From the assigned, or related, reading please choose three to five keywords. You may develop a longer entry on one or two keywords and develop a new, or integrated, entry on a previously selected keyword. These keywords should have a common usage (are part of our "general discussions"), but may be given a particular technical or disciplinary definition by the writer. I want you to provide brief entries — 350 to 500 words — for each keyword. Please post, and arrange alphabetically, all keywords to this page.
capitalism
In reviewing our struggles with the system and within it, especially in light of the neoliberal restructuring of the academy, it seems that capitalism is at the heart of it. The "product" has become master, and the university (by this I mean, generally, the R1 universities) have become factories for research, patents, and degrees. Popper's amended version of Marx's surplus population, in part, says "The accumulation of capital means that the capitalist spends part of his profits on new machinery… These machines, in turn, may be intended either for the expansion of industry, [or] they may be intended for intensifying production by increasing the productivity of labor in existing industries" (366-367). If we look at this brief part of Popper's amended theory, we can start substituting words, perhaps seeing "the capitalist" as "the university" and in turn reading "machines" as students that produce research (for the university and industry) and earn degrees (contributing to the expansion of the university). This may be a very cynical way of viewing the academy, but it seems to be an increasing trend and has been part of our discussion numerous times throughout the semester, especially regarding the R1 style university. This is not to say that the liberal arts colleges are immune, but they seem to be a hold-out the same way that craftsmen can be considered hold outs to the capitalist system of increasing production. I wonder, then, what will happen if any uprising should happen against this "means of production" - will the workers unite and revolt? Or is this new system the only system?
class
According to Harvey’s A Brief History of Neoliberalism, “class” is not a stable social configuration, so it can be difficult to see how neoliberalization acts as a vehicle for the restoration of class power (and while this may be its perceived function, neoliberalism does not necessarily seem to restore economic power to the same populations) (31). Indeed, the numbers suggest that the neoliberal turn may be better associated with the restoration/reconstruction of the power of economic elites (19). The campaign against big government, deregulation, tax breaks on investment, deindustrialization, and reduction of corporate taxes that took place during the Reagan era effectively launched “the momentous shift toward greater social inequality and the restoration of economic power to the upper class” in the US (26).
As Harvey points out, “class” can mean very different things in different places (31). For the most part, the word “class” has no meaning in the US, whereas Britain’s class system is deeply entrenched, and in Indonesia, Malaysia, and the Philippines, economic power came to be held by a few ethnic-minority Chinese (32). Despite the differences in conceptions and formations of class across the world, Harvey identifies several trends with regards to class power in the neoliberal state, including: the fusion of ownership and management of capitalist enterprises (CEOs paid with stock options) and reducing the gaps between capital earning dividends and interest as well as between profit-making on production, manufacturing, or merchant capital. The lifting of regulatory constraints resulted in flourishing financial activity and innovation, which in turn resulted in a power shift from production to finance (33). This led to CEOs as the rising class power under neoliberalism, but by no means the only one; entrepreneurial opportunities along with new trade relation structures allowed for “fast fortunes” to be made in new economic sectors (biotechnology and IT, for example). These few individuals have dominated the world economy, and Harvey argues that this “radical reconfiguration of class relations” is transnational, with class power often exerted in more than one state simultaneously (35-6). The “disparate group of individuals embedded in the corporate, financial, dreading, and developer worlds do not necessarily conspire as a class,” but they share interests and recognize advantages that come as a result of neoliberalization. Also as a result of neoliberalization, they “exercise immense influence over global affairs and possess a freedom of action that no ordinary citizen possesses” (36).
common sense
David Harvey opens Chapter 2 (“The Construction of Consent”) of A Brief History of Neoliberalism with a short discussion of Marxist philosopher Gramsci’s “common sense” (or “the sense held in common”) as grounds for the political consent that spurred the neoliberal revolution (39). Stemming from regional or national traditions, common sense is “long-standing practices of cultural socialization,” which Harvey makes a point of distinguishing from “good sense,” or that sense which comes (or is, rather, “constructed”) from critical engagement with current issues (39). Harvey describes both senses as constructed in and of themselves, but he alongside Gramsci argues that common sense is especially dangerous in its capacity to allow elites to deliberately mislead, obfuscate, or disguise real problems with cultural values, fears, and prejudices (39). “Freedom” is an example of buzzword that resonates within the common sense of American such that it becomes, as Rapley calls it in Globalizataion and Inequality: Neoliberalism’s Downward Spiral, “a button” for those in power to press for access to the common sense of the masses, thus creating an environment of consent with all the appearances of a democracy.
