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Bertrand Russell, democracy, George Boole, Helen De Cruz, Judith Simmer-Brown, Nathan J. Robinson, Noam Chomsky, Peter Singer, United States, war
The United States has always been a relentlessly pragmatic place, which doesn’t leave it much room for philosophy. Watching three Republican presidential candidates all take pot-shots at philosophy on the same night was only the most vivid recent example. But it’s not just right-wingers. Today Helen De Cruz discussed a recent article from socialist former philosopher Nathan J. Robinson that wonders whether we should do philosophy at all – whether, in fact, we have an obligation not to do philosophy. He claims, “I definitely feel, though, that I couldn’t have justified spending a career as an academic philosopher” – not because there are so few such jobs out there and you’re taking them from people who want them more, but because the time you spend on such a career is supposedly abdicating a larger political responsibility.
The examples Robinson cites as models are Bertrand Russell and Noam Chomsky – perhaps the two activist intellectuals most famous for having an activism that they saw as completely unrelated to their intellectual work. (An earlier and less famous example is the anarchist geographer Élisée Reclus.) Chomsky, according to Robinson, claimed that “intellectually, he wished he could have done work on the history of science. Politics doesn’t interest him intellectually at all” – and yet “when Chomsky is asked about his regrets, or things he feels he did wrong, he says that he regrets waiting so long to get involved in the anti-war movement, feeling it was a kind of moral failing to stick to ‘pure’ science as the war was escalating.” His linguistics was his love, his politics was his advocacy. Robinson views Chomsky’s political involvement as an admirable self-sacrifice – one that Chomsky thinks he should have pursued even further. Maybe, he muses, all of this intellectual work is wasting our energy that could be used more effectively on political action In A Time Of Crisis.
There are multiple problems with Robinson’s view. First of all, it only makes sense if one assumes that one’s philosophical or intellectual work isn’t making a practical contribution to the world. In Russell’s case, the purported separation between his activism and his philosophy seems only possible given his impoverished conception of philosophy. His popular works like “In praise of idleness” and “Zest” were about the good life and how to live it, questions that Plato and Aristotle would have considered self-evidently philosophical. His powerful mind could have come up with more sustained philosophical arguments giving deep, powerful, convincing justifications for Russell’s political convictions. Yet Russell was too mesmerized by the bizarre self-important conceit of his generation at Cambridge, that somehow the great ethical questions of life and how to live it didn’t really count as philosophy: a bizarre view that, at its most extreme, led to A.J. Ayer’s berserk self-contradicting claim that empirically unverifiable claims are meaningless, and one that continues to infect the study of Indian thought. A John Rawls, by contrast, did a lot for political activism through philosophy. I’m less familiar with Chomsky, but my father (with a dearly departed friend) argued that Chomsky’s case for the distinction between linguistics and politics is weaker than Chomsky made it out to be.
But more importantly, even if one is doing the sort of intellectual work that has no clear application, Robinson doesn’t show us what would be wrong with that. For one thing, we never know what’s going to become useful in the future. When he came up with them in 1854, George Boole’s “laws of thought” seemed like fancifully abstract logic-chopping, but it created the field of Boolean algebra that is fundamental to modern computer science.
More fundamentally, most of us who do philosophy love it – after all, everyone desires to know. (On the original meaning of philosophy, a love is exactly what it is.) And it’s on that point where Robinson really pushes his critique: you shouldn’t do something just because you love it, but because the state of the world demands it of you. “I wasn’t born into a world where it was ‘morally possible’ to spend a lifetime thinking about questions like ‘how do we know that anything is real?'” His key argument for this:
Is it morally wrong to do nothing but scientific research and to be “apolitical”? I think there’s a good argument for that position. The Vietnam War, for instance, was an atrocity. The U.S. government was causing endless unnecessary human suffering. As Americans living in something resembling a democracy, we have a certain obligation to try to steer government conduct in a direction that helps rather than hurts people. I do think it would have been wrong not to speak out against the Vietnam War, just as it would have been wrong not to speak out against the Iraq War. I believe the old cliché about how evil flourishes when the good do nothing.
