In her essay on John Stuart Mill, Gertrude Himmelfarb writes:
“For almost a century and a half, On Liberty, for liberals and conservatives alike, has been a major text in intellectual history and a source of inspiration in practical affairs. But there is the Other Mill, who wrote essays that were bold and novel in his time and that remain remarkably prescient and pertinent today.”[1]
R.F. Stalley remarks in his introduction to Aristotle’s Politics:
“Disturbingly, however, he [Aristotle] does not disguise the fact that only a limited section of the population will be able to achieve such a life. Many people lack the appropriate capacities, but, in any case, the existence of a city requires that a substantial number of its inhabitants engage in occupations which are inconsistent with a good life. Manual labour and trade not only take up time, but they also render people unfit for the activities which Aristotle sees as worthwhile.”[1]
It is the sign of an overly active imagination and a restless mind that one focuses more on what ought to be than what is, which is the question we face in the present moment: must we prefer hard ‘facts’ to utopic ‘visions’, the present to the future in its entirety, or the past in all its knowingness, to the detriment of the now and henceforth. The question of escapism, of voluntary renunciation, or of blatant ignorance of the world is a question posed to many in the ivory tower, but is of pressing importance to the philosopher of politics, if only because the very birth of political philosophy was in a heedless utopia, and its most ardent expression in perhaps the most common-sense abstractions (of course, it is not always as dichotomous as this, and certainly Aristotle ought not to have acquired a reputation for various forms of pedantry and didacticism, but that is wholly another matter). What separates the enviable political philosopher from the second-rate thinker? Is it wholly in making compromises with reality, or is the same virtue as that which applies to politics itself — neither an excess, nor a dearth — of some value here? Is methodological neutrality as chickenish as neutral positions often sound, the sign of an insecure individual unable to commit to any one side and reserving the most ‘obvious’ position whilst refusing to think in any way that would endanger his ‘common sense’? This subject is of peculiar interest here not because of Schumpeter’s irritable gestures against Aristotle, which are beyond inflammatory. It is because of a more contemporary debate, one that has taken place for all time and will continue to take place. Does a ‘thing’ have an ‘essence’ or an ‘end’, a telos? Is the teleological mode of thought such a wretched mode of analysis, unsophisticated and brutish, or does it appear to bear some sophisticated manner of thinking that ought to have some relation to the manner in which we think of questions in the first place, even before we examine answers?
Continue reading “Hard Facts, Utopic Visions, Sceptical Sights”
In his De Re Publica, Cicero writes:
“For legal equality — the object of free peoples — cannot be preserved: the people themselves, no matter how uncontrolled they may be, give great rewards to many individuals, and they pay great attention to the selection of men and honours. And what people call equality is in fact very unfair. When the same degree of honour is given to the best and the worst (and such must exist in any population), then equity itself is highly inequitable. But that is something that cannot happen in states that are ruled by the best citizens.” (1.53)
In his analysis of farmers and the subsistence ethic, James C. Scott writes:
“In bad years the collection of taxes fell off substantially and, reluctantly, remissions were granted for whole districts hit by floods, pests, or drought. This lenience may in part have been due to a symbolic alignment of the traditional court with the welfare of its subjects but it was also surely a reflection of the traditional state’s inability to reliably control much of its hinterland.”1.
Continue reading “The Centralisation of Power”
“There are times which are not ordinary, and in such times it is not enough to follow the road. It is necessary to know where it leads, and, if it leads nowhere, to follow another. The search for another involves reflection, which is uncongenial to the bustling of people who describe themselves as practical, because they take things as they are and leave them as they are.”
—R.H Tawney, The Acquisitive Society (New York: Harcourt, Brace and Company, 1920), 2.
How fitting for our times!
E.R. Dodds’ essay on the ancient concept of progress, which found mention in a recent post, included an interesting comment on Plato’s Republic that worthy of further discussion, namely, that:
“Alternatively, the dream could be projected as a blueprint for the future, one of those ‘rational Utopias’ of which Plato’s Republic is only the most famous example. Utopias of this kind are less a sign of confidence in the future than of dissatisfaction with the present; their authors seldom have much to say about the practical steps by which Utopia is to be achieved.”[1]
Continue reading “A Passing Comment on the Establishment of Platonic Utopias”
Writing in the midst of this pandemic always brings up this unavoidable question: is there such a thing as progress — progress not commiserate with the material terms in which we qualify, quantify, and evaluate our lives otherwise? We chide the medieval world for being subject to the whims and fancies of nature, of being subject to the arbitrary and capricious diktats of small living and semi-living entities completely invisible to the naked eye, but are we any better?
I would dare venture to say that after the rise of civilisations, progress has been sketchy at best, that economic and commercial growth is mistaken for a change in the human condition, that the times we live in seem to be wholly unrecognisable but are merely the hypostatisation of some cycle of historic occurrence that is outside our control and repeats itself in broad strokes, and that those who study the past well enough can only see the various occurrences and reoccurrences but nothing more, nothing less.
Joseph Schumpeter is the rare economist whose interest and work extends outside of the small, technical field of economic analysis. In his History of Economic Analysis, he looks deep and wide, but of particular interest to us are his comments on the ancient Greeks and Romans, and the medieval Scholastics.1 The book is more widely known for the provocative claim that the man regarded as the father of classical economists was merely derivative of his French brethren — Turgot being the main source of ‘inspiration’ — but that is a claim that I will reserve for examination at another time. For now, of key interest are: {1} the distinction he makes between thought and analysis, {2} the distinctions he draws between Plato and Aristotle, {3} his discussion of the development of the concept of usury alongside the flourishing of industry in medieval Europe, and {4} his discussion of the ‘welfare state’ and its relation to the thought of the medieval scholastics.
Continue reading “Schumpeter’s Soirée with the Ancients and the Schoolmen”
I was led to the following passage in Adam Smith’s Theory of Moral Sentiments by Joseph Crospey’s book, Polity and Economy, which has found mention and discussion on this blog previously. The passage in concern is at 4.1.10, and is of considerable length: long enough to jump across pages and, faced with justified type, blend into a whirlwind of serif lettering with no sense of time or space. For ease of comprehension, I ought to break it down.
The opening lines of the passage refer to the conclusion of the preceding (and comparatively minuscule) one: “The pleasures of wealth and greatness, when considered in this complex view, strike the imagination as something grand and beautiful and noble, of which the attainment is well worth all the toil and anxiety which we are so apt to bestow upon it” (TMS 4.1.9). This is what Adam Smith will refer to as nature’s imposition upon man: it makes outward riches seem more attractive than they actually are, deluding and misleading the senses. But wealth is characterised by Smith in terms of its grandeur, beauty, and nobility — in aesthetic terms before moral ones. Why, precisely, wealth confers nobility upon its possessor is a question not for those content with their station, or those who seek knowledge and may well prefer inner wealth to outward displays of it. Wealth is clearly not desirable in itself, but only for the aesthetic embellishments it can afford. But, one may ask, what does the acquisition of wealth have to do with honour? This is a question one can only turn back to Smith. Honour is ambiguously defined in Smith’s work, and definitions of it are often provided in contexts such as this, where it is contextually implied that it is a good thing, but it is not conferred by outward, material goods. Honour belongs to the non-material world, and for the material world to be responsible for its production is precisely the wool that is pulled over one’s eyes by nature.
Continue reading “Smith’s Laissez Faire Solution to Happiness”