Indeed, Harvey asserts that the widespread consent that took place for the accomplishment of neoliberalization characterizes the shift to neoliberalism as democratic, not as something that can be attributed solely to power players like Thatcher and Reagan after 1979 (39). He does, however, describe the political consent as constructed across populations large enough to win elections. Indeed, in the neoliberal state, the “coercive powers of competition” are what “drive” such neoliberal practices—and, in turn, “this drive becomes so deeply embedded in entrepreneurial common sense … that it becomes a fetish belief” (68). With regards to technological development, for instance, “talented interlopers” reshape common sense to their advantage by putting forth innovations in technology that destabilize dominant social relations and institutions (69). The result is a crisis that has everything to do with capitalist tendencies, hinting at one of the problems with neoliberalism: a contradiction between “a seductive but alienating possessive individualism on the one hand and the desire for a meaningful collective life on the other” (69). The manipulation of common sense by the elite gives them control of consent, and trying to understand the construction of political consent means extracting political meanings from cultural ones (40).
compassion
In Not for Profit, Why Democracy Need the Humanities by Martha Nussbaum, cultivating compassion couples with the Socratic method to increase the critical thinking capacities and democratic practices of a citizenry. Critical thinking, in and of itself, falls short of cultivating democratic stewardship: the emotion of compassion must also play a feature role.
Likewise, respect features as key in democratic practice. It encompasses an ability to recognize and revere the trials and accomplishments of not only those people in one's own group, but those not like oneself (51-55; 20-22). Though important, respect lacks the heft to serve as a counterweight to critical argument to the same degree as compassion. Respect can also involve deference, not only reverence. Compassion, by contrast, enables one to view other people as equals. Through the act of putting ourselves into someone else's shoes, we sharpen both our skills of critique and our capacity for debate that is not aggressive, winner-takes-all, but is civil (25-26). As a practice to strengthen democracy, compassion enables parties to soften hard stances and to seek common ground (70). Compassion, anchors democracy, keeping it from slipping into the passions of nationalism or the disregard of nihilism. Through recognizing ourselves in others, we become aware that as rulers by proxy through the officials we elect, whom we elect and the policies created by those people can result in positive or dire impact on other members of society (28, 44). Compassion allows to vote as if we did not already know which role in society we played. Moreover, through exercising compassion, we develop a capacity for reflection upon our country in its entirety without remaining rooted (or mired) in only the concerns of the groups with which we identify (45).
By focusing on compassion, Nussbaum channels Gandhi, insisting that first one must quell the struggle within, and that compassion safeguards against more base emotions such as “fear, greed, and narcissistic aggression” (48). These less than noble emotions exist in us all, and only through self-examination and the cultivation of critical thinking coupled with respect and compassion can we ensure that we practice democracy as a system of inclusion by society's most vulnerable members.
democratic vulnerability (69)
The concept of 'democratic vulnerability', as supported in Not for Profit, Why Democracy Need the Humanities by Martha Nussbaum, relies on the premise that in a fully functioning and flourishing democracy, anyone from any station in life can speak up (38, 69). The key to ensuring that citizens of any background can participate and contribute to public debate relies on conceiving of democracy not as a given, but as a practice vulnerable to both business-oriented factions and factions oriented for personal gain that seek to sweep critical inquiry under the rug in the push toward economic and/or personal gain (29). Nussbaum focuses on Socrates as willing to not only speak out against power, but to engage in debate with plebians. He also posited that in order for a democracy not to become somnambulistic and bloated it must be tended by a citizenry skilled in critical thinking (67).
Further, without skills in critical thinking and debate, lack of decision-making skills on the part of citizens can lead to blind compliance to authority or to peers (69). If you have no well-considered opinion, you may have no choice but to be subjected by people that can enforce their will. A well-informed citizenry that can engage in critical debate performs a dual function: it safeguards democracy from vulnerability while remaining aware of the need for vigilant attendance to democratic practice, lest the democracy become vulnerable. As a term, 'democratic vulnerability' moves democracy in practice as a notion from conception to concept, from ideation to realization. The term holds also a prescription for how to ensure democracy: by participating with vigilance in its buttressing.
