Authenticity and Identity

If authenticity is to be a guiding moral ideal, we must have some notion of what a self is and how to identify who we really are. Introspection, by all accounts, is inadequate, even misleading. There are three basic approaches:

1. The existential option: We may observe the narratival pattern of our lives thus far and creatively extend it, calling future actions authentic when they help produce a coherent narrative.

2. The revelatory option: We may depend on Scripture to tell us who we are and what is consistent with so being.

3. The dialectical option: We may enact what appears to us to be our values in order to discover whether they are truly our values.

The existential option does not require there to be any pre-existing fact of the matter as to what we are. We create a self from our actions, and so long as they cohere we can call our actions authentic. Only conflicting actions--ones which pull the narrative flow of our lives in different directions--can be called inauthentic. Which action is inauthentic in such a case, moreover, cannot always be determined beforehand. It may be that narratival unity can be preserved by disowning either action, in which case authenticity will not guide one's choice. In other cases, one action stands out against the backdrop of one's life as out of place.

The revelatory option has a major flaw as an account of authenticity for anyone who cares about the usual conception of authenticity. If we look solely to Scripture, then what is revealed about us is not individual. Each of us is shown to be the same so far as Scripture's account of our deep nature goes: sinners in need of redemption, created in the image of God, and so on. Nowhere does it say what I, now, in my particular situation, am to do with my unique self. It provides bounds and principles, of course, but that does not fit with the main point of an ideal of authenticity.

The dialectical option is essentially an experimental approach to authenticity. On this account, we have a deep nature which is revealed in situations. We discover who we are by doing things and seeing how they turn out for us. This is very similar to the existential option, except it presumes that there is some pre-existing fact of the matter about who we are, so that we can be true to ourselves or not. Yet, this fact is concealed from us and only comes to light as we act on what we seem to know about ourselves thus far. There is thus an interpretive spiral regarding ourselves on this view. We start with some view of ourselves, act on it, then alter our view in accordance with what our actions expose about ourselves--our talents, desires, values, abilities, etc. We repeat this over the course of our lives, changing course a little bit with every action. Each account of ourselves being merely a hypothesis to be tried or theory in the works.

It will come as no surprise that I think elements of each of these three views are correct. Scripture does reveal who we truly are, and if we are to be true to ourselves we must, minimally, be true to the nature we share with all humanity. To get a fuller picture of ourselves to be authentic to, however, we must observe ourselves. We must observe what we have shown ourselves to care about and the traditions out of which we live. We should ask how we see someone with this life history going on to live, interpreting our life histories--which extend to before our births, to family histories and traditions of thought--through the lens of Scripture. We should then live into a preliminary picture of who we appear to be, ready to change course as it becomes apparent, whether through our own dissatisfaction or the advice of others, that the course we are on does not fit us.

Relations in Nature

I am half inclined to start by just gesturing toward Merleau-Ponty and various articles which have made similar points. There is more I want to say than they say, however.

First, the external conception of nature is the notion of nature as a bunch of particles combining in various ways, governed by various laws. This is all well and good. The notion goes on to view everything as reducible to the particles which each have a nature of its own, independent of other particles. Some people hold this kind of view in some domains but not others, but my concern here is with the trajectory of this sort of view.

First off, we are part of nature. We are thus equally subject to these laws of nature. This gives rise to psychological experimentation on motivation and grit, which, again, I am not against. The problem in this realm arises when we start treating ourselves as things. That is, when we start treating our problems as engineering problems, where we expect a five step troubleshooting plan to solve our issues. Most self-help falls into this category, as do many blog posts. Life becomes skill, rather than wisdom.

Next, nature becomes something to control. It is resource, problem, or solution. By viewing its parts as external to each other, we fail to recognize the dynamic systems which occur in nature, and imagine instead that we can simply engineer our way to a world built for ourselves.

By now it should be clear how nature is not related externally to itself. Nature is full of systems, from atoms to electrical circuits to the weather to the solar system, there are an immense variety of interlocking facets, where each part reacts to a change in every other part. By disrupting these systems beyond their capacity to accommodate change, we discover that nature is not infinitely resilient, but is constructed to resist us should we play god too far.

At this point it may be good to try to articulate a little more of what we might call gestalt metaphysics. A gestalt is a form. However, particularly in Merleau-Ponty's usage, a gestalt is a dynamic form. A system which holds together, accommodates changes, and maintains itself to some degree. Merleau-Ponty's definition holds that a gestalt occurs where each part depends for its properties on every other part (if I remember correctly). What I have been trying to sketch in these posts is the view that much of what we think of as independent of its surroundings actually exists in a gestalt and contributes the form of that gestalt. Our social institutions form a system which holds together and accommodates changes to some extent, sometimes reacting against threats whether we notice or not. Social groups collect in a way such that they can sustain themselves without much effort from participants. Even with means/end relations, the meaning of an action depends on the situation which provides the background against which the action appears as any particular action, and thus the action depends on its situation to be the action it is.

Society as Organism

The following is essentially a restatement of Hegel's views on society modulated through my own metaphysical views (which are, themselves, heavily influenced by Hegel).

The relation of people to society or each other can likewise often be thought of as an external relation. Each individual is thought of as a unit, in principle independent of others, free to define him or herself however he or she chooses. This lies behind our notion of how democracy should operate, the capitalist notion of freedom of exchange, and much of our obsession with personal freedoms.

Let me try to trace the ligaments of this a little more. On this model, each person is ontologically independent of others. One is who one is solely because of one's own decisions. Perhaps, of course, one's environment has shaped one, one's particular body has given one certain skills or impediments, but none of this is supposed to come into who one is. One is supposed to be externally related to all of these factors. You are supposed to be an individual, independent of your past. In principle, then, who you are cannot be essentially related to your community or any other obviously contingent facts about one's concrete existence. You must be free, then, to create yourself--and, indeed, reality--however you like.

But your creation is your own creation. It is therefore distinct from that of others, even unique. No one can understand the real you because you are not accessible through the cultural medium you express yourself in. Any mode of expression must be felt as inadequate because it expresses one as in a particular culture in a particular time, not as a free and independent individual. One thus inevitably becomes lonely, since one cannot express oneself in a manner which will feel adequate to one's self conception, and thus one cannot feel known in one's expression.

There are two attitudes one may take to these individuals. They may be basically good or basically bad. In the former case, restrictions on expression must be bad, and must therefore be done away with. In the latter case, the individuals must be restrained from hurting themselves. Generally, the view will be mixed, but this only means that the individuals will be treated as alternately a source of good potential to be harnessed and a danger to be restrained. The relation of government to people will thus be felt as that of regulation. There will be only either the imposition of restraints, whether for our own good or not, and the removal of such restraints, either for our good or to our harm.

Once we are independent individuals, we lose the communal ties which bound us together and provided a rich web of connections such that we could discuss issues civilly with other whom we respected independently of the particular issues. Overlapping communities provided ways of expressing ourselves which others in those communities could understand, but depended on the assumption that culturally situated modes of expression could adequately express us. As individuals, we seem to have lost that belief. We experience ourselves as beyond our cultures.

Still, however we may act, we are related to each other internally. I mentioned some about how men and women are internally related, although I cannot flesh that out thoroughly. We are also internally related to society in that our ways of experiencing the world are picked up from others. We understand ourselves in relation to others or not at all. We cannot find ourselves without recognizing ourselves in the world. This is way going out into the world to find oneself is such a strange idea. You are far more likely to discover who you are by examining how you came to views you hold, by tracing the threads which make up your life, and by acknowledging your socially situated perspective. This need not make one less confident of one's views, although it should make one a little more circumspect about rejecting others' views out of hand, but should rather give one a greater ability to articulate what draws one to one's views, what fallacies one might be making, and thus make one more confident that one has thought through one's views well.

Because we are internally related to others in society we are stuck with group affiliations, however much we may deny them. These groups metastasize into factions and oppose each other because each claims to be independent. Each faction wants to be seen as made up simply of free independent people who think rightly. Neither faction, therefore, can stand the other. This results in something like war, where neither side can recognize the other as right thinking, but winds up dehumanizing the other.

