In The New York Times, moderate conservative David Brooks reflects upon Charles Murray’s Coming Apart: The State of White America, 1960-2010. Brooks agrees with Murray that Americans have divided into two polarized “tribes.”
“The members of the upper tribe,” says Brooks, “have made themselves phenomenally productive. They may mimic bohemian manners, but they have returned to 1950s traditionalist values and practices. They have low divorce rates, arduous work ethics and strict codes to regulate their kids.”
Meanwhile, “in the lower tribe, men in their prime working ages have been steadily dropping out of the labor force, in good times and bad. People in the lower tribe are much less likely to get married, less likely to go to church, less likely to be active in their communities, more likely to watch TV excessively, more likely to be obese.”
Brooks praises Murray for the rigor of his data and analysis, and then offers his own solution to the problem.
“I doubt Murray would agree, but we need a National Service Program. We need a program that would force members of the upper tribe and the lower tribe to live together, if only for a few years. We need a program in which people from both tribes work together to spread out the values, practices and institutions that lead to achievement.”
So: While American liberals want to use force to redistribute wealth and jobs among the rich and poor, Brooksian conservatives want to use force to redistribute values, practices and institutions among rich and poor. Liberals want to use compulsion to move other people’s money around as they see fit. Brooks wants to use compulsion to move the people themselves around as he sees fit.
Once again I am shocked at how easily and automatically so many intellectuals are willing to use compulsion to solve problems.
Here is an example of a phenomenon that has long puzzled me: Nasty in-group fighting. In The Rise of Neo-Kantianism, Klaus Christian Köhnke asks:
What can “explain one of the most distressing features of the neo-Kantians: the fierceness and bitterness of their polemics, the nastiness of their ad hominem arguments, which destroyed personal friendships and decent collegial relations? Heinrich Rickert (Heidelberg) wrote to Paul Natorp (Marburg): ‘Just because we critical idealists agree on fundamentals, we have to take the knives to each other” (Cambridge University Press 1991, p. x).
It’s easier to understand demonizing the far opposition, i.e., those whose beliefs and values are alien to your own. But it’s harder to understand demonizing those with whom you agree on 99% of key issues. Why does the 1% disagreement drives some to paroxysms of anger, bitter infighting, and denunciation?
The infighting dynamic crops up in a variety of types of movements across history — political movements (e.g., the Marxists), educational movements (e.g., the Montessorians), architectural (e.g., Frank Lloyd Wright’s followers), philosophical (e.g., Objectivists), semi-scientific (e.g., Freudians), and of course most religious movements.
Heinrich Rickert above stated it as an imperative: The closer the agreement, the worse the fighting. Why is that so?
* Is it that we expect or hope for more from those close to us, so disagreements are more crushingly disappointing?
* Is it that those close to us have more power to hurt us, so disagreements lead to defensive over-reactions?
* Is it that movements are social, so disagreements are opportunities for in-group status advancement or for signaling one’s status and alliances?
I can understand the phenomenon more easily within systems that have strong faith-and-authority epistemological traditions. Such groups do not make reasoning and healthy argument habitual, so it makes sense that their members would not be able to handle questioning and disagreement well.
But that makes more puzzling the in-fighting among rational belief systems, i.e., those that explicitly identify and urge productive argument and discovery skills. In those groups, is the descent to nastiness simply a failure of character? Or are there strong psychological and social-psychological dispositions that even rational belief systems have a hard time overcoming? Or is the initial impression great amounts of infighting distorted — that actually most of the group’s members handle the disagreements productively and in proportion, while only a few noisy participants drown them out and drag down the discussion?
A related question about leadership: Does a movement’s leader typically contribute to the in-fighting problem, or do the followers do it all by and to themselves?
One datum: In discussing Freud’s fractious movement, Howard Gardner tells this sad anecdote:
“Less happily, their involvements with Freud proved costly for some individuals, particularly those who had broken with him. Freud’s young protege Victor Tausk, despondent over his recent rupture with the unforgiving Freud, committed suicide; of the earlier followers, at least six others ultimately did the same. These facts represent our first evidence of the casualties that tend to befall those within the orbit of highly creative individuals” (Creating Minds, p. 82).
