Power: An Introduction—Part 3(c) ii

Please note: This concluding post in the series presumes one has read the prior posts on the subject, but in particular the posts commencing with "Power: An Introduction—Part 3(a)."

Our final discussion of "power" examines the de that comes from the possession and exercise of spiritual and moral authority. It draws on examples and exemplars from several classical Chinese worldviews.

The Art of Rulership (Huainanzi, 2nd century BCE) is, arguably, a provocative attempt to integrate conventional conceptions of legal and political power with the more obscure or ill-understood notions and descriptions of moral and spiritual power we find in circulation among classical Chinese worldviews. But such an integration was not literally possible owing to the vastly different presuppositions and assumptions one finds at the root of Legalist thinkers and their Confucian and Daoist counterparts. As Roger Ames informs us, the text is littered with ostensibly Legalist terminology, analogies, metaphors and allusions but it does not "read" at all as a Legalist work of political philosophy or even an attempt to integrate or harmonize this philosophy (were that possible) with writings we today identify as Confucian and Daoist. Instead, the "spirit of eclecticism" and "creative syncretism" (what Goldin prefers to call 'insidious syncretism') that characterizes this Han dynasty treatise, suggests its animating purposes are best described as Confucian and (especially) Daoist, and thus Legalist assumptions, beliefs and premises about power cannot be reconciled with those purposes: "The political theory contained in The Art of Rulership, although constructed with an obvious Legalist facing, shares an underlying sympathy with precepts of Taoist and Confucian origin and, taken in total, contains a systematic political philosophy that is not only unique but compelling" (Roger Ames).

Two passages must suffice here to illustrate the distance of the Huainanzi from the (im)moral and political views of the Legalists, First: "Punishment and penalties are inadequate to put an end to wickedness. Only godlike transformation is estimable and only the most essential vapors [zhijing, 'subtle or utmost essence.' As Ames explains, this expression 'is a special term in this treatise connoting a powerful though intangible inner potency which, when concentrated and retained intact, can be directed at others to influence their activities and effect their transformation.'] can do it in this way." Second: "There is that by which a State is preserved; there is that by which a man stays alive. That on which a State exists is benevolence and rightness; that on the basis of which man lives is doing good." Therefore my take on the Zhushu chapter of the Huainanzi is akin to Ames's interpretation and in opposition to Paul Rakita Gordin's plausible but (what I believe to be) unpersuasive argument that the principle (or ideal) of limin or "benefiting the people," "represents a consciously articulated ideology of autistic paternalism." I would rather characterize it as an early Chinese variant of "benevolent libertarian paternalism" or perhaps an "ethics of care and empathy" writ large!

From The Analects (Ames and Rosemont translation):

1.2 Master You said: 'It is a rare thing for someone who has a sense of filial and fraternal responsibility (xiaodi) to have a taste for defying authority. And it is unheard of for those who have no taste for defying authority to be keen on initiating rebellion. Exemplary persons (junzi) concentrate their efforts on the root, for the root having taken hold, the way (dao) will grow therefrom. As for filial and fraternal responsibility, it is, I suspect, the root of authoritative conduct (ren).'
Comment: Notice that this does not mean that a junzi will never have a reason for deying authority. As virtue ethical theory reminds us, the source of sound character and goodness is cultivated first in the family and intimate relations. Likewise, ren is no less relevant to questions of authority and responsibility in wider social relations, in particular, the political realm, and the junzi will therefore have a proper understanding of the reasons behind the exercise of authority beyond the intimate sphere in the arena of collective conduct.

1.10 Ziqin asked Zigong: 'When the Master arrives in a particular state and needs to learn how it is being governed, does he seek out this information or is it offered to him?' Zigong replied: 'The Master gets all he needs by being cordial, proper, deferential, frugal and unassuming. Perhaps this way of seeking information is somewhat different from how others go about it.'

1.15 Zigong said: 'What do you think of the saying, "Poor but not inferior, rich but not superior?"' The Master replied: 'Not bad, but not as good as "Poor but engaging the dao, rich but loving li."' Zigong said: 'The Book of Songs states, "Like bone carved and polished, Like jade cut and ground." Is this not what you have in mind?' The Master said: 'Zigong, it is only with the likes of you then that I can discuss the Songs.'
Comment: One reason I've included this passage is that it provides us with an exquisite excuse to introduce, by way of Michael Nylan's book (2001), the significance of the Five Classics (namely, the Book of Documents [or Book of History], the Book of Odes [or Book of Songs], the Yijing [or Book of Changes], the Rites [Li] Canons, and the Spring and Autumn Annals), but in particular and especially the Book of Odes in both Confucianism and Chinese civilization of the period in general. In addition to the Analects, these texts quicken our appreciation of the role of li and wen in the self-cultivation or spiritual askesis of the (would be) junzi and more widely as the social forms and institutions through which jen is made manifest and thus the power of de is expressed and felt. In other words, here we witness the power of de in action, that is, the de of wisdom and judgment embodied in the praxis of the microcosmic realm of the intimate sphere on the one hand, and in the praxis of the interrelated and complementary macrocosmic political sphere on the other:

"As a textbook of style and the language of diplomacy (in both senses of the word), the Odes could hardly be outdone. A storehouse of elegant language and refined formulae, preferably intoned with special pronunciations in set keys, it served as a kind of early thesauras and book of etiquette rolled into one, whose limited format was of limitless applicability. The social graces in turn were what made for an impressive character: the 'sound of virtue' capable of influencing others for the good. Good students of the Odes, according to tradition, 'incite [others'] emotions, observe their feelings carefully, keep company with others, or express grievances, either in the service of their fathers at home or their princes abroad.' [....] This potential for suasive power, the most typical motive cited for the study of the Odes and for the inclusion of the canon in the curriculum of the polite arts, rested on an admirable virtuosity. The ability to select on the spot an apt citation from the anthology so as 'to round out meaning' displayed erudition and perceptiveness. To go on to compose minor variations on an ode or to match or 'cap' a verse, returning it with one better, took greater improvisational insight. The ultimate test of a person's discernment—the capacity to make perceptive connections—occurred in the social arena in contests of oratorical skill in which the recitation of short selections from the odes or extemporaneous variations on them could sway the course of events [emphasis added]. [The indissoluble ties sketched here between literature, etiquette and ethics bear comparison with the concept and praxis of adab in Islamic history, as well as with the Republic of Letters in the Parisian salons of the European Enlightenment, governed by remarkable salonnières like Marie-Thérèse Geoffrin: the female equivalent of the Confucian junzi.]

[T]hose who could chant odes and respond appropriately to them were considered 'qualified to become great officers' who would 'turn their merits to account.' Conversely, the lack of such abilities was deemed sure proof of the person's loutishness, ignorance, insensitivity, and lack of suasive influence, in that 'words lacking pattern and refinement do not go far [in persuading others].' Based on his knowledge of odes, one could get a fair grasp of a man's training, self-discipline, and resourcefulness. And this ability to know men via their knowledge of the Odes, was considered the most valuable type of knowledge available to the ruling elite. To know others and to be known favorably by them was the one skill essential to those wishing to acquire or retain high rank. At the same time, those already in power needed to exercise their powers of discernment in knowing others, lest they fail to measure merit accurately, employ it suitably, and reward it proportionately, for only thus can a superior attract good men to his service and secure their loyalty [emphasis added].

In the political domain...acts of knowng and persuading rested upon wise use of the Odes. Where the Documents canon enjoin rulers to know men, the phrase is always in the context of selecting the very best men for bureaucratic office. But if the odes, or at least the State Airs, were in any part the powerful expressions of unlettered commoners, then the task of knowing men ultimately required at the same time the development of a fine sensitivity to the less overtly political, an attention to the essential, irreducible nature and feelings common to all people at all eras, regardless of rank, so as to arrive at the broadest, most long-range, and most compelling views possible. [....] [T]he very existence of the Odes anthology and its reputed origins implied the necessity for members of the ruling elite to attend closely to the stories, duties, and songs circulating among the very lowliest subjects in the state, even the fuel and fodder gatherers, for only in that way could one know enough men well enough to persuade and be persuaded by them, as appropriate [emphasis added]." (Michael Nylan)

2.1 The Master said: 'Governing with de can be compared to the North Star: the North Star dwells in its place, and the multitude of stars pay it tribute.'
Comment: As Ames and Rosemont remark in their note to this passage, "This is the Confucian version of the Daoist 'nonassertive action' (wuwei) where patterns of deference make governing 'noncoercive' and 'authority' is authoritative rather than authoritarian." In The Art of Rulership (1994) Ames elaborates: "The ruler 'does nothing' inasmuch as his personal cultivation, possible only through interaction with his people, does not require the projection of arbitrary demands on his subordinates. His relationship with these subordinates is characterized by a total absence of compulsion. That the particular realization of these subordinates happens to be congruent with that of the ruler is due to their common participation in a creative moral order."

2.3 The Master said: 'Lead the people with administrative injunctions (zheng) and keep them orderly with penal law (xing) and they will avoid punishments but be without a sense of shame. Lead them with de and keep them orderly through observing li and they will develop a sense of shame, and moreover, will order themselves.'
Comment: Much could be said about this passage but I'd like to exploit the mention of li to once more share a bit from Nylan's brilliant treatment of the Five Classics, this time round on the meaning of li in the Li canons:

"[The three Rites canons] assume that everyone can be perfected; they stipulate that a code of manners, aristocratic in origin, be learned and applied to all humans; they advocate the assignment of social rank according to virtue and merit, defining both in terms of relative contributions to the larger society, and they aim to school each person, through theory and praxis, in the very social skills that facilitate effective interaction. Accordingly, it should come as no surprise that nonelites in early, medieval, and late imperial China were at times more eager than the social and political elites to embrace the precepts set forth in the Rites canons. The rites could empower commoners to join the elites justs as easily as they empowered elites.

Training in ritual [li]...habituated persons to strict order and hierarchy while providing the periodic indulgences and spectacles that gave people welcome release from their daily drudgery. At the same time, it served to preclude or regulate unhealthy or unrealizable desires, making the expression of human feelings both refined and satisfying. Finally, the aesthetic coherence of individual rites were then deeply pleasurable to participants and audience alike, which tended to reinforce the desire to behave well. By contrast, the penal code hardly guaranteed better conduct. Written laws, which did nothing to reform the person from within, would more likely spur men to look for legal loopholes or to turn litigious. Rites worked to instill morality, in other words, penal law could only define the illegal, notify people that crimes are to be avoided, and punish crimes after the fact, For Confucius, then, rule by ritual is manifestly better than rule by law, not only because it is inherently more humane, but also because it is more effective. Whereas rule by law can only at best deter crime, rule by ritual can preempt the impulse to crime by fostering in humans, through symbolic systems, the desire to create and enhance community, and so teach humans to satisfy their most basic needs without hurting others."

2.21 Someone asked Confucius, 'Why are you not employed in governing?' The Master replied, 'The Book of Documents says: It is all in filial conduct (xiao)! Just being filial to your parents and befriending your brothers is carrying out the work of government. In doing this, I am employed in governing. Why must I be "employed in governing?"'
Comment: Self-government is morally obligatory and prior to wider forms of governance and government. Like eudaimonistic ethics, Confucianism offers us a type of moral individualism (or moral autonomy in the minimal sense) if only because of its concentration on self-cultivation and character development, as well as the fact that individuals are responsible for actualizing objective value in the world. Again, like eudaimonism, self-government made possible through self-cultivation (by way of li and wen) is the ideal model or paradigm of good collective government. Therefore one of the criteria for assessing the moral legitimacy of the latter form of government is its ability to generalize throughout society the opportunity and capacity for self-cultivation and self-government and thus the attainment of ren. More fundamentally, collective good government should provide the necessary preconditions of self-cultivation that are not self-suppliable by individuals. Individuals, in turn, are under an individual and collective moral obligation to support a state that endeavors to meet these conditions and criteria (cf. David L. Norton, Democracy and Moral Development: A Politics of Virtue, 1991: 6-11).

4.1 The Master said, 'In taking up one's residence, it is the presence of authoritative persons (ren) that is the greatest attraction. How can anyone be called wise who, in having the choice, does not seek to dwell among authoritative people?'

4.25 The Master said, 'Excellent persons (de) do not dwell alone; they are sure to have neighbors.'

8.9 The Master said, 'The common people can be induced to travel along the way, but they cannot be induced to realize (zhi).'
Comment: The junzi and the sage possess the requisite ren and zhi that can motivate others, through the power of de, to follow the dao, to practice or emulate good behavior, even if the common people lack the wisdom and self-knowledge possessed by the sage and junzi. There is an implicit recognition here and elsewhere in the Analects of the necessity for what James MacGregor Burns has termed "transforming leadership" (Burns thought Mahatma Gandhi was 'perhaps the best modern example' of such leadership. For a brief but informative discussion, see Dennis Dalton's Mahatma Gandhi: Nonviolent Power in Action, 1993: 191-194). According to Burns, "Transforming leadership [in contrast to the 'transactional' type] ultimately becomes moral in that it raises the level of human conduct and ethical aspiration of both leader and led, and thus it has a transformative effect on both."

12.19 Ji Kangzi asked Confucius about governing effectively, saying, 'What if I kill those who have abandoned the dao to attract those who are on it?' 'If you govern effectively,' Confucius replied, 'what need is there for killing? If you want to be truly adept, the people will also be adept. The de of the junzi is the wind, while that of the petty person is the grass. As the wind blows, the grass is sure to bend.'

15.5 The Master said, 'If anyone could be said to have effected proper order while remaining nonassertive, surely it was Shun. What did he do? He simply assumed an air of deference and faced due south.'
Comment: Ames will again be our guide: "This passage is not an unrepresentative excerpt from the Analects. On the contrary, it can be regarded as a succinct characterization of the Confucian attitude toward government. In this ideal Confucian administration, the ruler does not personally attend to matters of government, but by setting a positive example and through the charismatic influence of his virtue (de), the people are led into a manner of conduct in which they seek moral achievement" (cf. 2.1 above). And although this is the only instance of the term wu-wei in the Analects, "it can be argued that wu-wei is an appropriate description of the ideal Confucian ruler: one who reigns but does not rule." Philip J. Ivanhoe confirms and expands upon the above, noting that, in the case of rulers, it is de that "enabled them to attract loyalty and worthy followers; it gave them a way to legitimize a noncoercive form of government."

From the Daodejing (Translations by LaFargue [L], Ivanhoe [I]):

67 [L]:
I have three treasures,
I protect and keep hold of them.
The first is called 'gentleness'
The second is called 'frugality'
The third is called 'not promising to act like leader of the world.'
Gentle, so able to be bold
frugal, so able to be lavish
not presuming to act like leader of the world, so able to become head of government.
Now:
To be bold without being gentle
to be lavish without being frugal
to act like a leader without putting oneself last:
this is death.
Yes, gentleness:
'Attack with it and you will win
defend with it and your will stand firm.'
When Tian wants to resuce someone,
it surrounds them with a wall of gentleness.

7 [I]:
Tian is long lasting;
Earth endures.
Tian is able to be long lasting and Earth is able to endure,
because they do not live for themselves.
And so, they are able to be long lasting and to endure.
This is why sages put themselves last and yet come first;
treat themselves as unimportant and yet are preserved.
Is it not because they have no thought of themselves,
that they are able to perfect themselves?

23 [I]:
To be sparing with words is what comes naturally,
And so,
A blustery wind does not last all morning;
A heavy downpour does not last all day.
Who produces these?
Tian and Earth!
If not even Tian and Earth can keep things going ofr a long time,
How much less can human beings?
This is why one should follow the Dao in all that one does.
One who follows the Dao identifies with De.
One who follows loss identifies with loss.
The Dao is pleased to have those who identify with the Dao.
Loss is pleased to have those identify with loss.
Those lacking in trust are not trusted.

46 [L]:
When the world has Dao,
they have no use for saddle horses,
using them to haul manure.
When the world has no Dao,
they raise war horses on sacred ground.

Nothing is more crime producing than desirable things,
nothing is a worse misfortune than not being content,
nothing makes for more guilt than desire for gain.
Yes:
Be content with enough, and there will always be enough.

59 [L]:
'When it comes to governing the people and securing Tian, there's nothing like a farmer.'
Just being a farmer—
This means getting dressed early.
Getting dressed early means increasing one's store of De
increasing one's store of De, then nothing is impossible
nothing impossible, then no telling the limit
no telling the limit, then one can possess the state.
One who possesses the Mother of the state can last a long time.
This means having deep roots and strong foundations,
the Dao of 'lasting life, good eyesight into old age.'

10 [L]:
When 'carrying your soul,' embracing the One Thing,
can you be undivided?
When concentrating qi, bringing about Softness,'
can you be like an infant?
When 'claeansing and purifying the mysterious mirror,'
can you be without blemish?
When 'loving the people and caring for the kingdom,'
can you be without knowledge?
When 'the Doors of Tian open and shut,'
can you remain Feminine?
When 'Clarity and bareness penetrate everywhere,'
can you remain wuwei?
Produce and nourish.
Produce but don't possess
work but don't rely on this
preside but don't rule.
This is mysterious De.
Comment: In speaking to the "many esoteric phrases...whose concrete reference is now lost to us," LaFargue informs us that "Groups of people who meditate regularly often develop a highly differentiated awareness of inner states and movements and a special vocabulary to describe them, which outsiders always will have difficulty understanding." To my knowledge, the one scholar who has consistently, coherently and persuasively examined the corpus of early Daoist writings that make reference to the mystical states of consciousness that may result from meditation practices (for the latter is a necessary but not sufficient condition for the former) is Harold D. Roth. According to Roth, the Daoist master-disciple lineages that produced texts elucidating insights from "inner cultivation" practices and their practical benefits, were engaged in particular in the "apophatic" meditation practice "of removing the normal contents of the mind to produce a profound tranquility with a decisively noetic character" (cf. Robert K.C. Forman, ed., The Problem of Pure Consciousness: Mysticism and Philosophy, 1990). Roth argues that early Daoism shows evidence of intimate acquaintance with what he calls "bimodal" mystical experience, the first mode of which "is an introvertive unitive consciousness in which the adept achieves complete union with the Dao," while the second mode "is an extrovertive transformed consciousness in which the adept returns to the world [not unlike the philospher who, after his vision of the Sun—the Good—returns to the Cave in Plato's Allegory of the Cave] and retains, amidst the flow of daily life, a profound sense of the unity previously experienced in the introvertive mode. This experience entails an ability to live with the world free from the limited and biased perspective of the individual ego." Daoist texts routinely reference meditation practices and the subsequent relevance of the mystical states of mind for living in harmony with the natural and "heavenly" worlds, as well as the Dao that is metaphysically responsible for or ontologically sustains those worlds (and yet transcends them). Unlike many well-known works penned by other mystics East and West, the Daoists do not attempt to give some phenomenological description or "taste" of mystical states of consciousness or subjective accounts of what such experiences "are like." Nevertheless, the Daoists did develop a basic vocabulary for mystical states of consciousness as seen in chapter 10 above and elsewhere in their early texts with such words as the "Unadorned" (su), the "Unhewn" (pu), "tranquility" (jing), and "emptiness" (xu), the last being "the penultimate meditative state in several of our early Daoist sources." In 4.28 of the Zhuangzi, for example, there is the well-known "fasting of the mind" passage: "It is only the Dao that coalesces with emptiness. Emptiness is the fasting of the mind." (cf. Roth's article, "Bimodal Mystical Experience in the 'Qiwulun' Chapter of the Zhuangzi," in Scott Cook, ed., Hiding the World in the World: Uneven Discourses on the Zhuangzi, 2003: 15-32).

16 [L]:
Push Emptiness to the limit,
watch over Stillness very firmly.
The thousands of things all around are active—
I give my attention to the Turning Back.
Things growing wild as weeds
all turn back to the Root.
To turn back to the Root is called Stillness.
This is 'reporting in'
'reporting in; is becoming Steady.
Experiencing Steadiness is Clarity.
Not to experience Steadiness is to be heedless in one's actions—misfortune.
Experiencing Steadiness, then one is all-embracing
all-embracing, then an impartial Prince
Prince, the Emperor
Emperor, then Tian
Tian, then Dao
Dao, then one lasts very long.
As to destroying the self, there will be nothing to fear.

56 [L] (partial):
Close your eyes
shut your doors.
Dampen the passion
untie the tangles
make the flashing things harmonious
make the dust merge together.
This is called the Mysterious Merging.
Comment: LaFargue writes that these sayings are about the askesis imperative of meditation instruction, and no doubt Roth would agree.

42 [L and I] (partial):
Dao produced the One
The One produced Two
Two produced Three
Three produced the thousands of things.
The myriad creatures shoulder yin and embrace yang,
and by blending these qi they attain harmony.
Comment: I think Ivanhoe's interpretation is close to if not on the mark: "I take the Way to be the most inclusive term designating the hidden, underlying structure of things. The 'One' would then be its xiang, 'image,' the closest thing we have to a picture or representation of the Way." The One might also be qi, insofar as we can logically and conceptually distinguish qi from yin and yang, thus "two" would be yin and yang, and "three" would be qi + yin and yang (If I recall correctly, I think Livia Kohn also interprets it this way.).

47 [L]:
Understanding the world without going out the door.
Understanding Tian's Dao without looking out the window.
Traveling very widely, understanding very little.
And so the Wise Person:
Knows without any going
names without any looking
accomplishes without any doing.
Comment: Perhaps needless to say, we see here the fundamental importance of "inner cultivation" practices and their relation to wuwei.

53 [L]:
If I had the least bit of understanding
I would walk on the great Dao.
Only display will be dangerous.
The great Dao is very smooth
but people love bypaths.
The court is very well kept
the fields are very weedy
the granaries very empty,
'Their clothes are fine and colorful
on their belts are sharp swords,
they are filled with food and drink'
a superabundance of expensive goods.
This is robbers boasting
certainly not the Dao.

77 [L]: Tian's Dao is like the stringing of a bow: It pulls down what is high
it lifts up what is low
it takes away from what has an abundance to give to what has not enough.
Tian's Dao:
Take away from what has an abundance help along what has not enough.
People's way is not like this:
Take away from what has not enough to offer it to what has an abundance.
Who can have an abundance to offer the world? Only the one who has Dao.
And so the Wise Person:
Works but does not rely on this achieves successes but does not dwell in them has no desire to show off his worth.

66 [L]:
The Yang-tze and the ocean:
How are they able to be Emperors of the hundred streams?
Because they excel at being low—
This is how they are able to be Emperors of the hundred streams.
And so:
Wishing to be high above the people,
you must by your speech put yourself at the bottom.
Wishing to be out in front of the people,
you must put your self in the last place.
And so the Wise Person:
Stands above, but the people are not weighed down
stands out in front, but the people are not harmed
and so the world delights in praising him, and does not tire.
Because of his not contending
no one in the world can contend with him.
Comment: The sage here resembles the karma yogi ideal found in the Bhagavad Gītā, which entails selfless social service and renunciation of the “fruits of action” (i.e., non-attachment), in addition to other requisite practices of self-discipline (e.g., control of the senses). In the Indian nationalist struggle, the karma yoga model was upheld and instantiated in diverse ways, notably by Bal Ganghadar Tilak, Śri Aurobindo, (Karmayogin was the title of an early journal founded by Aurobindo), and Mohandas K. Gandhi. The moral and spiritual praxis of Confucian self-cultivation, Daoist inner-cultivation, and karma yoga alike involve the attempt to integrate the via contemplativa with the via activa, but in all three traditions it seems safe to conclude that the former is meant to serve the latter: in Daoism we see this in the repeated stress on the practical benefits of states of consciousness attained through meditation, and the need to appreciate the necessity and value of de and wuwei in the widest social and political realms. Likewise, Raghavan Iyer speaks of the “karma yogi who values introspection chiefly as the basis and guide to effective action, who desires to change society rather than to contemplate.” Indeed, one might say the Daoists were engaged in something very near the Gandhian endeavor to introduce the āśrama (monastic) ideal into politics. In all three traditions, moreover, the perfectibilist path of the individual ascending to a vision of the Good is incomplete without the descent back into the Platonic Cave, wherein one is now committed to a life of self-sacrifice in service of the hoi polloi, the masses.

63 [L]:
Be a Non-Doer [wuwei]
Work at Not-Working [wuwei]
acquire a taste for that which has not taste.
Treat small things as though they were great
treat few things as though they were many.
‘Reward what is injurious with kind De.’
Plan difficult things focusing on the easy points
do great things focusing on the small details.
Difficult tasks in the world always begin from what is easy
great tasks in the world always begin from what is small.
And so the Wise Person:
Does not ‘do great things’
and so is able to fulfill his greatness.
Yes:
Light agreement is never very trustworthy
considering everything easy makes everything difficult.
And so the Wise Person:
Treats things as difficult,
and in the end has not difficulty.

76 [L]
People begin life Soft and Weak
when they are dead they are hard and firm
Among the thousands of things:
Grass and trees begin life Soft and tender
when they are dead they are withered and brittle.
Yes, strength and hardness accompany death
Softness and Weakness accompany life.
And so:
With a battle-axe too hardened, you cannot win
when a tree becomes hard, then comes the axe.
The strong and the great stand lowest
the Soft and Weak stand highest.

References and Further Reading (for the series of posts on 'Power: An Introduction'):

Ames, Roger T., trans. The Art of Rulership: A Study of Ancient Chinese Political Thought. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 1994

Ames, Roger T. and David L. Hall, trans. Daodejing: “Making This Life Significant.” A Philosophical Translation. New York: Ballantine, 2003.

Ames, Roger T. and Henry Rosemont, Jr., trans. The Analects of Confucius: A Philosophical Translation. (A New Translation Based on the Dingzhou Fragments and Other Recent Archaeological Finds). New York: Ballantine, 1998.

Ball, Terence. ‘Power,’ in Robert E. Goodin and Philip Pettit, eds. A Companion to Contemporary Political Philosophy. Malden, MA: Blackwell, 1993, pp. 548-557.

Benn, Stanley I. ‘Power,’ in Paul Edwards, ed. The Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Vol. 5. New York: Macmillan and the Free Press, 1967, pp. 424-427.

Bicchieri, Cristina. The Grammar of Society: The Nature and Dynamics of Social Norms. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2006.

Bourdieu, Pierre. Language and Symbolic Power. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1991.

Bowman, Scott R. The Modern Corporation and American Political Thought: Law, Power, and Ideology. University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1996.

Castells, Manuel. The Information Age: Economy, Society and Culture, Vol. I, The Rise of the Network Society. Oxford, UK: Blackwell, 1996.

Castells, Manuel. The Information Age: Economy, Society and Culture, Vol. II, The Power of Identity. Oxford, UK: Blackwell, 1997.

Castells, Manuel. The Information Age: Economy, Society and Culture, Vol. III, End of Millennium. Oxford, UK: Blackwell, 1998.

Chong, Kim-chong. Early Confucian Ethics. Chicago, IL: Open Court, 2007.

Chong, Kim-chong, Sor-hoon Tan, and C.L. Ten, eds. The Moral Circle and the Self: Chinese and Western Approaches. Chicago, IL: Open Court, 2003.

Cook, Scott, ed. Hiding the World in the World: Uneven Discourses on the Zhuangzi. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 2003.

Csikszentmihalyi, Mark, and Philip J. Ivanhoe, eds. Religious and Philosophical Aspects of the Laozi. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 1999.

Dalton, Dennis. Mahatma Gandhi: Nonviolent Power in Action. New York: Columbia University Press, 1993.

Deetz, Stanley A. Democracy in an Age of Corporate Colonization: Developments in Communication and the Politics of Everyday Life. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 1992.

Dowding, Keith. Power. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 1996.

Elster, Jon. Sour Grapes: studies in the subversion of rationality. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1983.

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Power: An Introduction—Part 3(c) i

Please note: This post is intended to be read in sequence, but those impatient or pressed for time should at least begin with "Power: An Introduction—Part 3(a)."

Much has been written about political authority, but moral authority is a neglected topic in contemporary thought. [....] Discussions of authority tend to go wrong from the beginning. They start with considering authority, and then, usually without notice or excuse, switch to considerations of political authority. [....] If authority is the genus, then moral authority is a species. There has not been much written on the latter.—John Kekes

Legitimate moral authorities are in authority because they are an authority. What makes them so is that they possess the appropriate qualifications. Since pluralistic moral authority relations tend to be private, moral authorities tend to be de facto, not de jure. The latter requires some formal method to confer the status of authority, but in private relationships there is no such method. One individual may recognize the moral authority of another, but the recognition is a personal matter based on the belief that the authority possesses the relevant qualifications. This belief, of course, may or may not be justified. If it is justified, then the moral authority is legitimate and it is reasonable to recognize it as such.—John Kekes

To paraphrase Kekes, one in possession of moral authority does not rely on commands, impose her will on others, or tell another person what he or she should do. Moral authority serves as a mediator of the moral tradition for those who do not know how to judge, or believe that their judgment is defective, or simply that the (moral) authority's judgment is better than what they could arrive at on their own effforts. To act or believe in deference to moral authority, as Steven Lukes says, is to act or believe "not on the balance of reasons, but on the basis of a second-order reason that precisely requires that one disregard the balance of reasons as one sees it." The need for the mediation of moral authority arises because, for any number of reasons, people lack sufficient knowledge of their moral tradition, at any rate, they find themselves increasingly in situations that expose their inability to reflexively rely on their traditional moral beliefs and intuitions, and the consequent uncertainty and anxiety prompts deference to clearly recognizable moral authorities.

The trust placed in moral authorities is warranted...by the way they live. They are placed in authority by others because they have shown how to live well according to a particular conception of a good life. Their authority derives from the successful experiments in living that their lives represent. They show to those interested that their conception of a good life is indeed good, that it is possible to live that way and succeed, and so they stand as examples to those who want to live that way. [....] [Moral authorities] do not set themselves up as such, but rather...are discovered. They are found to be conspicuous successes at living according to their conception of a good live, and that is why authority is attributed to them. The possession of moral authority, however, is only an unintended by-product of their conduct, not its goal. What primarily matters to them is to live what they regard as a good life.—John Kekes

Of course we're concerned with moral and spiritual authority, spirituality understood here in the sense outlined by John Cottingham in The Spiritual Dimension: Religion, Philosophy and Human Value (2005):

"[W]e find the term used in connection with activities and attitudes which command widespread appeal, irrespective of metaphysical commitment or doctrinal allegiance. Even the most convinced atheist may be prepared to avow an interest in the 'spiritual' dimension of human existence, if that dimension is taken to cover forms of life that put a premium on certain kinds of intensely focused moral and aesthetic response, on the search for deeper reflective awareness of the meaning of our lives, and of our relationship to others and to the natural world. [....] Spirituality has long been understood to be a concept that is concerned in the first instance with activities rather than theories, with ways of living rather than doctrines subscribed to, with praxis rather than belief. [....] In the history of philosophy the epithet 'spiritual' is most commonly coupled not with the term 'beliefs' but with the term 'exercises.' Perhaps the most famous exemplar is the sixteenth-century Ejercicios espirituales ('Spiritual Exercises,' c. 1522-41) of St. Ignatius Loyola. [....] In Ignatius...we are dealing with a practical manual—a training manual—and the structured timings, the organized programme of readings, contemplation, meditation, prayer, and reflection, interspersed with the daily rhythms of eating and sleeping, are absolutely central, indeed they are the essence of the thing."

After Pierre Hadot's Philosophy as a Way of Life (1995) and Martha C. Nussbaum's The Therapy of Desire: Theory and Practice in Hellenistic Ethics (1994), we've come to appreciate the significance if not centrality of spiritual exercises in the ancient world of Hellenistic philosophers:

"There were many Stoic treatises entitled 'On Exercises,' and the central notion of askesis, found for example in Epictetus, implied not so much 'asceticism' in the modern sense as a practical programme of training, concerned with the 'art of living. ' Fundamental to such programmes was learning the technique of prosoche—attention, a continuous vigilance and presence of mind (a notion, incidentally, that calls to mind certain Buddhist spiritual techniques). Crucial also was the mastery of methods for the ordering of the passions—what has been called the therapy of desire. The general aim of such programmes was not merely intellectual enlightenment, or the imparting of abstract theory, but a transformation of the whole person, including our patterns of emotional response. Metanoia, a fundamental conversion or change of heart, is the Greek term; in the Roman Stoic Seneca it appears as a 'shift in one's mentality' (translatio animi) or a 'changing' (mutatio) of the self. 'I feel, my dear Lucretius,' says Seneca, 'that I am being not only reformed but transformed (non tantum emendari sed transfigurari).'"

Traditions of spirituality, East or West, philosophical or religious, provide us with a lucid grasp of the fundamental and inevitable obstacles to the attainment of human virtue and the realization of intrinsic values that are part and parcel of human flourishing (eudaimonia). At the same time, they proffer specific, even individuated, forms of spiritual exercises and spiritual praxis historically crafted to counter and overcome these obstacles. As Cottingham makes clear, a spiritual praxis or a program of moral and personal askesis, understood as temporally, heuristically, psychologically, and morally prior to metaphysical doctrine, is in part designed to address the stubborn cognitive and conative defects to which moral agents are routinely subject and which, typically, are not amenable to discipline solely through the power of reason: the problem of akrasia, control of the passions, self-deception, wishful thinking, states of denial, and so forth. This is in addition to treating our existential vulnerability: "to pain, to loss, to fear, ultimately to extinction, [which] is not simply a function of our psychological and developmental difficulties, but is part of our very nature as human beings—one of the signs of existence, as the Buddhists have it."

Our appreciation of the moral and spiritual power that comes in the wake of the exercise of moral and spiritual authority also accounts for why our focus is on moral and spiritual exemplars. One reason, provided by Linda Zagzebski in her book Divine Motivation Theory (2004), is that "Religiously based moralities have an important function to serve in the development of common morality because they have richly described moral exemplars [e.g., the junzi and the sage]. By contrast, secular ethics in the [contemporary] Western world differs from religious ethics, not so much in having different exemplars, but in not having exemplars at all. This is particularly true of consequentialist and deontological ethics, both of which aim for universality by contructing entire moral systems out of the thinnest of moral concepts." Zagzebski in fact spells out an intriguing "direct reference" theory of the good (person), part of a larger project toward formulating an "exemplarist virtue theory." The theoretical focus on exemplars helps us make sense of the conversational settings found in the Analects, the references to the (as it were, 'anonymous') Sage in the Daodejing, and by implication, what Harold D. Roth calls the "apophatic practices of directed breathing meditation," or mystical praxis (which yields 'both introvertive and extrovertive mystical experiences that seem to be similar to those found in other traditions'), found in the latter text (e.g., chapter 10). It likewise does justice to several references to de (see the brief introduction in Part 3(b) i.) in the Zhuangzi, for example, with regard to characters such as Aitai Tuo and Shentu Jia in the fifth chapter. As Philip J. Ivanhoe informs us, Zhuangzi's "sages are highly imperfect and undesirable from the point of view of society. But, like the sage described by Confucius and Laozi, Zhuangzi's exemplars have a spiritual 'power' that arises from their special character." Be it in the Analects, the Daodejing, or the Zhuangzi, we find exemplars of at least three characteristics noted by Ivanhoe of the moral and spiritual charisma called de: 1) the attractive power of the person with de; 2) the distinctive effect of de upon those who come into its presence; and 3) the relationship betwee de and wuwei in government.

From an "emic" perspective, that is, from within a particular religious tradition, "The function of an exemplar is to fix the reference of the term 'good person' or 'practically wise person,' without any use of concepts, whether descriptive or nondescriptive." Zagzebski elaborates:

"I have proposed that 'good' is defined by direct reference. If so, it is plausible that 'good life' is defined by direct reference as well. It is a life like that, which is to say that we know it when we see it. [....] If we define the good life as a life like that, we do not do it independently of referring to persons whose lives we want to imitate. We imitate persons we regard as exemplars, and we imitate lives we regard as exemplary, and these are not independent activities. [....] So what is a flourishing lif? I propose that it is determined by what the exemplars say it is. [....] The exemplars make the determination of good lives in the hard cases. If 'good life' is defined by direct reference independently of 'good person,' then the life of a good person can come apart from a good life. However, if I am right, that is not the way these concepts work. The lives we want to imitate are the lives of persons we want to imitate."

From our "etic" perspective, however, concepts are essential to understanding those character attributes and properties exhibited by "good persons," or those individuals believed to possess moral and spiritual authority, hence, in Zagzebski words, "If all the concepts in a formal theory are rooted in a person, then narratives and descriptions of that person are morally significant. It is an open question what it is about the person that makes him or her good."

In Love's Knowledge: Essays on Philosophy and Literature (1990), Martha Nussbaum earlier proposed that we look to "literature as moral philosophy," in part because of the limitations of the language of conventional (hence professional) philosophical prose. Thus, for instance, literature, in particular the novel form, appears better suited than philosophical discourse to examining love "in its many varieties" and "tangled relations" to the good life. According to Nussbaum,

"certain truths about human life can only be fittingly and accurately state in the language and forms characteristic of the narrative artist. With respect to certain elements of human life, the terms of the novelist's art are alert winged creatures, perceiving where the blunt terms of ordinary speech or of abstract theoretical discourse are blind, acute where they are obtuse, winged where they are dull and heavy."

Nussbaum does not want to supplant but rather complement conventional philosophical inquiry into the ethical sphere with "certain literary texts" as a necessary but not sufficient condition (or 'source of insight') for any philosophical inquiry that aims to be "complete." To take but one example from Nussbaum's study, several novels of Henry James can demonstrate an Aristotelian-like appreciation of the significance of fine-grained moral perception and judgment, that is, "the ability to discern, acutely and responsibly, the salient features of one's particular situation."

A related but distinct argument courtesy of another philosopher, Colin McGinn, views literature and its companion arts as the vehicle par excellence for which to "engage our moral faculties." For most of us, in other words, the "story mode of moral discourse" (i.e., that form which includes the parable, the play, short story, the narrative poem, the novel, and the film) is "uniquely palatable and nutritious:"

"Our moral understanding and the story form seem fitted for one another. No rote learning is necessary: it all seems to flow quite naturally. This is the way our moral faculty likes to operate. It is almost effortless to take in a story, pleasant even, though the story may be replete with moral discourse. The novel, in particular, is a text of a very different kind from the scientific treatise. It is also very different from the philosophical text, which is what philosophers, naturally, are most comfortable with. Thus the novel form has tended to be ignored by moral philosophers: it is not, for them, the place to look for canonical expressions of ethical truth. Yet, quite obviously, it is for most educated people one of the prime vehicles of ethical expression. (Film plays a similar role for the less word-minded.) In reading a novel we have ethical experiences, sometimes quite profound ones, and we reach ethical conclusions, condemning some characters and admiring others. We live a particular set of moral challenges (sitting there in our armchair) by entering into the lives of the characters introduced. [....] Stories can sharpen and clarify moral questions, encouraging a dialectic between the reader's own experiences and the trials of the characters he or she is reading about. A tremendous amount of moral thinking and feeling is done when reading novels (Or watching plays and films, or reading poetry and short stories). In fact, it is not an exaggeration to say that for most people this is the primary way in which they acquire ethical attitudes, especially in contemporary culture. Our ethical knowledge is aesthetically mediated."

Zagzebsk's exemplarist virtue theory can no doubt endorse Nussbaum and McGinn's different yet compatible briefs on behalf of the moral value of the story form: "Narratives may reveal necessary features of value," she writes, "by uncovering the deep properties of a good person." And this is in keeping with the fact that "we learn moral concepts and acquire the ability to make moral judgment from experience. That includes the experience of imitating the way in which paradigmatically good persons form concepts and make judgments."

All the same, and without going any deeper into the "ancient quarrel" between the philosophers and the poets in the Western philosophical tradition (there does not appear to be an equivalent 'quarrel' in the history Eastern worldviews), it's fair to state that novelists, or writers in general, are not invariably, reliably, or unambiguously moral, or prone to sensitively examining the lineaments of the good life or the fine-grained features of moral perception and judgment cultivated in the daily round. And this is true even if we readily grant the story form is perfectly adapted to engaging our moral faculties. Most novelists, in other words, do not necessarily see their vocation or engage their readers in the manner of, say, Nussbaum's Henry James, or a Flannery O'Connor, Graham Greene, or Iris Murdoch. Although she is referring in particular to moral and spiritual exemplars, Zagzebski makes the selfsame point:

"Cultures enshrine the wisdom of exemplars in myths, legends, lives of saints and heroes, and in sacred literature. Since the advent of the modern novel, there has been a notable decline in depiction of individuals who are morally better than the ordinary, and art no longer has the function of representing moral exemplars. One of the distinguishing features of modern life is that we not only disagree about the identity of exemplars, some of us doubt that the they exist at all. The psychology of this kind of skepticism is interesting, and my conjecture about it is that it is associated with the desire to think of everyone as morally equal. Perverse forms of it include delight in seeing the admired brought down [a form of schadenfreude]. I suppose that makes the rest of us look better by comparison. My own view is that such an attitude is not very helpful. Everyone imitates anyway [a fact well appreciated by Plato, Aristotle, the Confucians and the Daoists, as well as by contemporary virtue ethicists]. We might as well imitate the right people."

