152. New solidarity

 There is an urgent need to find a new form of solidarity that fits the new, singularistic form of individualism discussed in the preceding item of this blog.

 For this, Rosanvallon[1] proposed a shift from distributive to relational equality. No longer an equalizing redistribution of outcomes, but giving people equal access to resources and relationships needed for the development of distinctive activity. That is also the capability approach advocated by Amartya Sen and Martha Nussbaum.

This is combined with the view that the formation of identity is social. Identity is a relational good that requires sharing with others. Citizens are not only bearers of rights but are defined by their relations with others. Rosanvallon called this reciprocity. In essence, what politics is, or should be, is communication and community among people who are different. Difference, not equality, is what makes relationships valuable.

In this blog I have developed a similar argument, on the basis of a constructivist epistemology: people construct their categories of cognition in interaction with others who are different. Differences are needed for learning.

Rosanvallon noted that the ‘micro level’ (my term, not Rosanvallon’s) of reciprocity requires a ‘macro level’ set of enabling institutions (which he called commonality). It requires a culture of collaboration in making society, turning difference into a binding, not an exclusionary factor, with a sense of curiosity, a zest for discovery. That requires institutions that prevent differences leading to exploitation, dominance or exclusion. The arena of distinction needs regulatory boundaries of justice.

The ethic of reciprocity requires a mentality of respect and openness, with a mutual extending of benefit of the doubt in case of mishap. I discussed that in my treatment of trust, in this blog (items 68-75). It requires a commitment to fairness, acting not only according to the letter of rules and agreements but also to their spirit. No more cheating, tax evasion, wilful pollution, fake products, and misleading promotion

All this does not eliminate competition and rivalry but, to the contrary, enables it, within boundaries of justice, and combines it with collaboration. This is a field of ongoing tension, in the search for mutuality as well as self-interest. This is enabled and constrained by human instincts for both self-preservation and social legitimacy. Institutions and personal and organizational skills should be developed to moderate between them.

The viability of all this is bolstered by its spiritual as well as its economic advantage.

Concerning spiritual advantage I argued (in items 49 and 55) that the highest form of freedom is the freedom to alter what one wants to want, and one can achieve this only by escaping from myopia and prejudice, and for this one needs openness to opposition by the other.

Concerning economic advantage I argued (in items 57 and 58) that differences between people can also, with the appropriate insights and skills, yield economic advantage, in creating innovation by Schumpeterian ‘novel combinations’.

Collaboration and regard for the other, in empathy and give and take, are desirable for their intrinsic value as well as their instrumental value, for realizing the opportunity for novelty in combining different views and capabilities from different people.

One should not be naive about this. As I argued in this blog (item 75), trust should never be blind and can operate only within boundaries of control. But trustworthy conduct can be rewarded with more limited control, offering a wider scope for action and novelty, as well as lower costs of control. Cheating is punished with the old straightjacket of control.

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[1] Rosanvallon, La société des égaux, 2011, Paris: Editions Seuil.

151. New individualism

In old liberal philosophy, individualism was sought in autonomy and freedom, with self-interest as a guiding principle, as exemplified in mainstream economic theory. However, it also recognized a universal essence of humanity, human dignity and human rights that needed to be protected. There could be quantitative but not qualitative inequality. Here, as in the preceding item in this blog, I follow the analysis by Rosanvallon in his ‘Society of Equals’.

That view provided an ideological basis for equal rights and access to resources of the law, election, education, jobs, culture, … In socialism, it yielded compensation for inequalities of income, housing and opportunity, with redistribution of income and various forms of social security.

But how far should that go? Should children be taken from their families for equal education for all? Should there be compensation for lack of talent?

The regime of ‘social justice’ is now perceived to have gone too far, producing perverse effects of bureaucracy, inefficiency, misuse of social security, and erosion of personal responsibility, yielding an ethics of dependence and passivity.

Middle classes feel caught between cheating among the rich, in remuneration, profiteering and tax evasion, and cheating among the poor, in parasitic misuse of social security. This corrodes their sense of solidarity.

This explains why present populism is rightist in condemning parasitic misuse of social security at the bottom and leftist in condemning capitalist excesses at the top. Social coherence is no longer sought in social arrangements but in nationalism, in identification by exclusion of immigrants.

