandonment by their backing-organisations or institutions.
This shows the power of values and legitimacy in collective human life and interaction. Sufficient collective moral disapproval can alone be enough to stimulate decisive action. Keys and Gray went beyond the bounds of contemporary “normative legitimacy”, and have paid the price.
This affair is likely to sit very ill with the right-wing commentariat, especially hysterical “opinion” spouters like Mad Mel and Richard Littlejohn, but also the less manically deranged. The angry (and nuttier) right typically reacts to such events by bemoaning the power of “sinister” interest “lobbies” that are “taking over” our society. More specifically, such “lobbies” are controlling even our very language and public morality. We can no longer say what we want – some words themselves are off-limits.
Now as it happens in some measure I agree with these rightwing commentators. Because it is true that our very language and public morality has undergone profound change with regards to the status of women in particular. As a result, certain people can no longer say whatever the hell they like without expecting serious repercussion. Some words themselves are, indeed, now off-limits (in public).
Where I differ from the right – aside from disdaining the naively simplistic view that profound social change is orchestrated by “sinister lobbies” – is in thinking that with regards to women’s equality, this is actually a jolly good thing. For the alternative is one that we know well from recent – and indeed, long-standing – historical precedent.
Certainly, there’s still a long way to go before genuine female equality is achieved in this country. But I would much rather live in a world where it is at least the publicly stated goal and norm. A world where ignorant bigoted male patriarchs cannot throw their weight around as part of a process that keeps half the population in the position of chastised, marginalised, denigrated second-class citizens.
Equally, I would much rather live in a world where offensive, degrading, intimidating, dismissive, undermining nastiness cannot be shrugged off as “just banter”. Because as anybody who has ever met a bully knows, the excuse that verbal intimidation is “just a joke” is one of the most effective means to marginalize and undermine a victim. Whether Gray and Keys realise it or not, when they claim that “it’s only banter”, they choke-off the voice of protest and close-down the means of escape for those objecting to what they are being subjected to, in turn manipulating them into accepting what they rightfully wish to resist.
So I welcome the new (and it is very new – well within my short lifetime) social norm of something like gender equality. A social norm that draws the bounds of legitimacy far narrower than what fat old Jurassic boors can cope with. And I make no qualms about that: because if the bounds of legitimacy weren’t being redrawn this way, the winners would be people like Keys and Gray. And frankly, I see no reason to prefer that world than the one we’re moving towards.
January 19, 2011
Book Review: Hume’s A Treatise of Human Nature – An Introduction
Book Review – Hume’s A Treatise of Human Nature An Introduction by John P. Wright, pp. 316, Cambridge, £16.99
This is a noteworthy book from a noteworthy author, to mutually reinforcing effect. John P. Wright is that rare thing: a scholar with a sophisticated grasp of the complexity of philosophical argument who is also a serious historian of philosophy (with an emphasis on “historian”). These two things have here combined to produce a beginner’s guide which doubles as a valuable scholarly contribution for more advanced readers.
Wright has succeeded in capturing the complexity of Hume’s arguments in the Treatise whilst maintaining a prose style which makes the material accessible, without disguising that readers must work hard to keep up. Particularly pleasing is the seriousness with which Wright treats Hume’s positions. Whereas many “introductions” give-in to the temptation to pass (usually dismissive) judgement on Hume’s arguments, Wright instead notes common objections before providing the more sophisticated Humean response, leaving readers to decide where to go from there. He is also scrupulously honest in making clear when he is taking sides in any interpretative debate (and in Hume scholarship, this is no infrequent thing). This is best exemplified in his meticulous discussion of Hume’s account of causation in the Treatise.
Wright correctly notes that the bulk of the “problem” of causation for Hume is epistemological – the issue of how we can come to “know” of causal connections in the external world. Providing an admirably thorough and accurate exposition, Wright follows Hume’s argument to the letter. Illustrating the powerful nature of the sophisticated epistemological scepticism in play, Wright explains the sheer intellectual force of the reasoning which leads Hume to suppose that our only basis for a belief in causal necessity resides in our own minds. Yet Wright notes that there is also an outstanding corollary debate in this area: that whilst Hume was intractably sceptical as to our ability to “know” of mind-independent causal connections, there remains the issue of whether he nonetheless thought causal connections obtained “out there” in an underlying reality, to which we do not actually have access.
On this “ontological” question Wright’s commitments are “realist”. That Hume believed there are necessary causal connections built into the fabric of existence, even if we can’t have direct access to them. Personally, this is far too quasi-Kantian a conclusion to deduce for my liking. My preferred reading is that Hume is thoroughly sceptical here, too: that whilst there might be causal necessity built into the fabric of existence, equally there might not. As we don’t know (and will never have any way of knowing), the correct position is not ontological “realism”, but simple, healthy, sceptical agnosticism. Wright, however, is quite open about his own commitments and the alternatives available, and his footnotes provide ready ammunition for opponents.
Of particular interest to more historically-minded readers will be both Wright’s lengthy and detailed introduction, and his constant endeavour to situate Hume’s arguments against a background of contemporary debate. Whereas many beginner’s guides simply regurgitate basic biographical platitudes, Wright has taken the trouble not only to provide a detailed over-view of Hume’s early life but also to stress the possible connections between the young man and the later philosophy (if only slight later: Hume finished the Treatise when he was just 27 years old).
