Thrasymachus and the Baptist ethicist
Ronald Aronson answers Baptist Center for Ethics Executive Director Robert Parham who wrote an essay criticizing ‘the new atheists.’ He first addresses the fact that some atheists are blunter than believers have become used to expecting (and that irritation with this is at least understandable).
Why are these so harsh? Above all, each sees himself as breaking a taboo: Thou shalt not criticize religion…I for one am grateful for the space for discussion these writers, along with Dennett (certainly no angry professor) have opened up, and forgive them for not being calmer and more measured.
Same here. I think we badly need the space – and that the taboo in many (or perhaps most) circles, at least in the US, remains unbroken. It’s certainly well and truly unbroken when it comes to politics.
My primary concern is to develop a coherent contemporary secular philosophy, one which answers life’s essential questions for those of us who live without God…I oppose claims of absolute knowledge, and I also oppose those who would see fit to impose their claims on others…Dr. Parham and I are potential allies in opposing those who assume that their values, norms and practices apply to everyone.
I agree with that, especially with what I take to be the spirit of it, but…only up to a point. What point? The point where some claims, some values and norms and practices, have to be imposed on others, have to apply to everyone. The point where the law comes into it, or the point where the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and various international agreements based on it are in effect. I’m quite sure that’s what Aronson means, but what I don’t know is what language we can use to disavow dogmatism and authority on the one hand while insisting on human rights and secular law on the other. I suppose I’m just saying that disavowals of assumptions that some values, norms and practices apply to everyone have to be made with great care, in order not to say more than we mean. I do assume that ‘my’ value and norm and practice that women should not be subordinated applies (or should apply) to everyone.
Adam Kirsch on Raymond Geuss raises the same issues.
[Geuss’s] attacks on the Bush administration and the war on Iraq, and his loathing of the bourgeois complacency of Rawls and Nozick, all suggest that he has his own conception of justice, which involves solidarity with the oppressed and resistance to the powerful…But it’s hard to see how, on his own showing, any critique of existing power arrangements could have any intellectual or moral coherence. The world of Thrasymachus is a war of all against all, in which the powerful will always win. If Geuss does not want to inhabit such a world—and who does?—he should acknowledge that the inquiry into the nature of justice, which has occupied philosophers from Socrates to Rawls, is not an ideological trick, but the necessary beginning of all attempts to make the world more just.
That’s the problem, isn’t it. If we can’t get agreement or at least consensus, then we’re stuck with power, and being stuck with power is no good, because we can never be sure that Thrasymachus won’t be the most powerful. (Hitler came horribly close to winning the war, at the beginning. Suck on that thought for awhile.) Yet we can’t help knowing that consensus is very hard – and in some cases probably impossible – to get. It’s the only hope, but it’s such a faint one. But, keep trying.
“If we can’t get agreement or at least consensus, then we’re stuck with power, and being stuck with power is no good, because we can never be sure that Thrasymachus won’t be the most powerful.”
I understand this, but I’m not sure it’s true. I may be wrong, but I think we’re stuck with power, and different forms of government deal with power differently, which is why Churchill (was it?) said something to the effect that democracy is the worst form of government, except for all the others.
The whole point of government is to manage power and the uses of power. The Nazis were no different. They, along with a good proportion of German people at the time, thought that the only way to deal with power was to give it to one leader. The disaster that this led to is legendary, but the reasons were not unintelligible. Post-WW I Germany was a chaos of competing powers. Hitler had a solution. A lot of people thought, at the time, that it was a good one. They were wrong.
But that doesn’t mean that politics is not still about managing power. That’s why seeking consensus or common ground, while a laudable aim, is not enough. We need to find as much common ground as we can, certainly, but there was a lot of common ground in Germany when Hitler was made Chancellor.
Lord Acton said, memorably, that absolute power corrupts absolutely – which is why he opposed the doctrine of papal infallibility, and a good reason why he should have left the Catholic Church. But power is going to be exercised, and amongst the wielders of power will be the odd Hitler or Thrasymachus, which is why it is so important that we can manage power in such a way that power hungry individuals like Thrasymachus and Hitler can’t spoil the world for the rest of us.
Indeed, that is what human rights are all about: governing the uses of power. We are stuck with power. Power is a given. The question is: How can we control it, so that it serves the common good? How can we control power so that no one need walk in fear? So far, the best way has proven to be some form of liberal (responsible) democracy (not just majority rule, which is just making the majority into a Hitler surrogate), which is why the intrusion of religion into the political sphere in the United States is so dangerous, because power, besides being a given, is very unstable, and upsetting the balance of (the management of) power just a little can have enormous consequences.
That’s what occurs to me at first taste, when I suck on the thought that Hitler came very close to winning the war (at the beginning). Of course, if he had won it – at the beginning – he would have won it, after all.
