As the
graphic might suggest, the focus of the second edition of our collaborative
efforts is Chris Matthew Sciabarra’s view of the role of culture in the
relations of power in modern societies. However, before Chris presents his view
on that topic, it is appropriate to review comments on the first edition that
have been left on our respective Facebook pages: Chris Matthew Sciabarra and Winton Bates.
Comments
on the first edition
We are
pleased that our efforts have attracted interest and perceptive comments from
people who have visited our Facebook pages. The comments fall into three broad
categories: differing views of thick libertarianism; whether it is possible to
influence culture directly; and the distinction between the question of whether
libertarianism (as a political philosophy) should be attempting to change
culture and the question of whether libertarians (as individuals) should be
attempting to influence culture.
Thick
libertarianism
Roderick
Tracy Long: I'm recalling an
exchange I had with Walter Block over "thick libertarianism," the
idea that libertarians should think of the struggle for liberty as bound up
with the promotion of other values not strictly entailed by libertarian
principles but entangled with them either causally or conceptually (locus
classicus is Charles Johnson's piece). Walter said that thick libertarianism
was dangerous because the attention to other values might distract or tempt
libertarians away from libertarian consistency. I said: "So you think
opposition to thick libertarianism is itself an additional value, not strictly
entailed by libertarian principle, that libertarians qua libertarians
nevertheless ought to embrace because of its causal connection with the
libertarian goal?" He said yes! I thought I'd trapped him in a reductio,
but for him my reductio was merely a modus ponens.
Jim
Peron: I don't see how one
can achieve a libertarian society without the wider range of values that
underpin it. One indication is how utterly unlibertarian evangelicals are
compared to others. I should say that it's been years since I read it but the
Edward Banifeld books "The Heavenly City" and "The Heavenly City
Revisited” were influential in this regard, as were my basic psychology classes
in university. Also of influence was "Under Development is a State of
Mind" by Lawrence Harrison. [This is the first paragraph of Jim’s comment.
Please see Chris’s Facebook page for the remainder.]
Possibility of
influencing culture
Boris
Karpa: There are, of course,
two issues:
1. It's very
difficult to come up with a strategy to deliberately influence a culture (and
to what extent some progressives have succeeded it was because they already had
large institutional inertia).
2. It's not
entirely clear how this is going to work even on the basic level. Either of us
can name any number of libertarian or semi-libertarian writers, for example,
who are reasonably talented, or at least as talented as any published
mass-market writer. But writing is an 'industry' with a low barrier of entry.
Of these many libertarian and semi-libertarian writers, how many of these
writers have had a movie or a show made out of their works? Or a PC game? How
are these writers treated by literary awards, etc.?
It's not that I'm
suggesting that it's impossible to influence culture, it's that I'm suggesting
that I'm not sure how it is possible to influence it in a *deliberate manner*
beyond just 'create art that reflects your values and hope for the best'.
Political
philosophy versus individual action
Douglas
B. Rasmussen: Is there not a
difference between saying libertarianism qua political philosophy should
attempt to change culture and saying that a libertarian concerned in advancing
libertarianism should attempt to change culture? The former concerns what the
political/legal order should do, and the latter concerns what individuals
should do.
Ed
Younkins: The legitimation
or justification of a minimal state that protects and defends freedom does not
depend upon the existence of a particular type of moral-cultural order. Such a
political order is objectively based on the nature of human beings who need a protected
moral sphere for the possibility of self-direction.
Although a
political order of metanorms is not necessarily coincidental with, nor
dependent upon, a particular moral-cultural system, the establishment and
support of such a political order would be easier to bring about if there were
widely shared beliefs and articulations with respect to its underpinning
political principles as well with certain moral principles. It follows that we
should work as individuals, and in concert with others, to build a
freedom-friendly culture of moral and virtuous people who strive to create a
good life, to flourish, and to be happy.
Replies by Bates
and Sciabarra
Please see our
Facebook pages for our immediate responses to those comments and to additional
exchanges. Our views on power relations in the cultural context of individual
flourishing are presented below.
Winton
Bates’s view of culture
My book, Freedom, Progress, and Human Flourishing, contains a brief discussion of cultural
change in Chapter Nine, “The Evolving Context of Human Flourishing” (pp
184-190). As the chapter title suggests, my focus was primarily on the nature of
changes that individuals have to contend with rather than on what individuals might
do, in concert with others, to influence the cultural context. Nevertheless, readers
would have no difficulty in discerning that I strongly support what Steven
Pinker has described as Enlightenment humanism:
“Emancipative values can also be
viewed as an outcome of Enlightenment humanism, a term used by Steven Pinker,
to encompass the ideas of thinkers like Hobbes, Spinoza, Descartes, Locke,
Hume, Astell, Kant, Beccaria, Smith, Wollstonecraft, Madison, Jefferson,
Hamilton and Mill. As I see it, a stronger case can be made for the emergence
of a general consensus supporting Enlightenment humanism among leaders of
political opinion, than for the existence of a coherent philosophy shared by a
group of intellectuals. While the classical liberals would probably have seen
little merit in the political views of rationalistic thinkers, and vice versa,
many conservative and progressive political leaders have seen varying degrees
of merit in different viewpoints and have sought to reconcile and assimilate
them in developing their own views.