I have already said something about how thinking of ourselves as internally related to society and to each other may work itself out, but let me develop it a bit more. First off, we should think of society on the model of an organism, rather than on the model of a contract of people. This is a rather biblical notion of society, in that the Bible expresses often that the Church is a body made of many members who perform different functions. In society, too, there are many sorts of people, and not all have the same talents and skills. Not all have the same cultural background. If we want genuine diversity, we will need to find some way to allow for cultural situatedness to have a substantial role in society, to be validated. Hegel works this out be arguing for a form of government where different kinds of workers have different relations to government. I doubt that would be quite right. What I find intriguing, however, is his idea that each group, rather than geographical locale, should be represented. The details of how this might work today are, however, obscure.

The notion of society as an organism should help us discuss issues which disproportionately affect one class or one kind of worker. By articulating how our nation holds together organically, we can start to picture why all of the nation should care about parts of the nation, and thereby help move us to a place where we all care what other groups think, rather than hiding away in our own groups which we deny are groups.

The Means/End Relation

In this post I will likely be drawing more than I know from Alasdair MacIntyre's After Virtue. I will also be drawing from others, however. The aim is to show how we think of the means/end relation as external, how that works out in practice, how it is an inaccurate way of thinking of the relation, and how we should think instead.

First, what does it mean for the means/end relation to be external? It would mean that any action we might do is only externally, contingently related to its effects. Such a conception can work out in one of two main ways. Either it is only the thought that counts, and what happens from there is inconsequential, or the actions are evaluated solely in terms of their effects. There are also middle grounds, where the intentions are weighed against the consequences.

This lies behind a particular kind of reasoning, called calculative reasoning, where I act for the sake of some goal in such a way that I select my aims simply to achieve the goal. The means do not matter so long as they achieve the maximum of the specified goal, whatever that goal might be. It also lies behind a particular kind of justification or excuse, where one apologizes only for the effects, refusing to accept that one may have done something really wrong because one "didn't mean it."

If I understand contemporary critiques of capitalism, they tend to rely on a critique of calculative reasoning, whereby this kind of external relation of goals to means whereby we seek to achieve them results in a flattening of the moral imagination and of the kinds of goods we can be sensitive to. Money becomes the symbol of commensurable values, and thus money gain is to be maximized at any cost. This results in the loss of non-monetizable goods, such as community and virtue. My point in bringing this up is that it won't be enough to shift away from seeing money as the medium of exchange of all values, thereby excluding non-monetizable goods, but the underlying problem is calculative reasoning about goods.

What, then, would it look like to think of the means/end relation as an internal relation? MacIntyre talks about goods internal to practices, where the good one is after is inseparable from the practice. The fun one has playing chess is inseparable from actually playing chess, as his famous example goes. This can be extended, however. The Hegelian way of articulating this is to talk of the means as the end in motion, or the end as the means at rest. In this way of thinking, the means have to fit the end, they have to be fulfilled by the end. The kind of action which the means is has to be the sort of thing which can come to rest in the end, the kind of behavior which will not tend to extend itself beyond the intended consequences. Similarly, the intent has to become embodied in action which aptly expresses it and brings it to fulfillment. One cannot sacrifice one's goal in pursuit of one's goal, in other words. One cannot oppress others for the sake of freedom or vote for a vicious person in order to preserve virtue.

Relations Internal and External

In this post I want to try to explain the concepts of internally related and externally related things and how they differ.

When two things are internally related, understanding one requires understanding the other. If two concepts are internally related, then one simply cannot really understand one of the concepts without understanding the other. Black and white, male and female, up and down, are all cases of internally related concepts, in this case, related via opposition. Some things are internally related in other ways, however. A tree and the seed from which it sprouted or the seed it spawned are internally related in that one does not really understand a tree without understanding the life cycle of a tree. Male and female are internally related not only by contrasting, but by being formed in such a way that their organs go together in a natural manner. One cannot understand manhood apart from womanhood not only because manhood excludes womanhood but because manhood presupposes womanhood for its subsistence.

When two things are externally related, they exist simply alongside each other. They may be related, as when an apple rests on a desk, but they are so only contingently. It is extraneous to what they are that they are related. A finger and the hammer which hits it are externally related. I do not need to understand anything about a hammer to understand a finger, nor a finger to understand a hammer. A world without hammers could have fingers in just the same way as ours does (granted, not having fingers might alter how we constructed hammers, but I think the point is clear).

There are a variety of phenomena which are internally related but which we have been trained to think of as externally related. The means/end relation is one, the relation of people to society is another, and the relations of various parts of nature is a third. I will spend a post analyzing how thinking of these as external relations works itself out, why they are actually internally related and what that means in each case, and at least a gesture in the direction of how thinking about them correctly might work out.

Forms of Cultural Critique

There are three main ways of critiquing a culture. The most obvious way is to critique the actual institutions which operate in the culture. The next way of critiquing a culture is to critique how people talk about and argue for positions in the culture. Finally, one may critique how the way people talk about and argue for positions impacts how and what institutions are formed and operate.

If we critique a culture solely by critiquing the institutions which operate in it, we run into the problem that we must presuppose that some institutions are good and others bad. Perhaps democracy is good or private property is bad, but in either case the critique is performed in terms alien to the culture under critique. This is the form of critique at work when we object to institutions in terms of their results. It is a valid form of critique, but only where the presupposed good is a generally shared good.

The next way of critiquing culture is to focus on what are called discourses of legitimation, that is, the language in which claims are accepted as valid or invalid. This is the way of talking about and arguing for claims which is dominant and which all arguments must fit in order to be taken seriously. In this manner of critique, it is possible to uncover tensions in the discourse itself, ways in which its terms presuppose conflicting claims. This will not always be the case, however. A form of discourse can be bad without being inconsistent. Incidentally, this is a claim not taken seriously enough by presuppositionalist apologists.

The problem with this second mode of discourse is that it does not engage social reality. It stops at the level of terms, and fails to make the case for why the terms we use matter. It is, after all, at least possible that two different discourses might lead one to the same results, and so long as nothing too bad happens, it seems, no harm no foul.

The final mode of cultural critique manages to connect the previous two. In this mode, we articulate how the discourse gives rise to the institutions, and then how the institutions and their results fail to measure up by the lights of the language of legitimation used. We can also do a reverse form of this mode of critique, often referred to as genealogy, where we articulate how the discourse of legitimation arose from concrete institutions, in order to come to terms with the inadequacies of a previous language of legitimation and the institutions it gave rise to. Each discourse of legitimation, then, gives rise to a new set of insufficient institutions which then sets it to change into a new discourse of legitimation designed to rectify its old failings. This is one way of appropriating the Hegelian dialectic in our day.

Critique in this final mode attempts to expose people to how the way they are talking about their problems is giving rise to new problems or failing to rectify their situation. To be successful, it cannot simply show how policies give rise to the problem, but must show how our way of talking gives rise to policies which it either cannot accept or which can be clearly seen to give rise to problems which the discourse of legitimation is designed to solve. The critique needs to do this in such a way that the answer cannot simply be to claim that the discourse would work with better knowledge or better understanding, that is, the critique must show that these failures are not contingent but part of how the discourse works.

Fulfillment

The notion which provides the title for this post finds use in a rather wide spread of "western" thought. Whether or not it finds use outside of thought which the West has drawn from, I cannot say. There are two distinct sources which come into understanding this notion: one is the Aristotelian concept of the fulfillment of a telos, the other is the Biblical concept of fulfillment of a prophetic theme. These are connected concepts, but not identical.

The Aristotelian concept of fulfillment is that of satisfaction. A fulfills something (a telos or desire) B if, and only if, B had specified A, or an item with property P where A has P, as its condition of satisfaction. Thus, a desire for something sweet can be satisfied by chocolate because chocolate is sweet, although a desire for chocolate cannot be satisfied by candy corn. On this notion of fulfillment, something can only be the fulfillment of a desire or something else which has a telos, and can only do so by meeting that telos. A human can only be fulfilled, in this sense, by becoming all that a human is supposed to be, by fulfilling the human telos, by matching the goal specified by one's human nature. One cannot fulfill the telos of a being by altering the underlying nature, for then one is simply altering the being to be a different being. Turning a human into a giraffe does not change the telos of the same being, but eliminates one being and brings another into existence, and this is precisely because the telos changes so fundamentally.

