Philosophy on the 86th Floor

     Decades ago, someone jumped from the observation deck on the 86th floor of the Empire State Building, only to be blown by a gust of wind to a lower ledge from which she was saved.  Glowing endorsements of the philosophy of existentialism and authenticity bring to mind that vertiginous observation deck: Surely, if existentialism entails radical human freedom, construed as the power to make a choice, any choice; then how could any truly authentic existentialist repeatedly visit that deck and yet never decide to jump from it?  One is left to speculate whether any existentialists have ever visited that deck, and if so, whether favorable winds have saved some of them from true authenticity. 

     The present writer thought again of that 86th floor while reading a favorable account of existentialism in the book review “Choose Your Own Adventure” by Professor John Kaag in the May 11, 2018 Wall Street Journal.  The reviewed book is entitled “The Existentialist’s Survival Guide,” by Professor Gordon Marino, who “has produced an honest and moving book of self-help for readers generally disposed to loathe the genre.”  Marino paraphrases Camus in writing that many people “have committed intellectual hari-kari … [in part by] mentally constructing an apparatus like faith in God” to order their lives.  Kaag writes that “it’s not that Mr. Marino disparages faith … [but] contends that faith never gives the certainty many religious seekers crave.”  However, if the charge of “intellectual hari-kari” does not count as a disparagement of faith, then it is hard to see what would so count.  Moreover, great numbers of Christians understand faith as the assurance of things hoped for and not as an expression of post-Cartesian certainty.  One might wish to consider alternatives to existentialism.

     Such an alternative is found in essentialism, whose paradigm, Platonic philosophy, considers that Ideas are essences and that essence is ontologically prior to existence.  Plato’s Demiurge looks to Ideas when setting about to fashion pieces of creation, thereby adding to the stock of existent things.  To the extent that Western philosophy is a series of footnotes to Plato, essentialism has been the long-term winner in the debate with existentialism, which holds the opposing view that existence is prior to essence.  How can one explain the post World War II fascination with the priority of existence?

     One might view existentialism as arising from an objectionable definition of human freedom as the power to make a choice, any choice.  It would seem that this freedom is more reasonably construed as the power to do what one ought, leaving open the question of what theoretical apparatus best controls the discussion of what one ought to do.  The impression arises that, to the extent that an existentialist cannot find a moral theory affording desired results, he or she finds it expedient to excise the moral theory intervening between freedom and action and to adopt the definition of freedom based on “choice, any choice.”

     Is there a theoretical preference for the priority of essence or existence?  For Hegel, natural consciousness contains movements of thought that proceed by (what others termed) “thesis-antithesis-synthesis,” which is a teleological process whose final cause is the ultimate, or essential, state of Absolute Knowing.  In the Aristotelian tradition, a final cause is first in specification (essence) and last in generation (existence). Thus, Hegel’s system is essentialist and, eo ipso, objectionable to the existentialist, Sartre. 

     For Sartre, being in itself (massive, mysterious, and lacking freedom) undergoes a type of ontological fission, or “self-splitting,” from which arise the existence of consciousness and a world of finite beings. Human freedom lies in the structure of human consciousness and is not a property of any human essence, which must be constructed piecemeal from human actions.  But on Sartre’s theory, what is the first existent thing?  It would seem to be a reality capable of creating its own essence.  But this reality might be supposed to have other characteristics as well and to constitute the human essence, in which case existence and essence would be co-primeval.  Moreover, as an empirical matter, human freedom seems to be limited by sociological, psychological, and moral factors; hence, “what a person becomes” is likewise limited.  On balance, the present writer finds that essentialism is more compelling than existentialism.

     One concludes from these considerations that erstwhile existentialists may be permitted to take the elevator down from the 86th floor.

Specters Old and New

     In a news item from May 5, 2018 it is reported that the Chinese government has given Karl Marx’ hometown (Trier, Germany) an 18-foot tall statue of Karl Marx to commemorate his 200th birthday anniversary.  While former anti-communists such as Vaclav Klaus believe that the statue makes a mockery of history, mere history cannot compete with economics: The city of Trier has been benefitting from Chinese tourism, and its mayor says that “it’s the right time to deal with Marx in this form.” 

     Judging from the tepid public reaction to the new statue of Marx in Trier, the historical memory of Marx, Engels, and the Communist Manifesto seems to be fading.  Hence, we will mention that the relatively youthful Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels collaborated on writing the Manifesto during the winter of 1847 to 1848, publishing it in London in February 1848 as a 23-page brochure.  At the time, governments across Europe were already tottering for various reasons, and the communists needed an official creed in order to unify their approach to the ongoing crises.  

     The Manifesto introduces the specter of communism as haunting (going around in) Europe: All the powers of old Europe [Pope, Tsar, Metternich (Austrian chancellor), and Guizot (French premier), among others], although failing to define the precise nature of this specter, have created fairy tales (Märchen) about it and have allied themselves in a kind of wild-animal chase (Hetzjagd) after it.  (One thinks of hounds in a fury of bloodlust hunting a fox.)  It is in opposition to these fairy tales and on behalf of the newly formed Communist League that Marx and Engels wrote the Manifesto, including several sections on the proletariat, the bourgeoisie, and the communist version of world history.  The visible ill effects of communism awaited the Russian Revolution, and it took longer still for critics such as Boris Pasternak (Dr. Zhivago) and Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn (The Gulag Archipelago) to document those ill effects.

