by David McDonagh
The British Empire and Liberty
The ‘Bitter Truth’: Empire and the Death of Liberalism
| The ‘Bitter Truth’: Empire and the Death of Liberalism Daniel McCarthy, editor of The American Conservative, has started a bit of a controversy with his essay “Why Liberalism Means Empire,” the thesis of which is that t… | |||||||
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In his article, “The ‘Bitter Truth’: Empire and the Death of Liberalism: Why liberalism cannot and never did mean empire” by Justin Raimondo, 6 October , 2014, the author is right to say, basically, that imperialism is intrinsically illiberal, but it is not the most illiberal thing, but he seems to think, or rather to write, as though it is. His thesis is that more imperialism means less liberty and vice versa, that they are inversely related, but that seems to be clearly false.
Nationalism has all too often proved to be even more illiberal than any empire, and that was, even more often than not, the case when nationalism went up against the British Empire, for that empire, at least from about 1860 up to 1914, was very greatly influenced by the liberal idea; that was in that period in fashion in Britain, but the British Empire not ever fully in accord with this liberal ideal, of course, as that is hardly possible. At no time was imperialism unopposed in the supposedly mother country and when liberalism became the fashion amongst the elite, after 1840, but with the masses way before then, maybe in the 1780s, so from about 1840 the home opposition to the Empire was even more keen than it had been beforehand.
The pristine liberals of the 1830s, like Richard Cobden and John Bright, were always hostile to empire, on principle, and that principle was the liberal idea. But following the long consideration given to the colonies in The Wealth of Nations (1776) Adam Smith, the two liberal propagandists held that imperialism was not only illiberal but also exceedingly costly and a massive white elephant, “India was millstone around England’s neck” said Cobden, and, later, Disraeli, oddly, repeated it.
But owing to the rise of statism in the Liberal Party of the UK in the 1870s and ’80s we, today, often see the uglier, longer word, “libertarianism” being used for the pristine liberal idea. Statist liberalism is the norm today, but pristine liberalism has never quite become defunct. It has revived a bit since the 1970s from the sundry rump that maintained the ideal beforehand, at least in a few books.
Daniel McCarthy, Justin Raimondo’s target in the saidabove linked article, may well take statism rather than pristine liberalism as what he feels leads to imperialism. McCarthy’s thesis, that imperialism is a prerequisite of liberalism, is quite absurd in the pristine sense of liberalism but also the wrong way round in the statist sense, as historically statism precedes imperialism, as well as surviving it.
And if the likes of T.H. Green, a nineteenth century pioneer of statist neo-liberalism, are to be heeded then liberalism requires a far stronger state, even, than we have today. But Green realised he was almost the opposite of those who had earlier called themselves liberals. He was more an Hegelian than a liberal, and he would have been more honest had he openly said so. But the rising statist liberals of his day just seemed to like the word. And there was quite a few of them. They eventually made the word their own, hence the use of “libertarianism” by pristine liberals today. But they confused quite a few by doing so, both in the 1870s, and ever since too.
Dominant politics often does lead to imperialism, if it can. There is glory in it for most politicians, even if they are not enthusiastic ideological imperialist idealists, as Joseph Chamberlain so clearly was. An empire usually aids the politician’s ability to make war. The ambition of all politicians is, clearly, to rule over others. Many obfuscate that fact with the cant that they are serving the public, but how many politicians are truly dim enough to shallow that cant? The state rules the public rather than serving it, but the journalists working on the media tend not to realise that fact, so the common political cant is still alive and well.
From 1860 to 1900, there was a lot of confusion between what I, here, call pristine liberalism and statist neo-liberalism within the Liberal Party of the UK. Even Gladstone was not always clear on the distinction. Men like David Lloyd George was utterly confused on it, though he was well aware of his own utterly statist aims for the future, but what they all agreed on was that liberalism was the way of future progress; that it was progressive. The idea of progress was vital to liberalism. But many overlooked, especially after 1880, that progress for statism is directly the contrary of progress for individual liberty.
Liberalism was not, ever, a Conservative position, though it emerged from the Peelite split in the Conservative Party in the mid to late 1840s over the repeal of the Corn Laws. It might also one day become quite conservative, if only ever full liberty is completely attained. But liberalism historically emerged in the House of Commons as a movement led by Robert Peel away from protectionism towards free trade. It existed as an ideological movement in books from way over a hundred years beforehand, from at least 1688, if not from the 1640s.
If McCarthy truly thinks the empire was a prerequisite to liberalism then he has, unwittingly, adopted a delusion. Liberalism is viable economically but the state and all of politics is not; so it is politics that always needs the subsidy, indeed it needs complete support from taxation, not liberalism, which, in its most extreme form of anarcho-liberalism, is anti-politics.
The idea of hegemony is as alien to liberalism, as is any empire. Liberalism is about the most extensive liberty for one and all. Any government of the people is alien to this ideal.
T.H. Green, who was one of the leading the statist reformers of liberalism after 1860, was a keen reader of the philosophy of Hegel, who was an ignoramus [i.e. an advocate who
has not mastered the subject-matter], especially in logic, but Green took to him as if he was a master. As those in error often, ironically, pride themselves exactly on their errors, so Hegel prided himself on his new “advanced” logic of dialectics, a paradigm that Marx pretended to adopt, but, though he occasionally used it to obfuscate things, he mainly remained, nevertheless, an Aristotelian, rather than an Hegelian, especially in logic; though Hegel himself remained largely Aristotelian too, in most things, despite his supposed “innovations” in logic.
Where Marx truly did follow Hegel, seriously, was in becoming, as I am myself today, a critic of political economy; though I have distinct, if not opposite, criticisms of economics from what those two had. Like Keynes later, Hegel hated the fact that the political economists were tending to downplay, if not completely forget about, the role of the state. By contrast, I resent the fact that the economists think way too much about statist economic policy, tending to make it their main object instead of the truth.
Liberal democracy is almost a unity of opposites, but not quite, as democracy could remain liberal if only people voted to negate the various negations of liberty e.g. for tax cuts, for true privatisation [viz. no state control or
state use of the market
but a complete sell off by the state], or for otherwise rolling back the state. To remain liberal, democracy, like coercion generally, needs to remain reactive, or defensive of liberty. When democracy goes proactive then it thereby gets illiberal.
Men, like James Mill, who was very active from 1802, when he moved to London from Scotland, up till his death in 1836, were not so unrealistic in thinking that democracy, or indeed the state, might be so limited as they have since seemed to twentieth century men like Joseph Schumpeter, who have thought that democracy was almost bound to be used to replace the market in his famous book Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy (1943). It is easy for the modern reader to overlook how popular liberty was before about 1870.
After 1870, though, what Schumpeter had in mind was what more and more people were thinking in terms of; and not only the ideological socialist for statism was generally coming into fashion. Men like T.H. Green aided the successful rise of statist liberalism to crowd out pristine liberalism. The early liberals, like James Mill and Francis Place, expected democracy always to be used in a purely defensive way but later many saw it, as had some in the 1789 riots, that the Romantics call the French Revolution, as applying to every aspect of life, as indeed totalitarian. [See The Origins of Totalitarian Democracy
(1952) J.L. Talmon]. Looking back from 2014, this looks to be almost impossibly naïve but that is to overlook the fashion or general outlook from about 1800 to at least 1850, if not to 1870, for, in those days, liberalism was very popular.
Any modern reader of a biography of Richard Cobden would think that Cobden was being very foolhardy to put pristine liberal principles before the electorate, when he first stood for parliament, in 1837, when he contested seat for Stockport. The reader will not be surprised to read that he lost the contest, and it will be thought, by most readers today, that it was as a result of Cobden being too openly liberal.
When they read that Cobden was utterly surprised they will, again, smile, but Cobden was utterly shocked as well as surprised, and he set out to discover why. He was completely sure that it was not a rejection of liberalism. We might smile yet again.
But in the next few days, Cobden found that his supporters had nearly all forgotten about the election, and that they thought it was still due in the next few days, or, in a few cases, even in the next few weeks, that, anyway, most of them felt that the time to vote was still sometime in the future. Cobden concluded that he would have won, just as he thought had done before he saw the result, if only he had but realised that he needed to remind his supporters of the day they needed to go out and vote on. He said, at once, that he could win an immediate re-run, with ease, the very next week, and that he hardly needed to do much to win the next time, and that proved to be true in 1841. So he was quite right all along. What the modern reader overlooks here is the massive change in fashion from pristine to statist liberalism; that took place well after Cobden’s death in 1865.
The sentence from Justin Raimondo that: “McCarthy’s essential premise is that history refutes the anti-interventionist arguments of “idealists” who deny the fundamental beneficence of empire, whether British or American” leads me to think that though history itself, as being merely only the past, lacks any brain of its own, so it never itself judges, so any historian can do better than that, but most historians, hitherto, seem to, perversely, produce something that is even worse than nothing if ever we had to have what they write as the only account; though any idea, whatsoever, is good enough to start any enquiry from, so given any account, we can always do better. However, many historians, so far, have written very poor books fact-wise. They usually seem to be out to flatter the state, to indulge in the fallacy of playing to the political gallery rather than to put the truth in the first place.
