Liberal morality needs liberal mythology
Once upon a time I studied political philosophy with someone who was persuaded that politics had not changed in any fundamental way since Plato wrote the Republic. He took the conviction very far. The industrial revolution, the Holocaust, the rise of nuclear weapons: None of it had anything particular to teach us that Plato hadn’t already thought through. Today I disagree with that outlook. But in reading The Open Society and Its Complexities, I was reminded of my old professor, and at times I thought: Gaus errs in the opposite direction, and in specific ways that matter. Which is to say that there are major themes in Plato — important themes that have shaped the history of political thought and our understanding of the promises and pitfalls of modern liberalism and open societies — that Gaus almost completely ignores. Here, I focus on what Plato famously called the “ancient quarrel between poetry and philosophy” (Republic, 607b5–6).
That subject probably sounds a bit obscure and academic, but at bottom the concern is about the relationship between intellectual life and political leadership. When Plato famously has Socrates censor the poets, and then works throughout the rest of the Republic to design a perfectly just city ruled by philosopher kings, he makes a conscious decision to focus his attention on the needs of the theoretically-minded (over the more traditional and parochial). Gaus does this, too, but he seems less self-conscious about it than Plato.
Plato censors the poets, but that’s because he recognizes poetry and civic myth-making as so important. He makes it clear that the just city will require particular kinds of storytelling, and he raises the possibility of allowing some of the poets back into the city.
Plato censors the poets, but that’s because he recognizes poetry and civic myth-making as so important. He makes it clear that the just city will require particular kinds of storytelling, and he raises the possibility of allowing some of the poets back into the city at the end of the Republic. He also indulges in a good amount of poetizing and image-making himself throughout the dialogues.
Gaus, at least in this book, sets the whole business of poetic education and civic myth-making to the side, and pursues a highly analytic/rationalistic approach. And so, while he is clearly highly invested in the question of political justification and how to defend the modern liberal order, I am left with big questions at the end of Gaus’ book. The main one is this (and it’s an old one): What kind of social and cultural infrastructure do modern, open and liberal, societies need?
The Open Society and Its Complexities is in many ways a wonderful and important book. It makes a powerful, extended case for the basic fact of human diversity. Gaus grapples in a serious way with the historical complexity of moral phenomena — with, for example, how culture and nature are mutually enmeshed historically, with the multifaceted give-and-take character of historical moral transformation, and with the ultimate plasticity of human culture and human life. There is so much here that is rich and important. Gaus’ book provides an especially valuable antidote to the kind of simple-minded and proudly ahistorical thinking that is prized so highly on the right today, from the Claremont Institute crowd to the National Conservatives. This culminates, as Kevin Vallier notes in his response for this symposium, in a very clear-sighted assessment of the real challenges that open societies present to their enemies. As Kevin puts it:
Where are they [open societies’ enemies] to begin to shut things down? Which process are they to crush first? They may smash one source of diversity, yes. But they may soon find themselves overwhelmed by another source of disagreement. The truth is that the enemies of the open society do not know how to close it because they do not understand it.
This strikes me as exactly right, and, this being my first real encounter with Gaus, I was delighted to see the point made so persuasively.
My own questions, then, are not about the value of Gaus’ book, but about some things that are missing or underestimated in Gaus’ outlook, especially as concerns the public justification of liberalism. Again, the problem of public justification is one of Gaus’ primary preoccupations in the book. The whole second part is about “self-organization and public justification of the complex Open Society.” The problem, as I see it, is that, while Gaus has a deep and genuine appreciation for the complexity of our cultural and natural inheritances, he underestimates the extent to which culture, including aspects of culture that constitute open societies, is the result of intentional human action and creative artifice.
It is one thing to justify a political regime in the abstract — to show how it fits together theoretically, in a manner consistent with what we know about the limits of the human condition — but it is quite a different thing to then get political buy-in in the real world.
Gaus clearly understands the problem of ethical and moral justification in the abstract, philosophical sense. He doesn’t just believe in the value of what he calls the Open Society, he also wants to be sure that that form of political organization holds together: that it makes sense in a way that can be conveyed to the public. He gives a thorough account of why this matters in the second part of the book. But Gaus has very little to say about how different ethical/moral/political systems have, in actual practice, been justified in and to the world historically. It is one thing to justify a political regime in the abstract — to show how it fits together theoretically, in a manner consistent with what we know about the limits of the human condition — but it is quite a different thing to then get political buy-in in the real world. In other words, it’s one thing to be Socrates, and another to be Aeschylus or Aristophanes; it’s one thing to be John Locke, and another to be Thomas Paine. Gaus obviously takes the part of the impartial theorist, as opposed to the poet-activist, but in so doing he side-steps a genuinely important part of the overall picture.
