Long Sunday

More Light

I don’t have any disputes with Simon Schama’s sardonic piece in today’s paper apart from his rather cursory take on the Enlightenment. It confirms a misgiving I had on watching the episode from his History of Britain which deals with British responses to the French Revolution. The Jacobins, says Schama, “hadn’t read the Rough Guide to Revolution,” didn’t have our twentieth century hindsight that all revolutions either install a new tyranny or like Cronus devour their own children. An antidote to Schama’s seemingly Frankfurterisch take on the Enlightenment is to be found in a recent essay by Stephen Bronner. Now the only dispute I have with Bronner is the left-liberal politics he draws from his analysis. I suppose no one can be all right all of the time.

Political Theology

Some notes from Claude Lefort's complex essay, "The Permanence of the Theologico-Political?" from his Democracy and Political Theory.  I make no attempt at an interpretation; instead, I only an attempt to understand.

This is the first part in a series of two or three. 

Crossposted to theoria.  Long!!

Democracy to Totalitarianism

As some of you may know, I've spent a good part of the past few weeks reading Claude Lefort and Cornelius Castoriadis. I'm still not entirely sure what to make of them, but, at the very least, reading them has been an excellent corrective to my Foucauldian/Deleuzian tendencies. Among other things, Lefort is a first-rate theorist of democracy, totalitarianism and bureaucracy. Indeed, it is quite possible that Lefort was the first to use totalitarianism as a theoretical concept. While the word 'totalitarianism' pre-dates the second World War, it wasn't until well after the War that the concept was imbued with any theoretical content; previously it was descriptive. Lefort's major intelocutors, it is worth noting, are Arendt and Strauss.

Be Afraid, Be Very Afraid

In the ongoing saga that is the US government's surveillance of its own citizens, Vice President Cheney weighs in on executive power:

I believe in a strong, robust executive authority, and I think that the world we live in demands it," said Cheney. He explained that he has been anxious about "infringement on the authority of the presidency" since the Nixon White House, where he served as deputy to counsellor Donald Rumsfeld. "Watergate and a lot of the things around Watergate and Vietnam, both during the '70s, served, I think, to erode the authority I think the president needs to be effective, especially in the national security area," he said.

But Cheney was even more revealing in an interview on CNN on 20 December, responding to a question from reporter Dana Bash, who sought to give the vice-president every benefit of the doubt and an avenue of escape. "You talked about the fact that you briefed Congress voluntarily, that you do have a review process," said Bash. "But let's just say, in ten years or a few years, a president is elected who doesn't want to do those things, but you've given him this kind of power. What happens then?"

"Well," Cheney replied, "it will be up to him whether or not he uses it." Cheney's idea of the head of state invested with absolute power is a venerable one. Bush's presidency is the latest experiment to achieve it.

thought experiments 02

I recently proposed the following thought experiment:

Imagine the following: Someone is driving through Pennsylvania and all the lights are out. This person pulls into a gas station to buy some gas and some gum, but here, too, the kind of darkness that points to a power failure. The gas pumps don't work. Hoping to get some gum, the driver walks into the appropriately small mini-mart. It is dark but the door is open. The customer sees that all electricity has been cut. By chance, the guy running the cash register -- the only person working there this late at night -- has fallen dead of a heart attack. He died before he could close the cash register. Many hundreds of dollars do now spill out the cash register. The customer is reasonably convinced that no surveillance cameras are operating. In addition to the gum, it would be riskless to stuff one's pockets with many hundreds of dollars.

What would individuals unrealistically (yet 'heuristically') exclusively motivated by philosophic principles do if confronted with this situation? A Hobbesian atavar walks in and sees all the money. Hobbes tells us that humans are ruled by desire for what pleases and aversion towards what harms (Leviathan, Pt 1, Chapter 6). It seems clear to me that a Hobbesian entity would take the money, whatever else was desired, and leave. The creation of a just individual in the Hobbesian scheme is dependent on the existence of a playing field that always produces more 'harm' than pleasure for actions that are contrary to public order and justice. There always has to be a Leviathan around somewhere with a big stick ready and able to strike if the individual's cost-benefit analysis is going to add up in the right way.

The same point is made in Plato's Republic via the Gyges ring story, recounted by Glaucon. His point is that people who act justly "do so involuntarily and because they have not the power to be unjust." We can confirm this truth, Glaucon argues, "if we imagine something of this kind: having given both to the just and the unjust power to do what they will, let us watch and see whither desire will lead them; then we shall discover in the very act the just and unjust man to be proceeding along the same road, following their interest, which all natures deem to be their good, and are only diverted into the path of justice by the force of law." The myth of Gyges fits the bill nicely.

