Politics, Barbarism, and Uncertainty. Draft 4. Do not quote w/o permission. Nescio2@yahoo.com
Uncertainty, Politics, and Barbarism
Mevrouw de Rector Magnificus,
Mijnheer de Decaan
Dear Esteemed Colleagues and Friends,
Introduction.
Recently, while writing in the Washington Post, Oxford University’s White
Professor of Moral philosophy, Jeff McMahan, called for a ‘humanitarian’ proxy
war against the “barbarians” of ISIS in Syria by the “West.”i In response, I noted
that “the West” is not a proper contrast to “barbarian;” a barbarian (think of the
action-figure, Conan) is traditionally opposed to a ‘civilized’ or ‘humane’ person.
After all, “the West” is not incompatible with barbarism in its midst.ii
For example, in 1672 a mob lynched and cannibalized the Brothers De Witt in
plain daylight at the Gevangenispoort in the Hague. Spinoza reacted with horror;iii
his land-lady restrained him from putting a placard at the murder site. It is
supposed to have read: "Ultimi barbarorum," that is, “ultimate barbarians.”iv At
the time, the Dutch Republic was the wealthiest, most cultivated, and literate
society of Europe.v The anecdote about the placard is often used to suggest that
Spinoza was a supporter of De Witt.vi
Before I get to Spinoza’s real attitude toward De witt, I provide you a roadmap
of what follows. First, I first briefly re-introduce De Witt. For, inspired by
Spinoza and Hume, I treat De Witt as a would-be-modern-philosopher-king
equipped with the latest science. I do so in order to explore the nature of politics
and the limitations of science. In the second, third, and fourth parts of this lecture,
I explore Spinoza’s and David Hume’s analyses of the downfall of De Witt in
order to argue, first, that politics is characterized by activity under uncertainty;vii
second, that the political is about securing unity in the context of conflicting
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interests and values. I claim that this understanding of politics is central to the
Liberal tradition prior to the middle of the twentieth century.
The fifth part is a brief interlude about an unknown episode that involves De
Witt’s contemporaries, Christiaan Huygens, and Johannes Hudde. In the sixth
part, I describe how twentieth century Liberal thought tried to do without
uncertainty and sketch some of the contours of my future research; I wish to
contribute to reviving the Liberal tradition in a way that is realist and utopian,
although today I focus more on the realist strain.viii I end with a brief conclusion.
One disclaimer: I have introduced some terms, ‘Liberal,’ ‘uncertainty,’ ‘politics,’
and ‘barbarism’ without definition. I characterize these more precisely in what
follows.
1. De Witt, Hudde, and Huygens
In this section, I briefly introduce De Witt. Johan de Witt (1625-1672) was part
of a talented group of students of the Cartesian (Leiden) mathematician Van
Schooten. Van Schooten translated Descartes’s La Géometrié into Latin (1649),
and wrote an important commentary on it (1661).ix This commentary included an
appendix by De Witt.x Van Schooten also published a translation of Christiaan
Huygens’s work on probability (1657).xi Building on Huygens’s treatise,
Huygens, De Witt, and, yet another student first published by Van Schooten,
Johannes Hudde,xii explored foundations of probability and life insurance in
subsequent decades.xiii All three (Huygens, Hudde, and De Witt) were
independent minded, Cartesians and figure in my narrative today. De Witt, as
Raadspensionaris of the State of Holland, was the most powerful politician in the
Dutch Republic until he got massacred in 1672--the year when Dutch forces were
overrun by a French army and facing English attack at sea.xiv In what follows, I
treat De Witt as an exemplar of the limitations of a certain style of scientific
politics.
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2. Spinoza and De Witt’s Fall
In this section, I discuss Spinoza’s criticisms of De Witt in order to call
attention to two themes: first, the role of knowledge in politics; second, to argue
that domestic strife is a symptom of bad leadership and badly functioning
institutions.
Spinoza outlived De Witt by five years, and during that period he worked on the
posthumously published Political Treatise. This book reveals that Spinoza was
not a defender of the Dutch oligarchy under De Witt. In fact, he thought it
inherently unstable. In chapter 8, Spinoza describes the collapse of the Dutch
Republic. He asserts that within an oligarchy, daily political rule is devolved to
a bright upstart.xv In 1672 it turned out that De Witt was dispensable. Spinoza
was right to predict that the Dutch would never recover their former glory.xvi
De Witt was probably the most capable person to lead the Dutch confederacy.
This is the meritocratic element of an aristocracy. But by becoming dependent
on the judgment of one, political decision-making also becomes more fragile.
This connects to Spinoza’s defense of democratic decision-making in the
(earlier, 1670) Theological Political Treatise, where he argued for the epistemic
benefits of a multiplicity of public voices in decision-making. Spinoza did not
expect infallibility from democratic decision-making, but he did expect fewer
disastrous mistakes and more stability.xvii
In the Political Treatise, there is no trace of nostalgia for oligarchy; Spinoza
resists the urge to turn De Witt into a martyr. Rather, Spinoza explicitly treats
De Witt's fall as evidence for the bad institutional design of the Dutch republic.
In fact, De Witt’s fall is an instance of a more general claim by Spinoza.
Throughout the Political Treatise, Spinoza treats war, internal strife,
lawlessness, criminality, etc. as de facto evidence of bad institutional design.
I made two Spinozistic moves in this section: first, the significance of
epistemology, that is, the role of the nature and scope of knowledge, to political
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theory. Second, domestic strife is, in fact, a sign of bad leadership and badly
functioning institutions. I elaborate on both moves before long.
3. Magnanimous De Witt
In this section I discuss David Hume’s analysis of the Fall of De Witt in order to
argue for three claims: first, a politician must inspire unity among the citizenry.
Second, politicians act under conditions of genuine uncertainty. Third, scientific
politics risks expert overconfidence.
