Category: Politics

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Political Realism, Political idealism, Power and Justice: Security versus Human Rights

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Political realism basically takes two forms but both forms deny, for different reasons, that politics is fundamentally  related to ethical categorical reasoning(the basis of justice and human rights) and both forms would claim that instrumental reasoning of different kinds form the preliminary stage of action which is fundamentally to be measured by its consequences. The first form of political instrumentalism or consequentialism is encountered in Machiavelli’s thoughts. Machiavelli in his work “The Prince”  attempts to provide pragmatic guidance for rulers, advice  that is free from “lofty ideals”, and he claims that private morality and public morality are to be separated for a Prince who has the task of governing people. He recommended a kind of “situational governorship” in which , if the circumstances demanded it , one would be wholly justified in deceiving and killing the nobility of a country if they threatened the power of the ruler. This kind of recommendation has led some   commentators to call this work a handbook in the art of criminal government. It is better he argued to be feared and loved than to be merely loved, or even worse, feared and hated.  He adds that it is very difficult to be both feared and loved and that therefore the ruler should satisfy himself with being feared. This recognizably bears the marks of a realpolitik which refuses to think in terms of any kind of political or ethical idealism. Machiavelli believes that  “idealism” means  something which  common sense “associates” with the notion of an “idea” which in the mind of the realist becomes strangely detached from the action which is guided by it. It is almost as if the realist believes that rationally based actions can proceed blindly and instinctively toward some goal or consequence. It is not surprising therefore that Machiavelli believes that it is important for the ruler to have knowledge of the manipulation of instinctively based emotions as well as knowledge of  the Psychology of the people one rules. For example:

“Upon this a question arises: whether it be better to be loved than feared or feared than loved? It may be answered that one should wish to be both, but, because it is difficult to unite them in one person, is much safer to be feared than loved, when, of the two, either must be dispensed with. Because this is to be asserted in general of men, that they are ungrateful, fickle, false, cowardly, covetous, and as long as you succeed they are yours entirely; they will offer you their blood, property, life and children, as is said above, when the need is far distant; but when it approaches they turn against you. And that prince who, relying entirely on their promises, has neglected other precautions, is ruined; because friendships that are obtained by payments, and not by greatness or nobility of mind, may indeed be earned, but they are not secured, and in time of need cannot be relied upon; and men have less scruple in offending one who is beloved than one who is feared, for love is preserved by the link of obligation which, owing to the baseness of men, is broken at every opportunity for their advantage; but fear preserves you by a dread of punishment which never fails.”(Machiavelli, The Prince)

And of course it it would be foolish to question a realist about whether the above description is a realistic description of the real situation he finds himself in.For the narcissistic realist that would be a sign that he is  hated  which in turn would require appropriate action on his part, namely punishment of his critic.

Hobbes is a a Political realist but  with different more scientific assumptions  and a scientific  method: the resolutive-compositive method of Galileo which he uses to describe and explain mans political activities. He has in common with Machiavelli a simplistic Psychology which claims that  the basic parts of man from his sensory-motor organs  up to his memory, imagination, and reason  all compose endeavours which are essentially in the service of mans appetites and aversions. Every voluntary action is determined by mans appetites and aversions(Hobbes, Leviathan). This composite  consequence  then entails  a further consequence that man always seeks some power when living in communities  which is determined by the amount by which his capacities, riches ,reputation and friends exceed those of other men.  In simple societies like a state of nature, there are further consequences, the powers of men oppose each other. There is a struggle  for power which can become  violent resulting in a war of all against all because some mens desires are without limit:

“So that in the first place, I put for a generall inclination of all mankind, a perpetual and restless desire of Power after power, that ceaseth only in Death.”

Because the war of all against all cannot produce peace and commodious living Hobbes envisages a conditional justification of distributing ones own personal power to that of a sovereign who assimilates all  the power,  in return for the absolute obedience of  the citizen. The sovereign  provides the conditions necessary for a bourgeois  market driven society in which men continue to strive for power  in an environment which banishes the omnipresence of death  unless related to  the threat of the sanction of the law if their desires are uncontrolled. For Hobbes, a mans value is quantified by his capacities, riches reputation and friends.