Finally, 'democratic vulnerability' also points to the potential fragility of democracy. Other social systems may prove to be more indomitable, yet they do not necessarily include room for the weak, the poor, or the otherwise vulnerable to have a voice and participate in civic life. Democracy becomes fortified through attention to participation by the vulnerable of a society, their needs, and having their voices count. For a society to remain a democracy, it must both submit to the participation by its most vulnerable members and train all of its members in critical thinking and civic practice, whereby opening itself to the vulnerability of critique.
Ethics-
Schrag does not directly comment on the meaning of “ethics” or provide an ethical framework, however, he does discuss the distinction between different ethical frameworks existing across diverse research communities including the medical research community and the social sciences.
The keyword, ethics, is fundamental to our understanding about what constitutes acceptable research because of the ability of morality or an ethical code to become mobilized by power for the sake of exclusion or devaluation by one group over another. Schrage’s distinction between ethical oversight by authorities inside and outside the discipline’s research community illustrates a fundamental dimension of the process of imperialism. Schrage states, “IRBs are never composed of researchers in a single discipline in the social sciences or humanities, and they may not have any members familiar with the ethics and methods of the scholars who come before them. Both of these anomalies can be traced to IRB’s origins as a response to abuses in medical and psychological experimentation, and to the continued dominance of ethics-oversight bodies by medical and psychological researchers and ethicists” (2-3).
Given that ethics prescribes a guide of conduct, adjudicating whether or not an action is just, good, bad, right or wrong is the goal of any ethical framework. Due to the question of adjudication, ethics, can lead down the slippery slope of domination by one group over another based upon one group’s ability to impose or adjudicate questions of morality for another group. Schrag’s book is clearly concerned with the idea that IRBs become ways of dominating the practices of one research community by another using the question of ethics as a point of contestation. Clearly, the exclusion of social scientists in the formation of the IRB leads to a situation whereby the commitments of one research group (Biomedical researchers or psychological researchers) become dominant over research and methodologies outside of origins of biomedical research. The contestation over the meaning of “safe or ethical research” that the IRB attempts to resolve by creating a universal framework of ethical codes for all human to human research merely becomes a dominating norm whereby researchers in the non-formative disciplines of the IRB (sociology/anthropology etc) become subject to codes of conduct that are constructed outside of their respective disciplines. In this way the groups to which these codes are subjected to, especially those who did not participate in the formation of the ethical guidelines become colonized ethical subjects. The imperialism of IRB ethics begins to become apparent in the cases where non-biomedical research becomes subject to the norms and ethical guidelines of biomedical research.
effective responsibility
"Effective responsibility cannot be equated with a signature on a piece of paper." So states Gresham Sykes while explaining his reservations about the application of PHS's policy toward social science research (32). This is in response to his fear that IRBs could become little more than a superficial kind of approval board rather than a serious tool for monitoring the ethics of research - a tool, by the way, that does not understand the research it is approving.
As researchers it is our duty to ensure that we are upholding all the ethical standards of our field and it seems that, at least in the cases of the social sciences and the humanities, that these standards have been waylaid in favor of those set by biomedical and psychological practices. While there is a potentially psychological element in interviewing, survey taking, and other forms of non-medical interaction, these forms of research are, in general, far more benign and less invasive than that done on actual patients. Schrag’s general tone seems to hinge on this idea, this concept that IRBs are ineffective and unnecessary as a mere stamp of approval. Instead, it should be the responsibility of experts and governing bodies/societies that create and enforce ethical standards within their respective fields. Effective responsibility (in our fields) may only extend to treating consenting adults as just that: adults that have consented to be interviewed, surveyed, etc, and not people that need to be coerced into signing waivers and forms. If anything, this could potentially have the opposite effect, making subjects feel obligated to continue beyond their comfort levels because they “signed a form” saying they agreed to it all.