For example, it looks like sheer Romantic nonsense to call the breaking away movement of the colonies, which became the USA, a “revolution”, as it does also the riots in France that began in 1789. Edmund Burke saw that the new Romantic meaning of Revolution was a sham, as well as I do today, but he still continued to use the jargon in the revised sense of going to a completely new epoch, as it added spin to his warmongering schemes against France. The 1688 meaning of completing the revolution back to 1685 was maybe also unrealistic but not such a massive delusion. It was far more mundane than the 1789 Romantic meaning, just as the event was way more peaceful than the Romantic riots of 1789. It was also in reaction or defensive and it meant the same as reactionary. Liberalism is about repealing politically coercive laws rather than being progressive politics that can only be wasteful as well as illiberal.
Such silly schemes that the Romantic Edmund Burke was so keen on are still fashionable in the UK/USA today. It is a version of his rival Romantic, Rousseau’s absurd paradox of attempting to force people “to be free”, an aim that is bound to be self-defeating, as it actually puts force prior to liberty in practise. The UK/USA invades to “free” the people of Iraq but should they be surprised that the natives are not likely to see it that way but rather as sheer imperialism? Democracy itself is not liberty. It is, at best, a temporary evil, for the same reasons that Tom Paine said that the state was. Paine held that, ideally, coercion should not be needed at all but he felt that, realistically, it looks as if we will have to use it in defence. He realised that things are not yet, when he wrote in 1776, completely ideal. We might, even today, feel the need to admit the same for the foreseeable future. Coercion can be liberal if used only in defence.
Contrary to what Justin Raimondo says, it is not at all odd for a USA Conservative to be anti-Paine and pro-Burke, or pro-John Adams and thus pro-British. Justin Raimondo writes as if he does not read much USA Conservative literature.
Mises was right to see that the British Empire opened up to free trade after liberalism arose in the homeland from about 1840 to 1870. The empire was never was captured by the imperialist ideal, that the likes of Joseph Chamberlain sought to achieve, at the top, from about 1870 onwards, but that was an aim that Chamberlain had that he failed to ever bring off. Instead, the empire arose by default, as the British were actually aiming mainly at fighting the French and the accidental result, or unintended consequence, or by-product, of that aim was the emerging British Empire.
Liberalism is not a product of empire in any way, Justin Raimondo is right there, and McCarthy seems to be quite wrong to think that it is, but the British relatively neglected their Empire but instead they invested all around the world prior to 1914, and they did not ever make a customs union, as the current European Union [EU] is attempting to do today, out of the Empire but rather they left things open to the rest of the world in free trade after about 1860 up to 1914. That latter fact is contrary to Justin Raimondo’s idea and also to the spirit of his Mises quotation too, but not to the actual letter of it, for Mises goes on about the aims of the British imperialist ideologues, like Chamberlain, rather than the actual historical organisation of the Empire, which the imperialist idealists never quite got in charge of before 1914 but they got a bit more of a look in from 1918 onwards but, by then, their imperialist ideal was rapidly waning. Protectionism of the British Empire itself, called “Empire Free Trade” by Joseph Chamberlain, lost out badly to free trade that the Liberal Party championed against the Conservative and Unionist Party in the 1906 UK General Election.
The British invested more in places like Argentina, or even in the independent USA, rather than in the Empire prior to 1914. This looked very silly to Joseph Chamberlain, the late arriving imperialist idealist ideologue after 1870, and it is also contrary to how so many students, or even tutors, in the colleges, today, suppose imperialism just must have been like, as well as to how Chamberlain wanted it to be. Chamberlain fully aimed for it to more like the imperialist ideal. But he never quite achieved that aim, or even got anywhere near it. The Empire was never liberal, but it was influenced by the liberal idea to a far greater extent than it ever was by the ideological imperialist ideal. Later, after 1918, it went over more to Fabian influence, which was nearer to the imperialist ideal that it never attained, but by then the naked imperialist ideal was ebbing badly. The Fabians were not ever so openly imperialist as Joseph Chamberlain was. Nor were either of his two sons. Even the Conservative and Unionist Party moved on after 1906, thought they were to return to protectionism, if not to “Empire Free Trade” in the inter-war years. The Fabians pretended to be socialists but way more elitist than the ordinary socialist, as they were usually upper or at least middle class socialists, and their hidden imperialism was one of many features that made them extraordinary socialists, when it occasionally became quite explicit.
The breakaway of the USA in 1776 was not a struggle against imperialism but rather a split between Whigs and Tories in England as well as in the colonies, which was later turned into a nationalist split by Tom Paine and others. Some men in America, like Ben Franklin and his son [though he later became a founding
father, but his son
remained British], did value the British Empire, to begin with, as did Adam Smith in Britain, but most, prior to 1776, did not seem to think in terms of the Empire at all but only of the attempt of King George III to revive the power of the crown; as against the rule of parliament. The main issue, later, became whether taxation of the colonies to make up for the recent war against the French was fair or not.
Justin Raimondo writes as if the 1812 war, when the Whitehouse was burnt by the British, took place in 1776. What he means by “their own government” is best known to him, for the Tories, even in 1812, would not think the USA government was their own. They would not have seen it in Raimondo’s nationalist terms. But it is true that politics will split people off into enemies in its acme of war, but politics is never quite the liberal ideal, just as the British Empire never was quite in the grip of the imperialist ideal.
Liberalism was not thrown out by imperialism as such. Rothbard does not look so hot on any of this sort of stuff. He looks as if he was always too much in love with sheer Romance. Nearly every step Rothbard took away from Mises, with the exception of a few, like the step he took towards anarchy, looks like a backward one. He failed to see that the jump from utilitarianism to natural rights resulted in a distinction without anything other than a mere verbal difference, as Joseph Priestley rightly said of the debates over the supposed difference between utilitarianism and natural rights in the eighteenth century. Rothbard imagined many things that never existed, like revolutions.
Rothbard was not so good on Ireland either. But then nor was Gladstone. John Bright was principle bound to regretfully leave the Liberal Party on Gladstone’s error there in 1886. Gladstone was unwittingly making civil war in Ireland far more likely. Ironically for a lifelong opponent of Catholicism [despite being a High Church man] Gladstone sought to put many Protestants, puritans as well as all sorts of Anglicans, in Ireland under Rome Rule with his Home Rule aims.
Anyway, the Rothbard quote that Justin Raimondo gives is hopelessly inept. Liberalism emerged from the Tories after 1840 but Catholic Irish nationalism was not one whit liberal, in any way. Any liberals in Ireland soon found their way to the north, if not to England, but Gladstone unwittingly backed a totalitarian nationalist cause that would show no mercy to liberty in the second largest of the British Isles, especially on freedom of religion, that arose from about 1830 onwards.
The Catholicism of the south was fresh, energetic and intolerant and it effectively formed a new second nation in Ireland, one that was far from liberal, from a population that, before 1800, had only spoken Gaelic but that, in the decades long series of “monster meetings” of Daniel O’Connell, by 1820 they mainly spoke English for the first time, to also became both actively Catholic and Irish for the first time too. The new rising nation contrasted greatly with those who had supported Napoleon and the French before 1800, whom had largely been won over to the Act of Union in 1801, and who, soon, felt utterly alienated from the new movement in the south, so much so than many of them moved north.
But it is true for Raimondo to say that liberalism began to ebb in Britain in the 1870s.
Yes, empires cost money, as do wars. Justin Raimondo gets that right. But what is he referring to by “inner rot”? My guess is that it refers to nothing at all. The rise of statist liberalism after 1870 is not usefully called “a rot”. A better analogy would be that it was like the rapid growth of a new weed. Any gardener might think that it is most ironic that young males, boys and teens, often call their rivals “weeds” when they intend to mean that they their rivals are weak. In the garden, the plants called weeds are often the strongest known to the gardener. Statist liberalism was not weak, or rotten in any way, after 1870. It replaced pristine liberalism.
As normal politics is always cold war till it gets to its acme in normal war, or open violence instead of mere coercion, we had lots of cold war long before 1945.
McCarthy certainly seems to over rate the influence of politics, judging by the citations that Justin Raimondo gives from his writings. But it is an exaggeration on the part of Justin Raimondo to imagine a slippery slope that we cannot recover from if ever the politicians conquer foreign lands and thereby create an empire. It will be very illiberal for them to do that sort of thing but, presumably, they can always grant the conquered their independence. It seems easy enough to reverse.
But nationalism is not always going to be naturally nearer to liberalism than it is to imperialism anyway. And the story from 1945 up to today has not been towards increasing liberty whenever national independence has been obtained from the British Empire. More often than not, it has resulted in a more illiberal regime than was the case even with the intrinsically illiberal Empire.
Justin Raimondo tells us that McCarthy presents an absurd paradox of power where we can only get liberty by empire, and he rightly sees that as incoherent, but there is a coherent paradox of power, in that power cannot honestly earn its own keep but instead requires taxation, or support, from some enterprise that is economic. That only has a paradoxical flavour owing to common sense still expecting power to be efficient, when the reality is, instead, that political power always economically dysfunctional or expensive. But Justin Raimondo is clearly right in seeing that imperialism itself is always going to be illiberal but so too is the state and, usually, nationalism is too.
The rise of statist neo-liberalism, from the 1880s onwards, has certainly resulted in a contraction of civil liberties in the UK today, as Justin Raimondo rightly says.
