Jun
29
Out of All The Things That Are Hard Work, The Hardest Is Appreciating Another’s Work Truly
Filed Under personal | Leave a Comment
When our age understands that, of course, it will be a wholly different age, and nowhere near as tyrannical in the private sphere as it is now.
I think I’m taking a blogging break this weekend. Not sure yet. Please feel free to subscribe via feedreader or e-mail (h/t Problogger for the latter), and advice on how I can get a tag cloud for this blog is more than welcome. I realize this thing is, despite the search option that Blogger gives in the bar above, as disorganized as one can get.
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Jun
29
Wisdom and Rule: On Poem 343 of Emily Dickinson, "My Reward for Being"
Filed Under dickinson, philosophy, poetry, xenophon | 4 Comments
(343) My Reward for Being…
Emily Dickinson
My Reward for Being, was This.
My premium — My Bliss –
An Admiralty, less –
A Sceptre — penniless –
And Realms — just Dross –
When Thrones accost my Hands –
With “Me, Miss, Me” –
I’ll unroll Thee –
Dominions dowerless — beside this Grace –
Election — Vote –
The Ballots of Eternity, will show just that.
Comment:
He [Socrates] said that kings and rulers are not those who hold scepters, nor those elected by just anybody, nor those who obtain office by lot, nor those who have violence, nor those who have used deceit, but those understand how to rule….
And if someone should say…that it is possible for the tyrant not to obey those who speak correctly, he said, “How indeed would it be possible for him not to obey, since a penalty is laid down if something does not obey the one who speaks well? For in whatever matter someone does not obey the one who speaks well, he will no doubt err, and in erring be penalized.
And if someone should say that it is possible for the tyrant even to kill the one who thinks well, he said, “But do you think that the one who has killed the best of his allies is free from penalty, or that he suffers some chance penalty? For do you think that the one who does this would be preserved, or that he would in this way quickly perish?”
- Xenophon, Memorabilia Book III Chapter 10, trans. Amy Bonnette
One thing I have to do while working on the dissertation is explain how exactly the above passage constitutes a height of sorts for Socratic teaching. The rough argument will probably involve saying that Socrates is introducing the wise man as the Platonic “midwife” here: the wise man can only “penalize” inasmuch as he is wise. He is a nothingness in a sense, and it is easy to see why people see dissipation as the exercise of their freedom, or control through their own mastery of force as a good. In both instances, one feels oneself in action, or one takes oneself away from action. In the case of he who is wise, there is the feeling of always being acted upon, like as if one is the servant to a higher power that is disdainful of one.
Onto Emily Dickinson. I suspect “premium” in the second line is not synonymous with “reward” in the first. A premium nowadays can mean something one puts forth in order to secure a loan - I wonder if it has the same meaning for her? I think it is an open question whether the speaker has any “bliss,” and I actually suspect there is no happiness on the speaker’s part.
Now one can say I have no evidence for that last claim, especially if I’m bringing in Xenophon’s and Plato’s thought to bear on Dickinson’s work. For both of the former claim that Socrates was the happiest of men, and Dickinson herself has numerous speakers that seem to rejoice in nature. Her verse seems to dance at key moments, and does not stop for death, not at all.
So I can’t claim “Dickinson is giving us an unhappy speaker.” I should rather say that whatever makes Dickinson’s speaker or someone like Socrates happy is something we might never be able to understand.
To see this, note the “less,” “penniless” and “just dross” ends of each line in the first stanza. The issue is not merely wealth. An Admiralty would imply control over a navy: to have arms is to be able to have power in the world of any sort, to be able to resist Nature’s nastier tendencies. This our speaker lacks. Further, to have a sceptre is to be honored, to have a legitimate title to rule. That convention is much like what underlies money - it is a pure fiction of society. Yet our speaker lacks that too. Finally, control over realms and having gold are linked in Keats’ “On First Looking Into Chapman’s Homer,” but here, in not being able to resist Nature’s forces, and not being able to claim the honor of her fellow men, she can’t be even said to actually rule and have the burden of that responsibility to excuse her from Fortune’s slings or the opinions of men.