Nonetheless, Zagzebski herself opens up a conceptual and practical space for non-religious narratives and thus in effect enables us to endorse the arguments of Nussbaum and McGinn in her nuanced circumscription of the role of moral and spiritual exemplars:

"Religous exemplars are sometimes useless for modeling virtue in the messy situations that ordinary, less-than-virtuous persons encounter in modern life precisely because what makes the religious exemplars extraordinary is that they know how to avoid such messes. Some of us want to learn how to avoid the messes, but meanwhile, we have to face them and need exemplars of how to do that."

So it seems that Nussbaum's proposed "moral" role for literature or the novel, if not McGinn's generous conception of the "story mode of moral discourse," can in principle fill a gap in our ethical knowledge and self-understanding, that it can illuminate questions intrinsic to efforts to lead the "good" (or ethical) life (as well as the evil that stands in the way of that life). It does this by providing us with a "middle term" that both mediates and modulates between the "standard of perfection" incarnated in moral and spiritual exemplars and the kinds of lives lived by the vast majority of us, confronted as we all too frequently are by what Zagzebski aptly terms the "messes" of everyday life. Contemporary literature has at least the potential to provide the middle term necessary for modeling the aspiration to virtue in the messy circumstances of daily life while still acknowledging the necessity of cleaving to the "standard of perfection against which the rest of us are measured:"

"The exemplar may not be literally perfect, but he or she is close enough to determine what is good for us, on the Platonic interpretation. What is good for us in that sense is to imitate the exemplar. Second, human flourishing can be defined as the kind of life the exemplar desires or at which she aims." (Zagzebski)

Finally, and with Iris Murdoch, we should clarify the meaning of "imitation" and the "modeling of virtue" above, which is not, strictly speaking, used in the sense of "copying" the exemplar:

"Both Plato and Kant used an image of referring to an ideal or original pattern, not as imitation of either the model itself or of some chosen instantiation (example) of it, but as an inspired interpretation into the realm of practical life of a deep and certain moral insight. The notion of copying the model itself would be a 'category mistake,' since the model is not a particular thing, like a particular command or picture; imitatio Christi does not work simply by suggesting that everyone should give away his money, or wondering how Christ would vote."

Our final post will look at textual references to moral and spiritual exemplars in Confucianism and Daoism, that is, at those individuals whose moral and spiritual authority is evidenced by a non-coercive, intangible form power known as de.

A list of "references and further reading" will be appended to the next and final post in this series.

Image: Bamboo (1644-1911) Qing dynasty

Power: An Introduction—Part 3(b) ii

Having presented the basic concepts of Confucianism in our preceding post, we now outline some of the concepts necessary to a philosophical appreciation of Daoism. The qualifications noted in our previous post apply once again.

Dao (Tao) and dao (tao): Dao is best translated as “Way,” and the connotations are of a path or road:

Etymologically, the character dao is constructed out of two elements: shu, ‘foot,’ and hence, ‘to pass over,’ ‘to go over,’ ‘to lead through’ (on foot), and shou, meaning ‘head’—hair and eye together—and therefore ‘foremost.’ The shou ‘head’ component carries the suggestion of ‘to lead’ in the sense of ‘to give a heading.’ Dao is used frequently as a loan character for its verbal cognate dao, ‘to lead forth.’ Thus the character is primarily gerundive, processionsal, and dynamic: ‘a leading forth.’ The earliest appearance of dao is in the Book of Documents in the context of cutting a channel and ‘leading’ a river to prevent the overflowing of its banks. (Ames and Hall 2003: 7)

We will distinguish between Dao and dao(s): the former term Chad Hansen translates as “the great dao,” although our rendering is more explicitly metaphysical or, better, more “mystical” than Hansen would countenance (see Hansen, 1992 and 2007). Dao with a lower case “d” will be understood here in reference to “human” or “social” dao(s), and tian (‘heavenly’) or “natural” dao. In the Analects, Confucius speaks of daos rather than Dao, in Hansen’s words, "Confucius treats dao as the kind of thing that could be heard, spoken, studied, corrected, modeled, walked, or wasted, that could be present or absent. A dao can be born and grow, strengthened; it can be small or great. One can master a dao." (Hansen 1992: 84)

Human dao and tian-dao are prescriptive or normative “ways” where this is understood as synonymous with words like “course,” “method,” “manner,” “mode,” “style,” “means,” “practice,” “art” and so on (Hansen 2007). These daos in effect provide “an answer to any how question, to practical guidance in general” (Hansen 1992: 84). Hence we might speak of the dao of medicine as well as medical dao.

Both Dao and dao are the subject matter of the first lines of the Daodejing: “The dao that can be told [i.e., put into words] is not the invariant Dao.” The invariant Dao is nameless, that is to say, however much we may have recourse to language and images or symbols to explicate the meaning in conceptual terms, to point to or evoke the Dao, these concepts, images and symbols do not suffice by way of informing us at to what Dao truly, or metaphysically (or mystically) is or Dao qua Dao. This does not mean that we cannot in some sense have cognitive or propositional knowledge of, so to speak, the manifestations of Dao, only that such (propositional) knowledge is not equivalent to what is, after all, the Dao, and the Dao as such concerns nonpropositional knowledge or awareness, “knowledge by acquaintance” or “knowledge by appearance.” Knowledge of the Dao as such, like the Good in Platonic thought, or (nirguna) Brahman in Advaita Vedānta, or Nirvāna (nibbāna) in Buddhism, is nonpropositional, which does not mean that it is thereby irrational, but that it is best termed non-rational or perhaps even supra-rational or para-rational. One need not thereby claim that Dao, the Good, and nirguna Brahman are understood in precisely the same manner in the respective traditions, indeed, it would seem that there is an interesting difference, for example, between Dao and the manifestations of Dao (between, as it were, transcendence and immanence) and the relation that obtains between nirguna Brahman as Ultimate Reality and the “provisional reality” of the universe (i.e., the universe as neither real nor wholly unreal): the former involves a necessary (positive) relation insofar as the realization of Dao as Ultimate Reality need not entail the cancelling out of, or a claim as to the wholly illusory character of, the natural world (wanwu) (i.e., there is no absolute transcendence in the former case), while the latter arguably entails a realization of the natural world as illusory (māyā). In both cases there is a dependence of the natural world upon what is designated “ultimate reality,” either Dao or nirguna Brahman, but it seems that in Advaita Vedānta experiential realization of Brahman involves the absolute transcendence of the natural world, while in Daoism the relation between Dao and wanwu is one akin to the Hegelian notion of Aufhebung (in which case dialectical ascent involves simultaneously a negation and preservation), which highlights the relative truths intrinsic to wanwu and the indispensable yet limited role of language vis-à-vis the Dao. As Bou Mou argues,

On the one hand, Lao Zi positively affirms the role of language engagement with the Dao via names (the constant name--the rigid designator--and the descriptive designators) in capturing the Dao, on the other hand, he alerts us to the limitations of the finiteness of any descriptive names (descriptive designators) and emphasizes the wholeness and infinite dimension of the Dao that transcends any finite aspect of the Dao itself and any finite stage of the infinite development. Indeed, such a transcendental insight itself is delivered through Lao Zi's own language engagement in the oppening passage and other ones in the Dao-De-Jing. (from his essay in Bo Mou, ed., Comparative Approaches to Chinese Philosophy, 2003)

Nonpropositional knowledge is quintessentially a special type of experiential knowledge, what might be called an intuitive “knowledge by acquaintance” or “knowledge by presence” (rather than ‘knowledge by description’), although not in the Russellian sense (i.e., as an immediate, non-cognitive sensual or empirical knowledge prior to conceptual articulation), but as that phrase was understood, say, by the founder of the Illuminationist school of Islamic philosophy and mysticism, Shihāb al-Dīn Suhrawardī (549/1154-587/1191). Hossein Ziai explains: "A basic Illuminationist principle is that to know something is to obtain an experience of it tantamount to a primary intuition of the determinants of the thing. Experiential knowledge of a thing is analysed only subsequent to the intuitive total and immediate grasp of it" (Ziai in Nasr and Leaman 1996: 449). “The thing,” for us, is the Dao, but of course the Dao is no “thing,” indeed, Dao is beyond being (you) and non-being (wu). It is, as it were, Ultimate Reality, meant in the sense that Dao transcends traditional distinctions and dichotomies between reality and unreality, subject and object, existence and non-existence (and we need not claim the God of Islamic Illuminationist philosophy is equivalent to Dao to appreciate the comparison). This Ultimate Reality is, in part, other than or beyond (yet of course in some manner related to) the empirical world we see, hear, and touch, although we should nevertheless understand this world as dependent on Dao, as in some sense a manifestation or revelation of Dao (cf. 1.2: ‘Nameless it is the source of the thousands of things; named, it is “Mother” of the thousands of things’) as the ontological cause of the empirical world or “ten thousand things” (wanwu; Ames and Hall urge us to understand ‘things’ [wu] as ‘both processes (happenings) and events (happenings that have achieved some relative consummation),’ thus we might speak of the ‘ten thousand processes or events’). In the end, the nature of Ultimate Reality or Dao is unaffected by the myriad means we use to grasp it. Dao is invisible (yi), intangible (wei) and inaudible (xi), but it is no less real for all that, in fact, it is (ultimate) Reality.

Like mystics in several religious traditions, Suhrawardī constructs a specialized vocabulary to describe, analyze, and evoke, post facto, thus intuitionist “nonpropositional knowledge by presence” (as in his fourth stage of his Illuminationist mystical epistemology). The contributors to the Daodejing, however, did not construct such a vocabulary, eschewing any attempt to describe or analyze the mystical experience of Dao (cf. Kohn 1992). Instead, the Daodejing contrasts the experiential awareness of Dao, or the fruits of such awareness, what we might best term wisdom, with our routine, cognitive ways of categorizing objects and processes, our learned and habitual ways of conceptually carving up the world. The Daoist could hardly be asking us to give up rational cognition, to abandon our categories, to play loose with our concepts. Rather, she is alerting us to what is forgotten, lost, or ignored in an exclusive reliance on, or in according too much importance to, conventional knowledge, with knowledge by description (with ‘knowing that’), with propositional knowledge. And it is this intuitive and non-propositional knowledge which permits us to see propositional knowledge in proper perspective, to appreciate its perspectival and “relative” character (while the knowledge may be relative, our concept of truth is not). Although Daoists have nothing comparable to Suhrawardī’s fourth stage, they do have something similar if not identical to the first stage of Illuminationist epistemology, namely, that “marked by the preparatory activity on the part of the philosopher: he or she has to ‘abandon the world’ in readiness to accept mystical ‘experience’ (first, of a ‘Divine Light’ [al-nūr al-ilāhī] and then of ‘unlimited knowledge’ or Illuminationist knowledge itself [al-‘ilm al-ishrāqī]). In what sense, then, can it be said the Daoist, like ascetics and mystics generally, “abandon[s] the world?” Consider the following from the first chapter of the Daodejing: “Always eliminate desires in order to observe its mysteries” (i.e., the mysteries of the ‘constant Way’ or ‘Nameless’). Moreover, the Daodejing has numerous passages that speak to the illusory and evanescent character of worldly or conventional criteria for success, fame, fortune, and power. Even Confucius, according to Fingarette (in Chong, Tan, and Ten 2003) subscribed to a belief in “worldly abandonment” in this sense, as only the properly directed individual will can give up purely personal willing: "He tells us that we ought to abjure the quest for personal profit, personal frame, or personal gratification of the senses. It is not that there is anything intrinsically wrong with fame, honor, or even sensual pleasure—if such things arise as incidental effects of a will directed to the Way (dao) for its own sake. But better to have poor food and shabby clothes and be unknown, and to will the dao, than to depart from the dao even for a moment. (288-289) As Michael LaFargue (1992) comments on chapter 9 of the Daodejing: “Real worth is typically hidden worth, whereas those qualities that win public recognition typically are less solid and genuine.”

The Daoist is said to cultivate “quiet” (i.e., ‘non-worldly’) virtues like gentleness, frugality and self-effacement. The last line of chapter 45 states that “Purity and stillness rectify Heaven and Earth” (or, ‘can bring proper order to the world’). This celebratory saying is in reference to that stillness and purity of heart-mind (xin²) attained through breathing exercises as part of a meditation practice that serves as a necessary but not necessarily sufficient condition for the mystical awareness of Dao, for acting in harmony (wu-wei) with the dao of the natural and “heavenly” worlds. The third verse of chapter 15 (only part of which follows) asks: “Who can, through stillness, gradually make muddied water clear?” This is often taken to be a reference to meditation practice. Proper cultivation of “stillness” brings about a “hidden” or “empty” state of heart-mind capable of penetrating “into the most obscure, the marvelous, the mysterious,” thereby attaining a “depth beyond understanding” (i.e., beyond propositional knowledge and rational understanding, a reference to the difference between knowledge and wisdom; for a more detailed treatment of preparatory exercises [often referred to as ascetic practices] within medieval Daoism, see Kohn 2003). As Moeller (2004) says in his discussion of the fishnet allegory in the Zhuangzi, “‘to get the meaning’ (de yi) in a Daoist sense means, paradoxically, to be perfectly content (de yi) by no longer having any mental contents” (57). Lafargue (1992) points out, and Roth (1999) would concur, that the sayings celebrating the heart-mind qualities of “stillness, femininity, emptiness, and so on” are similar to the “genres and the context in which they occur in the Nei Yeh (Inward Training) [and thus] suggest a concrete background of self-cultivation (including introspective meditation), rather than intellectual speculation” (206). For Suhrawardī, the preparatory stage of abandoning the world “is marked by such activities as going on a forty-day retreat, abstaining from eating meat and preparing for inspiration and ‘revelation.’ Such activities fall under the general category of ascetic and mystical practices [cf. askesis, or 'spiritual exercises' as understood and practiced by the Stoics], although not in strict conformity with the prescribed states and stations of the mystic path or sūfī tarīqa, as known in the mystical works available to Suhrawardī” (Ziai in Nasr and Leaman 1996: 450).

Daoists rely on words and images: analogies and metaphors (Slingerland 2003), allegories, stories (Moeller 2004), and sayings as “proverb-like aphorisms” (LaFargue 1992) in both the Daodejing and the Zhuangzi (we’re not interested here in their compositional differences). These textual and literary choices presumably are not without rhyme or reason and, in fact, they have helped to account for the popularity of the texts. In this regard, one final comparison of Daoism with Illuminationist mystical philosophy is worthy of note:

The impact of the specifically Illuminationist theory of knowledge, generally known as ‘knowledge by presence’ (al-‘ilm al-hudūrī), has not been confined to philosophical and other specialist circles, as Illuminationist logic has been, for example. The epistemological status given to intuitive knowledge has fundamentally influenced what is called ‘speculative mysticism’ (‘irfān-i nazarī) in Persia as well as in Persian poetry. By looking briefly at a paradigm concerning the poet-philosopher-mystic’s way of capturing and portraying wisdom, this point will be made evident. [….] In my view, the most distinguishing characteristic of Persian poetry taken as a whole is its almost existential perspective regarding the outcome of philosophy…. From this viewpoint, the end result of philosophy, which is wisdom, can be communicated only through the poetic medium. Innate poetic wisdom thus informs the human being—the philosopher-sage; the sage-poet; and, ultimately, simply the poet—of every facet of response to the total environment; the corporeal and the spiritual, the ethical and the political, the religious and the mundane. The ensuing perception of reality and historical process is constructed (as in the Persian shi‘r sākhtan) in a metaphysical form—an art form, perhaps—that consciously at all stages employs metaphor, symbol, myth, lore and legend. The consequence is that Persian wisdom is more poetic than philosophical, and always more intuitive than discursive. This, in my view, is clearly the more popular legacy of Illuminationist philosophy and of its impact. (Ziai in Nasr and Leaman 1996: 451)

While Daoists declined to systematically elaborate the epistemology of meditative states of consciousness on the order of their Indic and Islamic (Sufi) counterparts, there is nevertheless an esoteric phraseology regarding meditation and mystical states of consciousness (self-cultivation), be it in the Neyie (Inner Cultivation), the Daodejing or the Zhuangzi, hence, for example: “carrying your po,” “concentrating qi” “cleansing and purifying the mysterious mirror,” from the Daodejing. And from the Zhuangzi:

The ‘Yingdiwang’ chapter tells us, ‘Just be empty, that is all. The perfect man uses his mind like a mirror, responding but not storing, and thus he can overcome things without being harmed by them.’ The ‘Renjianshi’ chapter also glosses this concept of ‘emptiness’ (xu), saying not to listen with the ear or the mind, but rather with the vital force (qi): ‘The vital force is empty and waits for things. Dao gathers in emptiness. This is called the fasting of the mind.’ (Ziporyn in Cook 2003: 50)

Harold Roth has written about this phraseology of heart-mind training and mystical experience in both his translation and commentary on the Neyie (Nei-yeh) (1999) and in his discussion of “bimodal mystical experience” in the Zhuangzi (Roth in Scott, ed., 2003: 15-32). The Daoist notion of wu (here: ‘emptiness,’ ‘nothing’) as a mental state and goal of meditation and self-cultivation cannot be the direct or immediated product of the ego or will, as the effort to will such a mental state can be said to entangle one in a pragmatic contradiction identical to similar efforts at “willing what cannot be willed” (Elster 1983: 43-108). The attempt to simply will the state of wu “tends to posit and entrench the very object whose absence is desired,” for “If I desire the absence of some specific thought, or of thought in general, the desire by itself suffices to ensure the presence of the object” (46). The state of mind sought by the Daoist is close if not identical to the “emptiness” or state of “no-mind” sought by the Zen Buddhist (cf. too the pinnacle of meditation in Patañjali’s Yoga Sūtra, namely, asamprajñāta-samādhi, a non-conceptual state of awareness of reality [nirvikalpa]) that permits the absence of “self-consciousness,” allowing one to relate directly to the world, without “without relating also to the relating” (or non-relation to self). We might better see this with examples of “positively defined states that similarly elude the mind that reaches out for them” (p. 50). Elster culls a handful of examples from the late psychologist Leslie Farber: I can will knowledge, but not wisdom; going to bed, but not sleeping; scrupulosity but not virtue; bravado but not courage; congratulations but not admiration; religion but not faith. As he explains, the goal of meditation for the Zen Buddhist (and the Daoist) is a state of mind that “is essentially a by-product. Nevertheless the belief cannot be wholly false, since Zen masters [and Daoist sages] do accept pupils and train them” (49). The state of an empty or still mind, be it for the Buddhist or the Daoist, is essentially a by-product, because the attempt to will the absence of a mental object is self-defeating, involving one in a pragmatic contradiction not unlike the one intrinsic to the folly of what Elster (after Farber), terms “willing what cannot be willed.” Put differently, our Daoist sage lives in harmony with the Dao such that she relates directly—spontaneously, gracefully, wisely—to the world without, in Elster’s words, “relating also to the relating” in a self-conscious or egoistic fashion.

Daoist teachers (and their Yogic and Buddhist counterparts) rely on mind-training and meditation techniques employing breathing exercises in conjunction with other kinds of ascetic practices (e.g., fasting, celibacy, dietary restrictions, etc.) as part of wider moral psychological and spiritual strategies designed to subvert habitual reliance on the will, including routine recourse to familiar modes and patterns of reasoning and a largely egoistic-relating to others and the natural world. These pedagogical strategies are crafted, in the end, to bring about a different way of living and a different kind of person, one naturally (as a kind of 'second' nature in Kupperman's sense) and spontaneously virtuous and wise, meaning a life lived in harmony with the dao of nature, the dao of tian, and Dao itself. The consequences of living a life attuned to Dao are crystallized in the notion of wu-wei (lit., not-doing or non-acting). In wu-wei, one has literally given oneself over to Dao inasmuch as it is understood to mean the “absence of action motivated by the agent’s desires, will, knowledge, education, language or socialization” (Fraser 2007: 99; see too Slingerland 2003). Such action is therefore wholly free and spontaneous in contrast to the intentional or conventionally volitional quality of motivated action. Moreover, the freedom and spontaneity of such action is evidenced in how one is able to respond to the exigencies of any situation or circumstance: in a spontaneous, intuitive, and non-self-conscious manner, in effect, in harmony with Dao. Yet wu-wei is still a kind of acting, and can be considered no less connected to an intentional project (as Fraser would remind us) in the sense that a student of Daoism is committed to attaining the goal of wu-wei and involves herself in the heart-mind training and other ascetic practices designed to bring that about (as part of its necessary but not sufficient conditions). Nonetheless, it seems our Daoist needs to rely on indirect pedagogical spiritual strategies in the short-term if she is to avoid getting entangled in the pragmatic contradiction of “willing what cannot be willed” or the effort to attain an empty mind or the state of wu-wei: just ask the novice meditator who seriously entertains the imperative to "empty" her mind to achieve the state of "no-mind," who struggles to stop the seemingly endless stream of (waking) consciousness.

Qi (ch’i) [related to jing and shen and thus all three terms are often referred to as the ‘Three Treasures’ (sanbao)]: variously translated as air, breath, vapor, ether or energy. In Daoism, it carries the connotation of “vital energy,” a life force that pervades and animates all things. According to Lloyd and Sivin (2002),

The untranslatable term ch’i was used before 300 BC for a multitude of phenomena: air, breath, smoke, mist, fog, the shades of the dead, cloud forms, more or less everything that is perceptible but intangible, the physical vitalities, whether inborn or derived from food and breath; cosmic forces and climactic influences that affect health; and groupings of seasons, flavors, colors, musical modes, and much else. Ch’i could be benign and protective, as that proper to the human body was, or pathological, an intangible agent of disease. (196-197)

Metaphysically or ontologically speaking, qi is unlike pre-Socratic or indeed most models of atomism, nor should we view it as some kind of fundamental ontological material stuff. Hall and Ames (2003) summarize the philosophical development of an intriguing metaphysical and ontological concept:

Although the systematized and elaborate ‘five phases’ yinyang wuxing cosmology does not appear until Han dynasty sources, the idea that the world and its phenomena are perturbations that emerge out of and fold back into a vital energizing field called qi was already widely held in the late fourth and early third centuries BCE, attested to in the Zhuangzi, the Daodejing, and the Mencius as well as other early texts. Qi has to be distinguished from either ‘animating vapors’ or ‘basic matter’ because it cannot be resolved into any kind of spiritual-material dichotomy. Qi is both the animating energy and that which is animated. There are no ‘things’ to be animated; there is only the vital energizing field and its focal manifestations. The energy of transformation resides within the world itself, and it is expressed in what Zhuangzi calls the perpetual ‘transforming of things and events (wuhua).’ It is this understanding of a focus-field process of cosmic change that is implicitly assumed in the Daodejing and other texts of this period as a kind of common sense. (63)

Hans-Georg Moeller has provocatively proposed that qi “faintly resembles light, which also cannot be sufficiently explained as matter.” Needless to say, qi resembles in several respects pictures and models found in contemporary physics (e.g., wave-particle complementarity) at least insofar as those models are not “atomistic,” but we are well-advised not to view qi as a scientific or even proto-scientific concept. Qi is central to Daoist breathing exercises in meditation (cf. Roth 1999), and it is said one can increase, strengthen, or “store up” this life force (cf. prāna in Indic yoga, especially its Hatha variant wherein the primary aim is to prevent the dissipation of this vital breath by centralizing it within the susumnā-nādī). Furthermore, qi is absolutely central to the theory and practice of Chinese medicine. While qi early on might connote something like “matter” or a material element, the notion of vital energy comes to the fore, although it could be plausibly claimed that qi remains a highly subtle, rarefied, unseen form of matter in everyday medical and martial arts contexts. Roth (1999) reminds us that qi in fact blurs the boundaries between how we usually conceptualize our notions of energy and matter:

One can see here a cosmic continuum in which the heaviest and most turbid ch’i is found in the most solid and dense matter such as mountains and rock and in which the most ethereal ch’i is found in what we would call psychological and spiritual phenomena such as the most profound inner experiences of tranquility and in the ghostly entities that survive physical death. However, this notion of a continuum fails to capture the association of ch’i with life and vitality, for in these early Chinese contexts the more ethereal ch’i is found in the vitalizing fluids associated with all living things. Human beings are made up of systems containing various densities of ch’i, such as the skeletal structure, the skin, flesh and musculature, the breath, the ‘Five Orbs’ (wu-tsang) of ch’i that form our inner physiology and include the physical organs of the lungs, kidneys, liver, gallbladder, and spleen and the various psychological states comprising our constantly changing continuum of experience from rage and lust to complete tranquility. This last group demonstrates the remarkably modern notion that psychological states have physiological substrates. (41-42)

The Daoist adept and the medical practitioner alike speak of “accumulating” qi, but the precise meaning differs between them: for the Daoist, this refers to breathing and meditation exercises that strengthen and increase qi, and there is a corresponding technical vocabulary for these breathing techniques guided by the heart-mind; for the healer, illness arises from disturbances in the constant flux and flow of qi within the body and thus “accumulation” of qi in this context is in reference to the description of a diagnostic symptom:

In many early medical texts accumulations were considered to disrupt the fluxes and flows in and about the body. It is worth noting that in early medical accounts the character zheng, which is homophonous with the Chinese characters Farquhar [1994] refers to as ‘sign,’ ‘symptom,’ and ‘syndrome,’ has the meaning of a Concretion with connotations of an accumulation. [….] The processes in the body considered responsible for illness were Knots and Concretions. (Hsu 58)

Kuriyama (2002) informs us that, of the four principal diagnostic modalities in classical Chinese medicine: “gazing (wang), listening and smelling (wen), questioning (wen [a different character]), and touching (qie),” it is the centrality of the last that accounts for “over 150 works on the interpretation of haptic signs” (19-20). These signs are detected through “pulse taking,” a gesture ostensibly identical in practice to that of European physicians. Yet as we now know, “Chinese palpation wasn’t based on the imagination of the dilating and contracting artery. The mo wasn’t the pulse” (38). While there is pulse taking of a sort in Chinese medicine, quiemo, palpating the mo, actually involves the palpation of various mo, “that is, a procedure for tracking changes in the conduits [of qi], blood [and other vital fluids] that so powerfully affected the pains and powers” (44-45). The vital streams detected in qiemo canonically numbered twelve and at one time were identified at different sites on the body but were soon concentrated at the wrist. Qiemo tracks changes in blood and qi. Kuriyama explains further that the “earliest references to qi and xueqi (blood and qi) appear in the [Confucian] Analects,” wherein they apparently serve as a biological or, better, physiological substrate for emotional temperament or aspects of character (103).

At the very least we have here a picture in which the body and heart-mind are indissolubly and causally connected to each other, with the individual possessing the capacity or potential power to “rule” or control xueqi to the end of healthy human flourishing. Yet in conformity to the Nanjing (Canon of Difficulties), Chinese physicians periodically decried the singular attention devoted to palpation which, doctrinally speaking, was ranked as the lowest of the four aforementioned means of diagnostic knowing: “Diagnosis encompassed the ‘divine’ art of gazing, the ‘sagely’ art of listening and smelling, the ‘crafty’ art of questioning, and the ‘skillful’ art of touching. Someone who learned the last thus qualified only as skillful, while those who mastered hearing and seeing achieved sageliness and divinity” (71). Lastly, Kuriyama reminds us that while the art and science of qiemo “is still very much alive” in China, the haptic knowledge canalized in pulse taking in the Western medical tradition “has become a shriveled, meager science,” largely replaced by the biomedical “precision and objectivity of machines making human touch look hopelessly obtuse and unreliable” (65). Lastly, while the ability to rule xueqi is necessary for a healthy body and might thus be said to be indispensable to the self-discipline of the heart-mind (xin²), it is the heart-mind that in the end is the master or “ruler” of thought, will and desire, of our cognitive, volitional and affective states. One learns to rule the body as it were, as part of the greater task of mastery of thought, will and desire, a task that requires the “emptying” of xin².

Wu-wei: non-action; non-interference; non-intervention. Livia Kohn’s entry on this concept from The Encyclopedia of Taoism, 2 Vols. (in Pregadio, ed. 2008: 1067) provides us with a succinct formulation: “Wuwei or ‘non-action’ means to do things the natural way, by not interfering with the patterns, rhythms and structure of nature, without imposing one’s own intentions upon the world.” Thus wu-wei is not, literally, non-action but refers instead to a qualitatively distinct and uncommon kind of action, what Huston Smith calls “creative quietude,” meaning one acts with a still or clear (‘unmuddied’) mind in a manner that embodies the Dao. Such action is characterized by a freedom and spontaneity (ziran) that come from a heart-mind experiencing an ecstatic or blissful oneness with “all-there-is.” It is the characteristic and conspicuous action of the sage (shengren) and the ideal ruler in both Confucianism and Daoism and is, arguably, a direct product of ascetic praxis and mystical states of consciousness. In short, wu-wei is acting with a meditative heart-mind (like a polished mirror) in harmony with the natural world and tian while instantiating the Dao.

Ascetic self-discipline, training in the arts, and meditative praxis can be fairly described as necessary yet not sufficient conditions for wu-wei. In other words, while “making every effort,” “striving,” “working hard” or even “willing” are in one important sense truly the antithesis of wu-wei, arduous striving, self-discipline and training the mind are no less integral to the eventual accomplishment of wu-wei. The “acting naturally” that is wu-wei, therefore, does not come naturally to us, hence we are instructed to “return to the uncarved block,” dampen the passions and still the mind. Only then might we prove capable of acting in a timely fashion with the consummate skill, grace and spontaneity befitting alike the exigencies of daily situations and unique circumstance. Acting naturally in the Daoist sense means cultivating what for us does not come naturally, and thus self-cultivation brings about, so to speak, a second nature (see Kupperman 1999), a nature capable of spontaneously and effortlessly realizing the Dao.

We can better appreciate wu-wei by briefly looking at a species of its converse, what we earlier referred to as “willing what cannot be willed.” For it seems plain enough that certain mental states (e.g., sleep, humility, virtue) are not achieved by direct acts of the will and in general there is a patent pragmatic contradiction inherent in the very attempt to “will the absence of will” in any immediate or direct sense. As Elster also informed us above, the Daoist (or Buddhist) must resort to indirect pedagogical strategies designed to undermine our habitual reliance on ego and will, thereby avoiding the pragmatic contradiction intrinsic to willing what cannot be willed. Chris Fraser explains how we might conceive of the Daoist project as avoiding this pragmatic contradiction if we simply re-describe our notion of intentionality:

[I]n some accounts of intentionality an agent cannot cause herself to perform actions that are wholly unintentional, because intentions (unlike effort) remain in effect over time, even when not consciously held in mind, and their scope covers all the subsidiary actions that contribute to their fulfillment. For example, this morning I set out to work on this review spontaneously, without consciously forming an intention to do so. Nevertheless, my activity was intentional, because it is part of a project I am performing intentionally. At some level of description, any voluntary movement an agent performs is intentional, merely by being an action rather than a reflex. (Fraser 2007: 101)

On this account, our action is still intentional in a wider or long-term sense (allowing time for the ego to recede into the background or for action that is no longer self-conscious) but not willful in the short-term or immediate sense. In any case, self-consciously “relating-to-the-relating” (to-the-world) and egoistic acting have to do with the state of mind (xin²) in acting and not action as such. Hence intentional action and wu-wei are perfectly compatible, as it is not intentionality or even willing that is the locus of the problem but rather the obsessive, narcissistic or solipsistic ego or what we call willfulness, an inability to “let go” (exhibiting ‘non-attachment’ to the fruits of action is how the Indic yogi would describe it) while acting in the world that is the reason for our inability to live in harmony with the natural world, tian and Dao. Although he discusses these issues in the context of the Analects (in Chong, et al, eds. 2003), Fingarette’s treatment is equally pertinent to our understanding of this topic in Daoism, invoking an important distinction between the “personal will” and the “ground” of willing:

[Confucius] tells us that we ought to abjure the quest for personal profit, personal fame, or personal gratification of the senses. It is not that there is anything intrinsically wrong with fame, wealth, honor, even sensual pleasure—if such things arise as incidental effects of a will directed to the Way (dao) for its own sake[cf. Daodejing 7, 9, 22, 24, 67]. But better to have poor food and shabby clothes and be unknown, and to will the dao, than to depart from the dao even for a moment [cf. Daodejing 70.3: ‘And so the Wise Person, dressed in shabby clothes, jade under his shirt.’]. This contrast of motives brings to our attention dimensions of will that may be but that are not inevitably and distinctively personal. It will be recalled that my will, in respect to its generative source, control over its arousal, intensity, and direction and its power in turn over conduct, is inherently personal. For in all these respects my will can only be identified and described by identifying me personally. But the ground for willing a certain act is distinguishable from any of these and it need not be personal. It is true that I and only I can will my will but it may be that what I will is called for by the li, or by ren or zhong, or shu, or yi, or—to put it most generally—by the dao, and that my reason for so willing is precisely that this is what the dao calls for. [….] So, while the will that I direct to the dao is personal regarding its initial locus of energy, and control over the arousal, intensity, direction, and persistence, when it comes to the ground on which I choose and justify the direction for my will, and on which I elect to maintain that will vigorously and wholeheartedly, that ground—the dao—is in no way one that has reference to me personally. (288-289)

Wuxing: Five Phases or Five Agents (theory). Joseph Needham (1956) and Manfred Porkert (1974) well explain Five Phases in general, and Kaptchuk (2000) devotes an appendix of his seminal study of Chinese medicine to elucidating Five Phases in relation to medical doctrine and clinical practice. A.C. Graham (1989) makes clear that Five Phases theory is the conceptual fulcrum facilitating correlative thinking and rudimentary cosmology in classical Chinese thought:

The Chinese cosmology which assumed its lasting shape by the beginning of the Han is a vast system starting from chains of pairs correlated with the Yin and Yang, branching out into fours and fives (Four Seasons, Four Directions, Five Colours, Five Sounds, Five Tastes, Five Smells…) correlated with the Eight Trigrams and Sixty-four Hexagrams of the Yi-jing. This scheme, in which to explain and infer is to locate within the pattern, provides the organizing concepts of proto-sciences such as astronomy, medicine, music, divination, and, in later centuries, alchemy and geomancy. (319-320)

I disagree, as I suspect would Lloyd and Sivin (2002), and Kuriyama (2002), with Graham’s characterization of Classical Chinese Medicine (CCM) as simply a “proto-science” in his discussion of Five Phases and correlative reasoning, based as it is on an historical characterization in light of later causal reasoning in the history of science in the West, an understanding that decisively and absolutely privileges Western biomedicine over medical traditions outside its geo-historical boundaries. In other words, Graham refers to CCM as a proto-science because much of the reasoning intrinsic to CCM’s theoretical edifice is utterly dependent on correlative thinking which Graham believes is historically and philosophically superseded by analytical and causal reasoning of the sort exemplified in modern Western science and philosophy. Nonetheless, Graham does not, in the main, denigrate correlative thinking, for he recognizes its fundamental and universal character: “We find correlations of the building-blocks of thought, of the same kind as in the most exotic cosmologies, in the operation of language itself, which may be claimed as the one activity to which correlative thinking is perfectly adequate” (Graham 1989: 323). In fact, for Graham, analytical thinking itself presupposes and is dependent on the linguistic and conceptual building-blocks of correlative reasoning. All the same, Michael Nylan (2001) is right to point out that while yin/yang thinking may come naturally to us, the type of correlative thinking which yokes yin/yang to Five Phases is rather less intuitive, perhaps one reason we over time we see changes in the specifics of Five Phases theory. Be that as it may, I think it’s prudent that we classify such correlative thinking as we find here as merely one type of reasoning, if only because (global and historical) meta-philosophical reflection helps us to appreciate the manner in which reason is “embedded, articulated and manifested in culturally specific ways” (Ganeri 2001), as well as the manner in which the “forms of rationality” are “interculturally available even if they are not always interculturally instantiated” (1-3). Such appreciation need not rank one form of reasoning over another, especially until or unless we can be said to fully and comparatively understand the nature, function and purposes of the various forms of rationality.

According to Kaptchuk (2000), “The Theory of the Five Phases is an attempt to classify phenomena in terms of five quintessential processes, represented by the emblems Wood, Fire, Earth, Metal, and Water” (437). These “emblems,” as we saw in the quote above from Graham, are correlated with such things as directions, colors, seasons and, with regard to medicine, tastes, emotions, yin/yang organs, orifices and virtues. These basic correspondences are further complicated in the Neijing, as the human body is divided into three regions, and each of these regions, in turn, is subdivided three times, with each subdivision containing an element of tian. In Chinese philosophy and cosmology, Phases are said to predominate (‘rule’) for a particular period of time before giving way to the next Phase and these are then tied to “rising” yin and yang, leaving us with a system of correspondences different from that invoked strictly for medical purposes. Wuxing makes possible the microcosmic/macrocosmic correspondences that are fundamental to many religious and some philosophical worldviews (cf. the Hermetic maxim, ‘As above, so below,’ or, ‘That which is Below corresponds to that which is Above, and that which is Above, corresponds to that which is Below, to accomplish the miracles of the One Thing’). Kaptchuk further notes that today "some [medical] practitioners, especially in Korea, Japan, and parts of the West, have creatively emphasized the Five Phases Theory and made it the cornerstone of a rich and insightful clinical practice. And, just as important, all East Asian physicians recognize Five Phases as an important vocabulary in their semantic network, theoretical perspective, and clinical practice." (449)

Yin-Yang: Originally, yin was used in reference to the northern slope of a mountain facing away from the sun, while yang designated the slope facing the sun. Microcosmic/macrocosmic correspondences are associated with the forces or energy of yin/yang, with yin linked to the receptive, the dark, and the soft; among its symbols are cold water, a dark sky, the color black, the tiger, and even numbers; while yang corresponds to the creative, the bright, the hard, its symbols including the sun, fire, the dragon, the color red, and odd numbers. Nothing in the cosmos is ever wholly yin or yang, a metaphysical and ontological fact pictorially rendered by the Taiji diagram (see Little 2000: 131). In classical Chinese medicine, the concept of yin/yang was quite early bound up with qiemo as is apparent in the title of an indispensable text, Yinyang shiyimo jiujing (Treatise on the moxibustion of the eleven yin and yang mo), which predates the oft-cited Neijing (i.e., perhaps as early as third century BCE).

One of the earliest (if not the first) mention of yin/yang occurs in the Yijing ([I Ching] the Book of Changes), which states, “One yin, one yang, that is the Dao,” a formulation that differs from the more complex outline found in chapter 42 of the Daodejing: “Dao produced the One, The One produced Two, Two produced Three, Three produced the thousands of things.” Following Livia Kohn’s (arguable) interpretation (1992: 46-47), I take “the One” to refer to qi and “the Two” as yin/yang, and thus “the Three” is qi and yin/yang working together to account for the manifest or phenomenal world (i.e., wanwu, ‘the thousand things’). In any case, the fluctuation and interaction of these symbiotic and complementary polar energies are further refined in their expression through the system of correlations and analogies found in Five Phases (wuxing) theory. Yin/yang and the Five Phases encourage us to view the natural world as more than a collection of discrete objects, particularly those captured by “basic level categories” (see, for instance, the discussion in Lakoff and Johnson 1999: 26-30), but as things belonging to a complex web of interrelated forces and events marked by both identity-in-change and change-in-identity, be it manifest, latent, or hidden; hence chapter 42 continues: “The myriad creatures shoulder yin and embrace yang, and by blending these qi (‘vital energies’) they attain harmony (he).”

Of course the internal dynamic equilibrium of yin and yang (necessarily related to external forces of yin and yang) serves as the ideal physiological state central to the health of the individual in Chinese medicine. Generally speaking, too much yang is symptomatic of heightened organic activity, while too much yin indicates inadequate functioning of the organs. It is important to note as well the relative employment of yin/yang terminology in Chinese medicine, to cite just one example, the heart is yin vis-à-vis the small intestine, but yang in relation to the kidneys. Not surprisingly, yin/yang is absolutely fundamental to the medical doctrine of the Huangdi neijing (Yellow Emperor’s Inner Canon), which remains a central doctrinal text in classical Chinese medicine.

Image: Li Tieguai, ca. 1500, Ming dynasty

Power: An Introduction—Part 3(b) i

As promised at the end of our last post, we'll now introduce some basic terms essential to an understanding of Confucian and Daoist worldviews, the emphasis being on the philosophical dimension of these traditions so as to better appreciate the conceptions of power we hope to illuminate. This basic glossary guide cannot but appear cursory to scholars of these worldviews, and space constraints preclude introducing any more than a handful of terms. Still, they should suffice by way of making the material in our final post intelligible to those not well acquainted with classical Chinese worldviews and perhaps even provoke a few readers to pursue this subject matter in greater depth (our list of references and further reading should assist and guide any such exploration).

