Erik Hammar

Dear reader, below is a text written by my friend Paul de-Font Reaulx. We thought it would be fun to write an exchange on a topic we have discussed a lot (without reaching any agreement), namely, the objectivity of morality. Are things right or wrong, really? And what would that even mean? Anyway, please see below for Paul’s introductory argument (as well as some background to what it is we are talking about). I’ll post my reply later on.

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It is my pleasure to start off this discussion on the objectivity of morality, an exemplary non-question according to some, and a lingering existential worry amongst others. I defend the claim that there are objective moral facts – such as the fact that boiling babies is wrong – which determine the rightness and wrongness of actions. By their being objective I mean that they do not depend on the attitude of anyone; boiling a baby is wrong no matter how you feel about it. In other words I will be defending the view that some actions are – lo and behold – actually wrong.

I will refer to my position as ‘moral realism’, and for those interested I will defend a more specific version usually called ‘non-naturalist moral realism’. Moral realism is distinct from ‘error-theory’, which claims that there are no moral facts. It is also distinct from ‘constructivism’, which claims that there are moral facts but these are not independent of our attitudes. For example, a constructivist might hold that boiling babies is wrong because we are in consensus with regards to the abhorrence of the action. A moral realist makes a stronger claim, arguing that even if we happened to be in a community where everyone were happy baby-boilers, baby-boiling would still be wrong, full stop.

Perhaps sweepingly I speculate that moral realism is the position held by most of us before we ever read philosophy, or were exposed to pop-cultural references to Nietzsche. I will in this post argue that this is not a position we have reason to move from. It is natural for a reasonably critical person to turn sceptic at this point, and I intend to dispel such scepticism below. I will do this by first arguing that it is much more intuitive to be a moral realist than any alternative unless we have reason not to, and that the most popular reasons not to be a moral realist are actually quite poor.

‘Alright, so why should I prefer moral realism to constructivism or error-theory?’

I argue that moral realism – not considering objections to it as of yet – is preferable to constructivism and error theory. This positive account can be broken into two propositions:

• It appears that some acts are plainly wrong no matter what anyone thinks about it
• We should believe what appears to be the case unless we have reason to doubt it

Let us start by elaborating on (1). I suggest that when we (or at least most people) reflect on our instinctive attitude to an action such as genocide we find that it is not something like ‘I strongly disapprove of genocide and so do many other people’. Rather it is more definitive, like ‘genocide is morally wrong’. Someone might well reinterpret this instinctive attitude to genocide as actually being mere aversion and closer to the former statement, in light of some of the objections below for example. I do not contest this, but for now I only claim that on the face of it – ‘pre-philosophy’ – actions such as genocide appear to us to be objectively wrong, no matter how we later make sense of those appearances.

Let us progress to (2). This is an intuitive claim which deserves to be pulled out a little bit. Basically I suggest that we should hold as a general principle to believe that things are as they first appear to us, unless we have reasons to doubt those appearances. In some cases, such as if we were in the desert and saw an oasis in the distance, we do have reasons to doubt appearances. However, try to imagine doing the same even if you didn’t have reason to doubt appearances. You would not be able to drink coffee (there’s nothing in the cup), play Civilization (Persia didn’t just conquer my capital) or anything else that makes life bearable. It is reasonable to conclude that we should believe that things are as they appear unless we have reason not to. Finally let us apply the same principle to moral realism. We should doubt that some actions are objectively wrong only once we have reason to doubt that they are.

Now objections have indeed been given, and some provide good reason to question moral realism. My aim for the remainder of this post is negative; to handle some of the most available objections to moral realism, and show that they provide insufficient grounds for rejecting moral realism. I then conclude that we should maintain our belief in there being objective moral facts until better reasons to reject it come our way (that’s Erik’s job).

Let us progress to the negative case. Due to scope I will handle only three objections which I believe constitute the majority of the scepticism to moral realism. If you don’t worry about an objection then you can skip that section.

‘When there is no God to provide morality, where are these facts supposed to come from?’

I would speculate that a worry such as that above underlies a significant portion of popular suspicion of moral realism, and this is why I bring it up. It can be put as an argument using some quintessential existentialist quotes: ‘If there is no God, everything is permitted’ (Ivan Karamazov – Dostoyevsky [arguably]), ‘God is dead’ (Nietzsche), and hence there is no wrong or right. The intuition which drives the argument is that moral facts would have to come from some source – a lawgiver. In the absence of such a source there cannot be objective moral facts.

The argument is actually weak, because Ivan’s cynicism leads to some counterintuitive consequences which can be made clear (as with most things) with the help of Plato, using the main argument in his Ethyphro. Now, if God is the source of morality, then God’s will defines what is right. This means that God could not be evil, because whatever he would will would be the good by definition; that God is good becomes a tautology (a necessary truth). But to some – including myself – this is very counterintuitive. When we say that ‘God is good’ we intend something more than a tautology such as ‘a bachelor is an unmarried man’. Furthermore, consider the case of Abraham and Isaac. Had God allowed Abraham to sacrifice his son this would make us want to question the goodness of God. But we would not be able to, because Abraham’s sacrifice would be good by definition. Unless we want to equate any possible decision of God with the good, we should not accept that God is the source of moral facts.

The alternative is to say that moral facts are independent of God, but that he embodies it perfectly. In this case it is not a tautology to say that God is good, it is an informative statement. But if moral facts are independent of God, then his existence should not obviously have bearing on their existence. In other words, we are about as well off with or without God when it comes to objective moral truths.

‘Fine, but where are all these ‘objective moral facts’? I don’t see them!’

Even if objective moral truths wouldn’t need a lawgiver to exist, that doesn’t mean that they do. In fact, it might strike one as very strange that they would. The argument is roughly that unlike chairs, dogs, trees and other objects, it’s not clear where all these objective moral facts are lying about. My belief that the cat is on the mat is made true by a certain state of the world, namely the cat being on the mat. I also believe that genocide is morally wrong, but what is it that makes this belief true? The fact that would make genocide wrong does not seem to be of the same kind as the cat being on the mat, but rather of a less available non-natural kind which I seem unable to point to. Because moral realism would have to posit such strange entities as non-natural objective moral facts, which we have no reason to believe exist, we should abandon it in favour of the alternatives.