If we take the passage from Xenophon seriously, then the speaker probably sees herself as Wisdom in the second stanza. Wisdom is a “Grace” inasmuch as it is characteristic of the divine far more than the human. But what lies right next to Wisdom?
She says it is something that can be unrolled, “dominions dowerless.” That dominion is defined by those who have chosen her, those who have cast “ballots of eternity.” Is she saying that someone who is wise must of necessity be a public figure, and impartial to all, for what is key to being wise is being honored as wise? That wisdom itself requires a certain respect from man in order to actually be wisdom?
If so, she’s saying it in a defiant way, like one sneering at those who would have her hand, like one who has been bitten with rage. Perhaps it is not those who would murder Wisdom if they didn’t seek its submission that have her angry, but the mere fact that Wisdom cannot neglect power and honor ultimately, if that is indeed the only way the unwise can conceive the world.
It could also be said that the “dominions dowerless” have to do with a circle of friends that extend throughout all eternity, seeing her as more of an equal than as someone to compete with, and more than willing to dispense honor. The impartiality would not come from condescension in such a case, but from fraternity. I don’t much like that thought, because to give up all ability to possess is to be a nothingness. But that brings us back where we begun.
Jun
29
Mansfield aims to defend the Constitution against the slights and scorns of political and social science and, especially, to restore respect for its forms and formalities….
Mansfield argues that while the Constitution is a means to ends outside itself, its forms include an end - self-government - that deserves our loyalty even when it is not immediately in our private interests. Forms and institutions can be a cause of behavior, so that over the long term, the Constitution may shape interests and values even more than it reflects them: in this sense, the extra-constitutional is a part of the Constitution, not something opposed to it. Formalities separate what is to be revealed in public - what we regard as proper, important, or honorable - from what should be concealed and controlled, and like law generally, the restrictions of form can help to free us from what is low and trivial. Forms establish expectations, and in so doing, indicate directions or goals: thus formal equality, however qualified by the inequalities that follow from individual rights, shapes our political language and works to tip the balance of policy.
- Wilson Carey McWilliams, reviewing Harvey Mansfield’s America’s Constitutional Soul, in Political Theory, Vol. 20 No. 3, Aug. 1992
This forms/formalities distinction is not one I have thought much about before, and given how much I talk about form without content, I think I need to address the idea of “formality” that has been brought up by the above passage.
McWilliams eventually argues that Mansfield wants a “veneration” of the Constitution that might not be justified given what seems to be Madison’s own secularism regarding the document he shaped perhaps most of all the Framers. The word “formality” seems to be an accounting of mores or values that stem from Constitutional form: since we have a right to free speech, that form can be said to create a formality, which in public life would be holding everyone speaking as “proper,” “important,” or even “honorable,” and in private life, finding attempts to restrain speech the mark of someone bad.
The question is whether Constitutional form alone creates the formalities needed to protect the Constitution. This blogger says “no” fairly emphatically. But Mansfield is far more sophisticated than I am, seeing aspects of design that I don’t normally give credit to. McWilliams points out that for Mansfield, distinctions between “state and society” give people a “distance from their government” - that government doesn’t respond to every little thing the popular will demands at any given moment allows for formalities to be reflected upon as time is given for reflection on those formalities themselves. Furthermore, because there is a distinct sphere of private life, we learn continually as individuals that freedom and responsibility are two sides of the same coin.
Ultimately, one way to look at the Constitution is to see it as organizing prideful, spirited actors as working together to stay free. Such a conception would mean that government does not try to mold its citizens exactly into a sort of person, as classical governments did with gods being of the city, and as socialist governments do now through public control of nearly everything.
