– Plato’s Republic and issues with the rule of Reason:
Plato’s Republic is one of the earliest attempts to theorise about how a perfect society should be structured. The book is an inquiry into justice. It is fascinating and has many possible interpretations, but if the modern reader takes it pretty much at face value, they will be pretty shocked. Plato famously thought the only way to have a just society was for it to be ruled by philosopher kings. Plato hated democracy because of the way democratic Athens had voted to execute his teacher and idol Socrates. He thought society should be governed by reason rather than populism, but the result of his reasoning is a country where children are taken at birth from their parents and raised communally (if children think there is a possibility that anyone could be their mother or father, then they will come to love everyone and the same with adults not knowing who their children are); a country where promising children are picked out and given special training separate to everyone else before they are appointed, not elected, to be rulers. It may appear to modern readers like a quasi-Nazi state. Freedom is nowhere on the agenda, people are forced to play their role for the supposed benefit of society.
Perhaps Plato took armchair philosophy beyond its limits and exposed the dangers of reason. Sir Thomas Moore, the renaissance Englishman who was executed for his refusal to recognise King Henry VIII as the head of the church (he preferred the Pope and was later made a saint for his stand), lampooned such attempts at radically building a society from scratch, even if it was a theoretical attempt, in his sarcastic Utopia. John Roskam from the Institute of Public Affairs, a conservative think tank, said to me in my first year of University that conservatism itself is a political movement against Plato. Conservatives think that society has developed the way it has for a reason, either because it’s good or because it works or because there is no other way it could be. Therefore they are highly sceptical of attempts to radically change society fearing that even if they are well intentioned they will have unknown negative consequences.
However surely there is some value in pointing out the problems society has. Plato may have gone a bit off but maybe it is noble to simply try and come up with original solutions to fundamental issues in society. What Plato really wanted was for society to be arranged so that everyone fulfils their role and lives up to their potential. This seems like a good thing but it does involve Plato, or someone else, determining for the individual what their natural role is. This is, needless to say, problematic. Why should someone else be able to tell me how to live my life? The writers of the Indian spiritual, moral and literary epics, the Upanishads, also wanted everyone to play their role. Unlike Plato, these guys actually had their ideas implemented. And the result was several thousand years of strict social caste structures and the disgraceful oppression of ‘undesirables’ (who were deemed to only have a role doing the worst jobs in society) which still exists, although thankfully not as government policy, to this day.
– Marx and faith in government:
Bertrand Russell said that Plato gave us a philosophical justification for totalitarianism, passed down through Karl Marx, to Stalin. This is probably a bit harsh on both Plato and Marx (though not Stalin) but they did both have a certain faith in the power of governments to run flawlessly and shape human behaviour. Marx‘s ideal society was one where everyone gave what they could to the collective (the government) and took what they needed from the collective. Equality was the overriding principle; equality of outcome. Marx wanted the government to ensure everyone had the same economic positions. Marx was not a utopian though, he didn’t simply dream about a time when we could all get along. He was a serious sociologist with deep insights into how humans behaved. Where people’s and businesses interests did not align with the collective they would oppose it. These people must be thrown out of positions of influence and they must be coerced into contributing. Hence we have him advocating progressive taxation and nationalisation. The problem is that such a system needs a very powerful government to enforce these changes and someone needs to be trusted with such power. A certain faith needs to be placed in the government.
– Human nature:
Modern liberals since the enlightenment have questioned this faith, often arguing that government power must be significantly limited because “power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely”. Even much more moderate left wingers have been accused of ignoring the limits of human nature; of assuming that governments can act efficiently and without corruption. And that they can use education, poverty reducing measures, or whatever, to mould human behaviour towards a more idealised state. Amartya Sen, the Indian Nobel prize winning economist turned Harvard professor of philosophy, is fairly left wing himself but he writes that John Rawls places too much in the power of institutions such as public school system, government welfare system, the taxation department and the like. Rawls, probably the most influential political philosopher of the twentieth century, spent his time trying to think up the ideal make up of institutions for society and seemed to assume that an ideal society would result from these ideal institutions. Sen points out that the behaviour of humans is not entirely governed by the institutions under which people live, no matter how perfect the institutions are.
