Wednesday, October 31, 2012


49. What freedom?

Centuries of philosophical debate on freedom have led to a distinction between different forms or levels of freedom.

First, the freedom of action: in freedom from and freedom to. Freedom from, also called negative freedom, is freedom from external constraint, coercion, intimidation, manipulation, etc. Freedom to, also called positive freedom, is access to resources, competencies, economic, political, social and cultural processes, etc. These freedoms of action differ from freedom of will. Freedom of action may mean that one is at the mercy of unconscious desires, drives, impulses, instincts, addiction, etc.

Hence there are ‘higher’ levels of freedom, concerning the will that lies behind action. A second level of freedom is that of self-reflection and self-restraint. Here one has the internal freedom to ask oneself what one should want on the first level (desires, impulses …) in agreement with a ‘higher’ level of the will. The question then is not ‘what do I want’ but ‘what should I want’. Freedom on this level does not imply that it is good what one wants. One can be convinced that certain bad conduct is good. One can have the self-restraint to do evil. For example, in a violent ideology, for which the fanatic renounces pleasure and comfort.

Freedom of self-reflection and self-restraint are not as self-evident as they may seem. Neural research and social psychology have shown how dominant the unconscious is in our choice and action. Much is determined by unconscious impulse, intuition, instinct, and feelings, and often that yields effective decisions. I discussed this in a previous item (item 5) of this blog, on freedom of the will.

The third level is the freedom for self-perfection, to change what you want that you want, in an adaptation of norms of good and evil. Of course, the question then is where those come from. An important source is Christian morality of self-restraint, altruism, and sacrifice for the weak. The philosopher Nietzsche rejected this with gusto, as hypocritical, a false self-denial, and as a suppression of the forces of life and creativity.

A fourth level is freedom of the self to form the self, in a re-evaluation of values, in a shift of higher (third level) convictions of good and bad. This freedom to transcend and form the self could perhaps be called the freedom of Nietzsche, and earlier it was an ideal of romanticism. Many think that one cannot have this highest level of freedom, or at least not fully, because ultimately everyone is determined by genetic properties, life course, and character that emerges from them. It is like the baron of Munchausen lifting himself from the morass by his bootstraps.

For the formation of the self, escape from the self, freedom from the self, one needs the other who offers opposition and contradiction and thereby offers new insight into what one might want. The good life requires that one grasp this opportunity. And that is different from Nietzsche, who shoves the other aside in the exercise of the will to power. 

Monday, October 29, 2012


48. Immorality of the group

In his Moral man and immoral society, Reinhold Niebuhr pointed out that while for the individual the egotistic instinct for survival may be mitigated by a countervailing instinct for altruism, on the level of groups that largely falls away. A salient case of group egotism is the recent one of bankers.

Niebuhr gives four explanations of group egotism. First, according to him benevolence is a personal, not a collective characteristic. Second, in a group people can mask their personal egotism as a collective interest. The dictator Mubarak was authoritarian, he claimed, not for his personal interest but to protect Egypt from Islamic radicalism. Third, in groups the mediocre person can project and compensate his/her frustrated personal ambitions in the glory of the group, the nation, religion, or a political ideal. Fourth, there is a cognitive effect. After a while, an isolated elite can honestly perceive its perspective as the only viable one, having become blind to the injustice it creates, and sees protest as ungrateful, ignorant, perverse and self-destructive. When political power also generates economic interest, in corruption and appropriation of parts of the economy, this yields increased vulnerability to its loss, and the consequent need for more power to guard it, which further isolates the elite.

I think there are further causes. First, there is the phenomenon of prisoner’s dilemma’s: individually one would want to take a less egotistic course of action, but one cannot afford to as long as others do not go along, and this is what they all think, so that no one takes the step. ‘The others do it as well’, is the excuse. Think again of the bankers. And national governments are themselves involved in a prisoner’s dilemma of keeping an industry (banking) from leaving the country. 

Second, the needs that people have in common in a group are of a ‘lower’, more egotistic nature, of physical needs, money, and security, rather than more individualized needs for social legitimacy, responsibility and ‘higher’ values.

Third, according to my hypothesis, discussed previously in this blog, the good of loyalty within the group was not viable in evolution without the bad of suspicion against outsiders. The demand for in-group loyalty makes it very difficult for a single voice to dissent. 

