When Reason Goes on Holiday

Philosophers in Politics

Neven Sesardic

• Publisher: Encounter Books
• Year: 2016
• ISBN:
  9781594038808
• Topic: Philosophy
• Subtopic: Philosopher Biographies

Philosophers usually emphasize the importance of logic, clarity and reason. Therefore when they address political issues they will usually inject a dose of rationality in these discussions, right?Wrong. This book gives a lot of examples showing the unexpected level of political irrationality among leading contemporary philosophers. The body of the book presents a detailed analysis of extreme leftist views of a number of famous philosophers and their occasional descent into apology for—and occasionally even active participation in—totalitarian politics. Most of these episodes are either virtually unknown (even inside the philosophical community) or have received very little attention.The author tries to explain how it was possible that so many luminaries of twentieth-century philosophy, who invoked reason and exhibited rigor and careful thinking in their professional work, succumbed to irrationality and ended up supporting some of the most murderous political regimes and ideologies. The huge leftist bias in contemporary philosophy and its persistence over the years is certainly a factor but it is far from being the whole story.Interestingly, the indisputably high intelligence of these philosophers did not actually protect them from descending into political insanity. It is argued that, on the contrary, both their brilliance and the high esteem they enjoyed in the profession only made them more self-confident and less cautious, thereby eventually making them blind to their betrayal of reason and the monstrosity of the causes they defended.

CHAPTER ONE

The Wisdom That Failed

“Many would be wise if they did not think themselves wise.”

—BALTASAR GRACIÁN

Should philosophers be kings, as Plato suggested? Or, to paraphrase William F. Buckley, wouldn’t it be better to be ruled by the first 2,000 people listed in the telephone directory than by the most illustrious of Socrates’ intellectual descendants?

The evidence presented in this book shows that, despite their declared love of wisdom, surprisingly many leading philosophers have shown embarrassingly poor judgment in their excursions into politics. The disastrous way some of the most influential contemporary philosophers have engaged in politics should make us think twice before following their advice. This also raises a question: How could people who are obviously very clever and sophisticated in a field that is intellectually demanding be so foolhardy in practical affairs?

Indeed, twentieth-century philosophers have a bad track record in choosing sides in some momentous political debates. Many contemporary philosophers have disgraced themselves by defending totalitarian political systems and advocating political ideas they should have easily recognized as distasteful and inhumane. To give just three well-known examples, Jean-Paul Sartre championed Stalinism and later Maoism, Martin Heidegger actively supported and celebrated Nazism, and Michel Foucault publicly expressed enthusiasm for Khomeini’s Iranian Islamic revolution.

How could the very people committed to gaining the deepest knowledge about the world and human existence get things so wrong? Could this have something to do with the fact that the three philosophers just named (plus many others with similar unfortunate involvements in politics) belong to the so-called continental tradition in philosophy?

The terms continental and analytic describe two different schools in philosophy that have been in conflict roughly since the beginning of the twentieth century. The distinction between them is notoriously hard to draw in clear and explicit terms, but philosophers usually have no problem assigning most of their colleagues into one of these two traditions. A provisional self-characterization of the analytic style of doing philosophy is the claim that the analytic approach “involves argument, distinctions, and . . . moderately plain speech” (Williams 2006, viii). In one of the best historical accounts of the rise and development of analytic philosophy, this approach is described as being committed “to the ideals of clarity, rigor, and argumentation” and to the goal of “pushing rational means of investigation as far as possible” (Soames 2003, xiii–iv). Basically, then, the trademarks of analytic philosophy would be clarity of thought, precision, and logical coherence, as well as the honest and persistent effort to avoid obscurantism, pretentious writing style and false profundity.

This opens the path for the argument that analytic philosophers are better protected from committing political blunders because of their training in clear and logical thinking, whereas continental philosophers, lacking this kind of training and consequently being prone to empty rhetoric, undisciplined thought, and obscurity, will be much more exposed to the risk of making fools of themselves in politics. This is what many analytic philosophers tend to think.

We Will Teach You How to Think, They Said

The American Philosophical Association (APA), which is heavily dominated by analytic philosophy, seeks to attract philosophy majors with the following message:

The study of philosophy serves to develop intellectual abilities important for life as a whole, beyond the knowledge and skills required for any particular profession. Properly pursued, it enhances analytical, critical, and communicative capacities that are applicable to any subject matter, and in any human context (APA 1992).