I do not hope to dispel the worry from this objection, but show that it is far from the intimidating aberration it might appear at a distance. I do this by arguing that the same charge can be brought against many things which we do not doubt the objectivity of. The clearest example of such a case is mathematics. Most people believe that mathematics is objective, and subsequently that there are objective mathematical facts which makes ‘1+1=2’ true for example. Sceptics of ‘mathematical realism’ are at least rarer than sceptics of moral realism.  It is far from clear however where these mathematical facts are found, and it is easy to argue that they are as elusive as moral facts.

I suggest that if we feel inclined to reject the existence of objective moral facts because of their metaphysical strangeness, then we should also reject other entities which seem to be equally strange, unless we can show that they are different. But we don’t want to reject the existence of objective mathematical facts, and hence we should not reject the existence of objective moral facts from the same argument.

In other words, there are lots of strange entities which we rarely question the existence of, and which we certainly cannot point to. It is easy to be harsher against objective moral facts because somehow they seem even stranger, and are usually in question more than mathematical facts for example, but I find it is far from clear that they should be.

‘But hang on, the obvious difference between moral and mathematical facts is that people disagree about morality all the time, but not mathematics!’

Someone might reasonably point out that a people’s beliefs of what is wrong and right differ, while few people dispute that the square root of 36 is 6. To give more force to the argument, we can observe that cultures through history have differed significantly in what they took to be moral behaviour. Take as an example the view on suicide in medieval Japan compared to medieval Europe, where it was considered honourable in the former and disgraceful in the latter. The fact that humans have differed so much in their moral beliefs and do not converge on some single point suggests that there is no such point to converge towards, and that there are no underlying objective moral truths which our beliefs correspond to after all.

As above I will not be able to refute this charge decisively, but I believe that I can show that it is far from sufficient to settle the question at hand. Firstly, the charge seems to get its force from the idea that we can all see very clearly what is right and wrong in all questions, and despite this we find that our beliefs differ profoundly. This is not the case. Aristotle remarked that ethics is complicated, and often we are far from certain as to how we should act. It is only when we reflect deeply on difficult questions that we might be able to discern an answer. The fact that clear answers are rare does not imply that are no answers.

Therefore we should not at all be surprised that one (or both) view is erroneous in questions such as suicide, which is a difficult moral question. If however we would find a culture which defied what we take to be the most basic moral facts, such as it being wrong to torture innocent people with equal moral value to ourselves for fun, then moral realism should be abandoned. This is an empirical discussion which I cannot dwell on now, but only say that I have yet to find such a case.

Secondly, we do make errors in mathematics as well, and some take a very long time to figure out. The Busemann-Petty problem provides an example for those who are interested, where a solution which was accepted by the mathematical community was later refuted. Therefore the difference between morality and mathematics appears to be one of degree, in that morality is more vague and difficult, rather than being clear-cut. Hence the argument from disagreement fails to show that mathematics is decisively more objective than morality.

‘Wow, that’s awesome, I’m convinced!’

Good to hear! Now I realize not all readers might be as easily persuaded as my imaginary interlocutor, and I will humbly admit that I have not settled the debate. I do hope however to have shown why the most available objections to moral realism fail to provide a serious challenge to it in their more primitive forms. I leave it to Erik to do better.

by Paul de-Font Reaulx

18 August 2016

Som utlandssvensk försöker jag så gott jag kan följa den politiska debatten i Sverige. Och även om jag sällan förmår sätta mig in i sakfrågornas alla detaljer, så reflekterar jag en hel del över de mer allmänna drag som karaktäriserar svensk inrikespolitik.

Bland annat tittar jag på gårdagens Aktuellt de flesta morgnar. I onsdagens program såg jag följande fråga bli ställd till gränspolisens talesperson gällande verkställandet av utvisningar:

Programledare: “Vissa i samhället tycker ju att ni ska vara mycket hårdare i de här fallen, medan andra tycker att papperslösa och människor utan tillstånd ska behandlas mycket mildare. Var står ni där nånstans?”
Polis: “Ja, vi står där polisen måste stå. Vi är en samhällsinstitution. Vi har samhällets våldsmonopol. Polisen måste och ska alltid upprätthålla den lagstiftning som lagstiftaren instiftar. Polismyndigheten och enskilda poliser kan inte själva välja fritt vad man ska göra och vad man inte ska göra. Grunden i en demokrati är att vi gör det som lagstiftaren beslutar.”
Programledare: “Men det innebär ju att ni kan komma att skicka tillbaka en sådan som Alex som vi såg här.”

Man bör tolka generöst, men det är svårt att förstå frågan som annat än gällande ifall polisen tänker se till att lagen expedieras eller inte. Möjligtvis kan det tolkas som en fråga om resursfördelning eller verkställandemetod. Men det är inte en trolig tolkning. Dels för att formuleringen “Var står ni?” inte förefaller syfta på sådana överväganden. Det hade också funnits väldigt mycket naturligare, rakare och tydliga sätt att fråga om polisens resurser, och dessutom behandlade programledarens direkt föregående fråga ämnet. Och slutligen för att det (utmärkta) svar som ges godtas som svar på frågan (vilket visas i och med programledarens följdfråga). I slutsats förefaller det därmed som om SVT, som vore det helt naturligt, frågar polisen om de har tänkt verkställa lagen eller om de, i ljuset av lagens konsekvenser, “står” någon annanstans.

Frågan vävs in så naturlig av programledaren att det är lätt att förbise hur extrem frågeställningen är. I vilket annat land hade etablerad media med full seriositet och trovärdighet kunnat ställa en sådan fråga? Möjligen i en instabil stat med bräckliga institutioner där polisens lojalitet mot den rådande regimen var oklar och man genuint ville veta var de stod. Vem vet, kanske någon annanstans också. Det är inte den möjliga särskildheten som i sig är illavarslande, utan snarare vad det säger om den politiska-kulturella bakgrund varemot Sveriges politiska samtal sker.

