Public Policy, Truth and Politics

Public policy, truth and politics

Stuart Weierter

A thesis in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of

School of Social Sciences

Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences

2020

Surname/Family Name : Weierter Given Name/s : Stuart James Abbreviation for degree as give in the University calendar : PhD Faculty : Arts and Social Sciences School : Social Sciences Thesis Title : Public policy, truth and politics

Abstract 350 words maximum:

This thesis critically assesses the reformation of politics undertaken by the social sciences and especially by policy science. It argues that what is lost with this reformation is a deeper consideration of the problematic relation of truth to politics, a problem which cuts deeper than any social science cares to plumb. Forgotten in the prevailing social scientific reckoning of politics is that truth (as not mere belief) is both distinct from and yet also defined by what we value or count as good. The thesis seeks to retrieve this fundamental insight and problematic and to offer an appropriate response to it. I work my way back from the debates in politically applied social science (or policy science) to the foundational thinkers. These include Harold Lasswell, John Dewey, Max Weber, and Georg Hegel. At the end of this journey I call for a return to the ‘everyday’ as the most comprehensive basis for distinguishing between theoretical perspectives. And I outline the implications of this return for those political advisors – bureaucratic and public service officials – tasked with ‘speaking truth to power’.

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Stuart Weierter

For each publication incorporated into the thesis in lieu of a Chapter, provide all of the requested details and signatures required Details of publication #1: An earlier version of this thesis was submitted to Lexington Books for publication as a monograph in the month of May, 2019. Full title: Executing Truth: Public Policy and the Threat of Social Science Authors: Stuart Weierter Journal or book name: Publisher: Lexington Books Volume/page numbers: n.a. Date accepted/ published: May 2019 Status Published X Accepted and In In progress press (submitted) The Candidate’s Contribution to the Work Apart from guidance provided by supervisors, the candidate was the sole author of the work. Location of the work in the thesis and/or how the work is incorporated in the thesis: A draft of the thesis composed this work. PRIMARY SUPERVISOR’S DECLARATION I declare that: • the information above is accurate • this has been discussed with the PGC and it is agreed that this publication can be included in this thesis in lieu of a Chapter • All of the co-authors of the publication have reviewed the above information and have agreed to its veracity by signing a ‘Co-Author Authorisation’ form. Primary Supervisor’s name Primary Supervisor’s signature Date (dd/mm/yy)

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Thanks to Miguel Vatter for his sharp and probing criticism, to Geoffrey Levey for his guidance and finessing, and to Melanie White for her social theory insights. I am ever so fortunate to have had these three as critical companions.

Love to my wife Ivana – thanks for putting up with my many mental absences. And to my son Elliot, words are not nearly enough.

CONTENTS

Acknowledgements ...... i Chapter 1: Introduction ...... 1 The Root Problem ...... 6 What’s New? ...... 10 Significant Others versus My Approach ...... 18 Structure of the Thesis...... 25 Chapter 2: Truth, Politics, and Public Policy...... 34 According to the Evidence ...... 34 The Political Limits of Social Science ...... 42 Overcoming Self-Interest or Politics ...... 43 Limiting Rationality ...... 47 Normative Judgement ...... 48 Rational Interpretations ...... 50 Overcoming Rationality ...... 58 Concluding Comment ...... 67 Chapter 3: Harold Lasswell and the Possibility of Political Science ...... 72 Introducing Lasswell ...... 74 Policy Sciences ...... 77 Politics and Non-Politics ...... 80 Technique ...... 86 Truth and Convention...... 90 Symbols ...... 95 Conclusion ...... 101 Chapter 4: John Dewey’s Politics of Poetic Craftsmanship ...... 105 A Pragmatic Approach ...... 107 Poetic Nature ...... 110 Craftsmanship ...... 117 Ends-In-View ...... 120 Great Community ...... 125 Craftsmanship and Community ...... 129 What Remains ...... 135 Conclusion ...... 136 Chapter 5: Rationality in Action: Max Weber’s Political Science ...... 140 A Brief Discussion of Hermeneutics ...... 143 Returning to Weber ...... 157 Weber and his Method ...... 160 Ideal-types and the Social Scientist ...... 175 Personality ...... 180 Political Personality ...... 187 Conclusion: False Politics ...... 192 Chapter 6: Hegel’s Resolution ...... 197 The Importance of Hegel ...... 204 The Philosophy of Right ...... 211 Hegel’s Science of Logic ...... 222 The State and Science ...... 227 What Must We Hold? ...... 234 Conclusion: What Does it Mean to Give Up the Logic? ...... 238 Chapter 7: Self-Knowledge and the Everyday ...... 243 What’s the Point? ...... 243 Without Self-Knowledge ...... 244 Back to the Beginning ...... 254 An Everyday Return ...... 255 Conclusion ...... 266 Chapter 8: Conclusion – Theory in Practice ...... 269 State Execution ...... 275 An Educational Reorientation ...... 284 References ...... 287

CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION

A senior judge believes innocent people may have been jailed because too much faith has been placed in forensic techniques that have been proved to be flawed. Justice Chris Maxwell, President of the Victorian Court of Appeal, said there was little proof that forensic techniques including gunshot analysis, footprint analysis, hair comparison and bite mark comparison could reliably identify criminals. He called on governments around Australia to urgently change the law… - Report in The Sydney Morning Herald, 1 September 20191

Many observers are concerned that these ideologies do not respect democratic norms and conventions. Some suggest that they reflect a ‘post-truth’ politics that draws on emotion instead of expertise and evidence. - Australian Senate Legal and Constitutional Affairs References Committee, August 20192

This thesis is concerned with the relationship between science and the state and, in particular, with the increasing reliance of the state on social science in discharging its duties. I argue that the inherent limitations of social scientific knowledge are poorly understood by social scientists and state officials alike. I locate the fundamental problem in the distinction between truth and politics and identify universal bureaucracy as the malaise that this problem has bequeathed. After considering some of the most celebrated attempts by philosophers and social scientists to transcend this problem, I suggest and defend my own approach to it, which

I find in the ‘everyday’.

The conundrum arising from the relation of truth to politics is perennial, and remains so long as we desire to know what we are doing, and to know what we are saying. To know what we are doing and saying is desirable only if there is already some distinction between knowing and not-knowing, between true and false, as well as some doubt about the appearance of this distinction. To doubt is crucial, for without doubt we do not desire to seek out the distinction

1 Liam Mannix, ‘Top judge worried forensic evidence putting innocent people behind bars’, Sydney Morning Herald, 1 September 2019. 2 Australian Senate Legal and Constitutional Affairs References Committee, Inquiry into nationhood, national identity and democracy: Discussion paper (Canberra: Australian Senate, 2019).

between true and false; as, for example, under the doubtless knowing of things divinely revealed. The absence of doubt, likewise, is crucial: the defining mark of truth is what we hold to be doubtless. It follows that doubt is ever present if we are not gods, could not know as gods, nor know by the gods. We might say then that the distinction between true and false is ultimately a matter of comprehensiveness, bound by a beginning which arises in and from doubt, and an end revealed as doubtless (or the absolute fulfilment of truth-seeking).

Of one with doubting is the question of politics. Of course, prior to the question of politics arising (becoming doubtful) the political things just are – revealed not as political as such, but as divine or ancestral. Authority is derived not from the present-day actions of men and women, in other words, but from the gods or ancestors. The political things – our way of life, our laws, our customs – become questionable at the moment we doubt and thereby desire to seek the truth. Do we live well, or do others? What is the nature of the authorities under which we live? What is natural? In becoming questionable these things – norms, laws, our way of life together – do not become political simply. For these ‘political’ things existed before we doubted their nature; and in doubting, the nature of ‘political’ things change. In doubting ‘political’ things, in bringing them under our purview, they invite us to action. They become political in the decisive sense; which is to say questionable under the light of truth, and thereby reformable. The reformation of politics by way of truth is, though, itself a political endeavour insofar as it presupposes a certain orientation towards truth and the questionable nature of politics. This in turn is guided by how we are orientated to the question of truth, and how subsequently it might be put to work politically. These tangled orientations do not obviously exclude – indeed they invite – a unified response, or a resolution. In our day, this resolution is evident in the institutions through which the partiality of politics is reformed under the guidance of our way of truth-seeking.

I note the obvious fact that our institutions of truth-seeking (i.e., universities) and our state bureaucracies are moving ever closer. The former, in seeking to be useful or relevant, panders to the latter, which seeks the means to fulfil its functions impartially. This relationship is not a mere accident; and I will argue that it is founded on a particular resolution of the puzzle thrown up by politics and truth. This resolution is limited. In what way it is limited I explore by seeking an ever more comprehensive understanding, critical and progressive, but remaining within the realm presupposed already by the resolution. It is this foundation which must be critiqued to expose the inadequacies of what is built upon it.

