Hobbes knew—but a lot of philosophers didn’t
I found the following quote from Thomas Hobbes in a Powerline post discussing the curious fact that so many renowned philosophers over the years have gotten entranced with tyrannical forms of government. It’s worth reading the whole thing, but here’s the quote:
[B]etween true science and erroneous doctrines, ignorance is in the middle. Natural sense and imagination are not subject to absurdity.
Nature itself cannot err; and as men abound in copiousness of language, so they become more wise, or more mad, than ordinary.
Nor is it possible without letters for any man to become either excellently wise or (unless his memory be hurt by disease, or ill constitution of organs) excellently foolish.
Actually, I don’t know about that last sentence. I think it’s highly possible to become excellently wise or excellently (that is, exceedingly) foolish, even without the help of “letters.” After all, there is some wisdom to be found in many pre-literate oral traditions, and no shortage of fools the world over.
But I do think there’s a very special kind of foolishness that can occur with a too-strong emphasis on the heady rather than the experiential. A great many of these philosophic Don Quixotes followed a tyrant who sounded good, and they needed the Sancho Panzas to ground them, but they didn’t even know it. Recall, too, that it was books that led the Don into his utopian fantasyland:
The story follows the adventures of an hidalgo named Mr. Alonso Quixano who reads so many chivalric romances that he loses his sanity and decides to set out to revive chivalry, undo wrongs, and bring justice to the world…
And as Orwell said:
There are some ideas so absurd that only an intellectual could believe them.
Orwell himself was no slouch in the intellect department, and he was also a man of letters. But he had lived a life of experience out in the world rather than academia. It is instructive, though, to note that the brilliant Orwell was a socialist who never abandoned socialism (I discuss the possible reasons here).
I’ll close with one of my favorite quotes from one of my favorite authors, Milan Kundera (from his book Immortality):
”¦[C]ommunists used to believe that in the course of capitalist development the proletariat would gradually grow poorer and poorer, but when it finally became clear that all over Europe workers were driving to work in their own cars, [the communists] felt like shouting that reality was deceiving them. Reality was stronger than ideology. And it is in this sense that imagology surpassed it: imagology is stranger than reality, which has anyway long ceased to be what it was for my grandmother, who lived in a Moravian village and still knew everything through her own experience: how bread is baked, how a house is built, how a pig is slaughtered and the meat smoked, what quilts are made of, what the priest and the schoolteacher think about the world; she met the whole village every day and knew how many murders were committed in the country over the last ten years; she had, so to speak, personal control over reality, and nobody could fool her by maintaining that Moravian agriculture was thriving when people at home had nothing to eat. My Paris neighbor spends his time an an office, where he sits for eight hours facing an office colleague, then he sits in his car and drives home, turns on the TV, and when the announcer informs him that in the latest public opinion poll the majority of Frenchmen voted their country the safest in Europe (I recently read such a report), he is overjoyed and opens a bottle of champagne without ever learning that three thefts and two murders were committed on his street that very day.
”¦[S]ince for contemporary man reality is a continent visited less and less often and, besides, justifiably disliked, the findings of polls have become a kind of higher reality, or to put it differently: they have become the truth. Public opinion polls are a parliament in permanent session, whose function it is to create truth, the most democratic truth that has ever existed. Because it will never be at variance with the parliament of truth, the power of imagologues will always live in truth, and although I know that everything human is mortal, I cannot imagine anything that would break its power.
The quote from Kundera sounds like he knows first hand the common sense and practical nature of many who reside in flyover country. Now I have to go to the library and see if any of his books are on the shelves. Thanks.
I once had a philosophy professor who maintained that one course in philosophy cures most people of the need to philosophize. Those still uncured become philosophy majors. The sickest of all go to graduate school and become professors of philosophy.
Just yesterday, I just wrote in a letter to a friend that sitting as I do in my office in Van Nuys with a window facing the freeway on-ramp where the homeless have created an enclave and drug deals are made; I am aware of the destructive results (law of unintended consequences) of the public policies of the city of Los Angeles and state of California, in a way I would not be if my office was in a more desirable locale. I suppose those who drive past this downtrodden area while on their way to better conditions, live under the facile notion that “if only enough money were collected, re-distributed or programs created”, it would all get better. Reality deferred.
In the Road to Serfdom, Hayek points out that the German professoriat were among the earliest and most enthusiastic supporters of the Nazis. He also points out that in general during the 1930s the university faculty in the US and Europe were either fascist or communist but seldom capitalist.
My youngest is about to complete his undergraduate degree in philosophy from UCLA. He is grounded and sensible, and surprisingly he didn’t run into a lot of out-of-touch professors either–quite the opposite. In my life, some of the best conversations I’ve had, have been with this young man–from an early age too.
Plato’s Republic stands as an excellent example of why we don’t let philosophers run the government.