Confucianism:

dao (tao): ‘way,’ in the sense of path or road. Zhang Dainian writes ‘The concept dao is perhaps the most important concept in Chinese philosophy.’ In the Book of Documents one finds mention of dao with regard to cutting a channel so as to prevent a river from overflowing its banks. Dao occurs some eighty times in the Analects. Other meanings: to explain, to tell, method, art, teachings, doctrines (hence, ‘a way to do something’ or ‘the right way to do something’). Ames and Rosemont state that for Confucius, dao is primarily rendao: ‘a way of becoming consummately and authoritatively human.’ In Confucianism, one is concerned with properly ascertaining the way of life of one’s cultural predecessors (Confucius said he ‘did not forge new paths’). Coming to understand this dao allows one to properly perform li (one might say dao, like ren, is manifest in li) in one’s own life and thereby continue transmission of what is vital within tradition. This might be gleaned from Analects 15.29: ‘It is the person who is able to broaden the way (dao), not the way (dao) that broadens the person.’ Confucius was reticent about the dao of tian, the truth of which he assumes and, accordingly, is largely in the background of the Analects. As noted above, therefore, Confucius focused on the human way, in contrast to the Daoists. Yet the Confucian dao is not perhaps without metaphysical significance, as in 4.8: ‘If at dawn you learn of and tread the way (dao), you can face death at dusk.’ (Dao will also be discussed from the vantage point of Daoism in 3(b) ii.)

de (te): virtue, power, integrity, moral/spiritual charisma, excellence. Originates with tian, and is evidenced in the non-coercive or nonviolent power or effects one has on others as a consequence or by-product of one’s virtues, of one’s personal ethical excellence and exemplification. In short, de is virtuous conduct, with the implication that such conduct can have a magical-like effect (inspirational, motivational, and so forth) on others. This can be seen in 4.24: ‘Excellent persons (de) do not dwell alone; they are sure to have neighbors.’ Cf. 2.1: ‘Governing with excellence (de) can be compared to the North Star: the North Star dwells in its place, and the multitude of stars pay it tribute.’ And 2.3: ‘Lead the people with administrative injunctions and keep them orderly with penal law, and they will avoid punishments but be without a sense of shame. Lead them with excellence (de) and keep them orderly through ritual propriety (li) and they will develop a sense of shame, and moreover, will order themselves.’ In 12.19 we learn that the ‘excellence [or virtue] (de) of the exemplary person (junzi) is the wind, while that of the petty person is the grass. As the wind blows, the grass is sure to bend.’ One bends to the will of or defers to the power of de. From contemporary Anglo-American analytic philosophy, the late Robert Nozick provides us with a compelling and evocative description of the power of de in his book, Philosophical Explanations (1981):

It is not implausible to think we are elevated by others who are more developed than ourselves in their striving for harmonious hierarchical development and for a valuable life. We are aided and encouraged along our own path of development by their striving for self-development [in Confucian terms, ‘self-cultivation’] and purer feeling; contrast the effects on us of encountering those with a sour mixture of one-upmanship, self-aggrandizement, desire to dominate or destroy, and other festering emotions, the effects of wending our way and bending our attention to their motivations and trajectories. [….] We all know people, I hope, who bring out the best in us, people in whose presence we would be embarrassed to speak or act from unworthy motives, people who glow. In their presence we feel elevated. We are pushed, or nudged further along a path of development and perfection; rather, we are inspired to move ourselves along, in the direction shown. [….] We want to find a way of living whereby our best energies and talents are poured out so as to speak to and improve the best energies and talents of others. We want to utilize our highest parts and energies in a way that helps others to flourish. (Robert Nozick, Philosophical Explanations. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1981)

junzi (chün tzu): gentleman; noble person; exemplary person; virtuous individual. Prior to Confucius, junzi meant ‘son of a lord,’ denoting aristocratic rank, the male child of a noble family. Confucius provides us with a transvaluation in meaning: from "nobility of blood" to "nobility of character." The Confucian gentleman is trained (self-disciplined and acculturated) in ritual practice (li), study (xue), and the arts (wen). The proper performance of li exhibits ren (jen) and relies on the power of de (te). The junzi is more than a shi yet less than a Sage (shengren), the latter providing the model of emulation for the junzi. Cf. 4.16: ‘Exemplary persons (junzi) understand what is morally appropriate; petty persons understand what is of personal advantage.’ In the words of Hall and Ames, the junzi ‘serves as the primary agent of sociopolitical ordering. He performs this function by virtue of his role as a model of [self] cultivation.’ Self-cultivation for the junzi entails bringing into harmonious proportion that which is innate (‘nature’) and that which is acquired (‘nurture’), as well as effecting a harmony between his inner state and outer behavior. As regards the former, Slingerland says ‘the goal in ritual performance was to achieve the proper balance between zhi (‘native substance,’ that is, raw emotions and feelings [what Ames and Rosemont term ‘basic disposition’] and wen (‘acquired refinement’), to avoid being an uncouth brute or an affected pedant…’ (cf. 6.18). The junzi’s performance of li is both creative and spontaneous, evoking the proper participation in li by others and inspiring their cultivation or accumulation of ren. The intrapersonal order attained through training of the junzi’s body and disciplining of the heart/mind (xin²) is a necessary condition of interpersonal order in the expanding circles of human conduct: from the intimate realm of the family, through the small group and community, to larger and more complex forms of social and political organization. It is the human heartedness or goodness of the junzi that gives life or meaning to li, that allows us to see the sacred or holy in everyday gestures and acts, in conventions and social norms, in etiquette and rites of passage. It is the merit and virtues of the junzi that authorize critical reflection on li, that authorize the possible alteration of li, that permit the spontaneous and creative articulation and performance of li specific to the exigencies of a particular time and place. The junzi knows what to do and how to do it, in other words, he is at ease in any situation, without self-consciously deliberating how to act. In the words of Herbert Fingarette, ‘The dao is present in the junzi’s will,’ for the ‘junzi’s will imposes nothing, but it manifests or actualizes the dao.’

li: ritual, rites, etiquette, customs, conventions, social norms, propriety. An early instance of li is in reference to a bronze cauldron used in sacred ceremonies. Later it refers to holy rituals, such as sacrifices to the ancestors or divination practices. Confucius widens and deepens the meaning of li to refer to social norms, conventions, etiquette, rituals, gestures, in short, to the myriad forms of scripted or patterned behavior performed on a routine basis in daily life that is ultimately sanctioned by tian and reflects the proper ways (daos) of living exemplified by one’s cultural ancestors. In the word of Ames and Rosemont, ‘Li are those meaning invested roles, relationships, and institutions which facilitate communication, and which foster a sense of community [and common good]. The compass is broad: all formal conduct, from table manners to patterns of greeting and leave-taking…from gestures of deference to ancestral sacrifices, all of these, and more, are li.’ An animating assumption here is that social behavior should be choreographed according to divine or sacred archetypes (e.g., tian) or models as practiced by the Sages of the past and exemplified by the junzi. Generally speaking, li is the proper or right way to do things given a proper consideration of tradition by the right kind of person. Everyday social interaction can be suffused with a holiness or sacredness that comes with the actualization of dao provided it is correctly—harmoniously and spontaneously—performed by individuals possessed of ren. This results in human behavior being in accord with the rhythms and patterns of tian, with its sacred cosmological and natural processes (or daos). Li performed by individuals lacking in the requisite amount of ren is akin to mindless habit, it is lifeless, mechanical, meaningless, awkward, self-conscious or egocentric and profane. Li without ren, dao and yi accounts for the fetters or shackles of tradition, of the veneration of tradition for tradition’s sake. More specifically, processes of reification or ossification will infiltrate li performed by individuals not committed to self-cultivation, hindering the truly personal and creative appropriation of tradition. Li are a social grammar learned through (1) socialization and acculturation (beginning with the family), (2) through the emulation of the right kind of persons (e.g., the junzi and the Sage), and (3) through informal and formal appropriation of the material found in the ‘Five Classics’ (Odes, Documents, Rites, Changes, and Spring and Autumn Annals). The junzi critically and creatively appropriates the li of tradition assessed in the light of ren and yi (morally right or appropriate), a process that entails making the tradition one’s own. Because of the integral relation between li and ren, it seems one might speak of the moralization of human behavior with Confucius, in other words, the scope of ‘the ethical’ is not confined to infrequent or special situations or acts but refers in some sense to the entirety of one’s conduct, insofar as all of one’s behavior is capable in differing degrees of influencing, shaping, or contributing to an ethical disposition, to ethical character. Ames and Rosemont well appreciate the uniqueness of this view: ‘For Westerners, there is ostensibly a distinction to be made between being boorish and being immoral. For Confucius, however, there are simply varying degrees of inappropriate, demeaning, and hurtful behavior along a continuum on which a failure in personal responsiveness is not just bad manners, but fully a lapse in moral responsibility.’ The writer and philosopher Iris Murdoch comes close to the Confucian perspective on the scope of ethics. Murdoch believed that all our states of consciousness and action presuppose cognitive and affective discrimination and that any such discrimination is subject to moral appraisal, as evidenced here in a passage from her Metaphysics as a Guide to Morals (1992):

The moral life is not intermittent or specialised, it is not a peculiar separate area of our existence. [….] Life is made up of details. We compartmentalise it for reasons of convenience, dividing the aesthetic from the moral, the public from the private, work from pleasure. [….] Yet we are all always deploying and directing our energy, refining or blunting it, purifying or corrupting it, and it is always easier to do a thing a second time. “Sensibility” is a word which may be in place here. Aesthetic insight connects with moral insight, respect for things connects with respect for persons. (Education.). Happenings in the consciousness so vague as to be almost non-existent can have moral “colour.” All sorts of momentary sensibilities to other people, too shadowy to come under the heading of manners of communication, are still parts of moral activity. (‘But are you saying that every single second has a moral tag?’ Yes, roughly.) [….] [M]uch of our self-awareness is other-awareness, and in this area we exercise ourselves as moral beings in our use of many various skills as we direct our modes of attention.

Li has everything to do with what Murdoch refers to here as the proper directing of our modes of attention. Michael Nylan has nicely explained the egalitarian quality in the Confucian conception of li as enshrined in the three Rites canons:

they promote a kind of egalitarianism in three senses: they assume that everyone can be perfected; they stipulate that a code of manners, aristocratic in origin, be learned by and applied to all humans; they advocate the assignment of social rank according to virtue and merit, defining both in terms of relative contributions to the larger society; and they aim to school each person, through theory and praxis, in the very social skills that facilitate effective interaction. Accordingly, it should come as no surprise that nonelites in early, medieval, and late imperial China were at times more eager than social and political elites to embrace the precepts set forth in the Rites canons.
Another character for li originally meant the lines running through a piece of jade and came to denote ‘good order,’ ‘principle,’ and ‘reason.’ It became very important in the historical development and philosophical articulation of Confucianism (see Cua in the bibliography).

ming: ‘command’ ‘to name’ ‘mandate,’ or fate, thus, in the latter senses, that which is determined independently of human agency or volition. In the Shang dynasty, ming is the name for that kind of speech invoked in divination and in some ceremonial actions (e.g. of investiture). Later, ming is sometimes employed in the sense of ‘mandate,’ for instance, ‘we are mandated [or commanded] by Heaven [tian] to do X, and if we do X then the order desired by both Heaven and man will be obtained’ (Michael Puett). Yet ming can also mean the misfortune experienced by the moral person, in the words of pop psychology, ‘when bad things happen to good people.’ The terrible events or occurrences that befall such individuals thus not in any obvious sense ethically deserved or merited. This latter meaning is along the lines of fate or destiny which is out of one’s control. Hence ming can be used in both a descriptive and normative sense. The junzi’s (‘inner’) processes of self-cultivation having solidified his spiritual and ethical comportment or having developed his ren, ‘the vicissitudes of the outside world—life and death, fame and disgrace, wealth and poverty—can be faced “without worry and without fear”’(Slingerland). Thus the common man and the Confucian gentleman respond to the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune in fundamentally different ways owing to their different psychological and ethical dispositions. Michael Puett suggests that we can reconcile the aforementioned meanings: ‘If ming is consistently associated with the commands of Heaven, if these commands cannot always be associated with a moral calculus, and if humans are being called upon to act morally despite these commands from Heaven, then it would imply that the relations between man and Heaven are highly complex….’ In other words, the would-be junzi concentrates upon that which is within his control, namely the perfectibilist project of Confucian self-cultivation.

ren (jen): benevolence; humaneness; goodness; perfect virtue; authoritative conduct; love. Ren is the sum of uniquely human ethical virtues, an all-encompassing ethical if not spiritual ideal, crystallized in the practice of benevolence and compassion. Karyn Lai writes that ren, ‘in its general form…is manifest as a concern for the human condition; in its more specific instances, it is manifest as a concern for specific others.’ Ames and Rosemont define ren as ‘one’s cultivated cognitive, aesthetic, moral, and religious sensibilities as they are expressed in one’s ritualized roles and relationships.’ Ren is even expressed, in part, in ‘one’s posture, and comportment, gestures and bodily communication.’ Ren is the result of self-cultivation, an educational process that commences within the family and continues throughout one’s lifetime, for it is, in the words of Hall and Ames, ‘a process term that has no specific terminus ad quem [endpoint].’ Similarly, Kim-chong Chong notes that ren, ‘like autonomy, is…an achievement concept.’ The exemplary or authoritative person (junzi) is continually self-surpassing, on a perfectibilist moral and spiritual path that ends with the Sage, the ideal spiritual figure of the Golden Age that serves as a lodestar for self-cultivation. Ren, like the Platonic Good, cannot be definitively expressed in propositional language, as it is as much about ‘knowing how’ as ‘knowing that’ (a distinction that goes back to the philosopher Gilbert Ryle; these two modes of knowing are not mutually exclusive), and one reason we know about the presence of ren through li, the latter embodying ‘knowing how.’ Slingerland, however, accounts for the Confucian reluctance to define ren—its ‘indeterminate character’ and ‘apparent vagueness’—to ‘the problematic nature of judgments of character.’ With good reason, Socratic dialectic and dialogue demonstrated that the virtues are not wholly captured in the names, propositions and images by which we have learned to know them, however much such knowledge is integral to coming to know their true nature, a knowledge that takes the form of nonpropositional insight. Replace ‘the good’ with ‘ren’ in the following from Francisco Gonzalez and you can better see the argument here: ‘Propositions are well suited to expressing knowledge of objects or facts; they can no more express knowledge of the good, however, than they can express knowledge-how or self-knowledge, both of which are involved in knowing the good.’ Insofar as li is the codified, external expression of ren (David Hinton), li and ren are similar to the Socratic dialectic as discussed by Gonzalez in Dialectic and Dialogue: Plato’s Practice of Philosophical Inquiry (1998), perhaps one reason the scenes of Confucius and his students depicted in the Analects is reminiscent of Socrates and his interlocutors in the agora:

[T]he use that characterizes dialectic itself instantiates what it brings us to understand, so that this understanding is always self-understanding (in the sense of a ‘knowledge of knowledge’). This is why this use presupposes an affinity between the subject and the object. One must have and thus be acquainted with virtue and the good, even though only implicitly and confusedly, in order to inquire into them. As a user’s knowledge, knowledge of virtue and the good is acquired and exhibited in the very practice of inquiry, rather than in any propositional results abstracted from that practice.

Confucius is often asked in the Analects what he means by the word ren, which suggests he no where provides a satisfactory definition or propositional formulation that fully articulates the essence, truth or meaning of ren, however much his examples and references point to some aspects, features or qualities of ren. It is natural for his students to ask such questions, and the collective process of inquiry serves to instantiate and exhibit ren! As Ames and Rosemont state, ‘like a work of art, it is a process of disclosure rather than closure, resisting fixed definition and replication.’ The Analects suggests, to borrow from Nozick, that ‘we are to care about, accept, support, affirm, encourage, protect, guard, praise, seek, embrace, serve, be drawn toward, be attracted by, aspire toward, strive to realize, foster, express, nurture, delight in, respect, be inspired by, take joy in, resonate with, be loyal to, be dedicated to, and celebrate’ the values and virtues that make up ren. Cf. 4.1: ‘In taking up one’s residence, it is the presence of ren (authoritative persons) that is the greatest attraction. How can anyone be called wise who, in having the choice, does not seek to dwell among ren (authoritative persons).’ Chong explains that ren is approached in ‘the language of integrity, self-worth, courage, and right,’ in stark contrast with an egoistic focus on ‘material things, profit, wealth, rank, and the opinions of others.’ In processes of enculturation and socialization it is fair to say, with Kwong-loi Shun, that the ‘ideal of ren is shaped by actually existing li practices in that it is not intelligible and cannot be shown to have a validity independent of them. However, it is not totally determined by li because advocacy of the ideal allows room for departing from or revising an existing rule of li.’ Enculturation and socialization are what shape innate dispositions and tendencies or, put differently, are what awaken our awareness of and attraction toward ren (Confucius did not articulate a theory of human nature as such, although his understanding of same seems, by default, open-ended). In this sense, li might metaphorically be seen as deposits of jen, as concretized jen, which, in turn, serve to facilitate an attraction toward the value of jen. Yet jen transcends li as Shun makes clear, inasmuch as it is the former that allows for critique and modification of the latter. This transcendent quality of jen with respect to li is well explained here by Slingerland:

Although the training through which virtues are acquired proceeds according to a general set of rules or principles, the actual decisions made by a person with fully virtuous dispositions are both more flexible and more authoritative than the rules themselves. Thus, once a practice has been mastered, in the sense that the requisite virtues have been developed, this mastery brings with it a certain independence from the rules that constitute the practice: the master is able to reflect upon the rules and may even chose to transgress or revise them if, in her best judgment, this is what is required to realize the good or goods specific to that practice. Practice mastery thus brings with it a type of transcendence: the freedom to evaluate, criticize and seek to reform the practice tradition itself.

We all have some implicit awareness of the good or ren as a consequence of our enculturation and socialization through li practices, and further Confucian self-cultivation draws us closer to ren as the essence of our humanity. If ren is ultimately rooted in the dao of tian, and we owe our existence to such cosmological forces and powers, it might even be argued, Socratic-like, that individuals possess an innate knowledge of ren, however dim, and that Confucian self-cultivation and education serves to bring such knowledge into ever-greater awareness and fruition, hence we are not ‘taught’ ren in the conventional sense. This is certainly in keeping with Mencius’ later assertion that human nature is intrinsically or innately good, accounting for how one can come to recognize and appreciate the good through psychological and moral developmental processes. It is traditionally argued that there are two indispensable parts to jen: shu (‘reciprocity,’ or the negative formulation of the Golden Rule: ‘do not impose on others what you yourself do not desire’) and zhong (loyalty). These concepts seem applicable to the various hierarchical roles one is involved in daily life (the argument of David S. Nivison), with the considerations of shu applicable to one in a ‘superior’ position or rank, and zhong applicable to one in a ‘subordinate’ position or rank. Of course one is typically involved in roles of both types, for example, the (superior) relation of the father to the son in the family, while the father at his place of employment may have a manager or boss, in which case he is now in a subordinate relation. Empathy appears to be fundamental to both shu and zhong, and of course both can be no less appropriate to roughly equal relations as well.

ru: prior to Confucius refers, first, to dancers and musicians in religious ceremonies or holy rituals. Secondly, it came to mean those who themselves were masters of religious rituals and ceremonies. Because of the links between such ceremonies or ritual performance and the topical matter in the ‘Six Classics’ (i.e., the Book of Poetry, the Book of History, the Book of Rites, the Book of Music, the Book of Changes, and the Spring and Autumn Annals—the Book of Music was eventually lost, so the Six Classics became the Five Classics), the ru were often teachers, both in official capacity and as private tutors. Ru were also well-versed in the arts or culture (wen): li, music, archery, charioteering (or carriage driving), mathematics, and calligraphy, for example. By the Warring States period, Confucius was widely acknowledged, when not esteemed, as the leading exemplar of the ru tradition. Later, the ‘Way of Confucius’ and the ru tradition became one, such that every ruist was by definition a Confucian and vice versa.

shengren (or simply sheng): sage; in the moral and spiritual hierarchy of ideal figures the sage is closest to, if not the embodiment of, perfection. The sage acts in full harmony with the patterns and processes of nature and tian. In other words, the way (dao) of the sage is one with both the dao(s) of the natural world and the dao of heaven. Traditional Chinese history upholds the model of predynastic and other ‘sage kings’ like Yao, Shun, Wen, and the Duke of Chou who ruled with the Mandate of Heaven (tian ming) and thus in their personal and political behavior displayed an awareness of the harmony, beauty and sublimity intrinsic to natural processes. Nivison has argued that the notion that these were ‘sage kings’ was relatively late in articulation, a position that accords with the fact that the pertinent chapters in the Analects are likely later interpolations in comparison to books 3-7 and 9, what Van Norden calls the ‘core books’ of the Analects. In 7.34 Confucius says that he cannot be considered a shengren, and in 7.26 he laments, ‘I have no hopes of meeting a sage. I would be content if I would meet someone who is a junzi.’ The junzi holds ‘the words of the sage’—along with the Mandate of Heaven and great men—‘in awe’ (16.8). The sage is the one person who ‘can listen to music and discern in it the original details and quality of an age and its culture’ (Hall and Ames). Ignoring the words of their Master, the Confucian tradition soon designated Confucius a sage, indeed, it viewed him as the archetypal sage. Hall and Ames further fill out the portrait of the sage as ‘the rare person [who] elevates the human experience to profound aesthetic and religious refinement, making the human being a worthy partner with the heavens and the earth.’ Moreover, and in keeping with the metaphorical imagery of dao, ‘the shengren have traveled, appropriated and enlarged a longer stretch of the road than the shi and junzi, and they are providing signposts and bearings for the latter as well.’

tian (tian): very roughly, ‘heaven.’ With Ames and Rosemont, I think this term is best left untranslated, as there is no satisfactory equivalent term in English. Unlike heaven in the Abrahamic religions, Tian is best understood as both transcendent and immanent, for the natural world is part of heaven, although the fact that this term replaced Shang Di suggests, in addition, that it had a supernatural function. In fact, some of the anthropomorphic qualities associated with the ‘Lord on High’ carried over into tian (e.g., in the Documents, tian ‘hears and sees,’ and we can speak of the ‘will [ming] of tian’), but the latter notion is considerably less anthropomorphic than the former. I am also in agreement with Robert Louden’s position (contrary to the view of Fingarette and others) that the passages in the Analects in which tian occurs ‘form a consistent whole, one from which we can reliably infer both that Confucius was a strong religious believer in a nonconventional sense, and that his moral orientation was itself dependent on his religious outlook.’ Cf. 7.23, in which Confucius is informed that the Minister of War in Sung was attempting to kill him: ‘Tian is the author of virtue [de] that is in me. What can Huan Tui do to me?’ Or consider Confucius’ remark in 9.5, where we learn that, like Socrates, Confucius believed he was on a divine mission: ‘With King Wen dead, is not culture [wen] invested here in me? If Tian intends culture to be destroyed, those who come after me will not be able to have any part of it. If Tian does not intend this culture to be destroyed, then what can the people of Kuang do to me?’ The next passage in the Analects finds Confucius’ student Zigong claiming that ‘Tian definitely set him [Confucius] on the path to sagehood.’ Confucius clearly believed the aspiring junzi should ‘model himself on, and seek moral guidance from, Tian’ (Louden). As Tian is not personal deity of any sort, it cannot speak to us in any way but a metaphorical sense, yet the wise (i.e., those with zhi, ‘knowledge,’ ‘wisdom’) can discern meaning in the fact that ‘the four seasons turn and the myriad things are born and grow within it’ (17.19). Louden’s interpretation of this passage suggests Confucius, in this instance at any rate, was not far from the worldview of the Daoists: ‘he is implying that through the harmony, beauty, and sublimity of its natural processes Tian communicates a great deal about how human beings ought to live and act, at least to those who have learned to listen carefully to it.’ Confucius was, comparatively speaking, reticent about things supernatural or metaphysical, but there are myriad reasons to account for such reticence (reasons not dissimilar from those that find spiritual teachers preferring the oral to the written word, or the reason Plato gives us in the Seventh Letter: ‘this subject matter cannot at all be expressed in words as other studies can’) without implausibly turning Confucius into an agnostic humanist. On the other hand, one might plausibly infer from such reticence that Confucius did not countenance metaphysical speculation of any sort and, furthermore, if metaphysical talk distracted in any way from the urgent and practical matters at hand (how to live and act here and now) it was to be avoided.

wen: originally, line or pattern; to inscribe, to embellish; the arts or culture; generally speaking, wen makes reference to the patterned regularity or symmetry, harmony and beauty found in (the dao of) tian (Heaven), in (the dao of) the natural world, and (the dao of) a properly humane culture. With regard to tian and the natural world one might say, by way of illustration, that wen is evidenced in the physical laws (or normative regularities) of nature (cf. Anthony Zee’s Fearful Symmetry: The Search for Beauty in Modern Physics, 1999), or the mathematical and aesthetic elegance of the Golden Ratio—Phi—throughout human history (see Mario Livio’s The Golden Ratio, 2002). For Confucius, wen entailed, at the very least, the ‘six arts,’ namely, rites, music, archery, charioteering, mathematics and calligraphy. Of course, given Confucius’ commitment to the Five Classics, we can assume poetry and dance were likewise essential. In 7.6 Confucius says, ‘Set your sights on the way (dao), sustain yourself with virtue (de), lean upon benevolence (ren), and sojourn in the arts (wen).’ Confucius’ position on the role of tradition in an appreciation of the arts is gleaned from 3.14: ‘The Chou [Zhou] dynasty looked back to the Hsia [Xia] and the Shang dynasties. Such a wealth of culture! I follow the Chou [Zhou].’ In the Book of Rites (one of the Five Classics) we are reminded that ‘the perfection of virtue is primary, and the perfection of art follows afterward.’ Put differently, the arts are enlisted in the Confucian project of moral and spiritual self-cultivation (perfectibilist growth and education). They serve to integrally and holistically discipline or train the body and heart-mind (xin²) of the would-be junzi. As Edward Slingerland reminds us, ‘music was considered by the early Confucians to be one of the most powerful tools for shaping the emotions, and the metaphor of musical perfection also served for Confucius as a metaphor for the perfected state.’ Xunzi understood wen as essential to harnessing or disciplining the ‘natural and irrepressible’ emotions that ‘burst forth in words, poems, songs, and dances’ (Goldin):

There is a danger, however, that this effusion of passion may overstep its proper bounds by violating the principles of the Way, and what began as a natural human tendency may metamorphose into a source of chaos. But the Sage Kings took steps to address just that problem: they established rituals of artistic expression, ensuring that poems and song conform to the Way. For when the people of a state sing and hear proper music, they are influenced
by its power to bring themselves in line with the Way as well. (Goldin)

Confucius and his followers were well known for reciting the three hundred odes, playing them on strings while singing and dancing to them. His devotion to the Odes exemplifies his understanding of wen. The Odes had variegated epistemic, political, ethical, aesthetic, psychological, and cultural functions in ancient China, only some of which we’ll mention here (see the excellent treatment in Nylan’s The Five ‘Confucian’ Classics, 2001). Not surprisingly, ‘all traditions portray the Odes’ vital importance as a cultural repository of eminent utility and as a teaching tool for the social graces’ (Nylan). The Odes could arouse the emotions of others, allow for the acute perception of others’ feelings, enhance a fraternal sense of community, ‘diplomatically’ express grievances or critiques so as not to offend or humiliate their targets, serve as a display of character and erudition. Formally or stylistically speaking, the inherent ambiguity and the multivalence of the odes allowed songmakers and audience alike to thrill to witty displays of learning, imparting a single meaning to lines quoted with a specific context. In effect, then, an ingenious, flexible, yet guided response, reaching ever higher levels of insight, became both the prerequisite for and the end product of Odes’ learning. (Nylan)

We might see the Confucian project of self-cultivation itself in aesthetic, or more broadly, artistic terms, as Hall and Ames did in Thinking Through Confucius (1987) and Nylan does here:

Moral self-cultivation is itself a kind of exquisite taste: the truly cultivated have learned to delight in the moral Way and to appreciate the beauty and utility of ritual. Such sophisticated powers of discrimination keep them on the path of full humanity (jen), painstakingly refining their initial impulses toward sympathetic understanding, like the jade cutter who cuts and files, chisels and polishes the precious material. People who know enough to take pleasure in the Way find that the end products of their efforts, their lives or their jades, have become exquisite works of art. (Nylan)

Little noticed, the Confucian conception of wen has much in common with the Platonic if not classical Greek understanding of the role of music and dance in paideia (moral education; aretē, or the moral habituation to virtue; education directed toward ‘the Beauty and the Good;’): ‘As an instrument of paideia, ritual dancing, in which the customs of the group are encoded, implied the acquisition of moral virtues and a sense of civic responsibility, of mature allegiance to the community, an espousal of its traditions and virtues’ (Steven H. Lonsdale, Dance and Ritual Play in Greek Religion, Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1993). For Plato, music and dance were, in Lonsdale’s words, ‘the first and fundamental steps of education,’ constituting a form of ‘unwritten laws’ that complement or sustain the written laws of the polis. These unwritten laws might helpfully be identified as a subset of Confucian li. Substitute heart-mind (xin²) for ‘soul’ in the following and the identification is transparent: Plato believed music and dance contributed to moral education and civic virtue, in other words, to ends motivated by an intimate knowledge of the Good, ‘because rhythm and harmony penetrate most easily into the soul and influence it most strongly, bringing with it decorum and making those who are correctly trained well-behaved’ (Lonsdale). Music and dance in ancient Greece, like the composition and performance of the odes in classical China, ‘made moral learning at once the most natural and so most delightful of all human activities—far more than a polite accomplishment, a significant source of gratification [or, in Greek terms, eudaimonia]’ (Nylan).

xiao: filial piety, meaning a strong sense of loyalty and respect toward one’s parents. This ethical obligation or moral duty, in the words of Liu, “is one that has penetrated Chinese culture the most.” The duty, as Liu also notes, extends beyond the lifetime of one’s parents insofar as Confucius prescribes a proper length and attitude for mourning the death of one’s parents (1.11). Filial piety does not entail blind—unthinking—obedience, as both children and parents alike are bound by the rule of proper conduct or propriety. And part and parcel of respect and loyalty is a corresponding mental attitude: reverence (or devotion). Filial piety is especially important in as much as the family is the moral embryo of the larger society and thus where one first learns the meaning and value of the varieties of virtuous behavior (e.g., gratitude or love) that form the backbone of ethical character and thus are absolutely necessary to proper performance one’s roles outside the family. In other words, it is within the family—the setting of one’s first relationships—that the process of lifelong moral development begins.

xin¹ (hsin¹):faithfulness; trustworthiness; ‘living up to one’s word’ or ‘making good on one’s word;’ one of the necessary conditions for personhood (Analects 2.22). xin¹, as a character trait, assumes, in the words of Hall and Ames, ‘that one has acquired the ability, acumen and resources to enact and make real what one says.’ It is integral to the achievement of personal integrity and, because it is essential to establishing interpersonal credibility, it is viewed as indispensable to the relation of friendship. Entailing the ‘commitment of the benefactor’ and the ‘competence of the beneficiary,’ xin¹ is ‘the consummation of fiduciary relationships’ (Ames and Rosemont). In Analects 1.8 Confucius says, ‘Take doing your utmost and making good on your word (xin¹) as your mainstay. Do not have as a friend anyone who is not as good as you are. And where you have erred, do not hesitate to mend your ways.’

xin² (hsin²): mind and/or heart but probably best as ‘heart-mind;’ also, thoughts and feelings, as Chad Hansen explains, ‘the common translation of xin as “heart-mind” reflects the blending of belief and desire (thought and feelings, ideas and emotions), into a single complex dispositional potential.’ Discussions of the heart-mind in Confucianism touch upon issues associated with human nature, and our capacity for human development, transformation, and self-transcendence. Anyone can aspire to be a Sage, for the peasant and Sage King alike possess xin², and yet the heart-mind of the Sage has become like an exquisite piece of jade: cut, chiseled, and polished to perfection. The fact that, in theory or principle anyone might become a sage does not of course speak to the question of how many individuals actually become sages or even aspire to be sage-like. Consider, for instance, the following from Paul Rakita Goldin’s explanation of Xunzi’s belief that “however vile their initial dispositions, if people attune themselves to the Way unceasingly, they may become Sages themselves:”

Small men can become noble men, and noble men can revert to being small men. [….] In his antonomastic style, Xunzi writes that even a person in the street can become the equivalent of Yu, a famous sage, although such a transformation would require an accumulation of learning which would be difficult to accomplish. [….] At this point Xunzi elaborates it is possible to walk across the world, although no one has done it; but the fact the no one has done it does not mean that it is impossible. Likewise, it is possible for a person in the street to become the equivalentof Yu, although, ostensibly, no one has done it recently; but the fact that it is difficult does not mean that it is impossible. It is difficult because it requires unceasing self-cultivation and vast accumulation of learning. (Paul Rakita Goldin, Rituals of the Way: the Philosophy of Xunzi. Chicago, Il: Open Court, 1999)

Many Confucians believe that tian (t’ien) has endowed humanity with the heart of the Way (daoxin), with the inherent potential and inclination to strive for the good. According to Hansen, both Confucius and Mozi (Mo-tzu or Mo Di) ‘assume that we actualize the [xin’s²] disposition by internalizing culture, by language.’ For Mencius (Mengzi), on the other hand, xin’s² dispositions are innate, intrinsic to human nature and as such, distinguish us from ‘beasts.’ Moreover, these dispositions can grow and flower as from a seed, provided they prove capable of trumping interference from certain bodily desires, baser passions, or selfish motivations. It is through the heart-mind that one realizes the specifically Confucian cluster of virtues: filial piety (xiao), loyalty (zhong), empathy (or the negative formulation of the Golden Rule: shu), humaneness (ren), propriety (li), that which is just and proper (yi), and wisdom (zhi). According to Mencius (Mengzi), it is our xin² that entertains, weighs and decides between competing courses of action in its role as the ‘natural governor of the self’ (Philip Ivanhoe). But this situational exercise of judgment becomes, for the Sage, a spontaneous act ‘without ambivalence or indecision. His intuition is reflexive and inevitably motivates him’ (Hansen). The ability to spontaneously respond to situations in an ethically sensitive and appropriate way reflects the possession of ‘precise practical knowledge and infallible self-control’ (Hansen). These, in turn, are the by-product of cultivated powers of concentration or meditation, what Mencius calls the ‘unmoved heart-mind.’ Finally, qi fills the empty space, as it were, of the stilled or emptied mind, in Hansen’s words, providing ‘the metaphysical underpinning of this idealized moral psychology.’ In Mencius’ words: ‘If one cultivates it [i.e., qi] with uprightness and does not harm it, it will fill up the space between Heaven and earth. It is a qi that unites yi [moral intuition] with the Dao.’ Xunzi (ca. 310-210 BCE), the last great exponent of Confucianism before the close of the classical period of Chinese philosophy, did not share Mencius’ conception of the intrinsic goodness (as a capacity or potential to be realized, signified by the four ‘incipiences’ above) of human nature. As Goldin notes, for Mencius, human nature can grow and change, ‘for xing embodies the unique characteristics of human beings, while in Xunzi’s work, it signifies only the characteristics that all people share from birth.’ Xunzi famously argued that this shared original nature (i.e., what we have from birth: xing) is bad or evil , what is good, rather, is ‘artifice,’ for example, the transformation wrought by a teacher well-versed in the Dao of li and morality, or the norms and conventions of conduct established by the Sage Kings of prehistoric times (a Golden Age, if you will). It is artifice, in the form of trying and exhaustive self-cultivation, ‘that completes one’s nature’ (Goldin), as a kind of (moralized) ‘second nature.’ For Xunzi, it is the heart-mind is capable of knowing the Dao owing to its possession of three (paradoxical yet not mystical) qualities: emptiness, unity, and tranquility. It is the heart-mind that is capable of arriving at the deliberative conclusion that it is in our self-interest in the best sense—enlightened self-interest—to follow the rituals: ‘The mind…must be able to observe dispassionately the conduct of the self. It observes that xing is self-destructive because it does not conform to the rituals, and directs the self to begin the arduous process of transformation’ (Goldin). So, while morality is external in Xunzi’s conception, insofar as it is equivalent to proper practice of the right rituals, the motivational force to be moral is internal, located in the powers of the heart-mind. Hence, it is fair to say that ‘a person is ultimately a union of xing and artifice (wei)’ (Goldin). Despite Xunzi’s deep disagreement with Mencius, his philosophy remains very much in the letter and spirit of the Master in as much as a predominant refrain throughout the Analects is the importance of learning, the love of learning being one of the criteria used to separate the junzi from the ‘small man.’ The heart-mind, according to Xunzi, is what motivates this love of learning.

yi: right (in the sense of correct or proper); duty; morality; righteousness; the quality of an action that makes it fitting or appropriate; the quality of a person disposed to such acts. Yi is what enables one to act in a proper and fitting manner in tune with the exigencies of a particular situation and in harmony with extrinsic and intrinsic natural and heavenly forces (e.g., qi) and patterns. More mundanely but relatedly, it can refer to the obligations and responsibilities in virtue of one’s various social roles and positions. For Mencius, yi is one of the five basic principles that guide the basic forms of human relations, in this case, that obtaining between the ruler and subject. In general, however, yi is associated with the junzi whose self-cultivation or self-realization serves to enhance the common good. Either the Sage or the junzi, in other words, bring to a situation or state of affairs spontaneous and creative ‘acts of signification [as] meaning-disclosing actions [that] “extend the Way”’ (Hall and Ames). As Van Norden has explained, while Mencius emphasized the context-sensitivity of virtuous actions and the fact that different (virtuous) individuals may do different things in different contexts, ‘nonetheless, there are (in particular contexts) objectively right and wrong reactions. Thus, Mencius insists that if virtuous individuals “exchanged places, they all would have done as the others.”’ Yi is infrequently found in the Analects, and is like ren insofar as Confucius leaves us without a definition or theoretical elaboration of its meaning. Mozi (Mo Di) and the Mohists, however, proffered a succinct formulation of yi as entailing a consequentialist reckoning of what benefits everyone on the whole (what provides for the common—or, as we say today, the public—good). For Xunzi, the aptitude for yi is owing to our linguistic ability to make distinctions, which, in turn, allows for us to subscribe to this or that convention or norm, this or that ritual code. For all Confucians, the extent that li is construed as a sort of moral sensitivity to or moral intuition of what is right, it can serve as a critique of li, providing a (reasoned or moral) point of departure from li in a particular case (cf. Analects 15.17 and 18).

zhi: knowledge; wisdom; to know or to realize; the term connotes some continuity or indissoluble connection between knowledge and action: ‘to know is to authenticate in action,’ that is, one’s knowledge is tried or tested in the crucible of experience. Of the four cardinal virtues of the Greek tradition (wisdom, justice, courage, and temperance), only wisdom is found in Mencius’ list, alongside ren, yi, and li. Mencius calls upon the analogical model of the craftperson’s skill to illustrate the process of acquiring practical wisdom, thus zhi is more akin to acquiring—and mastering—a skill rather than information processing. It is a kind of ‘know-how’ or ‘know-to’ rather than simply to ‘know-that,’ hence it has a non-propositional quality as well: ‘knowledge by acquaintance’ in the Platonic sense. In Hansen’s words, ‘we know a dao when we make it real in our xin².’ There is no corresponding implication that the knowledge captured by words, images and propositions is not still a species of knowledge, for (with apologies to Gonzalez) words, images and propositions can give us the properties of, say, ren or yi, inform us, in other words, of how such virtues are qualified, but they cannot express what ren or yi is, the essence of ren or yi, their ‘true being’ (the assumption here, of course, that there is such a thing). And, at least in the Platonic account, formulations of the qualities or properties of ren and yi, for example, presuppose at least some (however dim or inchoate) intuition of what a thing like ren or yi in fact is. We might suggest this as one possible reason Confucius was reticent with respect to a definition or theoretical explanation of ren or yi. The dialogic settings found in the Analects are not unlike that of Socrates in the agora, and thus it is not implausible to imagine that Confucius used such settings to engage in a dialectic similar to Socrates’ (cf. Analects 9.11), thereby apprising his students (interlocutors) of their partial perspectives on such things as ren and yi (and li, etc.), while exemplifying (as zhi) in his person the very nature of yi, of ren:

even though names, images, and propositions do not succeed in expressing or “offering” the true nature of a thing, they must nevertheless, in expressing the thing’s qualities, refer to or presuppose its nature. This is what makes possible a particular way of dealing with these means that, by exposing them in refutation, opens them to the nature which they presuppose but conceal. (Gonzalez)

With both Socrates and Confucius it would seem to be the case that the knowledge of the true being of a thing is at the same time self-knowledge (hence 2.4). And with both Socrates and Plato, nonpropositional insight must nevertheless avail itself of the knowledge associated with everyday experience, of knowledge captured in words, images and propositions, of knowledge evidenced in discursive reasoning (the dialogue, the conversational setting):

The dialectician…does not fool himself into thinking that the flaws of ordinary experience can be overcome through the construction of an ideal language or the systematization of formal logic. In our everyday use of words, propositions, and images, the true nature of things already stands revealed to us, however darkly (doxa). [….] [W]hile the ultimate goal of dialectic is nonpropositional insight, the only means of attaining (and I would add, sustaining) this insight is a form of discursive reasoning. [….] The insight that transcends words cannot be obtained except by means of words; what cannot be spoken becomes manifest in the very process of speaking. Thus what we have in dialectic as Plato understands it is the wedding of discursive and nondiscursive thought. Only through the process of examining and refuting propositions—a thoroughly discursive process—can we just barely obtain knowledge that is nonpropositional. [….] Dialectic, the primary object of which is the good, is essentially a “know-how.” It is the identification of dialectic with knowledge of use that prevents it from being solely “knowledge by acquaintance” (direct, unmediated intuition) or solely propositional knowledge and makes it instead that process in which insight and discourse are reconciled. (Gonzalez)

It would appear, therefore, that Slingerland (2001) has more than sufficient reason for acknowledging a similarity between the maieutic (dialectical method) of Socrates and the pedagogical method of Confucius.