According to Manent (2013: 8), the modern state monopolises,

by producing a command that is independent of every opinion, including and

above all religious opinion, a command that authorizes and prohibits opinions

according to its sovereign decision. The modern State, still uncertain of its

strength, at first joined to itself a religious opinion or word, which was the State

religion. Once it had attained its full strength, it raised itself above every word; it

was truly without a word of its own. It became the “neutral,” “agnostic,” “secular”

State that we know.

Under a similar spirit, the modern university arose with the liberation of philosophy from the authority of theology (Őstling 2018: 26-27). Wilhelm von Humboldt is generally considered the forefather of the modern university.3 Under his guidance, universities were transformed from institutions fixed in the medieval tradition to ones providing an education in pursuit of self-determination, character building, and self-cultivation (Bildung). In so doing, philosophy rather than theology came to undergird the independence of the university, and research in pursuit of self-cultivation was elevated (Őstling 2018: 26). Though the German research

3 Humboldt (1767-1835) was, amongst other things, a senior official in the Prussian ministry of the interior.

university was a state institution, and although academics were state employees, Humboldt imagined the ideal university as independent of the state. This feature was more institutional demarcation than categorical difference. Academics would be something like the self- directing mind, while civil servants would be the enlightened hands of the state (see Őstling

2018: 39, 187). Each would bow only to the freedom presupposed by universal reason.

The research university model spread far beyond Germany (see Menand, Reitter, and

Wellmon 2017: 4). It also spread well beyond Humboldt’s ideal. Over time, with the eclipse of philosophy as a unified science by the plurality of sciences, the ideal of self-cultivation was in turn supplanted by the desire to cultivate things informed by research. Fundamental science generated the ‘applied sciences’, that is, applied to what would have been otherwise encountered by the (merely) self-cultivated.

Theory remains (as it must) a distinguishing feature of these new sciences, but it needs be made practical, which is to say ‘relevant’ (see e.g., Gunnell 2006: 780). A consequence of this practical turn is that the institutional demarcation between the state and universities (both public and private) erodes. While the public university always depended on state funding, the state has come to rely on university produced knowledge. As a prominent social scientist has it:

Solution-oriented social science makes solving problems the object of social

science, and working on other people’s problems becomes the key driver of the

problems to be solved. These solutions may be of relevance for everyday citizens

or actors working in government, non-profits, or for-profits...If we focus more

extensively on solution-oriented social science, we will increase the reach of the

social sciences, and we will create social science that is exciting, meaningful and

transformative (Western 2016).

As I mentioned previously, my immediate concern in this thesis is with the ever-closer relationship of the state bureaucracy and university research, and the flow-on of this relationship to advice provided to our elected representatives. Consider that nowadays most governments have ‘nudge’ units (see OECD 2017), signalling their aspiration for a soft politics rooted in behavioural economics. Consider also that ‘evidence-based’ policy is the current fad, along with ‘co-design’. Under the latter, the public is invited to play a part in fashioning what was in the past a state responsibility. As a broad aim, who would argue against ‘evidence-based’ policy? Knowledge trumps ignorance, always. But the relationship between state bureaucracy and universities also requires us to understand the rightful limits of science in relation to policy-making.

These limits first show themselves as a lack of self-awareness. A standard example is the unrecognised value-ladenness and political partiality of positivist social science (see e.g.,

Crick 1959; Strauss 1962; and Surkin and Wolfe 1970). In seeking out impartial rules for decision-making and action, the positive social sciences presume they rise above the political partiality of others. Whereas others may suffer from explicit or unconscious biases, the social scientist supposedly offers an impartial or more universal form of reasoning and judgement.

It could be argued that social scientists represent the political interests and appetites of their own class. However, since the social scientist seeks to remain impartial (or seeks a political regime guided by evidence-based research and what is revealed scientifically), even these kinds of political bias must be recognised and overcome. Thus, in the latter twentieth century, social scientific inquiry broadened and became more politically sensitive and self-aware.

Positivist forms of inquiry were joined by more critical interpretivist and idiographic methods of inquiry. The trouble is that in seeking to overcome political partiality by way of an ongoing refinement of method – and thereby better expose opinion rooted in ‘bias’,

‘ideology’, ‘false consciousness’ and so on – the state and science become only more tightly

unified. There is simply added, as it were, ever more bolts to what Max Weber describes as

‘the iron cage of bureaucracy’.

