Pluralism and the Big Experiment

On Friday, I quoted William James thus:

"See everywhere the struggle and the squeeze; and ever-lastingly the problem of how to make them less. The anarchists, nihilists and free-lovers; the free-silverites, socialists, and single-tax men; the free-traders and civil-service reformers; the prohibitionists and anti-vivisectionists; the radical darwinians with their idea of the suppression of the weak, -- these and all the conservative sentiments of society arrayed against them are simply deciding through actual experiment by what sort of conduct the maximum amount of good can be gained and kept in this world."

This is from The Moral Philosopher and the Moral Life, an essay in which James anticipated the point of view that later came to be known as "value pluralism," a theory in meta-ethics associated with Isaiah Berlin and Joseph Raz.

Henry responded, in the comments section, that James was too optimistic. Surely the advocates of some of those viewpoints were after things nastier than seeking the maximum amount of good that can be gained and kept in the world?

Yes, I answered, they were. And their counterparts today are. Indeed, James' language about those he here calls "radical darwinians" suggests he thinks of them as rather malevolent. He isn't referring simply to the Spencerian notion of failing to assist "the weak," but to something more active, the "suppression" of the weak, which seems to me a reference to the spread of eugenic ideas in his day.

But still, as Henry notes, James refers to these radical Darwinians as part of the great higgle-haggle with the others, so they must in some sense be part of the Big Experiment. Isn't this too optimistic a view of them?

I think James would say that the functioning of one particular faction within this Big Experiment does not depend upon the motives of anyone involved. Thus, for instance, at least some of those "free lovers" he mentions might be motivated by old-fashioned lust, and an unwillingness to abide by the contraints of monogamy. rather than by a desire to produce the best possible mutual accomodation of conflicting values. Still, if such a movement finds resonance, if it builds a base and becomes politically or demographically significant, it will be because it speaks to some dissatisfaction. It will be because the status quo locks out some sentiments, frustrates some energies, and there will be -- should be -- a constant press to include what is so far excluded.

And, yes, one could say the same about Nazism. Hitler didn't build a popular following because a lot of Germans decided they wanted to kill a lot of people. war. He built a following because life in the Weimar Republic was miserable for many, and he gavwe them a vent for that misery. This qualifies Nazism, too, as part of the Big Experiment deciding through actual experiment by what sort of conduct the maximum amount of good can be gained and kept in this world, even though nobody involved would have described it that way, and even though that particular trial was an enormous failure by that test. The idea of a Big Experiment is a way of understanding history, and thus a history-based way of understanding morality. It is not a hypothesis about the psychology involved among the people 'making' history.

Even the wreckage of Nazism, BTW, left some benefits behind. In the English-speaking countries, especially, the war seems to have thoroughly discredited eugenic ideas, for example, so that have disappeared from the fray.

Some Themes

Restating some of the themes that are the reason this blog exists, but whence I often drift....

My view is that the soundest foundation for political thought is the moral philosophy outlined by the philosopher William James in "The Moral Philosopher and the the Moral Life".

That essay is perhaps best remembered for this sentence.

"Or if the hypothesis were offered us of a world in which Messrs. Fourier's and Bellamy's and Morris's utopias should all be outdone, and millions kept permanently happy on the one simple condition that a certain lost soul on the far‑off edge of things should lead a life of lonely torture, what except a specifical and independent sort of emotion can it be which would make us immediately feel, even though an impulse arose within us to clutch at the happiness so offered, how hideous a thing would be its enjoyment when deliberately accepted as the fruit of such a bargain?"

The point is that we ought to respect that specifical and independent emotion and refrain from torturing the lost soul.

But let us continue with James' essay. For his overriding point is that we will always act under conditions of uncertainty, because "there is no such thing possible" James writes, "as an ethical philosophy dogmatically made up in advance."

There are a plurality of rights that are, in the context of our limited temporal perspective, in conflict. The only way forward is the meta-right of reconciling the first-order rights. He gives an entertainingly condensed picture of politico-moral conflicts at the end of the 19th century. "See everywhere the struggle and the squeeze; and ever-lastingly the problem of how to make them less. The anarchists, nihilists and free-lovers; the free-silverites, socialists, and single-tax men; the free-traders and civil-service reformers; the prohibitionists and anti-vivisectionists; the radical darwinians with their idea of the suppression of the weak, -- these and all the conservative sentiments of society arrayed against them are simply deciding through actual experiment by what sort of conduct the maximum amount of good can be gained and kept in this world."

In this process, we are all bound to be in the wrong in some sense. Hence the need to pray for forgiveness. But we may also hope that even in our wrongnesses we contribute to the education and development of our species, to the gradual reconciliation of the different rights. To the meta-right.

Thus much, James. I do not claim him as an anarcho-capitalist. Indeed, you'll see that he lists "anarchists" as one of the contending factions in the above exposition, part of the fray. A philosopher will be above the fray. (The "conservative sentiments of society" are part of the fray too, though arrayed against all the others.)

My own view of anarcho-capitalism, though, is that it is actually one with the meta-right. It is what I see when I seek to join James above that fray. It is where we will find ourselves heading as we work to reconcile all of our different impulses.

Josiah Royce expounded on a similar concept when he talked about "loyalty to loyalty." A meta-loyalty. He wrote about how wonderful loyalty to a group larger than one's self is. But then he took note of the obvious objection to any "philosophy of loyalty." A pirate may be loyal to his pirate captain. They may all work together quite well. But they are working to rob the honest folk who have trusted treasure to that merchant vessel so unfortunate as to sail past them! Should we celebrate the loyalty of a pirate?

Well ... yes, in a sense. But we should also note that it fails to be loyal to loyalty itself. The loyalty of the sailor on the merchant vessel to HIS captain doesn't infringe upon anyone else's loyalty. THAT sort of loyalty, then, is also meta-loyal. The pirate's loyalty only works to defeat the loyalty of others, and this is both exemplifies an ideal and undermines it.

Meta-right. Loyalties that include loyalty to loyalty. In such ideas we see the way forward, and I hold that way will turn out to be anarchic. In the meantime, we deal with the specific dilemmas we face as best we can, fumbling, and trying to keep in mind the broader goals beyond the day to day crises.