According to the tradition, Gyges was a shepherd in the service of the king of Lydia; there was a great storm, and an earthquake made an opening in the earth at the place where he was feeding his flock. Amazed at the sight, he descended into the opening, where, among other marvels, he beheld a hollow bronze horse, having doors, at which he stooping and looking in saw a dead body of stature, as appeared to him, more than human, and having nothing on but a gold ring; this he took from the finger of the dead and reascended. Now the shepherds met together, according to custom, that they might send their monthly report about the flocks to the king; into their assembly he came having the ring on his finger, and as he was sitting among them he chanced to turn the collet of the ring inside his hand, when instantly he became invisible to the rest of the company and they began to speak of him as if he were no longer present. He was astonished at this, and again touching the ring he turned the collet outwards and reappeared; he made several trials of the ring, and always with the same result--when he turned the collet inwards he became invisible, when outwards he reappeared. Whereupon he contrived to be chosen one of the messengers who were sent to the court; whereas soon as he arrived he seduced the queen, and with her help conspired against the king and slew him, and took the kingdom. Suppose now that there were two such magic rings, and the just put on one of them and the unjust the other; no man can be imagined to be of such an iron nature that he would stand fast in justice. No man would keep his hands off what was not his own when he could safely take what he liked out of the market, or go into houses and lie with any one at his pleasure, or kill or release from prison whom he would, and in all respects be like a God among men. (359c-360d)

No one wants to be just. It's a drag. We do it because we can't get away with being unjust, which is much more profitable. Both the Hobbesian and the shepherd from the Gyges story would take the money from the convenience store. The artificial conditions created by a system of surveillance and guaranteed punishment have been suspended, both at the convenience store and in the ring story. (In Lord of the Rings, the ring that Frodo or what's-his-name carries around with him makes him invisible, and this is one of the things that's supposed to be so evil about it: someone who is invisible escapes social control. Even the 'just' individual, as Frodo is made out to be, would end up being corrupted by the invisibility of the ring just as much as Gollum.) But who would refuse to take the money, and why?

A Reactionary Holiday that Suppresses the Memory of Civil War

Thanks to Marc Goodman, I have discovered the reactionary kernel that hides at the center of Hanukkah:

While Jewish children, one way or another, manage to acquire insight into somber holidays like Yom Kippur, Jewish parents tend to assume that they have nothing to learn from kiddy celebrations. As a result the "minor" holidays of Purim and Hanukkah escape scrutiny, like lullabies whose sweet melodies drown out disturbing lyrics. Many a community knows how to use children as shields against confrontation with its own darker truths. I can think of no better illustration of this strategy than our current ways of marking Hanukkah. For it turns out that Hanukkah is a festival built upon a mound of suppressed memories and censored texts, a putative celebration of light that in fact commemorates a Jewish civil war.

Eight Crazy Nights

With all the discussion about populism recently, I thought it appropriate this time of year to mention  one of the more celebrated populist uprisings in Jewish history.  The holiday that honors this insurrection is known as Chanukah (which means rededication).  Chanukkah is probably one of the best known, and least understood, Jewish holidays, not because of any great religious significance, but because of its proximity to Christmas. Many non-Jews (and even many assimilated Jews!) think of this holiday as the Jewish Christmas, adopting many of the Christmas customs, such as elaborate gift-giving and decoration.  It is bitterly ironic that this holiday, which has its roots in a revolution against assimilation and the suppression of Jewish religion, has become the most assimilated, secular holiday observed in the United States.

Carl Schmitt at Nuremberg

[Cross-posted to theoria.]

With the revelation of secret and illegal domestic spying in the United States, along with Bush's justification of such actions, people have started talking about Carl Schmitt again.  Afterall, didn't Bush justify his actions in explicitly Schmittian terms?  Recall, it was Schmitt who, in Political Theology, defined the sovereign 'as he who decides upon the exception'.  This sudden interest derives, in large part, from comments made at press conference on Monday, December 19, where Bush said the following:

And having suggested this idea, I then, obviously, went to the question, is it legal to do so? I swore to uphold the laws. Do I have the legal authority to do this? And the answer is, absolutely.

As I mentioned in my remarks, the legal authority is derived from the Constitution, as well as the authorization of force by the United States Congress.