However, there are also a few rays of light. First, with state power one can help to break through the stalemate of prisoner’s dilemma’s by imposing a solution that participants claim they would favour if only the others went along. Second, there can be countervailing power with organizations that take social responsibility as their goal (such as Amnesty International, Geenpeace, etc.). Third, moral isolation of the group may be lessened by stimulating, or demanding, more diversity within the group, and by shaking it up with a higher turnover of entrance and exit. Think of boards of directors of large firms. That is also one of the virtues of democracy: preventing governments from lasting too long and exposing them to the challenge of outsiders. 
              

Wednesday, October 24, 2012


47. How nazist is present populism?


What are the sources of present rightist populism, in the Netherlands, Denmark, France, and other countries? It has been compared to Nazism. How valid is that? From various work (by John Gray, Rüdiger Safranski and Menno ter Braak) I identify the following characteristics of Nazism:

  1. Romantic nationalism, with myths of national character and a glorious past, demanding subordination to national culture.
  2. Charismatic, autocratic leadership: the leader gives a pure and unmediated interpretation of the will of the people.
  3. Demonology: dark forces threaten ‘our’ society and culture.
  4. Grievance against the ruling elite of ‘soft’ and ‘cosmopolitan’ intellectuals that ‘denies the problem’ and ‘fails to take action’.
  5. An imminent apocalypse, from outside (our race and culture are destroyed), or from inside (we shall eradicate them all).
  6. Racism: the demons form an inferior race.
  7. Inevitability of violence against the demons to realise a nationalist utopia.
  8. A fascist glorification of violence as an existential kick.

The first five points can be attributed to rightist populist movements, but the last three only to an extremist fringe. However, present populism might shape the conditions for them to spread.

Nationalism is romantic in the desire to be absorbed in a higher, organic unity of the nation, as a safe haven from external threat. The rhetoric is romantic in the primacy of feelings and opinions over facts, and in rebellion against cosmopolitan universals that neglect national and individual identity. In present populism the demonology arises in the rabid condemnation of the Islam: the Apocalypse arises in a ‘tsunami’ of Islamic immigrants that will destroy our western values.

We underestimate populism if we disregard the validity of some of its views. Earlier in this blog I criticized universals, but I recognized that we cannot do without them. The resistance to universals should not fall into anti-intellectualism. Reasonableness, with respect for facts and arguments is indispensable for democracy.  But we should demand that universals be tested, corrected and enriched by the individual, the general by the specific. Politics must be inspired by the people, science by practice, and rules must leave room for the richness, diversity, and unpredictability of insights, opinions, practices and initiatives.

Another, deeper source of populism is an innate instinct towards mistrust of outsiders. Outsiders are identified by clear characteristics of difference, in appearance and lifestyle.
This instinct forms a rich vein for populist vampires to sink their teeth into. Particularly if it is attached to deep feelings of religion, race, ethnicity or nation.

So why this populism now? First, present economic and financial crises, with loss of jobs, pensions and property, are attributed to globalised markets that are blamed on the elite that engineered it, for example in European integration. This yields a trigger for retreat into nationalism. Second, problems with integration of Muslim, largely Moroccan immigrants, in several European countries, used to trigger the instinct of xenophobia, yielding the stuff for creating demons and the threat of apocalypse.  

Monday, October 22, 2012


46. Intolerance and altruism are instinctive

My hypothesis is that there is an inclination towards intolerance, xenophobia and discrimination in our genes, and that it goes together with an instinct for altruism only within the group.

In evolution a striving for self-interest favours survival, so that is what evolution leaves in our genes. That egotism is tempered in case of family, since our genes can also be transmitted through them. A step further is that if people resemble us that may be an indication of genetic similarity. People who do not look like us, in appearance and conduct, are suspect.

Damasio reported that revulsion from the foreign is anchored in the brain centre where smell and taste are located. Originally, in evolution, that was a mechanism against ingesting poison. With this, the aversion to the foreign is accompanied not only by emotions of threat but also with feelings of contamination and poisoning.

One might think that loyalty and altruism are good for survival of the group and for that reason could be an outcome of evolution. Charles Darwin thought that. It has long been thought in evolutionary theory that this cannot be so, since potential properties lie in the genes of individuals, and groups have no genes. People with altruistic genes would be vulnerable to an invasion of egotists that prey on them, so that in time the altruists would be pushed out.