Rosanvallon noted that this principle of identification by exclusion also applied earlier. In the US, solidarity among whites was achieved by discrimination of blacks. Perhaps that yielded a lesser need for solidarity by socialism, in the US. The principle also applied to 19th century imperialism and protectionism as a basis for national solidarity.

Present individualism is more radical than the old form. Rosanvallon called it singularity. I think it has been engendered by, among other things, Nietzschean philosophy of the will to power, and other existentialist philosophy. The ruling ethos now is one of self-realization and –manifestation, achieving distinction by qualitative difference. The collective is seen as a contemptible ‘herd’, the institutionalization of conformism and mediocrity.

In Nietzschean philosophy pain and hardship are part of life, not to be relieved by the state but to be accepted as an individual challenge to be overcome, in growth and transcendence of the self.

As noted by Rosanvallon, paradoxically this more extreme individualism has called forth a more extreme claim of equality. It has shifted from equal legal and economic rights to equal rights to distinction, in self-manifestation. A right for everyone to be recognized as a unique, valuable individual, on equal standing with stars, experts, artists, and intellectuals.

Frustrated craving for recognition of distinction is perhaps what drives some young people to take revenge in shooting people.

Clearly, not everyone can achieve distinction by old criteria of accomplishment by knowledge, reason, argument, talent, professionalism and creativity. Therefore, those standards are shoved aside as ‘elitist’, and are replaced by a self-congratulatory clamour of opinions, feelings, and emotions, and uninhibited exhibitionism on the Internet, posturing in social media. Distinction by achievement is largely replaced by attention claimed by appealing to emotions and prejudice.

Alternatively, unable to credibly achieve distinction, people seek recognition by proxy, basking in the fame of stars they idolize, in sports, show business, politics and business, which they mirror in supportership and emulation of appearance. Hence the appearance of idols in advertising.

This idolization, in turn, is taken as legitimating exorbitant remuneration of the stars, where the winner takes all, shedding any connection with economic rationale.

All this yields the paradox of Bossuet: people complain about the consequences (capitalist failures and increasing inequality of income, wealth, tax evasion, favouritism, and rule bending) of causes they endorse (individual self-realization, singularity).[1]

Perhaps that explains the current phenomenon of passive submission, the astonishing lack of massive, collective revolt. And in the absence of a real threat of revolt, present institutions and habits of injustice will prevail.

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[1] See Rosanvallon, La société des égaux, 2011, Paris: Editions Seuil, p. 17.

150. Equality on the move

 There is renewed debate on rising inequality of income and wealth within countries, compared to a rising equality after WW1. This has been demonstrated with statistical data, but there is limited analysis of causes and of how developments may be turned around. I dedicate the following three items to those questions.

There are many forms of (in)equality between people. Pierre Rosanvallon identified two main dimensions.[1]

First, a difference between equality of substance and equality of relation. The first is equality in the form of identity, homogeneity; as having a shared essence, or as being absorbed in one indistinct mass. Examples are race, ethnic group, nation, cultural heritage, ‘blood and soil’, shared myths of history, and perceived destiny. The second entails equal access to relations between differentiated individuals, without exploitation, domination or exclusion.

Second, the difference between a static and a dynamic view. In the first equality is seen as already established, in a given institution of the social. According to the second, equality is under way, in construction and adjustment, in ongoing debate between different perspectives, under changing conditions. Imperfection on the move.

The substantial and static views are often combined, in equality of race or nation, as given and unalterable, to be defended against impurities and change.

Nationalsocialism, in particular Nazism, is a salient example. There, homogeneity was naturalized in terms of race, whereby it is taken out of the social and political, with the added advantage of yielding a clear, genetic boundary between ‘inside’ and ‘outside’.

The substantial/static view is a-political in that there is no room for confrontation between different views to arrive at a consensus. No political debate is needed. A single visionary leader claims to embody the common social substance. There may be elections, but they are not intended to reach some compromise between different views, but to distil the essence of the nation, in an ‘expression’ of the common ‘will of the people’ in the choice of the leader. This is dictatorship dressed up as democracy.