Of particular interest here is Wright’s suggestion that Hume’s early psychological breakdown – before his new “scene of thought” which inspired the penning of his masterpiece – was induced by a rigorous attempt to conform his life to the stoic moral teachings of Francis Hutcheson and Lord Shaftesbury, two extremely prominent moral theorists of the early 18th century. Basing this claim not in idle speculation but in Hume’s correspondence, Wright thus makes an important historical contention about the possible motivations for – and our interpretations of – Hume’s repudiation of the stoic “moral sense” theories in favour of an epicureanism that placed pleasure-seeking and pain-avoidance at the centre of human psychology. For those who wish to combine philosophy with history to good effect, Wright’s is no trivial suggestion.
Indeed historical sensitivity is one of the most pleasing things about this volume, where intellectual context of Hume’s arguments is always sketched. This is not only interesting in itself, but also helps both to illustrate Hume’s own rival commitments as well as guiding the reader towards interpretations that avoid retrospective conceptual anachronism. This is particularly important when Wright comes to discuss Hume’s moral and political commitments in the final sections of the book.
On one level, by locating Hume’s intervention as a complex response to (amongst others) Hutcheson, Shaftesbury, Bernard Mandeville, John Locke and Samuel Clarke, this book happily avoids the trap of becoming a narrow, tired discussion of Hume’s arguments against ethical rationalism to the exclusion of all else. Whilst handling Hume’s rejection of any moral realism derived from a faculty of reason with aplomb, Wright is also wholly alive to the fact that Hume’s real targets in the Treatise were the “moral sense” realisms of Hutcheson and Shaftesbury, and the non-naturalistic sceptical moral irrealism of Bernard Mandeville. Accordingly, it is the responses to these authors which command the bulk of Wright’s treatment – which is exactly how it should be, for that is how it is in Hume.
In doing so, however, Wright also makes a subtle yet important scholarly intervention as to the extent of influence upon Hume. The great student of Hume’s thought, Norman Kemp Smith, famously claimed that Hume entered philosophy through the “gateway of morals” and that his moral and political thought were essentially an extension of Hutcheson’s. This interpretation has been followed in recent years by David Fate-Norton in particular, but Wright here aligns himself with scholars such as James Moore and Luigi Turco who emphasise the radical discontinuity between Hume and Hutcheson, with the Treatise constituting a thorough-going repudiation of the Glasgow professor. For what it’s worth, Wright further convinces me that the Kemp Smith interpretation must indeed be rejected.
Insofar as a beginner’s guide can be a tour de force, it is fair to describe Wright’s volume as such. It is, to my knowledge, the best introduction to Hume’s Treatise – and by extension, Hume’s thought – on the market. If you teach a course on Hume, or 18th century philosophy, or ethics, it should be on your reading list. For those just looking for a helpful place to start exploring one of the greatest works of genius ever produced, here it is. This is a book for all, and it deserves attention.
January 3, 2011
Why are we all democrats now?
I don’t see eye to eye with Norm on a fair few things, politics-wise. But his recent piece on the self-serving abuse of the word (and concept) “democracy” amongst much of the left is basically spot-on:
“… what is worst here is something captured not by any single quotation, but by a kind of miasmic subtext. This is that there exists somewhere underneath the deficiencies of ‘electoral democracy’ an already formed will of the people, a will in support of what Gopal and other meshuggeneh-leftist spokespeople want, but which is blocked by the distorting mechanisms of the non-real democracy they lament. This extraordinary assumption, supported by no empirical evidence, never seems sufficiently to agitate those who hold it into trying to explain why no party or movement standing on the kind of political programme [they] would want to see has been able to come even half way close to winning an electoral majority.”
That there is a “real” democratic will of “The People”, lying behind what is currently actually being expressed by the people, is not a particularly new thought. It also has a fairly long and somewhat ignoble history. (Les Jacobins, anyone?)
In the rush to equate “democracy” with whatever particular value or outcome political leftists favour, the complexity of that concept is almost always overlooked. (Ditto when smearing any opposed position as “undemocratic”.) Yet democracy refers to at least two things. Firstly, a process by which decisions are made. Secondly, a value about the ordering of political systems and activities.
Indeed, the word “democratic” is now thoroughly loaded with positive value-connotations, whilst “undemocratic” is an unambiguous political slur. Yet this is actually a quite remarkable fact. Because until roughly the 20th Century, no sane person ever thought democracy was a good idea. Rule by the people? Power in the hands of the mob? You’d have to be stark raving crackers to want that.
The only place it was ever tried was a slave-owning Greek city two and a half thousand years ago, where the adult male citizenry of just 40,000 was given direct decision-making power. The experiment lasted about 100 years, in which time a devastating war was lost to neighbouring Sparta, before Macedonian conquerors put a stop to it all.
For the next two millennia “democracy” was a term of denigration; a synonym for anarchy. So how did a very different modern take (i.e. electoral representation) on an ancient Greek idea about processes of decision-making undergo such reversal of fortunes? How did “democracy” become the only legitimate form of politics admissible on the world stage today, and in turn the cardinal political value in the West?
One very interesting answer is offered by the political theorist John Dunn.* That at some level, it basically comes down to the rise of American power.