The eighteenth century Scottish philosopher, David Hume, is now best known
for his Treatise. But in his own lifetime Hume grew rich and famous with his
History of England.xviii In his narrative Hume introduces Johan De Witt with
superlative qualifications: De Witt is “equally eminent for greatness of mind,
for capacity, and for integrity.”xix Later, when Hume describes the meeting of
Sir William Temple, the English ambassador in The Hague, and De Witt, he
again evokes De Witt’s magnanimity.xx De Witt sacrifices “all private
considerations to the public service.” Of all the exemplary political characters
treated by Hume only the quasi-mythical Alfred the Great, and the ruthless King
Edward 1st, receive a more generous evaluation from Hume in his seventeen
hundred year narrative.xxi
Hume emphasizes that De Wit is willing to negotiate to prevent war; De Witt’s
greatness is not of the conquering kind.xxii But while De Witt prefers to avoid
war, he will not yield on matters of principle (“reason”) or justice (“equity”).
For according to the foreign policy doctrine attributed to De Witt, concessions
will not prevent war, but only lead to new demands that will eventually lead to
war (or full surrender).
De Witt’s maxim is not a universal one; it is not appropriate to weak powers or - as the Netherlands are today --, protectorates. Hume intimates that to stand on
principle or justice when one is not capable of or unwilling to sacrifice for
independence is, while noble, an act of foolishness. This entails that De Witt is
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taken to accept that international politics is a kind of Hobbesian state of nature.
Only a great state can enforce equity. Such justice is also a matter of selfinterest because, as I have shown in joint work with the economist Spencer
Pack, by Hume's lights there is little difference between justice/equity and
property.xxiii
Among qualities praised by Hume, is De Witt’s ability to preserve, even
promote, a spirit of unity in a confederation that was notoriously incapable of
such unity: recall the execution of De Witt’s predecessor, the pensionary of the
State of Holland Van Oldebarneveldt and the civil war unleashed by the
stadtholder William II of Orange. To generate and maintain unity, guided and
constrained by reason and equity, is the political act as such. The unity is not
metaphysical, but dispositional.xxiv That is, a politician or a society must be able
to generate, or facilitate, opinions and habits of thought that allow individual
citizens or constitutive orders of a polity to maintain a latent or actualized
commitment to some unity.xxv For Hume, good political leadership involves
ensuring that unity is maintained through external threat and the forces of
internal dissolution.
Now, De Witt is as close to a philosopher-king we have seen in the modern age;
De Witt is the expert that rules experts; Hume makes the point explicitly with an
allusion to Plato’s Republic 488e–489d, while describing De Witt as follows:
“The genius of this man was of the most extensive nature. He quickly became as
much master of naval affairs, as if he had from his infancy been educated in
them; and he even made improvements in some parts of pilotage and sailing,
beyond what men expert in those arts had ever been able to attain.”xxvi
Hume’s account is surprising in two ways. To recognize these surprises, I first
need to remind you that Hume is known to be a defender of the impartial even
stable rule of law--a core commitment of all strands of Liberalism.xxvii In fact, in
this tradition ‘barbarism’ and the ‘rule of law’ are antonyms; the one excludes
the other.xxviii
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Yet, when there is a threat to the security or survival of the state, Hume’s
position is more flexible. For, he notes and approves of De Witt's willingness to
break Dutch law, in order to ratify rapidly a treaty (The Triple League) deemed
necessary for the public interests: “de Wit [sic] had the courage, for the public
good, to break through the laws in so fundamental an article…Though they
acknowledged, that, if that measure should displease their constituents, they
risqued [sic] their heads...”xxix
The second surprise is that while law is rule-bound, a politician’s craft is not. A
politician has to act under conditions of genuine uncertainty and while there are
maxims that can be followed, there are circumstances when she is in uncharted
waters. For the “public good” one may even break the law with all the
unintended consequences that may entail.
One might think, then, that political wisdom consists in a willingness to make
decisions. This view is now often associated with Nietzsche and Carl Schmitt.
But this is not Hume’s position.
For Hume bring the state of emergency under the rule of law in his one Utopian
work, his short enigmatic essay, “Idea Of a Perfect Commonwealth.” It is rarely
studied—even Jonathan Israel overlooks it in his massive works on the
Enlightenment.xxx I’ll spare you all the details of Hume’s utopian blueprint. But,
it turns out, that during “extraordinary emergencies,” Hume allows a junta with
dictatorial power for “six months.”xxxi For Hume the emergencies arise, if they
do, only in foreign affairs, especially in the context of war and conquest. So,
even in "the most perfect of all" possible states we need to prepare for
unexpected and unpleasant surprises.
Hume's proposal might appear as a nod to Livy's famous account of the
dictatorship of Cincinnatus in Republican Rome.xxxii But Hume is explicit that his
commonwealth is an improvement of ancient republics because he considers
these "oppressive." He has little fondness for the Ancient embrace of slavery.
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A better way to understand Hume's treatment is to take him at his word, and note
the "resemblance that [the blueprint of a perfect commonwealth] bears to the
commonwealth of the United Provinces, a wise and renowned government."xxxiii
Hume's perfect commonwealth is not a confederation, but a federation that can
act as a true unity in foreign affairs even during an emergency. That is, while
foreshadowing the American Presidency, Hume designs his own ideal state to
make space for a future De Witt, who, in cases of emergency, can make public
spirited decisions in foreign affairs without too much constraint but within a legal
framework. But rather than trusting a single person with emergency powers, he
assigns such authority to a small group.xxxiv It is an open question if Hume's
approach does not lead to the "oppression" he dreads.
States of emergency within a liberal framework are not a mere historical
curiosity. As I speak, France has been operating under emergency powers for a
few months already. In my judgment this is a mistake because France’s survival
is not at stake and the seeds for future division and hatred are being sown on a
daily basis.xxxv
Let me return to Hume’s analysis of De Witt’s Fall in his History. There he
argues that courageous decision-ism can be taken too far. xxxvi In particular,
politicians often must act under conditions of uncertainty; a wise politician
legislates ends and acts on fallible causal social knowledge that she learns from
the social scientist. xxxvii For, on Hume’s view, where there are stable social or
national institutions we can discover robust patterns of behavior. Hume thinks
this is true in modern states, but not in the international arena.xxxviii
Hume points to multiple causes for De Witt’s fall; the most spectacular is De
Witt’s misjudgment of the international situation.xxxix De Witt’s response to the
threat posed by England and France is treated as an instance of expert overconfidence. De Witt treats his country's potential enemies as rational,
calculating agents--ones that understand their own self-interests properly and
that will act accordingly. In the grip of his (proto-)rational choice model of
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reality, De Witt treats something as “impossible” that he ought to prepare for.xl
De Witt is turned into an anti-exemplar of an intellectual that mistakes his own
rational view of the world for reality.