This is a remarkably strong and bold statement about the alleged effects of studying philosophy: The pursuit of philosophy is claimed to enhance students’ analytical, critical, and communicative capacities, which can then be applied to any subject matter and in any human context.

The main problem here is that the APA provides no evidence at all for the wonderful improvements in thinking that philosophy supposedly can produce. Moreover, many scholars actually insist that the currently available empirical evidence comes nowhere near to establishing such a sweeping and resolute causal claim. In contrast to the APA’s assurance that studying philosophy improves reasoning skills, psychologists tell us that after a hundred years of debate “the issue of whether generalizable reasoning skills transfer to reasoning contexts outside of formal schooling remains an open question in the opinions of leading researchers” (Barnett & Ceci 2002, 615; emphasis added). What the APA advertises is additionally problematic because it seems to promise something like “far transfer” (i.e., transferring what one learns in one context to other very different subject matters and contexts). And the prospects of achieving far transfer are notoriously questionable (see Holyoak & Morrison 2005, 788–90, and references therein).

All in all, therefore, it appears that the APA is involved in false advertising, which can be explained by ignorance, self-serving intellectual dishonesty, or some combination thereof.

In a recent discussion about the value of philosophy, the executive director of the APA, Amy E. Ferrer, said this:

Philosophy teaches many of the skills most valued in today’s economy: critical thinking, analysis, effective written and verbal communication, problem solving, and more. And philosophy majors’ success is borne out in both data—which show that philosophy majors consistently outperform nearly all other majors on graduate entrance exams such as the GRE and LSAT, and that philosophy ties with mathematics for the highest percentage increase from starting to midcareer salary—and anecdotal evidence indicating that philosophy and other humanities majors are increasingly successful and sought after in the business and technology sectors (quoted in Jaschik 2015).

Ferrer’s defense of the value of studying philosophy is fallacious. It is based on the logical mistake post hoc, ergo propter hoc. Briefly, the statistical correlation between studying philosophy and all these good outcomes does not mean that the former causes the latter. It may well be that those who embark on philosophy studies are simply smarter to begin with and that their subsequent success is in no way (or not mainly) the result of what they learned in philosophy courses.

This pretty obvious alternative explanation for the good performance of philosophy majors is not recognized by the APA as a possibility that deserves any consideration. The same blind spot reappears in a letter that was signed by three officers of the APA (including the well-known Stanford philosopher Michael Bratman) and published on the APA website. Again, the authors first provide statistical data about above-average accomplishments of philosophy majors and then jump to the conclusion that studying philosophy “trains students’ general cognitive skills, improves their ability to reason” and thereby “make[s] philosophy majors highly flexible in the job market” (APA 2014; emphasis added). The three italicized words all assert causal influence and they can be justified only if something more than a merely statistical correlation is provided. The fact that even very prominent philosophers do not sufficiently appreciate the warning that correlation does not imply causation—perhaps the most hackneyed principle of critical thinking—is not the best advertisement for the value of philosophy for critical thinking.

The British Philosophical Association (2016) also promises on its website that the philosophy student will develop the capacities to “think well about important issues” and “learn to be an independent and flexible thinker,” and that these skills will “both be of value throughout one’s life and in demand by many employers.” Again, no evidence is provided that studying philosophy can really bring about these magnificent effects. Moreover, given all that we currently know there is no good reason to accept these optimistic claims.

In 2010 more than a thousand people, including a number of well-known philosophers, signed a petition titled “Make Reasoning Skills Compulsory in Schools” (Burgess 2010). The petition was addressed to Michael Gove, the UK Education Minister. The petition urged the government to make philosophy classes compulsory from a very early age, arguing that this “would have immense benefits in terms of boosting British school kids’ reasoning and conceptual skills, better equipping them for the complexities of life in the 21st century.”

In support of this radical proposal they offered two pieces of evidence.¹ One was a collection of articles written by a group of people, all of whom are philosophers and philosophy educators, and who—as we learn in the book introduction—were “all firmly committed” to the view that philosophy should be a compulsory part of the school curriculum (Hand & Winstanley 2009, xiii–xiv). Besides this highly biased source produced by true believers, the petition invoked a 2007 study by two researchers at Dundee University allegedly showing that “confronting core philosophical debates as the nature of existence, ethics and knowledge can raise children’s IQ by up to 6.5 points, as well as improve emotional intelligence.”