We cannot know that all researchers will be ethical in their practices, nor can we assume that all IRBs are incompetent and uninterested in the details of the research they approve, but it seems that we run the risk of becoming too dependent on this approval, and that once we have it we can assume a carte blanche to proceed with our maniacal plans however we like… We have all the necessary signatures, after all.
freedom
Freedom is the abstract but pervasively cherished ideal on which the United States believes itself to have been founded. In general terms, “freedom” would seem to mean the capacity to function according to one’s personal judgments without undue encumbrance. Most of these terms—“function,” “personal,” “undue,” etc.—lend themselves to contention and particular iterations of freedom are varied and even contradictory. Nevertheless, the word “freedom,” if not an accompanying coherent concept, appears throughout public discourse and popular culture. George Michael sang that “I don’t belong to you and you don’t belong to me” and continued, “you’ve gotta give for what you take.” The US Bill of Rights establishes “freedom of speech.” In the wake of French resistance to the US-led invasion of Iraq, “French fries” became, for some, “freedom fries.” A year ago, Jonathan Franzen appeared on the cover of TIME to promote his novel Freedom, and said elsewhere that he “could not care less about” the concept and that he wanted to write about anger. That anger may come from disagreements about what freedom entails and how societies and states may best facilitate its proliferation.
David Harvey notes the appeal of “[c]oncepts of dignity and personal freedom” (5). He describes the many “political upheavals” of 1968 as drawing strength from commitments to “greater personal freedoms” (41). However, Harvey identifies conflicts between the ideal of individual liberty that many would call “freedom” and the cultural ideal of social justice that many would associate with the possibility of freedom (41). Namely, a just system that enables universal freedom is only possible if all members of the system happen to agree on what they wish to do individually and/or on what they will allow others to do. In the US, rhetoric employing the notion of individual freedom complicates movements of social justice, a dynamic that Harvey believes neoliberalism directly exploited as it systematically reduced certain classes’ access to freedoms—those born of bargaining rights, for instance—in the name of creating a structure of personal liberties free of government interference. Harvey points out that, in fact, the government inevitably must act in cases such as monopolization (67) that one contradiction inherent in neoliberal thinking is that individuals may choose their own course as long as they do not join collectives such as unions (69).
The relationship between citizens, neoliberalism, and freedom, then, is tenuous, made the more complicated by the infiltration of neoliberalism into the hearts and minds of economics professors (and so their students), members of the press (and so their readers), and policy makers (and so their constituents). Within the university, and for scholars working in the humanities, especially, it may be crucial to name the kinds of freedoms we value and to develop the capacities, even within a neoliberalized setting, to facilitate their advancement.
Historicism
Cursory research outside of The Open Society and Its Enemies reveals that Popper describes and lambastes a somewhat idiosyncratically envisioned “historicism.” Nevertheless, his arguments concerning it, if they do nothing else, further define that which we ought not want in our research—in his view, at least. Popper claims that historicism, a social philosophy, “aims at something like scientific status” by mimicking both science's systematization of inquiry and its gestures toward prediction, the historical incarnation of which Popper disparagingly calls “prophecy” (3). Popper presents examples of historicism: theistic historicism places in a historical moment the eternal privileging of a particular people and sees history as playing out the script of this privilege (8-9); Marxian historicism exchanges people for class and eradicates God to read history as a progression through class struggle toward revolution (9-10). Whatever its specifics, historicism for Popper either a) looks to past events and observes apparent consistencies that are then interpreted as inevitabilities or b) theorizes as historically real an ideal the recovery of which ought to become the project of current human activity.
A possible point of contestation in Popper is his apparent use of the very historicism he abhors adamantly enough to have written a book on its “poverty.” Surveying the history of, for but two examples, “utopian engineering” and “the authoritarian,” Popper says of the former that it “has led only to the use of violence in place of reason” and of the latter that s/he “will in general select those who obey” as collaborators (161, 134). Despite their troubling language, which would appear to indicate historical grounding, such proclamations may be purely theoretical and ahistorical. In this case, Popper may be performing the sort of thought experimentation that certain versions of philosophy recommend in place of the pseudo-scientific practices of much contemporary academic inquiry, here called historicism.