Det är i sammanhanget svårt att hindra tankarna att vandra till rikspolischefens politiska utspel. Med all rätt blev det omskrivet att chefen över myndigheten med samhällets våldsmonopol tog partipolitisk ställning. Givetvis har myndighetschefer åsikter (som Eliasson puerilt påpekade), men han kan inte ha det inom ramen för ämbetet, såsom när han intervjuas i egenskap av rikspolischef. Dessutom finns det starka skäl att anse att vissa befattningshavare, till exempel valförrättare och rikspolischefer, och  bör vara diskreta med sin politiska hemvist även utanför tjänstens snävare ramar. Klart är att SVT:s frågeställning och rikspolischefens ställningstagande signalerar samma fullständiga aningslöshet om några av demokratins och rättsstatens grundpelare: det juridiska och polisiära systemens självständighet, den opolitiska tjänstemannakåren, de institutionella mekanismer som kanaliserar folkvilja i lag via valda representanter. Vilka mer generella slutsatser om Sveriges politiska kultur kan extraheras från dessa, och andra liknande, exempel?

Det är såklart vanskligt att hävda att enskilda händelser är exempel på mer övergripande kulturella mönster. Så är alltid fallet när man vill konkretisera teorier vars påståenden tar sig väldigt övergripande eller omfattande former. Till exempel är det närmast parodiskt att förklara en italienares hetsiga kroppsspråk under straffläggningen med att hans kulturella bakgrund påtvingade honom dessa för hans hemland stereotypiska gester. Men det innebär ju såklart inte att allmänna teorier om kulturella skillnader i kroppsspråk kan ha förklaringsvärde. Det är i detta ljus man bör se nedanstående funderingar.

Vad föreslår jag således att dessa värderingsyttringar, implicita eller explicita, är tecken på? Ett grundligt svar kan inte ges i dessa informella reflektioner. Men en bra kulturanalytisk utgångspunkt är Sveriges plats i World Values Survey (WVS), som jag allt oftare sett referenser till i svensk press. (Vilket i sig möjligen är ett positivt tecken på ökande självinsikt bland opinionsbildare.) Grundad av statsvetaren Ronald Inglehart, har denna forskningsgrupp sedan 1981 medelst frågeformulär sammanställt rapporter om värderingar i olika länder. Dessa har sedan analyserats för att placera vart land längs med två dimensioner. Sverige återfinns i den yttersta övre högerkanten. Våra värden är unikt sekulära och rationella, snarare än traditionella och religionsbundna. Och mer än någon annan värderar vi självförverkligande, icke-materiella fri- och rättigheter, möjligheter till individuella uttryck, snarare än “överlevnadsvärden” som materiell och fysisk trygghet och säkerhet, stabilitet, ordning.

Kanske är det någonstans här, med avstamp i WVS:s överlevnad-självuttrycks-axel, man kan inleda en analys som införlivar mina exempel i en mer generell beskrivning. Bröd och säkerhet oroar man sig för där det kan komma att saknas en. Sverige har varit lyckligt lottat som klarat att ställa dess medborgares basala trygghet och materiella levnadsstandard bortom rimligt tvivel, och därmed möjliggjort för dem hänge sig åt mer abstrakta, själsliga och mjuka värden. Men de långtgående effekterna på institutionell robusthet och samhällelig motståndskraft – precis vad en tyckande poliskår underminerar – återstår att se.

Jag fruktar att en kulturs ensidiga fokuserande på self-expression values kan undergräva både 1) medvetenheten om välståndets och trygghetens förgänglighet, och därmed fostra kortsiktighet och en naiv inställning till risker, och 2) den känsla av plikt till, och samhörighet med, det gemensamma samhällsprojektet som är nödvändiga i en stabil och livskraftig demokrati. En läsvärd ledare i GP ställde nyligen frågan om “eliten”, det vill säga den övre medelklass där self-expression values är som starkast, checkat ut och övergett samhällsbygget. “Vad händer med ett samhälle där människor slutar att bry sig om det gemensamma?”, undrade man.

Dessa frågor öppnar för diskussioner av global karaktär jag inte syftar till att beröra här. Det räcker gott att ställa frågan med Sverige i åtanke. Vi hyllar, oförbehållsamt, dagligen de värden som gett oss vår utstickande position i WVS:s undersökningar. De är viktiga för oss, både i sig själva och som instrument för allmän utveckling. Men det går att förirra sig och förhäva sig också på detta sätt. Förändringarna i svensk debatt de senaste två åren pekar på ett något yrvaket uppvaknande till detta faktum, i kölvattnet till flyktingkris, anarkiska tendenser i förorter, och ett förändrat militärt säkerhetsläge. Har vi påbörjat en mer djuplodande kulturell självkritik? Det vore inte helt ovälkommet.

The most wonderful TV series ever produced (possibly with the exception of the series with candid behind-the-scenes interviews with Swedish PM Göran Persson during his time in office, released after he had resigned) is probably BBC’s The Great Philosophers, where Bryan Magee interviews famous philosophers on central topics in the subject. I recently watched the interview with Herbert Marcuse, one of the founders of the Frankfurt School of critical theory which was to form the intellectual foundation of much of modern leftist thought. Today, I just wanted to share a wonderful quote from the heart of this tradition on the anti-intellectualism of parts of the New Left:

Magee: “One of the conspicuous features of the New Left that you have helped to father, is its anti-intellectualism. From the way you have lived your life, one wouldn’t expect you actually to approve of that.”

Marcuse: “On the contrary, I combatted this anti-intellectualism from the beginning. The reasons for this anti-intellectualism are in my view the isolation of the student movement from the working class and the apparent impossibility of any spectacular political action. This led gradually to some kind of, well, let me say inferiority complex. Some kind of self-inflicted masochism, which found expression among other things, in this contempt for intellectuals because they are only intellectuals and don’t achieve anything in reality.”

It may be apparent since earlier that I have a weakness for genealogical examinations of the pitifully disfigured political movement that today is the “radical” left. I would be the first to admit that this is often, in weaker moments, mixed with un unhealthy level of shadenfreude. But there are also better reasons to be interested in the mishmash of ideas bundled in much (but not all) of today’s radical politics, the New Left in its 21st century form.