The Biblical concept of fulfillment is similar, but different. It is evident that Biblical fulfillment can apply to things which do not possess inherent teloi, or can apply to things which possess inherent teloi without satisfying their surface level satisfaction conditions. Thus, Jesus can fulfill the law while, on the face of it, breaking the Sabbath. This is because the Biblical concept of fulfillment is a narrative-based concept. To fulfill something in this sense is to bring the story of which it is a part to completion in such a way that the part one is fulfilling is evidenced as important to the plot. This variety of fulfillment not only brings an underlying pervasive telos to satisfaction, but draws together the narrative threads which pointed to it and exhibits them in such a way as to accomplish their sense. The Biblical concept thus adds a narrative component which is lacking in the Aristotelian desire satisfaction account. The Biblical concept does not specify that it is the essence of a thing which specifies the telos to be satisfied, however. This is not to say that the Bible excludes that possibility, it simply does not tend to operate in terms of essences and teloi so much as narratives.

Hegel's reinterpretation of Christianity and drawing of the Creation-Fall-Redemption cycle together with an expressive account of reality brings the Biblical concept into philosophy and begins to unify the Aristotelian and Biblical concepts, but I find the existentialist account of action brings these two concepts together more clearly. Ironically, we can see this most clearly in thinkers like Sartre and Merleau-Ponty whose metaphysics generally seem opposed to Christian metaphysics. Sartre emphasizes that we lay down a past behind us, a sediment as it were, which makes us a certain way which we never at the same time are. One's past defines one, in a way, that is, one's objective being is only how one has been in appearance, yet that appearance cannot limit you. Sartre is opposed to a narrative construal of life, yet emphasizes the way that my past can only be understood in light of the future it gave rise to--if one finds oneself weeping over one's faults, this may be a moment of repentance or of weakness, depending on what one does from there. One's sincerity or insincerity can only be ascertained--only holds, even--in light of how one lives from there.

Merleau-Ponty is more sympathetic to a narrative understanding of life. His thought operates in terms of Gestalts. That is, he thinks in terms of wholes which are composed of parts in dynamic relation to each other. In this way of thinking, the whole can only be understood in terms of its parts and vice-versa. Applied to a life as a whole, then, there is a kind of unity which is to be attained, and that unity is a unity which must be constructed by living in such a way that one's life forms a narrative whole. For Merleau-Ponty as for Sartre this narrative whole does not pre-exist our construction of it, but unlike Sartre, the narrative has validity to it. One's past thus makes a certain demand on one's present and future to be such that the whole life forms a unified whole and not merely a set of moments one outside the other, as Sartre seems to claim all lives essentially are.

This narrative notion of life as being such that it ought to be unified presses us towards a Biblical concept of fulfillment. Yet Merleau-Ponty has not abandoned the Aristotelian concept, either. The essence has been replaced by a dynamic of forces which seek equilibrium and that equilibrium specifies a telos. This is a telos of self-maintenance, but self-maintenance as the kind of being one is, and thus this notion draws in the narrative concept of fulfillment because it endorses Sartre's idea of sedimentation. If we sediment ourselves, then that becomes part of who we are which must be maintained, any break with it must itself have a place in the narrative unity we are making of our lives.

From this vantage point, there is another kind of fulfillment which we can make out in the Bible. I do not think it is ever called fulfillment, but it is, itself, fulfilled in light of this concept of fulfillment I am drawing out here. Take the story of Abraham and Isaac or the story of Job, or really any of the stories which mirror Christ's cycle of life, death, and resurrection. In all of these stories, an inner reality is expressed, sedimented, proved. Abraham's faith is proven to the highest extent, it is given opportunity to express itself and sediment itself as a part of his life. Job's faith, likewise, is expressed in his life in a way it could not have been otherwise. In these stories we find God desiring to make evident what is only visible to himself. Even in Creation we see God wanting to make himself visible to others. Abraham fulfills his faith by offering his son. Job fulfills his faith by holding fast to God in suffering. In this way, we can see these events as generous gifts of God both to those who went through the trials and to us. For them, they are fulfilled by fulfilling who they have become in a hidden manner. For us, we are granted to see what only God could see before.

There is a general principle which I draw from all this: whatever exists is proven to exist in the way it exists. This can be applied as a principle of metaphysics, epistemology, or value-theory. What is good is proven good, what is real is proven real. The notion of proof here is correlative to the notion of fulfillment. I could equally say: whatever exists is fulfilled. This is a very Hegelian claim, but it does not require the rest of Hegel's metaphysics, and fits well with existentialist thought as well as Christian thought about the eschaton, when Christ will be proven Lord of all and all things will be made right.

This does not mean that it is fulfilled in the straightforward Aristotelian manner. It does not mean that everyone will one day have their telos satisfied completely. Rather, there is a narrative dimension which also applies. Those of us who have faith in Christ, who participate in his death and therefore also in his life, will be fulfilled in our narrative and fulfill the narrative which Christ has lived ahead of us. Yet this ending which we look forward to is tied to the life, death, and resurrection of Christ, and that narrative must be made our own. This is not to say that we must act perfectly like Christ or forego Christ's ending, but it does mean that we must recognize our lives as narratives in his mold. We can only claim our lives as of our own writing in ways which we also live as moments, not of sincerity, but of weakness. Our sins must take a particular role in our narratives, and Christ must take his place as Lord of our lives. The unrighteous, on the other hand, will receive their due punishment in order that their actions may form a narrative which fulfills the nature of injustice. If this attempt at explaining how this principle does not give rise to universalism makes little sense, do not worry. It is a single paragraph tackling a subject on which books are written.

Out of the Echo Chamber Wars

I noted in the previous post that our present predicament bears some similarities to Hegel's master-slave dialectic in his Phenomenology of Spirit. In this post, I want to use that as a clue to how we might expect our cultural development to go from here. However, having taken time to examine that region of the Phenomenology of Spirit a little bit more, it turns out that Hegel later discusses a phenomenon closer to our own culture, and so we will examine that discussion, not the master-slave dialectic. We will also discuss Hegel's account of the French Revolution and Terror. It is noting, however, that the feature which all of these share, that is, that of hostility between groups which each want unilateral recognition, is based, in both cases, on a desire for independence which does not permit mediated independence.

The sections we are interested in to begin with are  labeled (in my copy) The  Law of the Heart, and the Frenzy of Self-Conceit (C.V.B.b., pp.209-15) and Absolute Freedom and Terror (C.VI.III., pp.343-50). First, I want to show how this section matches our current predicament, then I want to examine whether Hegel's account of this phase's transition can be made sense of from where we are. Be warned that I find these sections difficult, and will be relying somewhat on Charles Taylor's reading in his Hegel (Ch.V.3.II., and Ch.VI.2., pp.163-7, 184-188). Even with such aid, however, I may not be able to make this as clear as I would like.

Taylor sets the stage as one where self-consciousness wants to recognize itself in the state, and believes itself to be naturally good and the world to be at its service. Thus, it wants to reform the state in its own image. This natural goodness, however, means that it thinks that the problem is law itself. Thus, it finds laws, generally, to be bad. For this reason, self-consciousness cannot, here, stop trying to reform the law and finds any law it passes to be an alien imposition upon it again. What one generation reforms the state into, the next (if both are in this stage) reforms it back out of. This comes out especially in Hegel's discussion of the French Revolution:

This process is consequently the interaction of consciousness with itself, in which it lets nothing break away and assume the shape of a determinate object standing over against it. It follows from this, that it cannot arrive at a positive accomplishment of anything, either in the way of universal works of language or of those of actual reality, either in the shape of laws and universal regulations of conscious freedom, or of deeds and works of active freedom.

Now, Hegel describes how get conflict from here:

Hence others find in this content not the law of their heart fulfilled, but rather that of someone else; and precisely in accordance with the universal law, that each is to find his own heart in what is law, they turn against that reality which he set up, just as he on his side turned against theirs. (p.212, emphasis in original)

And, in the case of the French Terror:

Universal freedom can thus produce neither o positive achievement nor a deed; there is left for it only negative action; it is merely the rage and fury of destruction. (p.346)

The government is itself nothing but the self-established focus, the individual embodiment of the universal will. ... By no manner of means, therefore, can it exhibit itself as anything but a faction. The victorious faction only is called the government; and just in that it is a faction lies the direct necessity of its overthrow; (p.347)

Because the government is a faction, it is guilty, and thus cannot prove the guilt of its opposition, thus,

Being suspected, therefore, takes the place, or has the significance and effect,  of being guilty; and the external reaction against this reality that lies in bare inward intention, consists in the arid barren destruction of this particular existent self, (ibid.)