It may be worth noting that Popper does not in this instance presciently critique the more recent “new historicism.” However, insofar as new historicism veers into determinism, explaining human behavior as a necessary consequence of its historical situatedness, Popper would likely reject it on the grounds that it, like historicism proper, doubts humanity's capacity to “alter the laws of historical destiny” (21). Popper himself thoroughly situates Plato's thought within the socio-political events of Athens and thus achieves a personally sympathetic, though no less philosophically critical, treatment of him without suggesting - in fact, while outright rejecting - the possibility that Plato could not have acted otherwise.
human subject?
humanities
The humanities is a term that refers specifically to “Those branches of knowledge, such as philosophy, literature, and art, that are concerned with human thought and culture; the liberal arts” (http://www.thefreedictionary.com/humanities). According to Ruth O’Brien, the humanities teaches “children the critical thinking that is necessary for independent action and for intelligent resistance to the power of blind tradition and authority” (Nussbaum ix). Yet the common tendency of the majority of American students (in any field) is to submit assignments in hopes of being evaluated positively rather than purely as an exercise of critical thinking or a care for citizenship. In other words, there is an attempt to produce work that appeals to an authority: the person giving out grades. In Not for Profit: Why Democracy Needs the Humanities, Martha Nussbaum claims that the result of an education in the humanities is “the ability to think critically; the ability to transcend local loyalties and to approach world problems as a ‘citizen of the world’; and, finally, the ability to imagine sympathetically the predicament of another person” (7). Creating critical thinkers and citizens of the world might be better accomplished by disseminating free educational material on the internet rather than providing this material to a select number of students willing to pay tuition.
There is an implication that these branches of knowledge make a person more human, but this creates an inequality by which we might believe that someone with training in the humanities and arts is more human than a person who never received such an education. Another question this term raises is whether literature, art, and philosophy can stand in for life experience or whether the goal of the humanities is to prepare people to handle life experiences in a more open-minded manner.
Nussbaum also says that the humanities can serve economic interests by promoting a “watchful stewardship and a culture of creative innovation” (10). But it is questionable whether an education in the humanities really is capable of this, or whether this relies more on people’s disposition and values. Can a person be “trained” to care more about other people?
Imperialism—-
Interestingly enough Imperialism is not mentioned in Schrag's first four chapters and is not cited in the index. Clearly the title of the book makes an implicit argument about the role the IRB plays in social science and humanistic inquiry. Given the above exploration of Ethics, the imperial dimensions of the imposition of a code of ethics upon non-participatory (i.e. not constructing a set of ethical guidelines themselves or not having participated in the formation of the IRB) research communities is an essential part of Schrag’s argument.
Imperialism can broadly be defined as “a policy of extending a country’s power and influence through colonization, use of military force, or other means” (Oxford Dictionary). Undoubtedly, Schrag is not concerned with a policy of extending a country’s power, though the argument can be made that the IRB is a form of control and power over the conduct of research. Schrag states, “Though DHEW sought nominations from the American Sociological Association and the American Anthropological Association, in the end no sociologists, anthropologists, or other social scientists were appointed to the commission. (This did not, however, stop the department from claiming that it had found experts in all categories specified by Congress)” (57).
One of the key components to any exercise of an imperial regime is the ability to discriminate by deciding who is included and who is excluded through the basis of the use of power. Through the case of the IRB’s imposition of an ethical framework governing the conduct of research, we witness an example of a clear a process of exclusion. Biomedical ethics came to dominant the debate surrounding the formation of the IRB and a specific set of ethical principles were universalized from a particular disciplines concern to cover the broad spectrum of human to human research. Sociologists and other social sciences were excluded from participation in the design of these criteria, yet have to abide by them. This process of exclusion in defining the terms of the debate or the terms of a solution is a hallmark of an imperial project.
This type of exclusion from formation yet inclusion by prescription is a typical case example of the dynamics of any imperial regime. In the United States, Native American tribes were not asked to participate in the formation of the Federal Government policies that removed Native Americans from their Eastern homelands yet were bound to follow the exercise of its policies. While this geopolitical example may seem removed from the discussion of the IRB and research ethics, the social sciences face a similar situation in which they did not have a participatory role in the creation of the IRB, yet have become bound to following their rules of conduct. Evidently, then imperialism of a form exists each time a researcher has to modify or gain approval from the IRB when that organization applies ethical standards that inform one discipline (biomedical research) to cover all disciplines.