In fact, it’s remarkable that there can even be a question about whether we have an obligation to work to try to lessen the amount of suffering in the world. And yet there are plenty of people who live comfortably, and they are blissfully untroubled by any thoughts of whether they are living up to their obligations or whether pure self-indulgence can be justified. It’s not that they’ve found a way to justify ignoring other people’s troubles. It’s that questions of responsibility and complicity are never even raised.
This last paragraph is interesting rhetorically. The last sentence, reasonably, is concerned that questions of responsibility are not raised – but the first sentence says the opposite, that these questions should not be raised: “it’s remarkable that there can even be a question”. And to be fair, relatively few would disagree that we should “work to try to lessen the amount of suffering in the world”. But what Robinson hand-waves is the question of what that actually means.
Epicureans and Theravādins (like the author of the Dhammapāda) would argue that we should lessen the amount of suffering in the world by striving at the difficult task of lessening our own suffering while not increasing anyone else’s. (While she doesn’t foreground suffering per se, De Cruz rightly reminds us of ethical egoists – she points to Yang Zhu, Spinoza, and Audre Lorde – who agree that “you should benefit yourself foremost.”) Mahāyānists like Śāntideva say that we should be reducing other people’s overall suffering, but that the source of their suffering is in internal states like craving, so the way to lessen that overall suffering is through teaching people to be more serene and mindful, not through politics.
So there probably isn’t much question that we should “work to try to lessen the amount of suffering in the world”. The problem is when that modest and loosely defined task suddenly gets transformed into something more narrowly and specifically political, something like “we should only work to try to minimize the total amount of suffering in the world, and that is most effectively done by changing political states of affairs.” It’s only that position that could justify the claim that doing philosophy is irresponsible or frivolous – and Robinson shies away from discussing the backing for it. Yes, evil may flourish more when the good do nothing – but Robinson gives us no reason to think that that must be our problem. There is a difference between naming a bad state of affairs and proclaiming that everyone has an obligation to prevent it. The latter is the position associated with Peter Singer, whom Robinson quotes admiringly but whose views Confucians would rightly consider monstrous. (As De Cruz notes, of course you should play games with your grandchildren even when that’s time you could spend on political work!)
For most of human history, people assumed that it was not their problem if people thousands of miles away whom they’d never met were starving or hit by an earthquake. They were not required to drop everything and get on a horse to bring their gold to help out with the suffering of lands unknown. Should they have been? If not, why are we so different from them? In Robinson’s piece, these questions are – never even raised.
The closest he comes is that interesting claim that “As Americans living in something resembling a democracy, we have a certain obligation to try to steer government conduct in a direction that helps rather than hurts people.” The problem with this claim is that most of the work is done by the missing premise – i.e. that those who do live in “something resembling a democracy” necessarily have an obligation to steer government conduct in a positive direction. Perhaps that is the thing that distinguishes us from the medievals who kept to their own business. But why exactly? This could be a reasonable case that we have an obligation to vote in a productive direction – that the right to vote carries with it that corresponding responsibility. But Robinson’s not talking about voting, he’s talking about public protest. He doesn’t tell us why living in a democratic-ish state gives an obligation to do that – let alone to sacrifice the other things that make life worth living. (Russell had the plausible response that “if he and others like him didn’t try to stop the threat of war, there wouldn’t be anyone around to appreciate philosophical work” – but that only makes sense if what one is trying to do is stop global nuclear war, not a smaller-scale conflict like Vietnam.)
My interest in essays like Robinson’s is becoming increasingly sociological. Robinson is far from alone in assuming that we have a duty of activism and being startled that anyone could think we don’t. You see a similar view in Judith Simmer-Brown’s story of the founding of the Buddhist Peace Fellowship: encountering the views of anti-political Buddhist teachers, she ignored everything they had to say and simply proclaimed “Something had to be done”. (See pp. 268-70 of my Disengaged Buddhism article.) There was no need to argue whether her own teachers were wrong, because she already knew. How did we get here, to a world in which a duty of activism gets assumed as so obvious?