What I mean is, we’re stuck with power when we can’t get consensus, and that’s no good because the wrong people may be the most powerful. Power keeps winning in Afghanistan (for instance) and there’s no prospect of reasoned argument improving things any time soon.
Eric: I want to just say how much I enjoy reading your posts. Theya re always intriguing.
(Props, as always, to Ophelia for providing the forum.
Eric, I think the adjective for democracy you were looking for may have been pluralist. A pluralist democracy ensures that we don’t end up with a majoritarian one. Which is why we have the tension between liberal multicultural values and liberal values in general: when do we decide to override multicultural values with liberal ones like the rights of women and homosexuals? It’s an interesting conundrum and I really appreciate and agree with the no-nonsense manner in which B&W deals with it. And like I commented on a recent thread, which you may not have read, like BrianM I too enjoy reading your thoughtful and knowledgeable posts, Eric. Do you publish?
While I share your general sort of concern, OB, and I also appreciate Eric’s thoughtful commentary, I think an important distinction is being missed in this discussion. There’s a great deal of difference between the assumption that some values are universal – typically for any given person making the assumption, my values – and drawing the conclusion that some values are (or ought to be) universal. Some variation on the principle of moral equality – that I cannot privilege my own welfare or any particular sub-set of persons’ welfare over anyone else’s welfare – lies at the heart of every ethical theory. Even the vague and too-often-cited Golden Rule, which is hardly a viable ethical theory in and of itself (although it’s not a bad starting place), is grounded in the bedrock of moral equality.
Moral equality is not a natural impulse or common intuition or any such thing; nor is it a mere assumption, a baseless article of faith. Rather, it is a conclusion of reason.
In Utilitarianism, J.S. Mill talks about people desiring happiness as the only kind of evidence we can have of the desirability of happiness. But Mill doesn’t suffer any delusion that people generally or universally have a natural desire for other people’s happiness: Rather, each person’s desire for his or her own happiness merely serves as objective evidence that happiness is desirable/good. We don’t see happiness as good-for-me; we see happiness as good, and consequently we want that good for ourselves and are motivated to pursue it for ourselves. After all, when someone else achieves something that makes them happy, do we not recognize that they are getting something good? Thus we are rationally obligated to acknowledge that happiness is good, no matter whose happiness it is – and hence the principle of utility. No individual person necessarily values other people’s happiness: Rather, since every person values happiness as such, reason dictates that more happiness is more valuable – regardless of whose happiness it is. The question of moral motivation, which is where the matter of power and politics comes in, is a separate issue: Knowing what is right and doing what is right have always had space between them.
Or forget Mill and consider Kant’s categorical imperative: Act in such a way that you treat humanity, whether in your own person or in any other person, always at the same time as an end, never merely as a means. This, Kant argues in Groundwork for the Metaphysics of Morals, is our sole moral duty. But he also argues that no empirical evidence can ever show us that this is our moral duty, and indeed that we can never be sure that any human anywhere at any time has ever acted out of genuine respect for moral duty rather than out of some inclination or self-interest!
This is Kant’s acknowledgment of the long-standing problem of altruism: If an altruistic act results in you feeling good about yourself, then how can it be said that you acted solely to benefit someone else (altruistically) rather than to your own self-interested benefit (feeling good about it)? Kant’s answer to this tired old question is that it simply doesn’t matter: The value of universal and equal moral respect for all persons is an inescapable conclusion of reason, regardless of whether and how it may be supported or opposed by our inclinations.
I’m not saying either Kant’s or Mill’s ethical theory is correct, or that their respective arguments for those theories are convincing. (I think both are rather flawed, in very different ways.) Rather, I’m pointing to the common theme underlying two of the most thematically opposed ethical theories ever advanced: Moral equality – that every and any moral agent is of equal value, period – is a conclusion of reason, not an assumption or intuition or any such thing. Attempts to avoid that conclusion involve various ad hoc rationalizations, spurious and insupportable claims of superiority on behalf of some privileged category of persons, and/or equally spurious claims of inferiority (usually with some disgust-invoking metaphorical description, e.g. ‘unclean’) about the non-privileged category. Any such exceptionalism – one rule or value for me and mine, a different rule or lesser value for you and yours – is rationally indefensible.
I would go so far as to say that the division of people into Us and Them is in fact a very natural assumption, supported by our inclinations and instincts, produced in us by the forces of both social selection (group identity and competition) and natural selection (organisms are motivated to pass on their own genes, or their kin’s genes to the extent that they resemble their own, not just to pass on any ol’ genes). The realm of Us and Them is where the assumptions that amount to various kinds of moral exceptionalism are made, and insisting on the rationally supportable principle of moral equality against any self-serving assumption of moral exceptionalism is always justified.