In this case an appeal to universal standards creates instantiations of domination when a particular discipline uses contextual research methodologies that constitute its existence as a particular discipline. The IRB imposition of a universal ethical framework flies in the face of pluralism whereby social science disciplines, who operate and organize along divergent methods of inquiry, must conform to the universal ethical ideal promulgated by the IRB. A universal ideal undermines the particularities of a specific discipline, thereby leveling the playing field by equating sociology, anthropology with psychology and medicine. This type of leveling of the playing field ignores the vastly different methods that social and biological researchers use. The IRB in an implicit way designates all human to human research interaction as subject to one universal ethical framework and undermines key differences between disciplines by normalizing one universal ethical ideal. This disregard for pluralism is a key indicator of any imperial project, and mirrors the rise of the universality of a neoliberal thought-paradigm through which all meaningful human to human interactions are theorized to take place in the market. The IRB's leveling of the ethics' field is similar to neo-liberal leveling of the economic' field. The universality of the IRB’s medical ethics imposed upon other disciplines of social researchers mirrors the way neoliberals discuss the market as the only way through which freedom is expressed. Thus the only way through which ethics are expressed is through IRB approval. Imperialism must rely upon universals that fail to distinguish between other modes of organization, thinking, and control in order to construct a dominant regime of power.
interventionism
Popper explores the term interventionism as a new system overlooked by Marx; the latter's inability to conceive of this system is attributed, according to Popper, to Marx's living under a system of unrestrained capitalism: “Marx investigated an unrestrained capitalism, and he never dreamt of interventionism. He therefore never investigated the possibility of a systematic interference with the trade cycle, much less did he offer a proof of its impossibility” (182). The inability to consider interventionism closed off possibilities for the future and also situated Marxist thinking in such a way that the present was considered to be on a set course. Thus a framework set boundaries on ideas of what could be changed in the present and what systems were possible or could be conceived of: “But we see… why this cry ['Workers, unite!'] must open up the whole problem of state interference, and why it is likely to lead to the end of the unrestrained system, and to a new system, interventionism, which may develop in very different directions” (179). For Popper, interventionism functions both a way to influence the trade cycle that Marx took for granted, but interventionism potentially threatensour freedoms. Each instance of state intervention, such as unemployment insurance, results in an “increase in the responsibility of the state” (182). This suggests that social engineers must walk a very thin tightrope, but who are the social engineers? In a democracy, we are all social engineers, and a cynical attitude or narrow ways of thinking thwart democracy or positive change.
Popper eventually concludes that “Since the day of Marx, democratic interventionism has made immense advances, and the improved productivity of labour—a consequence of the accumulation of capital—has made it possible virtually to stamp out misery. This shows that much has been achieved, in spite of undoubtedly grave mistakes, and it should encourage us to believe that more can be done. For much remains to be done and to be undone. Democratic interventionism can only make it possible. It rests with us to do it” (187). Encapsulated in this quotation appears to be an alternative to Marx's way of thinking, and with it is limitless change.
neoliberalization
Neoliberalization is the process of implementing neoliberal theories into policy and governance. To Harvey, the results (practice) often conflict with the principles of the theory. Rather than a system of personal freedoms that allows for individual and national prosperity (64-67), the practice of neoliberalization is a deliberate restructuring of public policy and manipulation of “common sense” to facilitate an upward migration of wealth and the restoration of class power. Within a milieu of recession and under the influence of neoliberal theory as endorsed by the Friedman-led Chicago school, figures such as Reagan and Thatcher won public support with talk of freedoms and necessity while systematically rewriting tax law to the advantage of the wealthy, disempowering labor unions to the advantage of corporations (44-6), and orchestrating international finance practices to the disadvantage of developing countries (74-5). Regardless of the theory, then, the practice of neoliberalization and its requisite exploitation of the disenfranchised appear in direct confrontation with the ideals espoused by universities, particularly the disciplines in the humanities.
This clash of principles has not impeded the influence of neoliberal approaches of monetization, privatization, and quantification on the operations of US universities. These sights of learning, as described—and perhaps romanticized—by Steve Fuller, once treated knowledge as a public good to be distributed to students. However, as neoliberalization breaches academic boarders, universities increasingly mimic the practices of directing funds to the top (establishing class power), networking with corporations (privatizing), and commodifying output (monetizing). Within even the humanities, which would ostensibly concern itself with precisely that which one cannot count, productivity is measured by publications, citations, and even student evaluations—all in accord with the neoliberal preoccupation with “profit,” in its various guises, and demonstrability.
