Recently over the transom:
Greetings from a long time reader and fan of your blog.I'm often struck by the difference in tone (representing a difference in your doxastic stance?) when you discuss ontological issues and when you discuss political issues. This was brought home forcibly by 'Does Evil Disprove the Existence of God’ and your ongoing commentary on US politics.When discussing ontology and philosophical theology you often insinuate that the existence of multiple rationally tenable answers to a given problem gives cause to question the very possibility of finding a solution, and thus that one should be at least cautious about claiming to have the correct answer. Yet, when commenting on politics you freely make moral condemnations and normative announcements [pronouncements].What explains this discrepancy? Are you of the opinion that political philosophy questions have easier answers than those of the 'Ontology Room'? As you have admitted that politics' meta-ethical foundations largely depend on metaphysics one adopts, I find that hard to believe. Or do you hold that in principle the same qualifications apply, albeit for the sake of every day communication don't give them every time you comment? (I had assumed it was something along the lines of the latter).As one of the things that drove me to Philosophy was the realisation that many people dogmatise about every-day social/political issues, but often throw up their hands—becoming skeptics, agnostics, or contradicting themselves—when faced with fundamental metaphysical or existential questions, I'm interested to hear your answer.Best wishes from the land of Ockham and Whitehead,
D. C.
My reader accurately observes that my tone is very different when discussing philosophical questions and when engaging in political commentary. When discussing philosophy the position I take is often that of a solubility skeptic. To simplify my view and present it in the form of a slogan:
The classical problems of philosophy are all of them genuine, some of them humanly important, but none of them humanly soluble.
And of course I hold this view tentatively and non-dogmatically. This implies that my solubility skepticism extends to the meta-philosophical problem of the solubility of philosophical problems. I don't claim to have solved it! I claim only that a very strong rational case can be made for my slogan, or rather, for my slogan properly 'exfoliated,' i.e. properly unwrapped and unpacked and qualified with all key terms defined.
Of course, one doesn't have to subscribe to my solubility skepticism to think that philosophical questions should be discussed carefully, cautiously, and calmly.
When it comes to politics, however, my stance is more often than not partisan and polemical. I have been know to say things like, "Anyone who holds such-and-such a view is moral scum and ought to be morally condemned." But of course I would never accuse a philosopher of moral turpitude should he adopt a regularity theory of causation or accept a Meinongian semantics. Subject to some qualifications, there is no place for polemics in philosophy proper. There is also not much need for it since the problems that fascinate us professional philosophers are often not exactly 'pressing.'
Now one distinction that needs to be made, and that my reader seems not to be making, is between political philosophy and politics. The first is philosophy, the second is not. The philosopher aims at understanding the world in its deepest and most pervasive features. His task is theoretical, not practical. Politics, however, is practical, a matter of action. To borrow a beautiful line from Plato's Republic at 486a, the philosopher is a "spectator of all time and existence." The state and the political in general are among the objects of the philosopher's calm and unhurried contemplation. But of course no human being is a pure transcendental spectator, not even the philosopher who meets the stringent Platonic demands and possesses magnificence of mind and a proper sense of the relative insignificance of human affairs; he is also an animal embedded in nature. As indigent, at-risk participants in natural and social life, as possessing what Wilhelm Dilthey called a Sitz im Leben, we must act to ward off threats and secure our continuance. And we must act in 'Cave-like' conditions where the lighting is bad and much is unclear. Here is the province of politics. As Schopenhauer observes, the world is beautiful to behold, but terrible to be a part of. We are both: spectators and participants. We are beholders of it and beholden to it. As participants, we must act to secure our material existence so that we can engage in the higher pursuits.
And so we must battle our enemies. When one's liberties, way of life, or very existence are under threat one must take a stand. This involves what might be called the 'dogmatism of action.' There is a certain benign skepticism that is essential to the life of inquiry; doubt, I like to say, in the engine of inquiry. But one cannot suspend judgment and refrain from the necessary one-sidedness of action in the face of one's enemies.