And towards the end of Hegel's analysis (after discussing how this stage goes crazy):

The universal here presented, therefore, is only a universal resistance and struggle of all against one another. ... What appears as public ordinance is thus this state of war of each against all.  (p.215)

I have now presented the two contradictions in the opposite order to Taylor (and Hegel). Taylor follows his explanation of these two contradictions with the shift which they require:

If the world order is the law of all hearts, then it can be considered as potentially capable of expressing the universal. What it would require on this view would be simply to be purged of individual self-seeking. (pp.165-6)

Because the source of the problem here is holding to one's own individuality, the next phase is a stage of self-denial. As I cannot yet make sense of Hegel himself in this following section, we will deal with Taylor here.

The peculiar feature of this kind of phase is man's sense of his own unworthiness, his apologizing for his existence, and his attempt to suppress his particularity, and become nothing but universal will. (p.166)

If Taylor's reading of Hegel is right, and if our era is sufficiently like the previous phase, then a Hegelian prediction for our future would be that we will transition into this self-denying phase. What could this look like? I think we already see this developing in a concern with "checking one's privilege" and avoiding assimilating other cultural expressions for fear that we will do so in an offensive manner. It shows up in other ways as well, but the general direction is towards putting oneself and one's own group down. This may also account for the amount of depression if we take depression to be internalized anger, anger with oneself. This is strongest in groups which form a majority, but I suspect it spreads to other groups, and most people are part of some kind of majority.

However, this takes self-consciousness on a road to a Kantian philosophy of duty. This is a duty which can never be fulfilled, because its fulfillment would be its end. Just as our current attempts at being authentic tend to involve seeking to be different from others, this kind of duty seeks to do the duties because they are duties and not because that is how we can be true to ourselves. What is needed is an account where being true to oneself and doing one's duty, as one is called to it by one's society, can come together, and thus where one can attain both true authenticity and fulfill one's duty. The Kantian account divides happiness from duty, whereas the account Hegel is driving at has it that our ultimate fulfillment is a fulfillment of duty, happiness is found in doing what is truly one's duty.

Because of this contradiction, we come around to a Romantic notion which holds to a moral intuition which is divided into a virtue-signaling speaker and a confidently active person who fails to attain to a genuine universal, who is thus charged with hypocrisy by the virtue-signaler who is likewise a hypocrite. Each is confident that it is in harmony with the universal, but they are still operating from intuition, not reason. They hold their views as a kind of divine revelation through intuition of the divine mind, but not one which can be thought, rather, it is only felt. This phase finally ends in a reconciliation between the two parties, and seems to complete the development of political culture in Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit. Perhaps there are other hints as to directions of development elsewhere, and we should certainly be open to the possibilities that Hegel may easily have gotten things wrong, missed stages, or failed to recognize a continuation.

This is not an entirely optimistic bit of futurology, but this discussion also does not bring us to the end of the line. We can hope that it is a short lived phase, and that we get to a decent stage before too long. Or we can hope that we take a good long time getting there, for the following one appears to be coming, one of letting the intention count for everything, on the one hand, and a struggle over what our actions mean on the other, which goes along with the Romantic phase I briefly noted above. This already appears, in our development, tied up both with entitlement and with the fear of appropriation just noted. It is a long road out if Hegel is correct and if we do not speed up.

It is worth noting that this account has twists and turns. On this account, we are not doomed to go farther and farther in the direction we are now going. I have not articulated how these twists might actually impact those trends which we are currently concerned about, but there are glimpses of hope for concerns about entitlement, linguistic tyranny, and, I think, racism.

A small note on race and Hegel. Hegel can look quite racist, and I wouldn't deny that he is, in fact, racist. However, his account of slavery's position in history and the development of consciousness does not validate slavery or racism in the end, although it grants it a position in the development of a people. Hegel would say a similar thing about the French Terror. The various iterations of master-slave-type dialectics can be seen as transitions enabling a previously hierarchized relation to reach equality. This is, roughly, how I see Marx appropriating the master-slave dialectic in economic relations. Thus, our present transition through extreme opposition may be seen, from a Hegelian standpoint, as a stage in racial reconciliation.

I should also note that I am not completely sold on Hegel's philosophy. I find it intriguing, and an interesting tool for thinking through these things and gaining a new perspective on them. It is worth trying to see how well what Hegel would say fits with where we are, and how much we might be able to use to make better progress. 

No, We Are Not Postmodern

The notion that we live in a postmodern world is bandied about, still. Primarily, I come across it among conservatives, political and theological, who tend to mean something about our culture not caring about truth or believing that truth is relative.

Perhaps there are some circles where the concept of postmodernism is applicable. Perhaps it is even clear what postmodernism is. I doubt it holds of American culture broadly. If it does hold, it holds more among conservatives themselves than liberals.

First of all, my argument is not that we actually tend to attain truth, nor that we actually act like we care about truth, but that we would claim to care about truth and claim to aim at it. Further, there are some postmodernist claims which we completely disavow. Yet there is continuity with postmodernism. We used to be more postmodern, but things have changed. It was a phase of which we retain a residue.

The very use of the terms "Post-Truth" and "Fake News" expose, not a lack of concern with truth, but a massive concern with truth, a weaponized concern with truth. Truth cannot be relative in the stereotypical postmodern sense without making these terms incoherent. These terms do not claim that the other side's news is true for them but not for the speaker, rather, it claims that the other side's news is false and usually suggests that the news is maliciously false (whether by intending to be false or maliciously being unconcerned with whether or not it is true). What we do not do, however, is claim that this is good or right.

The use of the term "Fake News" is also incompatible with a radical postmodern take on interpretation which would hold that there are no facts, only infinitely questionable interpretations. We do not claim that the news we call fake is merely an interpretation which is equally possible if one approaches with particular presuppositions; rather, we claim that they are accounts of matters of fact which get things wrong. We object, not only to what we take to be false factual claims, but to what we take to be unjustified interpretations. The postmodern instinct, on the other hand, is suspicious of claims about facts, being extremely aware of how statistics can lie, likely to a fault.

The belief that there is a "right side of history" or that America or a particular ideology is destined for greatness collides head on with the postmodern suspicion of metanarratives. Metanarratives being just such claims about history having a purpose, an overarching structure which gives historical action meaning and our actions meaning in historical perspective.

This shift has come about gradually, and there is important continuity with postmodernism here. We are strongly aware of the sociology of knowledge, that is, how our social groups set up plausibility structures and provide claims as to what can count as knowledge. This underlies the concern with bubbles and echo chambers. We are also aware of a need to listen to and understand those who disagree with us, which at least points in the direction of needing to be aware of each others' presuppositions in order to understand and communicate with each other across ideological lines.

The shift we have undergone is one which moves us from an individualistic way of securing certainty and tolerance by blocking argument to a communal way of doing so. Instead of individually trying to hold off arguments by denying that truths of certain kinds can reasonably be argued for, we form cultures which deny the possibility of any sane argument for certain claims, and regard all arguments for such claims as insane in some form, often maliciously so. Instead of individually demanding tolerance for our views, we merely isolate ourselves to groups of people who do tolerate our views and keep at arms length those who do not tolerate our views.

This shift has occurred because we want our truth claims to be recognized--again, the sociology of knowledge ideas which postmodern theorists largely popularized. In order to gain recognition for our truths, we need groups which will recognize those truths as truths. But we have also retained the desire to avoid needing to argue carefully for our views in response to all-comers. We are uncomfortable with argument, perhaps largely because one of the things we have retained from the postmodern era is a suspicion of reason. The only way to gain recognition for truth claims and avoid argument (and thus gain something have the form of certainty but lacking its power) is to form echo chambers. The two desires of our era are, then, the recognition of our own truth claims and the avoidance of conflict. In some ways, the latter is an extreme manifestation of the former--conflict occurs where truth claims are not recognized. To sum it up in a single desire: we desire certainty. This, too, is opposed to what "postmodernism" is ordinarily used to mean. A true postmodernism is comfortable with uncertainty, indeed, would hold it to be our necessary condition.

This era, too, will give way. We all recognize that echo chambers are a problem and that we have produced a situation where ideologies routinely talk past each other. The challenge is to alter our desires and forms of life in such a way as to move beyond our current era. We must move beyond, rather than back to the "good old" days of modernism, because we cannot unlearn the ways in which our rationality is affected by more than reason, the ways that reason can be used to manipulate, and the ways in which we are situated in cultures.