The Root Problem

The root problem, as I am contending, is a matter of comprehensiveness. Consider the reasons why we might take up or follow social science. For example, it: (1) provides practical solutions to intractable problems; (2) promises a politically neutral perspective or overarching regime; (3) clarifies and brings to the fore the deeper meaning-structures of social life; (4) exposes and liberates us (and others) from preconceived notions; (5) reveals the nature of knowledge itself. These examples highlight a broad range of enthusiasms, from the pragmatic optimism of the scientific solution-giver to the more contemplative desire to grasp objectively the fount of social and political wisdom. They also highlight a movement from political subservience to political liberation. Closest to political subservience is the social scientist who, by way of quantitative or qualitative methods, enables the state to more efficiently realise its ostensible universal aims (Mills 2000). On the other hand, tending toward political liberation is the sociologist of knowledge, who seeks to reform our understanding of political life (see e.g., Mannheim 1960). Yet, even in the case of a science that is politically subservient, insofar as it aspires to be useful, we cannot say that the truth is for it irrelevant.

Social science is never purely a means or solely a technical endeavour, as it brings to the table its own understanding of political goods – what is just, decent, desirable etc. In a related fashion, as a child of modern science in general, the social sciences hold that political life might be refashioned in ways not suggested by, or revealed simply as, our everyday

(mis)understandings. On this score, we might look to the sociologist of knowledge to draw out what is implicit in the motivations of the social scientific problem-solver. For the quest to

be ‘useful’ or ‘relevant’ finds its philosophical authority in more comprehensive theories of knowledge. As Karl Mannheim (1960: 262) observes,

there exists a fundamental although not readily apparent nexus between

epistemology, the dominant forms of knowing, and the general social intellectual

situation of a time. In this manner the sociology of knowledge at a given point,

through its analysis by means of the particularizing method, also penetrates into

the realm of epistemology where it resolves the possible conflict among the

various epistemologies by conceiving of each as the theoretical substructure

appropriate merely to a given form of knowledge.

As I will argue in this thesis, the methods employed by the social sciences – from statistical analysis and its generation of law-like models and empirical generalisations to hermeneutic and interpretative inquiry and its production of ‘thick’ narratives – are rooted in the same distinction between the ‘political’ and the ‘true’. The political remains the realm of self- interest. The true is revealed by way of contrast to the political and is that which transcends the political. It is important to note that theoretical construction cannot claim for itself the title of ‘truth’, rather, it wears the lesser crowns of the ‘hypothetical’ or the ‘useful’. Digging deeper, we discover that if the ‘true’ is not a construction of experience (since that remains merely our construction), then ‘truth’ must be what necessarily orientates us in a particular way towards experience.

Of help here is that towering figure of modern philosophy, Immanuel Kant. Kant argues that the touchstone of truth is what makes human experience possible. Knowledge which has its source in what is prior to experience Kant refers to as a priori (Kant 2003: 2). A priori judgements are distinguished from empirical-based judgements because they are necessary and universal (Kant 2003: 3). Mathematics is the archetypal a priori knowledge (Kant 2003:

5). Mathematics is not thought of as a tool or as a human construction but that which is fundamental to our understanding of the distinction between the true and the false.

Mathematics is incontrovertible. It is also objective and not merely a self-referencing system of our own making. It is built into reality as it were.

A mathematical judgement is therefore more than merely a logical relation and more than merely a universe of symbols. Rather, we reveal something of the structure of experience when we think mathematically. For Kant, this structure involves the distinction between analytic and synthetic judgements. By analytic, Kant means any judgement which does not move beyond an already accepted definition – such as ‘all triangles have three sides’. In contrast, only a synthetic judgement passes as knowledge, for only by such a judgement do we move beyond what we already know. For Kant, mathematics (here including arithmetic and geometry) is synthetic because it is more than mere logical inference. If it was merely analytic, it would do no more than describe the structure of the symbolic, and might be understood irrespective of experience, as pure logical relations. Kant questions this. The addition of one thing to another is explicable only spatially. The addition of two to three is founded on spatial or visual representation and not on logical analysis. In thinking visually, we arrive at an answer which was not suggested by the initial pairing of two and three. We must in some way intuit the addition, and in intuiting we bring into play the most fundamental structures of experience, that of space and time (Kant 1988: 36).

As mathematics is the touchstone of truth, so too are space and time the limits of what can be known by us. Mathematical judgements, in contrast to empirical judgements, are necessary

(or a priori). And the intuitions which accompany them, pure and a priori, are the basis of the empirical as revealed to us. The intuition is of space and time (see Kant 1988: 36). Intuition is primary on both counts, then, and mathematics is for Kant the paradigm of an intuition which

is not itself just a product of experience (which, if it were, would make truth radically contingent, or no different to any other perspective). As Kant (2003: 21) says on intuition:

In whatever mode, or by whatsoever means, our knowledge may relate to objects,

it is at least quite clear, that the only manner in which it immediately relates to

them, is by means of an intuition...But an intuition can take place only insofar as

an object is given to us.