However, altruism can survive if in the group deviant, excessively egotistic conduct is identified and punished because a sufficient number of group members commit themselves to it, even if for it they need to bring sacrifices that go beyond their self-interest. Such victory over self-interest requires a strong emotional loading.

That can be derived from religion. From fear of death and human fragility people have an urge towards belief in a myth of immortality. That transcends the limitations of mortal, vulnerable existence, and causes the self to rise above itself. The emotional force of it is strong enough to make sacrifices for a higher cause. If, next, the only true God is that of the own group, then outgroup discrimination is supported by religion, and altruism within the group becomes viable at the price of mistrust of outsiders. There is internal cohesion at the price of external intolerance.

It can be different, with a constitutional state with the rule of law in which misuse of dependence and good faith is punished, and whose cost one is willing to share. Thus divine order can be replaced by the order of law as a source of solidarity.

But even then the instinct towards trust within and distrust outside the group still slumbers, and can be roused when the uncertainty of existence increases due to a crisis or trust in the constitutional state is undermined, with suspicions of failing integrity and abuse of power of police, judiciary or politics. That awakening of the instinct for intolerance and distrust can be fired with an appeal to religion, ideology and nationalism. 

Tuesday, October 16, 2012


45. Obstacles for integration and tolerance

Some immigrants make little progress in integration. Some still do not master the host-country language. However, integration is not just a matter of language, and tolerance is not just a matter of good will. One must also have the mental ability.

Earlier in this blog (item 34) I indicated that people try to make sense of what others say and do by trying to fit it into mental scripts. When the proper scripts are lacking one cannot ‘frame’ and hence cannot ‘read’ the conduct of others, let alone respond adequately.

This is connected with deep differences in the life world. Some immigrants from Morocco originate from the Rif mountains, where the life world is still one of traditional, close, ties of family and clan. That is typically found everywhere in early economic development, in a simple, agrarian, local economy with little division of labour. In their history, more developed countries had that as well. There, the human being is fully wrapped up in small, closed, often relatively isolated communities. Within those, social control is strong and and there is little scope for external relations or internal differences of vision and attitude. Work and private life, the secular and the spiritual, the intellectual and the emotional are closely interwoven, in ‘thick’ all-encompassing relationships. Let me call it system A. There, rules can remain unwritten, because they are transmitted orally, in personal contact, and by role models, on the basis of familial, religious or personal authority.

As societies develop and become more complex, in division of labour, in urban economies, the human being takes part in a greater number of different groups or networks that each covers only one or few aspects of the life world. That yields highly individualized patterns of relationships. Most relationships are ‘thin’, limited, distant, reserved and limitedly personal. The richer, more personal relationships are more private, secluded from other relationships. Let me call that system B. There, norms and rules must be specified and public, and grounded in law.

According to Maslov’s hierarchy of needs, ‘lower’ needs such as those for food, shelter, safety, vary less between people than ‘higher’ needs of social recognition and self-fulfillment. Since the higher needs can be attained better in more prosperous societies, those societies harbour greater variety, in system B.

Someone from B justifiedly sees A as primitive, closed, suffocatingly unfree, authoritarian, lawless, undemocratic and irrational. Someone from A justifiedly sees B as loose, fragmented, impersonal, anonymous, cold, indifferent, materialistitic, exhibitionistic, a-spiritual, and aimless. That is next associated with democracy, which then is rejected.

Thus A and B are blind to each other and blind makes intolerant and blocks integration. Some immigrants see the world from the perspective of A, come to B, where they drown spiritually, clasp their own circle and traditions and may become vulnerable to missionaries that preach a return to the primeval age of A. Immigrants’ children are caught between A at home and B at school. 

Sunday, October 14, 2012


44. Nationalism old and new

The classic form of nationalism is the romantic nationalism that arose from the end of the 18th century, especially, at first, in Germany. It was a reaction upon the rationalism and universalism of the Enlightenment, in a re-conquest of feeling over rationality, the particular over the general, myth over science. It sought an escape from the separation that Kant had produced between the self and unknowable reality, by being absorbed in a larger, organic cultural whole, under the wings of a national spirit (see the discussion of romanticism in item 22 of this blog).

In economically less developed societies, the cultural identity of people was largely a matter of family and clan. Societies were strongly hierarchical, and perspectives were determined by birth and descent. That has largely, though not entirely, disappeared.

Charles Taylor claims that in modern society democracy requires a more categorial identity (see the discussion of identity in item 9 of this blog) in which many take part, and to which one belongs by virtue of birth into a national culture.