Our next post, Power: An Introduction—Part 3(b) ii, will introduce basic Daoist concepts.

Power: An Introduction—Part 3(a)

‘A difference appears…in China, that we should seize upon and that might open up new possibilities and at last shift the vision in which our tradition has become bogged down—as indeed all traditions tend to do, including the Chinese tradition (which is extremely traditional).’—François Jullien

The third post in our series of introductory musings on the concept of power will now shift to perspectives on power understood in largely a spiritual (or religious) and moral sense, commencing with the individual person, rather than in conventional social and political terms. But the spiritual and moral here is understood in a manner thought pregnant with implications and possibilities for our social and political worlds, a basic premise being that there are no boundaries between the personal and the political or between the ethical standards thought to reign in the intimate realm of everyday life and the moral standards applicable to collective conduct or the political arena. We will be drawing our exemplars and examples from classical Chinese worldviews, especially Confucianism and Daoism. This is not to claim or insinuate that Chinese philosophy lacked conceptions of power familiar to Western political philosophers, indeed, the “Legalists” (Fajia; the term in translation is meant to connote law in a legal positivist sense, yet as Hansen makes clear, the concept of the ‘rule of law’ is here rather attenuated if not altogether absent, at any rate, it's a far cry from that found, say, in the theories of Aquinas, H.L.A Hart or Lon Fuller) in the Chinese tradition are Realists with a vengeance. Or perhaps they are best described, strictly speaking, as Legal Nihilists, providing us, from the pens of Lord Shang (Gongsun Yang or Master Zhuang) and Han Feizi, with the first truly totalitarian political theory. As John Minford writes in the introduction to his translation of Sun-tzu’s The Art of War (2002), “Very early in Chinese history, the Taoist sage’s message of effortless harmony with nature and of the ‘power’ emanating from this harmony was hijacked by the Legalists (Chinese Fascists), who exploited the ‘absolute understanding’ of the Taoists as an ideological basis for ‘absolute power’ for the ‘omnipotent ruler or the ideal Legalist state.’” Chad Hansen explains in particular that

"Han Feizi’s writings were erudite, rich in historical detail and examples. He had learned philosophy, but added little original philosophy of his own. His writings were almost purely practical. They dealt with techniques of rule intended to strengthen the ruler in the competition for military conquest. His writings eschew ethics in favor of strategy. He took the end as given and obvious. The ruling noble’s goal was conquering and unifying tian-xia (‘all under heaven [tian]). [….] Beyond his dogmatic assumptions about the end of theorizing and his essentially strategic topic, Han Feizi’s writing is more polemical than reasoned. A typical pattern is that he recites some story and then concludes that it is an example to illustrate a phrase, about which one might also cite a poem. His cynicism rests on the familiar sneering tone of superior realistic insight. We recognize it from all self-described realists who reject moral considerations. He shows hardly a glimmer of awareness of the unjustified assumptions and contradictions in his theoretical position."

In a sense more Machiavellian than Machiavelli, Han Fei is, as Burton Watson notes, “not the inventor of Legalism, but its perfecter.” He certainly reworked traditional categories and concepts not unlike the manner in which Machiavelli dramatically reconceptualized the meaning of virtu. And the latter’s largely successful attempt to disarm Christian and Aristotelian ethics, insofar as such ethics was deemed applicable to political affairs, was not dissimilar from Han Fei’s complete rejection of both Confucian and Daoist values and ideals, indeed, insofar as

"Legalists policies were new and revolutionary, they could not count on the authority and sanction of history. On the contrary, the traditional attitudes and political precepts and values of the old order represented alternatives to their concept of ‘one standard’ and unified rule [fa] alternatives which could not be safely entertained. In the construction and operation of their political machine, the interference of traditional standards was intolerable and had to be eradicated." (Roger T. Ames)

Machiavelli was probably the better student of politics and he was clearly lacking in the totalitarian theoretical ambition of Legalism exemplified by Han Fei: “Legalist political philosophy might be described as ‘government of the ruler, by the ruler, and for the ruler’” (Ames).

Now as to the “basic premise” cited above—which can be seen as both a rejection of the “doctrine of double standards” and a decisive repudiation of (the logically distinct but related) normative theory of “dirty hands”—I will contend that it is more or less identical to a central assumption found in the moral and political thought of Mahatma Gandhi, as incisively summarized by Raghavan Iyer:

“Above all, it is Gandhi’s notion of power and of the relation between politics and society, or between politics (in the narrow sense) and politics (in the broader sense), that accounts for his tenacity in holding to the view that politics and religion (in his unsectarian, almost mystical, conception) are inseparable, and in challenging the common contention that there are two levels or types or standards of morality, one for the individual in his private life and in his immediate surroundings, the other for political life and collective conduct. This standpoint has been stated plausibly over and over again, from Aquinas to Maurras, Kautilya to Tilak, Jowett to Niebuhr. Prudentia politica or niti is held to be the charioteer of the other virtues, and adapts the natural law or dharma to raison d’état or artha. “

Reinhold Niebuhr provides us with one of the more sophisticated defenses of the doctrine of double standards, motivated in part by the attempt to overcome the total Augustinian dichotomy between the religious and the secular, the inevitable polarity between the holy society sustained by Christian caritas and the “minimum society” threatened by human cupiditas, or the insuperable divide between the civitas terrena and the civitas dei. As Iyer writes, “It is tragically unavoidable that the human spirit is unable to conform its collective life to its individual ideals,” but this statement of fact, “in Niebuhr’s view…justifies and necessitates political policies which a purely individualist ethic must always find embarrassing:”

“It was absolutely and continually fundamental to Gandhi to reject this dominant doctrine of double standards, with its varying sources of support, types of formulation and methods of justification. It is not that Gandhi failed to distinguish between fact and value, or even between what men must ideally do and what they can practically achieve. He recognized that in politics as in life, we continually search for a middle term in our attempt to mediate between the desirable and the possible. Nor did he fail to see that politics, like medicine, requires immediate action based upon incomplete knowledge. [….] What Gandhi denied was that in politics we must make more allowances, or even need more elbow room, than in the personal moral quest in the company of men [and women] of varying and even conflicting human aspirations. It was because Gandhi took very seriously, and regarded as highly complex and dilemma-ridden, the process of moral growth, choice and decision for the sensitive individual that he regarded politics as altering the sphere, but not the moral value or validity or culpability, of human action. [….] He was convinced of the closeness between firm and pure intentions, and the capacity for effective choices and decisions on the basis of what is held to be right and necessary. The spiritual or religious hope and faith must be realized in political terms, but this cannot require, or at any rate justify, the use of morally ambiguous means to attain political ends. In this sense, there can be no distinction between the secular and the sacred, and political integrity is as sacred as personal integrity. [….] Gandhi held that a society governed in terms of double standards is self-destructive. Political and personal morality must coincide and extend to all human beings in all walks of life. The purification of politics requires the removal of the taint of double standards by men [and women] of courage and integrity. [….] [Gandhi’s attack on the doctrine of double standards] is really based upon a Platonic and Kantian rather than an Aristotelian or Humean view of morality. If Gandhi refused to distinguish between political expediency and personal morality, this was due to his concern for absolute standards.” (Raghavan Iyer)

There is nothing on the order of the doctrine of double standards in either Confucianism and Daoism, hence one reason for the title of Herbert Fingarette’s seminal book on perhaps the foremost philosopher of the “hundred schools:” Confucius: The Secular as Sacred (1972). (I don’t share Hansen’s judgment that Mozi is ‘the first real philosopher in China,’ based as it is on a narrowly construed conception of what counts as philosophy, a conception fairly common among his peers in the profession.) Little reference will be made in what follows to the Mohist tradition, even though Mohists too did not “see room for a distinction between private and public morality, between values that everyone must share in order to maintain a stable society and values about which individuals can disagree without disrupting social harmony” (Chris Fraser). Because we are examining forms of moral and spiritual power located, so to speak, within the individual person, as well as worldviews which give ethical if not metaphysical priority to that person, Mohism will be left out of our account owing, as Fraser points out, to its “nearly complete absence of individualism.” In fact, for the Mohist, “What is right for the individual is determined by whatever dao (way) is right for society.”

As a prelude to our next post I’d like to first set the historical backdrop of the material and then provide an introduction to the basic concepts that will be found in our readings. John Minford succinctly narrates the requisite historical setting, a state of affairs uncannily similar to Hobbes’s “state of nature” thought experiment (Hence the oblique irony of Van Norden's statement that the Mohist argument in support of the doctrine of jian ai [universal love, impartial caring, or inclusive care] 'is probably the first use of "thought experiments" in Chinese philosophy, and perhaps their first use in the world.'), the conclusion of which is a general war of all against all (an axiomatic assumption of the contemporary Realist theory of international relations and international law):

"[T]he late Spring and Autumn, Warring States period, from the sixth century to the late third century B.C., was one of enormous turmoil in the Chinese world. The central authority of the feudal Zhou regime had long disintegrated, and a varying number of states were engaged in perpetual struggle for predominance. It was, as the contemporary historian William Jenner puts it, ‘a world of absolute insecurity, in which any state might be attacked by a combination of any of the others. Faced with absolute threats, states had to be able to mobilize all their human and material resources for total war. [….] Rival states contended for the best available advice, both strategic and ideological. [….] Confucius, born in the state of Lu, to the north of Wu, traveled from state to state, preaching an ethical doctrine of benevolence, righteousness, and ritual, of civilized conventions of decency, of the power of moral example, in the hope of saving Chinese society from chaos, without having to resort to the wiles of the military strategists such as Master Sun [Sun-tzu], or the heavy-handed imposition of draconian laws later practiced by the state of Qin. Confucius ‘was witnessing the collapse of civilization—he saw his world sinking into violence and barbarity.’ Unlike Master Sun, Confucius never ‘shared in the king’s might.’ He was just one of the many wandering scholars of his time whose propositions made this and the subsequent two centuries one of the golden ages of Chinese thought, a period of intense debate and exploration of fundamental philosophical issues. The ‘hundred schools’ of philosophy bloomed, each with its own recipe for success, its rules for the conduct of for personal and public life. Many of the ‘great sages’ of Chinese culture emerged during this period: Confucius (Master Kung), Laozi (or Lao-tzu; Master Lao), Master Sun, Master Mo, Mencius (Master Meng), Master Zhuang, the Master known as Lord Shang, and Master Hanfei [Han Feizi]. It was the thinking of these last two that prevailed when the state of Qin briefly succeeded in imposing its ruthless brand of totalitarianism on the whole of China in 221 B.C."

Our basic terms will be the subject of the next two posts: Power: An Introduction—Part 3(b) i and Power: An Introduction—Part 3(b) ii

A list of References & Further Reading will be appended to Part 3(c) ii.

Image: Portrait of an Unidentified Courtier in front of a Table (18th-19th century) Qing dynasty

Power: An Introduction—Part 2

‘[A]gainst the…thesis of supreme power, we argue first that since it is only by virtue of some people giving voluntary obedience that we can have coercive machinery at all, it must be possible for them on occasion to be unwilling to obey, so that no one can be coerced, and secondly, that since men are possessed only of imperfect information, the government will always be less than informed, and hence the less able to control events, the less it secures the respect of the governed.’—J.R. Lucas

‘It is the possession of private property rather than the affections of our private lives that gives man private power. Private power is not so much a matter of being cherished by others as of having external goods that others covet. And the very utility of money, in making property commensurable and extending the liberty of each exchanging property for property, makes more effective the power that property confers.’—J.R. Lucas

‘Every power carries a hidden powerlessness, that of being dependent on cooperation. Every powerlessness carries a hidden power, that of withholding cooperation. Sullenness, silence, ridicule, and destruction are the Subject’s hidden power. Since powerlessness is a function of desire, the powerless can, in principle and within severe limits, overcome their powerlessness by detaching themselves from their desires. But the Subject can only realize his hidden powers if he has insight, if he is imaginatively and intellectually enabled. The true latent power of the [Ruler] is therefore that of forming the mentality of his Subjects, his being in a position to control their capacity to recognize their situation and the possibilities it holds.’—Amélie Oksenberg Rorty

‘Often what holds Subjects in damaging power relations is that they are unable to realize the options that are in principle open to them, or are unable to conceive ways of changing the options that are open to the [Ruler]. It is not power as such, then, that holds Subjects in bondage. [….] Subjects render services willingly or unwillingly because they believe the gains of doing so are greater than the losses they would incur by not doing so. But gains and losses are so in the eyes of the believer. Characteristically, the options of both the Subject and the [Ruler] are at least in part critically fixed by their beliefs about their needs, about what they must have and cannot lose. If this is right, then being empowered critically rests on being in a position to define one’s needs, either one’s own, or someone else’s to serve one’s own.—Amélie Oksenberg Rorty

‘The faculty that envisages possibilities, that works them out in detail, that formulates them in such ways as to make them viable and available options is the imagination. [….] Now it becomes clear that in potentially liberating situations it is important to distinguish fantasy from the imagination. One of the ways of binding a Subject is to entice his imagination to futile exercises, either to envisaging options that he cannot obtain or by seducing his passive fantasy. Unfortunately the constructions of fantasy cannot be distinguished by their content alone: it is their functional roles that distinguish them.’—Amélie Oksenberg Rorty

‘The move from identifying power as the means to obtaining what a person desires leads directly to seeing that the imagination gives the greatest control over power. [….] In a modern society, the Sovereign’s imagination is formed by the same powers as form the imagination of the Subject: the hidden [Rulers] are the formers of public opinion, the TV script writers, the mass media, the public relations industry. But as long as these people are dependent on others believing them, they too enter into dialectical relation with their publics. The modern rhetorician and demagogue depend on the public for acceptance. He needs opinion polls to tell him what to say, and they often get it wrong. Whoever can make the demagogue appear ridiculous or impoverished or hysterical or vile in the eyes of the Subject has power over the [Ruler]. [….] To the extent it is possible for the poets and the ironists, the Shelleys on the one hand and the Charlie Chaplins on the other, to imagine options or to announce that the emperors have no clothes, they are the unacknowledged legislators of the world.’—Amélie Oksenberg Rorty

‘We suffer from our benefits: we learn from experience, and that simple fact has devastating effects on us. Our early experiences form expectations of what is possible. Our capacities for imagining alternatives are strongly limited by early experiences. [….] The structures of power have an astonishing stability. In the large range of constructive imagining of options we turn again and again to archetypal patterns, to the Charismatic Leader, to the Band of the Brotherhood Committee, to the Pure Young Hero, to the Good-Bad Earth Mother. Why are our imaginations of power structures so fixed? It is because we learn from experience; and our most formative experiences of power, and of power relations, are those we have during our prolonged and wholly dependent infancy. While this prolonged infancy makes empathy and psychological complexity possible, it exacts a cost. We are formed not only by what we have learned from experience, but by the ways we learn. As long as we are in complex and often highly benign compliance to those who nurtured and sustained us as infants, we associate security and well-being with dependence on power figures. It is to these beginnings that our imaginations return when we are discomforted, depleted, in need. Even though we eventually chafed at the restrictions of our nurturing figures, even though, if we were lucky, we developed sympathy and autonomy, we still have as part of our expectations and our early experiences of childhood where reality meant dependency, being Subject to a Boss. If that relation was a benign one, we are all the more likely to gravitate to reconstructing it when we are troubled; but if it was a malign relation, then we are all the more incapacitated. For then a malign power relation is what we expect of the world. It is what defined normality. And of course if it was malign, then we are crippled in our abilities to envisage alternative structures.’—Amélie Oksenberg Rorty

‘One of the reasons that power is often invisible is that it is not lodged in any individual person or group, but is exercised through a system of institutions that allocate authority. Because economic systems determine access to goods and services, they profoundly affect the distribution of power, without anyone actually making decisions about that distribution. Social systems determine the legitimacy of voice—the power of women, or alien poets to be heard—without anyone in particular being in control of such determination. It is often through such hidden processes, and not through the marginal power of any particular group, that enabling or limiting power is exercised. Because processes of this kind form a culture’s conception of its own interests, as well as its ability to hear visionary poets—interests tend to be self-perpetuating, difficult to recognize, and even more difficult to change.’—Amélie Oksenberg Rorty

‘Constitutions restrict the discretion of power-wielders because rulers, too, need to be ruled. But constitutions not only limit power and prevent tyranny, they also construct power, guide it toward socially desirable ends, and prevent social chaos and private oppression. The American Constitution, for example, was designed “to rescue us from impending anarchy.” More comprehensively, liberal constitutions are crafted to help solve a whole range of political problems: tyranny, corruption, anarchy, immobilism, unaccountability, instability, and the ignorance and stupidity of politicians.’—Stephen Holmes

‘The greatest threat to freedom, all liberals agree, is the concentration of power. This is true whether power is concentrated in the public or in the private realm.’—Stephen Holmes

‘Power, for the strategic political philosopher, emanates (at least primarily) from a center. For tactical political philosophy, there is no center within which power is to be located. Otherwise put, power, and consequently politics, are irreducible. There are many different sites from which it arises, and there is an interplay among these various sites in the creation of the social world. This is not to deny that there are points of concentration of power or, to keep within the spatial image, points where various (and perhaps bolder) lines intersect. Power does not, however, originate at these points, rather, it conglomerates around them.’—Todd May

‘If power is decentralized, if the sites of oppression are numerous and intersecting, it is hardly likely that any one set of individuals will find itself peculiarly suited to a vanguardist role in political change. What has come to be called the poststructuralist critique of representation is, at the political level, precisely a refusal of the vanguard, of the idea that one group or party could effectively represent the interests of the whole. Poststructuralism, particularly as it is embodied in the works of Foucault, Deleuze, and Lyotard, has defined a tradition of the type of political philosophy we have here called “tactical.” The political commitments of these thinkers run directly counter to the dominant traditions of political philosophy, be they formal or strategic, and define a possibility for political philosophizing that offers a new and perhaps better, perspective for political intervention.’—Todd May

‘Like poststructuralism, anarchism rejects representational political intervention. For anarchists, the concentration of power is an invitation to abuse. Therefore, anarchists seek political intervention in a multiplicity of irreducible struggles. As Kropotkin wrote, “[A] further advance in social life does not lie in the direction of a further concentration of power and regulative functions in the hands of a governing body, but in the direction of decentralization both territorial and functional.”’—Todd May

‘The anarchist rejection of representation and strategic political philosophy is an invitation to a widening of the field of politics. It is commonplace to regard the feminist slogan that the personal is political and the poststructuralist idea that politics is everywhere as truisms. What must be recognized in these slogans, however, is that they imply not only that power operates across a broader terrain than that considered by traditional, particularly liberal, theorists. [….] The widening of the political field of which anarchists, feminists, and poststructuralists speak is not only a quantitative widening but a qualitative widening as well. Power not only intervenes in more places; its intervention is of different types.’—Todd May

‘Gandhi had no illusions about the possibility of purging the State of power-striving and the egoistic pursuit of its own interests. However, while he recognized, like Hobbes and Machiavelli, that the pursuit of power is a basic human characteristic, perhaps even an animal drive, he was also convinced that just as power creates its own normative rules, moral values also create power and enhance the possibility of individual effectiveness and collective survival.’—Raghavan Iyer

‘When [Gandhi] spoke disparagingly of politics, he referred to the politics of power and regarded it as an overestimated segment of politics as a whole. “To me political power is not an end but one of the means of enabling people to better their condition in every department of life.” He did not merely distinguish between power politics and what Huxley in Grey Eminence called “goodness-politics.” He went further in denying that power politics is ultimately detachable from the rest of politics, which he regarded as co-extensive with the whole of life, the entire range of human activity in society. If politics were artificially separated from everything else, especially from religious values and faith, it would either become a game played according to its own amoral rules that might be given a moral disguise, or else it would become an illegitimate usurper of the religious emotions and needs of men. He felt that much mischief had been done throughout the world by the divorce between public and private conduct.’—Raghavan Iyer

‘[Gandhi] always looked at politics from the standpoint of the rebel than of the ruler, of freedom than of authority, of the individual than of the State. He was not merely suspicious of all power, like Jinasena in India or d’Holbach and Acton in the West, but he also rejected the normal notion of power. He believed that true power resides in people and not in governments or legislatures, and he hoped that political power, in the ordinary sense, would not enter Indian villages. “Power is of two kinds. One is obtained by fear of punishment and the other by acts of love.”’—Raghavan Iyer

‘The State has a distinct power of direction but its effectiveness depends on the ability to elicit other forms of power to support its own. For Gandhi, the corollary to this statement is that if individuals recognize the power in their hands and use it constructively to secure the social good (sarvodaya), or to engage in non-violent resistance (satyagraha) against unjust laws and repressive measures of the State, the monopolistic effectiveness of State power would be reduced and its coercive authority would be morally and materially undermined. In this way the purification of “power politics” would become possible. Hence the enormous importance that Gandhi gave to what he called the “Constructive Programme” launched by the voluntary servants of the people—dedicated missionaries and conscientious revolutionaries bound by vows, willing to introduce the monastic as well as the heroic ideal into political and social life.’—Raghavan Iyer

‘While Hobbes asserted the unqualified primacy of the political over the social at a time when society seem to be dissolved in the State, Gandhi regarded power, like welfare, as wholly a by-product of social activity and the complex web of human relationships as expressed through a variety of groupings, form the family upward. The more that political power which is based on coercion and hierarchy seems important, the greater the spiritual poverty of the society in which this is allowed to happen. But society can and must be changed through the efforts of its morally developed members.’—Raghavan Iyer

‘The main transformation [of power relations] concerns the crisis of the nation-state as a sovereign entity, and the related crisis of political democracy, as constructed in the past two centuries. Since commands from the state cannot be fully enforced, and since some of its fundamental promises, embodied in the welfare state, cannot be kept, both its authority and its legitimacy are called into question. Because representative democracy is predicated on the notion of a sovereign body, the blurring of boundaries of sovereignty leads to uncertainty in the process of delegation of people’s will. Globalization of capital, multilateralization of power institutions, and decentralization of authority to regional and local governments induce a new geometry of power, perhaps inducing a new form of state, the network state. [….] Under such conditions, informational politics, enacted primarily by symbol manipulation in the space of the media, fits well with this constantly changing world of power relationships. Strategic games, customized representation, and personalized leadership substitute for class constituencies, ideological mobilization, and party control, which were characteristic of politics in the industrial era.’—Manuel Castells

‘Cultural battles are the power battles of the Information Age. They are primarily fought in and by the media, but the media are not the power-holders. Power, as the capacity to impose behavior, lies in the networks of information exchange and symbol manipulation, which relate social actors, institutions, and cultural movements, through icons, spokespersons, and intellectual amplifiers.’—Manuel Castells

A list of References & Further Reading will be appended to Part 3(c) ii on this topic.

Image: Portrait of a Manchu Noblewoman, probably 19th century, Qing dynasty

Power: An Introduction—Part 1

Power, in a generic or basic sense, might be conceptualized as ‘the capacity of some persons to produce intended and foreseen effects on others.’

In Political Science, power is defined as ‘the mobilization by an actor—whether individual or collective—of resources such as wealth, official position (authority), fame, skill, knowledge, etc. to produce effects.’

A distinction is often made between ‘power over’ and ‘power to:’ the former is parasitic on or derived from the latter. ‘[P]olitics is not only (or even mainly) about coercion or domination—i.e., about power over—but about people having the power to persuade or dissuade, to bestow benefits on others.’—Terence Ball

Another distinction in the literature is between the dispositional notion of ‘having power,’ and the episodic sense of ‘exercising power.’ Thomas Hobbes often used power in the former sense, while Bertrand Russell spoke of power in the latter sense.

‘If an action is to count as an exercise of power, it must be calculated to cause some other person(s) to do something that they would not otherwise do, and meant to result in some advantage to someone, without necessarily resulting in any disadvantage or harm to anyone.’—Terence Ball

In political philosophy and political theory, power is often understood as ‘both a generalized capacity to attain ends that is unequally distributed among the members of a society as a result of the structure of its major institutions on the one hand, and an asymmetrical social relation among persons manifested directly in social interaction or indirectly through anticipated reactions, on the other.’—Dennis H. Wrong

We use ascriptions of power for ascriptions of responsibility: ‘Were we to be without the concept of power, our ability to judge actions and actors as blameworthy or creditable would be greatly impaired if not rendered impossible.’—Terence Ball

‘A man cannot be blamed for not doing what he was unable to do: a necessary condition of responsibility is power. Indeed, we often use the word “responsibility” to mean “power,” as when a man says he wants greater responsibility.’—J.R. Lucas

The ‘scope’ of power can refer, narrowly, to institutional activities and issue areas (e.g., education, urban planning, technology) and, more broadly, to different areas of choice and activity of the power subject.

In situations or scenarios in which ‘an entire class of relations between persons or groups in which [the potential or capacity for] control of one person or group over the other with reference to a particular scope is [relatively or apparently] balanced by the control of the other in a similar (or corresponding) or different scope’ as in, say, the relations between ‘management’ (as representatives of the ‘interests’ of capital) and ‘labor,’ or the relations between ‘sovereign’ states in the international arena, frequently give rise to a bargaining (or negotiation) process between the respective parties.’—Dennis H. Wrong

The above situation exemplifies what is termed ‘intercursive power,’ that is, ‘where the power of each party in a relationship is countervailed by that of the other, with procedures for bargaining or joint decision-making governing their relations when matters affecting the goals and interests of both are involved.’—Dennis H. Wrong

‘Integral power’ refers to situations in which decision-making and initiatives of action are largely centralized and monopolized by one party, although that party may utilize both organs (institutional and otherwise, that branch out from the center) and agents as representatives or delegates for further decision-making and action. The power of the State is best thought of as an ‘integral power.’

‘Integral power may be restricted without either reducing the decision-making autonomy of the power holder or countervailing it by giving others power over him [or ‘it’] with reference to particular scopes. Measures designed to limit integral power include periodic reviews of the acts of the power holder (legislative and judicial review), periodic reaffirmations of his power-holding status or his removal and replacement (rules of tenure and succession), the setting of limits to the scope he can control or to the range of options available to him within each scope (‘civil liberties’), and rights of appeal and petition concerning grievances.’—Dennis H. Wrong

‘The means by which we keep Leviathan under control are: the Separation of Powers; the Assignment of Responsibilities (or Offices); Remedies for Wrongs; Answerability for Actions; Process of Law; and the Rule of Law.’—J.R. Lucas

There must be real countervailing power nodes or centers able to enforce limits on the power of the integral power holder.

Subjects exercise countervailing power over their rulers through initiative and referendum, impeachment by ballot, and elections.

‘Politics includes both a struggle for power and a struggle to limit, resist, and escape from power.’—Dennis H. Wrong

Often a power holder simply endeavors to no more than maintain or strengthen the existing attitudes and belief systems, predominant ideologies and worldviews, of the power subject, thereby sustaining the status quo, promoting inaction or ‘non-decisions,’ and/or encouraging passivity or apathy in the face of the ongoing exercise of power.

We can speak of three attributes, as variables, of all power relations: Extension, Comprehensiveness, and Intensity:

1. Extension can refer to a narrow or broad dyadic relation. With regard to political regimes, it can refer—after Aristotle—to rule by ‘one, the few or the many.’ Extension concerns the ratio of the number of persons who hold power to the number of the ‘powerless.’ Neo-Machiavellians contend that in large societies, associations, organizations, etc., a minority of individuals comes inevitably to exercise power over the majority, the hoi polloi. Indeed, and for example, the German sociologist Roberto Michels postulated an ‘iron law of oligarchy’ in which the power of organizations tends to fall into the hands of a small number of leaders, regardless of the formal rules or constitution of the organization. Michels famously applied this ‘law’ to the (socialist) Social Democratic Party (the SPD—Sozialdemokratische Partei Deutschlands) in Germany after World War II, arguing that in spite of its democratic constitution and revolutionary goals, it was doomed to acquire bureaucratic form and conservative leaders.

2. Comprehensiveness refers to the number of scopes over which a power holder holds power or the proportion or range of power and control wielded over the power subject’s total conduct and life activity. In the modern period, even the comprehensiveness of totalitarian power (under a Hitler, Stalin or Mao, for instance) is importantly limited by the ‘difficulty of maintaining the visibility at all times of the behavior of all the subjects…’ (Dennis H. Wrong). Václav Havel, the Czech playwright, essayist and, after the Velvet Revolutions in East-Central Europe, the ninth President of Czechoslovakia and the first President of the Czech Republic, addressed the ‘comprehensiveness’ of Party-State Socialism in his country and elsewhere in an essay titled ‘The Power of the Powerless’ (1978). Neither a contradiction nor a paradox, the title was in reference to the power possessed by those seemingly without power in repressive regimes and the corresponding weakness of the power holders, weaknesses that were exposed by the ‘power of the pen’ in Havel’s case, and the persistence of an oppositional, often underground counterculture (cf. the ‘flying university’ in Poland) that addressed the possibilities of what Havel termed ‘living in the truth’ and the ‘higher responsibility’ possessed by all human beings, an especially salient and urgent topic in those situations where individual human beings are at risk from those in power.

3. Intensity refers to the range of effective options open to a power holder within each and every scope, for example, authority, force (or violence) or sanctions (including simply the threat thereof, which one meaning of coercion), manipulation and persuasion.

Comprehensiveness and intensity of power tend to vary inversely with extensiveness.

Naked force ‘is more effective in preventing or restricting people from acting than in causing them to act in a given way.’—Dennis H. Wrong

In cases of manipulation, the power holder conceals her intent from the power subject: ‘When B is not aware of A’s intention to influence him but A does in fact manage to get B to follow his wishes, we can say that we have an instance of manipulation.’—Dennis H. Wrong

Persuasion is also a form of power inasmuch as it clearly represents an instance in which an intended effect changes or influences or affects another’s behavior. Persuasion can be thought of as the ‘tested’ acceptance of another’s judgment (Hobbes’s ‘counsel’). In cases of persuasion, ‘B adopts A’s communication as the basis of his own conduct because of the content of the communication, which he has independently evaluated and accepted.’—Dennis H. Wrong

Authority has to do not with—at least in the first place—the content of a power variable but rather the source of power. The essence of authority is the issuance of commands (or directives, injunctions, etc.) and entails the untested acceptance of another’s judgment (hence the slogan from the ‘60s: ‘question authority,’ in the hope that reasons would be proffered whereby one might assess the quality of judgments, the soundness of reasons, of those exercising authority). Authority involves successful ordering or forbidding. There are different types of authority: coercive, induced, legitimate, competent, and personal. With regard to coercive (the threat of the proverbial ‘stick’) authority: ‘For A to obtain B’s compliance by threatening him with force, B must be convinced of both A’s capability and willingness to use force against him. A may have succeeded in convincing B of both by advertising and displaying the means and instruments of force that he controls’ [So it seems those military parades ritually performed by powerful States are motivated by a compelling raison d’état after all!].—Dennis H. Wrong

Force may be initially called upon or episodically employed ‘to establish credibility and thus to create a future power relation based on the threat of force that precludes the necessity of overt resort to it.’—Dennis H. Wrong

The person who resorts to coercion ‘may succeed without possessing either the capability or the intention of using force, so long as the power subjects believes he possesses both.’—Dennis H. Wrong

Coercion and legitimate authority are the two major or conspicuous forms of political power, with the latter understood as having on occasion sufficient justification for resorting to the latter.

For Machiavelli and Hobbes, among others, coercion often appears to be the ultimate and only ‘real’ form of political power.

‘Power belongs to those who can plausibly threaten to crush rivals by physical force as well as to those who master opinion by rhetoric and fraud. But it also flows, according to Hobbes, toward those who can plausibly threaten to withdraw their cooperation when it is most in need. The theory of power implicit in Behemoth is complex. Hobbes’s insistence that rulers must be “skillful in the public affairs” certainly implies that no one can rule by monopolizing force alone. Kings need cooperation and cannot afford to ignore the reasonable and unreasonable requests of their most important collaborators’ [Helen Mirren’s portrayal of Queen Elizabeth in ‘Elizabeth I’ well illustrates this proposition.]—Stephen Holmes

‘Hobbes admired the Romans for their capacity to win power through strategic concessions. They gained obedience from newly conquered peoples by offering not merely protection, but also citizenship, status, and the right to influence policy. By restricting their own arbitrary discretion, they gained useful cooperation and support’ (Stephen Holmes). Thus Hobbes had an appreciation of what is known as ‘authority by inducement,’ that is, the use of positive sanctions and rewards to bring about obedience on the part of the power subject.

‘Legitimate authority is a power relation in which the power holder possesses an acknowledged right to command and the power subject an acknowledged obligation to obey. The source rather than the content of any particular command endows it with legitimacy and induces willing compliance on the part of the person to whom it is addressed.’—Dennis H. Wrong

Legitimate authority might be said to presuppose shared social norms and values that unite the ruler and her subjects (the ruled), thereby enjoining the latter’s willing (uncoerced) compliance or submission: ‘[Legitimate] authority entails voluntary compliance, in contrast to coercion, since the influence of the superior on subordinates rests on their own social norms. But authority entails imperative control, in contrast to persuasion and personal influence, since social norms and group sanctions exert compelling pressures on individual subordinates to follow the superior’s directives. Compliance is voluntary from the perspective of the collectivity of subordinates, but it is compulsory from the perspective of its individual members.’—Peter Blau quoted in Dennis H. Wrong

‘Legitimate authority is more efficient than coercive or induced authority in that it minimizes the need for maintaining means of coercion in constant readiness, continual surveillance of the power subjects and regular supplies of economic or non-economic rewards [e.g., access, privilege, prestige, status, honor, information, etc.]. For these reasons, naked (that is, coercive) power always seeks to clothe itself in the garments of legitimacy.’—Dennis H. Wrong

Authority is ‘that feature of a person, role, office or government which authorizes (i.e. makes legitimate, either in reality or in appearance) the acts and commands exercised in its name.’—Roger Scruton

‘[T]hree questions must be distinguished: (i) What causes the belief that certain individuals, institutions, etc. have authority? (ii) What, if anything, shows that belief to be true? (iii) What, if anything, shows that people ought to subscribe to it?’ [….] The causes of belief in authority may be habit, custom or tradition, or even the ‘perception of a genuine and objectively existing right of government…. [….] The grounds of belief in authority are explored by theories of political obligation. [….] Some find the value of the belief to stem from its being a necessary condition of government, and hence of the security brought by government. Others argue that people need to believe in an external authority if their lives are to possess inner order, the moral life being impossible without the external symbols of its objectivity.’—Roger Scruton

Strictly speaking, authority is a right to act, rather than a power to act (signaling a de jure and not necessarily de facto relation).

‘A man, or body of men, has authority if it follows from his saying, “Let X happen,” that X ought to happen. [….] A man, or body of men, has power if it results from his saying “Let X happen,” that X does happen. [….] A man, or body of men, has influence if the result of his saying, “Let X happen,” is that other people will say (perhaps only to themselves), “Let X happen.”’—J.R. Lucas

‘[Even] though authority, power, and influence go together, often necessarily so, it is useful to distinguish them.’—J.R. Lucas

Expertise or competent authority is based on (superior) knowledge or skill and may rest solely on the subject’s belief in the superior knowledge or skill, as well as the belief that his own interests are served in deferring to such expertise. The comprehensiveness and intensity of expertise or the power of knowledge are typically low, confined to strictly delimited scopes.

In cases of personal authority, the subject obeys out of a desire to please or serve another person solely because of the latter’s personal qualities or (after Max Weber) charisma. Hence, ‘Your wish is my command.’ Charismatic authority is notoriously unstable and is by definition resistant to ‘routinization’ or institutionalization. In fact, the power of personal authority well exhibits an intriguing feature of each of the forms of power, namely, ‘a built in tendency to metamorphose over time into a different form when the power relation recurs often enough’ [This helps account for the fact that totalitarian societies are neither static nor absolutely totalitarian (except in ambition) and thus over time may reveal openings or weaknesses that power subjects can exploit to their advantage, as occurred in the events that helped make possible the nonviolent Velvet Revolutions in East-Central Europe.]—Dennis H. Wrong

‘A charismatic leader’s power over his followers consists in being able merely by suggestion to move them to do willingly what he wants, even though their interests might have led them to act differently.’—Stanley Benn

A would-be stable political order or regime will work to convert its reliance on coercive authority into legitimate authority.

‘The view that the power holder is able to apply force as a last resort—or, prescriptively, that she should ‘speak softly but carry a big stick’—is not really at odds with the frequent claim that resort to violence is evidence of the “failure of power.”’—Dennis H. Wrong

‘To refuse individually and en masse to comply or to kowtow to threats of force by presumably powerful forces or figures, thereby leading the latter either to back down or to follow through on their threats, is one of the main ways in which ostensibly powerless people can empower themselves.’—Terence Ball

‘The emperors of Rome were unable to prevent their subjects becoming Christians, the Princes of Europe were unable to secure conformity with their own religious views, the French Army in 1923 could not make the miners of the Ruhr dig coal. And although, since the boundaries of what is possible in practice are indeterminate, it might be argued in any particular case that those in power could have achieved their object had they been prepared to use all means whatsoever, yet at least these examples show that it does not follow from the fact that if there is anything which can be feasibly desired there is some body or bodies who can bring anything about, that therefore there is just one body which can do as it pleases.’—J.R. Lucas

Please Note: A list of References & Further Reading will be appended to Part 3(c) ii.

Image: Li Yinzu (1629-1664) Qing dynasty

"Making (Some) Sense of the Health Care Debate"

In Reasons for Welfare: The Political Theory of the Welfare State (1988), Robert Goodin notes:

In seeking an economic justification for the welfare state…we must look not merely for ways in which state welfare services provide economic benefits. We must look for ways in which state welfare services provide benefits that private actors in private markets cannot. We must look for ways in which markets would necessarily fail. [….] The private analogue to the social insurance programs which constitute the bulk (if not the whole) of welfare state activities would be private insurance programs. There are various ways in which private insurance markets might fail....

Indeed, and Goodin's first example involves the problem of “adverse selection,” the remedy for which is of course compulsory insurance. Yet private markets remains susceptible to the problem of “interdependent risks,” thus premiums collected from those who do not suffer from the insured-against contingency (‘winners’) do not suffice to meet claims from “losers:”

Consider the example of unemployment insurance. The probability of any given individual’s being unemployed is not just a function of trends within his own firm or industry. It is also a function of the state of the national economy in general. Under such circumstances, it would be impossible to guarantee the financial integrity of any mutual insurance scheme. The problem is not just that actuaries are unable to set the right rate for premiums. What is worse, with interdependent risks there can be no guarantee (as there can, through the law of large numbers, with independent risks) that premiums from ‘winners’ (e.g., those still in work) will suffice to cover claims from ‘losers’ (those out of work) whatever rate that is set.

That market failure is perhaps the most important argument for collective intervention in certain insurance markets. The government must act as underwriter of last resort, providing re-insurance out of general-fund revenues as necessary. Social insurance must, in that way at least, supplant purely private insurance.

To be clear, Goodin is not suggesting that the true justification of the welfare state is “to be found in the rigidly economistic logic of correcting market failures, narrowly conceived. Instead, it is to be found in the role of the welfare state in safeguarding the preconditions of the market,” which he proceeds to specify and elaborate.

I'm not here concerned with Goodin's compelling argument for the welfare state but wanted simply to introduce the subject of private insurance markets and social insurance to whet your appetite for an excellent article posted at SSRN by Robert C. Hockett: "Making (Some) Sense of the Health Care Reform Debate: Social Science, Social Insurance, Social-'ism,' and So On." The article is due to appear in the economic policy journal Challenge. Professor Hockett is now blogging at Dorf on Law and Mirror of Justice (the latter a blog for Catholic legal theory). I happen to think Bob is far and away one of the brightest intellectuals in the legal academy. By way of illustrious examples of his work, I cite just two of my favorites: "The Limits of Their World," 90 Minnesota Law Review (2006): 1720-90 (review of Jack L. Goldsmith & Eric A. Posner, The Limits of International Law, 2005), and "Three (Potential) Pillars of Transnational Economic Justice: The Bretton Woods Institutions as Guarantors of Global Equal Treatment and Market Completion," 36 Metaphilosophy 93 (2005), also in Christian Barry and Thomas W. Pogge, eds., Global Institutions and Responsibilities: Achieving Global Justice (Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2005).

In conjunction with the aforementioned essay on the "health care reform debate" by Hockett, I would ask you, dear reader, to also keep in mind the following from a volume edited by Goodin, et al., The Real Worlds of Welfare Capitalism (1999), for I think it goes to the heart of an assumption that animates the more articulate naysayers in this frequently intemperate national discussion:

According to traditional wisdom, we are forced to choose between the liberal regime (which promotes greater economic efficiency) and the social democratic regime (which promotes greater social justice), with corporatist regime offering itself as a good compromise between them (coming in a strong second in both respects). According to traditional wisdom, our choice between these regimes will necessarily be dictated by the relative weights we assign to those two sorts of objectives.