Yes, and it is deeply ironic that “Us and Them”ing, along with attribution of meaning to random events, assertion of significance to intuitions, and a wide range of other behaviours derived from our animal nature are the province of many who would do the most to deny that we are just animals. Everyday religion, and everyday politics, prove to the detached observer exactly all the claims of the human sciences that they set out to deny…
Ophelia – thanks for the little bit of hope there at the end, I mean it. I do believe, as Kirsch seems to do, that a major problem lies in not taking moral & political philosophy seriously. I am sure that in practice democracy is the best way of ‘managing power’ without a real physical fight but it’s still, in somebody’s words, ‘a pursuit of battle with peaceful means’. The idea that in philosophy we can only find grounds to defend positions is bogus – philosophy is & should be about finding universal truths that require no power on people for those people to accept them – that is the ambitious goal, & we should not settle for less (certainly not under a pressure from dogmatists calling those philosophizing dogmatists insofar they don’t subscribe to the idea that we’re all allowed to our own dogma’s).
In democracy there are too many things that are still open for discussion, it is for instance simply not a matter of democratic discussions whether women & men are equal, they are and that’s the end of it – forgive me for not putting the reasoning for this conclusion here (I suppose everybody here knows it).
Eric,
‘That’s why seeking consensus or common ground, while a laudable aim, is not enough. We need to find as much common ground as we can, certainly, but there was a lot of common ground in Germany when Hitler was made Chancellor.’
Respectfully, there are 2 things you’re missing in my view despite your erudite style:
a. we’re talking about universal things here – the common ground in Germany was in fact that: common ground in Germany, Germany not being an universal concept. As long as we’re stuck on nation-states common ground in such a nation-state is never a real common ground. The US as a dominating country has laudably avoided exporting its common ground but clearly runs a continuous risk of doing so, the fact that 100% Americans support things in a democratic way counts as 0% if the impact of that agreement crosses the US border.
b. democracy isn’t about power balance, that’s a popular Popperian thesis, with lots of practical appeal but it’s not a correct thesis; even democracy with all its limitations is to be more ambitious than that: it’s about finding agreement on voluntary basis on a basis of public reason
The use of state power is not primarily used to coerce the public but to coerce aberrant individuals. I do not think it is true that a majority of citizens are complying only because they fear powers of the state.
& insofar the theory of democracy as an essential power balancing act goes, you have to see it sucks at that. We see in post WWII Western democracies rather an ever increasing concentration of power, in private companies evading democratic control — to make a favourite point of Rawls: just look at who funds our to be elected officials (it’s a point of mere principle that an election shouldn’t be distorted by private funds irrespective of whatever democratic opinion might be prevailing on the matter).
Thanks to those who made so many kind, and probably undeserved, approving comments about my little pensées on the theme of power. As I said, these thoughts were the first taste of sucking on the thought that Hitler nearly won the war.
Rose is right. ‘Pluralist’ was probably the word I was fetching for. But also the word ‘responsible’, in the sense that, in the end, the people are the guardians of the guards, or the warders of the wardens – to answer Juvenal’s famous question – who are in this sense required to give an account of their management of the people’s affairs whilst the guards or wardens are in office.
My suggestion, however, was not that people act as they do because of fear of punishment, but our liberties certainly are protected by the existence of managed forms of power. Without that management, the Thrasymachuses of this world, being powerful themselves, would be quite prepared to use their power. These are the aberrant individuals that JoB is speaking of, but they are not less dangerous to the management of power on this account. And they are not necessarily few, either.
JoB doesn’t think (to use his words) that “it is true that a majority of citizens are complying only because they fear powers of the state.” Well, no, that is probably correct. In settled polities people go about their business within the limits of the use of power that is established by the way power is managed. However, in the absence of ways of controlling the use of power, it would not take long for people to find out that they could benefit by taking advantage of the power vacuum to act solely with regard to their own advantage. Hobbes, I think, was probably right about that.
As to Germany not being universal. This is beside the point. There was a growing consensus in Germany that the only way to bring order out of chaos was to give power to a single leader. This is also a way of managing power – not a good way, perhaps, but a way that is often resorted to. In post- WW I Germany, given its romanticisation of power, and its idealisation in Bizmark, a romanticisation that rubbed off on Hindenburg too, and ultimately, on Hitler, and where the struggling Weimar democracy was not highly regarded, and believed to be ineffective, some form of tyranny seemed to many to be the only way out of Germany’s troubles, and that is the way they took.
Democracy, as this, and many other examples show, is not something that can be exported and imposed. Democracy depends upon on habits of thought that may take many generations to develop. Afghanistan is not going to become a democratic polity overnight. It just won’t happen. So, imposing it by force of arms is not going to work. What will work, and what is necessary in order to develop democratic systems (which are also systems for managing power relations), in places where there has been no evolving system of freedom and equality, is something that we really need to know more about.