Despite its federalist political system having been originally sold as republican (and as explicitly not democratic), by the 20th century America found itself an ascendant global super-power. As well as having just contributed to the defeat of Fascist Germany and Imperial Japan, the USA was facing down the world’s other global superpower: Soviet Russia. Which of course claimed to be a workers’ paradise, run by and for The People.
After the defeat of Fascism in Europe and in the face of Communism in Russia, American-style representative electoral democracy was enthusiastically promoted by that Superpower (and its allies) as the only legitimate form of rule. And by the mid-20th Century, that form of rule was now universally known (for reasons that would take too long to explain) in the West as “democracy” – despite looking nothing like the original Greek experiment.
To keep cutting a long story short, America won the Cold War. If this didn’t quite bring The End of History, it did do an awful lot to finalise the ubiquity of “democracy” as the only legitimate form of political organisation, and its inauguration as the cardinal political value. In a Europe where only 75 years ago significant sections of both left and right would have pooh-pooh’d “democracy” as either fraudulent or undesirable, we’re suddenly all democrats now.
If Dunn’s answer is broadly right, however, it leads us to noticing a certain irony. Much of the unreflective left, which brands all its values as synonymous with “democracy”, trades precisely on the ubiquity of democracy as the cardinal political value in order to advance its aims. Yet much of that same left typically rails against American hegemony and “imperialism” – without considering that it may be the rise of American power itself which largely explains their felt need to equate all approved political values with “democracy”.
Of course, there may be no significant practical consequences to this; ironies need not have any applied pay-out. Then again, one might believe that a touch of (historical) self-awareness helps to breed more considered self-reflection, and perhaps better political judgement. Or at the very least, the penning of marginally less banal political polemics.
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*See his Setting the People Free (by far the most accessible of his work, though this theme is pursued in his other writings).
December 22, 2010
The Chimera of Impartiality?
Health Warning: This post rapdily degenerates into a very techy piece of philosophical navel gazing. Not for the timid.
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Vince Cable is probably still a minister for exactly the reasons he originally boasted to The Telegraph’s undercover journalists: that if he leaves Cabinet, the Coalition will likely fall. But whereas the original Telegraph story would merely have embarrassed Cable, further leaked revelations that he had personally “declared war” on the “Murdoch Empire” were greeted as a wholly scandalous revelation.
Assuming we all accept that individual politicians have personal political opinions, the current scandal can’t centre on what Cable himself thinks of Mr Murdoch’s doings. Clearly, the issue is that in his role as Business Secretary, Cable is supposed to be impartial. Although Sunder Katwala subtly challenges the political realities of such an assumption, he also captures and perpetuates it somewhat:
“Cable’s comments about Rupert Murdoch are in a different category. This was a bad error – and the government’s decision to remove Cable’s role in media regulation is an appropriate and correct response.
After his comments were made public, Cable could not claim to be in a position to judge the News International/BSkyB issue impartially. One might, however, be forgiven a sceptical thought as to how far Culture Secretary Jeremy Hunt may find Solomon-like wisdom and detachment on offer to him in inheriting these responsibilities.”
Yet I have deep conceptual suspicions about the nature of “impartiality” in political decision-making, which run as follows.
The standard charge against Cable is that, as Business Secretary with a quasi-judicial role, he was required to make a decision on the BSkyB take-over without political bias, and only according to the rules of economic competition as defined in law. If he made a decision based on his own personal political preferences that would not be “impartial”, and therefore it would be wrong.
But why would it be wrong? Presumably, because Cable would be trying to bring about a kind of political situation, rather than simply applying the relevant political rules. That seems fine as it stands (at least for now). But let’s also examine what would happen if Cable acted “impartially” and (for argument’s sake) decided to approve the BSkyB merger on the grounds that it was permissible under competition law.
In that case, a political situation would nonetheless arise, but now as a consequence of Cable’s decision not to take his own personal counter-veiling political preferences into account. (That political situation being: the further takeover of the British media by a foreign billionaire with vociferously right-wing views, who openly uses his media outlets for partisan political ends.)
So the alternatives we are faced with are:
- Cable acts “partially”, and a political situation (anti-Murdoch) is brought about
- Cable acts “impartially”, and a political situation (pro-Murdoch) is brought about
Now what we want to know is why the first outcome is worse than the second, and specifically because of partiality on Cable’s behalf (I’m here leaving aside considerations about which set of consequences is itself more desirable, to concentrate on the issue of partiality vs. impartiality). In order to avoid arguing in a circle I urge again that it is vital to remember that the consequences of Cable acting partially or impartially are, in either case, the generation of a political situation. It is thus simply no good resorting to a blanket position such as “it is wrong to make decisions about applying political rules from personal partisan judgement” and expecting that to do any convincing moral work in this individual instance, because
a) whether Cable is partial or impartial, a political consequence results, so the blanket position can’t be founded upon a claim about the value of the not bringing about political consequences per se; in fact impartiality does lead to the bringing about of political consequences – just different ones to those which a partial agent would have brought about
yet
b) it is no good making an intrinsic value claim about partiality either. To run that sort of claim, it would have to be seriously maintained that it just is morally superior to apply political rules without reference to personal political preference. But unless we are to fall back on some form of un-argued-for rule-worship (which is thereby untenable ipso facto), that position looks simply unacceptable: for the point of having political rules, after all, is to secure certain kinds of consequence. But that puts us back in the situation of noting that whatever the decision-making agent does, consequences arise. Precisely because political rules are put in place to effect consequences, we are back where we started and cannot appeal to the intrinsic value of “impartial” rule-application without begging the question as to why the rule should be followed.