In pursuing these desires, however, we have cut ourselves off from the genuine community which comes only where conflict can occur and from the pursuit of objective truth, that is, truth which can be recognized by any who genuinely and carefully seek it. We fail, then, to achieve recognition for our claims to objective truth, because our claims are recognized merely as a truth of the community we are in, not as objective truth, that is, the truth of, in principle, everyone. Hegel would claim, I think, that this kind of recognition occurs in the state, and this would account for the way in which the legal system is weaponized by all sides against their opponents in arguments about what is good.

At some point, I hope, we will recognize that we have merely substituted one kind of conflict for another. In seeking recognition for our claims to possess objective truth, we have attempted to wrest it unilaterally from each other by force of law, thus pressing us into a conflict which must end in either annihilation or subjugation of the other view. We are engaging, in other words, in something very similar to a community-level or thought-level occurrence of Hegel's master-slave dialectic. We are operating at a different level, but the same dynamics of conflict are at work, and both ordinary conclusions will be unsatisfactory because they will not prove the truth claims to be objective.

This post has gone long enough. I will end by summarizing. We are not postmodern, but are distinctly not postmodern. Nevertheless, we possess an inheritance from postmodernism which affects how we live, and casts light on our present predicament. When seen in this light, we can see that our present predicament, too, must pass on into a further stage of culture, and cannot retreat to an apparently better age.

Politically Correct Speech

I want to begin this post by articulating what seems to be a common account of expression in continental philosophy. I first encountered it clearly in M.C. Dillon's Merleau-Ponty's Ontology, and Charles Taylor, early on in his Hegel, for instance, articulates its development in the late 18th century, focusing on Herder. I will draw primarily from Taylor's account.

Expression in this technical sense means an articulation which at the same time defines what it articulates. That is, rather than simply referring to something, saying something about something outside it which exists independently of it, an expression contributes to what the thing it is about is. When I express myself in this way, then, I not only give vent to something about myself, make myself known to others, but I also give voice to something which may not quite have existed otherwise. I actualize a potential in me by giving voice to it, and may make something my goal by claiming it as my goal. My nature does not pre-exist my development in the way that a blueprint pre-exists a building, although it may be latent in me as the tree is latent in the acorn.

On this account, whenever we speak we give voice to a view of reality, we articulate a relationship between ourselves and ourselves, others, and nature. Our speech, perhaps especially our spontaneous speech, therefore shapes us, and it shapes us whether or not we are aware of it. By using sets of words which are burdened with particular associations in the language we find ourselves in, we are molded by those associations. The truth of the claim that we should speak in a politically correct manner is that words do more than come together to form propositions, they express views on the world, and even a single word or phrase might warp our vision of reality simply be remaining in use.

If this is right, then the conflict about political correctness is a conflict over how to view reality. It might merely be a conflict over whether this account of expression is accurate, except that many of those who object to being politically correct have their own terms which they would exclude, at least in some domains. It might merely be about how free we should be to express ourselves how we want, except that those who are against political correctness are also against some forms of self-expression. Instead, I suspect hesitancy about being politically correct occurs where people hold that the terms being excluded are necessary to (or express concepts necessary to) an accurate understanding of reality.

Another consequence of this view is the old view that we should be careful what we put in our minds, or what we sing, or otherwise what we do. That is, if expression forms us, forms our view of ourselves and reality, molds our desires and natures, then the words we sing and dance to mold us too. The movies we watch and the stories we tell, likewise, shape us. To endorse political correctness requires endorsing a view of entertainment as having an edificational dimension: a movie can corrupt us or edify us, and very few, if any, do neither. We can thus critique movies based on the account of reality and the good life which they tell, and both liberals and conservatives do. The objections of some liberals to casting decisions is quite like the objections of some Christians to sex scenes--both believe that consuming such media forms us in a bad way. The disagreement is merely as to what is good and bad in entertainment. What does edifying speech look like? That is the question raised in the conflict over politically correct speech.

Recognition and Social Efficacy

Yesterday (that is, the day I am writing this) I finished Hegel's Elements of the Philosophy of Right. Tomorrow I begin Charles Taylor's Hegel, though, so we are not done with Hegel posts. At any rate, there was a theme which is not clearly located in any particular part of that work, but which was my main takeaway: recognition.

Prior to reading much Hegel for myself, my impression of Hegelian recognition was that it was about individuals recognizing each other or the law recognizing citizens as legal persons. The theme is actually much broader. I won't be citing particular passages in this post, since a) it is a blog post, not an essay for scholars, b) it would take a lot of time to find such, and c) I am mainly working from impressions.

In Hegel's system, a huge role is played by the relationship between appearance and essence. These are discussed as what a thing is in appearance (for itself or for others) and what it is in itself (as we see it from our vantage point at the end of its development). Spirit, in particular, has a "desire" to be seen as what it is. It wants what it is for others and for itself to fit with how it is in itself. To put it another way, the essence requires actualization. Thus, in the master-slave dialectic in The Phenomenology of Spirit, the starting point is that Spirit knows itself as pure Spirit and thus wants to be recognized as pure Spirit, so it posits another Spirit to recognize it. Similarly elsewhere, when Spirit knows itself as a legal person, it posits some spiritual reality (e.g., law or constitution) to recognize its personhood.

There is another sort of recognition, however, and this is the one which was particularly striking to me. Not only does Spirit want to be recognized in its own actualization, but individuals, as Spirit, want to recognize themselves in the world. Thus, the reason Hegel argues for a constitutional monarchy is not merely so that an individual can be at the head of the individual state, but also so that we can recognize our individuality in the state. We want our essence, not only as persons, but also as manifestations of Spirit and thus as free willing beings to be manifested in the Spirit in which, Hegel would say, we live and move and have our being (there is a kind of divinization of the State in Hegel, which I am not sure what to do with). As persons, we can exist only in relations with others, and thus are dependent moments of a whole. We thus seek to recognize ourselves--our essential nature--in that whole.

Why is this so striking to me? Well, if you look back on my post on Autonomy and Economics, you will see that I was basically arguing that we want to recognize ourselves in the economic system we find ourselves in. The same basic argument can be made for much of political life, and forms the basis for the democratic element of any political system. The dissatisfaction which some feel with "political correctness" originates primarily from a similar desire to find oneself in one's language. We have a need, as it were, to have efficacy in our lives. This is perhaps the strongest truth in modern conservatism and libertarianism, but is also recognized by the best liberals. Martha Nussbaum argues that the important thing is that we have the ability to pursue certain activities, not that we actually do pursue those activities, and this claim is based on a very similar insight.

Others have argued that this lack of efficacy, or in Hegel's terms this lack of recognition of self in society, plays a role in various social issues, from riots to the opioid epidemic (and both certain sorts of social justice warriors and their detractors). The lack of efficacy arises from various factors, but tends to run through or result in poverty. Money gives one some capacities. Education provides still others, as Nussbaum notes. If we are seeking to increase the equality of social efficacy, which I think is a better target than equality of money or education per se, and which I suspect would better reach the root of other inequalities, then the aim is tied up with an aim for liberty, insofar as one cannot have efficacy without the liberty to exercise it. I think this aim cuts across the political spectrum. Equality is valuable because it enables social efficacy, but it is also necessary that there be a modicum of equality because without it we crush the social efficacy of those at the bottom of the heap.

The challenge is to develop concrete policies which might address the issue. I do not claim to be in a position, as of yet, to propose any, but that is--very slowly--what I am trying to reach for. Getting clear on our aims, however, is a massive step forward. If we could all get on the same page as to the goal, and recognize each other as aiming for the same goal, this would vastly increase our ability to discuss potential policies across the aisle.

Freedom

I have not posted anything about free will recently, so here I intend to sketch an account of freedom which is compatible with determinism. Before I get into that, however, let me explain the point of compatibilism with respect to free will and determinism. The point is not that I think the world is determined, though it may be, nor that I am afraid that it might be. I would be a compatibilist with respect to free will and determinism even if I were convinced that the world was indeterministic. The point is to articulate what free will depends on, what the concept of free will amounts to, or what kinds of free will are possible. A compatibilist, such as myself, holds that whether or not the universe is deterministic should not make a difference to whether or not we are free.

Free will is a vague term, and can be used in different ways. Ordinarily, I understand it as whatever choice-relevant factor is required for moral responsibility. One can also understand it to refer to the prerequisite for a being determining its own choices. I will need to do some work in a moment to clarify this second type.