Consider just for a moment the sublime irony of the tolerance with which ideas are mixed in the world of Buzzfeedian social commentary: The reification of the social world, where various kinds of “oppression” of rigidly defined groups is declared reality and fact unopen to interpretation, supposedly backed up by Foucauldian “analyses”. The embrace of some kind of particularistic ethics of identity and difference, combined with (dutifully tweeted) abhorrence at the lack of Benthamite utilitarianism in their Western Facebook friends as these are revealed to experience greater emotional distress over terrorist attacks in neighbouring countries than in far-away lands. The supreme value perceived in proud cultural and ethnic expression and identification amongst minorities, hand in hand with a complete obliviousness to why working class Europeans dare disagree with the “deconstruction” and ridicule of their most vividly felt beliefs, norms and social categories. Truly, to return to Marcuse, a not-so -splendid radical isolationism, not only from the working class, but from general coherence.

This may all seem a gainless rant, and though there may be an element of that, a deeper worry should beset us. For who will fill the democratic void which the left is currently so utterly unable to fill?

Here is a quotation from Chapter 1 of Charles Taylor’s seminal work Hegel (1975):

In other terms [Herder and other German romantics argued], words do not just refer, they are also precipitates of an activity in which the human form of consciousness comes to be. So they not only describe a world, they also express a mode of consciousness, in the double sense outlined above, that is, they realize it, and they make determinate the mode it is.
This is one of Herder’s great seminal ideas. If man is a being who is to be understood under the category of expression, if what is characteristic of him is a certain form of consciousness, Besonnenheit, and if this is only realized in speech, then thought, reflection, the distinctively human activity is not something which can be carried on in a disembodied element. It can only exist in a medium. Language is essential to thought. And if thought or the characteristically human activity can only be in the medium of language, then the different natural languages express each the uniquely characteristic way in which a people realizes the human essence. A people’s language is the privileged mirror or expression of its humanity. The study of language is the central and indispensable road to the understanding of human variety.

I subscribe to the view that much of the “politics of identity” in the late 20th and 21st century, in its worst as well as its more useful forms, stems from the thinking of the counter-Enlightenment German romantics (Herder, Hegel, Schiller, etc.) in the 18th and 19th century. This is in no way an original point, of course. It is not surprising that it is made regularly by people like myself who don’t, in general, think that the politics of identity, in the modern form it has taken as partially constitutive of the “New Left”, offers a positive contribution to our politics. The point about the German traditionalist roots of today’s radicals is ironic in a rhetorically effective way.

Yet criticising the excesses of identity politics is comparatively easy, and in some senses less meaningful, than trying to take seriously the increasingly relevant challenge posed to modernity by the romantic counter-movement and its successors. Personally, over the last years my views have been shaped to a large extent by the pressure to accommodate three distinct stances within a single, coherent, political and ethical outlook. These stances or positions can roughly be summarised as follows: 1) My rejection of the bulk of the arguments of the identity-political left; 2) My slow realisation of the powerful critique of certain aspects of, roughly, liberal Enlightenment modernity (especially the political and ethical modes it realises); 3) My original adherence to much of the traditional defences of Western liberalism, and more specifically the principles and institutions by which it suggests we regulate our societies.

There is considerable tension between these three positions, all of which I have felt myself increasingly keen to hold. A less schematic and more psychological description of what I have been grappling with, would be as follows. Coming to university I encountered the arguments of the identity political student movement. I think, but won’t repeat the tedious argument here, that this is largely a movement characterised by a deplorable rejection of reason for emotion in political argument, and which focuses on fringe cultural and linguistic issues over issues of inequality and class in the globalised economy, issues in need of thoughtful progressive voices. I instinctively felt, and got increasingly convinced, that the arguments produced embodied the death throes of an intellectually exhausted European/North American left. However, engaging with the various strains of the radical student movement, and contemplating the rejection of many liberal/Enlightenment ideals their views typically entailed (though I don’t know how aware of this fact many on the student left were), made me more acutely aware of how a different, much more potent critique of modern liberalism lurked in the background. To simplify and summarise, I think the conclusions offered by the New Left were either outrageous or incoherent. However, the ideas underlying them, did indeed challenge many of the liberal dogmas I had perhaps rather thoughtlessly adhered to before.

These doubts, or realisations about the weaker pillars of of the edifice of liberal modernity, concerned many things. Let me just give one obvious example. Behind many of the student left’s arguments were important notions of the centrality of cultural affinity to ethical life and the necessity of community and shared moral frameworks. For the student and much of the new left, these potentially deep points of criticism of culturally pluralist, purportedly value-neutral liberal states, unfortunately resulted mainly in ideas ranging from the farcical (“cultural appropriation”) to the deeply uncomfortable (the keenness to silence dissenting views). Yet here were points to be taken seriously. It is not enough to reject a poor argument, if you can see that the resources on which the argument draws could be put to much more effective use against your own position. Political expediency aside, if you want to think honestly about difficult political and ethical questions, then you must try to be your own world view’s most persistent critic.

This is, then, where I find myself grappling at present. My concerns are the greater because of certain metaethical views I have come to hold about the nature of normative truth, which are connected to, but developed in a slightly different literature from, what I have described above. How do we sustain the achievements of liberal institutions and governance, whilst taking seriously the counter-Enlightenment arguments about community, identity, and their constitutive role in our ethical and political consciousness? Modern Western societies are culturally pluralist. Their institutions tend to strive for procedural justice, value-neutrality, for the lowest common ethical denominator across a diverse demos. “Thin” ethical concepts guide its institutions, to use Bernard Williams term. How do we square this, to return to the quotation I started with, with arguments like the one that “different natural languages [which are determined by and interlinked with broader culture] express each the uniquely characteristic way in which a people realizes the human essence”? That, I think, is the question.