In particular, Hume does not deny that De Witt understands the true interest of
King Charles II as well as the King, but his Cartesian science has not prepared
De Witt for the true political art.xli As Spinoza had also concluded, Cartesian
science does not provide guidance for applying one’s knowledge in political
life. For, Descartes takes political power as given; the first maxim of
Descartes’s Discourse on Method is “to obey the laws and customs of my
country.”xlii Modern natural science may originate in the desire to conquer
nature, but by Spinoza’s and Hume’s lights it fails at the art of ruling and statebuilding.
Recall from the section on Spinoza, first, the significance of epistemology in
political theory. Second, the fact that domestic strife is a signal of bad
leadership and badly functioning institutions. In this section I have developed
both points. So, we are in a good position to understand three Humean lessons:
first, when possible guided and constrained by reason and equity, a politician
must be able to generate, or facilitate, opinions and habits of thought that allow
citizens to maintain commitment to some unity. Second, while a politician
should draw on the best available science, there are going to be occasions where
she has to act under conditions of genuine uncertainty and while there are
maxims that can be followed, there are (absent world government), by
necessity, circumstances when she is in uncharted waters. Third, even the
smartest rulers run the risk of expert over-confidence.
The points developed here link up to my scholarly work on the role of
uncertainty and expert overconfidence, and I say a bit more about them before
long. But first I want to draw out one more feature from the Spinozistic and
Humean reflection on De Witt’s Fall.
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4. Hume’s neo Spinozism
In this section, I complete my Humean-Spinozist analysis of De Witt’s fall by
claiming that we have to reflect on exceptional exemplars of success and failure
in order to grasp the art of ruling.
According to Hume, De Witt's failure of scientific imagination is exacerbated
by the fact that “by a continued and successful application to commerce, the
[Dutch] were become unwarlike, and confided entirely for their defence in that
mercenary army, which they maintained.” xliii Here Hume echoes Machiavelli's
injunction against reliance on mercenaries.xliv
But the more fundamental problem that Hume diagnoses, and this brings him
unexpectedly close to, and deepens, Spinoza's analysis, is that the Dutch were
not a true unity and so, because of lack of mutual trust had fired the experienced
officer corps of the Dutch army thought to be too loyal to the Orangist faction.
In addition, while De Witt had been careful to prevent corruption in naval
affairs, he had allowed a form of crony-ism seep into military affairs.
Hume implies that better political leadership by De Witt could have saved the
Dutch.xlv So, while Hume recognizes the limits of a political science that treats
the world as populated with rational agents acting in their own best interests, he
thinks there is a true art of ruling.xlvi In part, Hume signs up to Spinoza’s
approach, that is, to develop democratic institutions that promote epistemic
resources. Hume has a lot to say about institutional design; but it seems he also
thought – echoing Spinoza (and Machiavelli) -- that one could teach the art of
ruling by historical reflection on examples of success and failure. Thus, Hume
combines the modern social scientific focus on institutional design and
incentives with ongoing reflection on positive and negative exemplars of
political rule.
My historical case study has aimed at presenting the following six points: first,
the significance of epistemology in political theory. Second, the fact that
domestic strife is a signal of bad leadership and badly functioning institutions.
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Third, guided and partially constrained by justice, a politician must be able to
generate, or facilitate, opinions and habits of thought that allow individual
citizens to maintain commitment to minimal unity. Fourth, while a politician
should draw on the best available science, she has to act under conditions of
genuine uncertainty. Fifth, expert over-confidence is always a danger. Sixth, we
have to reflect on exceptional exemplars of success and failure in order to learn
the art of ruling.
Before I close with my own research agenda in light of these six points, I make
a brief detour.
5. A brief interlude: Huygens and Hudde
About two decades ago, the philosopher-engineer Professor George E Smith,
my teacher at Tufts, enlisted me in a translation project and scholarly research
on a key episode in the history of physics that involved two issues: the great
debate between Huygens and Newton over universal gravity and the search for
longitude with Huygens’s pendulum clocks which was arguably the most
important technological issue for a country dependent on commerce by sea. The
two episodes are linked because Huygens appealed to the evidence provided by
his clocks on Thomas Helder’s expedition to the Cape of Good Hope aboard the
VOC ship, Alcmaer, to argue against Newton and for his own theory of
gravity.xlvii
As it happens the recipient of Huygens’s 1688 report was Johannes Hudde part
of the talented generation of Leiden, Cartesian mathematicians; by 1688 Hudde
had also invented first-rate firehose-pumps, was the leading director of the
VOC, and among Holland’s most powerful politicians—as one of the Mayors of
Amsterdam, he basically arranged the means for Stadtholder William III of
Orange to invade England. (Amsterdam remembers him with a small street near
the Amstel-hotel.) He also had maintained a secretive correspondence with
Spinoza over God’s nature and existence.xlviii
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Hudde was thus in an excellent position to support and evaluate Huygens’s
efforts to build a working pendulum clock that could find longitude at sea. In
my original paper with Smith, we note that in his 1688 report Huygens’
recommends to the Directors of the Dutch East India Company that major
efforts be undertaken to determine longitudes for numerous locations.xlix The
VOC never followed up on this big-science-grant proposal. By contrast, the
French were already engaged in such a project.
After Huygens died in 1695 the Hudde-led VOC basically dropped further
research into using clocks to find longitude. This despite the fact that Huygens
had built up a twenty year technological lead over any competition.