However there is no doubt that people do, to a certain extent at least, respond to incentives. The classic liberal way of seeing the world, which has been so influential in western democracies since the time of Adam Smith, tends to see people as purely self interested rational beings. This assumption is what modern economics relies on. If you offer someone two jobs that involve equal amounts of work and they enjoy them both but one pays more than the other, they will choose the higher paying one. It’s just common sense right? And if the government sets up the incentives correctly they can manipulate human behaviour. If you set the fine high enough you can all but wipe out fare evasion on public transport. If you could somehow set the minimum wage high enough, and ensure high employment, you could stop people from selling drugs. After all why would a rational person be a drug dealer, when you could earn just as much doing a job that doesn’t include the constant threat of jail time and dealing with dangerous people? That’s the theory anyway. And one should never look at these matters too simplistically; if the fine for fare evading on trains was very high (like ten thousand dollars) it might stop the vast majority of people from fare evading but the odd person who does still fare evade might now, because of the huge fine, be tempted to murder the inspector when they are caught.
Obviously much of the debate relies on one’s understanding and assumptions about human nature. I wish to dwell on this point momentarily to show how it highlights that philosophy is highly interlinked. Questions of human nature do not usually fall under the category of political philosophy, but they are crucial for it. In the same way, all different branches of philosophy influence each other. And different disciplines all together, such as biology, psychology, physics, and mathematics, do, or at least should, influence the latest philosophy.
Issues of human nature have been big in Chinese philosophy as well as in the west. Unlike St Augustine who saw humans born as inherently corrupt due to his concept of original sin, the ancient Chinese philosopher Mencius saw humans as generally good. Mencius founded the idealistic wing of Confucianism. Even if not always good, humans certainly have an innate capacity for good in his view. The four Confucian constant virtues of righteousness, propriety, human heartedness and wisdom will all flourish in anyone if nurtured in the right way. This reminds me of Adam Smith style thinking that if governments get it right, people will respond to incentives and act in a better way.
– Freedom and libertarians:
For all this talk of government’s influencing behaviour to create a better world, a lot of western liberal thought over the last two or three hundred years has focussed on how to minimise the influence of governments. Freedom from government became a valued goal. It was this idea that is woven throughout the US constitution, which ensures separation of powers, a government with limited ability to act and strong individual liberties. It is understandable that enlightenment thinkers looked at governments with suspicion given they lived largely under tyranny, desperate to see their communities freed from the whims of dictators.
Libertarians continue this tradition today. They value freedom above all else. Robert Nozick, a Harvard friend and rival of Rawls, disputed what is called ‘patterned’ forms of justice. Patterned forms of justice look at an ideal outcome, or pattern, and seek to make society look like it. Patterned forms of justice usually are egalitarian and aim at some sort of equal distribution of goods throughout society, whether the goods be money, welfare, happiness or whatever. Libertarians value freedom and liberty above equality and see attempts at creating patterns in society as strangling people’s freedom to be and do what they want.
Nozick uses his Wilt Chamberlain example to show that attempts at income redistribution,such as through progressive taxation systems, deny freedom. It goes something like this: Wilt Chamberlain, one of America’s greatest basketball players, is so good that he is offered a contract where every game he plays the ticket prices are twenty five cents higher than normal and he gets that extra twenty five cents. Assume at the time the contract is offered society is arranged according to whatever pattern you like. Nozick doesn’t care which pattern because his aim is to discredit all patterned forms of justice. For the sake of the argument, I will imagine that a totally economically equal society is what I believe to be just. Now the contract takes effect. Over the course of the year, one million people freely choose to pay the extra twenty five cents and watch a basketball game involving Wilt Chamberlain. The result is that he ends up earning at least 250,000 dollars more than anyone else in that society. This breaks my original pattern of total economic equality. It goes against my original conception of justice. Maybe I should then bemoan this new inequality as unjust and disgusting. Maybe I should then, as the Marxists do, demand that the government tax Wilt Chamberlain and redistribute his money back to the people. However Nozick points out that each of the million people freely gave their consent for their twenty five cents to go to Wilt Chamberlain. For Nozick, there is nothing immoral or disgusting about it. It amounts to a consensual exchange and should be allowed to stand. For Nozick, if we think the initial situation is just (which we do because he allowed us to choose whatever situation we want) then we must think the outcome at the end of the yearlong contract is just. Nothing unjust has happened in between the two situations. The only thing that has happened is people have used their money as they see fit. To interfere in that, for Nozick, would be to deny the participants of the exchange their freedom and autonomy.