There are three major problems here. First, the public campaign to force all children in the UK to take philosophy classes essentially relied on only one scientific study. (Consider an analogous case: If two researchers announced that in their sample of 177 children, taking a certain new medicine was statistically associated with better health, would anyone seriously consider the proposal that, on that basis alone, all children in the country immediately start taking the medicine regularly?)

Second, it is unclear whether the supporters of the petition were aware that the authors of the study in question themselves explicitly cautioned the reader that the results “should not be over-interpreted or accepted uncritically.” (It is hard to think of a more extreme way to over-interpret and uncritically accept a study than to prescribe a national curriculum based on its tentative conclusions.) The authors pointed out that their study suffered from methodological imperfections and warned that sampling was not entirely random, that the possibility of the Hawthorne effect (also known as the observer effect) could not be ruled out and that differences between experimental and control classes could be influenced by factors that were not measured (Topping & Trickey 2007, 283).

And third, even if the gains were genuine, whether they would be sustained after the experiment ended would be unclear. Obviously there would be little point in modifying the national curriculum for elementary schools if the good effects dissipated soon after any such intervention came to an end (which frequently happens with reported increases in childhood IQ).² So before starting a massive educational reform, it stands to reason that the durability of those effects should be confirmed in the first place, preferably by independent research teams.

Surprisingly, despite all these self-evident reasons against joining the campaign, a number of well-known philosophers (including Simon Blackburn, Jonathan Glover, Bill Brewer, A. C. Grayling, Duncan Pritchard, Peter Simons, Jon Williamson, Bob Hale, John Dupré, Robert Hopkins, Brian Leiter, Jennifer Saul, and Helen Beebee) not only supported the hasty and ill-thought-out proposal but were ready to defend it publicly by putting their signatures on the petition. Even more oddly, among the names of the supporters we also find leading philosophers of science who should have immediately realized that there is simply no way that the presented evidence could justify the extravagant proposal of the petitioners. (Two of those philosophers of science, Alexander Bird and James Ladyman, are past editors-in-chief of the British Journal for the Philosophy of Science, arguably the world’s best journal in the field.)

One would have expected philosophers to be careful about making such confident public assertions about philosophy’s benefits for two reasons. First, since it is obviously in their interest to spread the belief that studying philosophy pays off so well, they should be acutely aware of the possibility of self-deception. Second, they should be concerned about the well-being of their prospective students who could be lured into choosing philosophy by false advertisements, but might later come to regret their massive investment of time and money in something that does not lead to the promised results.

Russell’s Paradox: A Genius with a Streak of Foolishness

The belief that studying philosophy, when it is geared toward developing analytical skills and conceptual clarity, also enhances rationality and critical thinking in practical affairs of everyday life (including politics) dates from the early days of analytic philosophy.

In a book still frequently assigned to undergraduate philosophy students, Bertrand Russell expressed a similar view about the practical usefulness of philosophy: “The essential characteristic of philosophy . . . is criticism. It examines critically the principles employed in science and in daily life” (Russell 1912, 233; emphasis added). This sounds nice, but there was little trace of critical examination in many of Russell’s own actions and especially in his political statements. George Trevelyan, Russell’s undergraduate classmate at Cambridge, once said about him: “He may be a genius in mathematics—as to that I am no judge; but about politics he is a perfect goose” (Monk 2000, 5). Similarly George Santayana said: “Along with his genius he has a streak of foolishness” (quoted in Eastman 1959, 192). Illustrations of Russell’s political irrationality could easily fill a whole chapter in this book, but since many of these episodes are probably already widely known I will give only a few examples of his ludicrous political outbursts.

In an article published on October 30, 1951, in the Manchester Guardian, Russell said that the United States was as much a police state as Hitler’s Germany or Stalin’s Russia. He continued:

In Germany under Hitler, and in Russia under Stalin, nobody ventured upon a political remark without first looking behind the door to make sure no one was listening. . . [W]hen I last visited America I found the same state of things there. . . [I]f by some misfortune you were to quote with approval some remark by Jefferson you would probably lose your job and perhaps find yourself behind bars.

It should be stressed that Russell’s anti-Americanism and his political si...