     Having died seventeen years before the Manifesto, Hegel cannot fairly be blamed for its excesses.  Indeed, he had shown the good sense to say that, even if world history is the self-unfolding of Spirit, we cannot predict the details of history.  Post-Hegelian radicals, however, had to make such predictions in order to attract attention.  Some Marxist predictions presupposed that “all social facts can be reduced to economics,” a view that became known as “economism.” 

     Although today’s specter of obsequious statuary is less ominous than 1848’s specter of communism, the contemporary specter of economism could become quite serious.  In the April 2018 edition of First Things, Richard H. Spady focuses on the gradual transformation of what had been convenient and contingent assumptions in economic models into normative goals for social planners.  For example, some economic models assume that trade expansion, mobility of labor and capital, and technological change are always good.  Spady finds that there is countervailing evidence that these economic factors also bring some negative consequences: Recent economic change has brought “widespread despair, resentment, and dysfunction among the lower two-thirds of American society,” consistent with Case and Deaton’s data on “dramatic decreases in life expectancy among white, high-school-educated Americans.”  Spady believes that this new specter of economism, if not explicitly dealt with, will lead to an era of increased societal conflict.

     Concurring with the spirit of Spady’s analysis, albeit without recourse to the terminology of “economism,” the dean of the Columbia Business School recently commented on the problematic nature of trade and immigration: He described a recent field trip that he took with 20 M.B.A. students - - not to the usual, globally-elite destinations such as Hong Kong, London, or Delhi - - but to Youngstown, Ohio in order to observe the specter of real industrial decline.  “Whether it’s Brexit in the U.K. or the debate over trade and immigration in the U.S.,  … [people ask] ‘Why am I supporting something that benefits on average, when this just means [that] Columbia M.B.A.s get it all?’ ”

Of Emmaus and Enlightenment

     Writing in separate Wall Street Journal articles during the past month, George Weigel and Yoram Hazony discussed the roads through Emmaus (4/1/18) and through the Enlightenment (4/8/18), respectively.  The initiation of a gradual legalizing of Christian belief and practice from the time of Constantine I to Theodosius I (300’s A.D.) is typically attributed to Constantine’s perception of a divine mandate for, or at least of an administrative convenience accruing to, such legalization.  On this account, this legalization began shortly after Constantine’s victory over his western competitor at the Battle of the Milvian Bridge on October 28, 312 A.D.  Weigel finds that the revolutionary effect of Jesus of Nazareth on his disciples on the road to Emmaus and elsewhere nearly three centuries earlier had galvanized the first Christians to become “a dominant force” within the Roman Empire.

     In contrast, defining the time, place, and content of Enlightenment thought may be more contentious.  The first roots of the Enlightenment seem to extend to the early modern period of Western philosophy, when Descartes (1596 – 1650) issued his clarion call for systematic doubt before accepting absolutely certain, true beliefs into a foundation for knowledge in all areas of inquiry.  Locke (1632 – 1704) reduced the foundational requirements from certainty to probability in empirical areas of inquiry.  Synthesizing both rational and empirical outlooks, Kant (1724 – 1804) famously became a transcendental idealist in order to remain an empirical realist.  We assume here that the full flowering of the Enlightenment occurred from 1715 (death of the French “Sun King”) to 1789 (start of the French Revolution).  

     The supposedly irrefutable, cutting-edge arguments promulgated by the French Enlightenment philosophes included statements to the effect that “man is a machine” (Julien de La Mettrie) and that “the brain secretes thought like the liver secretes bile” (Pierre Cabanis).  Following up on a remark by the philosophical historian Frederick Copleston, one observes that Cabanis must have found a truly remarkable bile-analog if it could serve as a “litmus test” for truth!  Hazony finds that contemporary advocates of the Enlightenment oversell the benefits of unfettered reason (because beneficial trends in science, medicine, and politics had already started before the Enlightenment) and underestimate the contributions of tradition, religion, and national identity (because any arrangements that could have prevented the French Revolution, the Napoleonic wars, and the Russian Revolution would have been highly desirable).  How could things have gone so wrong?

     Regarding politics, in 1784 Kant authored the highly regarded essay, Was ist Aufklärung? (What is Enlightenment?), in which Kant self-servingly praised Frederick the Great (1712 - 1786): It turns out that true Enlightenment freedom pertains to the public speech that Frederick granted to academics such as Kant, even while all others might appropriately be required to espouse the party line of the institutions employing them. 