“Over time,
it seems that Enlightenment humanist values have approached the status of a
coherent world view, which is broadly supported by public opinion in the
democracies, despite large differences between conservative and progressives on
some important issues. The process seems
to be one in which disparate political philosophies, often going back
centuries, act as tributaries to the broad streams of thought that flow into
the rivers of public opinion. Enlightenment humanism is one of those broad
streams of thought. The color of the water in the streams and the rivers
changes over time, depending on relative contributions from the different
tributaries.
“Such a
picture is complicated by the existence of postmodernism, as a competing stream
of thought, which has origins traceable to some of those Enlightenment
thinkers. Whilst Enlightenment humanism has a preoccupation with reason and
reality, postmodernism has a preoccupation with the use of power.
Postmodernism’s disrespect for truth is often associated with the narratives
presented by radical progressives but it is also present in the narratives of
unprincipled populists of a more conservative disposition. Fortunately,
persuasive rhetoric that influences the views of some people in ways contrary
to reason and reality tends to provoke widespread opposition.” (p 186)
In
retrospect, my view that Enlightenment humanist values are broadly supported by
public opinion may have been too optimistic. I should also make clear that the
problem I have with power relations has to do with preoccupation with the use
of power, rather than with attempts to understand power relations in society.
Chris has
made an important contribution to the understanding of power relations.
Chris
Matthew Sciabarra’s view of culture
I greatly
appreciate the comments that Winton and I received from our first installment
in this series of discussions. In this section, I’ll discuss the Tri-level
Model of Power Relations, which was first derived from my reconstruction of Ayn
Rand’s critical analyses of social problems, outlined in Part Three of Ayn Rand: The Russian Radical. The model focuses our attention on
the various reciprocally related levels of generality through which social
relations of power are manifested. It is a model that I have adopted in my own analysis
of various social problems and the systemic and historical contexts within
which they are embedded.
Winton
suggests that Enlightenment
humanism has been preoccupied with reason and reality, while postmodernism has been
preoccupied with the use of power. Hence, it is startling that Rand, who most
certainly placed herself in the reason and reality camp, also emerged with a
critique of power relations. Rand criticized modernism for its crippling dualities.
She rejected the modernist dichotomies of mind and body, reason and emotion,
fact and value, the moral and the practical, and so forth. Ironically, she developed
a multidimensional critique of social relations of power that echoes many of
the themes found in postmodernism.
The full
case for this can’t possibly be presented in this installment, so I’ll do my
best to summarize the implications of the Tri-Level Model illustrated above.
This summary comes not from Russian Radical but from Chapter Nine of Total Freedom: Toward a Dialectical
Libertarianism,
“The Dialectical Libertarian Turn” (pp. 379-383).
The model
provides different levels of generality by which to interpret social relations.
The personal, the cultural, and the structural can only be abstracted and
isolated for the purposes of analysis, but never reified as wholes unto
themselves. They are preconditions and effects of one another.
On Level 1
(LI), the personal level of analysis, social relations are examined from the
vantage point of personal ethical practices and implicit or tacit methods of
awareness (what Rand called “psycho-epistemological” practices). On Level 2
(L2), the cultural level of analysis, social relations are examined from the
vantage point of language, education, ideology, and art. On Level 3 (L3), the
structural level of analysis, social relations are examined from the vantage point
of political and economic structures, processes, and institutions.
We can trace
the implications of this model by grouping the levels into three distinct
forms, in which the level placed at the center provides a specific analytical
and strategic focus. Because these levels are abstractions from the whole, each
reveals key dynamics even as it obscures others.
L1-L2-L3:
Focusing on The Cultural
From this
point of view, the cultural level is brought to the foreground of our analysis.
This perspective allows us to investigate and evaluate the various cultural
traditions, institutions, and practices that help to sustain the existing
social system.