This is in stark contrast to the idealistic Kantian concept  of man as an  end in himself irrespective of his capacities, riches, reputation and friends. For Kant man does not have a market value because,  even if we concede that this simplistic picture of man refers to the facts about man and his relation to other men and his society, values cannot logically be deduced from facts. An ought cannot be derived from an is without committing the naturalistic fallacy. This is the major reason why political idealism is  closer to the truth than political realism but in itself is not the whole truth.

The salience of the above post for  the events we are currently experiencing in Syria, the UK(the land of Hobbes) and the USA is  the following. The world is experiencing the consequences of the disconnection of value-laden ideas to action. Political  idealism maintains, for instance that the good intention behind the action, rather than the actions consequences, is “logically” related to to the action which it ontologically defines. If this it is correct, this is  certainly an Aristotelian and Kantian position and it is one of the foundation stones of humanistic liberalism. From this view of action we derive our views of justice and human rights. This view  certainly rests on psychological or anthropological conditions far more complex than we see in either of Hobbes’ or Machiavelli’s theories which are fundamentally individualistic or egocentric in Hobbes’s case and   narcissistic in Machiavelli’s case. These are the theories that allow us  adopt an attitude which allows us to sign and support executive orders affecting a significant proportion of the Muslim world, an executive order  whose major motivation is consequentialist: allowing the most powerful nation in the world to feel safe in the face of, relatively speaking, small numbers of terrorists.

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“An unjust law is no law at all”(St Augustine)

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The above  quote sprang to mind whilst viewing CNN : Zakharia Fareed’s GPS on the  29th January 2017.

A panel of participants were discussing the legal action taken by the ACLU against the temporary anti-immigration decree signed into force by President Trump earlier in the week. A legal representative for the ACLU outlined  the  complex and convincing argument which resulted in a high court judge temporarily mitigating the decrees’ more devastating consequences for some of the groups of people affected.  The point was made that the decree violated  firstly, the constitution, secondly , the right to due process under the law, thirdly, some  legislation relating to discrimination against religious groups, and fourthly, treaties  such as the Geneva convention which have been signed by America and give all refugees the right of asylum in the country. The implication being made was that the decree was an anti-Muslim measure.

Another legal expert countered the ACLU position  with the view that, given the history of judgments from the US court system,  it was highly unlikely  that the action would succeed simply because there had been a history of discriminatory legal judgments against  minority groups including the Chinese which still stand as precedents in the legal system today.  It was also claimed that  President Obama had during his presidency taken up this very  issue of the courts “second guessing” the government on national security issues. The legal expert countering the ACLU expert  claimed that he did not approve of the decree but was basically arguing that the law was the law and with respect to the issue of anti-Muslim discrimination  this would not be the court’s position in view of the fact that some Muslim countries were excluded from the decree.

The next panel participant was a lady  who had been a Middle Eastern correspondent and claimed, that under the temporary anti-immigration decree she would be prevented from entering the USA, as would Fareed if he left and decided to return. Her  argument basically was  that “an unjust law is not a law at all”. She went on to make another  point about White supremacy and made the connection to the Trump government via  the new head of national security Steve Bannon who, it was claimed,  previously edited a right wing  media outlet. She was very articulate and being an ex-debate coach I likened her performance to a speech in a debating competition. I absolutely agree with her that the  problem with the  argument she was attacking was that it was completely ignoring the humanistic element of the  whole issue.(CNN had immediately prior to GPS been showing the crowds of demonstrators at a large number of airports up and down the US). But in defence of the legal expert perhaps his assignment from CNN was merely to respond to the ACLU court action.  In good debating tradition the legal expert that she had attacked was allowed to respond  but in doing so he  completely ignored her major argument that this was a constitutional  and humanistic issue transcending the actual practice and precedent of law. She was admonished for categorising 47% of the voters as white supremacists and also for letting her passions get the better of her reason.

I would like to argue that, from a humanistic liberal point of view ,the Middle East expert had a perfectly legitimate argument which was ignored and which goes all the way back to St Augustine who argued that the actual law must meet criteria of divine or eternal law if it is to be a just law at all. If we move forward into the realm of philosophy from the realm of religion  and apply St Augustine’s quote in this new context , Kant(an enlightenment philosopher)would definitely say that any law which was not in accordance with the moral law, e.g. did not respect people’s  freedom as an end in itself, was not a bona fide law at all.  For Kant, then,  the moral law was intimately connected to freedom and freedom could only be restricted if it encroached upon the freedom of others. He is often accused of being very formal and logical in his characterisation of the moral law but he concretises his first abstract formation of the moral law with the demand that we “act in accordance with the humanity in ourselves and others by never treating anyone solely as a means but always also as an end in themselves”. Philosophers during the Enlightenment and since have also been very quick to point out that no legal law can change the moral law but the moral law has very often in history served as the corrector of unjust laws. Move beyond the enlightenment to the civil rights demonstrations in the US led by Martin Luther King and you will find a concrete example of what I am saying.  Martin Luther King referred to the moral law in his arguments and used St Augustine’s quote.