Thus the concept of “impartiality” as a value in individual political decision-making apparently emerges as a conceptual chimera. If acting according to his political preferences, Cable brings about one set of political outcomes. If acting not according to his political preferences, he brings about a different set of political outcomes. But in either case, the responsibility for the ensuing consequences must come back to Cable. Cable is thus either active by commission in facilitating one set of political outcomes, or passive by omission in facilitating another. But as there is no moral weight in any commission-omission distinction, we remain without a relevant moral difference.
“Impartiality” in political decision-making apparently emerges as, at best, a piece of innocent cognitive self-deceit about the back-flow of responsibility, or at worst a cowardly conscious attempt to abnegate political and moral culpability for the generation of a set of political outcomes, by appeal to the exculpating force of omission as oppose to commission. (Deciding how cases are to be classified will depend upon context and judgement.)
There thus appears to be a case for suggesting that Vince Cable is not – deep down – morally at fault because he failed to act “impartially”. He’s at fault because he got caught waving the banner of partiality in a political environment which doesn’t tolerate such things.
But there may, as it happens, actually be very good reasons for having a political system that overall doesn’t tolerate such things. It’s fairly easy to see that, over protracted periods of time, the most desirable sorts of societies are likely to be those in which decision-making agents apply political rules “impartially”, at least much of the time. This, after all, will likely reduce the scope of personal corruption, cronyism and the general abuse of power for factional ends. And indeed, history attests that societies able to minimise precisely those sorts of things generally do the best overall – and insofar as they do the best, they are likely to develop and continue existing. Justification and genesis here dovetail neatly, though of course this is by no means a claim of necessity – plenty of societies have gotten very far with political ethoi actively antithetical to “impartiality”.
Furthermore, a system under which the norm of “impartiality” was deeply internalised by the great majority of political agents (in principle even if not always in practice) – and in which those deviating from impartiality were chastised or ousted – would surely likely be the best of all, for under such a system the application of political rules would be facilitated most automatically and efficiently, with fairly obvious cumulative benefits. Yet none of this changes the fact that c) “impartiality’s” benefits and justification derive from the consequences of political rule-enforcement being best facilitated this way, and in turn d) “impartiality” remains chimerical as a concept with relation to political decision-making in each individual instance of political rule-application.
But this actually means that we arrive at a satisfyingly holistic conclusion overall: that even if “impartiality” in political decision-making and rule application is chimerical at the level of individuals (who are by necessity causally implicated in whatever consequences actually come about, and therefore tied to them in terms of responsibility), this may nonetheless be a most useful and desirable chimera to have up and running in political societies like ours, i.e. where significant levels of political decision-making operate by the application of political rules. Utilitas and veritas can certainly come apart, after all, and sometimes we may get a little more of the former precisely if we have a little less of the latter.
November 13, 2010
Seconds Out, Round Two
My post In Praise of Riots attracted an undue amount of attention. Several people have asked me to clarify my position, and others have challenged me directly. This seems reasonable, as the original piece is indeed confusing. I’m thus taking this as an opportunity to expound some thoughts at length. PDF for the faithful; subsequent treatise not for the light of heart.
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Any adequate analysis of the use of non-peaceful direct action – i.e. the causing of physical damage to property, thus eliciting the potential of violent confrontation with the coercive power of the state (in the form of police or possibly even military) – must divide into at least two sub-components, which are, however, necessarily and intimately interconnected. I label these the “analytic” and “strategic”, and address them in turn, though division is necessarily somewhat artificial.
Analytic
Under this heading I consider the bare principle of whether citizens may damage property – and elicit potentially violent confrontation with the state’s forces – as part of a political protest against the policies of an incumbent government. I take the answer to be straightforwardly that at certain times, in certain circumstances, such action may be justified.
This is for the reasons broadly set-out in my original post, and which I stand by. Namely, that it is possible for a government to pursue policies which are so detrimental to the interests and well-being of citizens that those citizens are entitled to resist non-peacefully. I will broadly steer clear here of using the controversial and emotive label “violence”, both regarding acts of vandalism by protestors, and of what a government may do to (sections of) a citizenry via its policies, which may not however involve the (direct) use of jackboots and truncheons. Instead, I simply make the claim that if (sections of) a citizenry find that their interests are intolerably threatened by a government, then they may retaliate, with the aim and purpose of forcing the government to abandon – or at least ameliorate – its policies.
Importantly, I do not propose to (be able to) set a threshold for when citizens may non-peacefully protest. I take it that a) it is not possible to set such a threshold a priori, that b) it is pointless to attempt to set such a threshold a priori, as what matters is when citizens themselves judge things to have gotten so bad that they choose to act non-peacefully, and yet that it is c) nonetheless self-evident that at some point citizen-interests may be sufficiently threatened such that no reasonable person could deny an entitlement to non-peaceful protest in attempts to safeguard those interests.