But I was struck by this contrasting datum about Frank Lloyd Wright’s circle, as recalled by Ayn Rand after a visit:
“She long remembered her indignation over the attitude of hero worship and servitude that Wright was famous for instilling in his ‘Fellowship,’ made up of tuition-paying students. They cooked, served meals, and cleaned. They ate at tables set a step or two below the dais on which Wright and his guests and family dined, and they consumed a plainer diet. Their drawings, she noted, were undistinguished and imitative of Wright. ‘What was tragic was that he didn’t want any of that,’ Rand told a friend in 1961. ‘He was trying to get intellectual independence [out of] them during the general discussions, but he didn’t get anything except ‘Yes, sir’ or ‘No, sir’ and recitals of formulas from his writing.’ She compared them to medieval serfs.” (Anne Heller, Ayn Rand and the World She Made, pp. 169-170). And of course some of Rand’s followers have behaved that way too.
Nietzsche said that one must always forgive an intellectual his first generation of followers. It seems a sorry truth of history that those who grow up directly in the shadow of a genius have special difficulties with becoming independent.
So it is still a puzzle in my mind. Great matters demand great thinking and great passion — and great character in the exercise of both.
About justifiable, virtuous anger, Aristotle stated the ideal best — to be able to “feel anger on the right grounds and against the right persons, and also in the right manner and at the right moment and for the right length of time” (Nicomachean Ethics 4.5, 1125b 31). That is indeed the challenge.
My review essay on Donald Frey’s America’s Economic Moralists: A History of Rival Ethics and Economics (SUNY Press, 2009) is now out in Business Ethics Quarterly. Subscribers to BEQ can access the issue here.
The copyright agreement allows me to distribute a limited number of copies personally, so if you’d like a PDF of the review, email me at CEE [at] Rockford [dot] edu.
My conclusion: “America’s Economic Moralists is a good historical survey of mostly religious commentaries on economics. Frey’s work is in part a historical survey and in part a polemic against the autonomy individualists. In my judgment, Frey does a good job covering the important distinction between autonomy and relational economic moralities and many of the sub-debates therein. But there are more historically and philosophically significant themes that could also have been developed more fully, and Frey’s eagerness to advance the relational view and to slight the autonomy view sometimes gets the better of his skills as historian and philosopher.”
Cite: Hicks, Stephen R. C. 2012. “Review of Donald Frey’s America’s Economic Moralists: A History of Rival Ethics and Economics.” Business Ethics Quarterly 22.1, 186-193.
In my Philosophy of Art course, we are discussing Plato’s philosophy of art, by means of selections from Statesman and Books 3 and 10 of The Republic, along with snippets from Ion, Phaedrus, and Symposium.
In The Republic, Plato makes a systematic case for censoring all arts. The task of the Platonic philosopher is to take up the “ancient quarrel between philosophy and poetry” [607b] and to assert the State-enforced dominance of philosophy. To that end, The Republic as a whole is a powerful integration of philosophy, religion, education, and politics, and its argument for the political suppression of most art follows from that integrated system.
Rhetorically, Plato uses Socrates’ discussion with Glaucon and Adeimantus to list a series of grievances against poetry, music, and painting:
* A good portrait of the gods and heroes will show them as worthy and exalted beings — but poets such as Homer and Hesiod often tell tales of the gods and heroes fighting and bickering and acting immorally [e.g., 390b-391e].
* A moral citizen’s soul will be composed and dignified — but many musical modes stir us up inside and make us jangled and unsettled [398e-400d.].
* Good people and gods do not deceive — but painters constantly deceive us by trying to make their fake imitations look real [598c, 602d]. (Meanwhile, Plato allows that politicians (and only politicians) ought to be allowed to lie to their citizens [389b-c].)
* A strong and moral man will not grieve the death of a friend by moaning and wailing like a woman — but poets regularly have their characters issue long, pathetic lamentations [387d-388d].
* Courageous men are willing to die in battle — but the poets tell scary stories about the afterlife and make us fear death [386b-d].
* A proper moral of the story will teach that good people meet good ends and bad men meet bad ends [613d-614a] — but tragic poets have will often have bad men profit and protagonists fail and suffer despite their virtues [392b].
* Decent people respect and strive for worthiness — but comic poets appeal to our basest desires and mock and deride everything [e.g., 395d-e, 606c].
And so on.
The Republic’s overall argument for censorship thus combines a particular conception of morality with religion and authoritarian politics. Formalizing the argument:
1. To have a good society, we must have good citizens.
2. To have good citizens, children must be well educated. 3. To be well educated, children must be exposed to good material and shielded from bad material [386a].
4. So, to have a good society, children must be exposed to good material and shielded from bad material.
5. It is the obligation of the State to educate its citizens.
6. So the State should allow only good material and suppress bad material.
7. The State’s censorship applies also to art.
8. So the State should allow only good art and suppress bad art [401b, 595a].
[Next: Evaluating Plato's argument for censoring the arts. Return to the Intellectual History page.]