Next time you hear a Dutch politician extoll the ‘VOC mentality,’ you may
wish to remind him not just of the immoral activities of the Company and its
monopolistic rent-seeking, but also insist that Dutch decline set in, in part,
because of Hudde’s failure to develop and maintain a strategic, scientific
infrastructure that would engage in foundational research. The lack of strategic
thought exemplifies the Cartesian a-political approach to science which takes
politics for granted. I mention this explicitly because the department of political
science of the University of Amsterdam was founded in 1947 to cure the Dutch
political elite, and I quote the historian, Jan Romein, from its “political naivety
and social ignorance.”l
6. Uncertainty and Politics
In this section I articulate some of my research plans and some of my core
commitments. I treat politics as activity under conditions of uncertainty. By
‘uncertainty’ I mean circumstances in which we have no grounds to assign
probabilities to expectations and outcomes; these circumstances occur when we
lack access to underlying distributions.li The existence of uncertainty can be an
obstacle to scientific consensus. If we have scientific answers, and one can
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assume agreement over ends, then an issue or a problem can be depoliticized
and left to experts or technocracy.lii
Not all activity in the face of uncertainty is political. Rather than offer you a
definition of ‘the political,’ I echo Spinoza and Hume, and I’ll treat politics as
the task, when possible guided by science and justice, of generating or
facilitating, opinions and habits of thought that allow citizens to maintain
commitment to some unity despite the existence of competing values and
interests. It follows from this task that it’s not just politicians that engage in the
political, but that paradigmatic activities associated with the media, educators,
clergy, civic religion, bureaucracy, and parenting also intersect with the
political.
One controversial consequence of my approach is that I reject the idea that
ethics always trumps politics. I do so for two reasons: first, some such unity is a
pre-condition for moral lives with others. Second, morality is, in fact, better
served if we try to have it do less work for us.liii
During the last decade, I have studied the role of uncertainty in mathematical
economics and political philosophy since World War II. It turns out that the
disciplinary split between both fields was, in part, constituted by efforts at
developing decision procedures that could ignore uncertainty and generate
consensus for the chosen area of study.liv In political philosophy, this project is
associated with the great Liberal programs of Rawls and Habermas. I do not
need to remind a Dutch audience that when we leave the clouds of theory and
find steady ground in our fertile landfills, we are familiar with our own brands
of consensus-searching Liberalism: we call it ‘polderen’ or ‘paars.’
Technologies of consensus production can also be found in mathematical
economics, where they are, most notably, associated with Arrow’s elimination
of uncertainty from general equilibrium theory and in finance theory where they
are associated with the use of mathematical techniques of randomness to assume
away uncertainty. An example is the rational asset-pricing formula associated
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with names like Black, Scholes, and Merton. These programs have adherents
that continue to add sophisticated bells and whistles. I apologize for using
names as short-hand. I note that these are all men; I return to this issue shortly.
The prestige of consensus was reinforced, during the last six decades, by
Thomas Kuhn’s and Kuhnian views of science – in which science is conceived
as an authoritative, de-politicized field with a high degree of consensus and
most activity is oriented toward problem-solving which, in turn, ordinarily
generates more consensus. This, too, presupposes given ends. Once one accepts
these moves one can work with representative agent models in economics and
philosophy. Moreover, to reject consensus as a ruling norm could then be
characterized as a form of irrationality.lv In his inaugural address, my
predecessor, Jos De Beus, in observing these trends in Dutch political life
decried the culture of consensus, which favors the privileged and masks an
extensive inner 'rot' (his words).lvi
The financial crisis since 2007 has re-introduced a more widespread interest into
the existence and nature of uncertainty inside and outside of political
economy.lvii At the start of the crisis the CFO of Goldman Sachs, which had the
most admired risk models, was reported as saying, “We were seeing things that
were 25 standard deviation moves, several days in a row.”lviii That is to say,
Goldman Sachs really had no clue about underlying distributions—they thought
they inhabited a world of probable risk, bit it turned out that it is really
uncertain.lix Goldman was not alone in failing to grasp the nature of uncertainty.
For example, I have studied the Dutch planning agency; on the day Lehman
Brothers filed for bankruptcy, its forecasting model still predicted considerable
growth for the Dutch economy the following year.lx In reality the Dutch
economy contracted by four percent.
We have to learn to treat mathematical models of human behavior as useful
policy tools that have costs and benefits associated with them, but that should be
mistrusted if they are treated as consensus building devices that are the only
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model of reality. We need a better understanding of the politics presupposed and
suppressed by such models; we also need better institutions and practices. I feel
fortunate that I have joined a department with Jeffrey Underhill, Daniel Mugge,
and Jonathan Zaitlin—all of whom study these issues with great sophistication;
I have already been inspired by our tentative collaborations. But I am getting
ahead of myself.
On my approach, nearly all political problems have been encountered before
despite changes in technology, population growth, and conceptual and religious
transformations. I offer a modest example: in his original 1688 report to the
Dutch east India Company in which Huygens defended his pendulum clock,
Huygens noted that the "crew" of the Alcmaer had "taunted" and "laughed at"
the researchers with Huygens’s pendulum clock on board the ship. Huygens
here echoes the description found in Plato's Republic, Book VI, 488b-d.
The way I understand it, for much of the Liberal tradition, roughly from the
seventeenth century through the 1930s, uncertainty was associated with disease,
death, war, and theological dogmas, which would inflame the passions that, in
turn, would generate more political instability and uncertainty. In addition to
representative government and freedom of thought, one of the core ideas of the
Liberal tradition is to redirect people’s passions to commerce, family, sports,
and leisure so that uncertainty could be channeled to less dangerous ends. The
role of the (welfare) state, then, is to create institutions that through the rule of
law and public health reduce uncertainty. On this approach there is no
expectation that uncertainty can be eliminated fully. For it is understood that
markets and new technologies create their own species of uncertainty. In fact,
given that financial markets allow states to expand the scope of war-making,
itself a source of greatest uncertainty, Liberalism does not promise to eliminate
uncertainty.
That is, I have just sketched the germ of a large research project that can take
me through retirement. My new colleague, Marieke de Goede, has written two
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wonderful books that inform my analysis. Marieke has already cured me of my
naïve faith in precautionary principles; her work has demonstrated that in the
face of great uncertainty precautionary principles will be abused to justify
‘barbaric’ actions by purportedly Liberal states (including the Netherlands):
think of Guantanamo Bay, forced rendition, torturous interrogation, treat warrefugees as prisoners, and massive spying on citizens, etc.
My big-picture project is informed by two more ‘local’ projects. First, in order
to avoid staying trapped in the same series of concepts, I work on the history of
political thought because Liberalism cannot be renewed only from within. Here
I mention my interest in feminism. For, female and male feminism is a
persistent strain of criticism of the Liberal tradition and one of its main sources
of renewal.lxi I collaborate with Sandrine Berges to bring the ideas of Sophie de
Grouchy to the world, and I collaborate with Marietje van der Schaar on
generating interest in the role of women in early analytical philosophy. I am
looking forward to develop this line of research with my new colleagues,
especially Luara Ferracioli, Annelien de Dijn, and Saskia Bonjour.