Point c) needs clarifying. Although I cannot – and do not wish to attempt to – demarcate a threshold above which non-peaceful resistance is justified, I take it that 1) such points can be reached and 2) there is no inherent reason why governments in western democratic societies cannot reach those points (though they may be less likely to do so than other forms of regime). To expand: imagine a (fanciful) society in which the government of the day enacted a law which decreed that the first born of each family in a given sub-territory would be taken into slavery. The interests of families and of the first-born (as well, perhaps, of wider communities) would be dramatically threatened – and it seems obvious that they would accordingly be entitled to resist the government’s actions, and to resist them non-peacefully, especially if we also further assume, for argument’s sake, that no peaceful measures could possibly succeed. I take it that no reasonable person would disagree with this, because the only alternative to non-peaceful resistance in this (fanciful) thought experiment is for families to passively sit-by as their first-born are enslaved. (As for those – if they exist – who would continue to adhere to non-reasonableness as I have labelled it on my schema, I simply have nothing further to say to them as they do not fall within the level of political exchange that I can tolerate. This line of argument is not addressed to their views and concerns; they are outside the “discourse” of politics within which I conceive it possible to purposefully engage. I trust, however, that this will encompass relatively few readers, especially when any lingering worries about political process are addressed below).
This example is, of course, extremely fanciful. I use it only to make the point that some things that governments may do are so bad that forcible resistance can (obviously) be justified. I do not mean to say that this is some sort of minimum-threshold example. Government policies which are less (but still substantially) damaging to the interests of citizens may nonetheless still be considered as sufficiently threatening to the point of legitimating methods of non-peaceful resistance. Of course, deciding which cases do and do not qualify will be (inherently) controversial. This is a matter of political judgement, about whether or not the threshold of harms has indeed been reached, as well as of judgement for the individuals directly affected both in terms of harms-incurred, and of successful strategy worth pursuing (more on which below). Cases at the margin will be contested, and probably ferociously.
As for point 2), I again take this to be acceptable to all reasonable people, though I suspect it is likely to be more controversial. The most obvious – and oft-heard – objection to the use of non-peaceful protest in western nation states is that it goes against the norms and mechanisms of democracy. For example, it might be argued that non-peaceful protest is never justified in a democracy, because the social settlement in a democratic state provides explicitly for the non-use of violence, such that citizens have agreed to pursue politics at the ballot box, and at the ballot box only (or almost only; issue-campaigning, private lobbying, joining of parties and pressure groups etc. excepted, as being supplementary or constituent activities to the democratic process). The line of objections I am considering, however, claims that: the use of non-peaceful protest in a democracy is illegitimate ipso facto, just because of the fact it is a democracy being considered.
I take this argument to fail for two sets of reasons. However the first set rests on a controversial understanding of democracy; it can therefore be jettisoned by those possessing more “ideal” views of the processes and mechanisms of politics in Western democratic nation states. The second set of considerations I take to be nonetheless decisive, even if taken alone.
The first (controversial) argument is that modern mass democracy in Western nation states is sufficiently non-ideal so as to defeat any claim that non-peaceful protest is ruled out ipso facto by the mere existence of democratic structures. For I take it that the systems of rule we currently experience are founded upon histories of class-privilege and exploitation that were ultimately established to safeguard the rich and privileged from the poor and destitute. Ours are societies founded upon violence, and maintained by the continued threat of violence by the agencies of the state. As Adam Smith remarked when reflecting on the historical foundations of society:
“some have great wealth and others have nothing, it is necessary that the arm of authority should be continually stretched forth, and permanent laws or regulations made which may ascertain the property of the rich from the inroads of the poor, who would otherwise continually make incroachments upon it, and settle in what the infringement of this property consists and in what cases they will be liable to punishment.” (Lectures on Jurisprudence: Feb 22, 1763)
Furthermore, the system of government we experience today is not one of the “people” ruling in any identifiable sense. It is a system of rotation between (usually extremely wealthy) political elites who vie for the balance of favour amidst a tiny number of crucial voters, in turn returning parties to government based on wildly general (and frequently broken) manifesto pledges representing programmes of government so eclectic and enormous it cannot be said that the “people” have seriously endorsed any such a thing. Given that I take what we call “democracy” to be in fact rule by rotated elites, I find the claim that non-peaceful resistance against the policies of such elites can never be justified to be bizarre, and due more to a romanticised and unrealistic understanding of “democracy” than to any rational analysis of the conditions of real-world government and politics.[1]
Yet this view is controversial, so I do not rest my case upon it. Instead I make the more straightforward point that just because a government is elected via democratic mechanisms, it does not follow either that it is somehow incapable of harming the interests of (some) citizens beyond a tolerable point, nor that those citizens lose any entitlement to resist non-peacefully simply because a government harming their interests was selected via a certain form of (electoral) mechanism. If a government – democratic or otherwise – enacts policies that are sufficiently damaging to the interests of (some) citizens, I take it to be obvious to reasonable people that those citizens are entitled to resist non-peacefully if necessary. What is not (always) obvious is when the threshold for non-peaceful resistance has been breached in any particular instance. And again, I admit that is a matter of judgement and therefore likely to be of (extreme) controversy in any particular instance. But to continue to claim regardless of the above that non-peaceful resistance is “never” justified in a democracy is in fact to miss a major point of why democratic government is usually desirable in the first place: that it leads to and secures (amongst other things) the respect and protection of citizens. When democratically-based governments fail in this crucial aspect, they lose a large component of their underpinning legitimacy, justification and the very grounds upon which they deny the entitlement of citizens to use force instead of the ordinary democratic channels of political communication and action alone. To fail to see this is to fall into a form of process- or system-worship, whereby the reasons for preferring democratic processes and systems are abandoned in favour of an infatuation with processes and systems themselves.