Political Correctness [PC] has turned all the old liberal memes on their head, and, with their feet in the air, so to write, they are effectively defeated [bad pun
intended]. In J.S. Mill’s day, liberal tolerance was tolerance for criticism but today PC stresses this right to our own opinion, that usually ends up putting mores against any criticism, on the idea that criticism upsets people so [according to PC] it thereby tends to be “intolerant”!
But we cannot, justly or adequately, blame the rise of PC onto imperialism, but Justin Raimondo tends to wrongly suggest by what he writes that we can.
All states are at the expense of liberty so, as the USA is about the biggest state, then Justin Raimondo is right to see it as about the biggest enemy of liberty.
But democracy will only be a friend of liberty when used in reaction or defence. If ever it goes proactive, and its idealists today usually want exactly that, then it will then crowd out liberty, for a vote is always a vote against others. If they have done nothing to us, then proactive democracy is bound to be unjust aggression against them; even if mere voting does seem to be only a very slight aggression, or coercion, rather than being like any open violence. Liberty requires less or ideally no politics at all. Liberty alone is the pristine ideal of classical liberalism if we take it to its natural extreme.
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In some alternate hsitory, if some imaginary particular liberal thinkers had risen to influence at the right moment, the British Empire could have evolved into a globe-spanning liberal free trade zone. It did not of course, but if it had, we would live in a much better world. It seems to me that the British elites never really knew what an Empire is for, or should be for, and it just wandered along until it guttered out in a rather ignominious fashion. But in the right hands, it could have led the world to a future of liberty by now.
Bit of a pity really.
I think David (and Ian) are right.
The British Empire, like so many things, was a mixture of good and evil. However, on balance, it was (by the late 19th century) more good than evil. Such people as Lugard (active in the far east – as Raffles had been more than a century before) and, especially, in Africa (both East and West Africa) did vastly more good than harm – fighting against slavery, human sacrifice, destruction, mass murder and so on, and trying to protect people (ordinary people) from these things. And, yes, establishing the conditions for economic growth – although people who think such “Imperialists” as Lugard were motivated by money, or the interests of “greedy capitalists”, knows nothing about them.
In the 20th century the British Empire became more statist than it had been in the late 19th century (with the marketing boards of the 1930s and so on), but certainly the “independence movements” of the 20th century were objectively a bad thing – they were almost all about increasing (not reducing) statism, undermining private property and basic private freedoms.
It is no good to do as Rothbardians do and say “is this libertarianism – no! Therefore we must get rid of it”. In the real world one must look at the actual alternative (not the theoretical alternative of pure libertarianism) and in most cases in the 20th century the actual alternatives to the British Empire were worse (much worse) than the British Empire itself.
Of course the absurdities of the Rothbardians are not confined to their judgements about Britain – they apply to the United States also (with a seeming inability to make correct judgements about the Berlin Airlift, the Korean War, and on-and-on). Always the position is the same. “Is Uncle Sam a libertarian? No he is not – so SMASH HIM!”. Real history is about judging by the actual alternatives – for example the United States measured against the Confederacy (NOT the United States measured against an ideal libertarian standard) in the Civil War, or the West (especially the United Stated and Britain) against Marxism in the Cold War – not the West measured against an ideal standard (that was NOT a functioning alternative in the actual time and place).
In an armed conflict we are not given the option of choosing perfection (it is not on offer) – the choice in a conflict is between the alternatives (the sides) that actually exist.
Criticism……
I should point out that (for example) David is wrong to describe the Revolutionary regimes in France (which murdered hundreds of thousands of French people – mostly in the provinces, and plunged Europe into decades of war that claimed millions of lives) as “riots” (that is like describing a supernova as a firework), and (to move from history to political thought) I do not think he understands Edmund Burke (for example the basic point about what a hostile “armed doctrine” is, and why it should be opposed), but this does NOT invalidate David’s basic point – which I think is valid.
Conclusion…….
The British Empire (certainly in the late 19th century and 20th centuries) was vastly better than the alternatives to it (such as Imperial Germany in the First World War, Nazi Germany in the Second World War, the Communist Block in the Cold War – OR most of the “independence movements”) and did much more good than it did evil.
American conservatism (whether it is John Adams, Martin Van Buren, Grover Cleveland, Warren Harding, Calvin Coolidge, Barry Goldwater, Ronald Reagan – or whoever) is essentially OLD Whig stuff (not Church and King stuff – it can be religious but it is not in love with any particular Church and so on). Of course it looks to Edmund Burke – the classic OLD Whig (it always did – from the very start). To the defence of private property (including large scale private property) and the liberties that are based upon the defence of private property – against its enemies (at home and overseas).
Is Justin R. really shocked by this? Does he know nothing about American conservatives (who, historically, have been in various different political parties) at all?
The principles of 1776 were (as far as people such as George Washington were concerned) the principles of 1688.
[To them (the great majority of American “patriots” in 1776) a “Revolution” was not about creating a new society – it was about resisting the creation of a new society (turning things back – revolving them), against the agents of “The Crown” (not to be confused with George III as an individual) and their perceived threat to private property rights. When someone like John Adams came upon a Revolution that actually was (at least in its early years) about trying to create a new society – he was, of course, horrified (so horrified that he was tempted into harsh measures that he later regretted). People like him has fought to preserve the existing society – not to sweep it away and create a new one by top-down state planning.]
And the principles of 1688 were about opposing the threat of tyranny from Louis XIV (James Ii was just seen as the local front man of the “Sun King” and his dreams of unlimited government (economically and in such matters as religion) dominating Europe – no one thought that James himself could punch his way out of a paper bag, he was not the threat personally, even his Irish Catholic SUPPORTERS called James “King Shithead”)..
When someone such as Winston Churchill appealed to Americans to fight against the threat of the Nazis or the Communists, of course he was pushing at an open door (with some people – not with all people), because he was appealing to the principles of 1776 and 1688 – the struggle against the “Sun King” and his network of secret supporters (which some people believed that those who backed “the Crown” in the time of George III against the property of the Duke of Portland, and so on, were trying to bring back – for absolutism seemed to be on the rise all over Europe in the 18th century see “Cato’s Letters”)……plotting against ordinary society. And Churchill knew what he was doing.
The point is NOT “that stuff over there is a bad – go and stop it”, the point is far more “that evil thing over there is SPREADING, it is a threat to you and your families, there are people internally who want to help our enemies (we must expose them and break their power), we must destroy it (the tyranny) – or it will destroy us”.
A very different message – one to appeal to a conservative minded audience.
The British Empire wasn’t even called that, even among ourselves, until rather late on in its life, we not realising that its existence was an accident.
Even as an Empire – a not indeed very “busy” one in statist terms – among statist institutions of the modern busy big Prussian sort (as it latterly became) it did somewhat less harm, to more people, for longer, and for less human and economic cost, than any other Empire I can think of.
For example, more cotton, chocolate, bananas, peanuts, sisal, jute, petrol, tin, rubber, coal and coke, unenslaved people, beef, lamb, butter, cheese and wood became available to more people in more continents, for less money per ton, than ever before.
This doesn’t suggest a very large interest in ordinary goings-on by a Political-EnemyClass of the GramscoFabiaNazi sort, which is always interested in finding out what people like, and forbidding that thing in particular to them. That’s socialism, a European idea of particular anti-British leaning.
If that lot in itself was not enough for a justification, then we could also say that – for a sadly very very brief time, the twinkling of an eye – something else important happened in many places. What was that then?
It was that…
English Common Law Principles prevailed in governments’ “lawmakers’ ” minds and in courts, such that when Common Law (as opposed to “The Law Of Men”) drowns, as will be soon, its global existence will not vanish without trace.
Oh and I forgot:-
Electricity on demand, via wire things in the ground,
The undersea Cable-Telegraph,
The defeat and incarceration of Napoleon, at the end of The Great War,
Wireless Tele-vision (a not unmixed blessing as it turns out),
Radar,
The jet engine,
The internet,
DNA structure and understanding,
Antibiotics,
The electron, the proton and the neutron,
And more.
David, thus:
An astute observation. Seems quite correct to me.
. . .
It’s amazing what people take for granted. I would bet that most Americans have the idea that the British Empire was some sort of specific project of you folks (well, actually of your forebears, of course *g*). That was certainly the impression I got from my history classes as a kid, and it never even occurred to me that that could be an assumption rather than a fact. Of course, we had “the sun never sets on the British Empire” as one of the defining themes of the B.E. and therefore, presumably, as a common source of pride and sense-of-how-things-ought-to-be amongst the British, and also as a characteristic of the British nation as such. Which would support this misapprehension.
Yes David (David D.) when people such as Lugard sent back notes to London saying “you are now responsible for …..” the first response of government people was “who is he?” later it was “oh no – not again….”. Gladstone was not an ardent imperialist – but neither was the Conservative leader Lord Salisbury (indeed he, not under his real name, wrote anti Imperialist articles in the “Saturday Review” whilst he was Prime Minister at the height of the British Empire). Imperial Crusader X smashing evil human sacrifice cult in the area of Y (before planting, with tears in their manly eyes, the Union Flag, without any permission from London, and claiming the area of Y for Queen Victoria) was actually an object of dread for many of the politicians back home. “Oh no – what-his-name has engaged a X thousand savage warriors with a pistol and a copy of the Bible. If he is killed we will have to avenge him, and if he wins (and he is just mad enough to win – even at these odds) he will claim the area for Queen Victoria, and we will have the responsibility for yet another area we did not know existed”.