Second, together with Manja Bomhoff, I have been awarded a grant to study the
new Dutch Act on long-term care and its impact, especially, on home care for
the elderly. In preparing the grant we have been aided greatly by my new
colleagues, Imrat Verhoeven and John Grin. While I remain fond of abstract
ideas, I have come to recognize that responsible theorizing also requires
engaging with the lived experiences of those not well represented in the seminar
room or the corridors of political power and public opinion.
7. Conclusion
Today I spoke to you of my conception of politics and its relationship to
uncertainty. Along the way, I drew on fine-grained historical detail, the history
of political theory and the history of the sciences. I also intimated quite a large
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number of research projects. Some of you may have the suspicion that while I
pretend to be a hedgehog focused on uncertainty, I am really a fox who cannot
stick to a single line of thought.
There is truth to the suspicion, but I want to dispel it. So, I close with my
methodological stance and remind you of my core insight. First, in all of my
research I am a methodological analytical egalitarian. This is an approach
revived by my friends, David Levy and Sandra Peart, two creative
economists.lxii That is, I posit motivational homogeneity in order to allow
research into the social and institutional causes of observed variety. One
consequence of this stance is that an expert cannot assume herself to be outside
the system or society she models.lxiii Obviously, not everybody is equal, but
people take themselves to be equal when their interests or ways of life are at
stake. So, beliefs matter, and ultimately we should not treat the agents of social
and political life as thoughtless atoms.lxiv
The Levy-Peart stance comes with a norm of responsible speech: one cannot
promote policies in which the downside risks of implementation are wholly
placed on less powerful others. This norm motivates, for example, my response
to those that advocate proxy war in foreign lands.
Finally, I promised you my core idea. This idea draws on a strand of thought
that is now associated with Hayek. Hayek and I agree that there is no human
vantage point from which full knowledge of political affairs is possible, that is,
there is fundamental uncertainty. He used that insight to argue against socialist
planning and scientific politics in favor of markets. But markets presuppose
political and legal institutions and are influenced by surprising technological
and scientific developments. Meanwhile the financial crisis has reminded us that
markets are also a source of uncertainty and, thereby, generate ongoing need for
politics. So, because there is uncertainty, including market uncertainty that can
generate massive dislocations and social transformations, there remains a need
for politics.lxv That is, by embracing an “epistemic turn” – I owe the term to
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Martin Van Hees -- in political philosophy, I thereby embrace the centrality,
even primacy of politics. In reading the inaugural lectures of my predecessors, I
discovered that, in so doing, I continue the tradition of this Chair.
I close with a thought borrowed from Al-Farabi, the Islamic philosopher, who
figures in my seminar this week. He notes that democracy is compatible “with
the most good and most evil.”lxvi After the experience of the twentieth century, I
would not recommend aiming for the most good, but we should minimize the
evils.
Acknowledgments
I would like to follow tradition and use this opportunity to acknowledge
publically some of the supererogatory assistance I received during my career.
First, I thank the College van Bestuur, the Dean of faculty, and Wouter Van der
Brug and his search committee for hiring me and for granting me this honor. I
am thrilled by the welcome I have received from the department, and I am
especially grateful to our Chair, Floris Vermeulen, for easing my transition to
the University of Amsterdam and a whole new discipline.
Second, I single out some of my teachers. At the Vossius, Anneke Luger kept
my life on track; I also thank, Rob Brouwer, Jan Stronk, who was the first to
suggest I leave town, and the late, wonderful Hans de Klonia. My professors at
Tufts continue to be generous; not just George Smith, but also Dan Dennett,
Jody Azzouni, and Drussila Brown. In addition, the late Michael Fixler
suggested I go to Chicago. There I was mentored by Bill Wimsatt, Howard
Stein, Martha Nussbaum, Charles Larmore, and the late Ian Mueller. It turns out
that my wonderful supervisor, Dan Garber, is right about something: many of
the most important mentors are colleagues on the job. Before returning home to
Amsterdam, I have worked at five fantastic institutions with wonderful
colleagues; I single out for gratitude, Red Watson, Pauline Kleingeld, and Jose
Bernadette.
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Third, my best scholarly work has been co-authored with some very fine
scholars. I cannot list them all, and I have already mentioned George Smith,
Spencer Pack, and Sandrine Berges; here I note, especially, Chris Smeenk,
Merel Lefevere, Rogier de Langhe, and my new colleagues, Brian Burgoon,
Marieke de Goede, and Marlies Glasius. In addition Mary Domski and Ryan
Hanley have, as editors, published very fine papers under my name.
Fourth, my understanding of what philosophy could be was transformed by my
co-bloggers at NewAPPS. They taught me that excellence and relevance can be
mutually supporting. Bij Nader Inzien has made a strong start, and I look
forward to our joint development.
Fifth, I thank my fantastic PhD students, Marij, Johan, Barnaby, Jo, Laura,
Sylvia, Stijn, and Lea. They put up with a lot of (I use a technical term)
meshuggas, while I get to learn from them.
Sixth, David Levy and M.A. Khan, started out as ‘informants’ about
contemporary economics, but they have become exemplars of academic
integrity and intellectual fraternity.
Seventh, I thank my parents and sister for unstinting encouragement and
support.
Finally, Avi and Sarit for teaching me love and happiness I never expected.
Dixi, Ik heb gezegd.
Eric Schliesser, February 5, 20161
i
Jeff McMahan "Syria is a Modern Holocaust," The Washington Post.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/in-theory/wp/2015/11/30/syria-is-a-modern-day-holocaust-we-must-act/
ii
http://digressionsnimpressions.typepad.com/digressionsimpressions/2015/12/when-an-ethicists-calls-forproxy-war.html
iii
Spinoza broadly agreed with Hobbes’ account of the state of nature, but improved upon it by insisting in his
Theological Political Treatise (1670) that the state of nature was always a real possibility. Spinoza’s position
was vindicated by the barbarism at the Gevangenispoort.
iv
Dee Michael Della Rocca (2008) Spinoza, London: Routledge, 27. Rowen 1978?, who is quite skeptical of
most tales surrounding Spinoza’s and De Witt’s relationship, allows that this story “has the stamp of truth”
(because young Leibniz is ultimate source). For a searching exploration of the episode see Stan Verdult
http://spinoza.blogse.nl/log/de-leuze-ultimi-barbarorum-is-een-van-de-werken-van-spinoza-zijn-kortste.html
1
I thank Anneke Luger, Luara Ferracioli, David Teira, and, especially, Rene Brouwer, for very useful comments
on an earlier draft.