In this extended interview, philosopher Douglas B. Rasmussen responds to a series of questions (listed below) about his life and work.
Dr. Rasmussen is a professor of philosophy at St. John’s University in New York. In addition to the books discussed in the interview, he is the author of articles in American Philosophical Quarterly, The Review of Metaphysics, International Philosophical Quarterly, and many scholarly anthologies.
Why did you become a philosopher? [00:18]
Where did you go to college? [1:02]
Why does liberal society need a philosophical basis? [1:17 ]
You present those themes in some detail in your books Liberty and Nature, Liberalism Defended, and Norms of Liberty. What is your argument for liberty? [2:44] Previous question continued [00:09]
Which historical philosophers have you learned most from? [6:08]
How do those issues of metaphysics connect to liberalism? [8:15]
Which major historical philosophers do you most disagree with? [11:28] What is the hardest philosophical problem you are working on now? [00:08]
What is the most challenging criticism of your views? [2:43]
What is the state of liberal thought today among philosophers? [4:36]
To bring about a more liberal society, what key practical steps can and should be taken? [6:30]
Coming Soon:Profiles in Liberty interview with economist David R. Henderson.
I’ve been reading Eric Axelson’s 1973 Congo to Cape: Early Portuguese Explorers. It’s always an interesting question to ask how great ventures begin — Why did they start when and where they did? Why were they initiated by those individuals or groups and not others?
The circumnavigation of Africa was a great achievement over many decades. In principle many people — European, African, or Asian — could have accomplished it. So why the Portuguese?
Here is Axelson’s explanation:
“It was no accident that Portugal became the first European country in modern times to explore and colonize beyond the seas. Her medieval wars of independence against Leon and Castile, and her campaigns against the Moors in the Iberian peninsula, had encouraged the growth of a national spirit by the time—in the middle of the twelfth century—Portugal attained what are essentially her present frontiers. Bounded by unfriendly and often actively hostile Spanish kingdoms and Muslim principalities, Portugal was forced to look to the sea not merely for communication with the rest of Christendom, but also for essential trade: the export of salt and oil, of wine and cork, and the import of most of the manufactured goods her people needed. Moreover, her pastures and her cultivated lands were infertile, and the sea provided necessary food. Her fishermen became consummate seamen, and out of their ranks emerged the crews of ships that sailed in the Middle Ages to the farthest parts of northwestern Europe and of the Mediterranean” (p. 19).
Comments?
My thoughts: Axelson’s explanation is a good start but more is necessary. Many medieval peoples fought wars to protect their independence, and many places with poor soil became good at fishing; yet very few generated great exploration cultures. Axelson’s middle point about trade is strong: the map at right (click to enlarge) shows that Portugal is at the fringes when it comes to trade with just about everyone and that the land trade routes were already controlled by others (e.g., the Venetians and Levantines). But it’s still a question in my mind why the Portuguese didn’t simply acquiesce to an isolated, marginal existence; after all, that’s what many peoples throughout history have done. So who were the key deciders who initiated and led and pushed the Portuguese into great activity and accomplishment?
Another question: Axelrod gives one political and two economic motivations — were other factors such as scientific curiosity or religious evangelism significantly operative?
Here’s a list, adapted from this site, of key Portuguese names and dates:
1394: Henry the Navigator born
1419: Madeira Islands discovered by explorers Zarco and Tristao Vaz Teixeira
1427: Azores Islands discovered by Diogo Silves
1434: Exploration of the African coast begins
1444: Discovery of the Cape Verde islands
1484: Diogo Cao discovers the River Congo 1487: Bartholomeu Dias leads an expedition around the Cape of Good Hope
[1492: Christopher Columbus discovers the New World]
1498: Vasco da Gama reaches India via navigation around Africa
1500: Pedro Alvares Cabral discovers Brazil
1519: Ferdinand Magellan leads the first voyage around the World
1542: Portuguese explorers are the first Europeans to land in Japan
1569: Nagasaki, Japan is opened to Portuguese traders
In The New York Times, moderate conservative David Brooks reflects upon Charles Murray’s Coming Apart: The State of White America, 1960-2010. Brooks agrees with Murray that Americans have divided into two polarized “tribes.” 
Brooks praises Murray for the rigor of his data and analysis, and then offers his own solution to the problem. 
My review essay on Donald Frey’s America’s Economic Moralists: A History of Rival Ethics and Economics (SUNY Press, 2009) is now out in Business Ethics Quarterly. Subscribers to BEQ can 