How objects are given to us truly is the crux of the matter. Kant follows the paradigm of mathematics by holding that only the necessary and the universal, or space and time, are true.

These structure sensory experience, and, in turn, make mathematics and physics possible (as objectively real). Beyond this, human beings are radically free (see e.g., Kant’s (1988: 55) distinction between ‘judgements of experience’ and ‘judgements of perspective’). It follows that moral laws (Kant’s categorical imperative) and scientific laws (as theoretical construction and the methods which accompany them) are legitimate only insofar as they emulate the truth as revealed by the possibility of mathematics. That is to say, laws approach the truth only if universal (or objective, politically impartial, not subject to a partial perspective etc.), and only if they are rationally defensible as such.

We still live under the shadow of the Kantian colossus. The social sciences are plainly at home in this political cosmos. As I argue, the positive social sciences seek and find political legitimacy with their promise of universal (or politically impartial) laws. The sociologist of knowledge who would render knowledge a by-product of universal laws of experience (e.g.,

Mannheim 1960: 146) is also at home in this landscape. So are the more critical social sciences insofar as their criticisms of the law-like or nomological ambitions of the positive social sciences are made against the backdrop of Kant’s demarcation of universal mathematical truth and human freedom (see Rosen 1987: 19-49).

What’s New?

One might argue that social scientists have always sought to be useful, and by way of state tutelage, no less. Think of Auguste Comte’s ‘religion of humanity’, for example, or even earlier the ‘cult of reason’, established during the French Revolution. We might also look to

Jeremy Bentham’s utilitarian philosophy, as well as to the eugenics movement and its entanglement in the development of modern inferential statistics, which drew from jurisprudence, mathematics, and biology (the work of Francis Galton and Karl Pearson comes to mind). Each of these had as its goal social reform. But now, it would seem, we have moved on. Many of these examples strike us as naive, ill-conceived, if not downright tyrannical. At its worst, we now know that the scientific reformation of society undergirded an equally blunt and brutal politics.

Social science nowadays is more ‘critical’, more ‘psychological’ and, in many cases, more

‘inward’ or self-aware. With this comes a different view of itself, as well as of its subjects.

Consider the difference between eugenics and social psychology, for example, or how utilitarianism differs from symbolic interactionism. Along with these ‘theoretical’ differences we might ponder ‘methodological’ differences. Compare the obtuseness of traditional inferential statistics – such as linear regression – with the self-referencing impetus of

Bayesian statistical models, such as those underlying theories of ‘active inference’.4 All in all, as disciplines which must show themselves to be publicly worthwhile and non-trivial (if not bearers of the truth, simply), the social sciences enter the public realm aware of what is

4 See for example Friston et al. (2013: 2) who state that their ‘basic idea is that behavior can be cast as inference: in other words, action, and perception are integral parts of the same inferential process and one only makes sense in light of the other...This idea has been formalized recently as minimizing a variational free energy bound on Bayesian model evidence – to provide a seamless link between occupying a limited number of attracting states and Bayesian inference about the causes of sensory input...In the context of behavior, we suppose that inference underlies a sense of agency. A corollary of this perspective is that agents must perform some form of active Bayesian inference. Bayesian inference can be approximate or exact, where exact inference is rendered tractable by making plausible assumptions about the approximate form of probabilistic representations – representations that are used to predict responses to changes in the sensorium’ [italics in original].

politically palatable, now, given what they understand of themselves either via the psyche

(following psychology) or as a more critical reflection of themselves following some theory of knowledge. One might say that they have become more like social sciences, more politically astute, and not just (as with the eugenicists and utilitarians, for example) a natural or legal science to be applied politically.

This brings to the fore the problem of relevance and legitimacy, a problem subtler and more confounding than that faced by the eugenicists, for example. The movement from eugenics to social psychology is not merely a matter of expanding the effectiveness, or of increasing the power, of social science – for one might say that eugenics is much more powerful than social psychology. Rather, the movement is suggestive of a greater self-awareness and self- understanding. This is unsurprising, as social scientists must reckon themselves as occupied in the business of truth-telling. As a form of truth-telling, this movement (of self- understanding) is best described as one of an internal critique, following what is, or might be, understood of ourselves.