The trouble with looking at the Constitution that way, though, is that it assumes that because Madison isn’t Rousseau, Madison has a defense against Rousseau’s thought that is classically based. I actually don’t think the Constitution has any such defense built in it. That forms became formalities to some degree was not supposed to happen; the plurality of interests that the “enlarged sphere” brings into being means that the Constitution is less about “learning how to conduct civic discourse” and more about organizing any old actor that comes under Constitutional “governance” into the mechanism that is our politics.
I know, that sounds like the same thing Mansfield would say, so let me add what is decisive: the classics didn’t just assume “pride,” they worked with it, and aristocrats had pride because they were educated to be better in genuine ways.
As problematic as Rousseau and Kant are for American Constitutionalism, I see them as more in line with classical thought, and see the American project as more of a break. If you want to say that there is a way of teaching about Constitutionalism which promotes civil discourse that is wise and deliberate, you have to do it outside the Constitution qua Constitution. You can’t just go to the seven Articles and try to distill some magical teaching that fixes everything.
Mansfield knows that. Hence he teaches and argues using Aristotle as a basis.
Let’s be clear: one thing about Enlightenment is correct - all of us have to take education seriously in order for democracy to work. Where Enlightenment goes astray is in thinking that the elitist aspects of wisdom can be diluted if everyone is an expert, and that expertise can be a democratic wisdom of sorts.
Truth be told, those elitist aspects are more essential than ever before for our order. The essential consideration is what happens in a world without any real basis for pride: all becomes catering to the popular, and where the popular is driven by the market….
Jun
26
On Blogging, Having An Opinion, and the Quality and Trustworthiness of Your Voice
Filed Under blogging, kant, media | 3 Comments
Way too long: the essential point is that bloggers were paid to not merely run ads, but promote the content of those ads
I feel sorry for Jeff Jarvis, because he’s fighting the good fight, and I’m not sure how this war is to be waged. Can we tell people that getting paid to promote stuff is bad for blogging? That the promotion of stuff requires a credibility with one’s readers that is established independent of an ad campaign, if not opposed to the very concept of being an ad?
The deep problem Jarvis is running up against is that blogging does have to become profitable in some way to the people blogging. This blog you’re reading now is partly the result of years of education, and I still do research, check sources, and ask people questions before I sit down to write anything.
The idea that quality blogging can just emerge out of nowhere at no cost to anyone is preposterous. But many of us who do blog well are putting up with minimal rewards because we recognize how new the medium is, and how much potential it has.
We also recognize that the medium has inherently found a way of exploiting the labor that makes it worthwhile, and that this state of affairs cannot last. Web search companies that drive traffic to my site get something far more valuable than mere money from my writing: they get the credibility that comes from my knowledge, openness, and ability.
Jarvis can see this issue a mile away, to his enormous credit. If we want diverse, quality voices on the Net, we need to reward people substantially at some point. Intangible rewards aren’t going to cut it - the money needs to get to the writers at some point. The main reason for this isn’t elitist, but rather democratic.
We can’t expect people who have seriously busy lives to be on here reading and responding well for little or no reward. I mean, we need to consider why pay-per-post programs “work” - why so many people flock to them. They’re not selling their voice because they’re evil, or even because they’re wrong. They figure, quite rightly, that the only reward that can be had is one that is guaranteed and that they shouldn’t lose out.
Not everyone is going to have a voice as powerful as the WSJ’s editorial board. And why should one labor in the delusion that hearts and minds can be changed when there is money to do things like “eat” readily available?
It’s at this point I need to bring up a related issue. Gracchi has written on the concept of “public reason” in Kant: roughly, the idea is that everyone can discuss legislation/policy in their capacity as a scholar, as someone willing to commit his views to writing.