This sort of person existed as late as World War II – see (for example) “Mad Jack” Churchill (with his longbow and claymore sword going on commando missions), and the Earl of Suffolk (rescuing the French “”Heavy Water” supply one step ahead of the Nazis). And even after it (Templer in Malaya was deeply eccentric – and “Mad Mike” in Aden was well…… although he was indeed fighting appalling evil in the Yemen). Although most of the hard work was done by people such as General Slim in the Far East (the forgotten hero – and being forgotten would not have bothered him) and Financial Secretary Cowperthwait (spelling alert) in Hong Kong (who resisted demands from London to turn to statism).
In the 18th Century “The Crown” (not to be confused with the individual person who happened to be George III – who actually was honest, and rather nice before his horrific illness crippled his mind and body) was associated with organisations such as the East India Company (although NOT in the sense of helping the shareholders – the actual OWNERS of the East India Company were looted by key officials in the organisation and the government) that did indeed try and monopolise key parts of American trade, and “the Crown” did threaten American private property land rights (it did at home also – even the Duke of Portland was threatened “PROVE you own X” as if most English landowners have bits of paper proving that their ancestors “justly acquired” X bit of land in past centuries – and as if “the Crown” was really interested, it was really just an attempted LAND GRAB which horrified “OLD Whigs” such as Edmund Burke).
But the late 19th century was quite different – it was a different Empire. If anything it was too loose (not too strict) – with (for example) Victoria (in what is now Australia) allowed to impose taxes on British goods (thus hurting consumers living in Victoria – as well as British workers living in Birmingham and Manchester). I do not generally agree (to put it mildly – actually I detest the man)with Radical Joe Chamberlain (who was pushing statism in Birmingham since at least 1865 – actually he was copying what radicals had already done in Manchester), but he had a point that some free trade was better than none. A free trade zone that covered the whole British Empire (about a quarter of the human species) would have been worth having – whereas free trade with Germany and the United States was just not on offer (because they had already rejected it). And if the price for free trade in the British Empire was an “Imperial Parliament” (representing the other parts of the Empire – such as the Princes of India) well……..
My apologies – it was “Mad Mitch” not “Mad Mike” in Aden. Hard to see such people (Mad Jack Churchill, or the Earl of Suffolk and his “Holy Trinity” [who died with him] or ….) prospering in the present British (PC) establishment (including the PC army) obsessed with “negotiating with the Taliban” (who Mad Mitch would have taken on hand-to-hand till they were dead or he was) and other monsters – for monsters is what such people are (but the P.C. elite can not deal with the reality of evil).
Anyway…. back to the broader matters of history…
For the French Revolution see Alfred Cobban “The Myth of the French Revolution” (1954 – not a myth in the David M. sense, but the myth that it was pro “capitalist” that the Marxists push), and “The French Revolution – An Economic Interpretation” (1990 translation by Martin Thon of Florin Aftalin’s work on how the Revolutionaries tried to put the collectivism of Rousseau (and others) into practice. Although the standard works are by William Doyle – (“The Origins of the French Revolution” and “The Oxford History of the French Revolution” – both 1989 Oxford University Press).
Sadly such people as Thomas Jefferson choose to believe their own fantasies rather than was actually in front of their eyes – which led to the bafflement (utter bafflement) of people such as John Adams, who came to believe that Jefferson must support the horror, which was not the case. Jefferson “looked without seeing” – he so wanted the French Revolution to be X that he would not accept the evidence of his own senses that it was Y. When he himself became President Jefferson’s own policies were just about the OPPOSITE of those of the French Revolutionaries – he respected the Churches (even though he was not an orthodox Christian), he cut (rather than radically increased) government spending and taxes, and he was a hard money (gold coin) man – not a credit-money inflation man. And as for taking over factories and large estates…… that was the exact opposite of what Jefferson actually believed.
To put Jefferson into (say) the context of the Yemen (in the time of Mad Mitch – or, partly, now for that matter).
Mr Jefferson the enemy are various savage gangs of Islamic or Marxist fighters.
“No they are not – what you call “the enemy” are actually conservative Baptists (just like the ones I sent my famous SUPPORTIVE letter about a “wall of separation” between Church and State, a letter that modern “liberals” reverse the meaning of), that person who you claim is saying “exterminate the infidels” is actually explaining the importance of balancing the budget and establishing proper gold coinage”.
Thomas watch out! That brute-of-a-slaver is trying to cut off your head with an axe!
“Nonsense – this person is not a slaver, he is a charity worker. And he is not trying to cut off my head with an axe – he is trying to give me an apple pie he has made”,
Perhaps those people who used the word “mad” in relation to Jack Churchill (and so many others) choose the wrong target.
However, a fine President – who carried out the policies he (totally wrongly – indeed in blatant defiance of the evidence of his own senses) thought the French Revolutionaries supported.
Thankfully Thomas Jefferson did not regard Islamic foes as misunderstood friends (see his action against the Barbary Pirates – although the forces of Charles X of France who actually finished the job some years later), it was just the followers of Rousseau who insisted on seeing as almost the exact opposite of what they were.
Anyway….. (away from the followers of Rousseau – see J. McDonald “Rousseau and the French Revolution” 1965 and so on)….
For the actual beliefs of the American Founders and the meaning of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights – see (for example) the works of Forest McDonald such as “Novus Ordo Seclorum: The Intellectual Origins of the Constitution” (University of Kansas Press 1985 – it had to be “Bleeding Kansas” the place where the words of Jefferson and the actual private life of Jefferson-the-slave-owner ran into blood soaked conflict in the 1850s – long before Mr Lincoln became President and independent of him, and where the “tools of big business” and “religious fanatics [as the slavers called their Republican enemies – yes as far back as the 1850s] won in the end – as they will hopefully win next week, but we shall have to see how Governor Brownback and co actually do).
As for the British principles of 1688 – the British Bill of Rights and so on.
A good place to start is to study the opinions of Chief Justice Sir John Holt – a classic “Old” Whig of the period.
Remember, to these people, “Revolution” was a conservative defensive act – against dangerous innovators who sought to violate the fundamental laws (which according to Chief Justice Holt, like Chief Justice Sir Edward Coke a century before him, not even Parliament had any right to do).
And, of course, the dangerous innovators (with their plots against the rights of COMMON LAW property (see future Chief Justice Salmon P. Chase of the American Supreme Court on slavery – although he was only repeating, and expanding on, what Chief Justice Sir John Holt had said a century and half before) – Common Law property the basis of liberty) were really servants of evil foreign pay-masters…… and were engaged in a dark conspiracy……
Whether it is the struggle against Philip II in the 16th century( the fires of the Spanish Inquisition AND the mass slaughter in France), against the “Sun King” in the 17th and 18th centuries (which still dominated the thought of American Founding Father John Jay a century later – the man who ended slavery in New York), against the French Revolutionary regimes, against the “Slave Power” (and its dark plots for expansion into the West) in the 1850s and 1860s, against the Imperial German threat of the First World War, the Nazi threat of the Second World War, the Communist threat of the Cold War, or the Islamist threat today, the struggle (in conservative minds) is always a defensive one.
I think this is very true and very important. Libertarians like everyone else, have to deal in what can be, rather than some perfect ideal. And it is important to understand that sometimes a solitary “libertarian” policy in an otherwise Statist system can have a negative or entirely opposite consequence to that which it might have in the imaginary Libertopia.
Ian, of course this does NOT mean that we should be satisfied with what is (still less fall into the Hegelian folly of assuming what is must be rational). In conflicts we do have to choose from what actually exists – but then we must continually work to improve the side we have chosen (to improve the good and get rid of the bad aspects). And reason can be our only guide as to fundamental aim – we make our combat choice on the basis of what is, we base our long term plans of improvement on the basis of what could be.
This is not dreaming of castles in the air – I did say “could be”. Someone who proposes something (even as a long term aim) must explain how it would work (hence reason), if they refuse to explain then they are engaged in flatulence (or, rather, the political philosophy equivalent of flatulence).
When I commented yesterday I deleted one thing I was going to say, and I’m glad I did, because it is about 100 times truer now than it was yesterday.
Namely, thanks to all three of you guys, and especially (in order of appearance) to David, Ian, and Paul *g*, for all the information and the opinions as well, with which I agree insofar as I think I have the background to agree or disagree. (I do know a little bit of history, believe it or not. Not much though, especially in comparison with you three.)
. . .
I have occasionally attempted to wade through a bit of Hegel, or at least through pieces ON a bit of Hegel, but the efforts have been largely fruitless. So when make the following point, it really boils down to an explanation of what I would have meant had I said the exact same thing.
Nor I have ever read anything by anyone that would make me think much of Hegel. (In any sense.) Therefore I am certainly not defending Hegel.
HOWEVER. Taking the paraphrase “what is must be rational” on its own and out of context, whatever it may be, I would interpret it as specifically meaning that whatever IS, must have come about through a sequence of events that can be understood by the rational faculty of the human mind.
Or to put it as Ayn Rand might have, “the irrational cannot exist.”
In other words, regardless of how it has come to be so, we live in a “rational” universe: That which IS, is understandable in principle as the logical concomitant of various factors of Reality.