To put this in context, consider the period of the Vietnam War, a time when social sciences were, like never before, put to practical use, and those that were not were called upon to do so. For example, although psychological testing had been used in previous wars, it was during the Vietnam War that the social sciences hit their stride. Psychologists, sociologists, anthropologists, and political scientists all played major roles behind the scenes, bringing their academic expertise to bear on Department of Defence policies (see Rohde 2013). And following the 1961 appointment of Robert McNamara as U.S. Defence Secretary, formerly a professor of the Harvard Business School, emerging computer power was harnessed to statistically analyse datasets for the purposes of ‘improving’ military decision-making (see

Harrison 1988). As Rohde (2009; 2013) points out, though, this was not without its critics.

Indeed, as it began to emerge how far the social sciences had been implicated in the war –

pursued in the name of freedom, democracy, and American values – it began to dawn on some that these social scientists had been naive, insufficiently critical, and untrue to themselves. They were ideological lackeys.

It is not surprising that the political sciences came up for particularly sharp criticism. If political naivety should have been avoided, it should have been avoided by those who must

(by the terms of their science) claim to see politics more clearly than others. This was not just an argument about the character of political scientists, then, but about what, exactly, political science is. If merely a scientific discipline, along the lines of natural science, if ‘value-free’, then it might be put to use for any political position whatsoever. It would be apolitical, in other words. Or, not master of its own domain. Indeed, it could not even live up to the promise of the eugenicists, who, in not considering politicised life need not have deferred to it.

Enlightening is Bay’s (1965: 39) argument that what was needed was not more ‘value-free’ research but ‘an intellectually more defensible and a politically more responsible theoretical framework for guiding and interpreting...empirical work; a theory that would give more meaning to...research, even at the expense of reducing its conceptual and operational neatness.’ Political responsibility for Bay boiled down to the distinction between the satisfaction of idiosyncratic needs and the satisfaction of universal needs. His was an argument which deferred to a universal psychology, as it were (he deferred to the freedom implied in Maslow’s hierarchy of needs), in order to derive a more intellectually defensible position and a more politically palatable one. Political naivety was, thereby, avoided with a greater understanding of human being. Intellectual defensibility was, likewise, fortified insofar as the defence of universal needs was understood to be the best public defence. As

Easton (1969: 1060) put it: ‘Reform becomes inseparable from knowledge.’ And by ‘reform’

Easton meant under the light of the universal or ‘real’ needs of humanity.

Here we can see that the problem of political entanglement is resolved by way of comprehensiveness, a movement which itself throws up ever deeper problems of entanglement. Consider that with the movement from a biological account of humanity to some ‘value-free’ account of human behaviour social scientists find themselves personally implicated in their science. Such an implication is not faced by the eugenicist. Of course, the eugenicist is himself the object of his own science, as it were, being himself a genetic creature. But he cannot be the subject. Not being the subject of his genes, he is not personally implicated (by the strict terms of his science). Turning to the behavioural and psychological sciences, by contrast, the genesis (or subject) of behaviour cannot be so easily distinguished from the science of behaviour. If not reduced to biology, the genesis of the psyche is unearthed by sociology or anthropology (and the genesis of anthropos unearthed as human history). As such, the science of behaviour is merely a subset of some more expansive science, of which the social scientist is him or herself a subject. Entangled thus, in seeking a firmer foundation for this science, the ground is forever slipping away. It is not surprising, then, that recourse was made to something like the ‘universal needs’ of humanity. As universal (or foundational), these needs put a stop to the infinite regress associated with social science’s entanglement in the genesis of behaviour. In overcoming this entanglement, in turning to the ‘real’ foundation of behaviour, the reformation of (false) behaviour comes to the fore.

Of course, here we enter broader territory insofar as any defence must stand before the judgement of the (abstract) public. From this perspective, the relevance of research is only legitimated politically if it truly does serve universal needs or values. But how are these determined? Following Bay and Easton (from above) these universal needs are revealed scientifically. The problem of ideological lackey-ism has not been resolved, then, but merely pushed one step back: not now American patriots, but scientific partisans. In order to attain

legitimacy once again a couple of avenues are available: social science might show itself as having dropped any political pretensions (such as ‘hidden’ universal values) and become truly and universally useful, or it might attempt a more thorough explication of its own foundations.

In the former we return to a wholly pragmatic science, having ditched any theoretical (or ideal) pretensions such as ‘universal needs’. And following psychology (not biology, as did the eugenicists), political pretensions are recognised and limited by way of some understanding of agency – think here of the concerns around self-determination which occupy behavioural economists (a fusion of social psychology and economics) (e.g., Thaler and Sunstein 2008). The guiding concern is ‘what works’, within limits. Within these limits, practice must follow directly in the footsteps of empirically validated, utilitarian-styled, theory.