Western democracy is a salient case of the relational, dynamic view. It is truly imperfection on the move. The present government undoes what the previous one did. Decisions avoid conflict or are compromises of mushrooming complexity. I discussed the imperfections of democracy earlier in this blog, in item 127.

Rosanvallon distinguished between de ‘nation-identity’ and the ‘nation-solidarity’. Solidarity entailed the recognition of differences in access to resources, and the will to redress them and to provide a cover of social risks.

He argued that the joint experience of war, in WW1 and WW2, engendered a sense of solidarity: ‘under bombs we are all equal’. A second impulse was the fear of communism, and the perceived political need for social reforms to prevent revolution.

A third impulse was intellectual, in the emergence of social science and the awareness of the individual as socially constituted, autonomous only in a limited sense, and subjected to social risks of birth, illness, and unemployment.

A fourth condition was trust, without suspicion that certain groups in society would misuse social arrangements.

Currently we are thrown back into the conservative-liberal ideology that ruled earlier, in the beginning of the industrial revolution and the rise of capitalism. According to the logic proposed by Rosanvallon, this would be due to the following factors. The solidarity of war has subsided, the threat of communism has eclipsed, mistrust has arisen with respect to outsiders (non-Western immigrants) seen to be preying on social arrangements, and individualism has re-emerged in a new form.

In the face of current failures of capitalism, are we again in a pre-revolutionary period?

There is widespread anger and frustration, but wholesale, collective revolt does not arise easily from the new individualism. Old forms of solidarity no longer seem attractive. A new way needs to be found for bringing together self and other.

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[1] Pierre Rosanvallon, La société des égaux, 2011, Paris: Editions Seuil.

149. Nietzsche as a pragmatist

 There is an obvious connection, recognized by many, between Nietzsche and pragmatism. What they share is perspectivism and contribution to life as a criterion for validity. But how, in more detail, do they compare?

They both reject the separation of subject and object, of thought and world, as well as the separation of fact and value, of ‘is’ and ‘ought’. The subject develops its knowledge and ethics in interaction with the world, and truth is judged in relation to purposes of actions.

In mainstream pragmatism (of Peirce, James, Dewey), ideas are revised when they fail in their application. I add, and I am sure Nietzsche would have concurred, that ideas also arise to create or respond to novel opportunities.

Mainstream pragmatism assumes that in the end knowledge will converge, in the limit, to objective truth. Nietzsche, by contrast, thinks of an ongoing creative destruction without any guarantee or indication, or even sense, of such convergence, and I go along with that.

According to mainstream pragmatism truth, or adequacy, or validity, is judged on the basis of utility or success in practice. Of course, that depends on the perspective one takes. In a wider view of pragmatism not everything is focused on practical ends. For Nietzsche, merit of ideas lies not in their direct contribution to utility, indeed Nietzsche despised that criterion. The criterion of usefulness or success raises the question: useful for what?[1] Lies and cheating can be very useful. Usefulness should be related to views of the good life. For Nietzsche that is life which contributes to longer term, supra-individual flourishing of human life, in spiritual growth, and self-overcoming. Lies and cheating don’t offer that.

Earlier in this blog I adopted an Aristotelian virtue ethic, with multiple, often incommensurable values, including honesty, openmindedness, courage, integrity, and prudence, in finding a way between extremes, depending on conditions. One recognizes several of these values in Nietzsche.

I propose that one can debate dimensions of the good life across cultures and communities, often finding at least partial overlap, in some degree of family resemblance.

Some dimensions of the good life are incommensurable between cultures, and this is problematic but not necessarily insuperable. They can be incommensurable already within cultures and even within views of an individual. At least partial agreement need not be hopeless and there need not be surrender to power and force. The paradox is that while absolutes are supposed to provide the basis for adjudication between different perspectives, they doin fgact lead to struggles of power and force, since they do not allow for leniency, compromise or hybrid.

Nietzsche would have railed vehemently against Rorty’s brand of pragmatism, with consensus in a community as the criterion of validity. He would have denounced that as a vile manifestation of the ‘herd mentality’.

Nietzsche would be less sanguine than mainstream pragmatism concerning facts and empirical science, wary as he was of ‘scientism’. Here, I take a middle position, with the view that while in principle facts are theory laden they can nevertheless often serve to settle disputes between theories.