Our authors provide us with an impressive examination of the latest comparative empirical data that provide a basis from which to assess the ability of these various welfare state regimes to meet such moral and political values as promoting efficiency; reducing poverty; promoting equality; promoting social integration and avoiding social inclusion; promoting social stability; and promoting autonomy. And their conclusion is unambiguous:

Far from being a matter of ‘horses for courses,’ it turns out that the social democratic welfare regime is ‘the best of all possible worlds.’ The social democratic welfare regime turns out to be the best choice, regardless of what you want it to do. The social democratic welfare regime is clearly best on its home ground of minimizing inequality. But it also turns out to be better at reducing poverty than the liberal welfare regime, which targets its welfare policy on that to the exclusion of all else. The social democratic welfare regime is also at least as good promoting stability (and arguably at least as good at promoting social integration) as is the corporatist welfare regime, which ostensibly attaches most importance to those goals. The social democratic regime is also best at promoting key elements of autonomy, something valued by all regimes if not necessarily prioritized by any. Thus, no matter which of those goals you set for your welfare regime, the social democratic model is at least as good as (and typically better than) any other for attaining it.

I raise the issue of the comparative value (in light of the criteria enumerated above) of different welfare regimes because it is germane to the fact that health care reform, however necessary, fails to confront more difficult and intransigent topics that have to do with existing inequalities in health as such (and that entail, for instance, an appreciation of the 'social determinants of health'). For an introduction to this subject, as well as a bibliography of titles that treat the question of health as it relates to social justice, ethics, and law, please see our previous post. In a time and place where both political parties pride themselves on dismantling whatever welfare state regime still exists in this country, I suppose it is hoping against hope to imagine the emergence of a social democratic welfare regime capable of sytematically addressing gross inequalities in health that are "closely tied to inequalities in the most basic freedoms and opportunities that people enjoy."

Utopian Thought & Imagination: An Introduction

‘A map of the world that does not include Utopia is not even worth glancing at, for it leaves out the one country at which Humanity is always landing. And when Humanity lands there, it looks out, and seeing a better country, sets sail. Progress is the realisation of Utopias.’—Oscar Wilde

‘Utopias are images of ideal communities; utopian thought tries to make explicit and to justify the principles on the basis of which communities are said to be ideal. [….] [T]he philosophical importance of utopias rests on utopian thought, although the practical effect of a utopia may be quite independent of its philosophic merits.’—William A. Galston

‘Utopian thought performs three related political functions. First, it guides our deliberation, whether in devising courses of action or in choosing among exogenously defined alternatives with which we are confronted. Second, it justifies our actions; the grounds of action are reasons that others ought to accept and—given openness and the freedom to reflect—can be led to accept. Third, it serves as the basis for the evaluation of existing institutions and practices. The locus classicus is the Republic, in which the completed ideal is deployed in Plato’s memorable critique of imperfect regimes.’—William A. Galston

‘Utopian thought attempts to specify and justify the principles of a comprehensively good political order. Typically, the goodness of that order rests on the desirability of the way of life enjoyed by the individuals within it; less frequently, its merits rely on organic features that cannot be reduced to individuals. Whatever their basis, the principles of the political good share certain general features:
· First, utopian principles are in their intention universally valid, temporally and geographically.
· Second, the idea of the good order arises out of our experience but does not mirror it in any simple way and is not circumscribed by it. Imagination may combine elements of experience into a new totality that has never existed; reason, seeking to reconcile the contradictions of experience, may transmute its elements.
· Third, utopias exist in speech; they are “cities of words.” This does not mean that they cannot exist but only that they need not ever. This “counterfactuality” of utopia in no way impedes its evaluative function.
· Fourth, utopian principles may come to be realized in history, and it may be possible to point to real forces pushing in that direction. But our approval of a utopia is not logically linked to the claim that history is bringing us closer to it or that we can identify an existing basis for the transformative actions that would bring it into being. Conversely, history cannot by itself validate principles. The movement of history (if it is a meaningful totality in any sense at all) may be from the most desirable to the less; the proverbial dustbin may contain much of enduring worth.
· Fifth, although not confined to actual existence, the practical intention of utopia requires that it be constrained by possibility. Utopia is realistic in that it assumes human and material preconditions that are neither logically nor empirically impossible, even though their simultaneous co-presence may be both unlikely and largely beyond human control to effect.
· Sixth, although utopia is a guide for action, it is not in any simple sense a program of action. In nearly all cases, important human or material preconditions for good politics will be lacking. Political practice consists in striving for the best results achievable in particular circumstances. The relation between the ideal and the best achievable is not deductive. [….]
Thus, the incompleteness of utopia, far from constituting a criticism of it, is inherent in precisely the features that give it evaluative force. As has been recognized at least since Aristotle, the gap between utopian principles and specific strategic/tactical programs can be bridged only through an inquiry different in kind and content from that leading to the principles themselves. If so, the demand that utopian thought contain within itself the conditions of its actualization leads to a sterile hybrid that is neither an adequate basis for rational evaluation nor an accurate analysis of existing conditions.’—William A. Galston

‘By perfectible, it is not meant that he [i.e., man] is capable of being brought to perfection. But the word seems sufficiently adapted to express the faculty of being continually made better and receiving perpetual improvement; and in this sense it is here to be understood. The term perfectible, thus explained, not only does not imply the capacity of being brought to perfection, but stands in expression to it. If we could arrive at perfection, there would be an end to our improvement. There is however one thing of great importance that it does imply: every perfection or excellence that human beings are competent to conceive, human beings, unless in cases that are palpably and unequivocally excluded by the structure of their frame, are competent to attain.’—Wlliam Godwin

‘There are recognizable barriers from which men have always sought to emancipate themselves, in order to obtain access to something, and appropriate something, that is conceived time and again in the ideas of freedom, joy, happiness, etc., which no cynical irony can expunge. The inexhaustible possibilities of human nature, which themselves increase with cultural progress, are the innermost material of all utopias, and moreover a very real, and in no way immaterial material at that. They inevitably lead to the desire to transform human life.’—Rudolf Bahro

‘Wittgenstein, Elizabeth Taylor, Bertrand Russell, Thomas Merton, Yogi Berra, Allen Ginsburg, Harry Wolfson, Thoreau, Casey Stengel…Baba Ram Dass, Gandhi, Sir Edmund Hillary…Freud, Norman Mailer…Thomas Edison, H.L. Mencken, Thomas Jefferson, Ralph Ellison…Emma Goldman, Peter Kropotkin, [Frank Lloyd Wright, Muhammad Ali, Kenneth Rexroth, Dorothy Day, Malcolm X, Oprah Winfrey, Vaclav Havel, Dorothy Healey, Leonardo Boff, Seyyid Hossein Nasr, James deAnda, Nelson Mandela, Helen Mirren, Pico Iyer, Mose Allison, Jewel, Dame Judi Dench, Aretha Franklin, His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama (Tenzin Gyatso), Leonard Cohen], you and your parents. Is there really one kind of life which is best for each of these people?’—Robert Nozick

‘Utopia will consist of utopias, of many different and divergent communities in which people lead different kinds of lives under different institutions. Some kinds of communities will be more attractive to most than others; communities will wax and wane. People will leave some for others or spend their whole lives in one. Utopia is a framework for utopias, a place where people are at liberty to join together voluntarily to pursue and attempt to realize their own vision of the good life in the ideal community but where no one can impose his own utopian vision upon others. The utopian society is the society of utopianism. [….] Half of the truth I wish to put forth is that utopia is meta-utopia: the environment in which utopian experiments may be tried out; the environment in which people are free to do their own thing; the environment which must, to a great extent, be realized first if more particular utopian visions are to be realized stably.’—Robert Nozick

‘We may distinguish three utopian positions: imperialistic utopianism, which countenances the forcing of everyone into one pattern of community; missionary utopianism, which hopes to persuade or convince everyone to live in one particular kind of community, but will not force them to do so; and existential utopianism, which hopes that a particular pattern of community will exist (be viable), though not necessarily universally, so that those who wish to do so may live in accordance with it.’—Robert Nozick

‘The classic utopia anticipates and criticizes. Its alternative fundamentally interrogates the present, piercing through existing societies’ defensive mechanisms—common sense, realism, positivism and scientism. Its unabashed and flagrant otherness gives it a power which is lacking in other analytical devices. By playing fast and loose with time and space, logic and morality, and by thinking the unthinkable, a utopia asks the most awkward, the most embarrassing questions. As an imaginative construction of a whole society, the utopia can bring into play the rich critical apparatus of the literary form and a sensitivity to the holistic nature of society, enabling it to mock, satirize, reduce the prominent parts, to illuminate and emphasize the neglected, shadowy, hidden parts—and to show the interrelatedness—of the existing system. Utopia can be seen as the good alternative, the outline of a better future, an “ought” to the current “is.” The possibility of such a future helps undermine the complacency and overcome the inertia of existing society by showing that it is neither eternal nor archetypal but merely one form amongst many. This need not lead to teleology (i.e. “this is your future”), for the alternative has many shapes.’—Vincent Geoghegan

‘For [Ernst] Bloch, the enemies of hope are confusion, anxiety, fear, renunciation, passivity, failure and nothingness. Fascism was their apotheosis. But since all individuals daydream, they also hope. It is necessary to strip this dreaming of self-delusion and escapism, to enrich and expand it and to base it in the actual movement of society. Hope, in other words, must be both educated and objectively grounded; an insight drawn from Marx’s great discovery: “the subjective and objective hope-contents of the world.” The Principle of Hope is an encyclopaedic account of dreams of a better existence; from the most simple to the most complex; from idle daydreams to sophisticated images of perfection. It develops a positive sense of the category “utopian,” denuded of unworldliness and abstraction, as forward dreaming and anticipation. [….] This then is Bloch’s great masterpiece. His achievement was to see that utopianism is not confined to intellectuals and their various blueprints of a better life. He saw that, in countless ways, individuals are expressing unfulfilled dreams and aspirations—that in song, dance, plants and plaster, church and theater, utopia waits.’—Vincent Geoghegan

‘Marxists have a defensive attitude towards utopias. It was so laborious to escape from them in the past. But today utopian thought has a new necessity. For that historical spontaneity that Marx conceived as a process of natural history and which our Marxist-Leninists celebrate in the name of objective economic law, must be overcome. [….] The problem is to drive forward the “overproduction” of consciousness, so as to put the whole historical past “on its head,” and make the idea into the decisive material force, to guide things to a radical transformation that goes still deeper than the customary transition from one formation to another within one and the same civilization. We are now facing, and what has in fact already begun, is a cultural revolution in the truest sense of the term: a transformation of the entire subjective form of life of the masses….’—Rudolf Bahro

‘Certainly, the concept of utopia is only one of the many possible demonstrations of the anxieties, hopes, and pursuits of an era and of a social milieu. The questioning of the legitimacy and rationality of the existing order, the diagnosis and criticism of moral and social defects, the search for remedies, the dreams of a new order, etc.—all these favorite themes of utopias are found in political systems and popular myths, in religious doctrines and in poetry. If the critique of social reality and the expectation of a new City turn toward utopia, that means that a choice has been made among available forms of discourse. What is said in utopia and as utopia cannot be said otherwise. There are “hot” eras when utopias flourish, when the utopian imagination penetrates the most diverse forms of intellectual, political, and literary activity; eras when opposing points of view and divergent main themes seem to rediscover their point of convergence in the very invention of the descriptions of utopias. But there are other “cold” eras, when utopian creativity is weakened and cut off from social, intellectual, and ideological activities.’—Bronislaw Baczko

1. ‘There is no utopia without an overall representation, the idea-image of an alternative society, opposed to the existing social reality, and its institutions, rites, dominant symbols, systems of values, norms of interdictions, hierarchies, relations of dominance and property, its domain reserved to the sacred, and so forth. In other words, there is no utopia without a synthetic and disruptive representation of social otherness. [….]
2. The representations of a different and happy City are the products of a particular way of imagining the social; utopias are one of the places, occasionally the privileged place, where the social imagination is put into practice, where individual and collective social dreams are welcomed, gathered, worked on, and produced. Moreover if utopian imagining activity is focused on overall and synthetic idea-images, it nevertheless is developed through day-to-day reality. The dreams of the happy City are, then, articulated with images of a renewed daily life, and utopias often offer a great luxury of detail in their descriptions of individual and collective daily life. The structural relationships between the representation of the overall society and the detailed images of the ordinary aspects of life are as complex as they are revealing. [….]
3. The alternative society is not only imagined, it is also thought to be consonant with reason, and prides itself on the rationality it brings into play. Utopias want to install reason in the realm of the imagination; in utopias, constant exchanges among social dreams and critical, theoretical, and normative reflection are carefully worked out. The term idea-image to which we often have recourse has the sole aim of bringing these distinctive characteristics of utopian representation to the fore. [….]
4. Utopia is not only imagined and thought, it is made intelligible and communicable in a discourse by which the merging of the idea-images and their integration into a language is accomplished. [T]wo classic paradigms were imposed in utopian discourse from the sixteenth through nineteenth centuries. The first is the utopia of the imaginary voyage. [….] The other paradigm is that of the utopia-proposal for ideal legislation. [….]
5. Every utopia is not necessarily proposed as a program of action or even as a model that would demand intellectual or emotional support. The novelistic utopias are offered most frequently as intellectual games. They only seek to stimulate both the imagination and the critical and moralizing reflection of the readers…. However, sometimes even the utopias presented in the form of an imaginary voyage inspire a will to act and to give some of their ideas a practical application. [….] But there are utopias that proclaim themselves as both a prophetic and a founding word, and that find their extensions in the establishment of exemplary communities professing to put them into practice.’—Bronislaw Baczko

‘Plato in fact comes in rather late, if we focus first on the world of classical antiquity. Utopian themes reach back to the earliest Greek writings. From Hesiod’s Works and Days, of the early seventh century BC, came the canonical depiction of the Golden Age, the bitterly-lamented vanished age of Kronos’ reign: when men “lived as if they were gods, their hearts free from all sorrow, and without hard work or pain;” when “the fruitful earth yielded its abundant harvest to them of its own accord, and they lived in ease and peace upon their lands with many good things.” Reworked by Virgil and Ovid as the lost age of Saturn (the Roman Kronos), the pastoral perfection in the Golden Age reappeared as the classic Arcadia, a time and place of rustic simplicity and felicity.’—Krishan Kumar

‘If Arcadia showed man living within, and according to, nature, the Hellenic ideal city represented human mastery over nature, the triumph of reason and artifice over the amoral and chaotic realm of nature. Hence the importance, in the ideal city tradition, of those who gave the law and made the rational order of human society: the founders and framers of cities and constitutions, the philosopher-kings, the architect-planners. An early Greek tradition already venerated the semi-mythical figures of Solon of Athens and Lycurgus of Sparta as the founders and law-givers of their respective city-states. Their idealization, common throughout the classical period, was boosted by Plutarch’s Lives (first century AD), which made of Solon and Lycurgus virtually the creators of utopian societies. As received in Europe through various translations of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, the Lives, eked out with such celebrated set-pieces as Pericles’ funeral oration from Thucydides’ History, set before European thinkers two sharply contrasting utopian models. There was Athens: democratic, tolerant, boisterous, given over to a cultivated hedonism; and there was Sparta: authoritarian, ascetic, communistic. European utopian writers, along with most other kinds, were clearly fascinated by the alternative possibilities suggested by these two great exemplars of the ancient world. Right up to the French Revolution and beyond, one way of classifying utopias was as “Athenian” or “Spartan,” with Sparta predictably the favourite not simply for matching more closely the utopian preference for a tightly regulated communal order, but as much for its status as the putative model of the most admired ancient utopia, Plato’s Republic.’—Krishan Kumar

‘[Thomas] More shows himself, and his Utopia, to the product of a new age. His Utopia has a rationalism and a realism that we associate typically with the classical revival of the Renaissance, and that are to be found equally in the architectural utopias of the fifteenth and sixteenth-century Italy. We should remember that Utopia was published less than three years after Niccolò Machiavelli’s The Prince (1513). More’s urbane and witty style, his “profound sense of political realities,” constantly evoke the relentlessly de-mystified world of Machiavelli’s notorious treatise (and, incidentally, remind us that utopia and anti-utopia [“dystopia”] shadow each other very closely).’—Krishan Kumar

‘The realm of utopia is wide but it is not boundless. Utopia is not some unchanging human archetype or universal human propensity. Distinctions have to be made and these must be largely historical. If utopia is not in one very obvious sense concerned with the here-and-now, for the most part it draws both its form and content from the contemporary reality. Whether or not we choose to call Plato’s Republic a utopia, or to accept the idea of a Christian utopia, we must recognize the fundamental difference of intention and concern between them, a reflection of the very different conditions that gave rise to them. Both classical and Christian utopianism persisted well into the modern age. They had—and have—a continuing influence on conceptions of utopia. This can make it difficult to see the even more important differences between these utopian “prefigurations” and the utopia proper, the modern utopia that was invented in Europe in the sixteenth century. The utopia of the ancient world is hierarchical, economically undeveloped and static. The modern utopia is egalitarian, affluent and dynamic. Such a conception emerged under unique historical conditions. As these changed so the content and even, to an extent, the form of utopia changed. So we should not be surprised to find ourselves dealing with utopias of many different kinds, and with many different purposes, in the more than four centuries since More’s Utopia. A strict definition of utopia would serve no useful purpose; as Nietzsche says, “only that which has not history can be defined.”’—Krishan Kumar

There was a ‘direct and dynamic connection between the idea of the American nation as utopia, and the foundations of scores of utopian communities that, dismissing this idea, still sought and found refuge on the American continent. We might borrow a term from the American philosopher Robert Nozick and consider America, in this aspect, as meta-utopia. In this conception, utopia is not one community, one vision of the good life, but a “framework for utopias,” a place which freely allows people to form and re-form themselves into utopian communities of diverse kinds. [….] Nineteenth-century America was this meta-utopia on a grander and more generous scale than ever before or since. The vast size of its still relatively unsettled territory, coupled with the utopian notions that accompanied its entire development as a nation, drew utopian groups to it as to a magnet. On both physical and ideological grounds, nineteenth-century America was the ideal framework for utopias in Nozick’s sense. It set up a dynamic counterpoint between the larger national experiment—America as utopia—and the host of small experimental communities, each pursuing its individual utopian vision. Meta-utopia, like utopia, produced a characteristic literature, the literature of the experimental community. There were the reports and survey of founders, sympathizers and observers, such as John Humphrey Noyes’s History of American Socialisms (1870), Charles Nordhoff’s The Communistic Societies of the United States (1875) and William Alfred Hinds’ American Communities (1878). Noyes founded Oneida; Hinds was a founding-member of it. There was also the autobiographies and memoirs of those who had actually been born or lived for much of their time in utopian communities, such Frederick Williams Evans’s Autobiography of a Shaker (1869), Robert Dale Owen’s Twenty-Seven Years of Autobiography (1874) and Pierrepont Noyes’s My Father’s House: An Oneida Boyhood (1937). All these combine, to a remarkable degree, personal involvement and sympathy with a wide-ranging outlook and refreshingly clear-sighted analysis.’—Krishan Kumar

‘[T]here was probably more genuine communism practiced in nineteenth-century America than in any society, at any time, beyond the hunting and gathering stage. This certainly seemed self-evident to many Europeans. The young Friedrich Engels was among the many European socialists who were stirred by the reports of the American communities, and who first looked to them to provide the example and model for European communism. “The first people in America,” wrote Engels, “and indeed in the world who brought into realization a society founded on the community of property were the so-called Shakers.” The American communities, he confidently declared, had demonstrated that “communism, the social life and work based on the common possession of goods, is…not only possible but has actually been realized…and with the best result.” The communities were themselves to a good extent the product of a wider movement of reform that enthusiastically embraced socialism. Socialism in mid-nineteenth-century America was far from being the “un-American” thing it has now become.’—Krishan Kumar

‘Gandhi’s fascination as a thinker lies in his inward battle between two opposing attitudes—the Tolstoyan socialist belief that the Kingdom of Heaven is attainable on earth and the Dostoevskian mystical conviction that it can never be materialized. The modern Hindu standpoint has generally been anti-utopian: Rama Rajya lies in the bygone Satya Yuga, and Kali Yuga is the age of unavoidable coercion. Gandhi began by challenging this view under the influence of Tolstoy, but he ended his life with more of a Dostoevskian pessimism. This does not mean that he abandoned either his imaginative, utopian, political vision or what he called his practical idealism embodied in concrete programs of immediate action. He did not feel that he was wrong to urge men to set themselves, as he did in his own life, seemingly impossible standards, but he came closer to seeing that it is wrong to expect them to do so. [….] “Euclidean” models—of the satyagrahi, of a society based on satya and ahimsa, of Rama Rajya—are not without their value in political theory, but they must not be mistaken for definitely realizable concretions. [….] Gandhi’s concepts of satya, ahimsa and satyagraha, of tapas, and, above all, of the satyagrahi, are such ideal constructions—“Euclidean” models as he himself called them. They do involve a “momentous truth,” but they are also deceptive representations, in a sense. In constructing these, Gandhi was in the oldest political tradition that goes back to classical Chinese and Indian thinkers, and to Plato in the West. They could serve in the serious task of civic education (paideia) provided they are not taken to represent precisely the political realities of the future.’—Raghavan Iyer

‘Utopia has, for four centuries, accompanied that hope of progress and that striving for betterment. It has been itself a principle of expression of that belief and a potent agent of that impulse. It now struggles against a confused but widespread sense that this has been an illusion, or an impossible dream. A strong utopian current has persisted…. It may be that, once invented, the utopian idea can never entirely disappear—not, that is, so long as Western society itself continues. But utopia as a form of the social imagination has clearly weakened—whether fatally we cannot say. It has not in recent times found the power to instill its vision in the public consciousness. If it cannot do so again some time in the future, we should be aware of the seriousness of the failure. Karl Mannheim, who was as thoughtful a student of utopias as anyone, considered that the elimination of the “reality-transcending” power of utopia would mean “the decay of the human will:” The complete disappearance of the utopian element from human thought would mean that human nature and human development would take on a totally new character. The disappearance of utopia brings about a static state of affairs in which man himself becomes nor more than a thing. We would then be faced with the greatest paradox imaginable, namely, that man, who has achieved the highest degree of mastery of existence, left without any ideals, becomes a mere creature of impulses. Thus, after a long tortuous, but heroic development, just at the highest stage of awareness, when history is ceasing to be blind fate, and is becoming more and more man’s own creation, with the relinquishment of utopias, man would lose his will to shape history and therewith his ability to understand it.’—Mannheim qtd. in Krishan Kumar

References and Further Reading:

• Baczko, Bronislaw. Utopian Lights: The Evolution of the Idea of Social Progress. New York: Paragon House, 1989.
• Bahro, Rudolf (David Fernbach, trans.). The Alternative in Eastern Europe. London: NLB (New Left Books), 1978.
• Bahro, Rudolf. Building the Green Movement. Philadelphia, PA: New Society Publ., 1986.
• Bartkowski, Frances. Feminist Utopias. Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press, 1989.
• Berryman, Phillip. Liberation Theology. New York: Pantheon Books, 1987.
• Bloch, Ernst (Neville Plaice, Stephen Plaice, and Paul Knight, trans.). The Principle of Hope, 3 Vols. Oxford, UK: Basil Blackwell, 1986.
• Bloch, Ernst (Jack Zipes and Frank Mecklenburg, trans.). The Utopian Function of Art and Literature: Selected Essays. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1988.
• Breines, Wini. Community and Organization in the New Left, 1962-1968: The Great Refusal. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1989 ed.
• Dolgoff, Sam, ed. The Anarchist Collectives: Workers’ Self-Management in the Spanish Revolution, 1936–1939. New York: Free Life Editions, 1974.
• Elster, Jon and Karl Ove Moene, eds. Alternatives to Capitalism. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1989.
• Erasmus, Charles J. In Search of the Common Good: Utopian Experiments Past and Future. New York: Free Press, 1985.
• Galston, William A. Justice and the Human Good. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1980.
• Geoghegan, Vincent. Utopianism and Marxism. London: Methuen, 1987.
• Godwin, William. Enquiry Concerning Political Justice. Middlesex, England: Penguin Classics, 1985 (1793).
• Hine, Robert V. California’s Utopian Colonies. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1983 (1953).
• Iyer, Raghavan. Parapolitics: Toward the City of Man. New York: Oxford University Press, 1979.
• Iyer, Raghavan. The Moral and Political Thought of Mahatma Gandhi. Santa Barbara, CA: Concord Grove Press, 2nd ed., 1983 (1st ed., New York: Oxford University Press, 1973).
• Jacoby, Russell. The End of Utopia: Politics and Culture in an Age of Apathy. New York: Basic Books, 2005.
• Jacoby, Russell. Picture Imperfect: Utopian Thought for an Anti-Utopian Age. New York: Columbia University Press, 2007 ed.
• Joll, James. The Anarchists. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2n ed., 1979.
• Katsiaficas, George. The Imagination of the New Left: A Global Analysis of 1968. Boston, MA: South End Press, 1987.
• Kohn, Livia. Cosmos and Community: The Ethical Dimension of Daoism. Cambridge, MA: Three Pines Press, 2004.
• Kumar, Krishan. Utopia and Anti-Utopia in Modern Times. Oxford, UK: Basil Blackwell, 1987.
• Kumar, Krishan and Stephen Bann, eds. Utopias and the Millennium. London: Reaktion Books, 1993.
• LaFargue, Michael, tr. The Tao of the Tao Te Ching: A Translation and Commentary. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 1992.
• Levitas, Ruth. The Concept of Utopia. Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 1990.
• Luntley, Michael. The Meaning of Socialism. La Salle, IL: Open Court, 1990.
• Mannheim, Karl. Ideology and Utopia. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1960 (1936).
• Manuel, Frank E. and Fritzie P. Manuel. Utopian Thought in the Western World. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1979.
• Marsden, John Joseph. Marxian and Christian Utopianism: Toward a Socialist Political Theology. New York: Monthly Review Press, 1991.
• Martineau, Alain. Herbert Marcuse’s Utopia. Montreal: Harvest House, 1986.
• Melville, Keith. Communes in the Counter Culture: Origins, Theories, Styles of Life. New York: Morrow Quill, 1972.
• Morrison, Roy. We Build the Road as We Travel. Philadelphis, PA: New Society Publishers, 1991.
• Nordhoff, Charles. The Communistic Societies of the United States. New York: Schocken Books, 1965 [1875].
• Nozick, Robert. Anarchy, State, and Utopia. New York: Basic Books, 1974.
• Pitzer, Donald E., ed. America’s Communal Utopias. Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 1997.
• Rexroth, Kenneth. Communalism: From Its Origins to the Twentieth Century. New York: Seabury Press, 1974.
• Schaer, Roland, Gregory Claeys and Lyman Tower Sargent, eds. Utopia: The Search for the Ideal Society in the Western World. New York: Oxford University Press, 2001.
• Smith, Christian. The Emergence of Liberation Theology: Radical Religion and Social Movement Theory. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1991.
• Sonn, Richard D. Anarchism. New York: Twayne Publ., 1992.
• Stites, Richard. Revolutionary Dreams: Utopian Vision and Experimental Life in the Russian Revolution. New York: Oxford University Press, 1989.
• Taylor, Michael. Anarchy and Cooperation. London: Wiley, 1976.
• Taylor, Michael. Community, Anarchy and Liberty. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1982.
• Weisbrud, Carol. The Boundaries of Utopia. New York: Pantheon Books, 1980.

Please see here and here for two previous posts on "utopian thought and imagination."

Natural Law: An Introduction—Part 3

"Bamboo stems with branches and folia," Kishi Ganku (Japanese, 1749-1838), Edo period. © Smithsonian Institution


“Ever since Antigone’s resistance to Creon’s prohibition against performing the rights of burial for her brother, and ever since the controversy over the essence of right and justice among Sophists and Platonists, that is, from the very outset of Occidental legal thought, philosophers have asked themselves whether positive law is committed to general moral principles. These principles of legal morality have been articulated in theories of natural law or justice.”— Otfried Höffe

“In the Enlightenment, natural law as a discipline [was] grounded exclusively on reason and independently of doctrinal elements. …[I]t belonged both to the faculty of jurisprudence and to that of philosophy.”—Otfried Höffe

“Before the Americans and French declared the rights of man, the leading proponents of universalism lived on the margins of the great powers. Perhaps that very marginality enabled a handful of Dutch, German, and Swiss thinkers to take the initial lead in arguing that rights were universal. As early as 1625, a Dutch Calvinist jurist, Hugo Grotius, put forward a notion of rights that was applicable to all of mankind, not just one country or legal tradition. He defined ‘natural rights’ as something self-possessed and conceivably separate from God’s will. He also suggested that people could use their rights—unaided by religion—to establish contractual foundations for social life. His German follower Samuel Pufendorf, the first professor of natural law at Heidelberg, featured Grotius’s achievements in his general history of natural law teachings in 1678. Although Pufendorf criticized Grotius on certain points, he helped solidify Grotius’s reputation as a prime source of the universalist stream of rights thinking.”—Lynn Hunt

“The Swiss natural law theorists built upon these ideas in the early eighteenth century. The most influential of them, Jean-Jacques Burlamaqui, taught law in Geneva. He synthesized the various seventeenth-century natural law writings in The Principles of Natural Law (1747). Like his predecessors, Burlamaqui provided little specific legal or political content to the notion of universal human rights; his main purpose was to prove their existence and their derivation from reason and human nature. He updated the concept by linking it to what the Scottish philosophers called an internal moral sense…. Immediately translated into English and Dutch, Burlamaqui’s work was widely used as a kind of textbook of natural law and natural rights in the last half of the eighteenth century. Rousseau, among others, took Burlamaqui as a point of departure. Burlamaqui’s work fed a more general revival of natural law and natural rights theories across Western Europe and the North American colonies. [….] Grotius, Pufendorf, and Burlamaqui were all well known to American revolutionaries, such as Jefferson and Madison, who read in the law.”—Lynn Hunt

“Having grown up with natural law theory and the associated moral philosophy, it is hardly strange that Americans found use for such ideas in their own writings and, eventually, in the documents of independence and constitution-building.”—Knud Haakonssen

“Certain basic rights are inalienable because they are duties under natural law, and all other duties/rights derive their ultimate justification more or less directly from these. None of the American theoreticians put forward a clear idea of rights as underived, primary features of the person, and one inevitably gets the impression that some of the apparent moral certainty stemmed from the fact that Americans stayed well within the comfortable moral world of traditional natural law theory, with its assurance of an in-principle harmony of individual rights and duties.”—Knud Haakonssen

“The persons known as major German war criminals were tried in 1945 for offenses specified in an agreement (‘the London Agreement and Charter 8 August 1945’) made between the states governing Germany since its surrender to them. The judges held that the defendants had at all relevant times been bound by (and in many instances had acted in violation of) the principles or rules specified in the London Charter, such obligations being derived not, of course, from the agreement (which was made subsequent to the acts in question), but rather, as to some of the crimes alleged, from international law and, as to the alleged ‘crimes against humanity,’ from the ‘elementary dictates of humanity.’ To hold the defendants responsible for violating these rules and dictates, and reject any argument that their acts’ compliance with German law could make the acts lawful, was not (so the tribunal ruled) to violate the principle of law and justice that no one should be punished except for violation of law. The result of these rulings might be accounted for by (i) exclusive positivism: the tribunal was morally authorized to apply moral rules, notwithstanding that the rules so applied were not rules of law either at the time of the crimes or the time of the prosecution. But the terms of the rulings (as just summarized) can be accounted for (ii) by inclusive positivism: the Charter was positive law for the tribunal and directed it to apply moral rules which by virtue of that direction were also legal rules. Still, (iii) natural law theory’s account seems the most explanatory: the moral rules applied were also rules of the ‘higher law’ applicable in all times and places (and thus in Germany and its territories, before as after the Charter) as a source of argumentation and judgment ‘according to law’ when the social-fact sources which are the normally dominant and quasi-exclusive source of law are, in justice, inadequate and insufficient guides to fulfilling obligations such as the judicial obligation to do justice according to law, or everyone’s obligation to behave with elementary humanity even when under orders not to—even if those orders have intra-systemic legal validity according to the formal or social-fact criteria of some existing legal system. And if one has doubts about victors’ justice, those very doubts can likewise appeal to principles of the same higher law, jus gentium, or law of reason and humanity.”—John Finnis

“The reluctance of legal positivists to provide a set of basic international norms that could conclusively mandate international legal intervention for a wide array of human rights abuses, such as prosecuting Nazi war criminals, led many theorists to look back to the natural law tradition. Justice Robert H. Jackson, the chief American prosecutor at the Nuremberg trials, said that he saw himself representing all of humanity as he sought to punish those Nazi leaders who had committed ‘atrocities and persecutions on racial or religious grounds.’ Jackson argued that the Martens Clause of the Hague Convention of 1907 provided two related sources of international law from which a defense of international tribunals could be derived. International interventions are justified by reference to ‘the principles of the law of nations, as they result from the usages established among civilized peoples, [1] from the laws of humanity, and [2] the dictates of public conscience. On this view, there are principles of natural law that are somehow enshrined in the public conscience. What offends the public conscience in international crimes is that humans are treated in ways that no human should have to bear—namely, to be made to suffer arbitrarily. Arbitrary suffering is here treated as clearly wrong from the natural law perspective since it violates the most basic standards of how humans regard each other, and how humans know, in the light of reason, that they should behave. Humans are supposed to treat each other with minimal decency based on the idea that human personhood has a core of intrinsic value that must always be respected.”—Larry May

“Law’s effectiveness is dependent on the moral legitimacy of the law. In this…I follow Lon Fuller, a paradigmatic moral minimalist, who attempted to provide a middle ground between legal positivism and robust natural law theory. [….] [I]n a pluralistic society or world community, it makes prudential good sense to link wide-scale acceptance to normative justification. For law to be effective, there must be such acceptance, but the acceptance is not what justifies the norms. Rather it is the moral legitimacy of law that both provides a justification for its enforcement and also creates wide-scale acceptance. There is a minimum moral or natural law content that laws must display to be legitimate. This is what I am calling the ‘moral legitimacy’ of the law. The morality of law does not need to be robust for law to be legitimate. Here there is a set of moral principles, recognized in virtually every legal system, that makes a law worthy of being enforced. Such moral principles ultimately protect the inner normative core of law by guaranteeing that the law is, in some rudimentary way, fair.”—Larry May

“[Intuitionism] has three main characteristics: (1) It is an ethical pluralism, in the sense that it affirms an irreducible plurality of basic moral principles…. (2) Each principle centers on a different ground for action, conceived as a factor implying a prima facie moral duty and knowable by ordinary moral agents. The ground itself might be an action, like making a promise; a cognition, such as noticing a person will bleed to death without one’s help; or an accessible fact, such as the possibility that one can contribute to the well-being of others. It is in virtue of grounds of these sorts that one has the duty in question. (3) Each moral principle is taken to be in some sense intuitively know by those who appropriately understand it.”—Robert Audi

Epistemologically, intuitionism “is roughly the thesis that basic moral judgments and basic moral principles are non-inferentially knowable and that, for those who justifiedly hold them non-inferentially, they are justified by, and constitute knowledge on the basis of, the non-inferential deliverance of reason.”—Robert Audi

Prima facie duties in the intuitionist sense are “ineradicable but overridable.” Indeed, as in the case of W.D. Ross’s intuitionism, once we appreciate that the “primary role of intuition is to give us direct, i.e., non-inferential knowledge (or at least justified belief) of the truth, rather than of the self-evidence, of moral propositions (especially certain moral principles), there is less reason to think that moral beliefs resting on an intuitive apprehension of principles are indefeasibly justified. [….] The view that the justification of moral intuitions is defeasible…is quite consistent with [Ross’s] claim that the self-evident truths in question do not admit of proof. That a true proposition does not admit of proof is an epistemic fact about it and leaves open that a person might have only poor or overridden grounds for believing it. It is true that paradigm cases of presumptively unprovable propositions—such as luminously self-evident simple axioms—invite the sense of indefeasibility. But a proposition’s having the epistemic status of unprovability does not entail that one cannot lose one’s justification for believing it, or fail to become justified in believing it upon considering it, or even fail to find it intuitive and for that reason not come to believe it at all.”—Robert Audi

“Rossian principles of duty (though perhaps not exactly Ross’s list of them) may be argued to be just the general moral principles one would derive—even, if not strictly deduce—from a careful application of the [Kantian] categorical imperative to everyday life. For instance, if one is to avoid treating people merely as means—and so to realize the negative standard expressed by the categorical imperative—one must recognize (prima facie) duties of non-injury (including avoidance of murder, brutality and theft), of reparation and of fidelity and veracity’ and if one is to treat people positively as ends—and so to realize the positive standard it expresses—one must recognize duties of beneficence, gratitude, self-improvement, and justice…. [….] If a Kantian intuitionism is viable, and if principles of the kind Ross proposed can serve as middle axioms, we have made a theoretical advance.”—Robert Audi

“We may still wonder what it is about persons in virtue of which, for Kant, they must be treated as ends. Kant employs a number of notions. Consider just one: dignity. This may in turn be taken to be based on autonomy, rationality, or other characteristics of persons. The most important point here is that dignity is a moral value. This is in part to say that it is essential to it that beings possessing it have moral rights. In part, to call the dignity of persons a moral value is to say that in virtue of it there are moral reasons to act in a certain way toward them and that certain other ways of acting toward them are wrong. A second important point about dignity—or indeed any comparably broad moral value that might ground the categorical imperative (such as ‘worth’), is that there is a far-reaching moral attitude that goes with it: respect for persons. If this is so, we might take both dignity and respect for persons as fundamental elements in a value-based intuitionism.”—Robert Audi

[The Natural Duty of Justice] is “the obligation each of us has to treat every person with equal concern and respect,” and “according to which each of us—independently of which institutions we find ourselves in or the special commitments we have undertaken—has a limited moral obligation to help ensure that all persons have access to institutions that protect their basic rights.”—Allen Buchanan

References and Further Reading:
(Several of these books simply contain brief discussions of natural law, ideas similar to those found in the natural law tradition, or insights explicitly or implicitly in support of natural law philosophy. I make the assumption that natural law need not be religious in formulation even if it is often religious in inspiration or motivation, hence there is such a thing as ‘secular’ or philosophical natural law, as we see quite early and clearly with the Stoics.)

• Alexy, Robert. The Argument from Injustice: A Reply to Legal Positivism. Oxford, UK: Clarendon Press, 2002.
• Audi, Robert. The Good in the Right: A Theory of Intuition and Intrinsic Value. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2004.
• Bix, Brian H. ‘Natural Law: The Modern Tradition,’ in Jules Coleman and Scott Shapiro, eds. The Oxford Handbook of Jurisprudence and Philosophy of Law. New York: Oxford University Press, 2002: 61-103.
• Buchanan, Allen. Justice, Legitimacy and Self-Determination: Moral Foundations for International Law. New York: Oxford University Press, 2004.
• Cunningham, Lawrence S. Intractable Disputes about the Natural Law: Alasdair MacIntyre and His Critics. Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2009.
• Dworkin, Ronald. Law’s Empire. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1986.
• Finnis, John. Natural Law and Natural Rights. Oxford, UK: Clarendon Press, 1982 ed.
• Finnis, John. Aquinas: Moral, Political, and Legal Theory. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 1998.
• Finnis, John. “Natural Law Theories,” The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Spring 2007), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), URL =
  http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/spr2007/entries/natural-law-theories/.
• George, Robert P. In Defense of Natural Law. New York: Oxford University Press, 1999.
• George, Robert P., ed. Natural Law Theory: Contemporary Essays. Oxford, UK: Clarendon Press, 1992.
• George, Robert P. and Christopher Wolfe, eds. Natural Law and Public Reason. Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 2000.
• George, Robert P., ed. Natural Law. Aldershot: Ashgate, 2003.
• Gomez-Lobo, Alfonso. Morality and the Human Goods: An Introduction to Natural Law Ethics. Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 2002.
• Haakonssen, Knud. Natural Law and Moral Philosophy: From Grotius to the Scottish Enlightenment. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1996.
• Höffe, Otfried (Alexandra Newton, trans.). Kant’s Cosmopolitan Theory of Law and Peace. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2001.
• Hunt, Lynn. Inventing Human Rights: A History. New York: W.W. Norton, 2007.
• Iyer, Raghavan. “The Open Texture of Natural Law,” in his Parapolitics: Toward the City of Man. New York: Oxford University Press, 1979, pp. 50-60.
• Janis, Mark W. An Introduction to International Law. New York: Aspen Law & Business, 3rd ed., 1999.
• Kainz, Howard P. Natural Law: An Introduction and Re-examination. Chicago, IL: Open Court, 2004.
• Maritain, Jacques. The Rights of Man and Natural Law. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1943.
• May, Larry. Crimes Against Humanity: A Normative Account. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2005.
• May, Larry. War Crimes and Just War. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2007.
• Murphy, Mark C. Natural Law and Practical Rationality. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2001.
• Murphy, Mark C. “The Natural Law Tradition in Ethics,” The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, (Winter 2002), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), URL =
  http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/win2002/entries/natural-law-ethics/.
• Murphy, Mark C. Natural Law in Jurisprudence and Politics. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006.
• Novak, David. Natural Law in Judaism. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1998.
• Nussbaum, Martha C. Frontiers of Justice: Disability, Nationality, Species Membership. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2006.
• Paul, Ellen Frankel, Fred D. Miller, Jr., and Jeffrey Paul, eds. Natural Law and Modern Moral Philosophy. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2001.