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Even a century later Adam Smith insisted that “Dutch” and “trustworthy” were near synonyms and thought it
the height of civilization. By ‘civilization’ Smith and his contemporaries meant ‘governed by the rule of law.’
vi
Gilles Deleuze (1988) Spinoza: Practical Philosophy. Translated by R. Hurley, San Francisco: City Light
Books, 13. This is not a surprising inference because the Theological Political Treatise, which he published a
few years before the massacre, says nice things about the city of Amsterdam and has a broadly anti-clerical
orientation. During the 1670s to be anti-clerical often entailed support for the oligarchic regime of De Witt.
Rowen op. cit., 391-399, notes, correctly, that De Witt’s own political philosophy is not Spinozistic. He also
points out (411) that there is no evidence that Spinoza and De Witt ever met nor that De Witt was interested in
Spinoza.
vii
See Alfonso Vergaray (2014) "Rethinking Uncertainty: Spinoza and Hume on Shaping Uncertain Secular
Futures" dissertation defended at Virginia Tech University. See also Bell, J. (2008). Deleuze's Hume:
philosophy, culture and the Scottish Enlightenment. Oxford University Press.
viii
I proceed under the assumption that Liberalism is not seen as a worthy option by four non-trivial groups of
fellow citizens: first, a-generation of Jihadists, whom remind all us of our society’s painful failure to offer a
compelling, inclusive good to all of our young; second, the populists who insist that they alone know what’s
good for the nation and, thereby, deny reasonable disagreement; third, the plutocrats and their technocratic
intellectuals who mistrust the electorate and encourage disenfranchisement, expert rule, or lotteries. Fourth, the
noble souls who have come to the conclusion that Liberal values only serve the interest of the ruling classes. For
the utopian strain, see See Schliesser, E. (2013). “Philosophic prophecy.” in Philosophy and Its History: Aims
and Methods in the Study of Early Modern Philosophy, edited by M. Laerke, et. al., Oxford: Oxford University
Press.
ix
Isaac Newton taught himself Cartesian mathematics from this book.
x
Elements of Linear Curves; Easton, J. B. (1963). Johan de Witt's kinematical constructions of the conics. The
Mathematics Teacher, 632-635.
xi
Hald, A. (2003). A history of probability and statistics and their applications before 1750 (Vol. 501). John
Wiley & Sons, 68,
xii
For an account of Hudde’s contribution, see Pedersen, K. M. (1980). Techniques of the calculus, 1630-1660.
From the calculus to set theory, 1630-1910.
xiii
Ciecka, J. E. (2008). The First Mathematically Correct Life Annuity Valuation Formula. Journal of Legal
Economics, 15(1), 59. Hald op. cit., especially pp. 122-142
xiv
On De Witt’s life, including his own political philosophy, see the biography of Rowen, H. H. (1978). John de
Witt, grand pensionary of Holland, 1625-1672. Princeton University Press. After the transition of power in
1672, Hudde became one of the mayors of Amsterdam and a leading figure in the Dutch East India Company.
xv
"In every council the secretaries and other officials of this kind, as they have not the right of voting, should be
chosen from the commons. But as these, by their long practice of business, are the most conversant with the
affairs to be transacted, it often arises that more deference than right is shown to their advice, and that the state
of the whole dominion depends chiefly on their guidance: which thing has been fatal to the Dutch." (8.44) The
context describes the malfunctioning of aristocracy.
xvi
See Klever, W. (1993). A new document on De Witt's attitude towards Spinoza. Studia Spinozana: An
International and Interdisciplinary Series 9:370-388. Admittedly, De Witt's family background was more
patrician than Spinoza would allow, but De Witt's rise to power was indeed a consequence of richer patricians
scheming on his behalf.
xvii
The quoted passage of Political Treatise 8.44 is, thus, an auxiliary to Spinoza’s argument for the epistemic
advantages of democracy. (He explicitly notes the lack of a right to vote for the commons.) Steinberg, J. (2010).
Benedict Spinoza: Epistemic Democrat. History of Philosophy Quarterly, 145-164.
xviii
David Hume (1776) “My own Life” http://davidhume.org/texts/mol.html. For my analysis, see Schliesser, E.
(2003). The Obituary of a Vain Philosopher. Hume studies, 29(2), 327-362.
xix
David Hume, The History of England from the Invasion of Julius Caesar to the Revolution in 1688, Foreword
by William B. Todd, 6 vols. (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund 1983). Vol. 6, 195-6.
http://oll.libertyfund.org/titles/793#Hume_0011-06_440
xx
“Sir William Temple…This man whom philosophy had taught to despise the world, without rendering him
unfit for it, was frank, open, sincere, superior to the little tricks of vulgar politicians: And meeting in de Wit
with a man of the same generous and enlarged sentiments, he immediately opened his master’s intentions, and
pressed a speedy conclusion.” David Hume, The History of England, op. cit. Vol. 6; 221-220,
http://oll.libertyfund.org/titles/793#Hume_0011-06_499
xxi
I have been unable to find a serious discussion of Hume’s treatment of De Witt’s fall.
xxii
See Alexander the Great at Treatise 3.3.2.12.
xxiii
Pack, S. J., & Schliesser, E. (2006). Smith's Humean criticism of Hume's account of the origin of justice.