It is an argument against adopting a version of justice which imagines a particular way society should be organised, a pattern. It is an argument that inequalities aren’t necessarily unjust. Indeed it is an argument that says that it is attempts at creating equal societies that are unjust. Nozick says that the Chamberlain example proves that “liberty upsets patterns” and so “patterns destroy liberty”. Instead of Marx’s “From each according to his ability, to each according to his need” we have “From each as they choose, to each as they are chosen”. Nozick wants a very limited government, a nightwatchman state, that doesn’t intervene in society except to protect people against violence, theft etc and enforce contracts and agreements. The government, for libertarians, should not be deciding what it wants society to look like but letting it evolve according to the wishes of those in society.
– Positive and negative rights:
Libertarians and other classic liberals tend to focus on negative human rights. Rights from something. A right not to have something done to you. I have a right not to be told how to worship by the government, for example. Positive conceptions of human rights are much more controversial, but they are around. A positive human right would involve a right to something. A right to have something done to you by someone else. Maybe one example could be a right to be fed when starving. If a government has to respect positive human rights it would have to do a lot more things.
– Freedom as capabilities:
It is possible to share the libertarian enthusiasm for freedom but disagree with the way they see freedom. Having freedom may not be as simple as not having the government push you around. The homeless woman sleeping under the bridge may be hassled by the government just as little as the rich woman in the mansion, but clearly the rich woman has more scope to choose what she will do with her life; what she has, where she goes, how she lives etc. The rich woman has more options, more choices and therefore, I would contend, more freedom. The capabilities approach to freedom, advocated by Amartya Sen and Martha Nussbaum, amongst others, looks at whether an individual has the capability to enjoy their freedom the way they wish to. If a government took this approach seriously then they would have to balance poverty alleviation and other concerns with the understandable desire not to interfere too much in peoples personal lives. A balanced approach seems sensible because it recognises that the nightwatchman state would inevitably result in some horrible things happening, like people who are too injured to find work starving, or at least being completely dependent on charity from others.
– Feminist concerns:
One strong feminist critique of libertarianism and classic liberalism has been that it respects the private sphere too much. The private sphere is merely a name for the area of one’s life where freedom from government is seen as paramount. It is of course the so called private sphere, though, where the patriarchy operates largely unbounded. From domestic abuse, to rape, to being pressured to do the majority of the chores and childrearing, there are many problems that the government is simply unable to address with a liberal respect for the private sphere. It is a space where, for example, there are no witnesses and allegations boil down to word against word.Hence it is hard to prove rape allegations. I don’t know what the solution is, it’s probably not a good idea to do away with the presumption of innocence until found guilty beyond reasonable doubt, but it should probably be noted that such a system is imperfect and has in particular screwed over a lot of women. It should be recognised that the personal is often political.
– The social contract:
The whole system of government, which is able to collect taxes, create laws, and enforce them, has been defended by social contract theorists who claim that such a system is theoretically justified and philosophically valid. If the system is justified we don’t need to worry as much about revolutionising our state, we just need to tinker with it. If the system is not justified that we need to completely re-think the way our society operates. The idea of the social contract has come to us from enlightenment and pre-enlightenment guys like Thomas Hobbes, John Locke and Jean-Jaqcues Rousseau. They all had very different arguments and versions of it but the general gist is that legitimate authority of government must be derived from the consent of the governed. That is not to say that all people must agree with all decisions governments make. Rather, the theory, goes that people would and do rationally agree to abide by common rules and corresponding duties for their own good. It is in their own interest to be bound by the limits of the laws and policies of the state because of the dangers to the individual that would arise in anarchy. It is also in the individual’s interest to agree to be governed because of the necessary public goods such as infrastructure (roads, sewerage pipes, electricity lines) that would not be possible without a government. The potential gains to be had from agreeing to cooperate and be bound by the collective outweigh the cons. And so people consent to be governed.