For example, in Iraq, the military surge means that the unregulated use of power is starting to deliver diminishing marginal returns. So much for the importance of managing power. But is it likely that Iraq is going to develop democratic institutions which will be able to control uses of power in the future? Not unless the military control of power is maintained, while Iraqi citizens with competing allegiances find out how they will benefit from settling and managing their differences in more peaceful ways. One thing Saddam Hussein did was to control the uses of power, and kept the lid on the simmering divisions within Iraqi society. That lid has to be kept on while Iraqi citizens learn how to manage power peacefully, and with respect for human rights and equality. How likely that is to happen is anyone’s guess right now. Given the surrounding influences, I wouldn’t give it a high chance of success. And if Afghanistan the chances of success are even less likely.
Of course, religion plays into all of these equations in destabilising ways, something that Western democracies are in the process of finding out to their cose. We probably need to study how religion plays into issues of the management of power. I don’t think we know enough.
Nor would I want to question JoB’s observation that Western democracies are may be a parlous condition right now, since it is relatively easy for Thrasymachuses to escape the restraints on the use of power in one place and to benefit from its more or less unregulated use in another. Perhaps the global financial meltdown is a sign that this will be less easy to accomplish in time to come. I hope so.
In answer to someone’s question: No, I don’t publish, though blogs give me a chance to express my opinion on things that interest me.
Ouch! Sorry to be so long-winded.
Thanks G. So it all turns on the verb ‘assume’…Okay.
But then if so, I think my main point still stands, because what people take away from that could easily be the disavowal of universalism that it would be if the verb were not ‘assume’ – and I said that these disavowals have to be made with great care. I think they do have to be made with great care. If I were making one I would want to leave Dr Parham in no doubt about my commitment to (secular) universal human rights.
Ophelia, I think, with the renewed claims of religious groups being made upon democratic polities, that consensus may be impossible to come by. (That’s one of the reasons that we need to get up to speed on the practical implications of these claims.) That’s why the qualification (and not a parenthetical one) of a commitment to secular universal human rights is absolutely fundamental. Otherwise, we will end up with warring parties, and it is not clear, despite the renewed claims to the Catholic Church to a favour place within the culture (at the same time that other religious groups are making the same claim), that the end result will not be a chaos of incompatible powers. This is the kind of thing that allows situations such as the one in Afghanistan (and now, increasingly, India) to prevail. This will make it impossible to bring about the respect of universal secular values in Afghanistan, and may just upset the delicate balance between group claims in India, and bring that wonderful experiment in democracy come crashing to the ground.
What I can’t understand is why religious groups, unless they in fact do intend to assume a dominant position in the culture, would not be pleased with the balance of forces provided by the recongition and protection of universal secular human rights.
I’ve just had a lull in trying to install a new ceiling fan, to get heat from the heat pump to circulate through the house, so I thought I’d put in another two cents.
Another thing that I cannot understand is Raymond Geuss’s rejection of Rawls idea of the original position, because that is precisely what the original position is: an acceptance and confirmation of the willingness to be bound by human rights principles. The contractual approach still seems to me to have a lot going for it.
If anyone’s still following this, Leon Wieseltier quotes Du Bois – in relation to Obama – about hope in a way that reminds me of Ophelia’s closing remark. Here it is:
Eric,
Well, quite. It’s bottomlessly depressing that universal assent to the Universal Declaration of HR is impossible, but it is certainly the case. ‘No, no! We don’t want your horrible rights. They’re a Western plot. Take them away. We want submission and authority.’
Lordy that was good G. whats the matter with the golden rule then?
Eric,
A bit late maybe but here goes:
“However, in the absence of ways of controlling the use of power, it would not take long for people to find out that they could benefit by taking advantage of the power vacuum to act solely with regard to their own advantage.”
I beg to differ. It wouldn’t take long for ‘some’ people & so & so forth, the qualification is important. It’s not a thing that all people would do, it’s a thing that they need to do because the fact is that some people would take an undue advantage from lack of coercions on the part of the authorities. Reason has it that most people only need this state coercion because some people are prone to abuse them if it is lacking.
In fact, as you point out, the secular rule of law is most threatened because there are states that could have undue advantages (as states or elites of the states) in not having such rule of law (it isn’t limited to the typical rogue states, it includes fiscal paradises – places where rich people can evade the laws of the countries they live in).
That is why indeed there’s both a need & a ground for universal regulation. A thing, as you also point out, that’s a bit more widely held now, because of a financial crisis but which is famously impopular in the US.
Then again: whether something is or is not popular doesn’t really matter when we’re talking about universal basics – certainly not when this (im)popularity is relative to the confines of a state with coincidental borders.
Alas Mr Thrasymachus is no longer with us and his books are either lost or burned. It seems possible that despite Plato’s portrayal (and Plato is never above a joke c.f. Symposium-Aristophanes)that the “real” Thrasymachus was describing what really is-not what may be.