Pragmatism is sympathetic to democracy and religion, while Nietzsche is not[2], at least not to theistic religion. If, however, one adopts a wider view of religion, as I have done in this blog, as a striving for transcendence including transcendence that is immanent, in this life, and horizontal, towards something bigger than the self, in this world, then I propose that Nietzsche would qualify.

What most distinguishes Nietzsche from pragmatism is his notion of the will to power, the overcoming of resistance as a value in itself. And I share the doubts on that, as I argued earlier.

 

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[1] Cf. Rossella Fabbrichesi, 2009, Nietzsche and James, A pragmatic hermeneutics, Economic Journal of pragmnatism and American philosophy.

[2] See Richard Rorty, 1998, Berthelot: pragmatism is romantic utilitarianism, in Morris Dickstein (ed), The revival of pragmatism, Duke University Press, p. 21-36.

148. Imperfection on the move

While I sympathise with Nietzsche’s thought on several points, I deviate from it in several ways, to develop my perspective of imperfection on the move.

Like Nietzsche, I reject absolutes but take values seriously. I add that most often values are adopted tacitly, without any question of validity arising at all. I will return to that in a later item in this blog. But where critical reflection is possible and relevant, one can legitimately accept values (and truths), as temporary, currently the best we have, given language and largely tacit established notions, while remaining open to possible failure of our cognitive make-up and to the need for revision in the face of new experience, meanings, or arguments.

Instead of Nietzsche’s Will to Power I posit a Will to Creation, including art as well as invention and innovation. That includes the need, and perhaps Nietzschean enjoyment, of overcoming resistance, but counter to Nietzsche, not as a fundamental value in itself, but as inevitable in creation. While for Nietzsche the will to power is primary, with creation as its highest manifestation, for me will to creation is primary.

Like Nietzsche I propose that one’s own prejudice also yields a resistance one needs to overcome. Will to power should apply also to the self. However, Nietzsche sought that in rivalry with opponents. In contrast with Nietzsche I propose that instead of vanquishing others, one needs to be receptive and empathetic to them, to be open to their opposition. This is needed to achieve the highest form of freedom: the freedom to change what one wants to want, and to overcome one’s prejudices. I argued this extensively in my book ‘Beyond humanism’, and in earlier items in this blog (49 and 60)

Here, I oppose enlightenment rhetoric of autonomous selves, in self-realization, and Nietzsche’s extension of it into self-affirmation. Even according to Nietzsche himself there is no originary, unitary, given self to affirm. The self is multiple and in flux, and develops in interaction with especially the social environment.

As indicated earlier in this blog, I endorse the fallibilist view of pragmatism, and the related notion of ‘truth’ as ‘warranted assertability’, but with some modifications.

How relativistic is the principle of warranted assertability? The answer to the absence of absolute, objective values should not be relativistic surrender to the incommensurability of values from different perspectives but, to the contrary, commitment to ongoing effort at debate between opposing views.

The criterion of warranted assertability is not only success in terms of utility, but also success more widely, in debate, with arguments that mobilize all relevant knowledge and experience, including facts.

While accepting the impossibility of achieving certain, objective truth, I re-institute facts and realism, in a non-absolute, contingent fashion.

Facts are indeed perspectival and theory-laden, but they are mostly less arbitrary and more reliable than theoretical speculation. In my practice as a scientist I have encountered situations where the perception of facts did vary with differences in theoretical perspective, but also cases where one could agree on them to settle differences in theory.

I do not believe in realism in the form of correspondence between ideas or perceptions with items in reality, but I do endorse realism in the sense that our ideas develop, mostly tacitly, without our being aware of it, in interaction with reality, as a function of experienced success, and in that sense somehow reflect them, though not as in a mirror. What, then, do we ‘have in mind’? I will discuss that in a later in this blog.

Finally, how could and why should one adopt the basic value of creation that I propose? I think we do have the drive and ability to creation as a result of evolution: it has given the human species an advantage in survival. I think it is advisable to adopt creation as a value for the flourishing of one’s own life and lives after that. Why? Does flourishing human life have absolute importance? I don’t know, but since we have life it seems best to make the best of it.

How all this works out in life and society has been the subject of a number of previous items in this blog.