Month: March 2006

That Sen interview in the Bangladeshi paper.

Sen remains a strong exponent of free will as expressed in terms of freedom of choice, even if influenced by circumstances and constrained by what’s permissible and what one is capable of. By way of identity, for instance, he chooses to assert the identity of an economist or a philosopher (among other things) depending on what is relevant for that particular discussion. “These are choices, among others, open to me, as are similarly relevant choices for anyone else.” As are the positions he takes on issues of politics, parties, ideologies and so on. “When choices exist, and not to recognise they exist is an epistemic mistake and also a root of irresponsibility – if we attribute our choices to others.”

It’s the kind of epistemic mistake that can distort whole large territories of thought – such as assuming that people of certain kinds have no choice about what will matter to them most; such as assuming for instance that for all Muslims, being a Muslim is what matters most, and that there is no choice about it. That’s a strange thing to assume. We all know plenty of tepid-to-cool and nominal Catholics and Protestants and plenty of secular and atheist Jews; why assume that all Muslims are as if another species and unable to make similar choices? Why assume that all Muslims are ‘devout’ Muslims? Because to do otherwise seems assimilationist and oppressive and Eurocentric? Probably, but the overcorrection is pretty oppressive too.

If Sen’s book makes a proposition to the individual reader, it’s with a similar sense of clarity: choose your identity of your own free will. But it also says something to the current world order, as it were: don’t slap single-identity labels on people. As Sen elaborates, he may think it very important in some specific context to assert the identity of an economist, a professor and of somebody left-of-centre…but anyone trying to predict his choices on the basis of any one single description to the exclusion of others would be making an error. Further, “Nor is every moral argument an identity-based idea.” And trying to squeeze him into any of those discrete boxes would thus be futile, both because there are many identities a person has and also because a person is not guided only by identity. But even civilisations are being put into boxes these days, with scientific rationality itself coming to be portrayed as something of an “immaculate Western conception”, to use a term from the book.

A person is not guided only by identity – that’s such a crucial idea to hang onto, I think. Without it we’re just – stuck; we don’t get to change or expand or experiment or escape or learn or explore novelty.

To be continued.

Harry’s Place reports that Reza Moradi is being (will be, I think) prosecuted for holding a Motoon poster. I don’t know if that’s based on what Maryam said in a bracket in her speech or whether it’s new information, but ‘Pangloss’ from the New Humanist says in the second comment, “Funny, have just been speaking to Maryam about this. Yes, he has been charged. As regards the bloke who complained – I haven’t a clue who he is, but the WPI have their suspicions.” He has been charged – with what? With carrying a cartoon with a poster on it. Commenters at Harry’s figure he’ll be charged with something under the public order act. I remember my shock when I found out – quite recently it was – that there is such a thing as the public order act. It came up here around the time of the guy who told a cop his horse was gay, and a woman was questioned by the police for saying on the radio that gays shouldn’t adopt children – that was only a few months ago. And then dear Sacranie was questioned for saying on the radio that gays shouldn’t do anything at all because disease bad ew – which serves him right in one way, but is still outrageous; and now this. Bad stuff.

Later – at 4:00 p.m. – Pangloss said:

What irritates me about this is the fact that this guy (who may or may not be an agent of a certain state which would have an interest in making life uncomfortable for the WPI)can actively seek out offence, and then have his complaint taken seriously by the police. I attended both the al-Muhajiroun and Hizb cartoon protests. Didn’t occur to me to tell the police that I found them offensive, but hey, maybe I should have.

Oh, great. And Moradi is being prosecuted as a result! David of mediawatchwatch said at 12:37:

I was a steward at the march and I was standing right in front of the bloke in the pictures. I heard and saw him make his complaint to the policewoman. Our head steward intervened and offered to personally protect the man, but the complainer was adamant. He also did a fair bit of video-ing of the speakers and crowd.

As I said on Sunday – start embroidering those ‘Free Reza Moradi’ banners. Start penning those notes to the Home Office.

And then there’s more Bunting (more Bunting? more Bunting?!) on the – well, on some ridiculous brainworm she has that she thinks is called ‘the Enlightenment’.

I need some help. I’ve been getting increasingly disturbed at the way in which the Enlightenment gets invoked by the self styled ‘hard liberals’ as if it amounts to their tablets of stone. Something didn’t seem to be adding up to me when they waxed lyrical about the Enlightenment legacy of rationality, secularism, belief in progress, the rule of law and the basis of all we know and love in western democracy and individual human rights.

Invoked? Self-styled? Hard liberals? Tablets? Of stone? Waxed lyrical? Belief in progress? All we know and love? Do you think she packed enough silly sarky jeer-words into that one paragraph? Can you tell that she thinks the Enlightenment is probably a load of old kack?

Then I began bumping into the subject with Muslim intellectuals who were acutely aware of how this legacy was being used (implicitly or explicitly) against Islam.

Ah – did you. Well that would explain it. So would the ‘implicitly or explicitly’ bit – that pretty much covers all the possibilities, doesn’t it: if the legacy isn’t used (by whom, exactly? who is the subject omitted by this passive construction? this passive-aggressive passive construction?) explicitly, well, you can be damn sure it is being used implicitly – there they go now, don’t let them escape, after them, run! And then of course there are the decisive final two words – ‘against Islam’. Well then – we know something very very very wrong and wicked is afoot. We don’t know what, exactly, but we know it’s bad. Somebody is using something (albeit perhaps implicitly) Against Islam. Nobody must ever use anything Against Islam, because Islam must be beyond reproach or criticism of any kind. Therefore no form of rhetoric is too silly or too manipulative.

These Muslims then argue that the Enlightenment was a process of European definition in the face of the Ottoman Empire; it was shaped in opposition to Islam and hence has an inbuilt anti-Islamic bias. Montesquieu’s ‘Persian Letters’ is a good example of this.

Uh – no it isn’t. Try reading it, Madders.

The bit which most intrigues me is whether a new understanding about rationality emerged in the eighteenth century and if so, how was it then positioned vis a vis religious belief? Since then, we’ve had Freud, Foucault and Nietzsche – all of whom have contributed to the understanding that we are profoundly irrational and that rationality is a social construction – a way of reasoning which we believe to be objective, but never can be. I’m no philosopher – hence the need for help – but I have a few questions: a) why do people think an understanding of rationality which is over 200 years old is useful now?

Oh, gosh, I don’t know! What a good question. Isn’t that odd? People can be so funny – thinking an understanding of anything at all which is over 200 years old (imagine it! in this day and age!) is any good at all, let alone useful now! Well – wait, wait – except religion of course. Except religion, and Catholicism, and Islam, and religion. I don’t mean them of course. But an Enlightenment understanding of rationality which is over 200 years old? Pee-ew! Might as well keep a 200-year-old fish around.