This is different from the usage of “rational” in the sense of “Obamacare is not a rational program,” which means that it will not and cannot work: it is not a rational response to whatever ills we think beset the system of American health insurance.
Or, more succinctly, we might simply say, “Obamacare is not rational.”
So “what is, must be rational” is in itself ambiguous, as it can be interpreted in two diametrically opposite ways and both within common usage of the term “rational.”
That’s not to say that Paul’s interpretation is incorrect — far from it! (And I know that many agree with him, including — I daresay — Randians.) But it’s the sort of question I find interesting, sometimes and for some reasons. That is, what a given person means by what he says.
And of course the study of philosophy is crucially concerned with understanding other people’s philosophical systems, which means understanding the details (if they’re sufficiently rational (!) to BE understandable, in the sense of being rationally-graspable) of what these people have meant by what they said.
So, if anyone can back up either interpretation of the subject maxim, please hold forth. :>))
Julie, this may or may not be relevant to what you said, but I think it is. It’s a way I’ve come to see the world of late, which is in a sense “cultural relativist”. I see both individuals and groups- “cultures”- as developing various responses to the circumstances they find themselves in. Different circumstances produce different responses, and thus cultures develop differently. This is why cultures often see each other as irrational and alien and just flat wrong. We point at those guys over there, and say “the thing they do is stupid” and they point at us and do the same thing. But they are all, in general, rational responses.
Sometimes (often perhaps) the perception of circumstances- that is, the belief in the way the world “is”- is itself wrong, but often we cannot be sure. Science can help. But for instance, let us say that we find some culture who sacrifice children to their Gods. We may say this is irrational. But it is a rational response if you believe that (a) there are Gods who affect the world and (b) those gods are pleased by sacrifices and (c) the more valuable the thing sacrificed, the more pleased they are.
Humans generally respond rationally to the world. What matters is what people believe about the world; what they believe to be true. This brings us again to one of my favourite things; Hume’s distinction between “is” and “ought”. If your “is” is different to mine, our “oughts” will be different too.
If that makes any sense. I have to admit to having not made much effort with Hegel, who I find utterly unreadable; what I know of his philosophy is from descriptions by others.
Ian, it makes perfect sense. (Never mind Hegel; I’m just curious there. It interests me deeply, what people mean by what they say, and the fact that what X says is so often not what Y hears).
The example you give of the people who sacrifice children to their gods because of how they think the world (and the gods) work, and your conclusion that within that framework what they do is rational, is a perfect example of part of what Ayn Rand was talking about when she insisted that Context Matters. (Or at least, that’s my understanding of that part of what she meant.)
So I do go with you at least part of the way (a big part of the way) in agreeing that to be rational is to act in accord with whatever one believes to be the facts, regardless of whether those beliefs are themselves rational. If you truly believe that the law of gravity is going to be suspended so that you can jump off the cliff and remain unharmed, then jumping off the cliff is not irrational, even though the theory itself is highly irrational. (Or so we believe, anyway. Personally I don’t aim to try to disprove it.)
Where there’s 29 football-fields’ worth of space between us is as to the nature of the Good, or the good. Which is not at issue here, so let’s not, unless you’ll be bitterly disappointed. :>)
The child-sacrificing people may be rational, but they aren’t Good. This is true of a lot of socialists and Communists too, I suppose. They seem to have convinced themselves that violating individuals’ autonomy leads to the betterment of all and is therefore perfectly rational, even (for some of them) when they understand quite clearly that mass murder will be required; so they see the latter as rational. And I suppose within their fantasy of How the World Is, it is rational. But it isn’t Good, it’s Evil indeed, and that’s flat.
Which means that the Muslim mother who sends her child off to be a suicide bomber, happy in the full belief that soon he will be in Paradise, is committing an act of the grossest evil, indeed it is a perversion (I think I said something about that a week or two back) even if her motives are of the purest.
Formally speaking you may well be right about Hegel, Julie.
However, the impression he leaves in the minds of his readers is that what exists is not just something that can be “rationally understood” (which it is) but “is rational” (in the sense of correct – which it is often is NOT) – and I think that impression is DELIBERATE.
It is like “the state is God” – yes this formally means…….. but the impression it leaves in the mind of the reader is not accident. Hegel wrote with a specific purpose in mind – to justify the Prussian state (although, yes, if one reads carefully and on and on…… he covers himself), the impression he leaves in the mind of the reader is that the existing state (being the result of the historical process) is a good-thing (TM). And that is a deliberate impression.
Karl Marx uses the “historical process” to justify some future society (which he then claims it is “unscientific” to be critical of – because it is the result of the historical process), Hegel does that with the present society (as Marx knew – that is where he got the tactic from).
It is all very well to say (as Hayek and others did) that decisions taken over time might well have had some merit (even if we do not understand the reasons why they do) because, otherwise, society would not have continued (the social evolution argument – that goes back to Roman traditionalists answering Greek rationalists).
However, reason does exist and should be used to examine the status quo – otherwise every change over time (and the opposite of that change – if that happens) is just nodded at as the “historical process”. After all the size and scope of the state (in Britain and the United States and so on) is vastly greater than it was a century ago. Must we accept the result of that historical process? Hayek would (politically) say NO – thus philosophically (to be consistent) he must also say NO.
For example, Mr Burke, when Warren Hastings claimed the historical process (and different cultural circumstances) as a defence, you did NOT nod in agreement (on the contrary – you will beside yourself with fury). Now leave aside the matter that you (Mr Burke) went after the wrong target anyway (you made the classical prosecutor mistake of going after the “big name” – when the evidence against PAUL BENFIELD was actually much stronger, you would have got a conviction if you had gone after Mr Benfield, but you wanted the “big name” and so you ended up with NAUGHT) – you did not accept an historical process defence or a different culture defence. You went straight to an Aristotelian attack on all that.
Therefore a critical examination of the BRITISH situation (on the basis of the same Aristotelian reason) is legitimate Mr Burke – after all you have spent your life (even as late as the 1790s – i.e. after the French Revolution) suggesting (and more than suggesting) various fundamental changes to policy (for example getting rid of all restrictions on “engrossing and forestalling”) even policies that went back more than a hundred years (such as restrictions of Roman Catholics) – on what basis do you do this? Strongly argue for these changes in policy? You do so on the basis of Aristotelian reason – therefore……..
Of course there can be the reply that economic and social policy is one thing, political institutions are another – but Mr Burke had also argued for changes in political institutions (for example new, new-though-up, restrictions on the powers of the executive – “the Crown”) and he did not change his
opinion. Therefore other changes in political institutions (such as those supported by Major Cartwright) must be considered on their merits (or lack of them).
I suspect that the real reason for not wanting to discuss the merits (or otherwise) of such suggestions for the change of political institutions is not that there were no arguments against the changes (so one has to resort to mystical sounding “result of the process of history …….”), but that there were no LOUD arguments – i.e. arguments that one would be comfortable saying in public.
For example the real argument against universal franchise is that most of the new voters (in the late 18th century) would not be paying the Land Tax – so they would not care if the Land Tax was pushed up and up (which people such as Thomas Paine wanted), But Mr Burke could not just say that (without seeming to insult “the people”) so we get pages of historical reverence for political institutions (the same political institutions that he railed against in other contexts – for example the Church of England over its SLAVE owning, the House of Lords over voting the “wrong way” over Mr Hastings, the House of Commons over the failure to pass …….. and so on).
In the 19th century the argument (the argument about history producing…… so we can not change it) rings even more hollow.
For example the real argument against expanding the franchise (in the late 19th century) is that most new voters would not be paying the INCOME TAX (so they would not care if it was pushed up and up) – but people do not say that They appeal to not changing our “ancient constitution” (“you mean “ancient” as in 1832 – and it is now 1867″ cheered their opponents) and so on – which rings hollow (no wonder they lost the argument – because they dared not say what they were really thinking).
One should SPEAK PLAIN – SAY WHAT ONE REALLY MEANS.
Then if one loses at least one has made an honest case.
If one says “we must defend the ancient constitution because the cows in the fields near the old oak tree where the blacksmith …….” rather than “I think the new voters would put taxes up – because they do not pay X, Y, Z, taxes” one loses by default – at least in the end.
At least (in spite of all his other faults) someone like John Adams makes an open case (in language that anyone can understand).
People – you do not pay X tax, but if you vote for people who will put it up, you are still going to get hurt BECAUSE ……..
No blacksmith by the oak tree, listening to the song birds.
Not because I am saying that there are no oak trees, or song birds or blacksmiths (of course there are) – but because the real reason that Mr Burke did not want various people to have the vote was not really because Mr Burke cares about these oak trees, song birds and blacksmiths (or moo cows munching on the cud). Or rather HE DOES – and he thinks that mass democracy would threaten that (by spreading civil war and the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people to England), but he is not prepared to say clearly (rather than in hints) the rational reasons why he fears this. Although (in letters and so on) he is sometimes more blunt and open.
Of course I am not being fair…….
John Adams (and so on) faced a different situation to Edmund Burke.
There was already a mass franchise (although not a universal franchise).
There is no point trying to prevent people have the vote – when they have already got the vote.
So one has to lay one’s cards on the table (in a rational way) and say “listen – you can loot the rich, but it is not in your interests to loot the rich BECAUSE…..”.