Whereas the theory of neoliberalism intends to open avenues for everyone to earn and achieve, the practice severely limits the lower classes’ access to the means of knowledge production, distribution, and use. While the humanities has adopted many neoliberal strategies for sustenance and internal regulation, it remains the task of those within the humanities to recognize the incommensurability of humanistic thought and neoliberal policy and, further, to articulate alternatives to the neoliberalization of the American university.
philosopher king
Plato’s philosopher kings are both lovers of wisdom and rulers of the ideal city-state. In The Republic, they rule his utopian state of Kallipolis, which could only come about if “philosophers become kings…or those now called kings…genuinely and adequately philosophize” (The Republic 5.473d). Such a ruler “pursues the gift of a good memory, and is quick to learn—noble, gracious, the friend of truth, justice, courage, [and] temperance…and to men like him…when perfected by years and education, and to these only…entrust the State” (see //The Republic// on the philosopher-king). Ideally, the philosopher king is committed to wisdom or “truth” in accordance with Plato's Theory of Forms and Ideas, in which there is a universal, original, archetypal entity behind each particular instance of something whose relation to the original Form or Idea is what the instances have in common. The philosopher, in his quest for truth, accesses these Forms and is thereby fit to command the ship of state.
Popper devotes a full chapter to the philosopher king, immediately (and continuously) attacking the notion that he is a lover of truth, citing Plato’s declaration of lying and deceiving as a royal privilege (138). Plato’s ruler is lying in order to preserve a greater esoteric truth—as with the “medicine” on page 139—and Popper uses this disconnect in Plato’s model to discredit any sense of justice (outside of serving the interest of the totalitarian state) to be found in the model and underscore its conceptualization of “truth in…[a] utilitarian or pragmatist fashion” quite unlike that of an Idea (144). Plato even says that the first few generations of rulers may be deceived for this greater truth, and “here we see that Plato’s utilitarian and totalitarian principles overrule everything, even the ruler’s privilege of knowing, and of demanding to be told, the truth” (140).
So, Popper reconceives of what Plato means by philosopher—from “seeker for wisdom” to “proud possessor” (144). Popper’s Plato (which we should bear in mind for Popper is just “Plato”) possesses truth from the Idea of Good, the highest of the Forms, but goodness does not play a role for Plato outside promoting the collectivist moral code, and wisdom outside arresting change (146). So why should philosophers rule? Popper sees the argument for their aptness at policy formation, but not in Plato’s postulation that they be absolute, permanent rulers except to breed a god-like master race through philosophical training that can prevent the otherwise inevitable racial degeneration. And so, Popper argues rather convincingly that “behind the sovereignty of the philosopher king stands the quest for power” and that the “beautiful portrait of the sovereign is [Plato’s] self-portrait” (155).
Popperian Justified Violence:
Karl Popper in Volume 2 of The Open Society and its Enemies gives an account of when violence may be necessary or may be considered just when critiquing the idea of an inevitable communist revolution inspired by Marxist ideals. Popper, in true non-platonic fashion, does not attempt to define the essence of violence. However, he explains how just violence ought to function. He explains, “I am not in all cases and under all circumstances against a violent revolution. I believe with some medieval and Renaissance Christian thinkers who taught the admissibility of tyrannicide that there may indeed, under a tyranny, be no other possibility, and that a violent revolution may be justified” (151). Popper argues for justified violence when the only aim of the violent revolution is to establish a democracy where he does not “mean something as vague as ‘the rule of the people’ or ‘the rule of the majority’, but a set of institutions (among them especially general elections, i.e. the right of the people to dismiss their government) which permit public control of the rulers and their dismissal by the ruled, and which makes it possible for the ruled to obtain reforms without using violence, even against the will of the rulers” (151).
Popper makes clear that violence should have be used in a tyranny where it is impossible to make reforms and that violence’s end should be the creation of institutions that permit reforms without the use of violence. Given this assessment Popper takes a strong stand on how violence is justified if it is used to create democratic institutions which allow for “piece-meal engineering” or reforming of society in an otherwise impossible situation of tyranny. In other words violence to end violence is justified so long as the violence enables the genesis of institutions which permit social change without violence. Violence to end Violence sounds like the mantra during world war one the war to end all wars. At the end of the day is there such thing as violence to end violence?