Happy to read that you still have the patience to read these kinds of inputs and respond to them analytically and thoughtfully. Personally, I’ve lost patience with all these public busybodies who make a living trying to foist their personal ideas about obligation and responsibility on the rest of us.
I take my cues from my conscience in combination with my surroundings and what life brings this way, and I usually have a clear enough sense when something becomes my responsibility. I’m way past the point where I’d need or want any activist’s approval for it.
Thanks. I’d lost patience on this sort of thing a long time ago, really – but these folks are still out there saying things that I think are harmful, so the counterarguments need to be made.
It’s baffling to me that people here don’t think they should do something to stop war crimes if they can do something about, which they can.
You could use the same line of reasoning for the mass of Germans that went along with, supported and/or did nothing to stop the rise of Nazism. The same could be applied to all sorts of things, like the Civil Rights movement, afterall a majority of Americans (especially PMC types like most of you here) were against MLK jr. Perhaps Robinson takes it as a given that the state should be a force for good, and that living in said states that have the power to influence change through mass organizing, ought to do it.
Maybe why it bothers people here is because they feel shame about not doing anything.
Andreas, thanks for introducing me to the acronym “PMC” (professional-managerial class, for others like me who hadn’t heard it before). And thanks to Gabriel Winant in n+1 magazine, via google, for explaining it to me. As for me, I’m “failed PMC”.
I doubt anyone here is opposed to stopping war crimes. Amod’s post just targets some of the holes in Robinson’s argumentation, because that’s what philosophers do, and it’s a habit that is useful (see my comment below).
In the few days since my last comment (below), I remembered that Hillary Rettig’s self-help book The Lifelong Activist (Lantern Books, 2006) is a pretty informative source for clues about Amod’s final question, “How did we get here, to a world in which a duty of activism gets assumed as so obvious?” Hillary spends part of the book addressing the unrelenting standards that she sees in many activists, and she tries to teach them to be “someone who does activism as part of a happy, healthy and well-balanced life”. For example, here’s the first paragraph of her chapter titled “How much activism do you really want to do?”:
Andreas, you make assumptions and cast aspertions about who the people exchanging views here on this blog are without really knowing anything about us. It’s not a particularly good way to argue. I demonstated in the civil rights movement and personally organized demonstrations against the Viet Nam and Iraq wars. I would argue that neither the anti-Viet Nam war movement nor the anti-Iraq movement shortened either war by a single day or saved a single life. I’m not opposed to people signaling their moral stances, but I am suggesting that when you say we have the power to stop war crimes, that we haven’t been noticably good at it so far. Our times spent organizing and demonstrating might have been better spent doing something else of potentially more real benefit to others.
I would argue the same regarding today’s students organizing on campus calling for divestment from Israel. They will not resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and will probably only succeed in helping Donald Trump get elected—just as the 1968 Chicago demonstrators at the Democratic National Convention helped get Richard Nixon elected. Good intentions (and I generously believe the call for divestment from Israel is well intentioned, despite its being a terrible idea) sometimes pave the way to hell. I think of the pacifists who supported the Kellog-Briand treaty before WWII. They thought they were paving the way for peace, but they were just paving the way for the most destructive war in human history.
You have no idea what the repercussions of their protests could or will be. Literally the same argument you’re making has been made against every progressive movement in American history. You can argue the anti-war movement against Vietnam played no role in ending it but you’d be very wrong. The Iraq anti-war movement certainly didn’t. Sure some of the largest protests in history occurred, but in overall scale, duration, organization, and reach, it was trivial compared to during Vietnam. The anti-war movement was far-reaching within the US military for example, there were dozens, at least, of underground newspapers, there was even an effort to unionize (which is why it is now illegal).
I’m on pain medication post-surgery, so excuse me if my thoughts are a tad jumbled.
“You can argue the anti-war movement against Vietnam played no role in ending it but you’d be very wrong.”
I organized my first protest against the Vietnam War in 1965. The war went on for another 10 years, ending in 1975. If the antiwar movement shortened the war, it had a magically delayed effect.
Are you being intentionally obtuse? The US pulled out in 1973, that is what I am referring to. So you took part in a protest in 1965, what do you want, a balloon?
