A reader asked me:
As a Wisconsinite, how about a blog post with (at least a bit of) your philosophical analysis of what's been going on there?
Here's why I won't do this: not because I don't have a position or in any way want to remain neutral as far as this blog is concerned, but because deep down in my gut, I feel like political problems are in most cases too bleedin' obvious to require a philosophical analysis.
The claim that the budget crisis here is manufactured, and comes entirely out of misplaced priorities in favor of giving businesses tax breaks, is not a philosophical claim as I understand the term. Yes, I have beliefs and ideas about the role of government, but when do these rise to the level of "a philosophy?" Well, certainly on a broad use of the term, anything you think about is philosophy, but to me, the task of philosophy is to dig at the foundations of something or other. If I believe that when I drop things, they fall, that's not a philosophy. Even trying to say why they fall doesn't count as philosophy, unless you have a crazy-ass, non-verifiable theory about why they fall ("God's love pulls them!"). If you're working within some tradition of explanation that you see no reason to question, then your analysis can be scientific, or aesthetic, or theological, but will likely not be philosophical.
Likewise, I regard people who radically want to overthrow the government as having a philosophy, while those who simply want to pursue some sensible course of action to administer things, where "sensible" is uncontroversial to anyone who is... well... sensible, are basing their reasons on ordinary, non-philosophical grounds.
Yes, I'm aware of the circularity in the above, and that my claim here implies that what counts or doesn't count as philosophy will differ according to its cultural setting. If I'm deciding which restaurant to go to based on cost and quality of food, that's not a philosophical choice, but if I avoid some place because I don't like their political views, well, that's something approaching philosophy, and if I avoid restaurants altogether out of a deep moral conviction that the eating-out process is inherently corrupt, then that's a philosophy.
It follows from this that people with philosophies are in many cases simply f'in crazy. However, I think deep cogitation on any of our social institutions or our "common sense" beliefs about metaphysics, epistemology, or ethics will reveal something fundamentally askew in our everyday thinking or practices, so really, there's room for sane philosophy in just about any area. In this area (politics today in Wisconsin), however, I don't feel like I've had to pull out my philosopher hat even for a minute. Prioritizing tax breaks over anything else is to me an obviously dishonest political ploy: whether offered to wealthy campaign donors or across the board to the majority of tax payers, these are bribes by politicians for you to vote for and contribute to them. I do credit the labor movement for having achieved many of the comforts that the majority of us now enjoy (i.e. advances in working hours and conditions), I do think employers having too much power is bad for people, and I do think teachers are certainly not in general overpaid. None of these things, to me, require much in the way of philosophical thought to establish, though I recognize that someone could have a radical philosophy that says government is inherently bad and so thinks that the acts of the Republicans here are a good idea. I simply don't see the appeal or sense of any philosophy of this sort.
-Mark Linsenmayer
Mark wrote: “I do credit the labor movement for having achieved many of the comforts that the majority of us now enjoy (i.e. advances in working hours and conditions), I do think employers having too much power is bad for people, and I do think teachers are certainly not in general overpaid. None of these things, to me, require much in the way of philosophical thought to establish.”
I would agree with you Mark, but what do you think is the reason why these propositions don’t seem to require philosophical thought — for us — to establish?
-Tom
Because when I start giving my reasons for these, I don’t find myself saying something I consider philosophical. Not that they don’t require reasons, i.e. that they’re totally obvious and unarguable, but the types of reasons aren’t, in my case, philosophical.
1. Re. the labor movement; it’s a historical observation. Of course there’s something philosophical to be said re. the epistemic status of these, but either I’ve been misinformed, or I’ve got it right, or the historical situation is much more complicated, and I need a historian (not a philosopher) to correct me.
2. Re. employers having too much power: I state this as empirical fact, taking “bad” in the ordinary sense that people claim it as bad. People don’t like bosses having arbitrary control over their wages, work conditions, advancement, etc. Even someone doing well doesn’t like the fact that someone above him can get a bug up his ass and fire him. The details of what to do about this require public policy thought (which may or may not be philosophical), but the statement as I’ve made it is not supposed to be controversial.
3. Re. teachers not being overpaid, this is of course a value judgment re. what teachers do, but I don’t think talking about values at all makes one philosophical. Re. the fact of what they get paid vs. what others get paid and how much it takes to live comfortably, there are some matters of fact there, and another value (what constitutes “comfortably”) that I could be wrong about (or have cause to rethink given further evidence), but these are still not philosophical (unless nearly everything we think is philosophical and every thoughtful person in any context is a philosopher).
Mark wrote: “Yes, I have beliefs and ideas about the role of government, but when do these rise to the level of ‘a philosophy’?”
This is a great question.
My own practical views about the situation in Wisconsin are point for point similar to yours. However, the fact that we tend not to feel that this general question about government rises to the level of philosophy is peculiar when put in historical context.