I urge all of you to read at least the first paragraph of Kant’s “What is Enlightenment?” I’ve written out a bunch of notes on Kant’s article that will become a longer piece, and the key to that first paragraph is essential for our considerations here. Notice that Kant isn’t really talking about “reason.” He’s talking about being willing to use one’s understanding. In classical terms, that’s more “spiritedness” than “reason,” and note the irony of the words “public reason.” One man alone doesn’t get things entirely correct.
I bring this up because the central task of democratic life is for those who know better to teach those who don’t - see Lincoln’s “Temperance Speech” for this teaching. That doesn’t mean we who may know better dominate, but it also means that all bloggers are not created equal. Even in Kant’s gushing over a “will” to “reason,” one’s capacity as a scholar is what allows one to argue one position or another. A soldier is much better at talking about military issues than another, a pastor on religious issues, etc. are examples Kant uses in “What Is Enlightenment?”
Of course, Kant flirts with relativism and perhaps too much accountability for those who do know. Those who are willing to write are going to be condemned - that’s probably the deepest lesson I’ve learned on the Internet. And Kant does imply that a citizen will be able to say whatever he wants about taxes, since he’s a “scholar” in the sense he pays them.
In the face of these dual concerns - people needing to be paid while not selling their voices, but also a type of expertise being required and respected by a mass audience generally - I wonder if this medium will ever be something more than a mere chaos. Something tells me blogging is a stepping-stone, and nothing more than that. Make friends here, enjoy yourself and learn, but don’t think this can ever be genuinely new media in the sense of “media” being “stable.” The entry costs, ironically enough, are too high to sustain for long, and the ability to think about issues at the highest level leads directly to solipsism here: people will literally see what you write, and then move on, like nothing has been said.
Don’t sell your voice because this medium needs you as dispassionate; rather, don’t sell your voice because you need the credibility in all other endeavors you’ll have beyond this.
Jun
25
Q: Why should Political Science even exist?
A: Most people reason in the following manner - they have a feeling, and they need to back that feeling up with an argument, and so they look for things to make an argument.
Reason starts and finds its “end,” in such cases, in making people’s arguments invulnerable to attack, in giving them the assurance that their first impulses were correct since they can’t be beaten.
This sort of reasoning, it should be noted, is characteristic of the empirical sciences. Either something is true or it isn’t with regards to efficacy. One might object that the empirical sciences don’t exist for psychological comfort, since one can be horribly wrong if one’s feelings don’t measure up to a test.
But it is true, that despite the best efforts of people to remain stubborn, that they do manage to feel humiliated when proven wrong. I submit that what connects the reasoning behind most people and the reasoning behind the empirical sciences is the idea of argument as a bludgeon. Truth is about something being absolutely true or absolutely wrong. Certainty is possible, because it has been assumed possible.
What if certainty were assumed impossible?
To have a science based on speech is to have a science based on uncertainty. We can only talk to each other because we do not know what the other is thinking. Underneath communication is a sort of skepticism; one has to assume that one has to work to understand another.
Political science starts from taking people’s opinions about things seriously. Opinions stem from truth, and reflect it in some way always, but do not emphasize the finality of truth. What they seem to indicate is that there is a diversity of ways to conceive of and achieve the good.
Political science ends with trying to reconcile those opinions and see which ones might be better than others. The same tolerance one assumes in order to take all opinions seriously initially drops away quickly when it is revealed that some opinions are more reflective of Truth than others. But absolute certainty is never there, and a multitude of opinions reside in what is highest. To “love one another,” to take one example, means many things even within a fairly strict moral code.
Which brings us back to where relativism truly lies. If one’s conception of Truth is absolutist with regards to the things we speak about, and it can’t be proven that anything we say matches up with Truth exactly, then relativism stems from the despair that our words don’t match up exactly with what we see.
For the political scientist, the invisible things, the things spoken about, are not a sign of despair but of promise. Human possibility is hinted at in the fact we get things wrong. What is obvious is that we get some things right, and both statements previous are the true confirmation that there is potential in addition to mere power.