The human condition is indeed a predicament. We must act even though we lack full insight into how we ought to act. And we must patiently inquire into how we ought to act and live even though calm inquiry can impede action. We have to avoid both a thoughtless decisionism and the paralysis that can result from excessive analysis.
If we distinguish, as we should, between political philosophy and political action, then the "discrepancy" my reader notes does not boil over into a contradiction within my 'system.' It would eventuate in a contradiction were I to maintain both of
a. Solubility skepticism is a rational position with respect to all classical philosophical problems
and
b. Solubility skepticism is not a rational position with respect to the problems of social and political philosophy.
But of course I don't maintain both of these propositions. I maintain (a) and the negation of (b). I would also be in trouble if I fell into a sort of performative inconsistency by upholding (a) while acting and writing as if I also uphold (b). But I don't think I am doing that. For when I do battle with political opponents I am operating in the political sphere, not the philosophical sphere, and therefore not in the political-philosophical sphere.
"But why battle your opponents? Why not get along with them?" Because they won't allow it. You cannot get along with someone who labels you a racist for opposing illegal immigration. You cannot get along with someone who thinks it perfectly legitimate to use the awesome power of the state to destroy the livelihoods of bakers and florists who refuse to violate their consciences by supplying goods and services to same-sex 'marriage' events. And so on through dozens of examples.
As I said, polemics has no place in philosophy. But politics is not philosophy and its is hard to imagine politics without a sizeable admixture of polemics. I wish it were not true, but politics is war conducted by other means. That is clearly how our opponents on the Left view it, and so that is how we must view it if we are to oppose them effectively.
As a culture warrior, I do battle with my enemies. As a philosopher, I seek truth with my friends.
Another very important distinction that is relevant here is that between philosophy-as-inquiry and philosophy-as-worldview. A worldview could be characterized as a system of ideas oriented toward action. Worldviews are action-guiding. Since we must act, and since we must act in some principled way, we need worldviews. But which worldviews are in the long run conducive to human flourishing? Here is where philosophy-as-inquiry comes into the picture.
My reader speaks of the Ontology Room; he should have spoken more broadly of the Philosophy Mansion in which there are many rooms, one of them being the Political Philosophy Room. In this mansion and in all of its rooms, polemics and invective are out of place. But the Philosophy Mansion can exist only if she is defended against her enemies. Manning the ramparts and minding the moats are the culture warriors who defend the mansion so that the acolytes of our fair mistress Philosophia can carry on as they have for millennia. (Similarly for churches and monasteries and synagogues and ashrams and zendos. Nazis and Commies and Islamists have a history of destroying them.)
As one of the things that drove me to Philosophy was the realisation that many people dogmatise about every-day social/political issues, but often throw up their hands—becoming skeptics, agnostics, or contradicting themselves—when faced with fundamental metaphysical or existential questions, I'm interested to hear your answer.
My reader is speaking of the average Joe and Jane. These types are not skeptical in my sense since they are not inquirers. They have no interest in the ultimate truth about the ultimate matters. They are, for the most part, bottom-of-the-Cave types who are lazy and thoughtless and simply want an excuse to not think about the so-called Big Questions. The are typically anti-philosophical: they think philosophy is hot air, word games, and mental masturbation. But when it comes to hot-button issues, they adopt absurd philosophical views that they are incapable of recognizing as philosophical. One hears, for example, the opinion that a human fetus is "just a bit of tissue."
To sum up.
There is no inconsistency in my position as far as I can see either logically or performatively. Political philosophy must be distinguished from politics. The first is a theoretical enterprise. It ought to be pursued non-polemically and non-tendentiously. Politics, however, is a form of action in which we must engage in order to preserve ourselves and our way of life. This involves battling enemies. Here polemics is not only admissible but unavoidable. One must act and one cannot be sure that one's actions are right. That is just the predicament we are in.
Philosophers who shirk their political responsibilities abdicate what little authority they have.
Comments enabled. But don't comment on my solubility skepticism. That's not the point of the post.
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