Journal of the History of Philosophy, 44(1), 47-63.
xxiv
‘spirit’
v
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Hume’s position is a non-trivial improvement over Hobbes’s approach in which such unity is a natural and
even inevitable by-product of the coming into being of the Leviathan. It is natural to think that because Hume is
a critic of the social contract tradition, that he rejects all of Hobbes’ account. But at a crucial juncture in his
account of the origin of justice, Hume echo one of the more striking moments in Hume when he asserts that
justice is the sense that “all the members of the society express to one another, and which induces them to
regulate their conduct by certain rules.” (Treatise 3.2.2.10) For, in Leviathan, the commonwealth is, when not
founded through conquest, instituted by a covenant “of every man with every man . . . as if every man should
say to every man, I Authorise and give up my Right of Governing my selfe, to this Man, or to this Assembly of
men,” (II.17). It is this covenant that generates “a real unity.” (See also Hobbes’s De Corpore Politico, 1.6.7. in
The Moral and Political Works of Thomas Hobbes of Malmesbury: 1750, London, p. 52) In Hobbes this unity is
lodged “in one and the same Person.” (To avoid confusion: a Hobbesian person can involve more than one
human being.)For both Hobbes and Hume the rules of justice, and thereby political unity, should be understood,
or conceptualized, as originating at a particular moment in time when all the potential members of a society say
something to all the other members about their wish to be ruled by law. Hume denies, of course, that this is a
historical fact.
xxvi
David Hume, The History of England, op. cit. Vol. 6; 197; http://oll.libertyfund.org/titles/793#Hume_001106_443 Throughout his treatment of De Witt, Hume reminds the reader of his strength of mind under duress.
xxvii
For a very careful treatment see McArthur, Neil. David Hume's Political Theory: Law, Commerce, and the
Constitution of Government. University of Toronto Press, 2007.
xxviii
In Hume, the adherence to rule of law fits a larger, conservative commitment to the value of tradition. But
that is not true of Liberalism as such.
xxix
David Hume, The History of England, op. cit. Vol. 6, 321; http://oll.libertyfund.org/titles/793#Hume_001106_502
xxx
For more thorough criticism of Israel, see De Dijn, Annelien. 2012. The Politics of Enlightenment: From
Peter Gay to Jonathan Israel. The Historical Journal, 55: 785-805. Schliesser, E. (2014). Jonathan Israel,
Democratic Enlightenment: Philosophy, Revolution, and Human Rights, 1750-1790. Œconomia. History,
Methodology, Philosophy, (4-4), 651-657. In Hume's plan for a perfect commonwealth foreign policy is
insulated from democratic control. He lodges it in the "council of state" which includes only three members.
xxxi
The junta consists of eight members.
xxxii
Livy, Ab Urbe Condita, iii. 26–29 translated by John Henry Freese, Alfred John Church, and William
Jackson Brodribb http://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/10828/pg10828-images.html.
xxxiii
One of his improvements over the constitution of the Dutch Republic is the removal of the veto power,
"which every province and town has upon the whole body of the DUTCH republic, with regard to alliances,
peace and war, and the imposition of taxes, is here removed."
http://www.econlib.org/library/LFBooks/Hume/hmMPL39.html
xxxiv
He requires the senate's judgment that there is, indeed, a state of emergency.
xxxv
Another example of emergency power is the European Central Bank, which has been operating very close to
the edge of its legal mandate for over half a decade now.
xxxvi
Hume makes the point by drawing a contrast between vulgar and refined politicians. When Hume describes
the meeting of Temple and De Witt, he writes about Temple that “This man, whom philosophy had taught to
despise the world, without rendering him unfit for it, was frank, open, sincere, superior to the little tricks of
vulgar politicians.” Temple has contempt for the “vulgar politician.” The implied contrast here is with his
attitude toward the refined politician. Hume agrees with Temple’s criticism of the ‘vulgar politician.’ For
according to Hume, the vulgar politicians “are apt... to have recourse to more hasty and more dangerous
remedies.” David Hume, The History of England, op. cit. Vol. 6, 322;
http://oll.libertyfund.org/titles/793#Hume_0011-06_702.
xxxvii
Hume reports Temple as claiming” (correctly) that “to remove things from their center, or proper element,
required force and labour; but that of themselves they easily returned to it.” That is, Temple’s position
presupposes knowledge of social causes (i.e., knowledge of what is 'natural' or 'proper' in social life.)
xxxviii
See Hume “That Politics May be Reduced to a Science.”
xxxix
Though de Wit’s intelligence in foreign courts was not equal to the vigilance of his domestic administration,
he had, long before, received many surmises of this fatal confederacy; but he prepared not for defence, so early
or with such industry, as the danger required. A union of England with France was evidently, he saw,
destructive to the interests of the former kingdom; and therefore, overlooking or ignorant of the humours and
secret views of Charles, he concluded it impossible, that such pernicious projects could ever really be carried
into execution. Secure in this fallacious reasoning, he allowed the republic to remain too long in that defenceless
situation, into which many concurring accidents had conspired to throw her. David Hume, The History of
England, op. cit. Vol. 6, 257-8; http://oll.libertyfund.org/titles/793#Hume_0011-06_576
xl
Hume is aware that De Witt had political reasons for allowing the army to be weakened (see below).
xxv
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This is not the place to articulate Hume’s positive views of the role of the emotions in foreign affairs; but he is
quite clear that these are governed not only by rational considerations. Here’s a nice example of Hume’s
criticism of British foreign policy: “In the first place, we seem to have been more possessed with the ancient
GREEK spirit of jealous emulation, than actuated by the prudent views of modern politics…Here then we see,
that above half of our wars with FRANCE, and all our public debts, are owing more to our own imprudent
vehemence, than to the ambition of our neighbours.” (“Of the Balance of Power.”) Rotwein is still an
indispensable guide to the role of passions in Hume’s account of social life. See his lengthy introduction to
Hume, David. "Writings on Economics, edited and introduction by Eugene Rotwein." (1955): Madison:
University of Wisconsin Press
xlii
AT VI 22/CSM I 122. One might have thought that Cartesians would be well placed to have knowledge of
human nature. Descartes’s Passions of the Soul is a careful analysis of causes of human affairs.
xliii
While it is unclear if De Witt should have allowed the Orangist army to remain a mortal threat to his regime,
it is pretty clear that Hume thinks that military affairs should be closely guarded against corruption. “these new
officers, relying on the credit of their friends and family, neglected their military duty; and some of them, it is
said, were even allowed to serve by deputies, to whom they assigned a small part of their pay.” David Hume,
The History of England, Vol. 6, 258; http://oll.libertyfund.org/titles/793#Hume_0011-06_577
xliv
And taken out of context, one might also assume that Hume agrees with those Republican authors of his day
that declaimed against the vices of luxury and commerce (for Hume's considered views, see "Of Commerce"
and "Of Refinement in the Arts.") For excellent discussion, see Hont, I. (2005). Jealousy of trade: international
competition and the nation-state in historical perspective. Harvard University Press.
xlv
Hume here deviates from Spinoza's (briefer) analysis which explicitly treats De Witt's power, and subsequent
fall, as evidence for the bad institutional design of the Dutch (oligarchic) aristocracy of his age. (Hume is not
against such explanations, as his treatment of the natural experiment involving Genoa very nicely exhibits in his
essay, "That Politics May be Reduced to a Science.")
xlvi
This is not the place to explore Hume’s account of political rule. See José A. Benardete (2013). Greatness of
Soul in Hume, Aristotle, and Hobbes as Shadowed by Milton's Satan. Cambridge Scholars Publishing.
xlvii
Newton’s Principia appeared during this period.
xlviii
Klever, W. N. A. (1997). Mannen rond Spinoza, 1650-1700: presentatie van een emanciperende generatie.