I am lucky to have a girlfriend who understands my academic passions. I recently received a cherished gift from her, a beautiful little edition of Rene Descartes’ brief but worthwhile Discourse on the Method (various title translations; 1637). It is an autobiographical and philosophical work, in which Descartes tracks his record in developing and living according to a certain “method for the well guiding of reason” he has devised. The four maxims which constitutes this method are quite interesting, so let me quote them almost in full:

1. “The first was, never to receive any thing for true, but what I evidently knew to be so”
2. “The second, to divide every one of these difficulties, which I was to examine into as many parcels as could be, and, as was requisite the better to resolve them”
3. “The third, to lead my thoughts in order, beginning by the simple objects, and the easiest to be known; to rise little by little, as by steps, even to the knowledge of te most mised, and even supposing and order among those which naturally do not precede one the other”
4. “And the last, to make everywhere such exact calculations, and such general reviews, that I might be confident to have omitted nothing”

A set of criteria for the method of gaining knowledge, he says, inspired by the step-by-step deductions of the geometricians and mathematicians. These maxims indicate what I think is interesting, that the common portrayal as Descartes as a skeptic and pessimist about knowledge is inaccurate and confused. Descartes thinks, quite simply, that there is quite a lot of things that human beings have the ability to gain firm knowledge about, although he is very aware of the risks of personal and cultural bias and prejudice we always run in doing so. In light of this, I want to elaborate and put into context Descartes’ thought, but I must apologise in advance to those who are experts on Descartes specifically, as opposed to philosophically interested generally – I am no expert on Descartes. My summaries and interpretations will be crude. (I also don’t aim to criticise Descartes’ views, as I am afraid I don’t have time to write that much.) However, what is partly crude need not be fully useless, if it can offer introduction or useful overview.

To remind, Descartes is most famous for his “method of doubt”, expounded most elaborately in his Meditations on First Philosophy, whereby he starts by clearing away all those bits of knowledge that he can conceivably doubt, to see what remains. Sensory impressions, for example, must initially go, since they can be doubted on the basis that we can believe that we have certain sensory experiences when we are dreaming or delirious. What is left, he asks, if I remove from the tables of my mind all that I can conceivably doubt. Famously, he argues that the one thing about the world that he cannot doubt is that he himself exists, since in doubting, he is thinking, and thus, there is something that thinks (cogito, ergo sum).

However, because the summary of Descartes often stops at this point, he has become something (I believe) of the embodiment of the caricature philosopher – the lofty, detached skeptic, questioning how you know you are sitting in a chair and that you are eating müesli, as everyone else gets on with the business of real life. Now, as an aside, even if this were a true characterisation of Descartes’ views, the disregard for it would be up for grabs. Skepticism about your eating müesli might be a defensible epistemological position in some sense, and nothing immediately follows about whether you should disheartedly drop your spoon or defiantly keep crunching your müesli in the face of its ontological dubiousness.

But to return to Descartes, the crucial distinction is that between doubt as philosophical method and doubt as philosophical position. The latter, only, is skepticism. Descartes tries to demolish the apparent foundations of knowledge through the method of doubt, only in the hope to erect a more stable epistemological abode on top of them. Put in its context his attempt is put in a very different light from that of the Philosophy 101 caricature. Descartes is writing in the midst of the intellectual upheaval of the Enlightenment and the ideological debates between established Church and Science. He is looking for a foundation for science, rather than a bizarre skeptical argument for doubting the material world of chairs and tables around us.

His argument, shorltly, is something like what follows. He can perceive, in his famous phrase, “clearly and distinctly”, that it could not be the case that he did not exist yet was thinking. Since he is thinking (specifically, doubting), then in exactly the same way as he can infer that it is true that 2+2=4 from the inconceivability of its not being so, he can infer that he actually does exist from the fact that he is thinking (doubting).

Introspecting into the self the existence of which he has thus established on firm grounds, he discovers that he has in himself certain ideas. These ideas include mountains, animals, etc. But they also include a subset of other notions of perfection, of which the key one is the composite idea of a being more perfect than himself in every conceivable way. He can see, he says in the Discourse on Method, that he is not perfect, since he has in him “the idea of a being more perfect than mine”. This idea, which it is “manifestly impossible” to regard “as nothing”, cannot come from something less perfect than him (perfect, I understand it, in terms of reason). Having thus argued that he exists, has within him the idea of a more perfect being, and that this idea is clearly not nothing, he goes in for the great conclusion:

And because there is no less repugnancy that the more perfect should succeeed from and depend upon the less perfect, than for something to proceed from nothing, I could no more hold it from myself: So as it followed , that it must have been put into me by a nature which was truly more perfect than I, and even which had in it all the perfections whereof I could have an idea; to wit, (to explain myself in one word) God.

Descartes is often said to make use of the ontological argument for God’s existence (originally presented, I believe, by St. Anselm). I found it interesting that actually reading Descartes’ version, it does not really follow the standard summary of the ontological argument, which is: “We can imagine a perfect being. A perfect being would not be perfect if it lacked existence. Hence, a perfect being exists (and we call this being ‘God’).” (A wonderfully cunning argument. I believe that the standard view among philosophers is that it was Kant who finally demolished it by showing that existence is not a predicate in the standard way.) Now, Descartes argument says, instead, that he has the idea of perfection within him, and it could only have originated from something which is perfect. The argument here hinges on the premise that the idea of something perfect necessarily originates from a something perfect in the relevant way, or invertly, that the idea of something perfect cannot originate from something which is not perfect in that way . Hence, since the idea of perfection exists in us, the perfect being from which it must originate, exists (or theoretically, has existed). Importantly, the conclusion that God exists and has the qualitites of perfection is one which Descartes sees on par with mathematical proofs. It is one which no rational being who properly understands the argument can, in good faith, doubt. Thus he says:

As for example, I well perceive, that supposing a triangle, three angles necessarily must be equal to two right ones: but yet nevertheless I saw nothing which assured me that there was a triangle in the world. Whereas returning to examine the idea which I had of a perfect being, I found its existence comprised in it, in the same manner as it was comprised in that of a triangle, where the three angles are equal to two right ones; or in that of a sphere, where all the parts are equally distant from the centre. Or even yet more evidently, and that by consequence, it is at least as certain that God, who is that perfect being, is, or exists, as any demonstration in geometry can be.

Let us get back to the thread of the main story. How does this help Descartes in restoring proper foundations for knowledge, and in particular, scientific knowledge? Well, he goes on to leverage the conclusion that God exists to put back on the table of knowledge all those articles which his method of doubt has temporarily, as part of the skeptical exercise, displaced. If God is perfect in every way imaginable, he is also perfectly good, and so would not deceive the senses so, that the world around us is all the results of the machinations of an evil demon, that what we take to be real is not in any way so. A perfectly good God would not deceive us. Hence, we have reason to trust what careful examination and experimentation can indicate to us about the physical world.