Natural Law: An Introduction—Part 2

"Crow on a Cherry Branch," Okuhara Seiko (1837 - 1913) © Smithsonian Institution.

“In Locke’s state of nature there are binding moral duties, including a duty of self-preservation and, given natural equality and reciprocity, a duty to preserve others, a duty not to take the life of another and a duty not to do what tends to destroy others by impairing their liberty, health or property. (These duties seem to be derived from the fundamental law of nature, which is the preservation of humankind.). Citing Richard Hooker’s views, Locke holds that the recognition of moral equality also gives rise to positive duties of benevolence and beneficence.”—Martha C. Nussbaum

Although positivist legal theorists “take their theories to be opposed to, or at least clearly distinct from, natural law theory,” natural law theorists “have not conceived of their theories in opposition to, or even as distinct from, legal positivism.”—John Finnis

“Natural law theory accepts that law can be considered and spoken of both, as a sheer social fact of power and practice, and as a set of reasons for action that can be and often are sound as reasons and therefore normative for reasonable people addressed by them.”—John Finnis

“The fulcrum and central question of natural law theories of law is: How and why can law…give its subjects sound reason for acting in accordance with it? How can a rule’s, a judgment’s, or an institution’s legal (‘formal,’ ‘systemic’) validity, or its facticity or efficacy as a social phenomenon (e.g., of official practice), make it authoritative in its subject’s deliberations?”—John Finnis

“[N]atural law theory holds that law’s ‘source-based character’—its dependence upon social facts such as legislation, custom or judicially established precedents—is a fundamental and primary element in ‘law’s capacity to advance the common good, to secure human rights, or to govern with integrity.’”—John Finnis

While law is “normally [an] indispensable instrument of great good”… [it nonetheless can become] “an instrument of great evil unless its authors steadily and vigilantly make it good by recognizing and fulfilling their moral duties to do so, both in settling the content of its rules and principles and in the procedures and institutions by which they make and administer it.”—John Finnis

“If one thinks perceptively and carefully about what to pursue (or shun) and do (or forbear from), one can readily understand and assent to practical propositions such as that life and health, knowledge and harmony with other people are desirable for oneself and for anyone else. The intrinsic desirability of such states of affairs as one’s flourishing in life and health, in knowledge and in friendly relations with others, is articulated in foundational, underived principles of practical reasoning (reasoning towards choice and action). [….] A natural law moral theory will give us an account of the way in which first principles of practical reason take on a moral force by being considered, not one by one but in their united (‘integral’) directedness. That integral directedness is given specific (albeit highly general) articulation in principles such as the injunction to love one’s neighbor as oneself; or the Golden Rule of doing for others what you would want them to do for you and not doing to others what you would not have them to do to you; or in the ‘categorical-imperatives’ to respect, and treat intrinsically valuable humanity (the basic aspects of human flourishing) in oneself and in others, so that each of one’s communities is treated as a [Kantian-like] kingdom of ends—of persons each ends in themselves” (John Finnis). These higher level moral principles can be given further specification, what Aquinas called determinatio, through the institution of governmental authority acting in the first instance through legislation and other forms of law-making. The political-theoretical part of natural law theory should address—explain and elaborate—the corresponding (moral) grounds of political obligation and the proper forms of governmental authority.

“Social facts make a positive legal rule a reason for action because the desirability of authority as a means of securing common good, and the desirability of the ‘rule of law and not of men,’ are standing and potent reasons for acknowledging such facts as an instance of valid legislation giving presumptively sufficient reason for compliance. Purely positive law that is legally valid is (presumptively and defeasibly) valid and binding morally—has the moral form or meaning of legal obligatoriness—when and because it takes its place in a scheme of practical reasoning whose practical starting-point is the range of basic ways in which human well-being can be promoted and protected, the way picked out in practical reason’s first principles.”—John Finnis

The defeasibility of the presumptive obligatoriness of authoritative reasons “is entailed by the dependence of such reasons’ peremptory, pre-emptive or exclusionary force upon a background of presupposed basic human needs and goods, and of basic moral principles and norms, a background which entails that if a purportedly authoritative proffered (posited) reason conflicts sufficiently clearly with those standing needs, good, principles or norms, its exclusionary force is exhausted or overcome and the purported obligatoriness defeated.”—John Finnis

“[B]oth the effectiveness of laws as solutions to coordination problems and promoters of common good, and the fairness of demanding adherence to them, are dependent on there being both by the subjects and administrators of the legal system as legally and morally entitled, precisely as validly made law, to prevail against all other reasons save competing moral obligations of greater strength.”—John Finnis

“The positivist thesis that all law depends for its existence, validity and obligatoriness on its social-fact source(s) is often accompanied, as in [Joseph] Raz’s ‘exclusive legal positivism,’ by the thesis that judges, as the ‘primary law-applying institutions,’ have a duty to decide certain sorts of case (e.g., cases where the existing legal rule would work injustice) by applying moral principles or rules or rules which warrant amending or even abandoning part of the existing law.”—John Finnis

“Natural law theories hold as strongly as any positivist theory that sound and legitimate adjudication gives priority to conscientious and craftsman-like attention to social-fact sources and to rules and principles pedigreed by such sources, [and] sets them aside only if and to the extent that they are ‘too iniquitous to be applied,’ and tailors the resultant new rule so as to cohere as far as possible with all the other (not too iniquitous) doctrines, rules and principles of the particular legal system in which the judge has jurisdiction.”—John Finnis

“Most people now do not need natural law for instruction regarding clear-cut issues like genocide, slavery, or sexual molestation. But the fact that these issues are ‘clear-cut’ seems to be a tribute to the fact that at a certain junction in history, at least implicit natural-law considerations were influential in bringing about new moral insights and changing prevailing practices.” —Howard P. Kainz

“Let us take telling examples of Natural Law assertions:
‘All human beings seek self-preservation.’ (factual-seeming)
‘All human beings are entitled to survive.’ (evaluative)
‘A human being cannot seek self-preservation and with consistency deny the same right or urge to another.’ (a seemingly logical truth)
‘All human beings are equally entitled to freedom of choice, thought, speech, and action.’ (evaluative)—liberty, negative or positive
‘All human beings are equally entitled to some minimal respect worthy of human stature.’(evaluative)—minimal egalitarianism
All human beings are entitled to equal respect and equal opportunities of self-expression and self-fulfillment.’ (evaluative)—strict egalitarianism
‘No human being should act toward another in a manner that he or she would not wish anyone else to act toward him or her.’ (evaluative)—the Golden Rule
[….] In general, such assertions are not merely definitions of ‘man’ or decisions of principle, and they certainly are not contingent truths. If we could correctly characterize them we might be in a position to show that the criticism of the logical positivists [i.e., that the concept of Natural Law ‘is wholly empty of empirical content and cognitive meaning;’ legal positivists, on the other hand, contend ‘the concept is empty of operative force and practical import’] is irrelevant rather than false. Natural Law assertions are often about what a human being must be assumed to be, or how human beings must be treated if we are to assign abiding, universal, and meaningful status to being human; that is, if we are to regard all human beings (biologically defined) as rational and moral agents, or if we are to differentiate decisively between the human and other species of beings without detaching man entirely form nature. It is important to concede that the word must necessarily introduces a metaphysical (a non-empirical as well as non-evaluative) element into every careful formulation of Natural Law.”—Raghavan Iyer

“Inasmuch as the concept of Natural Law contains a minimal element, it is an attempt at the definition of ‘man’ and the articulation of the foundations of human existence in a social and cosmic context. Insofar as it contains a maximal element, it is plainly metaphysical, passing beyond the boundaries of presently verifiable experience. However, between minimal and maximal ranges of meaning, the concept touches upon generally shared (or at least sharable) notions of human self-awareness, felt needs and ideals, common feelings of deprivation, self-alienation, and moral autonomy, as well as mutually recognizable signs of striving after a deeper and larger fulfillment than is capable of conceptualization. Natural Law has often been articulated with a stress on features that seem to be defined with dogmatic certainty, but essentially it expresses a deep sense of wonder, reverence, and agnosticism as to the unknown possibilities of human growth.”—Raghavan Iyer

Please Note: A list of "References and Further Reading" will be appended to the third and final post in this series.

Natural Law: An Introduction—Part 1

"Persimmon Tree," late 18th-early 19th century, Nakamura Hochu © Smithsonian Institution (The image is for ornamental purposes.)

Natural law has to do with the idea that there are some meta-laws (or principles) that transcend, supervene upon or trump positive law(s). In the Western philosophical tradition, its roots go back as far as the pre-Socratic philosophers: Anaximander (610-547 BCE), Pythagoras (570-500 BCE), and Heraclitus (540-475 BCE). There are glimmers of it in Aristotle’s notion of “right reason” and Plato appears to assume the workings of some sort of unwritten and divine natural law. It is also found in the work of the Greek dramatists, Aeschylus (525-456 BCE) and Sophocles (495-406 BCE). Natural law receives its first strong articulation among the Greek and Roman Stoics: “We find in Stoic natural law theory very general but groundbreaking concepts of divine governance, of rationality or logos embedded in nature, universal human equality and brotherhood, and the ideal of respecting and harmonizing oneself with nature” (Howard P. Kainz).

Among the Roman jurists, Gaius (130-180) identified natural law with the “law of nations,” in the sense that there is a rational element underlying and therefore common to all judicial systems. The East Roman Christian Emperor Justinian (483-565) oversaw a codification of all Roman law as the Corpus Juris Civilis (in three parts: the Digesta, Institutiones and Codex) in which natural law is distinguished from the ‘law of nations’ and is depicted as a set of immutable divine laws which can be used to judge the validity of civil laws. The twelfth century Benedictine monk and canon lawyer from Bologna, Gratian, understood natural law as contained in the Hebrew Bible’s Decalogue and in the Golden Rule of the New Testament Gospels.

After the Stoics, St. Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274) represents the most important development in the natural law tradition. Aquinas distinguishes between the “Eternal Law” that governs the universe, the “Divine Law” found in the Scriptures, “Natural Law,” which is participation in the Eternal Law by rational creatures, and civil or positive law. In this account, Eternal Law gives rise to natural law and the Divine Law reiterates aspects of the Natural Law. At its best, civil law will assume or incorporate much of the natural law that pertains to social order. In effect, natural law mediates between divine law, on the one hand, and human or positive law, on the other. As explained by Kainz, “what we experience as fundamental human inclinations are aspects of the eternal law instilled into human nature, orienting humans toward certain natural goals. Human beings have a natural inclination to accomplish the general ends congruent with their nature, and this inclination is a mark or impression of the eternal law in which they are participating. Natural law thus is the actual participation in the eternal law, facilitated by human inclinations to implement the will of the divine legislator.” The primary motivation for such participation in the eternal law is a rational apprehension of the imperative that “good is to be done and pursued, and evil is to be avoided,” which is a general principle of practical reason. This is said by Aquinas to be the “first precept” of natural law. The good for humans is eudaimonia, clarified in terms of the natural inclinations of human nature, and which entail three pivotal secondary precepts of natural law: (1) the preservation of human life, (2) sexual intercourse and education of offspring (an inclination in common with other animals), and (3) an inclination to good, according to the nature of our reason which nature has provided us, and involving an inclination to know about God, live in society, and to shun ignorance (and hence pursue knowledge). The determination of further natural law principles is not a strict logical or deductive exercise of reasoning from premises to a conclusion, but involves the derivation of conclusions from the secondary precepts, for instance: do not kill, help maintain social order and harmony, as well as the giving of “determinations” to certain generalities: for example, prison sentences or fines are a determination from the principle that evildoers should be punished.

With Francisco Suárez (1548-1617), natural law is made known to us through “natural reason” and the law of the Decalogue. The law of God is, after St. Paul, written in the hearts of all men, “But if we would look for empirical confirmation of the rational application of natural law, Suarez suggests that the ‘law of nations’ is the closest approximation to it.”—Howard P. Kainz

“For many years, natural law was thought to be the principal source of international law. Indeed, many texts of the sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth centuries characterized themselves as studies of the ‘laws of nature and of nations.’ [….] A belief in the relevance of natural law to international relations may, but need not, stem from religious principles. The early sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Spanish international lawyers, Vitoria and Suárez, for example, based the law of nations on Catholic natural law foundations. However, Grotius [see below], a Protestant, later looked to more general biblical sources, as well as to classical authors and to right reason, to ground his theory of natural law. [….] When nineteenth-century legal positivists began deriding international law as being mere morality and not law at all, many international lawyers took affright and tried to sever their ties with natural law altogether. There was a suspicion that intimately linking international law to natural law debased international law.”—Mark W. Janis

Relying on the polyvalent meaning of jus in early medieval philosophy as law, right or justice, “the Spanish Dominicans, Francisco de Vitoria (1492-1546) and Bartolemé de las Casas (1474-1566), reflecting critically on the Spanish conquest of the New World, insisted that natural rights inhered in humans and were being subverted by European colonizers. Vitoria applied jus gentium [the ‘law of nations’ or international law] in condemning the actions of the Conquistadores in America, arguing that jus gentium forbids the taking of property of the Indians, or trying to bring them under the domination of the Spanish Empire, since they have a right to their own government. Native Americans may not be enslaved since they have dominion over themselves and over things, and their state of freedom is indicated by their political systems, magistrates, and system of exchange and religion; and it is unjust to force the Christian religion on them, since faith has to be voluntary.”—Howard P. Kainz

The Dutch jurist Hugo Grotius (1588-1645), made explicit a point found earlier in the tradition (e.g. with Robert Bellarmine): natural law can be valid and binding even if God does not exist (i.e., we need not presume a divine legislator). The “father of international law” grounded natural law in what he took to be our intrinsically social, altruistic nature as rational beings. In her recent book, Frontiers of Justice: Disability, Nationality, Species Membership (2006), Martha C. Nussbaum states that she is attempting to “revive” the natural law philosophy of Grotius. Although Grotius applies natural law principles specifically to international relations, Nussbaum contends such principles suggest a broader or more “general template for thinking about domestic issues as well, although he does not so apply it: In On the Law of War and Peace (1625), Grotius gives an account of the basic principles of international relations, tracing it to the Greek and Roman Stoics (Seneca and Cicero above all). Put very simply, this approach holds that the way to begin, when we think about fundamental principles, is to think of the human being as a creature characterized both by dignity or moral worth and by sociability: by ‘an impelling desire for fellowship, that is for common life, not just of any kind, but a peaceful life, and organized according to the measure of his intelligence, with those who are of his kind.’ Grotius thinks of these features as deeply natural. We may, however, (with Cicero, who was agnostic in metaphysics), view these claims as freestanding ethical claims out of which one might build political conceptions of the person that can be accepted by people who hold different views in metaphysics and in religion. The general idea of Grotius’ natural law theory is that these two features of the human being, and their ethical value, suggest a good deal about the treatment to which every human being is entitled. Thus political theory begins from an abstract idea of basic entitlements, grounded in the twin ideas of dignity (the human being as an end) and sociability. It is then argued that certain specific entitlements from those ideas, as necessary conditions of a life with human dignity. [….] What I want to bring out about Grotius’ theory is that it begins with the content of an outcome, in the sense of an account of basic entitlements of human beings whose fulfillment is required by justice; if these entitlements are fulfilled, then a society (in this case, ‘international society’) is minimally just. The justification of the entitlement set is not procedural, but involves the intuitive idea [what for Aquinas would be a ‘self-evident’ idea] of human dignity and arguments to the effect that a certain entitlement is implicit in the idea of human dignity. Grotius explicitly argues that we must not attempt to derive our fundamental principles from an idea of mutual advantage alone; human sociability indicates that advantage is not the only reason for which humans act justly. Grotius evidently believes that a society based upon sociability and respect rather than upon mutual advantage can remain stable over time. [….] Notice that for Grotius the important kind of equality among persons is moral equality, which entails equality of respect and entitlement. Equality of powers plays no significant role in his argument. [….] Thus there is no analogue in his theory to Hume’s Circumstances of Justice or to the similar assumptions in the theories of Hobbes, Locke, and Kant. Wherever human beings are alive, there are already Circumstances of Justice between them, just because they are human and sociable.”—Martha C. Nussbaum

“Thomas Hobbes’s Leviathan (1651) might be treated as the antitype to everything Grotius stands for, but such a presumption would clearly be mistaken. Indeed, what is most striking to someone who examines the social contract tradition beginning from the natural law tradition is how much these thinkers agree with Grotius and his fellow natural law thinkers. That is to say, Hobbes holds that there are natural moral laws that enjoin ‘Justice, Equity, Modesty, Mercy, and (in summe) doing to others, as wee would be done to’ (XVII). But he believes that these moral laws can never give rise to a stable political order, because they are ‘contrary to our naturall Passions, that carry us to Partiality, Pride, Revenge, and the like’ (ibid). Natural sociability can be observed among bees and ants, but in human beings there is no reliable sociability without coercion. Because our natural passions are fundamentally competitive and egoistic, with fear playing a central motivating role, the state of nature—the state of human relations in the absence of a strong coercive sovereign—is a state of war. Hobbes famously describes this state as a very miserable one indeed. In this state of war, there is a rough equality of power and resources. Where bodily strength is concerned, the weakest can kill the strongest by stealth; where mental capacity is concerned, this rough equality will be doubted only by those who have a ‘vain conceipt’ of their own wisdom. [….] Although Hobbes appears to think humans are moral equals as well (the natural law part of his theory suggests this strongly, at any rate), it is equality of power and ability that plays the salient role in his argument. Equality of ability plays a large role in making the state of nature as bad as it is: for it generates an equality of hope, which in turn spurns people on to further competition. Given this natural equality of power, our passions incline us to make peace with one another, so that we can get on with our lives in tolerable security. ‘The Passions that encline men to Peace, are Feare of Death; Desire of such things as are necessary to commodious living; and a Hope by their Industry to attain them. And Reason suggesteth convenient Articles of Peace, upon which men may be drawn to agreement’ (XIII). Hobbes does not portray his social contract as generating principles of justice. He speaks of justice in ways that are hard to reconcile, sometimes arguing that there is no justice where there is no coercive power (XV), and sometimes arguing that there are natural principles of justice, albeit ineffectual ones, given our natural passions. But the social contract does generate the fundamental principles of political society. The contract is a reciprocal agreement to transfer natural rights (XIV). Its object is for every man a ‘good to himselfe,’ for the group of human beings a mutual advantage, ‘that Is to say, of getting themselves out from that miserable condition of Warre’ (XVII).”—Martha C. Nussbaum

“…Hobbes is normally portrayed as the great defender of the position that moral laws are not laws properly so called, and ‘states could be bound by no higher law.’ This view is based on Hobbes’s claim that the relationship among States in international affairs is like the relationship of people in the state of nature, where the natural human condition can be described as the ‘war of very man against every man.’ As Hobbes says at the end of Chapter 30 of the Leviathan: ‘The Law of Nations and the Law of Nature, is the same thing. And every Sovereign hath the same Right, in procuring the safety of his People, that any particular man can have, in procuring his own safety.’ It is thus contended that Hobbes is the great defender of the use of violence, especially in situations where there is no sovereign, and most especially in the relations between States. It is often forgotten, though, that in the very paragraph where Hobbes speaks of the war that exists in any state of nature, he also declares that the first branch of the ‘first, and fundamental law of nature’ is ‘to seek peace and follow it.’ The more Hobbesian-sounding law of nature, ‘by all means we can, defend ourselves,’ is said to be only the second branch of the first law of nature. Hobbes has been often unfairly characterized as the defender of the right of States to use any means, including violence, in the relations with one another and with their own subjects. This is because in the state of nature, while individual persons have the right to do everything, this is not a reasonable position in which to remain.”—Larry May

“[W]hile it is always unreasonable to be first performer of the social covenant, it is also unreasonable not to want to join cooperative associations that could protect us. It seems reasonable to argue that if Hobbes rejects the desirability of first performance to the social contract, he should also be opposed to the attitudes of cooperation and trust that are essential to an international rule of law. Yet, in Chapter 14 of Leviathan, Hobbes indicates that the first performance of contracts is only conditionally irrational in the state of nature—that is, only when cooperation jeopardizes self-defense. But Hobbes also counsels that we should always pursue peace over war and that it is reasonable to go to great lengths to create a situation in which people feel bound to keep their promises and contracts. Indeed, Hobbes defines the law of nature as a dictate of right reason that counsels against the use of force and violence. Civil society, along with the domestic rule of law, is created so as to provide just the sort of mutual enforcement of agreements that will make the first performance reasonable. [….] A Hobbesian position on international law would support a systematic set of laws of nature that can be derived from the two-pronged principle: Seek peace where you can, and otherwise be ready to resort to war. What is lacking in Hobbes’s account, from a contemporary perspective, is a strong defense of human rights.”—Larry May

“Hobbes argues that the laws of nature are mere theorems for what ‘conduceth to the conservation and defense of themselves.’ For this reason, natural laws are not laws properly so-called: they are binding ‘in foro interno,’ not ‘in foro externo.’ Nonetheless, for Hobbesians, natural laws are no less binding in terms of their reasonable restraint on violent action because of their ‘in foro interno’ status. These secular laws bind in the conscience, and this is a true bindingness. But they do not bind as laws often do—that is, they do not bind because of the fear of punishment at the hands of the law-givers. Fear of the person who could punish creates a bindingness that is externally motivated . Yet the internally motivated bindingness of conscience, while weaker than such things as fear, is still a motivation for most people. And a Hobbesian can follow Hobbes in arguing that it is reasonable for humans to place restraints on what they can bargain away: ‘[T]here be some rights that no man can be understood by any words, or other signes, to have abandoned or transferred….’ Because Hobbes did not clearly recognize a category of moral rights that could be used to ground fundamental legal norms, and because he did not think that the laws of nature were laws properly so-called, he is normally seen as the first strict legal positivist rather than a defender of natural law theory. But it seems to me that the Hobbesian, although non-standard Hobbesian, position on international relations…blurs the distinction between positive and natural law theories in significant ways and sets the stage for a moral minimalism that lets in a minimal conception of natural law. For while the law of nature only bind in the conscience, they do still bind, and can form the basis for restraint of violence, even in the international arena. A secularized and minimalist natural-law theory is one that derives constraints on the use of violence from principles of human psychology and morality.”—Larry May

Please Note: A list of "References and Further Reading" will be appended to the third and final post in this series.

Virtue Ethics: An Introduction—Part 3

‘Rules can be indispensable and yet indeterminate, they can be indeterminate and yet action-guiding. [….] Rules are not the enemy but the matrix of judgment.’—Onora O’Neill

‘…[T]he Aristotelian ancestry of the concept of (moral) virtue…traditionally consists—under one aspect—in a capacity for thinking correctly about how to respond to particular situations as they arise. (This is the capacity summed up in the concept of phronēsis, a “practical wisdom”—in Aristotle’s terms an “intellectual,” not a “moral virtue, but one that has to be understood by abstracting the common cognitive element from a range of different virtues that are genuinely moral: virtues consisting in the reliable disposition to deal in an appropriate, felicitous, or at least not contemptible way with the various sorts of circumstances attendant on human life.) The subject matter of this kind of correctness is not itself psychological: it relates, first, to the evaluatively significant features of situations and, second, to the identification and weighing of any reasons for action that these features may generate. [….] Virtue ethics, then, can be seen as aiming at the evaluation of the rational character ideal as it relates to practical rationality, and within practical rationality, to the proper appreciation of those (potentially action-guiding) values that lie beyond the range of ordinary self-interest.’— Sabina Lovibond

‘[W]e can begin with the idea…that the virtuous person has a distinctive way of seeing situations, persons, courses of action, or anything else that we regard as a logically appropriate object of moral evaluation. This way of seeing is objective in that those who become party to it are thereby alerted to genuine features of the world.’—Sabina Lovibond

‘Virtue ethics…offers a character ideal not just in the edifying sense (an example we should strive to imitate) but also in an epistemological one: it follows Aristotle in holding out a standard of correct judgement.’—Sabina Lovibond

‘[Phronēsis brings] together, on one hand, a general insight into what is of value or worth pursuing and, on the other, insight into the concrete possibility of realizing value in particular situations. People who have the quality of phronēsis will therefore excel in the construction of “practical syllogisms,” which we can think of as verbal representations of the thought expressed in an episode of purposive action. They will have a good eye for the evaluatively significant particular, and so will be among the active supporters of that structure of concern which makes such a particular “significant” (that is, potentially action-guiding) in the first place.’—Sabina Lovibond

‘[S]omeone who has been successfully initiated into a culture cannot make explicit all that she has thereby learned about the ethical—either about what counts as an instance of some concept figuring in the common ethical vocabulary, or about how to assess the relative “saliency” of different value considerations bearing on a particular case.’—Sabina Lovibond

‘Contrary to the common view, virtue ethics is not…starkly opposed to Kant and his followers on the issue of “moral motivation.” Virtue ethicists who rely on Aristotle’s philosophy of action rather than Hume’s need not, and should not, say that the virtuous agent acts “from desire” as opposed to reason, for…Aristotle and Kant share the non-Humean premise that we have two principles of movement, not just one. The virtuous Aristotelian agent does not characteristically act from the principle-of-movement-we-share-with-the-animals, as a child does, but from reason (logos) in the form of “choice” (prohairesis).’—Rosalind Hursthouse

‘[T]he territory of virtue is larger than that of action and tendency to action. Virtue involves and depends on appropriate emotions as well as actions. This is still true where the tendency to action is not an important aspect of the emotion, as in feeling sympathy for what deserves sympathy in the past, about which, in the most important respects, we cannot do anything. Even more importantly, virtue depends on motives and beliefs that shape actions. Claims about virtue and the virtues are not chiefly about the ethical classification and evaluation of actions performed, but rather about the ethical significance of what lies behind our actions.’—Robert Merrihew Adams

‘A view of virtue as a kind of goodness rather than a kind of rightness makes it easier to see how there can be quite different alternative ways of being genuinely virtuous.’—Robert Merrihew Adams

‘Moral virtue is excellence of moral character.’—Robert Merrihew Adams

‘One who enjoys the supreme benefit in loving the Good will have a motive to imitate the Good, and therefore to become as excellent as possible.’—Robert Merrihew Adams

‘Spirituality has long been considered to be a concept that is concerned in the first instance with activities rather than theories, with ways of living rather than doctrines subscribed to, with praxis rather than belief.’—John Cottingham

‘There were many Stoic treatises entitled “On Exercises,” and the central notion of askesis found for example in Epictetus, implied not so much “asceticism” in the modern sense as a practical programme of training, concerned with the “art of living.” Fundamental to such programmes was learning the technique of prosoche—attention, a continuous vigilance and presence of the mind (a notion, incidentally, that calls to mind certain Buddhist spiritual techniques). Crucial also was the mastery of methods for the ordering of the passions—what has been called the therapy of desire [after Martha Nussbaum’s book of that title]. The general aim of such programmes was not merely intellectual enlightenment, or the imparting of abstract theory, but a transformation of the whole person, including our patterns of emotional response [cf. the Greek term, metanoia].’—John Cottingham

‘[Aristotle] has quite a bit to say about what the virtue of phronēsis consists in, but he clearly is not confident that he can give a full account of it. …[H]e thinks that fundamentally it does not matter, because we can pick out persons who are phronetic in advance of investigating the nature of phronēsis. [As Zagzebski writes in a note, ‘Since Aristotle think that the virtue of phronēsis is both a necessary and sufficient condition of having the moral virtues, the truly phronetic person will always be paradigmatically good as well as paradigmatically wise.’] The phronimōs, can be defined, roughly, as a person like that, where we make a demonstrative reference to a paradigmatically good person. So Aristotle assume that we can pick out paradigmatic instances of good persons in advance of our theorizing.’—Linda Trinkaus Zagzebski

‘The function of an exemplar is to fix the reference of a “good person” or a “practically wise person” without any use of concepts, whether descriptive or nondescriptive.’—Linda Trinkaus Zagzebski

‘It is not implausible to think we are elevated by others who are more developed than ourselves in their striving for harmonious hierarchical development and for a valuable life. We are aided and encouraged along our own path of development by their striving for self-development and purer feeling; contrast the effects on us of encountering those with a sour mixture of one-upmanship, self-aggrandizement, desire to dominate or destroy, and other festering emotions, the effects of wending our way and bending our attention to their motivations and trajectories. [….] We all know people, I hope, who bring out the best in us, people in whose presence we would be embarrassed to speak or act from unworthy motives, people who glow. In their presence we feel elevated. We are pushed, or nudged further along a path of development and perfection; rather, we are inspired to move ourselves along, in the direction shown. [….] We want to find a way of living whereby our best energies and talents are poured out so as to speak to and improve the best energies and talents of others. We want to utilize our highest parts and energies in a way that helps others to flourish.’—Robert Nozick

‘First, the exemplar can serve as a standard of perfection against which the rest of us are measured. The exemplar may not be literally perfect, but he or she is close enough to determine what is good for us, on the Platonic interpretation. What is good for us in that sense is to imitate the exemplar. Second, human flourishing can be defined as the kind of life the exemplar desires or at which she aims.’—Linda Trinkaus Zagzebski

‘There are some individuals whose lives are infused by values, who pursue values with single-minded purity and intensity, who embody value to the greatest extent. These individuals glow with a special radiance. Epochal religious figures often have this quality. To be in their presence (or even to hear about them) is to be uplifted and drawn (at least temporarily) to pursue the best in oneself. There are less epochal figures as well, glowing with a special moral and value loveliness, whose presence uplifts us, whose example lures and inspires us.’—Robert Nozick

‘If all the concepts of a formal ethical theory are rooted in a person, then narratives and descriptions of that person are morally significant. It is an open question what it is about the person that makes him or her good.’—Linda Trinkaus Zagzebski

‘With respect to certain elements of human life, the terms of the novelist’s art are alert winged creatures, perceiving where the blunt terms of ordinary speech, or of abstract theoretical discourse, are blind, acute where they are obtuse, winged where they are dull and heavy.’—Martha C. Nussbaum

'[O]rdinary people—which means all of us—find [the] story mode of moral discourse [i.e., the form which includes parable, the play, short story, the narrative poem, the novel and the film] uniquely palatable and nutritious; it seems perfectly designed to engage our moral faculties. Our moral understanding and the story form seem fitted for one another. No rote learning is necessary: it all seems to flow quite naturally. This is the way our moral faculty likes to operate. It is almost effortless to take in a story, pleasant even, though the story may be replete with moral discourse. The novel, in particular, is a text of a very different kind from the scientific treatise. It is also very different from the philosophical text, which is what philosophers, naturally, are most comfortable with. Thus the novel form has tended to be ignored by moral philosophers: it is not, for them, the place to look for canonical expressions of ethical truth. Yet, quite obviously, it is for most educated people one of the prime vehicles of ethical expression. (Film plays a similar role for the less word-minded.) In reading a novel we have ethical experiences, sometimes quite profound ones, and we reach ethical conclusions, condemning some characters and admiring others. We live a particular set of moral challenges (sitting there in our armchair) by entering into the lives of the characters introduced. [....] Stories can sharpen and clarify moral questions, encouraging a dialectic between the reader's own experiences and the trials of the characters he or she is reading about. A tremendous amount of moral thinking and feeling is done when reading novels (Or watching plays and films, or reading poetry and short stories). In fact, it is not an exaggeration to say that for most people this is the primary way in which they acquire ethical attitudes, especially in contemporary culture. Our ethical knowledge is aesthetically mediated.'—Colin McGinn

‘Religious exemplars are sometimes useless for modeling virtue in the messy situations that ordinary, less-than-virtuous persons encounter in modern life precisely because what makes the religious exemplars extraordinary is that they know how to avoid such messes. Some of us want to learn how to avoid the messes, but meanwhile, we have to face them and need exemplars of how to do that.’—Linda Trinkaus Zagzebski

‘Emotions easily become dispositions. Human beings develop patterns of emotional response in similar situations. These circumstance/emotion pairs become part of a person’s character. They express the way she emotionally fits into the world around her. An emotion is motivating because of the combination of its affective component and its intentionality. Affectivity is a necessary but not sufficient condition for a state’s being motivating. It is necessary because affect is what gets us going. Hume is usually associated with this point, but so is Aristotle [in De Anima], and I believe they are right that no cognitive or purely representational state can do so.’—Linda Trinkaus Zagzebski

‘The concept of a motive arises within the discourse of giving reasons in both the sense of precipitating reasons and the sense of justifying reasons.’—Linda Trinkaus Zagzebski

‘Motive dispositions are constituents of traits of character. A trait of character is the combination of a motive-disposition and reliability in acting in a way that expresses the motive and reaching the end (if any) of the motive. The good ones are constitutive of virtues, and the bad ones are constitutive of vices.’—Linda Trinkaus Zagzebski

‘I have proposed that “good” is defined by direct reference. If so, it is plausible that “good life” is defined by direct reference as well. It is a life like that, which is to say that we know it when we see it. Describing lives is one of the functions of literature and biography. [….] If we defined the good life as a life like that, we do not do it independently of referring to persons whose lives we want to imitate. We imitate persons we regard as exemplars, and we imitate lives we regard as exemplary, and these are not independent activities. [….] So what is a flourishing life? I propose that it is determined by what the exemplars say it is. [….] The exemplars make the determination of good lives in the hard cases. If “good life” is defined by direct reference independently of a “good person,” then the life of a good person can come apart from a good life. However, if I am right, that is not the way these concepts work. The lives we want to imitate are lives of persons we want to imitate.’—Linda Trinkaus Zagzebski

References and Further Reading:

• Adams, Robert Merrihew. A Theory of Virtue: Excellence in Being for the Good. New York: Oxford University Press, 2006.
• Annas, Julia. The Morality of Happiness. New York: Oxford University Press, 1993.
• Aristotle (Roger Crisp, trans.). Nicomachean Ethics. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2000.
• Athanassoulis, Nafsika. ‘Virtue Ethics,’ Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy:
  http://www.iep.utm.edu/v/virtue.htm
• Baron, Marcia W. Kantian Ethics Almost Without Apology. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1995.
• Berkowitz, Peter. Virtue and the Making of Modern Liberalism. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1999.
• Broadie, Sarah. Ethics with Aristotle. New York: Oxford University Press, 1991.
• Chong, Kim-chong. Early Confucian Ethics. Chicago, IL: Open Court, 2007.
• Crisp, Roger, ed. How Should One Live? Essays on the Virtues. Oxford, UK: Clarendon Press, 1996.
• Crisp, Roger and Michael Slote, eds. Virtue Ethics. New York: Oxford University Press, 1997.
• Darwall, Stephen, ed. Virtue Ethics. Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2003.
• Dent, N.J.H. The Moral Psychology of the Virtues. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2004.
• DePaul, Michael and Linda Zagzebski, eds. Intellectual Virtue: Perspectives from Ethics and Epistemology. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2003.
• Engstrom, Stephen and Jennifer Whiting, eds. Aristotle, Kant and the Stoics: Rethinking Happiness and Duty. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1996.
• Foot, Philippa. Virtues and Vices and Other Essays in Moral Philosophy. Oxford, UK: Blackwell, 1978.
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Image: Mending Clothes in the Early Morning Sun, © Smithsonian Institution

Virtue Ethics: An Introduction—Part 2

The image is of "Noah's Ark" (ca. 1590), a painting attributed to Miskin. © Freer Gallery of Art, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C. I chose this for the same reasons Amyn B. Sajoo selected it for the cover of his Muslim Ethics: Emerging Vistas (2004), as explained in the Preface to the book.


The mature, self-responsible, self-actualizing individual is first and foremost self-governing. The art and science of self-government is for virtue ethical theory the paradigm of good government (or governance). We might imagine, therefore, that the primary task of good government is to assure that the opportunities and occasions of such self-governance are generalized throughout society. Owing to the human condition and reflective of our natural sociability, not all of the preconditions of self-directed individuality can be self-supplied by individuals. It follows that if we are to hold individuals morally accountable for self-discovery and self-actualization, they are entitled to the necessary conditions of same. In short, some of the necessary (yet not sufficient) conditions of eudaimonistic moral aspiration are best thought of as social and political conditions, the responsibility for which is everyone’s:

To say that all are responsible is not necessarily to say that each is responsible, though. Still less is it to say that each is necessarily responsible for attempting to do whatever must be done himself. [….] [W]e typically—and rightly—suppose that, when responsibilities have not been allocated to anyone in particular within a group, the most that can be said is that each of them has an imperfect duty to perform at least some (but not necessarily all) of the acts that we might ideally wish be performed. The same general principle gives rise to much stronger implications at the level of the group as a whole, however. When no one in particular bears responsibility for performing some morally desirable actions, everyone collectively has a strong, perfect duty to see to that those things are done, within the limits of the capacities of the group as a whole to do so without undue sacrifice. [….] [The requirements of strong collective responsibility are, from the perspective of individual action, a coordination problem.] [T]he solution to such coordination problems is, of necessity, a responsibility peculiar to the group as a whole (Robert E. Goodin).

While in the past it was the polis or city-state that provided (through its ‘constitution’) a solution to the coordination problem represented by the generalization of the opportunities and occasions for human flourishing, today that solution is provided by the State. The State bears ‘ultimate responsibility for providing the coordination that is required in order for people to be able do the right thing’ (Goodin). Virtue ethics can appreciate the fact that individual moral responsibilities give rise to collective moral responsibilities that cannot be self-supplied by individuals: Where shared collective responsibilities are concerned, it is—by definition—everyone’s business what everyone else does. And this tautology is far from an empty one. It is everyone’s business, first and most simply, because it is a responsibility that everyone shares with everyone else. It is everyone’s business, second and more importantly, because, for anyone else’s contribution to be efficacious, each agent must usually play his part under the scheme that has been collectively instituted for discharging that shared responsibility. [….] Failure to discharge shared, collective responsibilities…undermin[es] in certain crucial respects other people’s moral agency itself. [….] That is what justifies us, pace libertarian principles, in forcing people to play their part in collective moral enterprises—so that others may play their part in them too [….] All of this is simply to say that, where there is a collective responsibility to coordinate individual behavior in pursuit of some morally important goal, it is legitimate for the collectivity to impose sanctions upon individuals in pursuit of that goal. Of course, it is perfectly true that not all coordination schemes require such enforcement…[for]people are sometimes prepared to play their assigned roles without any external sanctions whatsoever. So my argument here is not that we should necessarily always enforce coordination schemes. It is, rather, that we should always be prepared to enforce them as necessary (Robert E. Goodin).

Eudaimonistic ethics is a valuable voluntary option for individuals only if the necessary social and political conditions for it prevail.

The eudaimonist conception of human nature and the good life entail enhancing the quality of life through the acquisition of moral virtues and the proper development of character. As dispositions of character, the moral virtues are (1) personal utilities, (2) intrinsic goods (i.e., of intrinsic or inherent value), and (3) social utilities (because morally ‘other-regarding’). Utility is understood here in its lexical sense, meaning fitness for some purpose or worth to some end.

To have moral integrity implies one is dedicated to the task of harmoniously integrating otherwise separable, conflicting and often fragmented aspects of personhood—notably, cognitive and affective faculties, desires, interests, roles, life-shaping choices—into a self-consistent if not harmonious whole. In the Apology and the Crito Socrates exemplifies moral integrity, conducting himself in a manner that vividly and exquisitely exemplifies the very conduct for which he is condemned (i.e., living a philosophical way of life).

The problem of moral development is the problem of discovering the conditions necessary and sufficient for the manifestation of the virtues and the actualization of value(s). Each person is morally obligated, from the perspective of virtue ethics, to sincerely and persistently endeavor to actualize, conserve and defend those values he or she identifies with as the product of self-examination and the prerequisite of self-direction. The specific cluster of values so identified may (and usually does) vary from person to person and no one individual is capable of realizing all such values, although one might nonetheless recognize and appreciate all values (or value as such), especially insofar as these values have become identified with other individuals. Individual values identification brings in its wake the intrinsic and intangible rewards of personal fulfillment and flourishing. We are all alike with regard to values-potentialities by virtue of our human nature, but we differ, owing to genetic inheritance, upbringing, circumstance and so forth in the manner of values-identification and actualization. We might see this as the interdependence of value-actualizers, serving to confirm our inherently social nature as human beings. Such interdependence, furthermore, is capable of (has implications for) filling out the meaning of true community.

Identification with particular values is a sign of moral integrity and entails ‘living in truth to oneself,’ where ‘the self’ is fulfilled in the actualization, conservation and defense of value(s). Such identification is of a piece with self-knowledge and simultaneously a ‘knowledge of the good.’