From Sesardic’s final chapter:
Is there hope that the dreary situation in philosophy described in these pages could be changed for the better in the near future? And if yes, how exactly could the ideological unanimity and self-righteousness that accompanies it be undermind? Is there an antidote for those who have eaten on the “insane root” of liberal extremism and intolerance? Many are pessimistic. Some tend to despair, maintaining that leftist orthodoxy is cemented in academia to such a degree that arguments can no longer work and that it now be attacked only with mockery and humor.
Sesardic continues that he believes truth will out, that reason will prevail, that silence is not enough to guarantee being left alone, that one must speak out against the dark side. I’m of the pessimistic mind set, that it’s too late for reasoned arguments with the unreasonable, and that those who have willingly blinded themselves to the horrors their ideas have helped create need more than mockery, humor, and exposure.
“I cannot imagine anything that would break its power.” Milan Kundera
An encounter with hard reality erases all illusions. Regardless of how large the unanimity in a poll. Trump’s election just proved that Kundera’s “parliament of truth” based in the certainty of polls is built upon ‘shifting sand’.
I am presently reading a book,
“Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind” by Yuval Noah Harari.
He traces the outlines of human history from 2 million years ago through the present. This is an area I have long been interested in and am always on the lookout for new information. Lots of interesting facts and ideas in this one.
However, the author is a member of the intellectual faction that believes there is no reality except chemistry, biology, and physics. To his mind all culture and government and mathematics consists of mythical stories that humans have constructed. In his eyes no one culture, government, or mathematical system is superior or more useful than another. This is interesting to me as it shows how post-modern humans are now in the process of inventing the idea of multi-culturalism and equivalencies between moral systems and governments. In his mind communism is just as valid as capitalism, Muslim society’s rules/customs equal to those of the U.S., etc. In the author’s eyes there are no knowable truths when it comes to human affairs except in the hard sciences. And even then, sex (as a matter of chromosomes) is a fact, but gender is a choice.
I’m glad I bought this book. It is the first that I have seen that openly and seriously argues that up is down, war is peace, and yes really means no.
Read tis piece from CityJournal:
https://www.city-journal.org/html/disrupters-14950.html
It shows another example of how rich, successful people living in a bubble have no idea of what gives meaning to people’s lives. They really seem to think that if the rich gave some money to the other 99%, those people would be happy enough. Forget relationships, accomplishments, community.
Talk about a lack of real experience.
parker:
Kundera is a very unique writer. He goes from fiction to commentary on politics and life and back again, with a fair amount of sex thrown in. But I think his writing is for the most part brilliant. The film “The Unbearable Lightness of Being” did not do justice to his book, which is excellent. The other book of his that I like (a very strange one, I might add) is The Book of Laughter and Forgetting.
I also refer you to the final quote in this post. Also to this.
I’m with Decius:
That’s extremely funny.
“[…] there are no knowable truths […]”
Save that we may infer such “truth” as is attributable to the teaching of Yuval Noah Harari that “there are no knowable truths” — which teaching, on reflection, appears in the guise of an enormous jest in the construction of an entire book, created or made, one supposes, for the acquisition of monies, or else to while away the time in pointless frivolity.
Sharon W Says:
March 3rd, 2017 at 4:27 pm
My youngest is about to complete his undergraduate degree in philosophy from UCLA. He is grounded and sensible, and surprisingly he didn’t run into a lot of out-of-touch professors either—quite the opposite. In my life, some of the best conversations I’ve had, have been with this young man—from an early age too.
* * *
I commend you on raising a most ‘Stute fish.
(http://www.boop.org/jan/justso/whale.htm)
My own recommendation, arrived at during post-graduate work in Political Science, is that no one should even be allowed to study philosophy until they are at least 40; and no one should be allowed to work in government (elected or employee) until after at least 10 years work in a real (ahem) job.
expat Says:
March 3rd, 2017 at 6:13 pm
Read tis piece from CityJournal:
https://www.city-journal.org/html/disrupters-14950.html
It shows another example of how rich, successful people living in a bubble have no idea of what gives meaning to people’s lives. They really seem to think that if the rich gave some money to the other 99%, those people would be happy enough. Forget relationships, accomplishments, community.
Talk about a lack of real experience.
* * *
There is always a study to prove every assertion.
http://www.fuqua.duke.edu/news_events/archive/2008/ariely_legos/
“Ariely and co-authors Emir Kamenica and Dražen Prelec set out to understand how “perceived meaning,” affects a person’s willingness to work. The team defined meaningful work as a task that is either acknowledged or has some point or purpose. …
“These experiments clearly demonstrate what many of us have known intuitively for some time. Doing meaningful work is rewarding in itself, and we are willing to do more work for less pay when we feel our work has some sort of purpose, no matter how small,” Ariely said. “But it is also important to point out that when we asked people to estimate the effect of meaning on labor, they dramatically underestimated the effects. This means, that while we recognize the general effect of meaning on motivation, we are not sufficiently appreciating its magnitude and importance.” …”
This particular study is also part of Ariely’s book “The Upside of Irrationality” – a fascinating compilation for anyone philosophically minded but reality grounded.