So having said that perhaps we could leave off discussing Good and Evil, I see I went on to write two paragraphs doing exactly that.
🙁 😉
By the way…
You mean “ought” depends upon “is,” at least to some extent?
I certainly think so, but that’s the exact opposite of your position as stated here there & everywhere until now.
Anyway, I’m not in the mood to get into all that. Just sayin’. And in any case I agree with what you said leading up to that remark, and also with the remark itself.
Sleep well, my child, and be at peace. 😉
David M.s point about Hegel and Aristotle is correct – Hegel thought he was a master of Aristotle, but he was not really.
Aristotle was not well taught in German universities – although his thought was still taught in Austrian (Hapsburg) universities (as he was in Oxford – so it is not just a Roman Catholic thing).
Some people have suggested that Carl Menger (the founder of the Austrian School of economics) was so strong for the UNIVERSAL nature of reason (not dependent on “historical stage” and so on) because he had received an Aristotelian education (not in economics – Aristotle was not a wonderful economist), but in philosophy – from Franz Branteno and others.
Of course Edmund Burke had received an Aristotelian education also (at Trinity Dublin) – and most of the time he stands with the universal nature of reason and moral principle, But when under pressure (and fearing that to speak bluntly would turn people against him) then ………. well we get the moo cows under the oak trees.
Paul,
Ah! I didn’t know that.
Thank you very much for the latest dispatches. I wish I were in Rockford at the moment, which is where Kolakowski’s books are. Have you read Main Currents of Marxism? Dr. Kolakowski starts with Plato and follows through Plotinus, the Christian philosophers, Eusebius, Meister Eckhardt, through Kant, through Hegel…in particular, I’d like to re-read what he said about Hegel. Not that I remember much of what he said about any of them.
Regardless of L.K., you certainly shine a light onto Hegel, and even more, perhaps, on properly “doing history” in the first place. (Searching for the reasons, for why things proceeded as they did. Actually, that’s the great intellectual hunger of Man: to know HOW things are, and then — without stopping — WHY things are as they are. It is all very complicated and confusing, and sometimes I get fed up and think, The heck with it. But the fit always passes, sooner or later.)
Also, thanks for the commentary on Mr. Burke. This is the sort of stuff that tends not to make it into a general-history class, not even an overview of British history.
Quite a few people in our own time (2000’s & ff.) would have been well-advised to simply say what they meant, “fair and square, with no contradictions.” “>))
Julie.
Normally I am defending Burke against David (David M.) – but there is a tactic in Burke (on the demands for fundamental political change) of….
la, la, la, dancing round the Maypole …….. (then slip in real argument, against the changes, in terms of various hints) then la, la, la, more dancing round the Maypole.
In the defence of this – it worked, (till 1832 – then the dam burst, or rather was blown open).
To be fair to Hegel he was defending the REFORMED Prussian State – that had ended serfdom and so on. But to say – well this is what the historical process has produced therefore it is wonderful, is to say nothing (nothing truthful). What if the “historical process” (which is just what people decide to do) had produced something different? For example serfdom was not ended by a mystical historical process – it was ended by specific people making specific choices, And the creation of serfdom (i.e. the legal principle that someone was tied to the land) was also a matter of specific people (such as the Emperor Diocletian) making specific choices.
They (the actual individuals) could have chosen to do otherwise – and then you would have a different “historical process”.
It is like the dispute in Sunni Islam – more than a thousand years ago now.
Do you judge what is the Koran by reason or not?
In mainstream Christianity (as in Talmudic Judaism before it) the answer in relation to the Bible is “YES” – one does NOT kill someone for doing X just because the Bible says so – one has scripture as a starting point, and then one uses reason to see if it makes, sense and (if it does not make sense) what it might really mean (had not the “will of God” been twisted by various men when they wrote the Bible – “seeing through a darkened glass” and thus not seeing the truth). Of course one may still decide to kill someone for doing X – but the Church lawyers (or whatever) have to come up with good arguments INDEPENDENT of scripture (by appealing to reason) for why one should do so.
In Sunni Islam the conflict went the other way – if the Koran says X, then X it is.
Reason can not be used as an INDEPENDENT STANDARD by which to judge scripture (that is strictly forbidden – that debate was lost in Islam over a thousand years ago).
Morality is simply (according to the mainstream) what God says it is (arbitrary) and it is all predetermined anyway (another aspect of mainstream Sunni Islam).
Let us say there was a verse in the Koran that said that people who scratch their noses should have their left leg cut off.
Now a Talmudic Jew or a Canon Law (Aristotelian Scholastic) Christian would then say “why does scripture say that – what does it really mean……” – to mainstream Islam that is an illegitimate question (especially if leads to people not having their left leg cut off, or whatever, for scratching their noses, or whatever).
And what if the person made no choice to scratch his nose (say they did it in their sleep) – again not relevant (remember everything is predetermined anyway…….).
Now some 18th century people might have been pleased to be compared to mainstream Sunni Islam – but the Aristotelian Edmund Burke would not have pleased (to put the matter mildly).
To which is the answer is – “well then Edmund – stop playing about with the Maypoles and moo cows, MAKE YOUR CASE”.
Paul,
As one who is militantly anti-militant-atheism (as well as anti-militant theism, of course) that’s an excellent response to the Militant Atheists who are forever jeering at Christians and Jews because the religious are moral because of Authoritarianism and their fear of God and eternal Hell.
For some I suppose that’s true, and unfortunately you do hear some of the holy-roller-type Christians (anyway) going on about “fear God,” and a lot of Christians who do claim “Because God wills it” as their motivation.
But that’s hardly true across the board. In fact it’s hard for me to believe that’s the actual truth for most Christians; I think most of them either have arguments worked out from reason, or, even more likely, the truth is that they think, “Because it’s the right thing to do!”
My point is, that your point is an excellent counter to the jeerers, in defending Christianity and Judaism.
Yes Julie – the key point is “who wrote the scriptures?”
The mainstream Christian answer is “people” – divinely inspired people, but still people. Lots of different people at different times (“seeing throw darkened glass”) and the early Church gets some of their writings (rejecting other writings which were often just as popular) and calls the result its actions “the Bible” – and then spends the next couple of thousand years interpreting it (and not just the Catholics – the Anglican Richard Hooker does the same) in the light of reason and experience (or other things – for example when it was pointed out to Martin Luther that epistle of Timothy contradicted his justification-by-faith-alone position he declared that it was a “epistle of straw” and that was that).
The mainstream Islamic answer is different – the Koran (in reality written long after the death of Mohammed – who issued verbal commands to meet the political and military situations he faced, and changed the “commands of God” as the situation required) is, according to mainstream Islam, an unchanging document as old as the universe – the author is GOD (not various people).
That is why those who look for reform in mainstream Islam look in vain. There was a sect within Sunni Islam (a very powerful sect) who argued both that the Koran should be judged in the light of reason and that humans were beings (i.e. that we make choices – that we can do other than we do, that everything is not predetermined by God), but they were crushed – more than a thousand years ago.
That arch “Imperialist” Winston Churchill was correct about mainstream Islam – he could have expressed the matter in more tactful language (he is not tactful at all in the first edition of the “River War”), but he was correct. As was Gladstone – and the liberal Gladstone had no imperial reason for his opinion (it was based on long study of these matters).
Julie-
Not contradictory. You cannot derive “ought” from “is”, but “ought” is constrained by “is”. That is, whatever goals you define for yourself are constrained by reality. The palette of available goals depends on nature. For instance, if CO2 emissions cause global warming, that doesn’t tell you whether you ought to reduce CO2 emissions or otherwise mitigate global warming. But if CO2 doesn’t cause global warming, that set of potential oughts are no longer in the palette. You can’t fight an effect that doesn’t exist. Which of course is why people who like regulation like to believe in AGW, whereas people who don’t like regulation prefer not to believe in it. If AGW doesn’t actually exist, those oughts are off the table. If it does, they are on it.
Ian, I hate like heck to say this, but … the word “ought” has various meanings depending on the exact context. So, just exactly what do you mean by “ought”?
For example:
1. The postman generally comes at 3 o’clock, so he ought to be here in the next couple of minutes.
2. There is a theory that increased CO2 in the air will is heating up our world disastrously, which will cause the polar icecaps to melt away entirely. Therefore we ought to see them shrinking by a large amount every year from now on.
3. If you want X to occur, you ought to do Y.
4. You ought to do Y. But why? Training? Custom? Lack of imagination about alternatives? You just feel like it?–or, in a serious situation, you might say, “Gut instinct.” It simply seems attractive? — Actually I’m not sure but what this is a particular type of usage 3. As Mises might have said, You want to remove a felt unease, or you want to satisfy an inner prompting. Either of these could be the X in usage 3.
5. You ought to do Y. Because.
I know where I stand on this whole issue, but I don’t want to discuss it with a view to either defending or destroying Hume. If I were sufficiently interested in his philosophy, I would have to read through the opus for myself, to see what he meant by this or that, in context. But life is short, and the shelf of books to be read and studied and absorbed is long….
So is it OK if we leave Hume out of it, and also not try to persuade each other of anything? Just: “Here’s what I think. What do you think?” And maybe, “I don’t see what you mean,” or “I see what you mean, but I don’t take that view because….”