It is indeed amazing how the commonly derided skeptic dreamer Descartes can thus very practically argue:

For they [the notions touching natural philosophy] made it appear to me, that it was possible to attain points of knowledge, which may be very profitable for this life: and that instead of this speculative philosophy which is taught in the Schools, we might find out a practical one /…/ as we know the several trades of our handicrafts, we might in the same manner employ them to all uses to which they are fit, and so become masters and possessors of nature.

For the sake of, he continues, convenience and good health – a most practical view indeed, or at least in comparison with the caricature of Descartes the skeptic. He concludes that he will spend his time studying medicine, as it is the most important science. “I think, therefore, we have solid epistemological foundations for the kind of scientific knowledge which we should use to bring convenience and good health to the public.” Perhaps less catchy, but, if I am not mistaken, a tad more complete a summary.

I always found the idea of realism in political theory somewhat confusing. I am not here talking of realism in the International Relations sense, i.e., as a theoretical outlook stressing the strong systemic or human forces which make international (and sometimes also domestic) politics perpetually brutish and nasty. Likewise, I am not talking of ethical realism, the view that moral propositions have truth values and that some are true, rather than merely hidden expressions of emotions, commands, wishes or other prescriptive judgements. I am instead talking of realism specifically applied to political theory (or philosophy, I make no distinction here). In this text, I first spell out the initial dilemma to which the notion led me. This dilemma suggests realism in political theory is either trivial or in contradiction with the normative aims of the field. I then suggest three senses of realist political theory which avoids both horns of the dilemma, namely: realism as emphasis on institutions rather than abstract theory; realism as a criticism of “utopian method” in political theory; and realism as the affirmation of certain pessimistic empirical assumptions. I of course make no claim to originality here, but hopefully, it can help to clarify certain points about the political realisms available to us.

I won’t try to define political theory here, because any definition might well pre-empt or prejudice a discussion about how it can or could be realist. But let us just identify political theory roughly as the thinking about the normatively best forms of political society and institutions, the nature of and relation between different political values, and the relationship between morality and politics. This suggests that something like John Rawls’ project to construct a just basic structure for a pluralist society, in light of certain conceptions of rationality, dignity, autonomy, and fairness, is a paradigm example of political theory.

What is it, then, that I have found somewhat peculiar about the idea of realist political theory? Let us first look at what the word ‘realist’ suggests. In International Relations, where the term is standardly used, the central point conveyed by a theory describing itself as realist is a certain tough-minded acceptance of the nasty nature of international politics. Realist theory, its proponents say, offers theory grounded in the real facts of the real world, however discomforting these may be. Its polar opposite, supposedly, is naive theorising which fails to account for the realities such as selfishness, fear and cruelty. Its essence can thus be encapsulated in the idea that theory must hard-headedly take into account certain unchangeable realities, in particularly the messy, troubling, complicated realities of human society. This is broad and general, but I believe it captures the way realism has been used in discussion about domestic as well as international politics, though for various reasons it holds a more clearly defined place within the discourse of the latter. This gives us some hints for where to start when we think about realism in political theory.

If, as seems reasonable, we begin thinking of realism as taking into account brute realities of the world, the idea of realist political theory indeed starts to look a little bit peculiar. The difficulty can be put in terms of dilemma, a dilemma between two ways of understanding realist political theory. It is a potential dilemma because both alternatives which I shall describe seem to discredit realist political theory, in different ways. Let me being by summarising the horns of the dilemma. First: If realist political theory merely means political theory which takes the world into account, which political theoretician would not accept that his theory is realist? Who would admit that his theory is completely and utterly detached from the real world? Even the most utopian of thinkers, a Plato or a Kant, will have to say that even if the societies they describe could not plausibly come about, their theorising still “takes the world into account” in important ways. That is, their theories present ideals towards which real humans in the real world better start working, or models from which real, actual people can learn, or conceptual constructions from which we can see what is good and what is bad in the real, dirty world around us. Even if we write about the loftiest, most unreachable of ideals – so long as we admit those ideals are ideals for human beings, and might have looked different had human beings been relevantly different, we will hold that our theory takes realities into account appropriately. Whether a theorist presents down-to-earth concrete changes to voting laws, or elaborates a highly abstract theory of ideal communication, his theory is thought to apply to the real world in some relevant sense. In other words, since no political theorist will admit that his theory does not take the world into account in the appropriate way, how is realist political theory supposed to be different from political theory generally? This is the first horn of the dilemma: the seeming triviality of realism in political theory.

In the above weak sense, ‘realist political theory’ comes to mean simply ‘political theory’ – realist adds nothing to the notion of connectedness to the world inherent in ‘political’. It is now time to see what happens if we exchange this conception of realism (which seemed to lead us to triviality) for a more substantive realism. To avoid triviality, we may try to substantiate the notion of realism to help differentiate realist political theory from political theory simpliciter. If we can specify realist demands on political theory which are stronger than those springing already from ‘political’ per se, we may be able to show that realist political theory is indeed a meaningfully distinct approach to political theorising. Such specification of more strenuous realist demands would, I think, have to take the form of more extensive limits on the “loftiness” of the theory. It may be partly helpful to envision a spectrum, a line. On the lofty, idealist end we may be said to find Plato’s Republic, and slightly further on, the more realist Laws. In the Republic, the major thrust of the project is doubtlessly idealist, in the classical sense. An ideal state is mapped out, the inhabitants and structure of which would be radically different from exiting society (today as well as in Ancient Greece). In the Laws the political change envisioned is not so radical, and the possibilities for a transformation of seemingly intractable human character traits not quite so hopefully expansive. Imagine, then, that pushing the realist criterion further would mean moving from the lofty heights of the Republic, through the Laws, to end up with the realism of the institutional engineer who devotes his energy to arguing the virtues of the Saint-Laguë over the D’Hondt formula for local by-elections. On this simplified image, realist political theory may be characterised as theorising which demands we inhabit a position appropriately distant from the most idealist Platonic loftiness.

However, strengthening ‘realist’ thus, we run up to the second horn of the dilemma, namely, that when pushed too far, realism in political theory seem to deny the normative nature of political theory. The aims of political theory are not merely empirical, but normative and transformative, and if this is so, then why should one accept any more substantive realist demand than the trivial realism-as-relevance we discussed above? If the charge to a theory is that it is not realist enough, the reply could simply be that it deals with what ought to be, rather than with what is (or could easily come about). One may indeed ask why political theory should be more realist than would be entailed by being relevant, by being political. And if we accept that political theory always ought to try to be relevant, what would actually distinguish specifically realist political theory?