However, modern society has developed many partly overlapping, partly separated networks, beyond family, in education, profession, sport, work, industry, politics, etc. Access to resources, including employment, reputation, and influence, depends on what networks one takes part in, and the position in them. And those networks have become increasingly international.

Networks generate a novel inequality that is more surreptitious than former rank and standing because it is informal and often denied. Thus there are networks of top managers that sit on each other’s boards, of interest groups that are involved in the making of public policy, and all manner of advisory and supervisory councils.

Access and position in networks highly depends on education and connections, still, that one was born into. Membership of networks is self-reinforcing via overlaps between networks, and the fact that having many connections one becomes an attractive partner for even more connections.

People with a lower level of education, less access to networks and lesser ability to handle them feel left out, robbed of the perspective that democracy promised of direct and equal access, and become disappointed in democracy. They then fall back on national identity as a form of identity to which they do have access, directly and automatically, as a member of the nation. That access is especially connected with language, and that is why language is so central in discussions on integration. Language as access to national identity also forms an easy means for excluding outsiders.

Nationalistic populists can mobilize the grudges and suspicion concerning elites and project themselves as champions of the neglected. For this they can employ nationalistic elements such as language, culture, ethnicity, or religion. They can appeal to human instinct towards mistrust of outsiders. That is especially effective with the claim that foreigners penetrate the networks that the neglected still do have, in family, neighborhood and work. Then identity is seen as identification with national cultural values, and thus the individual becomes subordinate to the nation, and nationalism can become totalitarian, again. 

Wednesday, October 10, 2012

43. Justice

There is a prevailing view of justice as a social contract of self-restraint for mutual benefit between rational, free, autonomous actors. The underlying assumption is that they are roughly equal in power and means. I reject the assumptions of rationality, autonomy, freedom, equality and mutual benefit. Rawls assumed that for the determination of what is just there is a ‘veil of ignorance’, as if people can stand aside from their own situation and background, knowledge, skills and means, but that is an illusion. The assumption of a rational agreement between people roughly equal in power totally ignores the immorality of groups and phenomena of power that I will discuss later in this blog.

Most objectionable, as argued by Martha Nussbaum in her Frontiers of justice, is that creatures (e.g. children, the handicapped, the elderly, and animals) that are less endowed, with fewer means and resources, or little power, are simply ignored or set aside.

Justice goes further than an equilibrium of mutual advantage between actors with roughly equal power and capacities. Justice counts especially when there is no equilibrium of power. I prefer the capabilities tradition that Nussbaum follows, where justice entails that people have access to what is needed for human dignity and flourishing, to achieve (Aristotelian) virtues. It is not only about negative freedom from interference with flourishing of the individual, to which liberals limit themselves, but also positive freedom to achieve flourishing, i.e. to have the means and access to it. Nussbaum lists the following: life, health, bodily integrity, perception/fantasy/thought (by means of education and training, freedom of expression, and freedom of religion), emotions, practical reason (view on the good), affiliation (empathy, respect), other species (be concerned with animals and nature), play, influence (political participation, property, work, access to relationships). I can imagine variations to this list, but it serves as a guide.

Beyond individual capabilities justice also requires solidarity. In present complex society, with extreme division of labour and innumerable mutually connected markets, tension between individual and collective interests, unpredictable and unintended effects of complex interactions between individual and collective actors, and perverse effects of markets, people are subjected to systems they have little influence on. Also politicians do not steer but are carried along in a fancy fair of collisions. Then there is a collective duty to assist the casualties of the system. The system also provides windfalls that yield individual success, profit and flourishing of life (I myself, for example, have little to complain), but people should realise that their success is not all their own doing, and that the ground beneath their feet is drenched in the blood of previous generations in their battle for rights and freedom, and that they are benefitting from a leverage of the genius and toil of previous generations. Neither success nor failure are entirely one’s own doing. Under the influence of radical enlightenment thought about the autonomous individual in liberalism the systemic effects on opportunities and development of people are neglected.

Sunday, October 7, 2012

42. Fragility of goodness

Aristotle accepts that we cannot rise above our potential, towards the absolute. We are subject to forces we cannot fully control, and the correctness of ideas and judgements depends on circumstances. Universal rules of goodness do not work.