Earlier during the evening on a CNN report, a senior democrat had used the image of the statue of liberty weeping in connection with the temporary anti-immigration decree. I know the lady statue of justice is blindfolded but when the Middle East expert  was neutralised because of her “passion” it was like hearing the statue of justice   wailing and then witnessing her being gagged, at least in respect of this one very important argument. This for me illustrated the success of the Trump media campaign in “scaring” reporters away from the philosophically important humanistic issues that are involved here. This phenomenon also occurred throughout the election campaign and is continuing. Reference was made to the fact that Fox news was the preferred channel for the Trump team and I am truly sorry if this criticism of CNN drives even one viewer in that direction because, in my opinion CNN is the channel that is succumbing the least of all American channels to all attempts to neutralise the media.

I do not know what the outcome of the court action will be  considering the fact that supreme court justices are  politically appointed, but if the decree stands then we will indeed be faced with the reality of living with an unjust law in this ,the 21st century in the USA. The law and morality will be split apart and only mass demonstrations of the magnitude of the civil rights marches last century will restore the marriage. However, even if that is the case in the meantime there is still the very real issue of the confusion created  at airports because of the lack of communication concerning which groups of people were and which groups of people were not to be screened or allowed entry.

Just a footnote concerning the relation of the President to reality. At the same time as the mass demonstrations were being televised at airports in the US, the President claimed that things were going “very nicely”.  The key philosophical issue here is how to correctly describe and explain the phenomenon we are presented with. I saw no comment on the media about the Presidents statement. This inversion of the good and the bad, the truth and the false  by Trump and his team is a tactic that has wrong-footed the mass media for more than 6 months now and it is time for them to attend to their footwork and live up to the expectations that all have of the 4th estate.

 

 

 

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The Banality of Authoritarian leadership

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The title of this post attempts to echo a comment by Hannah Arendt in her book  on Eichmann’s trial in Jerusalem. In this work she claims that after examination of all  the interview material with Psychologists and other officials, and after witnessing the events of the trial, one can draw no other conclusion about the personality and character of Eichmann than that he merely was not able to think. This opinion flew in the face of the prevailing discussion which tended toward a religious categorization of what happened in terms of the evil of  Eichmann’s actions and character. The comment “the banality of evil” seemed to many Jews to trivialize what had happened in the holocaust  exactly because they believed strongly that a religious idea of the sacred served as the standard by which to measure a man and his actions. To a Philosopher who characterizes the humanity of a man in terms of his/her ability to think, however, the accusation  has exactly equivalent dramatic value. Someone who fails to think in accordance with the basic categories of morality appears less than human. Popular opinion might even think of such people  as monsters(rather than devils: but are not devils a kind of monster?).

So what is the evidence for  judging that  current political leaders might  have difficulties with the capacity of thought in general but in particular with ethical thought? In an interview on television shown on CNN on the 26th January 2017, it was  argued  by the President of the USA  that he believed that torture should be used on suspected terrorists and the reason he gave for his belief concerning the truth of his claim  is that people in his intelligence agencies have told him that torture works. This was a somewhat surprising admission given an earlier claim  that one of his own newly  chosen cabinet ministers with extensive military experience had provided him with arguments that torture is not a good idea. Other commentators have pointed out that torture  is in fact against the law of  the country  and  a change in the law would be needed  if  it  was to be a possible anti-terrorist strategy. I am not sure whether  it was part of the same argument or a separate section of the interview but the President also seemed to be arguing that there was so much hate in the world that the decision to torture  terrorists would not worsen matters noticeably. One is reminded  here of  the view of every humanist since Buddha that violence breeds more violence, that the policy of an eye for an eye would lead to a world of blind people trying to find their way to their destinations. It appears then that we have at least one current world leader who responds emotionally to  both “sound bites”  and  images of the sizes of inauguration audiences without any thought  or critical capacity. Of course it would be foolish to suggest that this leader is like Eichmann, the mass murderer in all respects or even most respects. The argument is only that there is sufficient resemblance between the banality of Eichmann’s behaviour as recorded in his pre-trial testimony and his witnessed court room behaviour  and the banality of  pre-and post inauguration behaviour of the latest President of the USA. The most obvious difference between Eichmann and Trump is, of course that Eichmann was merely a cog in the Nazi machine being directed by a larger cog higher up the chain. But for those of us who still read books, having ones life run by sound bites and television images  is represented very well by the image of cogs blindly turning other cogs.