If Trump wins again, it’s not because of some students living up to their moral convictions, occupying some campuses to stop genocide. It will again be the failure of the neoliberal Democratic Party, which is what got the country here in the first place.
But sure, keep looking for excuses to do nothing.
This is you: https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2023/08/10/how-public-attitudes-toward-martin-luther-king-jr-have-changed-since-the-1960s/
Three days ago was May Day, the real Labor Day. Most Americans have no idea anymore what that means. The reason what labor rights and protections exist today is because of the labor movement, much of which was extremely violent (usually carried out by the state and private armed forces) in reaction to a variety of direct actions whose consequences and effectiveness as the time could not be foreseen. Arguing that we shouldn’t take radical action to prevent or affect change because we can’t know how effective it will be is just ludicrous, nothing would ever improve. It’s also very easy to have this position when you’re comfortably sitting in a position where you effectively don’t have to worry about any of these things.
Re: Nathan. Amod’s argument that there’s a missing premise with Robinson’s piece. This “duty of activism” is “assumed as obvious” because it follows premises that are largely universally accepted, except from sociopaths. It should be obvious, Robinson was operating under the belief that it’s axiomatic that “we have an obligation to steer our government in a positive direction,” and have a moral duty to stop (or make an effort to) an atrocity when we can. Under Amod’s reasoning, he sees nothing wrong with German citizens doing nothing to stop the Holocaust from happening, they have no moral obligation.
The contradictions in the second paragraph of that quote from Nathan Robinson (who is not me, by the way—so I’ll refer to him as Robinson to avoid confusion) were so interesting that I had to read his whole article, and I was surprised to find that it’s a rather philosophical piece. I would say its title is a philosophical question: “Can philosophy be justified in a time of crisis?”
There’s a distinction in the business management literature that I find useful and similar to the subject of this post: inquiry versus advocacy. One could think of “philosophy” as mostly inquiry and “activism” as mostly advocacy. Business management authors who write about inquiry and advocacy often talk about “balancing inquiry and advocacy”: that’s the title of a chapter by Rick Ross and Charlotte Roberts in The Fifth Discipline Fieldbook (1994), for example. (This issue also comes up in another field I’m familiar with, environmental conservation: see, e.g., Michael Nelson & John Vucetich’s “On advocacy by environmental scientists: what, whether, why, and how”, Conservation Biology 23(5), 2009.) Kim Cameron, in his book Positive Leadership (2nd edition, 2012), cited an empirical study from which he summarized:
I would be wary of generalizing from that study, but what’s interesting is that it claims that being slightly more inquiring than advocating is associated with “high performance” in teams, by some measure at least. So much for the “uselessness” of inquiry!
I could easily be wrong—I would have to do a quantitative analysis of Robinson’s article to be more certain—but Robinson’s article struck me as balanced in inquiry and advocacy. What Amod seemed to dislike is some of what Robinson advocated, and there’s room for more inquiry there, I don’t doubt. But I was surprised to find that Robinson was doing more philosophy, more inquiry, than I expected, and Robinson’s title even inquires (“Can philosophy be justified in a time of crisis?”) whereas Amod’s title advocates (“You don’t have to drop philosophy for activism”), which in a way makes Amod look like more of an advocate, i.e. activist, than Robinson! But, in any case, I think both Robinson & Amod are avoiding the extremely low inquiry/advocacy ratio of Cameron’s “low performers”.
You are right that, effectively, I’m providing an answer here, rather than doing the questioning that Robinson claims to be doing. One of the things I wanted to call attention to with that paragraph was that Robinson had already prejudged the answer to the most important question, and indeed thought it was “remarkable” that the question would even be asked: in your terms, he was doing advocacy while claiming to be doing inquiry.