If the liminal relationship between sovereignty, legality and illegality is in question (i.e., whether or not illegal acts can be legally justified as exception within the Patriot Act deemed legal as seen by the Constitution), then commentators are right to wonder if Bush's policy is, at the core, Schmittian.  It is, I think, a fair question.

Two issues invariably rise: (1) we know that much 'national security' policy is in the control of those who deny being part of the international Straussian conspiracy, that Strauss was a student of Schmitt's, and that Schmitt only ended the relationship when it became impossible for him (as a Nazi party member) to remain friends with a Jew (there is no indication that Strauss wanted the relationship to end; he continued sending letters -- unanswered -- to Schmitt well after Schmitt assisted him in fleeing Germany to London) and (2) when people start talking about Schmitt they start talking about Nazis and fascism.  Thus, rather than spending time on (1) Schmitt's intellectual output, (2) potential relations between Schmitt, Strauss and Straussians, (3) whether or not recent policy can be characterized as 'Schmittian', people rather (4) discuss "Hey, wasn't he a Nazi?  How Nazi was he?  Doesn't that make his philosophy 'Nazi philosophy'? Isn't anyone who talks about Schmitt also a Nazi?".

Not wanting to fuel this -- despite it being a moderately interesting question that we've already been over a number of times with Heidegger and then de Man -- I'll nonetheless contribute the following, taken from Schmitt's interrogations at Nuremberg.

thought experiments

The "thought experiment" is among the most used and best loved tools in the philosophic shed.

Thought experiments have "heuristic value." That means they help to explain or test ideas, situations, problems. Max Weber's "ideal types" are thought experiments; Marx's description of the process of capital in _Capital_ is an ideal type / thought experiment.

But the thought experiment has a very broad and ancient usage. If I mention a few, it's not because I don't think people reading this already know about them. I'm just trying to make a point.

Of course Socrates' cave analogy in _The Republic_ is a kind of thought experiment. But in general, whenever Socrates takes a specific question that troubles common sense -- like, what is friendship or what is fealty, or justice, or some other 'value' -- he quite frequently employs a 'thought experiment' that is designed to 'raise' the discussion away from specifics and in the direction of more abstract considerations of principle.

Then, of course, there's the whole social contract tradition -- such a 'continent' in political theory! One can't navigate around that 'horn'! -- which is nothing but a reflection on the this-sidedness and worldliness of a particular thought experiment; that is, what if there were no laws, no norms, no rules; what would happen? Hows would humans interact? Do you want 'norms' to give you a 'yes' or a 'no' about what to do or not do? Get thee to a state of nature! Go and blush behind this veil of ignorance!

The tradition of thought experiments lives a false and shadowy existence in the netherworld of "big question" debates about morality. Let's say you're on a boat and there's five people, and there's only enough water for two of those people. If the water currently available is shared equally, all five will die over the next three days; whereas if the water is hoarded by two of the five, chances for survival tripple -- to nine days. What's the 'right' thing to do? That's a thought experiment. Note that it is no less an experiment for occurring in 'thought.'

Imagine the following: Someone is driving through Pennsylvania and all the lights are out. This person pulls into a gas station to buy some gas and some gum, but here, too, the kind of darkness that points to a power failure. The gas pumps don't work. Hoping to get some gum, the driver walks into the appropriately small mini-mart. It is dark but the door is open. The customer sees that all electricity has been cut. By chance, the guy running the cash register -- the only person working there this late at night -- has fallen dead of a heart attack. He died before he could close the cash register. Many hundreds of dollars do now spill out the cash register. The customer is reasonably convinced that no surveillance cameras are operating. In addition to the gum, it would be riskless to stuff one's pockets with many hundreds of dollars.

Two questions: First, what should the customer do? Second question: What do we predict the customer will do? It's a thought experiment!

Let us further imagine that the individuals going into the blacked-out convenience store in Pennsylvania are motivated by pure philosophic principles: one a Platonist, the other a Humean, another a Sadist, someone else a Hobbist, another a Rawlsian, and so on. What would different individuals motivated by competing philosophic approaches do? What would they think? How would they reason?

Look Now, Pay Later

For a time and  time and time and time and time and time of fear, he already had a few brave words:

Perhaps we should warn you that there is one thing you won’t read, and that is a pat answer for the problems of life. We don’t pretend to make this a spiritual or psychological patent-medicine chest where one can come and get a pill of wisdom, to be swallowed like an aspirin, to banish the headaches of our times.