Neoneocon@6:24 pm yesterday,
Go slow, I am merely an old Iowan farm boy. But you have made me interested in Kundera. I digest information slowly. I am an anolog human in a digital era. Poor, poor pitiful me. Smile.
AesopFan,
Here is an example of my own experience over booklearning: My father had a auto radiator repair shop and repaired vehicles for all the farmers, businessmen, contractors etc in the area. He knew everyone. One thing that really made him happy was to have someone call and say he needed something for a repair or a job. Since it was no longer produced, my dad would be the one who could tell him exactly who might have that item sitting in his garage somewhere. Dad was valued not just for doing his day job, but also for his super extensive connectedness to the community and his love of helping others.
Another dad anecdote: he sold insurance and collected premiums when I was young. The first ting he did each day was check the obits in the paper to see if any customers had died. a few years ago my brother introduced me to a friend I had never met. He started our conversation telling me about his memory of my dad coming to their house the day after his father died. He was about eight at the time ( 40 or 50 years ago) and he still remembers my dad talking to his mom about when she would receive te life insurance payment and how much that helped relieve his mother.
Connections and caring are so important and they influence people long after we are gone. We have to have faith that if we connect with people and do the right thing, we will leave a footprint.
To be fair, as far as I can see, most Philosophy Faculties are free of Post Modernism. Foucault, Marcuse et al. nest in Arts Faculties where they will never meet any vigorous criticism.
Worse still, on the vocational courses, which many people on both sides of the Atlantic look to as the salvation of education, the entire academic content comes via Liberal Arts.
“You don’t reason with intellectuals. You shoot them.” Napoleon Bonaparte.
The Hobbes of the headline of Neo’s piece wrote his stuff just 200 years after the Gutenberg Bible was the first printed piece of “letters”.
Hobbes’ statement “Nor is it possible without letters for any man to become either excellently wise or (unless his memory be hurt by disease, or ill constitution of organs) excellently foolish” should be read in this context. The only source of written words (“letters”) before the Gutenberg was scribes, copying one document at a time for a most modest readership.
I dare to say that books were hardly widespread in Hobbes’ day, and the vast majority of Englishmen remained illiterate for more than another century after Hobbes. The few literates wrote for one another, a pretty exclusive club. Excellently wise comes from reading a goodly number of the right “letters”, e.g. Locke, others, and the Bible, and excellently foolish comes from reading “letters” of rubbish.
Still true today. The very heart of our political problems.
Fortunately, we can share our “letters” on sites like this one.
@Frog – interesting point re: what “letters” meant in Hobbes time.
Very much in line with how I’d like our Constitution to be read and “interpreted”.
.
So, to simplify, we should take “people with letters” to be people who can actually read, something that is common today in our country.
Maybe more correctly, that people who HAVE actually read in significant amounts.
Correct?
Wonder if he’d modify or qualify that same thought if he had the chance to observe today, given how much more widely read people are (probably several orders of magnitude above some of his better read compatriots – though need to factor in quality of content)?
Hobbes was describing a form of what today might be called the Dunning-Kruger effect.
Certainly, we see zealotry in any realm, even with great education.
Perhaps we shouldn’t limit the D-K effect to describe those who lack the training and expertise yet have outbound confidence in their position, and apply it to those with “too much” education.
There are those who invest oneself entirely with an idea set, to the exclusion of all else.
The D-K effect in “reverse”? Or, does it then become “Dogmatism”?
Anthropogenic Global Warming (vs Natural Cycles)?
Creationism (vs Darwinism)?
AesopFan: I read the article you linked and it turned my stomach. These ‘tech elite’ are a combination of the ‘robber barons’ of old that used legal means to destroy their competition (pulling up the ladder behind them, so to speak) and the “anointed” ones described and decried by Thomas Sowell.
@Julie – if you are referring to the article “The Disrupters”, it is interesting that it makes you “sick”.
Reality is, it shows that those who founded highly successful tech companies are like everyone else.
They hold a mix of views, and sometimes conflicting ones.
The writer expected them to be very libertarian with their views, given the foundation that gave them opportunity to rise.
Instead, it finds many are very supportive of left / dem ideals.
Mix into that their new found wealth and their desire to protect it (from property zoning to tax rules and immigration laws) and it is no wonder they are very much in favor of government’s active role.
Just that, when you net it out, it is probably about rules for “others” and special dispensation for “themselves”.
And, round and round we go each election cycle, as everyone has their own set of rules they’d like to impose on others.
Very few think that, maybe, just maybe, it is the fact that government has so much power to begin with, that we find ourselves in this mess,
It seems no matter who is in power, they barely budge a micron to get rid of any of it, instead merely shuffling it around.
Perhaps our focus should be on radically reducing the size and scope of government, then lock it down at that, leaving less power for those who have access to abuse.