Take freedom as prerequisite for moral responsibility first. If this is all freedom is, then an account of moral responsibility which makes clear whether any of its elements presuppose indeterminacy will answer the question of whether free will is compatible with determinism. My account has it that moral responsibility arises from the ability to consider other points of view on a decision. The only element here that seems likely to require indeterminacy is that it is an ability. So the next step here would be to provide an analysis of (particularly unexercised) ability which is compatible with determinism.

Now take freedom as self-determination. If freedom is self-determination, then when a being performs an action freely in this sense, the freedom of that being has the final say on whether the being performs that action. This need not mean that no other factors are involved, and clearly must be compatible with the being doing things for reasons. Hegel's account of freedom lies in this kind, where he suggests that a being is free if it does all it does from itself, not determined by anything outside itself. The notion of "outside itself" at work here is not, however, a physical one. It is a matter of appropriating or incorporating things into oneself. Thus, one can be free in this sense in a deterministic world so long as one finds oneself--sees one's own values and so on--in what determines one. To put it another way, one would be free so long as one can say "Amen" to all that determines one in its manner of determining one--if one is glad to be determined in the way one is.

Moral Subjectivism, Relativism, and Objective Expressivism

Yesterday, I brought up expressivism, the moral theory according to which terms like "good" and "bad" primarily, if not exclusively, express sentiments about actions. Since the next section of Hegel's PR is quite relevant to expressivism, that is where we are headed today.

The account which Hegel is opposing is not exactly expressivism. It is not a theory about the meanings of moral terms, but about what makes an action good or bad. The account appears to be, roughly, that what makes an action good is that it is done from a good motive or that the agent is convinced that he is doing what he should be doing.

As Hegel traces the account which he is opposing, he argues that it leads to relativism. This should be a familiar argument, whether one accepts it or not. It is basically the same development which leads from "it doesn't matter what you believe so long as you're sincere," to "what's true for you might not be true for me."

(e) Subjective opinion is at last expressly acknowledged as the criterion of right and duty when it is alleged that the ethical nature of an action is determined by the conviction which holds something to be right. The good which is willed does not yet have a content; and a principle of conviction contains the further specification that the subsumption of an action under the determination of the good is the responsibility of the subject. Under these circumstances, any semblance of ethical objectivity has completely disappeared. Such doctrines are intimately connected with that self-styled philosophy... which denies that truth...can be recognized. --PR,, remarks to §140, italics in original.

This is what I refer to in the title of this post as "moral subjectivism." It is not the stage of our present culture but the stage which our culture was in not long ago. It is what some people refer to as "postmodernism." One of my occasional discomforts with agreeing with MacIntyre's claim that we are, culturally, expressivists, is that we are no longer relativistic expressivists. We do claim that there is right and wrong, that there is true and false, albeit even as we continue to regard moral discourse as exprevissivistic.

(f) ...The only possible culmination - and this must now be discussed - of that subjectivity which regards itself as the ultimate instance is reached when it knows itself as that power of resolution and decision on [matters of] truth, right, and duty which is already implicitly [an sich] present within the preceding forms. ...in addition, its form is that of subjective emptiness [Eitelkeit], in that it knows itself as this emptiness of all content and, in this knowledge, knows itself as the absolute - The extent to which this absolute self-satisfaction does not simply remain a solitary worship of the self, but may even form a community whose bond and substance consist, for example, in mutual assurances of conscientiousness, good intentions, and enjoyment of this reciprocal purity...and certain other phenomena [Gestaltungen] are related to the stage [of sunjectivity] which we are here considering - these are questions which I have discussed in the Phenomenology of Spirit (pp. 605ff). --ibid., italics and brackets in the original. 

Turning to the Phenomenology of Sprit, then, we find:

Conscience, then, in its majestic sublimity above any specific law and every content of duty, puts whatever content it pleases into its knowledge and willing.

...When, however, consciousness finds expression, this puts the certainty of itself in the form of pure self and thereby as universal self. Others let the act hold as valid, owing to the explicit terms in which the self is thus expressed and acknowledged to be the essential reality. The spirit and substance of their community are, thus, the mutual assurance of their conscientiousness, of their good intentions, and rejoicing over this reciprocal purity of purpose, the quickening and refreshment received from the glorious privilege of knowing and of expressing, of fostering and cherishing, a state so altogether admirable. (The Phenomenology of Mind, 384-385 in the Dover edition, trans Baillie) 

 At this stage, the subject takes itself to determine what it should do by itself. To be in this stage does not require that we take ourselves to be consciously legislating morality for ourselves. Rather, I would suggest that the idea that one must follow one's heart fills the same role. In fact, Hegel seems to suggest this in the Phenomenology when he says:

Conscience, which in the first instance takes up merely a negative attitude towards duty, qua a given determinate duty, knows itself detached from it. But since conscience fills empty duty with a determinate content drawn from its own self, it is positively aware of the fact that it, qua this particular self, makes its own content. Its pure self, as it is empty knowledge, is without content and without definiteness. The content which it supplies to that knowledge is drawn from its own self, qua this determinate self, is drawn from itself as a natural individuality. (ibid., 387, italics in original)

What Hegel is saying here is simply that, though we think we are find what is good emanating from our inner "true" selves, we are actually only finding our own natural, particular, undeveloped desires. For Hegel, the true good is universal, whereas the particular, qua particular, is evil. Hegel does not completely oppose the idea of being oneself, but his idea of what that should amount to is distinct from what we mean by it. Hegel's notion of the self is one where the self is what it is only in the context of a whole which it finds itself in. The notion of the self which we use when we tell someone to be herself is a notion of the self as separable from the social context the self is in, as a self-sufficient, self-legislating almost-divinity--the notion which Hegel is critiquing in these passages.

Let me point out, too, that these passages speak of a community composed of people assuring one another that they are okay--"I'm ok, you're ok." This is a phenomenon one can find easily in certain circles, and it helps to strengthen bubbles because this assurance keeps us from second-guessing ourselves. One often hears such a community's opponents suggesting that the assurances are required because the members are afraid that they are wrong, but notice that there are some groups of this kind which oppose each other. Perhaps both are wrong, and I suspect both are correct about the other, that they are afraid they are wrong, because no one has a firm basis on which to make their moral claims, and thus no one has any valid certainty (incidentally, his analysis of hypocrisy, which follows shortly after the above passage, appears to apply very well to virtue signaling).

I owe an explanation of how this developed form of expressivism is not relativistic. A large part of this is that the phenomenon which Hegel is articulating is not self-consciously relativistic. It is inherently open to relativism, but claims to be objective. When someone claims to be following his own heart, he is not claiming to be inventing his own morality, but to be following true morality as revealed by his heart. Our natural dispositions sway us to clump toward similar positions, and so we can maintain the illusion that we are all tracking moral reality even when none of us are, since there is consensus. Because there is no verifiable basis for moral claims, however, expressivism comes to be how moral discourse works, even thought morality is not, itself, expressivistic. If our hearts are our only guides, then the only way to convince someone of a moral claim is to sway her heart, the only way to disagree with someone's moral claim is to view him as being untrue to himself.

Any relativism which exists, then, is buried under claims to objectivity. The expression of moral claims may be made in such a way that is reminiscent of relativism, with the same kinds of empty objections to opposing views, but the individuals making the claims no longer think the opposing views are right for anyone.

I should note that there are genuine arguments offered for some positions in some circles. Often these arguments are not very well thought out, however, and occasionally they are more rhetoric than genuine argument. The semblance of argument, however, remains. It likely never left, and it forms the seed from which we may hope to regain a morality based, to some extent, on rational disputation.

Alienation and Retreat

the tendency to look inwards into the self and to know and determine from within the self what is right and good appears in epochs when what is recognized as right and good in actuality and custom is unable to satisfy the better will. --Hegel PR, Remarks to §138

In the context of the rest of Hegel's Philosophy of Right up to this point, I take this to mean that the retreat into the self for guidance as to what to do occurs when the guidance provide from outside oneself breaks down, whether by the guidance being obviously wrong, or by the authoritative guides losing standing (e.g., by being found hypocritical). I have also heard it suggested that this kind of retreat occurs where the general public finds that it lacks social efficacy, that is, where people find themselves in a position where it appears that they can have no influence in the culture or state. Both of these situations are situations where the self fails to find itself represented outside itself, that is, where it is alienated from the outside world.