The above dilemma encapsulates the confusion I originally felt when encountered the concept of realist political theory. My position was indeed that “Of course it should be ‘realist’ as in ‘relevant’, and of course it should not be ‘realist’ as in ‘limited in its normative scope’. So what does it mean to say that we should try to make political theory more realist?” Seeming dilemmas invite attempts at clarification. In light of the above I will try to suggest how I think we can helpfully understand realist political theory. I say ‘can understand’, because people may of course use the term as they wish. But I think that my suggested understanding has advantages: it specifies intelligible positions and ties them to the historical meaning of the concept of realism. The first point will be one about political theory’s emphasis. The second will be about its method. The third will be one about the empirical assumptions of normative political theories.

My discussion is predicated on the following reasoning: It does not make sense to simply adopt realism as a condition on political theorising which requires it to take reality into account. In isolation, without further context, this understanding of realism is either trivial or unacceptably limiting. But the talk of realism in political theory has been brought forward in response to the way in which political theory has been conducted, so we have reason to at least investigate what impulse is behind it, and if in what sense a dose of realism can improve political theory as practised in the Western philosophical tradition.

The first sense in which I will suggest a political theory can be realist has to do with its methodology and area of focus, or emphasis, rather than the substantive issues involved in specific political theories and problems. In this sense, being a realist political theorist means taking critical stance towards what we may call the utopian tradition in political theory, towards the pre-eminence of ideal over non-ideal theory. It is the kind of criticism launched by Jeremy Waldron when he says that political theorists have had too little to say about political institutions compared to abstract ideals and ideas. The charge is that political theorists talk about the wrong things, rather than necessarily talk wrongly about things. This is not necessarily to say that abstract ideals and ideas have no place, or even a central place, in political theorising. But it is a criticism of just how dominant such abstract approaches or theories have been in the normative discourse about politics. We can understand this as a criticism of emphasis: Political theorists have been too quiet about the worldly applicable, the imperfect but useful, the normativity of engaging with politics as the art of the possible. Whether one agrees with this or not, it is a defensible stance which can meaningfully be distinguished as realist.

The second meaningful sense ‘realist political theory’ can take has to do with method. Here, the criticism is not that political theory has focused disproportionately on the abstract as opposed to practical institutional design and other similarly concrete issues. Rather, the criticism is of the kind of political theorising which proceeds through imagining ideal politics and from such an ideal deduce what ought to be done in the realist’s here and now. It is a moot point here whether many theorists actually get around to working out the real world implications of their idealist theories – it seems to me they do not. But the kind of realism I am conceptualising here is one which criticises this very method, be it actually applied in its entirety or not. We can see this realism at work, I think, in criticisms of Rawls’ veil of ignorance or Habermas’ ideal speech situation. Instead of preceding from a small set of assumptions, through an idealised political situation, towards, possibly, practical advice in a world beset by difficulties not brought in at any previous step in the theorising, one can imagine beginning from assumptions of disorder, complexity, pluralism, etc., and work out theory from this starting point. I guess that, arguably, this is what Rawls tries to do, especially in his later work. The specification of justice as fairness as a political, not metaphysical, idea is supposed to offer a theory which takes as starting point the messy pluralism in modern societies when it comes to theories of the good. It also seems to be what Bernard Williams’ theory tries to do. Williams highlights (“Realism and Moralism in Political Theory” in In the Beginning Was the Deed) that the first question of politics is the Hobbesian question of order:

‘I identify the “first political question in Hobbesian terms as the securing of order, protection, safety, trust, and the conditions of cooperation. It is “first” because solving it is the condition of solving, indeed posing, any others.’

A lot of deep questions are raised by this realist line of criticism: Is there right one method in political theory? Are methods mutually exclusive? In the end, this leads us to ask what we are actually trying to do when we do political theory, a question which is terribly difficult.

Let me know briefly discuss the third intelligible kind of realist political theory. In essence, this realism is brought out by certain key points of empirical disagreement among theorists. The paradigm example of this kind of realism is the standard line against radical, utopian political theories. Such theories, it is charged, rest on empirical assumptions that do not bear the burden the theories put on them. They make unwarranted assumptions about the forms human relationships can take, the sophistication their biology can even under ideal circumstances allow, etc. The historian Richard Pipes’ criticism of communism is a typical example. His charge has two main parts: First, communist utopianism assumes an alterability of human psychological characteristics which is not possible, at least not in any larger community for any long period of time. Second, and related, communist political theorists have held that past societies have lived harmoniously under forms similar to those envisioned by modern communist theory (Richard Pipes, Communism – A History, 1994), in particular, without any recognition of private property. It need not concern us here what the merits of these criticisms are and to whom they may apply. The point is simply that they are a good example of one particular kind of realism in political theory.

It is interesting to note how different realism in this sense is to the senses of realism discussed above, where realism was aimed at the methods or focus of political theorists. Here, the realism is much more like the realism of International Relations. It is a substantive view, labelled realist, but which will only be realist, in this sense, to the extent that we agree with the substantive empirical assertions contained in it. If we compare a caricature modern realist and a caricature modern liberal International Relations theorist, the difference is not that they have different relationships to reality, in the way that ideal and non-ideal political theorists discussed above can be said to have. Rather, it is merely the case that one side of the debate calls its empirical assumptions ‘realist’. Of course, the liberal, who has stronger beliefs in institutions and possibilities of cooperation than the realist, believes that his empirical assumptions are more realistic than the realists. The realist cannot to be said to be more intimately in touch with reality, in the sense of presently existing conditions, unless we want to start making his case. The same is true of realist political theorists who charge that some brand of more radical political theory is unrealistic in the sense that its empirical assumptions about which events are likely to occur or do occur presently or under some specified future conditions. Realist political theory in this final sense, thus, is not bound logically to any particular substantive theoretical content. However, in light of the connotations and history of realism within the political sphere (broadly conceived), it can most fairly, I think, be applied to theories stressing the intransigence of certain, in particular negative, traits about the structures or participants of human politics.