Indeed it might be the very banality of  the behaviour and language of morally  confused people that  causes a mist of confusion to descend upon everyone in their vicinity and which allows a popular  “acceptance” of alternative moral  positions.

The danger of relativizing morality is that the next stage in that process is to believe that the law can be manipulated in the same way in which one manipulates  other people. The law becomes another cog in the machine. Not to mention the fact that we have another leader to the East who cares little for International law and who has been characterized as delusional  in relation to his behaviour in  the Ukraine. The President of the USA wishes peaceful relations with  this warmonger and  it is not difficult to see why. The apprentice may be  seeking a master in the arena of the manipulation of nations. He may be seeking to be a larger cog in a larger machine.

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The Open Society and its enemies

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“The Open Society and its enemies” is a two volume work by Karl Popper claiming that Plato, Hegel and Marx were the enemies of open societies. I am not sure that this is fair judgment of Plato’s political ideas since many of these are still used as a standard by which to measure justice in societies today. Plato was definitely not a liberal but many humanistic liberals have sought and found inspiration in his dialogues. It should also be remembered that Plato’s “Republic” is the first systematic attempt to analyse political ideas such as justice and freedom. Since I have, in earlier posts, raised the question of whether humanistic liberalism is in the process of being dismantled by current events in the UK and USA it might be useful to use some of Plato’s ideas to analyse the phenomenon of  Mr Donald Trump in terms of the idea of being an enemy of the open society. The BBC in a short critical presentation compares some of Plato’s criticism of  classical Greek direct democracy with what is currently happening in the USA. According to the BBC’s presentation of Plato, when parents are no longer respected by their children and when teachers become afraid of their students a tyrant from the oligarchs will emerge to tempt the people with promises that he will solve all their problems and deliver a better life. Now one of the reasons why our liberal democracies are representative and not direct democracies is partly to eliminate the phenomenon of the tyrant via  a system of representative democracy which functions in accordance with the classical Greek idea of areté.  Areté means excellence  when referring to action and virtuous when referring to an agent and involved in this idea is the message of the Republic which is that no one can govern in accordance with areté unless one has the appropriate knowledge. The warning bells relating to President Trumps  lack of practical wisdom and competence have been ringing all through his campaign. A stable liberal representative democracy would have heeded the significance of these bells and any  candidate should have been stopped in their  tracks by the collective tonnage of  rational argument in the media and through the collective tonnage of resultant public demonstrations. Now unfortunately the media did not  fulfill its obligations in this respect  and demonstrations only reached significant proportions the day after Trump was inaugurated.

In classical Greece during the time of the philosophers, a man of practical wisdom  could stand in the market place and his arguments be heard and understood. I do not think the media are the only party to blame  for the current chaotic situation because I am sure they will maintain  that the argument that Trump was not qualified for the position of the Presidency was presented adequately to an audience that refused to listen or understand. Plato, suggested in the Republic as a definition of Justice in the State, a principle of specialisation in which he claims that people of  the wealthy class should not interfere with the ruling class and furthermore the wealthy man should never rule  for fear of the corruption of the office through abuse of power in for example, favouring his friends and family. But the real bite of the principle of specialisation relates to areté, the excellence of the rulers political wisdom, and in this respect the medias argument is a poor one  because quite simply the sound bites we heard in the media interviews of Trump never achieved the level of practical wisdom, never were in accordance with areté, the excellence we expect from a President and his interrogators. One of the messages of the Republic was that training and thorough education was of vital importance for the rulers but since Ronald Reagan one must assume that the Republic of the USA no longer believes in that idea. Perhaps the future will see the birth of the concept of the apprentice President.