In the latter, in encompassing also political things, the aim is more comprehensive. I draw on

Dowding’s (2016) well-received book on the philosophy and methods of political science as an example. Where the behavioural economists would ask only one type of question – ‘what works?’ – Dowding moves further afield, arguing that depending on what questions we are asking, certain social scientific methods will present themselves as more suitable and others not. His aim still is explanation or, better yet, prediction, but not simply according to instrumental rationality (2016: 43-52). The legitimacy of his political program is not revealed directly in its immediate relevance, then, but arises also by way of its truth (e.g., 2016: 245).

Truth here is understood as akin to a revealing of the deepest structures of explanation (2016:

247-250). In turning to philosophy (understood by him as a theoretical account, epitomised by metaphysics – i.e., ontology and epistemology – and exemplified as Darwinian evolution – see 2016: 5, 31), explanation would rise to the reach of comprehensiveness, which, in turn,

would vouchsafe for discernment (e.g., 2016: 7, 30, 48).5 Here we find political science striving to be both relevant and comprehensive or, to put it another way, both useful and aware of what it is doing. What underlies this is a theory of knowledge, insofar as we only come to know, to really know, by empirically distinguishing necessary truths from the contingent (e.g., 2016: 29, 43, 52).

If these necessary truths are exemplary, and if experience is not fully an exemplification of these truths, because we ourselves interpret the world in various ways, it makes sense that discernment would be sought with a matching of methods to research question. For what we are after in this case is the closest approximation to necessity, given the form of the question

(law-like or not) arising from the problem we find before us. In each case, though, the answer remains theoretical: what we are seeking are guiding paradigms or models, or representations of the world which bring to the fore the most enduring connections, associations, or identities.

As an account limited to theory, we might argue that, politically, this is merely an idiosyncratic perspective – the politics of a philosophy of political science is incommensurable with a philosophy of political science. This is problematic, though, only if the political realm is more comprehensive, and so potentially more exemplary of the truth, than the scientific. If not, and this is the path followed by Dowding, we might hold that the political is revealed by, or simply finds its perfection in, the philosophical. Indeed, taking

Dowding’s path, we discover that the politics of a philosophy of political science is simply equivalent to that science which makes possible such a philosophy. As Dowding (2017: 228) puts it:

5 Dowding (2016: 214) says that ‘I think it would be unfortunate if political science departments were to abandon political philosophy to the philosophy departments, because I think moral theory without political nous [i.e., political science] tends towards the irrelevant, and political science should remain normatively and philosophically inclined even as it becomes more technical and empirical.’

My interest in the history of ideas is driven by what others in the past thought, and

by the way they thought, but because there is so much that they could not know I

am not as convinced as many that we can learn much directly from them. What

we can learn is how our words today need to take on new meanings from what our

forebears meant by them because we know so much more.

Following Dowding, it is fair to say that what we know, and what those from the past could not have known, is theoretical (i.e., explanation by way of necessity). The philosophy of political and social science – which only now is possible – secures the political legitimacy of social science, so it follows, since only by way of such a philosophy do we know that we have left our prejudices behind. We know more now, in our age, because of our own predilection for explanation (or theory) over practice. We surpass thinkers of the past because they could not have understood what they were doing. They were creatures of history. They were unable to rise above history because they were still on the way to discovering what things are. They were hoodwinked still by appearances. Enquiring into opinions about things, for example, they remained still deceived by what things mean (culturally bound as they were

– see Dowding 2016: 221). The discoveries which made this transcendence of history (or of appearance) possible were – following this line of thought – of a universal nature, insofar as these discoveries might hold for all political things whatsoever (Dowding 2016: 221).

Moving to a more analytical, discrete or detached account of things, we might – so it goes – discover the essential make-up of all things. This would, so it follows, hold good across all times and places, or as close to this as we can get.

Still, at the broader level of politics, do we not encounter here a petitio principii? At this level, is not our assumption of political legitimacy too quickly secured? For doesn’t our theory of knowledge – a theory which we must have inherited, by this account – lead us already to limit how and what we might know? And in so doing, in presuming to know what

knowing is – namely, theoretical – don’t we foreclose too soon on the question of politics and truth? For this question arises for us not in theory, as it were, but in practice. Think of the difference between a well-crafted military operation plan, and the reason for its crafting. Only in ‘doing’ might we discover our own theory’s broader significance. Here by ‘doing’ I don’t mean those practices which follow from theory, such as putting a plan into action, but, rather, the more intimate or pre-theoretical practice associated with constructing plans.6 In opening this question (of truth and politics) we return to shakier ground. For if universal theory is our measure of rationality, if this is the only true value, or the resolution of the problem of political legitimacy, then the problem of politics as it arises in practice is solved only because practice disappears (except as method or what, in the end, is of mere academic, or idiosyncratic, interest – see Dowding 2016: 245).