Thus far I take myself to have sketched the grounds for accepting the following (basic) claim as obvious to all reasonable people: that governments may harm the interests of citizens, and that citizens may resist that harm non-peacefully at certain times. Of course, the question of when that harm-threshold is crossed becomes paramount. But I repeat: that is a matter of case-specific judgement, and we cannot say in advance of any actual context and circumstance in which to judge. For what it is worth, I believe that the policies of the present Coalition government are in the process of crossing the line in terms of harm to (some) citizens, and thus non-peaceful action in retaliation, with the aim of halting or ameliorating the current Coalition policies, is likely to be justifiable in terms of a reaction to harm-inflicted. Others will disagree. I accept that it is reasonable for them to so disagree; because the core analytic point I am making here – that non-peaceful resistance can be justified – is not the same as saying that, on Wednesday, it necessarily was justified. Reasonable people may well say that the relevant harm thresholds have not yet been breached (or, further, that non-peaceful protest was likely to have worse consequences – though again more on that below).
However, before turning to the question of “strategy”, some final points in relation to and based upon the above need to be addressed. Many responses to my original piece complained that d) I would not support direct non-peaceful action against other targets or for other causes (e.g. against the Labour Party HQ, or in the name of racist bigotry), and that e) I was opening the door for mob rule.
Charge d) is misplaced. Whilst it is true that I may not support particular instances of the use of non-peaceful force – say against Labour HQ, or in the name of bigotry – this simply means precisely that in those instances I would oppose the use of direct non-peaceful action. This does nothing to undercut my general position that sometimes non-peaceful action is justified, nor my case-specific judgement that on Wednesday, in relation to the policies of this Government, non-peaceful direct action was indeed probably justified as a reaction to harm-about-to-be-incurred.
As for charge e), my response (in addition to the above) is that mob rule is a perennial danger in any political society. It is true that I would not like it – and no right-thinking person should – if government were dictated-to by pitch-fork wielding hordes. But I take one of the key functions of government to be to create circumstances in which pitch-fork-wielding hordes do not arise. The control of violence by the state is, after all, one of its basic functions. If such hordes are arising, then a political society is in serious trouble. But to suggest that a belief that citizen use of non-peaceful force can sometimes be justified in turn opens the flood-gates to mob rule, is to employ a somewhat implausible picture of how prone citizens are to demand direct power over decision-making at the point of a pitch-fork, and of the similarity between non-peaceful protest and the coercive position of an armed and angry rabble able to dictate terms to a (by implication, seriously weak) government. In short, the idea that endorsing some acts of non-peaceful protest either opens the flood-gates to mob rule, or is somehow synonymous with endorsing mob-rule, is simply implausible, and can be dismissed.
Strategy
I take myself to have established that it is reasonable to hold that citizens may use non-peaceful means to resist – or attempt to influence or dissuade – governments that are harming their interests sufficiently. The question that now arises – intimately connected to the question of judgement repeatedly encountered above – is whether the use of non-peaceful protest can be justified in terms of a systematic policy, chosen and consistently pursued, in order to exert pressure upon a government.
In order to get an adequate grasp of this (very challenging) question, we need to delineate two possible circumstances, one of which does not apply to Britain at present and one which probably does. However, there is likely to be no firm point of demarcation between these two situations (and within the broad sketches I will draw there will in reality be enormous variation). And again, deciding when a country is in one or the other (or neither) of these rough situations is a matter of judgement, about which reasonable people may, again, disagree.
The first situation I wish to consider is one in which a government (democratic or otherwise) systematically attacks the fundamental interests of (a group of) citizens such that (some of) those citizens organise themselves in a concerted manner so as to resist that attack, and resist it consciously and with full meditation. Examples of this might include South Africa under apartheid, the situation of blacks in the American South in the 1950s, and (more controversially) the occupation of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip by Israel, or (at the far less extreme end of the scale) mining communities in the Britain during Margaret Thatcher’s battle with the National Union of Mineworkers.[2]
In these situations, organised resistance is likely to be directed by leaders of the group(s) whose interests are being attacked (whether directly or indirectly, whether by commission or by continued omission of recognition) by the government. In such a stand-off situation – which may well begin to approach something more like civil war, or secessionist struggle, though this will not always be the case, as the Thatcher example indicates – a decision will fall to the leaders of the threatened groups as to whether or not to pursue non-peaceful (and perhaps even overtly-violent) methods.