Eudaimonistic individualism supports and strengthens both community and tradition, these being in the course of any life ‘received’ and then ‘chosen.’ Individual moral autonomy here has a necessary connection to the identification and appreciation of the ‘right’ tradition and the ‘right’ community. Recall that the individual self-realization of eudaimonistic ethics is inherently a social enterprise, as virtuous individuals are the vehicles for manifesting objective worth in the world. Being objective, the worth of such values actualization and expression is incomplete without the recognition, appreciation and utilization by appropriate others; that is to say, by those individuals who comprise an individual’s ‘natural community.’ The obligation of the individual to relate to this community is one with the moral obligation of self-actualization, an inherently non-egoistic enterprise. In the same way, and as explained by Norton, there is a ‘natural tradition’ and ‘natural meta-tradition’ for every person, for we have predecessors in the general endeavor of self-directed living, as well as predecessors in a particular chosen course of life. Thus to ‘choose oneself’ inevitably and invariably entails the deliberative choice of one’s meta-tradition and tradition. Prior to this choice, one’s meta-tradition and tradition are central to what Jürgen Habermas has called the ‘lifeworld,’ the individuated (if not idiosyncratic) backdrop of personal and collective identity that symbolize one’s share of the cultural inheritance, and about which one may be only dimly (less than fully consciously) aware, yet with which (through its language, concepts and categories, etc.) one makes one’s way about in the world. With the age of reason, as it were, one’s involuntary affiliations are subject to reasoned choice, to deliberate commitment and self-imposed obligations, as one identifies with that tradition that becomes the backbone of one’s worldview (while one’s worldview may contain elements from more than one tradition, the nature of philosophical and spiritual discipline or praxis, the student-teacher relationship, and the sheer depth and scope of major religious and philosophical traditions suggests it is neither wise nor prudent to identify with more than one tradition) . The ‘choice’ and commitment to community and tradition assume a developmental period of inquiry and exploration, experimentation and uncertainty, the eudaimonistic equivalent of moral adolescence. Moral maturity is evidenced when one comes to identify with one’s freely chosen community(ies) and tradition, when one comes to appreciate the absolutely fundamental pride of place one’s tradition plays in providing propitious conditions for individual and collective flourishing. The eudaimonistic approach to community and tradition hopes to avoid the pitfalls of New Age dilettantism, the follies of faddish eclecticism, and the vices of rootless cosmopolitanism while not succumbing to a Burkean-like veneration of traditions that fails to subject their contents to a rational or reasonable scrutiny (‘critique’). Eudaimonist communities are self-defining, being predicated on the individual’s moral autonomy and her unique articulation and realization of values for herself and others (i.e., the common good). In such a community, individuals interact with one another as ‘whole persons,’ being greater than the sum total of their social roles, their social interactions characterized by a conspicuous exemplification of caring and compassionate relations understood as universalizable forms of erōs (in the Platonic sense) and philia (in both Platonic and Aristotelian senses).

Understood at a sufficient level of abstraction, the shared values and beliefs within such a community are perfectly compatible with diverse lifestyles or life-plans; to use Norton’s example, not every Transcendentalist need live, like Thoreau, for two years in a cabin in the woods. Indeed, think of the variety of individuals who were Transcendentalists: Ralph Waldo Emerson, Walt Whitman, and Sarah Margaret Fuller, by way of lustrous examples.

One learns from the aporetic dialogues, Socratic elenchus, and Platonic dialectic that knowledge of the virtues—and the Good for that matter—is neither simply the product of unreflective or untutored intuition (the ‘stuff’ of everyday experience), nor propositional knowledge (the claim of the Sophists; propositions ascribe predicates: qualities, properties or attributes, to an ‘object’), nor a combination thereof. (When we say that a person ‘knows that p,’ ‘believes that p,’ ‘doubts that p,’ ‘affirms that p,’ etc., ‘p’ stands for a proposition.) In Platonic thought, the fact that we have some ability to recognize instances and properties of a particular virtue, is due to our soul’s possession of (or prior acquaintance with)—however obscure or opaque in the present—the knowledge of that virtue, knowledge, if you will, of its essence. A propositional definition of virtue is partial and incomplete, incapable of expressing the true knowledge of virtue. However important in some contexts—after all, they express relative truths—propositional formulations should not be confused with the knowledge of virtue. One reason for this is that the knowledge of virtue is bound up with self-knowledge, and such knowledge effaces the boundaries between subject and object (for instance, one cannot communicate one’s self-knowledge to others). The knowledge of good (and evil) is directed more to, and evidence in, the ‘how’ of knowing rather than the knowledge ‘that:’ knowledge of the good means knowing how to be good (or how to do things well). As Francisco J. Gonzalez explains, the knowledge associated with the virtues and the Good is (1) a knowledge how (exemplified by Socrates himself in the course of a dialogue), (2) a self-knowledge insofar as it is ineluctably tied to the virtuous agent herself, and (3) non-propositional knowledge (hence the aporias, the Socratic method, and the philosopher’s ascent out of the Cave to a vision of the Agathon). Nonetheless, words, images (as allegories, metaphors, analogies, etc.) and propositions are dialectically essential to the dialogic process of evoking, remembering, or awakening that enables one to recognize, in some measure, that with which the soul has had prior acquaintance. In terms of the Platonic Cave allegory, the Good is the true cause of knowing and being known, and the knowledge of the Good is decidedly non-propositional. For example, our knowledge of beauty itself, as a ‘form’ or ‘idea,’ depends on illumination of the Good (the Sun) in the very way that our perception of beautiful sensible objects (as partial or instantiations or realizations of “beauty”) depends on the illumination of the sun. The Platonic ‘form’ of beauty is the ideal that all objects christened ‘beautiful’ must approximate or instantiate. Similarly, ‘we can know what a virtue is without reducing it to its imperfect and contingent instances only because our understanding of the good allows us to idealize’ (Gonzalez). Knowledge, on this account, is not simply or solely knowledge of how things are, but presupposes a desire to know how things (by nature) should be. Doxa, opinion or belief, does not become epistēmē or knowledge through syllogistic proofs or deductive justification (for the Good remains outside any system of deductive knowledge), as the former already presupposes the latter, its epistemic status owing to the fact that it is an implicit awareness of the (idealized) ‘form,’ albeit restricted to its incomplete instantiation or partial realization. Through dialectical ascent to the Good we learn to distinguish belief from true knowledge, to properly distinguish the ‘form’ from its instantiations, in Aristotelian terms, to distinguish the contingent from the necessary. ‘The soul can seek to understand what virtue is only because it already “divines” this in the words, propositions and images with which it deals’ (Gonzalez). So propositions are used in dialectic to attain an insight that transcends them (the Good, after all, is transcendent), an insight into that nature which they themselves presuppose but cannot adequately or definitively express. This insight is on the order of a ‘knowledge by acquaintance’ (not in the Russellian sense, which is an immediate kind of sensuous or empirical knowledge) but is more than that inasmuch as the virtuous individual exemplifies the proper praxis of a ‘knowing how,’ having artfully woven together insight, reason, and right living.

Plato is an objective idealist, for it is as a result of our insight into and reflection upon noumenal realities outside the Cave that we are able to properly re-order the concrete and phenomenal world of the political realm with that which is true and just, with that which is Good, thereby bringing the soul of man into proper harmony and proportion with the polis of men, and both in alignment with the macrocosm. The objective nature of morality assumes the integrity and intelligibility of a cosmic order permitting subjective views of the Good articulated by individuals capable of indefinite growth or perfectibility, relative views and formulations of the Good that are consciously distinguished from but inspired by absolute (non-propositional) truth and goodness (the Agathon).

After Plato and Aristotle, it is the Hellenistic philosophical schools in Greece and Rome that provide the clearest expression of virtue ethics. These schools practiced what Martha Nussbaum calls the ‘therapy of desire,’ as the Epicureans, Skeptics and Stoics—among others—'all conceived of philosophy as a way of addressing the most painful and pressing problems of human life. They saw the philosopher as a compassionate physician whose arts could heal many pervasive types of human suffering. They practiced philosophy not as a detached intellectual technique dedicated to the display of cleverness but as an immersed and worldly art of grappling with human misery. They focused their attention, in consequence, on issues of daily and urgent human significance—the fear of death, love and sexuality, anger and aggression—issues that are sometimes regarded embarrassingly messy and personal by the more detached varieties of philosophy’ (Nussbaum). In Platonic terms, this represents the dialectical descent back into the Cave following the ascent to the Good, the ascending and descending dialectics complementing each other not unlike the way in which political theory is dialectically related to political praxis. The goal of philosophy remains human flourishing (or the relief and prevention of unnecessary suffering), and the methods of this medical ethical philosophy make use of logical rigor, precise reasoning, rational arguments, yet these are valuable only insofar as they prove their ‘protreptic’ worth, that is, insofar as they prove helpful in turning the Socratic interlocutors toward self-examination and philosophy, toward virtue and the good life. As with Socrates, the premises of a therapeutic argument are not designed in the first instance to logically necessitate an indubitable conclusion, but rather to turn an individual in a certain direction, to convert her to a certain course of action, the measure of success being practical and ethical, rather than purely formal or theoretical. The conception of the philosopher’s mission a medical one, ‘compassion and love of humanity [are] central features of it. Having understood how human lives are diseased, a philosopher worthy of the name—like a doctor worthy of that name—will proceed to cure them’ (Nussbaum). This medical philosophy must therefore challenge and change the psychology of the interlocutor, must delve deep into her inner world with appeals to memory and imagination, relying on the techniques of narrative and rhetoric, and calling upon the resources of friendship and community. It is a therapy of desire because our emotions often have a cognitive dimension that helps us better perceive and assess what is deeply significant or important in our lives. In Nussbaum’s words, ‘passions such as fear, anger, grief and love are not blind surges of affect that push and pull us without regard to reasoning and beliefs. They are, in fact, intelligent and discriminating elements of the personality that are very closely linked to beliefs and are modified by the modification of belief.’

While virtue ethics has social and political preconditions, as well as political implications and importance, it is perhaps best viewed as serving parapolitical purposes, where parapolitics ‘signifies the imaginative application of seminal ideas vitalizing political theory and practice; the elaboration of fundamental principles into paradigms of relationships among persons and between civil means and humane ends; the quest for political understanding and action based upon the ever-receding perspective of ideals rooted in the ethics, metaphysics and psychology of self-transcendence.’—Raghavan Iyer

Please Note: 'References and Further Reading' will be appended to the third and final part of this series.

Virtue Ethics: An Introduction—Part 1

Virtue ethics
…begins with the question: ‘What is a worthy life for a human being?’
…is preoccupied with the moral growth and character of individuals.
…postulates, in its classical Greek version, four principal (or ‘cardinal’) moral virtues: wisdom, justice, temperance (or moderation, sōphrosynē), and courage. Of these four virtues, sōphrosynē is the most difficult to render adequately into English. It implies mastery of the art of self-control, excellence of character and soundness of mind; it further connotes the qualities of wisdom and eudaimonia. In Plato’s triune soul, it represents reason ruling over the ‘spirited’ and ‘appetitive’ parts. In social and political terms it suggests balance, proportionality, and judiciousness in action. Indeed, as with all the cardinal virtues, we might examine it in terms of thought, feeling, speech and action, for it (they) has (have) both intra- and interpersonal application. Christians, while acknowledging the significance of classical Greek virtues, recognize the following (cardinal) specifically theological virtues: faith, hope and love [agapē, also ‘charity,’ Gk. charis, L., cāritās]; other theological virtues include goodness, humility, chastity, and poverty. A Buddhist list of virtues would include wisdom, compassion, generosity, patience, perseverance, concentration and non-attachment. The Confucian cluster of virtues is relatively unique as well, although all of these lists might plausibly be said to have more than strong family resemblance to each other, as some virtues, notably wisdom and some form of self-control, are common to both religious and non-religious worldviews.
…is ‘agent-centered.’ While modern moral theories, like utilitarianism/consequentialism and deontology/Kantian ethics, are largely or conventionally ‘act(ion)-centered.’ It is certainly possible to imagine an ethical life that appreciates and integrates the virtues of all three ethical theories, even if that means giving (lexical) priority to one theory over the others. The leading notions of eudaimonist ethics are, typically, not those of obligation, duty and rule-following but rather goodness, worth and value, although the endeavor to be good or to realize value(s) is certainly conceived as obligatory. And indeed, there’s nothing that precludes obligations, duties and rules, imperatives and commands, from playing an indispensable role in virtue-ethical training and moral growth.

A virtue is a settled (i.e., reliable) disposition to act in a certain way. It expresses an ideal as much as an achievement.

The qualities of moral character, however fragile, are a (spiritual, ethical, cognitive and affective) developmental outcome. These virtues, as excellent qualities of character, are intrinsically valuable for those who exemplify them while at the same time being extrinsically valuable for others.

Virtue ethics is perfectionist or, better, perfectibilist (in the Godwinian sense): it demands of individuals a continuous moral growth, a ‘self-surpassing’ with no endpoint, and commitment to an askēsis familiar to Hellenistic ethics, Christianity, Islamic humanism and mysticism (Sufism), Indian religious worldviews, and some forms of Daoism. This perfectibilist ethics in the ‘art of living’ involves a training dedicated to techniques of mental attentiveness or presence of mind and focused on learning those methods necessary for ordering the passions or mastering the ‘therapy of desire.’

Because virtue ethics are dispositional, there’s a significant difference between a ‘virtuous act’ and ‘living virtuously.’ Cultivating a virtuous disposition entails habituating our emotions in particular ways as well as the exercise of practical reasoning (deliberative judgment, phronēsis) so as to learn how and why to act the right way in any given situation, as well as, more broadly, conduct our lives in such a way as to reveal our dedication to (the fundamental value of) the Good. Developmentally speaking, the virtuous person comes to learn how to intuitively and spontaneously respond to the moral dimensions of any circumstance or situation: ‘The better I get at deliberating and working out what to do, the less I will need to deliberate, for the more obvious it will become to me what the morally salient features of the situation in front of me are.’—Julia Annas

The virtues are rational states generated from repeated choices and the fruition of a developmental pattern or habit (in the Aristotelian sense) of consistent and coherent reasoning about the right and proper thing to do, the right and proper way to live. Acquiring a virtue is often compared (keeping in mind the analogy is not perfect) to acquiring a skill (e.g., becoming an artisan), or learning to play a musical instrument. The emulation of one’s betters enables on to eventually progress to the point where one acquires an understanding of what one is doing and has the ability to freely act (perform) on one’s own in a self-directed fashion. One’s parents, teachers, and peer group all affect the trajectory of ones’ character development, all can work with our natural endowments and tendencies in the arduous process of chiseling, cutting, shaping and polishing this raw material through habituation exercises and (formal and informal) educational practices. In the first instance, virtue ethics is beholden to the presence of virtuous agents as intimate role models fit for direct and indirect emulation.

‘One might think that the demands of morality conflict with our [enlightened] self-interest, as morality is other-regarding, but eudaimonist ethics presents a different picture. Human nature is such that virtue is not exercised in opposition to self-interest, but rather is the quintessential component of human flourishing. The good life for humans is the life of virtue and therefore it is in our interest to be virtuous. It is not just that virtues lead to the good life (e.g., if you are good you will be rewarded), but rather that a virtuous life is good because the exercise of our rational capacities and virtues is its own reward.’—Nafsika Athanassoulis

Human nature contains innate potentialities and capacities that can come to fruition with careful cultivation, proper habituation and education. The actualization or realization (or expression) of such potentialities and capacities is experienced as affording that sort of happiness, contentment or satisfaction that is peculiar to self-fulfilling conduct, otherwise known as eudaimonia or ‘human flourishing’ (living well).

Our innate excellences or virtues (aretaiē, s. aretē) come to fruition as a result of a proper orientation toward ‘the Good,’ for in our heart of hearts, we are lovers of the Good.

Eudaimonia, awkwardly translated as ‘happiness,’ but better rendered as ‘human flourishing,’ identifies the condition of living in truth to oneself, and requires a deliberate process of self-discovery and self-examination as integral to that form of self-knowledge that is part and parcel of virtuous living.

‘In an ethics of virtue there is no room for supererogation. There is no “floor” of minimal moral obligation for the agent to rise above; being a fully virtuous agent is an ideal for everyone. The development of virtue is a process that everyone starts and continues to go along, there are no levels that only moral heroes are supposed to reach. However, there is an analogue to the problem of supererogation: the thought that there is a distinction between the virtue that we all may be expected to achieve , and the virtue which only exceptional people may be expected to achieve.’—Julia Annas

‘The eudaimonistic handling of supererogation is discernable in the testimony of heroes and saints that their heroic or saintly conduct was perceived by them as their duty; yet at the same time, they typically do not universalize their heroic or saintly duties. [….] We can think of their situation on the analogy of the skilled swimmer who can accomplish a deep-water rescue that is beyond the capabilities of a novice and a non-swimmer. As moral development increases, so do moral responsibilities, and in recognition of this the hero or saint demands more of himself than he asks of other persons, and more of himself than he asked at prior levels of development. In sum, eudaimonism’s thesis is that some of what is obligatory at later stages of moral development is supererogatory…with respect to earlier stages, while moral development itself is a universal demand upon humankind.’—David L. Norton

For eudaimonistic individuation or self-actualization it is the responsibility of persons to actualize objective value(s) in the world. (David L. Norton)

Whatever one’s projects and commitments are (apart from specifically moral ones), they cannot be identified with character, but how someone maintains or fails to maintain commitments and responsibilities normally counts heavily toward character, as do the sorts of commitments and responsibilities someone takes on.’—Joel Kupperman

‘Strength of character is independent of goodness of character, in the deeply wicked people have strong characters. Indeed, a strong character is required to be either extremely good or deeply wicked.’—Joel Kupperman

‘A person’s character is a complex of innate dispositions, shaped by environmental influences, as well as traits acquired through habituation, reasoned assessments, and voluntary choices. A character is not something that comes ready-made and can just be put on. It is a complex individuating feature of persons and cannot be hived off from the person. It provides a source of continuity throughout a person’s life. Thus, characters are not to be thought of as simply a collection of moral virtues. Further, virtues, unlike characters, can be specified independently of persons who instantiate them. If two people have the virtue of courage, it is the same virtue they have. Characters are inextricably linked with the persons who create them.’—Christine McKinnon

‘We value traits, calling them virtues, because they are dispositions reliably to recognize what is of value or disvalue in the world, and reliably to respond appropriately in thought, feeling and actions. Intellectual virtues, such as wisdom, and moral virtues, such as benevolence and being just, have precisely this feature. We value wisdom because we value truth. We value benevolence because we value such things as security and comfort, and we disvalue cruelty because we disvalue such things as pain and needless suffering. And so on for justice and the other virtues. What you value in the world will determine what character traits you value in yourself and in others. Another way of putting what is at the heart of virtue is that a virtue is a trait that is reliably responsive to good reasons, to reasons that reveal values; it is reason-responsive in the right way.’—Peter Goldie

‘Character is fragile.’—Peter Goldie

‘People who exhibit quite different traits in different spheres of life are often seen as not typical, let alone successful, in their inner fragmentation, but as having pervasive failings of character and feeling and as susceptible to swings of judgment and action. A rigid distinction or disassociation between spheres of life is often maintained at great psychic cost, and frequently fails: the impartial severities of the “public” person carry over into intimate relationships; the indulgences or bullying of “private” life become the corruptions of “public” life. Habits of dishonesty or of callousness, of friendliness or of courtesy, are not easily kept within distinct departments of life; nor are sensitivity and lack of sensitivity to others. Without some very general inclusive traits of character, patterns of action, attitude, and feeling within spheres of life, even psychological stability, can fail. Inclusive principles of virtue are no more dispensable than inclusive principles of justice.’—Onora O’Neill

Please Note: A list of 'References and Further Reading' will be appended to the third and final post of this series.

Philosophy of Law & Legal Theory: A Basic Bibliography

Our next bibliography in the Directed Reading series covers “philosophy of law and legal theory.”

Some of the titles are from the discipline of philosophy proper but I thought to include them owing to their demonstrative or possible relevance to philosophy of law and legal theory (Larry Solum’s references in many of the entries in his Legal Theory Lexicon are exemplary in this regard). Still, there is much one might have included that I’ve left out: for example, “neuroethics and law” has become an increasingly important subject area that raises questions (some novel, others long-standing) in part addressed with the conceptual resources provided by philosophy, yet I’ve not included works in the philosophy of mind or the philosophy of science (in this case, neuroscience) essential to treating such questions. As a basic or “select” bibliography, the list is not exhaustive, yet I trust it fairly represents the scope and substance of philosophy of law and legal theory, at least in some parts of the globe. And I welcome suggestions for possible additions to the next draft of this compilation.

I want to thank Larry Solum of the Legal Theory Blog as well as Matt Bodie and Dan Markel of PrawfsBlawg for posting earlier drafts of this list (with the latter, as part of the ‘Research Canons’ project). And I'm most grateful to Dennis Patterson (see too here) for awakening and shaping my intellectual interest in the philosophy of law and legal theory.

Political & Legal Obligation: An Introduction — Part 3

But the contract, on which government is founded, is said to be the original contract; and consequently may be supposed too old to fall under the knowledge of the present generation. If the agreement, by which savage men first associated and conjoined their force, be here meant, this is acknowledged to be real; but being so ancient, and being obliterated by a thousand changes of government and princes, it cannot now be supposed to retain any authority. If we would say any thing to the purpose, we must assert, that every particular government, which is lawful, and which imposes any duty of allegiance on the subject, was, at first, founded on consent and a voluntary compact. But besides that this supposes the consent of the fathers to bind the children, even to the most remote generations, (which republican writers will never allow) besides this, I say, it is not justified by history or experience, in any age or country of the world.

Almost all the governments, which exist at present, or of which there remains any record in story, have been founded originally, either on usurpation or conquest, or both, without any pretence of a fair consent, or voluntary subjection of the people. When an artful and bold man is placed at the head of an army or faction, it is often easy for him, by employing, sometimes violence, sometimes false pretences, to establish his dominion over a people a hundred times more numerous than his partizans. He allows no such open communication, that his enemies can know, with certainty, their number or force. He gives them no leisure to assemble together in a body to oppose him. Even all those, who are the instruments of his usurpation, may wish his fall; but their ignorance of each other's intention keeps them in awe, and is the sole cause of his security. By such arts as these, many governments have been established; and this is all the original contract, which they have to boast of.

The face of the earth is continually changing, by the encrease of small kingdoms into great empires, by the dissolution of great empires into smaller kingdoms, by the planting of colonies, by the migration of tribes. Is there any thing discoverable in all these events, but force and violence? Where is the mutual agreement or voluntary association so much talked of? [….]
It is in vain to say, that all governments are or should be, at first, founded on popular consent, as much as the necessity of human affairs will admit. This favours entirely my pretension. I maintain, that human affairs will never admit of this consent; seldom of the appearance of it. But that conquest or usurpation, that is, in plain terms, force, by dissolving the ancient governments, is the origin of almost all the new ones, which were ever established in the world. And that in the few cases, where consent may seem to have taken place, it was commonly so irregular, so confined, or so much intermixed either with fraud or violence, that it cannot have any great authority.

My intention here is not to exclude the consent of the people from being one just foundation of government where it has place. It is surely the best and most sacred of any. I only pretend, that it has very seldom had place in any degree, and never almost in its full extent. And that therefore some other foundation of government must also be admitted.—David Hume, “Of the Original Contract”

1) ‘A state is legitimate only if it claims to impose on its subjects a general, at least prima facie, duty to obey its law and its subjects have a general prima facie duty not to interfere with their enforcement.
2) There may be no general, even prima facie duty to obey the laws of a state, not even those of a just state; but there is a general prima facie duty not to interfere with the administration of the laws of a just state.
3) Legitimate states are not only possible, but actual.’—William A. Edmundson

‘Law changes our moral situation in at least three ways: (1) Legal judgments and enactments can alter the balance of reasons and thereby create new moral duties; (2) legal judgments and enactments provide a mechanism for enforcing moral duties, whether preexisting or flowing from legal acts; and (3) sufficiently just states impose a general duty not to interfere with their administrative prerogatives. These powers are enough to constitute a robust conception of legitimate political authority. This is the only sense in which political obligation and legitimacy need to be correlated.’—William A. Edmundson

‘In fact, because there is a degree of parallelism between political and epistemic authority, a legitimate political authority gives citizens good reasons to believe they ought to obey its laws, just as legitimate scientific authorities give the laity good reasons to believe what they say about the workings of the world. [….] Good reasons needn’t be sufficient or conclusive reasons, whether the issue is scientific or political authority. What those good reasons are, in the case of political authority, is not always made vividly clear. In many instances, the best that can be said of a law that is a legislative compromise (as most are) is that important but conflicting ends and interests were weighed and balanced, and general conformity with the means specified by the law in question is better than the alternatives (including the alternative of doing nothing).’—William A. Edmundson

‘Anyone who claims that there are actions that are both illegal and justified surely need not be thereby asserting that it is right generally to disobey all laws or even any particular law. It is surely not inconsistent to assert both that indiscriminate disobedience is indefensible and that discriminate disobedience is morally right and proper conduct. Nor, analogously, is it at all evident that a person who claims to be justified in performing an illegal action is thereby committed to giving endorsement to the principle that the entire legal system ought to be overthrown or renounced. At a minimum, therefore, the appeal to “But what if everyone did that?” cannot by itself support the claim that one has an absolute obligation to obey the law—that disobeying the law can never be truly justified.’—Richard A. Wasserstrom

‘We should comply with and do our part in just and efficient social arrangements for at least two reasons: first of all, we have a natural duty not to oppose the establishment of just and efficient institutions (when they do not yet exist); and second, assuming that we have knowingly accepted the benefits of these institutions and plan to continue to do so, and that we have encouraged and expect others to do their part, we also have an obligation to do our share when, as the arrangement requires, it comes our turn. Thus, we often have both a natural duty as well as an obligation to support just and efficient institutions, the obligation arising from our voluntary acts while the duty does not.’—John Rawls

‘…[T]he principles to which social arrangements must conform, and in particular the principles of justice, are those which free and rational men would agree to in an original position of equal liberty, and similarly, the principles which govern men’s relation to institutions and which define their natural duties and obligations are the principles to which they would consent when so situated. It should be noted straightway that in this interpretation of the contract theory the principles of justice are understood as the outcome of a hypothetical agreement. They are principles which would be agreed to if the situation of the original position were to arise.’—John Rawls

‘…[E]ven under just constitutions unjust laws may be passed and unjust policies enforced. Some form of the majority principle is necessary but the majority may be mistaken, more or less willfully, in what it legislates. In agreeing to a democratic constitution (as an instance of imperfect procedural justice) one accepts at the same time the principles of majority rule. Assuming that the constitution is just and that we have accepted and plan to continue to accept its benefits, we then have both an obligation and a natural duty (and in any case the duty) to comply with what the majority enacts even though it may be unjust. In this way we become bound to follow unjust laws, not always of course, but provided the injustice does not exceed certain limits. [….] The right to make laws does not guarantee that the decision is rightly made, and that while the citizen submits in his conduct to the judgment of democratic authority, he does not submit his judgment to it. And if in his judgment the enactments of the majority exceed certain bounds of injustice, the citizen may consider civil disobedience.’ Civil disobedience is understood to be ‘public, nonviolent, and conscientious acts contrary to law usually done with the intent to bring about a change in the policies or laws of the government. [….] In this way it manifests a respect for legal procedures. Civil disobedience expresses disobedience to law within the limits of fidelity to law and this feature of it helps to establish in the eyes of the majority that it is indeed conscientious and sincere, that it really is meant to address their sense of injustice. Being completely open about one’s acts and being willing to accept the legal consequences of one’s conduct is a bond given to make good one’s sincerity, for that one’s deeds are conscientious is not easy to demonstrate to another or even before oneself.’—John Rawls

‘Morality is that system of conduct which is determined by a consideration of the greatest general good: he is entitled to the highest moral approbation whose conduct is, in the greatest number of instances, or in the most momentous instances, governed by views of benevolence, and made subservient to public utility. In like manner the only regulations which any political authority can be justly entitled to enforce are such as are best adapted to public utility. Consequently, just political regulations are nothing more than a certain select part of moral law. The supreme power in a state ought not, in the strictest sense, to require anything of its members that an understanding sufficiently enlightened would not prescribe without such interference.’—William Godwin

‘…[A] man may be right to comply with the commands of the government under whose de facto authority he finds himself. But none of this settles the question of legitimate authority. This is a matter of the right to command, and of the correlative obligation to obey the person who issues the command. [….] Obedience is not a matter of doing what someone tells you to do. It is a matter of doing what he tells you to do because he tells you to do it. Legitimate, or de jure, authority thus concerns the grounds and sources of moral obligation.’—Robert Paul Wolff

‘The defining mark of the state is authority, the right to rule. The primary obligation of man is autonomy, the refusal to be ruled. It would seem, then, that there can be no resolution of the conflict between the autonomy of the individual and the putative autonomy of the state. In so far as a man fulfills his obligation to make himself the author of his decisions, he will resist the state’s claim to have authority over him. That is to say, he will deny that he has a duty to obey the laws of the state simply because they are the laws. In that sense, it would seem that anarchism is the only political doctrine consistent with the virtue of autonomy. Now, of course, an anarchist may grant the necessity of complying with the law under certain circumstances or for the time being. He may even doubt that there is any real prospect of eliminating the state as a human institution. But he will never view the commands of the state as legitimate, as having a binding moral force.’—Robert Paul Wolff

‘…[A]n organization that is just, effective, and legitimate (in the sense of being singled out as the salient organization for this territory) has eo ipso a claim on our allegiance. Though popular consent may be implicated in its justice, its effectiveness, or its legitimacy, the moral requirement that we support and obey such an organization is not itself based on any promise that we have made.’—Jeremy Waldron

‘It is the contention that the idea of individual self-development is contradicted by the idea of government. This is so, it is held, because government is coercive power (perhaps “the monopoly of legitimate coercive power”) over individuals, whereas self-development implies the voluntary initiative of individuals and therefore cannot be coerced. But this argument mistakenly supposes that whatever characterizes self-development must likewise characterize its conditions. To say that self-development is voluntary is to say that it is optional. If it has a necessary condition, then self-development is an option only when these conditions prevail. And this is to say that for the option of self-development to exist, supply of its necessary conditions is mandatory. To be sure, the supply of the necessary conditions that are to be self-supplied by individuals fall within the option of self-development and is not mandatory. But conditions that must be furnished to individuals by external agencies do not partake of the voluntary character of self-development. Recognition that their presence is mandatory commensurates the provision of them with the coercive nature of government, while respecting the voluntary nature of individual self-development: individuals remain free to avail themselves, or not, of the provided conditions. It is mandatory, of course, that individuals contribute (notably through taxes) to the government that provides the necessary conditions that individuals cannot self-supply, but this is a different issue, namely the balancing of liberty with autonomy, where “liberty” is understood “negatively,” as freedom from interference, but “autonomy,” as “self-direction,” entails positive conditions of enablement.’—David L. Norton

References and Further Reading:

• Cudd, Ann, “Contractarianism,” The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Fall 2008 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), URL = http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/fall2008/entries/contractarianism/
• Dagger, Richard, “Political Obligation,” The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Fall 2008 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), URL = http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/fall2008/entries/politicalobligation/
• Dworkin, Ronald M. Law’s Empire. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1986.
• Edmundson, William A. Three Anarchical Fallacies: An Essay on Political Authority. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1998.
• Edmundson, William A., ed. The Duty to Obey the Law: Selected Philosophical Readings. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 1999.
• Estlund, David M. Democratic Authority: A Philosophical Framework. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2008.
• Finnis, John. Natural Law and Natural Rights. Oxford, UK: Clarendon Press, 1979.
• Freeman, Samuel. Justice and the Social Contract: Essays on Rawlsian Political Philosophy. New York: Oxford University Press, 2007.
• Gans, Chaim. Philosophical Anarchism and Political Disobedience. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1992.
• Gaus, Gerald F. Justificatory Liberalism: An Essay on Epistemology and Political Theory. New York: Oxford University Press, 1996.
• Godwin, William (Isaac Kramnick, ed.). Enquiry Concerning Political Justice. Middlesex, England: Penguin Books, 1976 (1793).
• Goodin, Robert E. Utilitarianism as a Public Philosophy. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1995.
• Green, Leslie. The Authority of the State. Oxford, UK: Clarendon Press, 1988.
• Green, Leslie. “Legal Obligation and Authority,” The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Spring 2004 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), URL =
  http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/spr2004/entries/legal-obligation/
• Greenawalt, Kent. Conflicts of Law and Morality. New York: Oxford University Press, 1987.
• Hardin, Russell. Liberalism, Constitutionalism, and Democracy. New York: Oxford University Press, 1999.
• Hobbes, Thomas (A.P. Martinich, ed.). Leviathan. Peterborough, Ontario: Broadview Press, 2002 (1651).
• Hume, David. “Of the Original Contract,” in Alasdair, MacIntyre, ed., Hume’s Ethical Writings. Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1979.
• Klosko, George. The Principle of Fairness and Political Obligation. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 1992.
• Klosko, George. “Presumptive Benefit, Fairness, and Political Obligation,” in Edmundson, ed. (above): 193-212.
• Kraut, Richard. Socrates and the State. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1984.
• Lloyd, S.A. Ideals as Interests in Hobbes's Leviathan: The Power of Mind over Matter. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1992.
• Lloyd, S.A. Morality in the Philosophy of Thomas Hobbes: Cases in the Law of Nature. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2009.
• Locke, John (P. Laslett, ed.). Two Treatises of Government. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1988 (3rd ed., 1698).
• Martinich, A.P. Hobbes. New York: Routledge, 2005.
• Norton, David L. Democracy and Moral Development: A Politics of Virtue. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1991.
• Nozick, Robert. Anarchy, State, and Utopia. New York: Basic Books, 1974.
• Pennock, J. Roland and John W. Chapman, eds. Political and Legal Obligation. New York: Atherton Press, 1970/New Brunswick, NJ: Aldine Transaction, 2006.
• Philp, Mark. Godwin’s Political Justice. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1986.
• Philp, Mark. “William Godwin,” The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Summer 2006 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), URL = http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/sum2006/entries/godwin/
• Rawls, John. A Theory of Justice. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1999, revised ed.
• Rawls, John. “The Justification of Civil Disobedience,” in Edmundson, ed. (above): 49-62.
• Rawls, John (Samuel Freeman, ed.). Lectures on the History of Political Philosophy. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2007.
• Raz, Joseph. The Authority of Law. Oxford, UK: Clarendon Press, 1979.
• Raz, Joseph. The Morality of Freedom. Oxford, UK: Clarendon Press, 1986.
• Sartorius, Rolf. “Political Authority and Political Obligation,” in Edmundson, ed. (above): 143-156.
• Shapiro, Ian. “The Social Contract,” in his The Moral Foundations of Politics. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2003: 109-150.
• Simmons, A. John. Moral Principles and Political Obligations. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1979.
• Simmons, A. John. Justification and Legitimacy: Essays on Rights and Obligations. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2001.
• Springborg, Patricia, ed. The Cambridge Companion to Hobbes's Leviathan. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2007.
• Waldron, Jeremy. “Special Ties and Natural Duties,” in Edumundson, ed. (above): 271- 299.
• Wellman, Christopher Heath and A. John Simmons. Is There a Duty to Obey the Law? Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2005.
• Wasserstrom, Richard A. “The Obligation to Obey the Law,” in Edmundson, ed. (above): 17-47.
• Wolff, Robert Paul. In Defense of Anarchism. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1998 ed.
• Wolff, Robert Paul. “The Conflict between Authority and Autonomy,” in Edmundson, ed. (above): 63-74.

Political & Legal Obligation: An Introduction — Part 2

‘I am not an anarchist because I believe political states provide vitally important benefits that are not to be secured in their absence, and they supply these benefits without requiring their subjects to make unreasonable sacrifices. This defense of statism openly depends upon the truth of three claims: (1) political states supply crucial benefits, (2) these benefits would be unavailable in the absence of political states, and (3) states can render their services without imposing unreasonable costs upon those they coerce.’—Christopher Heath Wellman

‘Put plainly, for the vast majority of us, life without political order would be a horribly perilous environment.’—Christopher Heath Wellman

‘I say that the benefits of citizenship are greater than the costs because what each of us gains from everyone else’s compliance with the state’s law is much more valuable than what we lose by having to obey these laws ourselves.’—Christopher Heath Wellman

‘I want to insist that a state is justified in nonconsensually coercing me (even if I am not benefited and/or would genuinely prefer to take my chances in the state of nature) because the state’s uniform coercion over all those within its territorial borders is the only way for it to rescue any of us from the perils of the state of nature. My account of political legitimacy is nonpaternalistic, then, because it insists that my state justifiably coerce me only because this coercion is a necessary and not unreasonably burdensome means of securing crucial benefits for others.’—Christopher Heath Wellman

‘[There are] certain roles which groups necessarily have to play in coordinating behavior. First, where coordination does not emerge naturally, coordination schemes can function as coordination schemes at all only if they are embraced by the group whose behavior is to be coordinated by them. This, in turn, means that someone must intentionally have engineered the coordination scheme, and everyone must act intentionally in compliance with it. That is to say, coordination requires everyone to “track” everyone else’s behavior. [….] Second, even where there is no need to organize a coordination scheme formally, the group as a whole still has a residual supervisory function. This entails, in the first instance, a responsibility to undertake regular monitoring. It entails, in the second place, a responsibility to be prepared to organize a more formal coordination scheme should the less formal ones fail to perform satisfactorily. Thus, groups must be at least ultimately responsible for coordination. The reason is the same as the reason why I must be responsible for rescuing the drowning swimmer—no one else can, or will. Coordination is, by its nature, our collective enterprise. No other agent, individual or group, can do it for us. [….] If individuals are rightly to be excused from achieving the good through their own isolated actions, pleading “It’s not my job,” then the collectivity must be empowered and enjoined to do whatever is necessary to eliminate those barriers that block morally efficacious individual behavior. The collectivity must be empowered to make it someone’s job, if anyone is allowed to plead, “It’s not my job.” [….] Where there is some collective agency in existence…there is no problem in ascribing group responsibilities…directly to it. The state is preeminent among such organized collectivities. Our paradigm of moral agency is essentially individualistic, to be sure. The natural person is our model. Only those things that are possessed of clear values, goals and ends, and capable of deliberation upon and intentional implementation of action plans in pursuit of them—can count as agents at all, for moral purposes. It is only to them that moral injunctions can be addressed. The limits of their capacity for effective action mark the limits of our moralizing. But artificially created agencies are agents, too. Most especially, the state is a moral agent, in all the respects that morally matter. It, like the natural individual, is capable of embodying values, goals and ends; it, too, is capable (through its legislative and executive organs) of deliberative action in pursuit of them. The state is possessed of an internal decision mechanism (a constitution, and the processes that it prescribes) that mimics perfectly, for these purposes, that which is taken as the defining feature of moral agency in the natural individual. [….] [It is the state that] must be ultimately responsible, because the state is the preeminent organization among them in any given territory. Other organizations exist by leave of—and at least in one (legalistic) sense, only under a charter from—the state. [….] Where shared, collective responsibilities are concerned, it is—by definition—everyone’s business what everyone else does. And this tautology is far from an empty one. It is everyone’s business, first and most simply, because it is a responsibility that everyone shares with everyone else. It is everyone’s business, second and more importantly, because, for anyone else’s contribution to be efficacious, each agent must usually play his part under the scheme that has been collectively instituted for discharging that share responsibility. [….] The failure of any one party to abide by the coordination scheme will typically undermine, to some greater or lesser extent, the success of the scheme as a whole, thereby preventing other moral agents from successfully discharging their assigned duties. It is for this reason that we may rightly force people to do their duties to schemes for discharging collective responsibilities—even if we may not so enforce isolated, individual responsibilities.’—Robert E. Goodin

‘To the extent that the avoidance of injustice is a moral imperative, the establishment of coordinating institutions is a moral imperative.’—Jeremy Waldron

‘…[G]oods provided by cooperation can be termed “excludable” or “nonexcludable.” Excludable goods can provided to some members of a given community while being denied to specified others. [….] Nonexcludable goods, in contrast, cannot be denied to specified others. Frequently, if provided at all, they must be provided to all members of some community. Familiar examples of nonexcludable goods are the rule of law, relief from various forms of pollution and other environmental hazards, and national defense. These goods and others like them that also depend on the cooperation of large numbers of people are often referred to as public goods. The two main features of public goods are (a) that they are nonexcludable and (b) that they depend upon the cooperation of numbers of people. [….] Because of the benefits provided by [schemes providing nonexcludable goods], individuals are no longer able to decide whether or not to receive them. Accordingly, the contractarian implications of the receipt of such benefits are blurred.’—George Klosko

‘The principle of fairness is able to generate obligations to contribute to nonexcludable schemes if certain conditions are met. The main conditions are that the goods in question must large be (i) worth the recipients’ effort in providing them and (ii) “presumptively beneficial.” [….] [B]y “presumptively beneficial” goods I mean something similar to Rawls’s primary goods, “things that every man is presumed to want.” [….] Because obligations to support cooperative schemes are grounded upon a broad principle of the fair distribution of burdens and benefits, they hold only as long as the costs and benefits of the scheme in question are fairly distributed. We can say that a scheme in which this condition is met passes the “fair distribution” test and so is “fair.” Because of the complexity of the distribution of benefits and burdens in actual schemes, however, it may be difficult to say whether any given scheme passes this test. Similarly, it may be difficult to say at exactly what point the pattern of distribution in a given scheme moves from being fair to being unfair. But it is clear that at the point at which a given scheme begins to fail the test, individuals’ obligation to it are dissolved.’—George Klosko

‘It is not merely that political coercion is a possible solution to the harmful circumstances of the state of nature; it is the only viable solution because only coordination will solve the problems, and there is no way to ensure sufficient coordination without coercion. [….] The point…is that the perils that prevail in the absence of political society are distinct insofar as they create what is fundamentally a coordination problem: There is no way other than general compliance with a single authoritative set of rules to secure peace and protect basic moral rights.’—Christopher Heath Wellman

‘…[W]e all have a defeasible moral duty to follow a just law validly enacted by a legitimate regime.’—Christopher Heath Wellman

‘Socrates’ duty not to try to destroy the Laws is explained…by appeal to the moral quality of the Law or the impartial moral values that this legal obedience will bring about or advance—values such as happiness [eudaimonia] or justice. Our general duties to advance or respect such values by…upholding the institutions that embody and promote them, are what explain the wrongness of Socrates’ proposed escape on all three readings of the opening “destruction argument.” The theories that in this way ground our duty to obey the law in one (or more) of the general moral duties that we have as persons and moral equals are…[called] Natural Duty theories.’—Christopher Heath Wellman

The Natural Duty argument:
Premise 1: Government (political society, law) is necessary for human beings. Among other things, this premise assumes the hypothetical ‘state of nature’ is synonymous with coordination and assurance problems and thus without coercive law and government the human condition would be aptly characterized, in Hobbes’ words, as ‘solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.’
Premise 2: All persons have a natural moral duty to (one or more):
(a) maximize goodness in the world (e.g., eudaimonia, perfection…)
(b) perform necessary tasks to which they are well suited and support and obey those who perform necessary tasks
(c) respect and defer to those who do necessary tasks by occupying positions of authority
(d) do and promote justice
(e) assist those in peril
Conclusion 1: Therefore all persons have a natural moral duty to:
(a) leave the state of nature and join together with others to create government and law where none exist; and
(b) support and comply with stable and existing governments and law within their jurisdiction (provided they are reasonably just)
Conclusion 2: All persons have a moral duty to obey domestic law. (Christopher Heath Wellman)

Philosophical anarchism denies ‘that legitimate states are possible and actual. “There are,” as John Simmons tersely puts it, “no morally legitimate states.” The position is called philosophical anarchism to distinguish it from the more notorious political anarchism popularly associated with bombs and beards, Sacco and Vanzetti. Philosophical anarchists are not committed to bringing down the existing political order and even concede that “government may be necessary and that certain governments ought to be supported.” But their support rests on general moral reasons that deny the state any right to rule or any presumption that there is moral reason to act as its laws require.’—William A. Edmundson

‘Where what morality requires and what the law requires converge, the philosophical anarchist’s practical recommendation will coincide with that of the state.’—William A. Edmundson

Please Note: References and Further Reading will be appended to the third and final part of this series.