The philosopher Martha Nussbaum in her Fragility of goodness gives a beautiful exposition on this. The tragedy of circumstance is demonstrated in the classical Greek tragedies. Agamemnon had no other choice than the one between his daughter, to whom he had paternal duties, and his army, to which he had the duties of the commander, and he chooses the second. The hero is caught in a situation where he cannot do good and must choose between two evils, and he is punished for it. Clytemnestra, the wife of Agamemnon, could not forgive him and in revenge she had him killed. Even heroes do not always carry blame for their destiny. Tragedy demands compassion, but this need not entail lenity or impunity.

Martha Nussbaum makes a connection with monotheism versus the old Greek polytheism. Long ago at Latin school I was told that monotheism is a sign of civilization, and I wondered on what that claim was based. Polytheism yields a sense of a variety of different, possibly conflicting moral duties. Perhaps that harbours the greater wisdom. Both American messianic capitalism and the extremism of Muslim terrorists are rooted in monotheism. Both make an appeal to the righteousness that has fallen on them by revelation of a God for whom they are the chosen people. Only one God can be the right one, and the appeal to another God can only be an expression of evil. If you are not with us, you are against us. Praise the lord and pass the ammunition.

However, the problem is not a matter of theistic religion so much as of something that emerges in it. It also arises in ideology. We have seen it in nazism and communism. Present conflicts are not a matter of Christian vs. Islamic faith, but of conflicting platonic pretensions in both of them. It is not about a contrast between Christ and Mohammed, but between Plato and Aristotle. If ‘we’ are on the side of the good, and the good is universal, then outsiders must be bad. And if the good is pure, the ‘we’ must not just neutralize but eradicate the vile, the outsiders.

This can take the form of a millenarian Christian idea that the kingdom of God will be achieved after an apocalypse, at the end of times, but with the twist that this can be realised on earth by human intervention. That aberration of Christendom has manifested itself several times in history. Recently with George W. Bush, as John Gray claims. However, such interpretation explains neither Muslim extremism nor the atheistic Utopias that were brought forth by enlightenment thought. The roots lie in the platonic, transcendent dream that is the source of theistic religion but also of other absolutisms such as engendered by the radical Enlightenment.

Thursday, October 4, 2012

41 Entrepreneurship

Entrepreneurship is a salient feature of being in the world, in the flourishing of life. What drives entrepreneurs, and how do they operate? It can hardly be the rational design that economics traditionally prescribed, in the optimal use of given means for given goals. The radical uncertainty of entrepreneurial enterprise, and especially innovation, precludes that. Often one discovers what options for conduct there are only as they emerge from action.

This fits with the summary of the pragmatic perspective, and of being in the world, that I gave in the preceding item in this blog: At any moment we act from ideas, views, normative assumptions and goals that we have, but we adjust them depending on what we encounter in problems and new opportunities.


As a novel label on a new bottle with old wine, in the entrepreneurship literature the fashion now is to call this effectuation.

What drives entrepreneurs to act like this? One proposal has been to use the notion of conatus, the drive of anything that lives to persist in its existence, which goes back far in philosophy and was considered the essence of life and the fundamental nature of the human being by Spinoza, for example. This idea has had wide acceptance in the notion that the primary goal of firms and institutions is to survive.

Nietzsche resisted this, claiming that often people undertake actions that clearly jeopardize their survival, and he proposed that the fundamental drive of beings is will to power. The urge to survive may apply to existing organizations but not so much to entrepreneurs who set up novel ventures.

Another concept that goes back to classical (Greek) philosophy is that of thymos, the will to manifest oneself, to make a mark, to make a difference. This seems related to Nietzsche’s will to power. And indeed this is often found among entrepreneurs as the will to prove that an idea works, or to carry it through to realization, or to make a novel contribution to society, or to exercise their independence of thought and action.

A problem then arises in collaboration. On the one hand especially independent entrepreneurs have to collaborate with others for two reasons. First because they are too small to develop all specialized knowledge and competencies needed. Second, the deeper reason lies in the logic of cognitive distance that I developed earlier, as a source of novelty. On the other hand, the problem then is, as I will discuss in much more detail later in this blog, that in order to realize the potential of such collaboration entrepreneurs have to commit to it with investments that make them dependent on each other. They have to engage in give and take and practise what I will later call the art of trust. And this yields tension with their motivation to pursue their independence of thought and action, and with the pragmatic need to be opportunistic in adapting means and goals to what is encountered along the way.