If these ideas are right, then the modern ideas of "finding oneself," "being true to oneself," and "not caring what others think" are a result of alienation. All three of these adages are forms of retreat, wherein we are advised to see ourselves as authorities on how to live. There is truth to these adages, but when they are absolutized they become corrosive to social cohesion. We become atomic individuals without interaction, and we deny the permissibility of exchanging moral views. What Hegel is suggesting, however, is that the social cohesion was corroded first. We take charge of our fates and souls because we are at a loss as to who else to grant authority over them.

As someone who is generally critical of the above mentioned modern ideas, this framing of the problem presents the challenge of navigating a way forward which respects the common and in many ways justified distrust of authority and lack of hope for social efficacy. In the latter vein, the rise of locally focused social movements benefits us. By focusing on smaller, low-level issues, we prove that we can change something, and can work our way up from there. With respect to our distrust of authority, however, I have not noticed any promising developments. As much as we follow leaders, we seem to trust only those leaders who are within our own groups. This is better than nothing, but is not promising for an exchange of moral views.

The challenge is compounded by the way in which our distrust of moral authority expresses itself. As MacIntyre has argued, we tend to operate with an implicitly expressivist view of moral discourse: we think of claims about good and bad as merely expressing cheers and boos for different actions. This lies behind the difficulty people have distinguishing between condemning an action and condemning an agent who acts in that manner. Because condemning the action is heard as booing, any agent who performs it seems to be booed along with it. Claims about good and bad become inherently charged with blaming and praising and cannot be heard dispassionately any more than swear words can. Because we hear moral claims in this way, we hear disagreements about moral claims as power struggles, and thus the resolution of moral disagreement is viewed, not as a rational processes, but as a processes of rhetorical, particularly emotional, persuasion. We are as suspicious of attempts to persuade us regarding moral claims as we are of advertisements, because we view both as the same kind of thing.

Futurology

When we think of the world's  future, we always mean the destination it will reach if it keeps going in the direction we can see it going in now; it does not occur to us that its path is not a straight line but a curve, constantly changing direction. --Ludwig Wittgenstein, Culture and Value p.3e

Futurology is the attempt to predict how the future will turn out. As opposed to less respected forms of fortune telling, it generally attempts to predict sociological and scientific changes, rather than particular events, although it occasionally makes stabs at predicting world wars and similar globe spanning events.

My subsumption of futurology under the category of fortune telling may suggest that I am opposed to it. I am not. We all predict the future all the time. Implicit in undertaking any action is the prediction that one will have time to do it, or at least make headway on it. There is also the prediction that if I do this, then something I want will result at a reasonable cost. If futurology based its guesses on events which had no natural connection with how things will turn out, then there would be a problem, but it instead attempts to extrapolate from current trends.

The task of extrapolating is often done poorly, however. That is the point of the opening quote: we tend to extrapolate linearly. We tend to think in terms of either progress or decline, and see these as both opposed and lacking internal resources for any reversal. It is hard, even when one notices this fact, to resist this tendency. If one looks back at my posts about current culture, one will likely see me falling into this error.

The twists in history come from the fact that not everyone is going the direction of the masses, and not all the masses are unequivocally going the direction of the herd. The herd is an abstraction. Each individual in the herd feels dislocated from the herd. Most people dissent in some way with respect to some view of their group. Some twists occur because there comes to be enough of a certain kind of dissent to crystallize into a new movement. Other twists occur because people change their minds, often because they see their views as conflicting in irresolvable ways.

What should give us hope in the present time, when it seems as though both the left and the right are providing only predictions of decline, is that these twists and turns occur, and are likely to occur. Neither political party is as unified as it seems, and both seem to contain views which conflict with each other. These two elements provide resources for both parties to change direction. In the culture at large and in various sub-groups the same holds, although it is less clear--because the groups are less well defined--where the fault lines may appear.

A responsible futurology must provide an account of the forces which are presently driving the culture, what the forces which are operating at a level that is not efficacious are, what new forces may be produced, what produces and demolishes such forces, and how all these forces and force effecting processes interact. The lazy futurologies which merely continue a trend linearly or expect history to repeat itself the same way every time must be done away with. Cultural and scientific trends are unstable, and history rarely repeats itself the same way twice.

Externalization, Internalization, and Formation

There is a view that how we keep our surroundings reflects how we are within. It shows up in Thoreau and Hegel, as well as motivational speakers. The view, to use Hegel's language, is that we externalize ourselves or press our minds into stuff. We work things by imposing ourselves on them.

This view is usually introduced as a one way street: when I form stuff in the world, how I am influences how it comes out. But it can also be run backwards: if you would be a particular way, then you must conform the world around you to express that. The relation of expression is not unidirectional, as Merleau-Ponty points out. There is experimental evidence to back this up, particularly in the realm of the emotions, but it is also the whole reason that practice works. When we express ourselves, we also form ourselves. Thus, how we are is a product of what we do, and what we do is a product of who we are. It is a reciprocal relationship.

It is therefore possible to express our way into being as we want to be. The more one acts a particular way, the more one will become the kind of person who acts like that. If thinkers like Hegel and Merleau-Ponty are right, then this works much more generally than habits narrowly construed. The more you speak in a certain way, the more you will act like those who speak in that way, and vice-versa. By identifying with a group in little ways, one sets oneself on the path to identify with them in bigger ways.

Imposter Syndrome can be described as a conflict between how one expresses oneself (usually successfully) and how one sees oneself. In hegelian terms, it is a conflict between the self in-itself and the self for-itself. This conflict is sustained by a belief that if one were really what one looks like, then the expression would just flow out of one. Instead, in all areas of life, to succeed we must set ourselves against our natural inclinations and develop ourselves by expressing and incorporating better ways of being.

Equality and Difference

It is a common critique that equality as an end tends to self destruct. Alexis de Tocqueville offers an argument for this idea in Democracy in America, and Hegel makes the same claim in his work. In both cases the argument goes relatively simply.

When held out as an end, equality requires all differences, all hierarchy, and all dissent to be flattened. Equality as an end by itself thus requires the imposition of equality and the destruction of any who would raise up differences. Equality cannot tolerate authority or institutions. It thus raises an in-group over an out-group, removing both equality and liberty. From "all humans are equal" we move quite quickly to "but those who recognize that are more equal than others."

We may seem to be safe from an equality which would level out all difference. We, after all, value differences. We honor each individual's right to express him or herself in a unique manner. Nevertheless, we refuse to let these differences exist as differences. We refuse the idea that differences might make a difference. Differences are permitted so long as they do not matter. This is not merely the opposition to differences in value, but an opposition to practical differences. We are uncomfortable, not only with the idea that it may be better to be smarter and not everyone is equally smart, but also with the idea that those with particular talents might be better off doing some things than others. We want to say that anyone can do anything just as well, but to say this we must turn a blind eye to practical differences.

Neither de Tocqueville nor Hegel are opposed to equality per se, but only to equality as an end in itself. Instead, both see equality as a means to liberty, albeit a means which may seek the role of end, and must be kept in its place. This was one of de Tocqueville's cautions for us in America: he saw that equality could be a tempting end, and thus lead to our downfall.

To preserve liberty, we must aim for enough equality that all have a degree of power, yet permit enough difference that not all have the same power. To preserve equality, we must recognize equal honor of those in different roles which require different actions. Different individuals have different powers, and thus find themselves in different practical situations which thus call for different responses. We can acknowledge this without claiming that some sets of powers or situations make an individual worth more or worth hearing more.

Culture, Environment, and Institutions

As promised, in this post I will discuss the way that cultural and environmental factors should affect the justification of institutions. Hegel will provide our starting point, rather than our end point today:

With regard to the historical element in positive right (first referred to in §3 above), Montesquieu stated the true historical view, the genuinely philosophical viewpoint, that legislation in general and its particular determinations should not be considered in isolation and in the abstract, but rather as a dependent moment within one totality, in the context of all the other determinations which constitute the character of a nation and age; within this context they gain their genuine significance, and hence also their justification.