In this context it makes sense to talk of “strategy”; it makes sense to discuss whether a group (or the representative or sections of a group) would do well to direct members and associates to pursue non-peaceful action. Whether the answer is in the affirmative will depend heavily on contingent context-sensitive factors, and ultimately be a case of judgement for the people choosing to resist (though often in practice, for the leaders of a resistance-organising group). In some cases peaceful action may be pursued, and pursued successfully (e.g. Ghandi’s policy of non-violence in India, and the non-violent strands of the Civil Rights Movement as when led by Martin Luther King). In others, non-peaceful (and even violent) options may be pursued, successfully or otherwise (the ANC in South Africa, and more controversially Hamas in Palestine).
Yet it seems to me clear that the situation faced by Britons today is not analogous to any of the above. At present, the harms inflicted by the Coalition are more anticipated than experienced. And there is no clear citizen-interest group(s) that is in a position to co-ordinate mass action against the government, opting to choose a policy of non-peaceful protest in resistance to government policy. Which is not to say that such a situation cannot arise. Indeed, it is arguable that such a situation precisely did arise in the Miners’ Strikes of 1984-5. And crucially, in such a context, whether or not it is strategically sound for government opponents to use non-violent measures will become a matter of judgement for those involved. Yet it is also important to note that it is only in something like that sort of context that it will make any sort of sense to talk about strategy at all.
At present, we are not in a situation where it is possible to meaningfully discuss whether or not to use a “strategy” of non-peaceful protest. This is because the outbreaks of non-peaceful action seen on Wednesday were spontaneous (and indeed, spontaneity tends to be more a feature of “riots” proper than co-ordinated, pre-planned programme of non-peaceful direct action – a distinction I failed to draw in my original piece, but which perhaps is not so important after all). They were the non-coordinated venting of anger by students seized by rage of the moment. Now, one may lament that those students so-acted; one may think that given the negative coverage in the media that resulted their non-peaceful actions did more harm than good, not least by being liable to alienate public opinion. Conversely, one may believe (as I actually do) that the images of rioting splashed across the national media would have sent a useful chill down the spine of Coalition ministers. (My sense is also that politicians happily ignore peaceful demos as utterly quaint and untroublesome, and hence just ignore them. Tumults are altogether more troubling). Furthermore, the non-peaceful protest in Millbank was pretty much the only reason the demo got anything like the serious media coverage it did (as the media simply didn’t bother to turn up until things were being smashed). However, this rapidly turns into an argument about consequences and likely outcomes, and nobody has final answers on that. Historians will have to decide.
But the point is that at present no group, or leader, is in a position to call for a co-ordinated use of non-peaceful measures against the coalition government. So in an important sense any talk of “strategy” is currently misguided. And I can now attempt to explain why I used the following sentence (which was pretty misleading, and in hindsight should not have been employed):
“British citizens should do it [non-violently protest] again and again, until our lords and masters understand.”
This gives the impression of advocating a concerted, thought-out use of non-peaceful action to resist the Coalition’s policies. In truth I do not think we are yet at the structural situation whereby this can be brought about by any organised group, or can yet be justified in terms of harm (definitely) done by this government to citizen interests (though I suspect both of those points may come sooner than many think – and I may well then decide, on balance, that non-peaceful methods are justified).
What I actually intended to convey (however misleadingly in practice) was the sentiment that if people are angry enough to riot then things are getting very bad, and that is something the government needs to have directly channelled back to it to ensure consideration of a policy change. More fundamentally: I take it that the vast majority of people prefer a quiet life. If significant numbers of them feel so angered as to destroy property and risk violent confrontations with the police, then that is indicative that lives are being seriously disrupted and interests seriously harmed. In such instances, the use of non-peaceful methods sends a vital communication to the government, and warns them that the policies being pursued are at the very least dangerous (in at least two senses), and in the eyes of the protestors, and those who support the protests, severely unjustified.
This is not a position about “strategy”; it is a position about the instrumental importance of spontaneous resort to non-peaceful methods – and how that is not necessarily a bad thing when recalling that such non-peaceful resistance may be a response to a real harming of people’s interests by the government, that in justifies the use of non-peaceful action (though, again, reasonable people may disagree about whether this is in fact the case).
Conclusion
I take it that citizens may resist governments when their interests are sufficiently harmed by that government, and no reasonable person can deny this. However, deciding when this is in fact so is a matter of judgement, and reasonable people may disagree on this (and in practice, almost certainly will). To talk of strategy in the use of non-peaceful methods presupposes an organised capacity to enact and co-ordinate such a strategy. Deciding whether to employ such a strategy will be a matter of judgement, both in terms of whether such a strategy of non-peaceful protest can be justified, and whether it is likely to succeed. Reasonable people can disagree about those things, too. However, there is another form of non-peaceful protest: the spontaneous form, as witnessed on Wednesday, and which is better characterised by the term “riot” than pre-planned non-peaceful direct action. It is ipso fact pointless to talk of “strategising” spontaneous non-peaceful protest. However, spontaneous non-peaceful protest also exhibits a relation to judgement, albeit judgement existing after the fact, i.e. relating to whether such a case of spontaneous non-peaceful action was justified in terms of a resistance to harms being suffered, and also from the perspective of whether that action was likely to succeed.
Clearly, one thing that emerges is that “judgment” is complex issue in these matters, and that its meaning and different application is going to impact not only how people decide, but what the nature of different options under consideration turn out to be, and how different people view them. Unfortunately, any attempt explore the concept of political judgement further is clearly far beyond the scope of this piece. Nonetheless, I hope that the above demarcation moves some way to mapping the terrain of the use and justification of non-peaceful protest. Or rather, what the terrain looks like to me, and where I take it people can have reasonable and unreasonable (or confused) differences about the use of non-peaceful protest.
