When bad people say good things
The immoral mind at work
Over at The New Republic, resident philosopher Damon Linker tackles an important question: can evil people say intelligent things?
The case in question is a recent screed against watershed philosopher-cum-Nazi Martin Heidegger. According to Linker, the essay in question makes the mistake of conflating worthwhile ideas with disdainful politics:
But moral disgust does not relieve a reader–let alone a critic–of the burden of intellectual engagement.
[. . .]
Yet even if distinguishing between Heidegger’s philosophy and his politics were as impossible as Romano (and Faye) would have us believe, that still would not justify excluding Heidegger’s thought from serious reflection, study, and a place in the university. On the contrary, it would serve as an additional reason to wrestle with the challenge it poses.
To some extent, the debate is academic. Heidegger is unlikely to become “the butt of jokes, not the subject of dissertations,” as stated by the essay to which Linker reacts. He’ll probably stick around as a fraught figure, studied seriously by philosophers on both sides of the Atlantic, and criticized by some subset of the same group as well as the educated public. The status quo will hold.
What’s really at stake is whether a consummately evil life (one more evil than Heidegger’s, for example) can produce something worth reading and studying. We can debate about whether Heidegger clears the bar, but only after we determine if there’s a bar at all.
My ancient Greek wedding
Does the history of ancient Greece tell us anything about the modern debate regarding gay marriage? No.
Emily Wilson has a book review of James Davidson’s Greek Love, a new exploration of the varieties of homosexuality in ancient Greece. I have not read the book itself (which sounds worthwhile), but the review reveals some confusion that may be typical of Liberal commentators on this issue.
Before going further, let me state for the record that I am in favor of full marriage rights for all, or the abolition of state-sanctioned marriage altogether. Good.
Wilson writes:
In short, there was no single “traditional” way to conduct same-sex relationships in ancient Greece. This fact in itself might make us leery of any claims about what a “normal” or “traditional” domestic setup might look like. Any claim about “the way things have always been” is liable to be false.
But this itself is simply false, as her own reading reveals! Davidson’s history reveals that there are indeed normalized views of love — his work shows only that there are many, many versions of tradition across Greece. There was indeed no normalized “Greek” view of homosexuality, but there certainly were customs and traditions in each city state that were no doubt powerfully prescriptive to their populations.
Wilson argues contra Foucault that “it really does not matter whether any Greeks thought of themselves as ‘gay.’” While this is surely true, in the modern context it certainly does, and the inevitability of this distinction forms the basis of the best arguments for gay marriage. WIlson has revealed only that it would be possible to think about homosexuality differently than we do now. Given that, her conclusion makes less sense:
Whatever public legitimacy was, or was not, granted to same-sex relationships in any previous culture, it would still be entirely unjust, within the terms of our own society, to deny homosexual couples the legal status available to heterosexual relationships.
Wilson is walking the fine line trodden by many historians and sociologists. Wilson’s conclusion is an explicit value judgment which is grounded in her own time and place and, of course, her Liberal values. However, the sweep of history reveals in no way that gay marriage should be justified, or even that it has been — that argument, which again I agree with, should be rooted in universal values. Davidson’s excellent history should be left to stand on its own, without a modern political agenda which it cannot support.
-John
Are guns covered in the public option?
Is violence the antithesis of democratic government–or at the heart of it?
Writing about the sudden presence of guns outside healthcare town halls, E.J. Dionne suggests there’s a deeper problem at stake:
There is a philosophical issue here that gets buried under the fear that so many politicians and media-types have of seeming to be out of touch with the so-called American heartland.
The simple fact is that an armed citizenry is not the basis for our freedoms. Our freedoms rest on a moral consensus, enshrined in law, that in a democratic republic we work out our differences through reasoned, and sometimes raucous, argument. Free elections and open debate are not rooted in violence or the threat of violence. They are precisely the alternative to violence, and guns have no place in them.
Dionne’s portrayal of democratic governance is both right and wrong. Read more
Rebuilding Athens
How much more democratic should we be?
A new Washington Monthly editorial by Paul Glastris argues that maybe the Athenian model of direct democracy wasn’t as bad as our Founding Fathers thought. Democracy has actually had a pretty bad rap until until relatively recently in human history, but a new book by Stanford classicist Josiah Ober suggests that Athens may have thrived — rather than suffered — thanks to its embrace of real citizen rule. Read more
Evaluating democracy promotion
Michael Gerson writes about the trials and travails of democracy promotion in the Middle East in today’s Washington Post. On the seeming retreat of democracy during 2006, Gerson notes:
Some American conservatives found Burkean lessons in the fading freedom agenda, asserting that democracy is a fragile flower that grows only in a rich cultural soil tended by Jeffersons and Hamiltons. Many liberals seemed relieved that President Bush didn’t seem right after all, though this involved global setbacks for political liberalism. It may seem strange that anyone should feel a thrill of vindication when the ideals of their nation appear to falter. But let us judge not, that we be not judged.