 ... This distinction, which is very important and should be firmly borne in mind, is at the same time a very obvious one; a determination of right may be shown to be entirely grounded in and consistent with the prevailing circumstances and existing legal institutions, yet it may be contrary to right [unrechtlich] and irrational in and for itself, like numerous determinations of Roman civil law [Privatrecht] which followed quite consistently from such institutions as Roman paternal authority and Roman matrimony. (Elements of The Philosophy of Right, same copy as last time, p.29, all italics and brackets in original--henceforth in the near future I shall abbreviate the unchanging part of this citation as "PR")

The distinction is between development historically and from the concept. There are two things in the above quoted which may seem in tension: Hegel's endorsement of Montesquieu's view and Hegel's apparent aversion to the historical view.

The aversion is to seeing the historical genesis as justification, and to seeing the totality in which a law exists as that law's (vindicating) justification. He may be using "justification" in the first paragraph in the sense of our proposed justification, in which case the point is simply that the law has a sense only in the context of an environment and culture, and thus can only be evaluated as a legal determination as applied in its particular context.

Right, as Hegel is trying to explicate it, is not a contingent concept, subject to the vicissitudes of history, but it does appear in history as developing. It develops in history without being developed by history. We can thus see the development of the concept in history, but must distinguish between what was subject to vicissitudes of history, and hence is not part of the concept of Right, and what was an internal development of the concept, required by the nature of Right.

Having sorted this out, we can say that Right appears in history and, insofar as the historical appearance of Right is full, the laws of a nation are justified. The point from Montesquieu is that the same Right will appear differently in different cultures, and the current stage in the development of Right can only be understood by examining the totality in which it appears. We can generalize this to say that the legal situation in a nation can only be understood along with the cultural and environmental situation in the nation.

This becomes clear when we recognize the way that cultural values, economic factors, and political life impinge upon one another. Alexis de Tocqueville spends a great deal of Democracy in America examining how these three elements interact, mutually supporting, and occasionally threatening, each other. If today we have a culture less well-suited to democracy, we can legislate ourselves out of the problem by finding a form of government which does suit us. On the other hand, we might prefer to alter our culture or modes of production to better support a democracy. Along with this more contentious example, there are examples which are easier to swallow. Legislation regarding carbon emissions presumes a relation to the environment. Legislation regarding what to do on hills presumes the existence of hills. Legislation regarding how individuals may claim unclaimed land are otiose when there is no land to be claimed, but necessary when the west is wide open to be claimed.

Present puzzles regarding work and automation or the role of the household and community are of this form. Our mode of economic life has changed, and has brought our culture with it. We are now faced with the puzzle of how to adjust institutions and laws, as well as economic activity and cultural products, to maintain cultural homeostasis. This is the puzzle which came to the fore, in part, a couple years ago when we noticed the massive effect of social media helping create echo chambers. The manner in which social media makes money is corrosive to current political and cultural practices, and thus something--although we do not know what--must change. The left gives its recommendations, and the right gives its recommendations, but the very problem they seek to solve hinders them from reaching a viable solution which can be agreed upon.

Genesis, Justification, and Conservatism

Yesterday, I discussed interpretive charity as it relates to arguments. Today, I want to discuss an expansion of that thought which underlies--at least elements of--conservatism.

We interpret social structures, institutions, and human biology as well as arguments. Each of these have some degree of justification in their genesis. However one thinks human beings came to be, every theory presumes some degree of adaption to our environment, in terms of which we may speak of our biological constitution as justified. Likewise, social structures and institutions are justified by their role in a society, and are instituted because they serve a purpose.

When interpreting any of these things, then, interpretive charity calls on us to recognize that there was some degree of justification for how things are at some time. The justification which was accepted might not be a good one, but it was there. Conservatism is thus the instinct to understand the justification well enough to see how someone might once have thought it a good justification, before dismantling it. This is called Chesterton's Fence (HT: Mere Orthodoxy). If you do not know why it was justified, or at least considered justified, then you do not know that it is no longer justified--although it may be, and it may never have truly been justified.

Perhaps it is best to distinguish between justification in the sense that we give justifications, and justification in the sense that things are justified. Call the first "proposed justification" and the second "vindicating justification." The kind of justification which social structures, institutions, and biology must have is proposed justification, which need not mean that anyone has ever articulated the proposed justification, simply that there is a justification in virtue of which the phenomenon has been brought forth and preserved. The kind of justification which may or may not ever have existed is vindicating justification.

We may recognize bad proposed justifications in our past, but we must in these cases as much as with our contemporaries seek to find what the good and true thing is which led them down the wrong road. If we can find no good or truth, then we cannot be confident that we have understood the institution well enough to change it.

I hope it is clear that I do not think we should do things simply because we have always done them that way. I am, after all, articulating conditions under which one may be justified in altering social structures and institutions. We have made mistakes in our constitution of society, and we have made improvements. Just as the liberal does not see all change as good, the conservative does not see all change as bad. Change is bad when it removes a good, but good when it sustains a good. The principle of interpretive charity with respect to the past, Chesterton's Fence, simply urges us to change things with care and understanding, recognizing why the past was, and giving reason for it to be in the past. We should adapt to new situations when the justification proposed no longer vindicates and is not replaced by a new vindicating justification.

Hegel, in Elements of The Philosophy of Right §3 may be taken to be minimizing the need to understand the justification of a social structure or institution in its origin when he says:

If it can be shown that the origin of an institution was entirely expedient and necessary under the specific circumstances of the time, the requirements of the historical viewpoint are fulfilled. But if this is supposed to amount to a general justification of the thing itself, the result is precisely the opposite; for since the original circumstances are no longer present, the institution has thereby lost its meaning and its right [to exist]. (Wood, ed Nisbet, trans. Cambridge University Press p.30, brackets in original)

But he is rather making a point which I agree with: that institutions play a role and are justified in the context of a whole society, so that as the society changes the institutions must, as well. This does not mean that we can be blind to the historical justifications of our institutions when altering them, and that is not Hegel's point. Hegel wants to make clear that the particular contingent institutions are contingent and not an essential part of what Right is, so that, while the institutions should fit the culture and environment, they need not be the same in all cultures and environments. There is a great deal more in Hegel's Elements of The Philosophy of Right about the relation of genesis and justification, which I suspect I will discuss later, but currently I have only read so far in the book, and it is not all on topic. Tomorrow, however, I will discuss the need for social structures and institutions to fit with the culture and environment.

Interpretive Charity

One of the striking things about reading both liberal philosophers and conservative Christian thinkers, is that one finds them arguing past each other. Each presents arguments against the other's positions, rebuttals of the other's arguments, which are not actually engaging the views and arguments which the other would present. Perhaps this is due to reading people who are more academic--perhaps each is responding to what the masses on the other side would argue. Nevertheless, it seems to lack interpretive charity.

Interpretive charity is evidenced where one seeks to understand a position, particularly a position one disagrees with, well enough to see how someone might find it compelling. If one cannot see why someone might believe P, then it is hard to see how one could have any confidence arguing against P.

In an era with greater evidence than ever before of how human beings reason fallaciously, we can be tempted to simply locate one of these fallacies which fits the case. This removes the hard work of understanding a position from the inside. The individuals who hold such views do not, themselves, think they are reasoning fallaciously, and at least some of them have examined their views carefully. They are as sure that you are reasoning fallaciously as you are that they are reasoning fallaciously.

Besides, if we seek to convince someone--if we seek to actually discuss things and increase consensus regarding what true and good--we cannot simply claim that they are reasoning fallaciously. Pointing out a fallacy may be part of the story, but it must be done in such a way that they can recognize the reasoning as fallacious. Instead of focusing on fallacies and psychological biases, we must focus on unearthing the logic of each others' views, understanding the paradigms within which the views we find so wrong may seem so right. We must find what is right in the opposing view such that it is attractive to others. We will then be in a position to articulate our own views in a way that makes sense to these others, and we will be in a position to show how our views draw on some of the same values and truths as theirs. The goal will be, on the one hand, to learn from those with whom we disagree what kinds of passions must be provided for in our own position. We must, that is, include in our own account an understanding of where the false turns are and what makes them at once attractive and wrong. This may require us to change our views, since we must account for a rational attraction to the wrong turn. Having learned from the other view, we must then articulate our own view so as to show how it encompasses and moves beyond the truths and values of the false views, and how it makes clear both the basis of that view and how it goes wrong.

This model of interpretive charity does not permit us to oppose arguments with psychoanalysis of our opponents. Such a tack may have a role elsewhere, but not when trying to argue for a position against another position. If we are arguing, we are not pathologizing our opponents. If we do pathologize our opponents, we can no longer make sense of arguing with them.