I can’t tell how intentional Gaus’ neglect of persuasion, poetics, and rhetoric is. I suspect it is not intentional, but rather reflects his own temperament and interests, as well as his debt to Hayek and others in the tradition that he is working within. It’s also clearly a reflection of tensions inherent to liberalism.
To help illustrate what I mean, let me refer to one of the aspects of Gaus’ work that I am best equipped to assess, which has to do with his treatment of Rousseau.
I know Rousseau’s works well, and Gaus is a very good reader of Rousseau. It was refreshing to see him reference Rousseau’s Second Discourse so thoughtfully throughout the book. The Second Discourse is one of Rousseau’s most philosophically abstract and sophisticated works, and it offers a radical account of human development that does justice to the dynamic and emergent character of human existence. Gaus understands this and references the subtleties of Rousseau’s account appropriately, using him primarily to show how other accounts of human nature, including Hayek’s, are insufficiently attentive to our communal and highly social evolved qualities. He also agrees with Rousseau that other social contract theorists like Hobbes and Locke didn’t reach back far enough into the human past. That meant that they failed to see the extent to which more sociable possibilities are part of our evolved natures.
Gaus agrees with Rousseau that other social contract theorists like Hobbes and Locke didn’t reach back far enough into the human past. That meant that they failed to see the extent to which more sociable possibilities are part of our evolved natures.
But what Gaus doesn’t mention, or fails to see, is the extent to which Rousseau also shaped the Second Discourse to be rhetorically effective. I can’t do this dimension of the Second Discourse justice here, but suffice it to say that even though the Second Discourse was one of Rousseau’s most philosophically sophisticated works, he didn’t posit his ideas in the style of a straightforward analytic treatise. Much of the work is written in terms of narratives, hypotheticals, and thought experiments, and it includes a clear two-part narrative structure that tells a dramatic story of mankind’s fall from an idealized past via the corrosive process of civilization (it also tells a parallel story of human individualization and improvement). Rousseau wasn’t just trying to convey his own understanding to the reader as clearly as possible; he was also trying to shape his readers’ views in particular ways.
And Rousseau’s two discourses were really just the beginning. Subsequent works, like The Social Contract, would be even more rhetorically striking, and/or far more literary. Rousseau wrote some of the most popular novels of his era, and went on to write three distinct autobiographical works. Besides those famous passages from The Social Contract ('Man is born free, and he is everywhere in chains'), the most politically ambitious passage in all of Rousseau’s writings, in my view, was The Profession of Faith of the Savoyard Vicar — a theologically-oriented set piece that Rousseau smuggled into the educational novel Emile. Here, Rousseau lays the basis for a liberalized Christianity of the future.
And so, whereas Gaus is invested in demonstrating the ways in which open societies are intellectually justifiable based on a sound understanding of anthropological questions and solid reasoning about politics, Rousseau was also invested in generating a more tolerant and, in some respects, more liberal and egalitarian world. Rousseau clearly thought that intellectualized forms of justification needed to be attended by rich cultural and sociological ones, which he grounded in more emotional kinds of written appeals. Rousseau saw himself as something like a civic “Legislator,” and he fought his political/poetical battles on a wide variety of rhetorical fronts. It is of course totally understandable that Gaus does not take on a similar role himself! But I am left wondering how and whether he thinks that open societies should be actively promoted and generated at all — and especially by academics, intellectuals, and other members of the so-called “creative classes.”