The “Burkean lessons” refer to Edmund Burke, regarded as one of the great intellectual forebears of conservatism. Gerson treats Burke’s views on democracy as questions about feasibility, rather than moral ones. Yet for Burke, the critical question was more likely whether cultivation of democracy in a poor soil is simply wrong.
Burke saw attempts to radically change society and government, particularly through violence, as misguided. Societies should evolve organically and by drawing on their own rich tradition. You can’t transplant Hamiltons and Jeffersons to Iraq. They have to be there already, as well established landmarks in the cultural firmament.
It seems the key questions for democracy promotion in modern societies are:
(1) Do we have an obligation to promote democracy abroad?
(2) If yes, is it appropriate to use force?
(3) Is it possible to promote democracy successfully in all countries?
The truth is that liberals and conservatives probably agree to a large extent about these three questions.
–Sam
The originality of originalism
Conservative commentator Ramesh Ponnuru has an interesting take on judicial activism in today’s New York Times. According to Ponnuru, conservatives have become caught between identity politics and judicial activism, essentially advocating in favor of activism when it thwarts identity politics. Writes Ponnuru:
Many conservatives oppose Judge Sotomayor’s nomination because she does not appear to support originalism, the notion that legal texts, including the Constitution, should be interpreted according to the meaning that the informed public assumed them to have when they became law. We argue as well that judges should try to overcome the biases of their backgrounds in the name of self-restraint. But when it comes to the race cases before the Supreme Court, too many conservatives abandon both originalism and judicial restraint.
The Voting Rights Act decision was a case in point. Eight justices avoided weighing in on the constitutionality of the law’s requirement that certain jurisdictions, mostly in the South, get Justice Department permission before making any changes to election procedures. Instead they ruled that a utility district in Texas that wanted to be freed from the provision should have an opportunity to try.
But Justice Clarence Thomas went further, declaring the provision unconstitutional. Congress, he argued, was justified in the 1960s in responding to the denial of the voting rights guaranteed by the 15th Amendment, but things have changed and the provision is no longer needed.
Justice Thomas is, in my view, right to consider the law outdated. But is that really for him to say? Congress is the proper body to make that judgment.
What I have always found curious about originalism is that it’s an approach to historical texts somewhat opposite to one prominent view in academic circles. Led by Cambridge scholar Quentin Skinner, many intellectual historians have disposed of the idea that historical documents — even constitutions — have any significant meaning outside of their immediate social and political contexts. (An interesting interview with Skinner that addresses some of these issues can be found here).
This is to go further than even many non-originalists, who would say that the Constitution is a living document. Instead, it is to say, as would originalists, that the Constitution is fixed. But it is to then add further that the Constitution — being fixed — is no longer relevant to our present circumstances. That is a conclusion some originalists mind well find profane.
–Sam
When may people disobey?
Iran, obligation and legitimacy
One question related to Marc’s post on the legitimacy of antigovernment violence in Iran is the reach of what scholars would call “political obligation.” As Marc describes, one central issue is how antistate violence can be directed in response to oppression. A prior consideration, however, is when any kind of civil disobedience is justified at all. Based on Marc’s calculation, political bonds dissolve when government agents stop governing and begin oppressing.
But where is that line and when does government cross it? This is actually a driving question for some of the earliest philosophers of modern politics. People like Hobbes, Locke and Rousseau were centrally interested in why people should obey government and when it was allowed — if ever — to disobey the ruling authorities.
Founder philosophizing
The National Review‘s Jon Miller interviews scholar Jeffry Morrison, author of The Political Philosophy of George Washington:
MILLER: In addition to Christianity and Cato, what are the other sources of Washington’s political thought?
MORRISON: The classical republicanism of ancient Greece and especially Rome, British Enlightenment liberalism (featuring John Locke), and Protestant Christianity were the three main ideologies that helped form not only Washington but also his peers during the Founding. Of course experience was a great teacher too: You see him change his mind on slavery, for example, based partly on his experience in the North. American colonial development and history also influenced him.
-Sam
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