In addition to the social contract being about rational self interest, it is also about fairness. You should follow the democratically decided upon laws because you reap the benefits of the system. You send letters in the mail, collect welfare payments, drive on publically funded roads, use public healthcare, send your kids to public school and drink water stored in publically funded dams. If you agree to use all this, then you have entered into the contract and it is only fair to live up to your end of the bargain (following the rules, pay tax etc.) in order to create a stable and functioning society. It’s kind of like being in a round of drinks; if you accept the first several free drinks, you’d be a jerk to walk off without buying the next round.
– John Rawls:
Many, including myself, see John Rawls’ philosophy as the most intellectually satisfying statement of the social contract. It puts us in a hypothetical situation called the ‘original position’ where under a ‘veil of ignorance’ we are to decide what kind of society we would like to live in. The fact that we are to give our consent for the system of government to be valid is what makes this a social contract theory (even if the consent is given in a theoretical contract). The veil of ignorance is supposed to mean we have no knowledge of our own race, religion, gender, sexuality, income, talents, tastes or preferences. By obscuring these things the veil forces us to leave them out of our answer. They should be left out because they are out of our control and hence morally irrelevant. A billionaire who knows he’s a billionaire is more likely to support a state with low taxes. A Muslim who knows she’s a Muslim is more likely to support a state run by Muslim principles. A chocolate lover is more likely to support a state where chocolate is subsidised. The veil gets rid of such bias. Rawls argues quite comprehensively that in the original position, all people would be governed by reason and end up choosing the same kind of society. This society is pretty much an idealised version of an egalitarian liberal or social democracy. Basic liberties are respected in full but at the same time economic inequalities are not looked upon well and great effort must be given to improving the lot of the worst off. Although I can’t say that Rawls’ principles and pattern of justice are necessarily objectively correct, to value fairness, equality and liberty seems like a good place to start.
– Cultural relativism:
Rawls in his later life held that his principles of justice were valid for western liberal democracies but he largely gave up on the idea of global justice. He thought that in the original position westerners would choose what he described but there are so many reasonable differences between cultures in basic outlook and fundamental philosophy that maybe, even in the original position, people from another part of the world would choose a different society. This brings us to the topic of cultural relativism. Do principles of justice apply globally or is what’s right for one society, and culture, different from what is right for another?
Maybe things like same sex marriage are right in western countries where we profess to recognise equality (and we have to be held to account to our own professed principles) but maybe in places like Saudi Arabia where equality might not be seen to be as important as other ideals, same sex marriage isn’t necessarily right. This obviously contradicts ideas of universal human rights and so you have to make a choice here, as to whether you respect the culture and norms of other places or you choose to stand up for universal ideals.
– Adam Smith’s impartial spectator:
The choice, though, might not be as stark as ‘let other cultures get away with whatever they want’ or ‘enforce your beliefs on others like an imperialist’. Most people think of Adam Smith as the founder of economics but in fact he was a Professor of philosophy at the University of Glasgow. He laid the fundamental philosophical tracks for modern economics for sure (his Wealth of Nations was published in 1776; isn’t it funny that both capitalism and the United States of America were born in the same year!?). Yet he also wrote on other topics including morality. One of his main contributions is the idea of an impartial spectator. Amartya Sen contends that we cannot assume other cultures have it totally right for themselves and let them get away with whatever system they have. Groups of people often succumb to parochialism and especially if everybody else is leaving you alone and ‘respecting you’, it would be easy to overlook valuable insights that may have occurred in other cultures by other people. Of course we cannot go in guns blazing George W. Bush style and enforce our own beliefs on everybody else either. But what should be encouraged is playing the role of an impartial spectator; one who has nothing to lose or gain personally either way but who can reasonably give insights which may lead to improvements in the societal arrangements of others. And obviously in the same way we should welcome insights from other cultures as we continuously look to improve the way we structure our own world.
Stay tuned for part 6, my conclusion.
Elliot Brice's musings. 