     Regarding religion, in 1793 Kant wrote the book, Die Religion innerhalb der Grenzen der bloβen Vernunft (Religion within the Limits of Reason Alone), in which he predicted that that the Enlightenment would lead people to cast aside dogma, authority, and tradition in favor of the rational principles that he believed formed the basis of all religions.  According to Kant, for example, it is not ritual or doctrinal profession that makes one pleasing to God, but rather having a rigorously disinterested moral attitude.  Such an approach to religion, however, entails a comprehensive demythologization in which Jesus’ presence on the road to Emmaus is symbolic at best, and the “dominant force” seen by Weigel is nowhere to be found.  Although Kant sees that historical faith has served as a vehicle for spreading elements of the rational faith, he seems to have hoped for a time when mankind can finally dispense with such vehicles.

     Ultimately, Kant never managed to cancel at least one contradiction in his thought: Frederick, Kant had enthused in 1784, was the only ruler “who is himself enlightened … [and] who likewise has at hand a well-disciplined and numerous army to guarantee public security.”  So far from boldly discarding all authority, Kant relied on princely heroes who would encourage Kantian academic debate, establish increasingly liberal parliaments and state churches, and enforce obedience to the state - - all by virtue of their princely authority.  But if authority is allowed to temporal sovereigns in the 1784 analysis, why should it be denied to historical religions in the 1793 book?  As Hazony concludes, “national and religious institutions may not fit with the Enlightenment, but they may have important things to teach us nevertheless.”

Facts, Values, and Myths

     In the website article, "The good guy / bad guy myth", Catherine Nichols remarks that contemporary popular culture is obsessed with the battle between good and evil, as witness the film series Star Wars and The Lord of the Rings.  Contemporary heroes fight for what is right.  The reader is left to conclude that contemporary heroes do what is right with minimal prompting and some satisfaction, even if not always easily and with pleasure: In other words, they exhibit virtues.  These virtues embody values.  People portrayed on opposite sides of conflicts have different moral qualities and values.  Nichols remarks that she detects a historic shift in folklore, away from “Who gets Helen of Troy?“ and towards “Who (or whose group) gets to improve society’s values?”  Nichols maintains that good guy / bad guy narratives promote social stability but discourage deliberation and moral vision, thereby creating an Ersatz morality.  In this view, the Grimm brothers’ collection of Germanic folklore and legends was not just a listing of stories, but a narrative that could help create a sense of nationhood.  Nichols maintains that “like the original Grimm stories, [good-guy / bad guy narratives] are a political tool designed to bind nations together.”  The reader does struggle to envision Bismarck relying on literary output designed by the brothers Grimm as one more political tool for installing his policies of social security.  However, perhaps there was a “third factor” that has affected both folktale culture and political culture in recent centuries.

     Professor Arthur F. Holmes [Fact, Value, and God (1997)] maintained that Bacon and Hobbs introduced a strict separation between natural science and teleological notions of human flourishing that culminated in an unprecedented split between fact and value in Western philosophy.  The view of Bacon and Hobbs was that both scholasticism and sectarian systems of thought lacked “right reason” in that they used words without empirical definition.  The notion of right reason evolved from whatever the sovereign decrees to whatever counts as purely natural-scientific thinking.  Even if there are divinely promulgated laws, those laws are accessible only by right reason as defined by public intellectuals and codified by the state.  Ultimately, Nietzsche’s nihilism and emphasis on individual autonomy perfected the split between fact and value.  Perhaps this split between fact and value was the “third factor” that arrived in time to allow for parallel, albeit intrinsically disconnected, political and folktale cultures.

Post-Truths and Populism

     The following text comments on the Wall Street Journal articles by Dr. Rebecca Newberger Goldstein and William A. Galston on March 17, 2018.  This review seeks to explore whether “post-truth” ideology is to traditional assertion as contemporary populism is to liberal democracy.

     Goldstein argues that “post-truth” refers to “something radically screwy” in contemporary politics.  Disagreement between democrats and oligarchs goes back to Athenian times, but modern pseudo-assertions of post-truths are not endorsements of propositions but declarations of ideological loyalty.  This re-purposing of propositions confuses political discourse, because people tend to lose track of what kind of assertion they are dealing with as an argument progresses, or as an emotional encounter degenerates.  It seems that some political factions find it expedient to develop a series of quasi-Gnostic emanations: A purported relativity of truth leads to “post-modernism,” which leads in turn to “post-truth” declarations of tribal loyalties.  No matter what faction originates this scheme, all parties to political disputes can advance systems of “post-truths,” endangering political debate.  Thus, in Galston’s context, both the populists (e.g., Trump or Brexit supporters) who represent an ignored subpopulation, as well as the transnational elites who govern technocratic power structures do not engage in real dialog and solve real problems.  This leads to a more precarious existence for liberal democracy itself.  This instability is a truly novel development in politics, ultimately based on a pernicious language game.  Post-truths are untethered from traditional assertions.  Contemporary populism is disconnected from traditional liberal democracy.  Appeasing the purveyors of extravagant speech means losing site of the philosophical coastline of experience that Kant prescribed for the voyage of reason.  Appeasement is as problematic now as it was in the twentieth century; only the “post-truth” spin is new.