Amod, you raise interesting questions. I think both our attention and our capacity for caring about others are necessarily limited resources, and how much attention and caring we ought to give to the almost infinite number of miseries, dissatisfactions, injuries, and dissapointments people suffer everywhere around the globe (not to mention non-human sentient being’s sufferings) is always something that needs to be mediated by something like practical reason, and so will always be a matter for further philosophical inquiry. As a practical matter, the unhappinesses of people who are part of my immediate world—family, neighbors, coworkers, friends—the people I care about most and whose welfare I have the most power to affect—will and ought to have a primary claim on my limited resources—and the amount I have left over to be actively engaged in caring for distant others is more open to question, especially in cases where my ability to positively impact the situation is more limited.
We are always free to volunteer for our local Red Cross or virtue signal for the cause celebre du jour—but it would be a hard to make the moral argument that this is required rather than (at best) superrerogatory. I say “at best” superrerogatory because of Susan Wolf’s moral saints argument—that feeling obligated to be involved in distant matters may be a poor investment of our scare resources given the other competing goods in life.
Agreed on all counts. You raise a good point that many forms of activism – even for worthy causes – are not even supererogatory. Virtue signalling is often a net negative, one that accomplishes nothing while alienating people around you. And I think a parent who refuses to buy toys for his children because he’s sending all the money to starving Somalians is not just a bad parent but a bad person.
I read Robinson’s original post (“Can philosophy be justified in a time of crisis?”) as being about how best to be an intellectual today. In my previous comment I connected this to the concept of “balancing inquiry and advocacy”, but Robinson also explicitly frames it, at several points in his article, as a choice between pure/academic philosophy and applied/popular philosophy.
Although Robinson discusses “moral saints”, at no point does he suggest that he ever seriously considered being anything other than an intellectual, pure or applied. His article is also rather autobiographical, and indeed such a question is probably best addressed in an autobiographical context. (Amod’s method in this post of rebutting particular claims by Robinson taken out of context has the downside of overlooking the autobiographical nature of Robinson’s piece, which is full of contradictions that reflect the messiness and complexity of who Robinson is, like most of us.) Amod seems more personally drawn to the pure inquiry side, and Robinson seems more personally drawn to the popular advocacy side, but I bet they both want some kind of relationship to the other side that is not complete rejection: after all, Amod advocates on a public blog, and Robinson finished his PhD and still cites academics.
I parenthetically noted above that this issue also comes up in environmental conservation, and it may be worth saying a little more about that. What kind of intellectual or scientist should one be if one is working in a discipline that was explicitly founded as a “crisis discipline”: how does one balance inquiry and advocacy? Amod and Robinson seem not to be very familiar with this field, but the issue seems similar to me and worth comparing. The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy article on “Conservation Biology” says in its lead section:
If people find your pubic political writing peevish and self-important to such an extent that by being a public advocate you do more to fuel opposition to the good for which you stand than further it, would that mean you’re obligated to stay in philosophy? I would think no: it’s perfectly acceptable for Robinson to pursue the path he has, even though it might cause more harm than good, because standing for the good is a worthy pursuit in itself. But philosophy is also a good.
It seems like Robinson is navigating a middle path between impossibly demanding maximalism, and morally destitute disengagement. That a career in (certain kinds of) academic philosophy falls outside the allowable limits of imperfect morality may be more a product of his own personal sense of self-reproach than any generalizable measure of obligations. In decades of philosophical study, I have never encountered a compelling argument for any particular midpoint between total obligation and total freedom.
I think there is a certain wisdom in moral traditions (such as many Christian traditions, and others) that accept the guaranteed failure of our limited resources (including willpower and empathy) in the face of seemingly unlimited demands for action. It would be extremely curious if the scope of our obligations just happened to fit within the scope of our agency, especially in a secular worldview where our moral psychology is an accident of physical evolutionary processes. A practical moral theory needs to tell agents how to fail, and how to understand failure as an integral part of moral life (even the lives of “moral saints”).
I can hear Nietzsche laughing in the background of all this, quipping “you torture yourselves grasping for justifications, and you can’t even conceive of anything to whom or to which justifications are owed”.
I doubt you can argue for any particular midpoint between obligation and freedom in the abstract. A lot depends on the particular cases. I do tend to be something of a minimalist on obligation, though: there are certain things we are blameworthy if we don’t do, but most of life doesn’t fall into that category.