In sum, then, I started by setting up a dilemma which easily emerges (and which certainly emerged for me) as I first started to consider what realist political theory might be. I then moved on to offer three distinct senses – to do with focus, method, and empirics – in which distinctly realist political theory is neither trivial nor in tension with the normative aims of political theory. Hopefully I can move on, in another blog post, to talk of the merits of each kind of realism. For I believe, indeed, that there are some very serious arguments for all three.

I’ve just finished reading a book that has been with me for more than a year now: Alasdair MacIntyre’s After Virtue. I first started reading it as I was studying ethics at university. I then read the first chapters but, in the hectic life of one essay following on the heel of another, never got further. After graduating I picked it up at Blackwell’s, and started to read what proved to be a complex, challenging book. The first edition having been published in 1981, it soon became an iconoclastic challenger of modern moral philosophy. I try to discuss  my thoughts on the book below, but partly, I realise, in quite a technical manner not very inviting, perhaps, to those without background in the academic study of ethics. But who knows, maybe there are some interesting bits regardless. Either way, I can start by pointing you to the lecture by MacIntyre available on YouTube on the subject “On Having Survived Academic Moral Philosophy” (Part 1). In this first of what I hope will be two texts, I summarise MacIntyre’s argument and try to make clear his negative thesis. In a later text, I want to talk about his positive, Aristotelian thesis. But I have not yet managed to understand that argument well enough to discuss it publicly…

Interdisciplinary and Demanding

Let me begin from a genre angle. MacIntyre’s book is challenging partly because it encompasses a variety of what we normally think of as distinct disciplines: moral and political philosophy/theory, the philosophy of history and social science, the philosophy of action, history, literature, social theory, organisation theory. These are all bound up in what is basically a twofold thesis: a diagnosis of a crisis of modern moral and political life, one the one hand, and a positive argument about an Aristotelian approach to remedying this crisis, on the other. The moral philosopher William Frankena says in a critique quoted by MacIntyre in his post-script that “What bothers me is not distinguising [history from philosophy]”, illustrating the scepticism a reader schooled in analytical moral philosophy may feel after reading MacIntyre’s book. The presumed impossibility of “deriving an ‘is’ from an ‘ought'” is likely to entail at least initial scepticism about MacIntyre’s philsophical account which rests partly on descriptive, historical argument. Yet the apotheosis of the Humean is/ought dictum and the harmful arbitrary distinctions between disciplines are two of the many things MacIntyre wishes to challenge and overturn. And so, given that ambition, one must engage with the actual substance of MacIntyre’s argument and not attempt to win by default through appeal to preconceived notions of what moral philsoophy is about or how it is to be done. That is, as it were, the issue at hand.

Aristotelianism and the Main Argument

Now, engaging with MacIntyre’s argument is far from a straightforward thing to do. His drawing on everything from Marxist social theorists, to literary interpretations of Jane Austen, to Sartre’s theory of action, is very demanding of the reader. Nevertheless, the main thrusts of his negative and positive arguments are relatively clear. First, he argues that the present state of moral discourse in the Western world (those parts of the world where the Judeo-Christian and Graeco-Roman heritage forms the bulk of the intellectual tradition) is in incoherent, incongruous ruins. Moral debate in our time is characterised by in principle insoluble clashes between arguments; insoluble because the different arguments rely on incommensurable premises. Our moral vocabulary is broken, because it consists of pick’n’mix concepts the meaning-giving social context of which is long gone. This paved the way for emotivism in ethics, and for general relativism and moral and political intellectual stagnation. But there is a way out of this: We must rediscover and reapply a certain kind of Aristotelian virtue ethics which was lost long ago. In doing so, we can rediscover morality in a form not thus debased. This will do as a summary. Below I look at the arguments in more detail.

A current crisis – the negative argument

We must prohibit the use of certain substances to minimise immense suffering resulting from them, says the utilitarian. We must protect the inalienable right of every individual to do what they wish with their body, says the rights theorist. Though it is often said we must “weigh” such arguments against each other, MacIntyre convincingly argues that there is not rational way to do so, because the basic premises remain completely incommensurable. There is no way to arbitrate between them. The reason for this, centrally, is that our moral language, in which  we conduct our debates, is eclectically made up of remnants from the past and poor inventions of modernity. We use ideas of virtues bereft of, e.g., the Ancient Greek or medieval social context which made them meaningful (such as patriotism, honour, courage). We match such concepts against Enlightenment concepts like Millian utility and Lockean rights. We are, in effect, using a moral language which is void of the social context in which they acquired their meaning and the criteria by which they were employed in argument. Or alternatively, we are using a language which was created after the breakdown of the pre-Englightenment moral order crumbled. Concepts such as utility and rights, thus, all indeed fall victim to the is-ought argument, MacIntyre says, because they lack the social context which made ancient moral discourse meaningful (more on this below). They are constructions without the immersion in social practices which makes normativity intelligble. In other words: We, late Western modernity, have lost the way.

It is important that MacIntyre’s is not a general relativist argument, in the sense that emotivist theories of ethics are. Emotivism holds that all normative sentences are just expressions of emotions of approval or disapproval. This is a tradition that stems back from Hume (though what Hume’s exact view was is controversial), and was picked up properly in the twentieth century as a response to the British intuitionists (Moore, Pritchard) by people like A.J. Ayer. Emotivists hold that moral language necessarily is void of meaning in the way MacIntyre argues that our moral language is. Moral debates are in principle irresolvable because moral statements are simply expressions of emotions. MacIntyre’s thesis is another: Moral disputes are irresolvable in our culture because of certain historical, linguistic and philosophical features of that culture. In a nutshell, morality is broken, not by necessity, but by contingency. This broken culture – that of modern individualism – culminated in (and included) Nietzsche’s critique of its morality. But as penetrating as Nietzsche’s attack was, he failed to provide a positive alternative moral vision, because he remained fundamentally within the tradition he attacked, equally hampered by its shortcomings. However, Nietzsche’s critique did not attempt to attack the long since discarded moral theory of Aristotle. If Aristotle can be vindicated, MacIntyre thus reasons, Nietzsche will fail to get the last word, and there is a way out of our predicament. And this is where MacIntyre turns to his positive argument: For it turns out Aristotle can be vindicated.