[1] Which is not to say that I oppose modern mass democracy. I do not. It is quite clearly the best system of politics and government yet tried. But that is no reason not to see it for what it really is.
[2] I should point out that I do not think these cases are straightforward or posses anything like moral equivalence. The point I wish to make is that it is at least prima facie plausible that they may be considered as structurally similar.
November 9, 2010
Offensive Words and Sexist Norms?
Over at Crooked Timber there’s a somewhat bizarre discussion taking place beneath this video (warning, Not At All Safe For Work)
What various Timberites are arguing over is whether the use of language like “sad twat” and “stupid cunt” is sexist and misogynist. Interestingly, we can use this as a case study for applying some recent philosophical theories of meaning and interpretation that have been advanced in the 20th century.
In the study of intellectual history, perhaps the most influential and important contribution to theories of interpretation and meaning was made by Quentin Skinner in this paper, which became a significant plank in what emerged as the “Cambridge School” approach. Skinner’s basic claim was that to properly understand and interpret a text from the past – and to avoid reading one’s own anachronistic contemporary prejudices into it – one had to recover its author’s intentions in writing it. To do this, the text has to be located in its relevant social and intellectual context, to see what arguments it was engaging with and which specific historically located concerns it was informed by.
We can apply this intentionality-based approach to our case of swearing above. The key question is: did the 15 year olds who made this video intend to use language that was derogatory towards women? Reconstructing the context of 15 year olds in Britain, the answer would appear to be that they did not. For as a commenter at CT points out, in contemporary Britain the words “twat” and “cunt” are predominantly used as insults for men. (Indeed it is quite rare and odd-sounding for a women in Britain to be called a “cunt”, in particular).
So can our 15 year olds be cleared of the sexism charge? Not so fast.
Yale professor Ian Shapiro has long argued that the Skinner intentionality approach is not the end of the story. Shapiro urges we acknowledge the possibility of agents un-knowingly reproducing power structures and dominant modes of thinking without realising it. For example, whilst an author may “intend” to produce an argument criticising (say) a current governmental regime, they may unwittingly be reproducing a pattern of argument that simultaneously presupposes that (say) a third of the population ought to continue to be kept as slaves. As the author’s argument becomes widely disseminated, it surreptitiously reinforces a norm that the author did not in fact realise they were endorsing (in this case, that slavery is acceptable).
Whilst that’s an oversimplified example, we can clearly apply the thought-process to the case of our swearing children: they may not have intended to reinforce sexist and misogynistic norms, by using language that portrays female genitalia as the basis for gross insult they unwittingly reproduced and re-enforced sexist and misogynistic values.
On this view, the use of “sad twat” and “stupid cunt” does appear to be misogynistic.
Yet perhaps we can go further. Much of the “post-structuralist” work of Michel Foucault, and the “deconstructionist” approach of Jacques Derrida, emphasised the extent to which individual subjects are themselves the products of power structures and “discourses” beyond their control.
On a (simplified and crude) reading of a general Foucault-Derrida approach, it might be said that these 15 year old children are intimately the products of societies which are ruled by “discourses” (i.e. legitimated ways of speaking, interacting and thereby thinking) that have developed in ways that systematically privilege men and relegate women to the status of subservient, exploited, secondary and controlled members of society. On a certain reading of this approach, what these 15 year old children are doing is redeploying and re-enforcing the gendered sexist norms of a society which is structured so as to systematically dis-empower one gender in opposition to the other. In turn, to focus on what these specific children happen to have done is to basically miss the point: the real action goes on elsewhere, at a more (if you like) “fundamental” level of social analysis.
The famous objection to this approach, however, is that it leaves no room or hope for individual agency. And this indeed seems a proper criticism to make: these children chose to use these offensive words. They could have chosen otherwise, and indeed would have had the phenomenological experience of the possibility of choosing when they made this video, rather than being mere automatons in the power matrix. These children’s actions are not straightforward functions of deeply-seated societal power structures; to forget that renders any analysis inadequate in providing a complete picture.
What we need to do, therefore, is reconcile all of the above considerations in some way. If we do that, I reckon the correct response to the question “was it sexist and misogynistic to use words like twat and cunt?” is clearly both “no” and “yes”.
It’s “no” insofar as these children, possessing their own sense of choice and agency, in a context in which these words are generally used as insults for men, probably did not intend to produce a sexist and misogynistic video. But it’s “yes” insofar as these children (unwittingly?) perpetuated the use of words that take female genitalia to be the height of insult, embedded in a structure of norms that assign women a more lowly status than men, reflective of deep power imbalances between the sexes whereby one group is generally placed in positions of control over the other.
Now, you may think that’s a damn obvious conclusion to draw, and that it shouldn’t have taken a thousand words plus much talk of interpretative theory to get there. Maybe. But then, re-read the CT comment thread and see what happens when people pick either “yes” or “no” and keep slugging it out regardless. Sometimes long-winded theory is helpful on getting clear, even if it yields what appear to be fairly obvious answers by the end of the process.