There is a striking difference between the ancients and the moderns (and the postmoderns) on this question. For the ancients, this question is supremely Philosophical, having to do with issues of eternal, ultimate, and ‘foundational’ import, e.g., Plato’s Republic and Aristotle’s Politics. For Plato there is nowhere else where it could be more clear that reason is embodied than in the political organization of the citizens. Many if not most of the modern philosophers, like Hobbes and Machiavelli who you’ve covered, Locke and Spinoza, have given very great importance to politics as well, mostly in the way of giving ideological shape to the modern liberal concept of the state as a formal contract between rationally self-interested natural individuals. But then in late 19th and 20th century Anglo thought politics disappears as a qualifying subject for philosophical consideration. What does it say about Frege, Wittgenstein, Carnap, Ayer, and Quine that they think (or want) reason to be apolitical (in addition to being ahistorical)?
Cheers,
Tom
“Re. teachers not being overpaid, this is of course a value judgment re. what teachers do, but I don’t think talking about values at all makes one philosophical.”
Do you think it is possible that our modern belief that fact and value are intrinsically separate is itself a utilitarian-technological value? (e.g., Plato and Aristotle did not believe this).
-Tom
My point is not that “the political” is aphilosophical per Frege or someone, but that within an established discourse, if you’re just making a judgment call re. some issue, then that doesn’t rise to the level of philosophical.
If you’re making a foundational claim re. the discourse itself, then that is philosophical.
What’s new (to me) in this way of thinking is that while normally being “unreflective” and “aphilosophical” is seen as a bad thing by philosophers (the unexamined life is not worth living and all), the majority of our thinking is aphilosophical of this sort, and necessarily so, in order to solve real-world problems. Someone who feels the need to pull out the big guns of philosophy to select a shirt in the morning is most likely a highly eccentric asshole. Re. the political, yes, I’ve done philosophical examination of the framework in which I make judgments (and my underlying assumptions are hardly as universal as those underlying clothing selection w/in a given society) and am not above doing occasional dialectical battle to defend those views, but I don’t see a philosophical approach as necessary to defend these particular claims unless I’ve been goaded into a foundationalist discussion with some actual interlocutor whose opposing views I respect and want to engage.
A relevant dynamic occurred here recently re. the New Work discussion (http://partiallyexaminedlife.com/2011/01/25/more-on-bergmanns-new-work/). I was trying to make a philosophical point that the economic order as we presently encounter it is not set in stone, and that it’s worth examining what we’d really like (do a little utopian thinking) and figure out what the avenues are for achieving some measure of this. One of my assumptions in making the particular argument is that less forced work is good, leaving room for more things people actually want to do in their lives, and another judgment, based as I perceived it on simple experience, is that technology can save us time by doing some things for us.
So I took those two judgments underlying my philosophical argument to be in themselves aphilosophical. (I realize how silly my insistence on making this distinction ultimately is, but since I brought it up, I’m trying to explore it…) Our frequent poster Doug, however, took issue with both of those claims on philosophical grounds, the first from something like a Hegelian perspective (work, even forced work, builds a sense of self), the second (and this is more of what Doug actually said) from the perspective that technology dehumanizes and its gains are only apparent.
At first I wanted to simply dismiss these challenges as those of a radical fringe element coming in and mucking up the point I wanted to make, but upon reconsideration, I acknowledge that they deserve response (and we’ll have an Emerson and/or Thoreau episode eventually, or maybe Heidegger on technology, where we’ll likely discuss Doug’s second claim at some length). The context, though, is a philosophy blog/discussion where questioning foundations is the whole point. It’s OK to explore what you think to be radical challenges in an academic exercise or a playground of the ideas, if you will.
In politics, ultimately it comes down to what you feel worth doing. I’ve done enough questioning in the past that I’m not going to have a philosophical switch to being a conservative. Of course, individual officials I may want to vote for may be corrupt, but that again is not a philosophical judgment, because I have a clear and pretty uncontroversial idea already re. what constitutes corruption (e.g. taking bribes or otherwise being an ass a la the former governor of Illinois). So the only live options for me would be voting Democrat or voting Green (or some other third party), or not voting at all in protest of a corrupt system, and I just see no practical use at all in the latter options, much as I’m willing to entertain the ideas of left-wing third party candidates and judge them on their individual merits, meaning I could always vote that way in the future in some particular setting.
There’s also the judgment of what if anything to do beyond voting, which gets into other judgments, some of them overtly philosophical, many of them not. I must admit that protesting is pretty foreign to me, not on ideological grounds, but just because if I go to some event, I tend to want to be either entertained, or to have some task for which my personal, individual presence is necessary.
Again, I tend to agree with your personal sentiments, like when you say
“I must admit that protesting is pretty foreign to me, not on ideological grounds, but just because if I go to some event, I tend to want to be either entertained, or to have some task for which my personal, individual presence is necessary.”
Although I also recognize the gains of the labor movement and tend to vote Democrat, it feels downright awkward to participate in any event in some way as an anonymous number.