As a matter of serious philosophy, though, I will say that it seems to me that people tend not to understand that any logical system rests on postulates, that is, the foundations are analytically-unprovable assumptions. Of course philosophy is supposed to be aimed at creating logical systems that apply to the real world; that is, it oughtn’t to be merely rationalism. Therefore the postulates a particular person chooses will (or should) be consistent with the real world as he finds it. The process should be similar to how physics progresses: observe, theorize, experiment: if theory is correct (on some particular point) then we ought to see X when we do Y; if X fails to show up, re-work theory, which may involve changing some of the basic assumptions of the theory, which are almost always assumptions about the real world. (In a rare case, it’s conceivable that the mathematical theory could be wrong. In somewhat less rare cases, the mathematical theory is fine, but that dolt of a computer made a mistake in doing the calculations.)
In particular, therefore, it seems to me that amazingly many people, a goodly number of whom ought to know better (mathematicians, I’m looking at you!) think they ought to be able to derive Reality. In other words, we humans have a hunger for absolute knowledge, knowledge that doesn’t rest on assumptions, knowledge attested to as Absolute by God Himself, and signed in blood by Him in seven places, if you see what I mean. If I can’t derive analytically–via pure logic, and the hell with “from first principles,” too–the fact that Earth exists, then by God maybe it doesn’t!
And it seems to me that the alleged “is-ought gap” only exists for people who insist that “in any case, there can be no real knowledge of reality.” The kind of knowledge they mean is absolute knowledge in the sense above, the kind of knowledge God would have. Unquestionable, definite, certain. It follows from this that no concept can be validated by reality, because a concept is a mental construct, something that exists only in the human mind. Now nobody lives his life as if that were true, but it’s a HIGHLY popular philosophical belief upon which amateur and professional philosophers try to base their philosophies.
So in effect, in this view “is” and “ought” can never be connected by definition. They occupy disjoint sets.
For what it’s worth, I agree with what you say above about our “oughts” being “conditioned upon” or “constrained by” what we believe IS. It’s just that I go farther. I say that in the sense of “ought” under discussion, “ought” has no meaning without “is.” It’s meaningless to say that a person “ought” to do something which is impossible, for instance. “Ought” depends for its very existence on “is.”
So, call me a “consequentialist;” no shame in that, it just makes me a realist. As a guide to action (which is only one of the meanings exemplified in the list of usages above), there is always an underlying “if-0then” that depends on the real world, on IS, like this:
IF you want X, then GIVEN the facts of reality* Y1, Y2, Y3, … you OUGHT to do Z.
With thanks to Randy Barnett for the template, by the way.
*Y1, Y2, Y3 , etc may include theoretical conclusions drawn from evidence presented by reality, thus being what I might call derivative facts. So an example:
IF you want to go on living, then GIVEN what we know about the effects on the human body of falling 50 floors, you OUGHT to refrain from jumping out of a 50th-floor window.
1. Jumping out of the 50th-floor window will kill me.
2. I wish not to die.
THEREFORE, I ought not to jump out of the 50th-floor window.
Two IS’s conjoined imply the “ought.” Simples.
It’s important to note that the wish or desire (the objective or goal of action or inaction) is itself a fact of reality: an “is.” If no particular outcome is desired, then a given IS won’t imply an “ought” relative to the outcomes possible under the circumstances. There is no “I wish,” so in the sense of “ought” I’m talking about, there’s nothing to trigger “ought-thinking.”
Julie,
Hume’s “ought” (and thus my “ought” in this context) refers to the idea of that which is moral. In other words, it is a universal preferable behaviour. It is when we are discussing universal rules. Thou shalt not kill. It’s not the same as your example, which relies on your personal preference- your (individual, subjective) desire to live. What he showed was that you cannot derive from facts of nature that nobody ought to jump out of windows, because, as in your example, if you find somebody who wishes to die, then they ought to jump out of the window.
Take rape, a popular inflammatory example to discuss 🙂
1. Rape causes suffering.
2. I do not wish to inflict suffering.
3. Therefore, I ought not to rape.
That only applies to persons who do not wish to inflict suffering, so it is generally useless as a universal derivation, since the people we want to not rape are specifically those who do not have the subjective value in statement 2. “Thou shalt not rape” cannot be derived from the other “is” (1).
So, they still are both is’s, aren’t they? Well, yes, but not in the important way he meant; an “is” is an objective fact about nature that everyone agrees on. The Earth orbits the sun. Sunflower seeds grow into sunflower plants. Your subjective state of mind (e.g. your will to live) is not part of that realm. The will to live is an opinion within the mind. It may change from moment to moment. It is the same as in Austrian economics, and indeed entirely homologous; just as we cannot derive an objective price value from nature (that is in the realm of subjective values) we cannot derive an objective moral value from nature either; we cannot say “everyone ought not to jump out of the window” because it fails on the pesky individuals’ internal opinions of whether they personally, right now, desire to live or not.
Which is why my answer is that libertarians don’t (or shouldn’t) bother with trying to fix universal values in the moral realm any more than in the economic realm. The alternative is our system of “rights”, which effectively draws a bound around each person and their property, and says, “one person may not inflict their subjective preferences on another”. You want to die, fine, jump out the window. But rights prevent you pushing somebody else out of it. You want to rape? Fine, you’re entitled to want that, but the boundary denies you the licence to do so. We get off the moral merry go round, let people believe whatever they like, but limit their actions to their own persons and those who share their intent.
Sorry, my HTML ineptitude made that rather italic heavy there.
Also, Julie, to address this-
I’m sorry to keep going on about Hume when you asked me not to, but the whole point of Hume’s programme was to say you can’t do that. The is-ought problem is basically a slap around the face of philosophers who do think they can derive everything. Hume was working in the spirit of the scientific enlightenment, and understood that you first have to study nature and see what you get, and that’s going to limit what philosophies you can have and what philosophy can do. He effectively told philosophers to stop contemplating pure logic and reason, look at what a human being is (hence “A Treatise On Human Nature”) and accept what limitations that puts on their ponderings. The is-ought gap is an observable from nature. It is part of the universe we live in.
The other thing about Hume is his scepticism is often misunderstood. (Paul particularly doesn’t like it and sees it as a puckish denial of reality. This being how the “Common Sense School” portrayed it, because they didn’t like it). In fact, again, he looked at nature and concluded that we must be sceptics. For instance, the problem of induction; we only trust induction because it always seems to have worked so far. But that doesn’t mean it will tomorrow. Nothing in nature tells us that it will. The laws of physics might be due to change at 10pm this evening. We hope they won’t, but we can’t be sure of that.
So Hume is a pragmatist again on this; he basically says, go ahead trusting that the world you perceive objectively exists, and induction will continue to function, and objects will fall down rather than up, and so on, but always be prepared that you just might be wrong about something, even if you’re certain of your perceptions. I think that caution regarding certainty is extremely valuable.
Ian it is not Hume’s scepticism (in the ordinary sense of the word) that concerns me – if he really doubted everything, then O.K. (he can go off fishing – or whatever). It is implied non sceptical (dogmatic) claims that are of concern. Although YES he may only being dogmatic as a thought experiment – to see if people can defend their beliefs if he really attacks them hard.
Not just famous one such as his “proof” that miracles can not happen (which Richard Whately mocked centuries ago, by using the same sort of “argument” to “prove” that Napoleon did not exist)l, but the claim (or implied claim) that human beings do not really exist – i.e. an sort of Islamic (mainstream Sunni Islam) position that everything is predetermined – that we can not do otherwise than we do (indeed that the “I” does not really exist – that a thought does NOT mean a thinker).
This is indeed to do with the enlightenment – it is a radical DENIAL of it. That is why I am concerned when you describe Hume as an “enlightenment” thinker – he was, in fact, the most important philosophical OPPONENT of the Scottish Enlightenment. And not just this.
Hume was not just attacking Aristotle, or Scholastics of the Middle Ages, he was attacking the entire humanist project as well (Erasmus and so on) – the basic dignity (indeed the existence) of human BEINGS. The attack really is as radical as that one finds in mainstream Islam (or in agency, human choice, denying ASTROLOGY – the “materialist science” of the Middle Ages, which also stated that people do not have a real choice, i.e. that human BEINGS do not “really” exist).
I repeat that I have no problem with Hume the sceptic – he can just go fishing or whatever (that is fine), It is when David Hume starts to lay-down-the-law that I have a problem Although YES he may only be presenting the case as a thought experiment (the thought experiment of DENYING THE EXISTANCE of the thinker – the reasoning agent, the choosing “I”).
Of course there is no such thing as good and evil (no right conduct or wrong conduct) if there are no agents (no human BEINGS) – but the point is that such a claim (that we can do otherwise than we do) is ABSURD (it denies the very existence of the thinker who is making the claim – it is LITERALLY “self contradictory”, in that it contradicts the existence of the self, the “I”).
So, yet again, the effort to get “beyond” good and evil – to get the “scientific” special knowledge (like astrology) is revealed as just another snare of evil. An excuse for wickedness – on the basis that people can not choose to do otherwise (i.e. that moral responsibility, agency, does not exist).
It is not what David Hume does not know (his scepticism) that is the problem – the problem is the things he knows for sure (or at least implies he does) that are just-not-so.
This has practical consequences.
For example how can an Islamist activist tell you (with screams, and tears in his eyes) about how the infidels murdered his or her child – when (in fact) they murdered the child themselves (or even when the child is actually alive – and playing in the next room)?