Political & Legal Obligation: An Introduction — Part 1

This is the first of three parts:

‘There are at least three central areas of disagreement in attempts to solve the problem [of political obligation], as a result of the various answers which have been given to three basic questions: To whom is this obligation owed? What is the obligation an obligation to do? How does one come to be under the obligation?’—A. John Simmons

‘The two most fundamental questions of political theory are: (1) Under what conditions, if any, may those in power claim to rule as a matter of moral right? This I shall call the question of political authority, and (2) Under what conditions, if any, may the citizen lie under a prima facie moral obligation to obey those who claim political authority? This I shall call the question of political obligation.’—Rolf Sartorius

‘Many people feel…that they are tied in a special way to their government, not just by “bonds of affection,” but by moral bonds’—A. John Simmons

‘Political obligation is closely linked with the obligation to obey some legitimate political authority, and insofar as that authority operates through laws, with the obligation to obey the law.’—A. John Simmons

‘Obligations are limitations on our freedom, impositions on our will, which must be discharged regardless of our inclinations.’—A. John Simmons

‘…[W]e can make sense of the idea of a legitimate political authority without positing the existence of a general duty to obey the law.’—William A. Edmundson

‘Philosophers have long understood the duty to obey the law to be a prima facie duty rather than an absolute duty…. A prima facie duty is, one might say, a candidate duty, one that will in fact be one’s duty unless a conflicting duty or other moral consideration outweighs it.’—William A. Edmundson

‘Thus there are at least three different positions which might be taken concerning the character of the obligation to obey the law or the rightness of disobedience to the law. They are (1) One has an absolute obligation to obey the law; disobedience is never justified. (2) One has an obligation to obey the law but this obligation can be overridden by conflicting obligations; disobedience can be justified, but only by the presence of outweighing circumstances. (3) One does not have a special obligation to obey the law, but it is in fact usually obligatory, on other grounds, to do so; disobedience to law often does not turn out to be unjustified.’—Richard A. Wasserstrom

‘Whatever else they do, all legal systems recognize, create, vary and enforce obligations. This is no accident: obligations are central to the social role of law and explaining them is necessary to an understanding of law’s authority and, therefore its nature. Not only are these obligations in the law, there are also obligations to the law. Historically, most philosophers agree that these include a moral obligation to obey, or what is usually called “political obligation.” Voluntarists maintained that this requires something like a voluntary subjection to law’s rule, for example, through consent. Non-voluntarists denied this, insisting that the value of a just and effective legal system is itself sufficient to validate law’s claims.’—Leslie Green

A moral obligation…
1. is a moral requirement generated by the performance of some voluntary act (or omission); furthermore, unlike duties, obligations require special performance
2. is owed by a specific person (the “obligor”) to a specific person(s) (the “obligee[s[“), whereas duties are owed by all persons to all others
3. simultaneously generates a correlative right: ‘By incurring an obligation to do A, the obligor creates for the obligee a special right to the obligor’s performance of A.’
(after A. John Simmons)

‘Obligations correlate with the moral version of what are called in legal jargon “rights in personam.”’ Duties ‘correlate with “rights in rem,” that is, rights which are held against all other people.’—A. John Simmons

We might speak of four kinds or principles of obligation: the principles of ‘fidelity’ and ‘consent’ (1 & 2), which are obligations deliberately undertaken, like promising or consenting; and the principles of ‘fair play’ and ‘gratitude’ (3 & 4) or principles of reciprocation, being understood as obligations generated by the receipt or acceptance of benefits. (after A. John Simmons)

‘The mere fact that an institution (or set of institutions) exists, and that its rules apply to me, will not bind me to that institution. If I am morally bound to obey the law or to be a good citizen, the ground of this bond will be independent of the legal and political institutions in question.’—A. John Simmons

‘…[T]he first recorded argument for political obligation, that of Socrates in Plato’s Crito, suggested at least three distinct ground for political obligations: that the State was a good State and thus owed obedience, that the State was a benefactor to be repaid, and that Socrates had tacitly consented to the State’s authority over him and so became bound.’—A. John Simmons

‘Consent theory has provided us with a more intuitively appealing account of political obligation that any other tradition in modern political theory. At least since Locke’s impassioned defense of the natural freedom of men born into nonnatural states, the doctrine of personal consent has dominated both ordinary and philosophical thinking on the subject of our political bonds. The heart of this doctrine is the claim that no man is obligated to support or comply with any political power unless he has personally consented to its authority over him; the classic formulation of the doctrine appears in Locke’s Second Treatise of Government. There is no denying the attractiveness of personal consent (and of the parallel thesis that no government is legitimate which governs without the consent of the governed).’—A. John Simmons

‘Consent theories of political obligation are the foundation from which the political works of Hobbes, Locke and Rousseau were constructed. Consent theory characteristically advances four central theses:
1. Man is naturally free. This is normally a claim about a “natural right” man is supposed to possess. In calling a right “natural,” we mean, first, that it is possessed by all men (or “all rational agents,” or “all agents capable of choice”) solely by virtue of their humanity (or “rational agency” or “power of choice”). And second, a “natural right” is not the product of some voluntary act, as other sorts of rights are. The natural right in question here is the “natural right of freedom”….
2. Man gives up his natural freedom (and is bound by obligations) only by voluntarily giving a “clear sign” that he desires to do so. "For while the individual gives up his natural freedom (to some extent) in authorizing the government to direct his actions, he allegedly both gains in the ‘new freedom’ available under the rule of law, and also, since his authorization ‘makes the government’s acts his own,’ does not really lose any freedom of action to begin with."
3. The method of consent protects the citizen from injury by the state. According to one version of the claim: "the method of consent guarantees that a government which has been consented to can never (logically) injure (in the classical sense of ‘wrong’) the citizen, provided it is acting ‘intra vires’ (within the terms of the citizen’s consent). Consent theorists also recognize limits on the sanctity of personal consent, for example, those captured in the doctrine that certain rights are "inalienable."
4. The state is an instrument for serving the interests of its citizens. The consent theorists demonstrate a preference for individual commitment over unavoidable benefits or protection of interests. [….] Thus, consent theory maximizes protection of the individual’s freedom to choose where his political allegiance will lie. Political obligations cannot be inherited or unwittingly acquired. And a deliberate undertaking, of which promising is the paradigm, is the only ground of obligation which allows this feature to be present in a theory of political obligation.’—A. John Simmons

Implied consent might be construed in at least three different ways:
1. ‘An act may be such that it leads us to conclude that the actor was in an appropriate frame of mind to, or had attitudes which would lead him to, consent if suitable conditions arose. This conclusion may be expressed by the conditional: if he had been asked to (or if an appropriate situation had otherwise arisen), he would have consented.’
2. ‘An act may be such that it “commits” the actor to consenting.’
3. ‘An act may be such that it binds the actor morally to the same performance to which he would be bound if he had in fact consented. I may do something which is not itself and act of consent, but which nonetheless binds me as if I had consented; after performing the act, it would be wrong (ceteris paribus) for me not to do those things which my actual consent would have bound me to do.’—A. John Simmons

‘The problem is that consent, whether express or tacit, must be fully voluntary in order to bind. Hume was surely correct when he remarked that it was simply not a live option for the average citizen to leave the country of his birth and native language and to abandon his friends, family, employment, and cultural ties. As an account of the putative foundation of political obligation it thus seems to me that any theory of an implied social contract must fail.’—Rolf Sartorius

‘Almost every member of every community that has existed on the face of the earth might reasonably say, “I know of no such contract as you describe; I never entered into any such engagements; I never promised to obey; it must therefore be an iniquitous imposition to call upon me to do something under pretense of a promise I never made.” The reason a man lives under any particular government is partly necessity; he cannot easily avoid living under some government, and it is often scarcely in his power to abandon the country in which he was born: it is also partly a choice of evils; no man can be said, in his case, to enjoy that freedom which is essential to the forming of a contract, unless it could be shown that he had a power of instituting, somewhere, a government adapted to his own conceptions.—Government in reality, as has abundantly appeared, is a question of force, and not of consent. It is desirable that a government should be made as agreeable as possible to the ideas and inclinations of its subjects; and that they should be consulted, as extensively as may be, respecting its construction and regulations. But, at last, the best constituted government that can be formed, particularly for a large community, will contain many provisions that, far from having obtained the consent of all its members, encounter even in their outset a strenuous, though ineffectual, opposition.—From the whole of these reasonings it appears that, in those measures which have the concurrence of my judgement, I may reasonably be expected to co-operate with willingness and zeal; but, for the rest, my only justifiable ground of obedience is that I will not disturb the repose of the community, or that I do not perceive the question to be of sufficient magnitude to authorize me in incurring the penalty.’—William Godwin

‘It has appeared that the most essential of those rights which constitute the peculiar sphere appropriate to each individual, and the right upon which every other depends as its basis, is the right to private judgement. [….] To a rational being there can be but one rule of conduct, justice, and one mode of ascertaining that rule, the exercise of his understanding. [….] The universal exercise of private judgement is a doctrine so unspeakably beautiful that the true politician will certainly feel infinite reluctance in admitting the idea of interfering with it.’—William Godwin

A. John Simmons concludes his powerfully argued and influential book, Moral Principles and Political Obligations (1979), with the claim that ‘Most citizens have neither political obligations nor “particularized” political duties, and they will continue to be free of such bonds barring changes in political structures and conventions.’ And yet, he argues, we still have a duty to support just government (as well as a duty to fight injustice). Moreover, the ‘absence of political obligations in a political community…will not entail that disobedience or revolution is justified.’

Please Note: References and Further Reading will be appended to Part 3.

Facts & Values, Truth & Objectivity

Value means goodness as an end: that which is worthwhile or desirable for its own sake.

We choose or determine that there be values, that they exist, but their character is independent of us.

To judge that something is good is to judge that it is properly valued.

Values are "intrinsic goods" that by their nature enhance a life, that make a fundamental and positive contribution to human flourishing (eudaimonia).

'Values are to be brought about, maintained, saved from destruction, prized and valued (where this last is some descriptive term of psychology plus the theory of action).’ We ought to ‘care about, accept, support, affirm, encourage, protect, guard, praise, seek, embrace, serve, be drawn toward, be attracted by, aspire toward, strive to realize, foster, express, nurture, delight in, respect, be inspired by, take joy in, resonate with, be loyal to, be dedicated to, celebrate values. With the very highest values, we are to be elevated by, enthralled by, love, adore, revere, be exalted by be awed before, find ecstasy in these highest values.’—Robert Nozick

‘We are born, as social animals, into a cultural world of value and disvalue—a world where certain things matter, as harmful, dangerous, comforting, warming and so on. If we have been brought up in the right way, we will be disposed reliably to recognize these values and disvalues and to respond as we should: as Aristotle says: “at the right times, about the right things, towards the right people, and in the right way.” And if this happens, then we will care in the right way about the things that matter: not simply caring for justice and kindness as if for some vague idea, but caring that particular people in particular circumstances are treated as they should be—with fairness, honesty and consideration, so that we get angry (justifiably angry) if this doesn’t happen. It will become “second nature” to have these responses, so that our own interests narrowly conceived, are quite naturally far from being our only consideration in deciding what to do. Being disposed reliably to be motivated by specifically other-regarding moral considerations is part of what it is to have a virtue.’—Peter Goldie

‘There are some individuals whose lives are infused by values, who pursue values with single-minded purity and intensity, who embody value to the greatest extent. These individuals glow with a special radiance. Epochal religious figures often have this quality. To be in their presence (or even to hear about them) is to be uplifted and drawn (at least temporarily) to pursue the best in oneself. There are less epochal figures as well, glowing with a special moral and value loveliness, whose presence uplifts us, whose example lures and inspires us.’—Robert Nozick

‘Most philosophers who have written on the question of what has intrinsic value have not been hedonists; like Plato and Aristotle, they have thought that something besides pleasure and pain has intrinsic value. One of the most comprehensive lists of intrinsic goods that anyone has suggested is that given by William Frankena (1908-1994). It is this: life, consciousness, and activity; health and strength; pleasures and satisfactions of all or certain kinds; happiness, beatitude, contentment, etc.; truth; knowledge and true opinions of various kinds, understanding, wisdom; beauty, harmony, proportion in objects contemplated; aesthetic experience; morally good dispositions or virtues; mutual affection, love, friendship, cooperation; just distribution of goods and evils; harmony and proportion in one’s own life; power and experiences of achievement; self-expression; freedom; peace, security; adventure and novelty; and good reputation, honor and esteem, etc. (Presumably a corresponding list of intrinsic evils could be provided.) Almost any philosopher who has ever addressed the question of what has intrinsic value will find his or her answer represented in some way by one or more items on Frankena’s list. (Frankena himself notes that he does not explicitly include in his list the communion with and love and knowledge of God that certain philosophers believe to be the highest good, since he takes them to fall under the headings of “knowledge” and “love.”) One conspicuous omission from the list, however, is the increasingly popular view that certain environmental entities or qualities have intrinsic value (although Frankena may again assert that these are implicitly represented by one or more items already on the list). Some find intrinsic value, for example, in certain “natural” environments (wilderness untouched by human hand); some find it in certain animal species; and so on.’—Michael J. Zimmerman

‘Values enter into the very definition of what a fact is; the realm of facts cannot be defined or specified without utilizing certain values. Values enter into the process of knowing a fact; without utilizing or presupposing certain values, we cannot determine which is the realm of facts, we cannot know the real from the unreal.’—Robert Nozick

Rational acceptability in the natural sciences depends ‘on such cognitive virtues as “coherence” and “functional simplicity,” show[ing] that at least some value terms stand for properties of the things they are applied to, and not just for feelings of the person who uses the terms.’—Hilary Putnam

‘[F]act, (or truth) and rationality are interdependent notions. A fact is something that it is rational to believe, or, more precisely, the notion of a fact (or a true statement) is an idealization of the notion of a statement that it is rational to believe. [….] [B]eing rational involves having criteria of relevance as well as criteria of rational acceptability, and…all of our values are involved in our criteria of relevance. The decision that a picture of the world is true (or true by our present lights, or “as true as anything is”) and answers the relevant questions (as well as we are able to answer them) rests on and reveals our total system of value commitments. A being with no values would have no facts either. The way in which criteria of relevance involves values, at least indirectly, may be seen by examining the simplest statement. Take the sentence “The cat is on the mat.” If someone actually makes this judgment in a particular context, then he employs conceptual resources—the notions “cat,” “on,” and “mat”—which are provided by a particular culture, and whose presence and ubiquity reveal something about the interests and values of that culture, and of almost every culture. We have the category “cat” because we regard the division of the world into animals and non-animals as significant, and we are further interested in what species as given animal belongs to. It is relevant that there is a cat on the mat and not just a thing. We have the category “mat” because we regard the division of inanimate things into artifacts and non-artifacts as significant, and we are further interested in the purpose and nature a particular artifact has. It is relevant that it is a mat that the cat is on and just something. We have the category “on” because we are interested in spatial relations. Notice what we have: we took the most banal statement imaginable, “the cat is on the mat,” and we found that the presuppositions which make this statement a relevant one in certain contexts include the significance of the categories animate/inanimate, purpose, and space. To a mind with no disposition to regard these as relevant categories, “the cat is on the mat” would be as irrational as “the number of hexagonal objects in this room is 76” would be, uttered in the middle of a tête-à-tête between young lovers. Not only do very general facts about our value system show themselves in our categories (artifacts, species name, term for a spatial relation) but, our more specific values (for example, sensitivity and compassion), also show up in the use we make of specific classificatory words (“considerate,” “selfish”). To repeat, our criteria of relevance rest on and reveal our whole system of values.’—Hilary Putnam

‘There are a variety of reasons why we are tempted to draw a line between “facts” and “values”—and to draw it in such a way that “values” are put outside the realm of rational argument altogether. For one thing, it is much easier to say, “that’s a value judgment,” meaning, “that’s just a matter of subjective preference,” than to do what Socrates tried to teach us: to examine who we are and what our deepest convictions are and hold those convictions up to the searching test of reflective examination.’—Hilary Putnam

‘The moral life is not intermittent or specialised, it is not a peculiar or separate area of our existence…. [W]e are always deploying and directing our energy, refining it or blunting it, purifying it or corrupting it…. “Sensitivity” is a word which may be in place here…. Happenings in consciousness so vague as to be almost non-existent can have “moral colour”… (“But are you saying that every single second has a moral tag?” Yes, roughly.)’—Iris Murdoch

Because our states of consciousness and action presuppose perceptual (or epistemic) discrimination, any such discrimination is subject to moral evaluation.

‘The moral point is that “facts” are set up as such by human (that is moral) agents. Much of our life is taken up by truth-seeking, imagining, questioning. We relate to facts through truth and truthfulness, and come to recognise and discover that there are different modes and levels of insight and understanding. In many familiar ways, various values pervade and colour what we take to be the reality of our world; wherein we constantly evaluate our own values and those of others, and judge and determine forms of consciousness and modes of being.’—Iris Murdoch

'There is a value cost to immoral behavior: The immoral life is a less valuable life than the moral one. ‘The immoral person thinks…his immoral behavior costs him nothing. But that is not true; he pays the cost of having a less valuable existence. He pays that penalty, though he doesn’t feel it or care about it.’—Robert Nozick

'Emotions...involve value judgments about important things, judgments in which, appraising an external object as salient for our own well-being, we acknowledge our neediness and incompleteness before parts of the world we do not fully control. [....] Emotions...view the world from the point of view of my own scheme of goals and objects, the things to which I attach value in a conception of what it is for me to live well.'—Martha C. Nussbaum

'[E]udaimonism is not ethical subjectivism. It is true that it exhibits great concern for the subject—the self of each person—for example, by insisting upon the importance of self-knowledge and self-development. But the self is here conceived as a task, a piece of work, namely the work of self-actualization. And self-actualization is the progressive objectivizing of subjectivity, ex-pressing it into the world. [....] For eudaimonistic individualism, it is the responsibility of persons to actualize objective value in the world.'—David L. Norton

The self-fulfilling life of each person requires more values than he or she personally realizes and is dependent upon others for these values. [...] Accordingly, the meaning of "autonomy," if the term is to be applicable, must be consistent with interdependence. ...[I]t means, not total self-sufficiency, but determining for oneslef what one's contributions to others should be and what use to make of the values provided by the self-fulfilling lives of others.'—David L. Norton

‘A person who tracks bestness, who seeks value, will have to formulate her own package of value realization; she cannot simply “maximize” on the value dimension. This package need not be an aggregate, it can pattern and unify the diverse values it realizes. In thus patterning value, the person may emulate a previous pattern exhibited by a value exemplar, or described in some tradition, or she may create a new complex unity, sculpting the value contours of her life in an original, perhaps unique way. Some significant part of the vividness of characters we read about in fiction, history, or religious texts or scriptures is their individuality in (valuable) value contouring.’—Robert Nozick

‘[T]he perfectionist aspiration to self-development…to a harmoniously hierarchically ordered being [cf. here Plato’s distinguishing and ranking of the rational, spirited and appetitive parts of the soul]…[should not] be interpreted as a denigration of what one hopes to improve on or of others not so intent. If we are to strive for a state judged higher, then something also must be ranked lower: to judge something as less than the best need not involve any elitist contempt for it.’—Robert Nozick

'One difficulty in discussions of value is that the descriptive language we have for what we value or disvalue is broad and inexact, and the terms that are readily available turn out to fit cases that differ significantly in value. Is a life marked by selfishness undesirable, or inferior to one that is less selfish but otherwise similar? Nietzsche, in a section of Thus Spake Zarathustra, ironically entitled "On the Three Evils," points out, both for selfishness and for two other examples, that generalizations fail in the face of the variety of instances. Indeed, we can see that the 'selfishness' of a creative, work-absorbed artist might be much more positive than the 'selfishness' of a petty profiteer or a family tryrant. One reason that Nietzsche's preoccupation with value is pursued in oblique utterances is that anything resembling a formula can be misapplied by someone who is insensitive to significant differences among cases. Camus makes a related point when, after presenting some models of very good kinds of lives, he observes that a recommendation of the models does not include assurance that imitations of the models are to be esteemed. Nuances matter. The difficulty with language points toward one of the ways in which context, especially the context provided by an individual life, matters in the assessment of value. [....] The importance of context to value exacerbates what is in any case a serious problem. If, as Aristotle says, every subject has its due degree of precision, and that of ethics is not great, it must be admitted that the precision generally to be expected in discussion of value is very low indeed. There are two strategies that a philosopher who believes in, and wishes to convey, a hierarchy of values can pursue in an attempt to mitigate this. One is not to rely entirely on general characterizations of the hierarchy of values, but instead to fill in meaning by presenting a concrete (and highly contextual) example of someone whose life was marked by the highest values. Thus, much of the meaning of Plato's ethics is in the portrait of Socrates that emerges, the students who compiled The Analects of Confucius pursued much the same strategy. A second strategy is to indicate one's hierarchy of values in a way that allows for elements of irony and a pervasive sense of the personal and elusive nature of what is being talked about. This is the strategy of Nietzsche and Camus.'—Joel J. Kupperman

‘[People] differ in temperament, interests, intellectual ability, aspirations, natural bent, spiritual quests, and the kind of life they wish to lead. They diverge in the values they have and have different weightings for the values they share. (They wish to live in different climates—some in mountains, plains, deserts, seashores, cities, towns.) There is no reason to think that there is one community which will serve as ideal for all people and much reason to think that there is not. [….] For each person, so far as objective criteria of goodness can tell (insofar as these exist), there is a wide range of very different kinds of life that tie as best; no other is objectively better for him than any other one in this range, and no one within the range is objectively better than any other.’—Robert Nozick

‘[Moral values] refer to things we consider worth cherishing and realizing in our lives. Since judgments of worth are based on reasons, values are things we have good reasons to cherish, which in our well-considered views deserve our allegiance and ought to form part of the good life. Universal moral values are those we have good reasons to believe to be worthy of the allegiance of all human beings, and are in that sense universally valid or binding. Moral values are meant for beings like us and intended to regulate our lives. Reasons relevant to a discussion of them are therefore of several kinds, such as our assessment of our moral capacities, what we take to be our basic tendencies and limits, the likely consequences of pursuing certain values, their compatibility, the ease with which they can be combined into a coherent way of life, and the past and present experience of societies that lived by them.’—Bhikhu Parekh

'[O]rdinary people—which means all of us—find [the] story mode of moral discourse [i.e., the form which includes parable, the play, short story, the narrative poem, the novel and the film] uniquely palatable and nutritious; it seems perfectly designed to engage our moral faculties. Our moral understanding and the story form seem fitted for one another. No rote learning is necessary: it all seems to flow quite naturally. This is the way our moral faculty likes to operate. It is almost effortless to take in a story, pleasant even, though the story may be replete with moral discourse. The novel, in particular, is a text of a very different kind from the scientific treatise. It is also very different from the philosophical text, which is what philosophers, naturally, are most comfortable with. Thus the novel form has tended to be ignored by moral philosophers: it is not, for them, the place to look for canonical expressions of ethical truth. Yet, quite obviously, it is for most educated people one of the prime vehicles of ethical expression. (Film plays a similar role for the less word-minded.) In reading a novel we have ethical experiences, sometimes quite profound ones, and we reach ethical conclusions, condemning some characters and admiring others. We live a particular set of moral challenges (sitting there in our armchair) by entering into the lives of the characters introduced. [....] Stories can sharpen and clarify moral questions, encouraging a dialectic between the reader's own experiences and the trials of the characters he or she is reading about. A tremendous amount of moral thinking and feeling is done when reading novels (0r watching plays and films, or reading poetry and short stories). In fact, it is not an exaggeration to say that for most people this is the primary way in which they acquire ethical attitudes, especially in contemporary culture. Our ethical knowledge is aesthetically mediated.'—Colin McGinn

‘The moral point is that “facts” are set up as such by human (that is moral) agents. Much of our life is taken up by truth-seeking, imagining, questioning. We relate to facts through truth and truthfulness, and come to recognise and discover that there are different modes and levels of insight and understanding. In many familiar ways, various values pervade and colour what we take to be the reality of our world; wherein we constantly evaluate our own values and those of others, and judge and determine forms of consciousness and modes of being.’—Iris Murdoch

Truth is objective; it is good to believe what is true; truth is a goal worthy of human inquiry; and truth is worth caring about for its own sake.‘Thinking about why we should care about truth tells us two things about it: first, that truth is, in part, a deeply normative property—it is a value. And second, this is a fact that any adequate theory of truth must account for. In light of this fact, I suggest that truth, like other values, should be understood as depending on, but not reducible to, lower-level properties. Yet which properties truth depends on or supervenes on may change with the type of belief in question. This opens the door to a type of pluralism: truth in ethics may be realized differently than in physics.’—Michael P. Lynch

‘Truth is a property that is good for beliefs to have. Since propositions are the content of beliefs, and it is the content of a belief and not the act of believing that is true, we can also say that truth is the property that makes a proposition good to believe.’—Michael P. Lynch

‘Objectivity calls for putting one’s idiosyncratic predilections and parochial preferences aside in forming one’s beliefs, evaluations and choices. It is a matter of proceeding in line not with one’s inclinations but with the dictates of impartial reason. The universality of reason must be recognized: What is rational for one person to do, to believe, or to value will thereby also of necessity be equally rational for all the rest of us who might find ourselves in the same circumstances. For rationality is inherently “objective:” it does not reconfigure itself to meet the idiosyncratic predilections of particular individuals. To be sure, objectivity will have to take context into account, seeing that different individuals and groups confront very different objective situations. Rationality is universal, but it is circumstantially universal—and objectivity with it. It is a matter of what “any of us” would do in one’s place. [….] The contextuality of good reasons can be reconciled with the universality of rationality itself by taking a hierarchical view of the process through which the absolutistic (and uniform) conception of ideal rationality is thought to bear context differently, on the resolution of concrete cases and particular situations.’—Nicholas Rescher

‘The content of an assertion is intrinsically related to a conceptual scheme. [….] In effect, propositions, true or false, are implicitly indexed to some conceptual scheme or schemes. [….] Facts are internal to conceptual schemes, or ways of dividing the world into objects, among which there can be equally acceptable alternatives. [….] [S]uch metaphysical pluralism is consistent with realism about truth.’—Michael P. Lynch

‘[I]n taking concepts to be flexible and fluid like, the pluralist is not saying that we are confused about our concepts. Rather, the point is that concepts are not absolutely determinate or closed; they do not have a fixed use in every possible situation. This does not imply, however, that no concepts have determinate uses in all actual situations. Some concepts may be perfectly determinate in actual situations, but not in all possible situations. [….] For the pluralist, concepts are…flexible; they are subject to possible extension in the fact of unforeseen circumstances. Hence, there can be irresolvable disagreements over how to apply any concept. In a sense, concepts are therefore always possibly vague in a nonpejorative sense; they have what Waismann called “open texture.”’—Michael P. Lynch

‘Minimally speaking, a proposition is true in the realist sense when things are as that proposition says they are. Some aspect of objective reality must simply be a certain way. If it is, then the proposition is true; if not, the proposition is false. The truth of the proposition hinges on the world alone, not on our thought about the world. In short, realism about truth minimally implies two commitments: (a) truth is an authentic property that some propositions have and others lack, and (b) the concept of truth is, in Putnam’s words, “radically non-epistemic;” that is, whether a proposition is true (in most cases) does not depend on what I or anyone else believes or knows. [….] According to correspondence accounts of truth, there are three metaphysical aspects to any true proposition: the proposition itself (the truth bearer), its correspondence (the truth relation), and the reality to which it corresponds (the truth marker). [….] In other words, propositions are true when they correspond to the facts.’—Michael P. Lynch

‘[T]here is no logical incoherence in supposing that facts and propositions are relative to conceptual schemes and that truth is the correspondence of (relative) propositions with (relative) facts.’—Michael P. Lynch

‘All truths are relative, yes, but our concept of truth needn’t be a relative concept.’—Michael P. Lynch

‘[T]he conditions under which a proposition is true are partly determined by the conceptual scheme in which the proposition is expressed. But what makes a proposition true is not its relation to a scheme but whether or not the conditions in question obtain. For a claim to be true (or false), the conditions must be relative to a scheme. Yet the reason that the claim is true is not because it is relative to a scheme (as the truth relativist must hold); it is true because it is the case.[….] A fact, in the human sense, is simply what is the case.’—Michael P. Lynch

‘[A] uniformitarian absolutism at the high-generality level of “what rationality is” is perfectly consonant with a pluralism and relativism at the lower level of concrete resolutions regarding “what is rational” within the contextual setting of particular cases. The ruling principles of rationality never uniquely constrain their more specific circumstantial implementations. At each step along the way we repeat the same basic situation: delimitation, yes; determination, no. The sought-for reconciliation between the universalistic absoluteness of rationality and the variability and relativity of its particular rulings is thus provided for by the consideration that the absolutism of principles operates at the highest level of the hierarchy of rational development, while there is ever “slack” and variability as one moves towards the lowest level of concrete determinations. The variability and relativity of good reasons at the level of our actual operations can indeed be reconciled with the absolutism of rationality itself by taking a hierarchical view of the process through which the absolutistic conception of ideal rationality is brought to bear on the resolution of concrete circumstances and particular situations.’—Nicholas Rescher

‘In characterizing a belief as objectively rational we are certainly not claiming that there is a universal consensus about it. No matter how sensible a contention on any significant issue may be, there is an ever-present prospect that some people—perhaps even many—will nevertheless quite defensibly and appropriately dissent from it. The validity of our judgments is emphatically not destroyed by finding that there are people who reject them.’—Nicholas Rescher

‘We have to come to terms with epistemic realities, which include: 1) the diversity in people’s experiences and cognitive situations; 2) the variation of “available data;" 3) the underdetermination of facts by data (all too frequently insufficient); 4) the variability of people’s cognitive values (evidential security, simplicity, etc.); and 5) the variation of cognitive methodology and the epistemic “state of the art.” Such factors—and others like them—make for an unavoidable difference in the beliefs, judgments, and evaluations even of otherwise “perfectly rational” people.’—Nicholas Rescher

‘If we are going to be rational we must take—and have no responsible choice but to take—the stance that our own standards (of truth, value, and choice) are the appropriate ones. Be it in employing or in evaluating them, we ourselves must see our own standards as authoritative because this, exactly, is what it is for them to be our own standards—their being our standards consists in our seeing them in this light. We have to see our standards in an absolutistic light—as the uniquely right appropriately valid ones—because this is what is at issue in their being our standards of authentic truth, value, or whatever. To insist that we should view them with indifference is to deny us all prospects of having any standards at all. Commitment at this level is simply unavoidable. Our cognitive or evaluative perspective would not be our perspective did we not deem it rationally superior to others.’—Nicholas Rescher

‘What people think to be true is clearly something that is person-variable and thus relative. We can take the line that “What is true?” is a question that different people can quite appropriately answer differently because of the interpersonal variability of available information. But what truth is all about is something that is…altogether definite and fixed. The evidentiation at issue in the epistemic sector is doubtless interpersonally and intercommunally variable. But variability on the side of information does not make for variation on the side of concepts.’—Nicholas Rescher

‘[W]e can (quite appropriately) disagree about what it is that is true and what good reasons are at hand, while yet maintaining an (appropriately) absolutistic view of what truth and good reasons are. The ideal nature of actual truth and of actual good reasons that inhere in our (defining) conceptions of inquiry establishes a clear limit to the implications of cognitive relativism. To re-emphasize: a pluralistic contextualism of potential basis-diversity is altogether compatible with an absolutistic commitment to our own basis. One can accept the prospect of alternatives as available to the community at large without seeing more than one of them appropriate for oneself. One can combine a pluralism of possible alternatives with an absolutistic position regarding ideal rationality and a firm and reasoned commitment to the standards intrinsic to one’s own position. We ourselves are bound to see our own (rationally adopted) standards as superior to the available alternatives—and are, presumably, rationally entitled to do so in light of the cognitive values we in actual fact endorse. The crux of the pluralism issue lies in the question of just what it is that one is being pluralistic about.’—Nicholas Rescher

‘The immense success of quantitative techniques in the mathematicizing-sciences has misled people into thinking that quantification is the only viable road to objectively cogent information. But think—is it really so? Where is it written that numbers alone yield genuine understanding—that judgment based on structural analysis or qualitative harmonization is unhelpful and uninformative, so that where numbers cannot enter, intelligibility flies away? (Modern mathematics itself is not all that quantitative, since it is deeply concerned with issues such as those of topology and group theory that deal with structures in a way that puts quantitative issues aside.) [….] To be sure, to acknowledge the limits of measurability is not to downgrade the whole process, let alone to propose its total abandonment. It is precisely because we are well advised to push the cause of measurement as far as we legitimately can that we need to be mindful of the line between meaningful measurement and meaningless quantifications. That we cannot draw this line better than seems to be the case at present is—or should be—a proper cause for justified chagrin. But for present purposes the salient point is that quantification does not carry measurability in its wake nor necessarily indicate objectivity. Polls quantify public opinion, but need they indicate anything objective? The sales price of entries in an art auction are perfectly good quantities, but they reflect no more than the elusive fashion and passion of the moment. There is nothing about quantities as such to indicate that they measure anything objective. Three lessons emerge: (1) While measurement requires quantification, quantification is not sufficient for measurement. (2) Quantification is neither necessary to nor sufficient for objectivity. (3) Actual measurement, while indeed sufficient for objectivity, is not necessary for it. The long and short of it is that the linkage between objectivity and quantification is more distant and more complex than is commonly envisioned.’—Nicholas Rescher

‘Any adequate worldview must recognize that the ongoing process of scientific inquiry is a process of conceptual innovation that always leaves various facts about the things of this world wholly outside the cognitive range of the inquirers of any particular period.’—Nicholas Rescher

‘[F]ailures of objectivity—wishful thinking, self-deception, bias-indulgence, and similar departures from the path of reason—may be convenient and even, in some degree, psychologically comforting. But they are ultimately indefensible. For if it is a viable defense of a position that we want, it is bound to be a rational one. In the final analysis, “Why be rational?” must be answered with the only rationally appropriate response: “Because rationality itself obliges us to be so.” In providing a rational justification of objectivity—and what other kind would we want?—the best we can do is to follow the essentially circular (but nonviciously circular!) line of establishing that reason herself endorses taking this course. The only validation of rationality’s recommendations that can reasonably be asked for—and the only one worth having—must lie in the consideration of the systemic self-sufficiency of reason. Reason’s self-recommendation is an important and necessary aspect of the legitimation of the rational enterprise. And in those matters where rationality counts, objectivity is the best policy by virtue of this very fact itself.’—Nicholas Rescher

‘Heeding the strictures of morality is part and parcel of a rational being’s cultivation of the good. For us rational creatures morality (the due care for the interests of rational beings) is an integral component of reason’s commitment to the enhancement of value. Reason’s commitment to the value of rationality accordingly carries in its wake a commitment to morality. The obligatoriness of morality ultimately roots in an ontological imperative to value realization with respect to self and world that is incumbent on free agents as such. On this ontological perspective, the ultimate basis of moral duty roots in the obligation we have as rational agents (toward ourselves and the world at large) to make the most and best of our opportunities for self-development. Moral obligation ultimately inheres in this ontological obligation to the realization of values in one’s own life.’—Nicholas Rescher

‘[T]he crucial question for rationality is not that of what we prefer but of what is in our best interests; not simply what we happen to desire but what is good for us in the sense of contributing to the realization of our true interests. The pursuit of what we want is rational only insofar as we have objectively sound reasons for deeming this to be want-deserving. The question of whether what we prefer is preferable, in the sense of deserving this preference, is always relevant. Ends can and (in the context of rationality) must be evaluated. It is not just beliefs that can be stupid, ill-advised, and inappropriate—that is to say, irrational—but ends as well. [….] What separates evaluations from mere preferences is that the former involves standards. In evaluating we bring criteria to bear on whose basis the ideas in question are rated as good or bad, superior or inferior, just or unjust, etc. Evaluations will, as such, have to be backed by reasons articulated in terms of the relevant norms—norms which ultimately inhere in the architecture of our generalizable needs.’—Nicholas Rescher

‘To proceed objectively is…to render oneself perspicuous to others by doing what any reasonable and normally constituted person would do in one’s place, thereby rendering one’s proceedings intelligible to anyone. When the members of a group are objective, they secure great advantages thereby: they lay the groundwork for community by paving the way for mutual understanding, communication, collaboration. And in cognitive matters they also sideline sources of error. For the essence of objectivity lies in its factoring out of one’s deliberations personal predilections, prejudices, idiosyncrasies, and the like that would stand in the way of intelligent people’s reaching the same result. Objectivity follows in reason’s wake because of its effectiveness as a means of averting both isolation and error.’—Nicholas Rescher

Global and historical meta-philosophical reflection helps us appreciate the manner in which reason is ‘embedded, articulated and manifested in culturally specific ways,’ the manner in which the ‘forms of rationality’ are ‘interculturally available even if they are not always interculturally instantiated.’ As Jonardon Ganeri notes, some paradigms of rationality, for instance the instrumentalist and epistemic conceptions, do not respect the oft-cited geo-historical division between East and West, while ‘others, for instance the Jaina notion of a rationality of reconciliation, or the modeling of reason by game-theory, are found in one but not the other [culture].’—Jonardon Ganeri

‘We learn most of what we know about what makes life worth living, and how to live it well, from non-scientific [or, if you prefer, non-legal] sources–biography, narrative history, serious journalism, and religious texts [I would add 'philosophy'], not to mention novels, poetry, drama and the visual arts. For Europeans at least, there is more insight to be got from a single volume by Jane Austen or Gustave Flaubert than a whole shelf of treatises on the social psychology of bourgeois love and marriage.’—John Ziman

‘In recognizing the compelling power of values, and of logical principles (their normative, or what is sometimes called their “magnetic quality”), we humans are plainly recognizing something that goes beyond the observed facts of the natural world. And the theistic outlook now proposes to interpret these features as signifying the presence, beyond the empirical world, of a transcendent supernatural domain that is by its very nature normative—rational and moral. The two principal categories of the normative, the rational and the good, are features which traditional theology has held to apply to God in virtue of his very nature. God is goodness itself (Aquinas), he is the Logos—ultimate rationality (St. John). In short, beyond, or behind, the observable universe—the sequence of events that is simply one contingent happening after another—there is for the theist a domain of eternal value and reason, a domain that impinges on our empirical world, making us respond to something beyond the mere sequence brute facts. We human creatures (since we are ourselves rational and moral beings, at least in part) are responsive to reason and value, and in being so responsive we participate, however dimly, in the divine nature.’—John Cottingham

‘To affirm that there c