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Political Responsibility

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Paul Ricoeur, the late French Philosopher, would have been fascinated by the twistings and turnings of current events in two of the bastions of political liberalism: the UK and the USA. His ethically based political theory reaches back to the Greeks and Aristotle, the Enlightenment and Kant, and engages with contemporary theories of Justice as manifested by the debates between Rawls and Nozick, Habermas and Gadamer. Ricoeur’s  primary claim is that Politics is vitally important to the well being of us all, yet it is simultaneously surprisingly fragile. Both of these factors, he argues entails that we owe it to politics to act and vote responsibly. In particular we owe a complex allegiance to our body politic which involves both respecting the status quo which has given us so much, and respecting those that criticize the status quo for its inadequacies to deliver the flourishing lives we all hope for.  Ricoeur analyses political discourse and finds a number of dialectical processes operating. Among them is that between  the utopia we hope for and the values of the ideological factors that constitute the status quo which historically has provided us with so much stability and prosperity. We need to maintain a delicate balance between these two factors in our political acts and political talk. Politics, he argues, is a unique arena which requires the mastery of a unique set of capacities amongst which good judgment and sound reasoning are paramount. Ricoeur refers to a number of  other paradoxes which constitute the fragility of political life including the problem of transference, i.e. the problem of people from other arenas of life bringing the capacities that they use in those arenas, into politics. Two  arenas which immediately spring to mind in relation to this point are the arenas of business with its practices of wheeling and dealing and contractual “interpretations” and the arenas of science with its theoretically oriented practices, manipulation of  variables and experimental reductionism and verification. To appreciate the differences for example between the business world and the political world it suffices to compare the stability and longevity of the institutions of  business (a company or a bank) with the longevity and stability of political institutions like the legislative system or the educational system.Running a country is nothing like running a chain of hotels. Ricoeur’s criticisms of populism would point to the role of facts in the sound reasoning process. Without facts which by definition are true beliefs, reasoning cannot proceed to sound conclusions. Subjecting facts to an “interpretative process” might enable voters to vote for popular people with what they perceive to be unique interpretative and rhetorical abilities but time is going to reveal the consequences of such voting for the political system. Some commentators are arguing that we can forget about the dialectic between  a better more hopeful future and the present status quo. What is at stake is a dismantling of the political status quo in favor of an economic roller coaster ride ending at an unknown destination.

Such is the fragility of the political process and the nature of our responsibility toward it.

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The Dismantling of Humanistic liberalism?

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It must be difficult for both journalists and academics to describe  and explain what has happened in the world over the past 6 months. Two of the bastions of liberalism, the United Kingdom and the USA have both radically changed their political direction. Brexit and the election of Donald Trump were not just unexpected because  of a miscalculation of the values of a number of variables. These events were unexpected because a number of variables suddenly became irrelevant and a number of new variables seemingly appeared on our horizons. One of the variables which almost overnight  seemed to become irrelevant, and which had become part of the framework of political expectations in all developed nations since the Age of the Enlightenment, was that of Globalization. Whether it be the global exchange of ideas or of goods and services no expert  or group of experts could have foreseen that these processes would be displaced by populist slogans such as “Make America Great again ” or “Let us take control of our country again” which in their turn led people to  vote for the least likely of a pair of alternatives. The analysis of the reasons for our modern predicament by journalists and the more popularly inclined academics who appear constantly in our media  refer to  an interesting number of factors which possibly could help to describe exactly what has happened, but no systematic attempt has yet been made to explain the phenomena which have recently presented themselves. The ground swell of attitudes and opinions that were leading us toward Globalization, or what Kant referred to as Cosmopolitanism, suddenly were affected by the two seismic events referred to above  and the whole Project of the Enlightenment, namely the moral progress of the world appears to have been stopped in its course. The two world wars and the cold war of the last “terrible century”(Hannah Arendt) failed to permanently alter the agenda of the Enlightenment. Since then we have had over 70 years of Kantian progress which included the formation of the United Nations and the European Union. Humanistic liberalism seemed to have triumphed and the hundred thousand year journey which Kant predicted appeared to be much closer to fulfillment than expected. I do not believe that the phenomena of Brexit and Trump defy analysis  but I do believe that we do not as yet have an analysis of why what happened, happened. The academic and political project of humanistic liberalism has suffered a setback. Some have claimed that  this project is in the process of being dismantled. If this is the case one can well wonder whether this century is merely going to be a continuation in spirit of the previous century.

Michael James