Because (their philosophy claims) there is no such thing as objective good and evil – as a objective standard to judge the Islamic cause by. So if lying benefits the cause – then lying is good. And, besides (at least in mainstream Sunni Islam – the sort of Islam that 18th century European thinkers had any knowledge of ), God (at the beginning of time – by an inescapable chain of cause-and-effect) has predetermined all things – so one can not blame the Islamist for lying (as this was predetermined from the beginning of time by an inescapable chain …..).
Only if the Muslim (or anyone else) makes the effort (makes the moral choice) to reject this evil (for that is what the philosophy is) can progress be made. Unless they sincerely do that (accept moral responsibility – the capacity for moral CHOICE) then treaties (and so on) with them, are worthless. Because their sworn word is worthless.
It is the same with (for example) spreading lying propaganda against “big business” “corporations” on this site (all those posts that Sean Gabb has on here – even if they are written by others).
If there is no real good and evil then it can not be evil to lie about “big business” “corporations” (for there is no objective evil). And if all actions are predetermined (if there can be no CHOICE to do otherwise) then the act of putting on Kevin Carson posts (or whatever) was predetermined also.
When the great J.S. Mill pretended that the “theory of value is settled” (pretending that foes of his father, James Mill, and David Ricardo did not even EXIST – shoving them down the Memory Hole) was he doing the same thing?
There is no objective good and evil – just the happiness of the greatest number, so if lying promotes this happiness of the greatest number…….
And….
If everything is predetermined I can not be making a moral choice to do evil (to lie about the nonexistence of foes of the labour theory of value) because there is no such thing as a moral CHOICE.
Was Mr J. S. Mill doing that?
I just do not know.
My god, this is a wonderful discussion so far. 🙂 At the moment I will just make a couple of points I was thinking about last night.
1. One has to do with the existence of people who believe “rape is good if I think it is,” either as an argument for a purely-subjectivist position on the ethics of rape or as an operating principle for actual rapists who really do enjoy it. The thing is, there is a fundamental principle of ethics — the ethics I believe, as do quite a few others — from which the conclusion “rape is wrong” follows. Namely, that to subvert the will of another is wrong; to interfere with any person’s self-determination is wrong; in short, to take over the life of another person, or some part of it, is wrong in itself, except in certain cases that come up such as making decisions and enforcing them for children and for others who are literally incompetent to run their own lives. It is this ethical principle from which libertarian political theory derives.
It’s not necessary to get into arguments about “rape is wrong.” Rape constitutes an assault on another, it’s an attempt to deny the other person’s sovereignty over himself, which is (GIVEN the nature of Man) an attempt to deny the other person his life-as-himself, and often enough to deny him his life in the strict physical sense; and that’s why it’s wrong. The other person IS himself, that is a fact of reality, and the attempt to withhold the ability to act as himself, to act on his own desires or beliefs or judgment, is an attempt to deny this fact of reality.
2. The other point is that a fact is something that’s so whether anybody believes it or not. The fact that rapists may not think rape is wrong is just as irrelevant to the actual wrongness of rape as the fact that some people think the Moon Landing was a hoax is to the fact that Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldren did walk on the Moon.
. . .
One more step. “But you can’t prove that your ‘underlying principle,’ that taking over somebody else is wrong, is correct/valid/right/true.”
I can’t “prove” that gravity exists, in that sense, either, but I’ve often enough fallen and dinged myself, and I’ve dropped and seen broken enough dishes, to believe that it does. I consider that the evidence warrants the conclusion?* The question then becomes, Yes, but what about people who don’t necessarily believe in gravity? (As for instance some people who under the influence of drugs have believed they can fly and that gravity has no meaning for them, and have tested the theory, with unfortunate results.)
So when you (generic you) set up a postulate about the Nature of Things, right/wrong, good/bad, true/false, by definition you can’t prove it analytically; you have to argue for it with supporting evidence, namely, observed facts of reality.
And, of course, misinterpretation of those is certainly possible. But that doesn’t invalidate the method.
It may be that there are reasonably intelligent people who don’t accept your proffered evidence. But that doesn’t mean you are wrong in selecting your postulate, nor wrong in your selection of evidence. Anybody can be wrong, even your critics. *g*
I want to live in a world where I will be seen as an end-in-myself, which fact is to be honored by everyone. It is GIVEN that everyone is just such an end-in-himself, whether anybody realizes that or not. It is GIVEN that if I do X in this situation, I will be acting in accordance with this principle, but that if I do Y, I will not. Therefore I OUGHT not to do Y, and perhaps I OUGHT to do X.
In this way, I cannot separate IS from OUGHT. OUGHT depends upon IS. It is true that I (the subject) am in the mix.
Others may not agree with this. There is a point at which one shrugs and says, “their loss.” Or, “That’s what makes horse-racing.”
. . .
*This is the essence of Reason in the broad sense: Do the adduced facts of reality warrant the conclusion?
This gets us into epistemology and the so-called Problem of Induction, and How Do Ve Know Anyssing Anyvay, and metaphysics: Vhat Iss Everyssing Anyhow?
Dammit, Ian, can’t you see I’m trying to get supper here? I do have a life of sorts, y’know…. *grin*
I believe an analogy to our situation is this: You and I have been going on a bear hunt, and (of course) we are not afraid.* We come to a chasm. We agree that we are where we are, and we agree that there’s a problem getting to the other side.
We look for a bridge. There doesn’t seem to be one.
Ian says, No way to get there from here. There’s no bridge. We’re stuck here.
Julie says, we will have to build one.
Ian says, No way to do that. No concrete, no steel.
Julie says, See these vines? We can use them to make a rope bridge.
Ian says, Won’t work. It will break.
Julie says, Fine, Ian, and I can see how you think the bridge will be too weak to hold up; but it will work for me. You stay here if you don’t trust it, or perhaps you can find some other way across.
. . .
*Do you know that children’s amusement?
Also, consider the fact that Paul is exactly 100% correct when he says that “If there is no real good and evil then it can not be evil to lie about “big business” “corporations” (for there is no objective evil).”
If there is no “real” — no fundamental — principle of good and evil, right and wrong, then there is no evil, there is no wrong, and similarly there is no (moral) good; in short there IS no ethical or moral “ought”; the very concept is meaningless. Therefore NOTHING meaningful can be said about ethics, or about morality. These become empty concepts.
“Preference” and “sentiment,” as we understand the words today, may be the practical motivators that get us to try to act as we believe we should; but they’re really not the right words to describe our allegiance to ethical principle, or perhaps I should sya to the source of that allegiance. Our nature provides us with various “urges,” such as the “urge” to do things that will make us feel good. Being humans, we have reason, and we bring our reason to bear on the question of whether X will add to our pleasure or enjoyment or happiness or contentment in some way; and if so, will it add enough to our lives to be worth the effort? Or would some other act Y do us more good?
Empathy, or at least the potential for it, is part of our nature. It’s one of the Givens, and it prompts us to treat others with respect. In a society that nurtures the individual, his capacity to cope with things, his capacity to take pleasure in what is healthy (that is, what is not perverse), his potential capacity to see other people as individuals like himself, entitled to recognition of their humanness just as he is recognized in his humanness by them, is given food and space to be realized.
Jesus could have said (and perhaps, actually, he did), “Honor others as you honor yourself.” That could be taken as the fundamental law on which all proper ethics is built. Hillel’s Golden Rule, “Do not treat others as you would not be treated yourself,” really gets its intellectual authority from that principle.
It is our nature to have the capacity for empathy and the capacity for reason, and if neither is damaged then they come together to provide us with ethical guidance. Over the millenia we have worked out some of the details on the intellectual level. But as individuals, we sense our ethical or moral guidelines as “emotions” of a sort. We feel a “sense of right and wrong.” This is far more than mere sentiment.
And the fact that some people and some cultures have come up with horrendous practices which they have persuaded themselves are morally OK does not mean that they ARE morally OK. Enslaving somebody is not honoring him, or respecting him, no matter what’s the norm in the society.
So anyway, back to the beginning. If there is no valid ethics, if all ethics is merely a matter of how a person feels, then for everyone, anything goes and everything is permissible because nothing is impermissible.
That’s my story, and I’m sticking to it.
The great problems of existence.
It is less difficult to deal (intellectually) with a nasty (although in his defence, old and sick) man such as Martin Luther – ranting about that “whore” reason, and how God predetermines everything (translation all these bad things are not my fault?) or a Hamas man (or women) out to chop off one’s head – than it is with a nice man who does not want to harm anyone.
“My reason is the slave of my passions – but my passions are not nasty” And “all things are predetermined, but it was not predetermined that I would do anyone any harm” are hard things to get annoyed about.
Of course some of us have rather nasty passions, and also are concerned that if we give in to stuff such as the “I” does not really exist (and that what our body does is predetermined) then very bad things will happen.
“Paul you are saying all this because you are very dark person, with very dark passions – about cruelty and hate”.
Have I ever denied it?
Turning top lighter matters.
If Ian ever wants to meet up at Barton Hall near me (it has been done up nicely) that would be good (dinner on me) and he can tell me where I am going wrong (these sort of things are never sorted out over the accursed internet).
I wish I could say the same about Julie – but unless one of us gets a TARDIS meeting up is going to be difficult.