How does
culture perpetuate existing social conditions? This is achieved through linguistic,
educational, and ideological means, among others. Distortions in language—through
the use of anti-concepts, for example—will tend to undermine rational
discourse, while serving the needs of the powerful. Certain educational
institutions and pedagogical practices will tend to undermine autonomy, perpetuate
conformity, inculcate obedience to authority, and subvert the development of critical
thinking. Stultifying, rigid, intolerant, racist, sexist, or tribalist ideologies
or belief systems (including dogmatic religious beliefs) will tend to foster exclusionary
“thinking within a square.” Such cultural practices can undermine those humanist,
cosmopolitan characteristics consistent with the development of human freedom
and personal flourishing.
But a sole focus
on dominant cultural traditions and practices tends to lessen our regard for
people’s abilities to alter their ethical or psycho-epistemological habits
(LI). Additionally, this focus minimizes the importance of the political and
economic structures (L3) that both perpetuate and require a certain constellation
of cultural practices.
Cultural
contextualism—that is, paying attention to the importance of cultural context
in the struggle for social change—is important. Indeed, as Hegel once declared: "No one
can escape from the substance of his time any more than he can jump out of his
skin” (Introduction to the Lectures on the History of Philosophy, 112).
That said, cultural contextualism is not cultural determinism. Though we
are situated in a particular context of time and place, we are also creative, efficacious
social beings capable of shifting that context over time.
L2-L1-L3:
Focusing on the Personal
From this
point of view, the personal level is brought to the foreground. This analytical
focus emphasizes the importance of personal ethical and psycho-epistemological
practices, which tend to perpetuate the dominant cultural and structural
institutions.
Remember
that even though this level is called personal, it is still a means of
viewing social relations through a particular prism. Rand’s inspiring
maxim—"Anyone who fights for the future,
lives in it today”—carries
enormous weight here, as each person adapts certain virtues in pursuit of certain
values, given their own unique and dynamic social context. Even if our struggle
for autonomy and authenticity takes place within authoritarian social systems
that are “airtight,” there is still a need for self-engagement
and self-fulfillment. Living authentically requires introspection, the ability
to articulate our thoughts, to accept our emotions, to experience psychological
visibility and various degrees of intimacy in our engagement with others, to comprehend
the nature of our actions, and to take personal responsibility for the social consequences
generated by those actions.
But an
exclusive focus on the personal level tends to diminish the importance of
cultural and structural factors, which provide the context for, and have a
powerful effect on, people’s abilities to achieve autonomy and authenticity. Certain
cultural attitudes and tacit practices are so deeply embedded in our lives that
it is extremely difficult—if not practically impossible—to call these into
question. Likewise, any given set of political and economic realities will tend
to constrain our ability to act autonomously. Folks who repeat the mantra, “free your mind and the rest will follow” (with apologies to En Vogue), fall victim to Level 1 thinking, divorced
from Levels 2 and 3.
L1-L3-L2:
Focusing on the Structural
From this
point of view, the personal (LI) and cultural (L2) levels of analysis recede to
the background, and the political and economic structures, institutions, and
processes become the primary focus. This perspective makes transparent the
dominant political and economic practices—the regulations, prohibitions, or
guns—that constrain us. But exclusive attention to oppressive structural policies
and practices tends to reduce the importance of, and need for, people to alter
their ethical or psycho-epistemological habits. It also tends to obscure the
importance of culture, which has a powerful effect on the kinds of politics and
economics that are practiced.
Those who
believe that it is possible to enact a nonaggression principle by edict are reifying
a Level 3 analysis. An attack centered solely on the state in the absence of a
supporting edifice of personal and cultural practices is doomed to fail. It
will likely replace one form of tyranny with another.
With the
aid of this Tri Level Model, our shifting points of view help to reveal the
depth and breadth of the problems we face. By filtering virtually every social
problem through the same multidimensional analysis and tracing the
interconnections among social problems, we will be led to reject one-sided
resolutions as partial and incomplete.
A couple of
additional points must be kept in mind, however. All systems are mixed to some
degree and no set of power relations is monolithic. Even within totalitarian
systems, pockets of resistance and parallel institutions exist. Hence, each
level of our analysis focuses attention on dominant tendencies within
any given social system. Moreover, no social system is hermetically sealed from
the rest of the world. The Tri Level model is one that must be adapted to
different systemic and historical contexts. And it requires sensitivity to differences within
cultures and among cultures—especially when we are faced with such an
abundance of illiberal tendencies in our own society and across the globe.
I should
add too that there is no “One Size Fits All” strategic approach to social
change. Considering the unique conditions of any given context, it takes effort
to investigate and examine the kinds of cultural formations that may nourish—or impede—both personal
flourishing and an emancipative politics.
**
The authors welcome comments on the relevance of the Tri
Level model in considering current illiberal tendencies in the cultures of the
liberal democracies. We have in mind that the next instalment of this exchange
will focus on that topic.