Popper also proposes one further example of justified violence. He explains “I mean the resistance, once democracy has been attained, to any attack (whether from within or without the state) against the democratic constitution and the use of democratic methods. Any such attack, especially if it comes from the government in power, or if it is tolerated by it, should be resisted by all loyal citizens, even to the use of violence” (151-2). Thus democracy must be defended according to the paradigm of Popperian Justified Violence. However, this line of argument opens the door to a slippery slope of defining threats to democracy or of resisting threats to democracy. In our contemporary geo-political circumstance the United States faces tough questions when the government argues its uses of military violence to combat anti-democratic forces is just. Once the use of violence begins where does it stop? (Hannah Arendt and Simon Weil have a particular philosophy regarding how violence obscures reality once it is unleashed.) How do we define a threat to democracy if through democracy people choose authoritative political structures? Is it the role of one democratic state to combat another in order to destroy the tyranny of other? Is this violence justified? The icy slopes of violence lay littered with the corpses of its victims. However, Popper provides a rough outline as to when violent political change is necessary.
soul
When Nussbaum uses the word soul in Not for Profit: Why Democracy Needs the Humanities, she insists on “the faculties of thought and imagination that make us human and make our relationships rich human relationships, rather than relationships of mere use and manipulation” (6). In other words, having a soul means that we do not view others as a means to an end, but we appreciate and care for others. The word soul appears most often in the rhetoric of salvation or it indicates a person’s essential nature. To not have a soul is to be doomed to hell, or to be considered apathetic or “not human.” According to Nussbaum, having a soul is necessary for democracy since “if we have not learned to see both self and other in that way, imagining in one another inner faculties of thought and emotion, democracy is bound to fail” (6).
Soul is an abstract term that is distinguished from its seeming opposite: the body. These two terms might be conceived of as metaphors working on a larger scale. The distinction that Nussbaum makes between having rich human relationships and relationship by personal desire appears to parallel the interests of democracy and capitalism respectively. The soul is positive, beneficent, free, and a shared part of humanity, while the body hungers for material needs and personal desire. In another sense, soul might refer to a person’s disposition. This raises the question of whether faculties of thought and desire for rich human relationships can be developed in a classroom or whether these are simply parts of a person’s nature. Nussbaum’s argument about soul and seeing from other people’s point of view is created on the assumption that by seeing from another person’s viewpoint, we will be more accepting or willing to set aside personal agendas in order to help others, and it appears that the ultimate goal is reciprocal caring.
Utopian Social Engineering v. Piecemeal Social Engineering
Though change is not easy; it is inevitable. Especially in the 20th Century powers came to the forefront to attempt to put political change to rest through loyalty to the state and to the collective. Though Western democrats count Plato among their methodological progenitors, in the Open Society and Its Enemies I, Karl Popper posits a Plato unlike that often revered in democratic political arenas. Through analysis of Plato's longing for a Utopian State, in which “good is everything that preserves” and “an unchanging, arrested state of things,” Popper insists that this desire to reconfigure all of society toward an ideal vision along with Plato's theory of severe social stratification marks Plato not as a forefather of the democratic state, but of the totalitarian (146). For the person interested in achieving a Utopian State, choosing how things should end comes first and each subsequent action is assessed as to its likelihood to fulfill the chosen Utopian aim (157).
Opposed to Plato's racially-based state as well as fascist and Marxist whole cloth remakings of society, Popper insists that social change best comes managed piecemeal. He lays out a range of tenets and guides for the humanist reasons for what he terms “piecemeal social engineering” and how this kind of social change may be accomplished. For example, he cites Kant's reflection that power clouds judgment, thus, thinking people of society should not be hindered by leaders from having the right to open reflection in the public arena (152). Further, the piecemeal engineer understands that it may be impossible to make everyone happy, yet, institutional means may be derived not to add to someone's misery. Most directly, the piecemeal social engineer will work against society's ills rather than take up arms for some Utopian “good (158). Popper also provides blueprints for piecemeal engineering, including “health and unemployed insurance..arbitration courts…anti-depression budgeting…educational reform.” In these cases, the totality is not being remade; should any of these pieces fail, misfortune would occur, but more than likely a whole society would not derail. Rather than falling short of idealist visions, piecemeal social experiments happen “under realistic conditions” and are “small scale.” (162) Moreover, each person ought to design a life how he/she sees fit, as long as he/she does not terribly detract from the life of someone else (165).