I wonder whether this is due to philosophy (especially existentialism) creating a heightened sensitivity about individuality or if its economic. The Marxist perspective won’t let me dismiss that this is – in part at least – an effect of having acquired enough bourgeois individual dignity and comfort not to feel compelled or desperate enough to have to reduce myself to (the feeling of being) an anonymous number in a mass.
One suggestion if you do an episode about Heidegger on Technology. One of Heidegger’s most interesting points is also one that runs deeply against our modern liberal ‘values’. And I admit frankly my own. That is, he claims that technology and its utilitarian mindset that believes in fact-value distinction — tech-nologic is itself a way of knowing and revealing for Heidegger — is all of a part with the modern universalist desire to level everything in the world — the sheer ‘facts’ without intrinsic meaning — to an ‘objective’/unobjectionable neutrality (we could call it the Neutering of the world). I think Heidegger is dead-on right here, and that modern natural science is for the most part the utilitarian mindset disguising itself as the authority on what is, and this authority on what is is itself predicated on our universal belief that the sheer facts can only be grasped by those who are ascetic enough to completely separate meaning from the world. Bow down before the universalist nihilism of techno-logic my friend.
Thus, I believe we philosophers should argue that most of what passes for realism in the techno-science world is actually subjectivism – the utilitarian-subjectivism that passes for realism because so many people share its normative desires.
I haven’t yet read Hilary Putnam’s book here, but he is a noteworthy contemporary pragmatist and a realist who argues against the fact-value opposition:
http://books.google.com/books?id=JvaUFgB1lKAC&printsec=frontcover&dq=putnam+fact+value&hl=en&ei=UCiGTdCZKPO-0QGD-ujMCA&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=book-thumbnail&resnum=1&ved=0CCoQ6wEwAA#v=onepage&q&f=false
Best,
Tom
I’m thinking that our political system is, roughly speaking, unphilosophical by design. The basic idea of a secular society is that individuals get to decide for themselves what constitutes the good life and so the particular way one decides to pursue happiness is not proscribed by the government. This is almost always conceived as freedom of speech, religion, association and assembly but the general thrust of all those rights is to protect each person’s right to talk and think freely, to express values and beliefs without fear of reprisal. As a result the role of the State becomes pragmatic and it is practically against the rules for the government to suppress or prop up anything except for the most basic and uncontroversial values and beliefs. The prohibition against theft and murder, for example, is not based on sectarian values or any particular religion.
It probably wouldn’t quite count as a philosophical treatment but Wisconsin Public Radio does an excellent show/podcast called “To the Best of Our Knowledge”. (And you know I have good taste in audio brain candy because I’m a fan of P.E.L..) One of the recent episodes, titled “Austerity” looked at the events in Madison from several different perspectives. This is how they handle every topic; they give it a multi-disiplinary approach by bringing together various kinds of experts from various fields to shed light on a single theme or topic. What you get, then, is context. It’s my favorite radio show ever and that particular episode was delicious.
I’ve become convinced that most of the stances and positions advanced by the political right can be defeated with simple, knowable facts. The highest scoring students in the world, for example, come from Finland where there is no standardized testing, 100% of the teachers are highly trained and belong to the teachers’ union. They’ve achieved first place status by doing everything the conservatives are against. I seriously worry and wonder why such things aren’t widely known and discussed. Why are the liberals not using such facts to defeat their vast array of demonstrably bad ideas?
My two cents.
“I’ve become convinced that most of the stances and positions advanced by the political right can be defeated with simple, knowable facts.”
Yep; this is largely what I was getting at in my great length. No philosophy is required, though the faculty of judgment is, and of course any alleged fact is open to a foundational challenge from philosophy, as foolish and inappropriate for a given situation many of those challenges may be (e.g. “maybe solipsism is true!”).
Fascism, A Republic, Democracy, Socialism, the Right, the Left. These are abstractions with supposed philosophic foundations therefore seemingly they should be talked about. The happenings that occur within these abstractions seem like fodder for discussion.
Perhaps one may feel only the systems themselve are worth discussing. I suppose obvious dysfunction and the facts that are apparent dont give rise to philosophical inquiry and only prove whether that sytem is being followed, adhered to, corrupted etc.
If something seems meaningless or not worthy of discussion than that seems reasonable. As Richard Rorty finds that discussing ‘truth with a capital T” is not worthy of philosophical discussion. [However wrote heaps of pages on why there is no reason to talk about truth “with a capital T”]
Also personally depends on whether the context applies to you or not. I for one have been spewing vitriol about the political system, its corruption, etc at various internet ‘hives’. However as Im getting ready to leave the country of US to Australia, my wife observed, that I will not need to put my affections and waste my cynicism on the system anymore. She is absolutely right. I do not foresee myself continuing to visit ‘hive mentality’ sites to release invective on the current state of affairs of US politics or gobal hegemony as it will no longer seem as important to me personally.