Uitgeverij Verloren.
xlix
"And although these errors will be improved upon before long through the use of the clocks, it would still be
very helpful if one investigated the true longitude at some important places with regard to the Meridian of Texel
or Amsterdam, by observing the satelites of Jupiter, of which there was mention before." Translated by G.E. Smith
& Eric Schliesser see Huygens, OCCH, Vol. 9, p. 290f.
l
Philip van Praag & Herman de Liagre Böhl (2015) “Tussen Wetenschap en Engagement: De Roerige
Geschiedenis van de Amsterdamse Politicologie, in Politicologie in Nederland: Van Politisering naar
Professionalisering, red. Rudy B. Andeweg & Barbara Vis. Oudewater: NKWP, o. 20
li
The Locus Classicus is Knight, F. H. (1921) Risk, uncertainty and profit. Boston: Houghton Mifflin; see also
Keynes, J. M. (1921). A treatise on probability. London: Macmillan. In economics, conditions of uncertainty are
operationalized if no long-run profitable insurance is possible; see Malinvaud, Edmond. "The allocation of
individual risks in large markets." Journal of economic theory 4.2 (1972): 312-328.
lii
Harman, Graham. "Bruno Latour: Reassembling the Political." (2014).
liii
Both claims require further defense. I have discussed the first claim, en passant, in two papers: Schliesser,
Eric. "Articulating practices as reasons." Adam Smith Review 2 (2006): 69-97 & Schliesser, E. (2013).
“Philosophic prophecy.” Op. cit.
liv
Eric Schliesser "The Separation of Economics from Virtue: a Historical Conceptual Introduction," in Baker, J.
A., & White, M. D. (Eds.). (2015). Economics and the Virtues: Building a New Moral Foundation. Oxford
University Press.
lv
For an example see G.J. Stigler
lvi
jos de bos (2001) "Een primaat van politiek" Vossiuspers, Amsterdam, p. 8.
lvii
Here’s some evidence for it. Knight, F. H. (1921) Risk, uncertainty and profit. New York: [publisher]. In
December 2015 it had amassed 22224 citations according to scholar.google of which 8993 since 2010 and circa
12500 since 2007. That is to say, since the financial crisis broke it amassed more citations than in the first
eighty-five years since it was published. Presumably many of the new citations are totemic. Scholar.google
numbers should be treated with caution, but they give good evidence of the size of the effect that I am
describing.
lviii
David Viniar in The Financial Times On 13 August 2007.
lix
It is very misleading to conceive of such occurrences as fat tails.
lx
Schliesser, Eric. "Four Species of Reflexivity and History of Economics in Economic Policy Science*."
Journal of the Philosophy of History 5.3 (2011): 425-445.
xli
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lxi
I have started researching and teaching two traditions of thought that are not intrinsically Liberal, but also not
anti-Liberal as such: nineteenth century Zionism and medieval Islamic political thought. Nineteenth-century
Zionism was born from a profound diagnosis of the failure of the Liberal project to deliver the promised fruits of
Jewish Emancipation. Second, the golden age of Islamic political theory was developed in the context of multiethnic empires in which there were competing sources of intellectual authority: revelation, law, tradition, and
science; the tradition is also essential background to Thomist and Spinozist philosophy. As the Argentinian
story-teller, Borges, reminds us, this tradition is a living present in ‘Western’ thought long before some of our
young turned to Jihad.A few years ago I was giving a lecture on Spinoza at the Rotary club in Zeist. During
Q&A I was asked why the Islamic world had not developed its own Spinoza. Before I answered that Spinoza
was deeply indebted to Islamic thought, I asked the audience to indulge me in a personal question to them. How
many of them had parents or grandparents with roots in the Dutch-Indies. To my amazement about two-thirds
of the hands went up; I then asked how many knew anything about the brand of Islam practiced there. All the
hands stayed down. After that evening, I reflected on my Bildung. I had read Multatuli, Nijhoff, Du Perron, Van
Dis, etc. But I was basically as ignorant as my audience about the history of Dutch experience with Islam.
lxii
Levy, D. M., & Peart, S. (2008). The street porter and the philosopher: conversations on analytical
egalitarianism. University of Michigan Press. Levy, D. M., & Peart, S. J. (2008). Thinking about analytical
egalitarianism. American Journal of Economics and Sociology, 67(3), 473-479.
lxiii
Cf. How for Rawls, “the moral theorist” can be thought of “as an observer, so to speak, who seeks to set out
the structure of other people’s moral conceptions and attitudes…We may also include ourselves, since we are
ready to hand for detailed self-examination. But in studying oneself, one must separate one’s role as a moral
theorist from one’s role as someone who has a particular conception.” Rawls, John. "The independence of moral
theory." Proceedings and addresses of the American philosophical association. Vol. 48. American
Philosophical Association, 1974: 7.
lxiv
That is, models of social reality should not be purely extensional, but have to be intentional (with all the
concerns about opacity, lack of substitution, etc.).
lxv
Markets, technology, and science all generate social transformations of the sort discussed and modelled by
L.A. Paul in individuals. Paul, L. A. (2014). Transformative experience. Oxford University Press.
lxvi
Al-Farabi Political Regime, in The Political Writings, Volume II Cornell University Press (2015) p. 87
(section 115) Obviously, what he means by the institutional structure of ‘democracy’ and what moderns may
mean by ‘democracy’ is different.
22