Another way into this problem is to consider a quote that Gaus regularly uses from Hayek: “The brain is an organ enabling us to absorb but not to design culture” (see 9, and 66). This notion, with its emphasis on learning and passive absorption over teaching and pedagogy, may be a useful antidote to accounts of the human that emphasize narrow rationality and instrumentality (that is primarily how Gaus uses it: “The fundamental point is that because we are cultural creatures, humans are, first and foremost, learners: to successfully acquire the tremendous store of information within our culture, we must decide who we are to copy”), and it may well be true as a general matter of the human brain and the human being. But the idea of the human brain as primarily a passive, absorptive organ strikes me as inadequate as concerns political life. It fails to take into account those who are not passive, but active; it fails to account for people who are good leaders and who spend time thinking about “cultural design.” Gaus recognizes the import of cultural activities and the extent to which learning takes place via imitation and the imitative arts, but he doesn’t have much to say about the people and activities that are or aren’t worthy of imitation. He places a good deal of emphasis on (and perhaps too much trust in) spontaneous order, and understates the extent to which design and intentionality have shaped political history.
Here’s how Gaus articulates his object early on in the book:
I shall inquire how we can live without oppression and subjugation in a complex and deeply divided world. If this question can be answered, we have all the justification that we can obtain — and need. (15)
I agree with Gaus that finding answers to theoretical questions about social and political forms is extremely important, and Gaus’ contribution on that front is genuine. But theoretical answers don’t translate spontaneously into resolutions to political problems. For that you need leadership, activism, persuasion, effort, and energy. And sometimes even coercion. Having sound answers is essential, and it is difficult, but it isn’t enough.
Liberals and left academics are often very thoughtful about the dangers of power and its misuse. But they often shy away from its potentially constructive dimensions (and for good reason, insofar as their primary concern is to create a world that minimizes political coercion and manipulation in all its forms). That may help to explain the liberal aversion to anything that smacks of rhetorical excess; if you accept certain accounts of liberal moral epistemology, any effort to do anything but convey truth plainly and directly might as well be rank propaganda. The liberal mind does not like to acknowledge the extent to which human beings yearn for (and maybe even need?) “thick” belonging and heavy-handed cultural guidance; it does not like to think about how limited the general capacity for genuine autonomous action might be. Gaus tries to thread this needle by playing up human social capacities for imitation and absorption, and underplaying the need for common standards, norms, and guidance. I think there’s something inconsistent here — a refusal to contend honestly with the need for public norms and guidance, even if in a more liberal or open system such norms and public guidance are going to look very different than they do in closed societies.
The liberal mind does not like to acknowledge the extent to which human beings yearn for (and maybe even need?) “thick” belonging and heavy-handed cultural guidance … I would like to see a little less laissez-faire in the open society’s defense, and a little more by way of full-throated leadership.
To be clear, I do not think liberals are wrong to be skittish about coercion and domination, but it does seem to me that, paradoxically, these aversions sometimes lead liberals to be unreflective about the various kinds of power and authority that are exerted in the world — their respective merits, the challenges they pose, and characteristic risks.
Now, it is possible that Gaus is right that what matters first and foremost is the intellectual justification of the open society, and the rest will follow through the chancy unfolding of time. But for all the attention he gives the problem, Gaus is still too blasé about what it takes to create and sustain genuinely pluralistic and open societies. I worry, more specifically, that Gaus is too blasé about some of the vulnerabilities that enemies of the open society see especially well. No one on the “New Right” is confused about liberalism’s failure to generate affirmative myths, shared beliefs and traditions, common languages and laws, and unifying values. They relentlessly exploit this thirst and this weakness in liberalism, even if that means celebrating bunk psychology, tired myths, and hateful conspiracies.
Liberals like to think that modern society will thrive absent anything like a civil religion — that we can mostly do without unifying traditions; that political myth-making and Plato’s “noble lies” can be relegated to the ancient past. I am eager, in what I take to be the spirit of Gaus’ work, to state that in a broadly liberal society our myths and shared stories will not be monolithic or universal or static (and thank goodness for that). But in light of the political challenges that are with us today, and that are lurking on the immediate horizon, I don’t think that we can do without more proactive and creative modes of engagement.
In the very least, we need to be able to recognize and articulate this part of our collective predicament.
Gaus’ own unstated preference seems to be for a kind of civic free-formism and free-for-all. Whether it’s because I have more faith in modernity’s goodness, or less faith in its stability, or because of simple differences in outlook and temperament, I would like to see a little less laissez-faire in the open society’s defense, and a little more by way of full-throated leadership.
If we act like it’s somehow illiberal to defend liberalism, or are collectively ashamed to poetize and prophesize a bit on the open society’s behalf, then I worry that the battle is half lost.
Plato expelled the poets from his ideal city; modern liberals would do well warmly to welcome them back in.
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