Returning to practice, and despite all the talk of research methods matching research questions, in the world of public or social policy the experimental method (and associated behaviouralist social science) is king, simply because only it, so it is held, provides a definitive answer to the question of ‘what to do?’ It provides – so it is assumed – a ubiquitous or universal knowledge, with ample room left on the edges for political guidance. (As, in practice, those questions which cannot be answered definitively are, so it is held, matters for political debate, and such debates draw on ‘evidence’ not ‘theory’ to triumph over the opposition.) What is discovered in Canada might be applied in Australia, and this straightforwardly, by way of what might be easily manipulated (i.e., the independent variable). It makes sense that ‘nudging’, based on behavioural economics, should be so popular. It draws not on arguments about the foundations of social science, but on ‘what works.’ Indeed, applied social science in general – psychology, sociology, economics,

6 This distinction between facts and values – to put it crudely – Dowding (2016: 250) describes by way of the difference between political science and political philosophy. This is a distinction which, for Dowding, does not move beyond the theoretical.

criminology – is popular, because it offers solutions. Here the experimental method is the

‘gold standard’ simply because it would appear to offer a universal solution no matter the political context. And here the rise of ‘big data’, for example, expands the scope of this logic, insofar as with it we gain the statistical ‘power’ to explore even the most peripheral of associations.7

What is new, then, is that we have arrived at a deep problem regarding politics and truth, a problem which might be addressed or ignored. If ignored the problem remains. If addressed theoretically, the problem is buried. This problem, I believe, calls out for a more comprehensive view or, as I am suggesting, consideration of both practice and theory. In concrete terms, this is the point at which theory is put to work by those who provide political advice. My concern is not then with a philosophy of social science nor with the methods of social science. I aim for comprehensiveness in theory and practice.

Significant Others versus My Approach

There is a vast literature on the aims, scope and methods of the social sciences. For present purposes, it may be helpful to delineate my inquiry from three notable interventions, one each from political science, philosophy, and sociology: David Ricci’s The Tragedy of Political

Science (1984), Alasdair MacIntyre’s After Virtue (1984), and Charles Wright Mills’ classic

The Sociological Imagination (2000 [1959]).

Ricci offers a fine survey of the dangers of reducing political life to a positive science, such as behaviouralism. He argues that the appropriate art of politics is to be found in

7 As an alternative we might cite the work associated with ‘developmental economics’; for example, the work of Martha Nussbaum and Amartya Sen (see Nussbaum 2011). Hasn’t this been taken up by the state as much as the more behaviourist oriented social sciences? This is true to a point. For certainly the general spirit of Nussbaum and Sen’s capability approach aligns already with the underlying ethos of much liberal public policy (not surprisingly their work has found traction in those countries without a liberal tradition – India, for example). Where this is left behind is in practice, as it were. For translating the broad ‘Aristotelian’ approach of theirs into practice brings us back to what the sociologists describe already as ‘well-being’. And this comes with its own practical research agenda, replete with empirically oriented ‘indicators’ and methods of measurement.

statesmanship rather than in science. Whereas the political and social sciences are narrowly focused and overly technical, the art of statesmanship draws on the broad experience and judgments of the great thinkers of the Western political tradition. As Ricci (1984: 317) puts it, ‘What must be sought, in the end, is a personal rather than collective understanding of politics, with due appreciation for the sense of mystery, glory, tragedy, leadership, courage, decency, and wickedness that goes under the name of wisdom.’ I concur. In Ricci’s terms, my thesis explores the tragedy of political wisdom.

For MacIntyre (1984), the contemporary resolution to the problem of truth and politics arises out of forgetfulness. He imagines a situation in which science – including its tools, techniques, and practices – had once a unified meaning. Following the erasure of science by a

‘no-nothing’ politics it re-emerges, devoid of its original significance. This situation,

MacIntyre points out, would result in the rise of irreconcilable viewpoints, mistaken by those who inhabit this world as the one-time reality of science. From this imagined world

MacIntyre draws a parallel with the reality of our contemporary moral-political world. We have forgotten or lost the narrative unity of the virtues, a unity which would allow us to judge those disparate moral claims which appear to us, now, as incommensurable. Crucially, this narrative unity was lost with the rise of social science, and coterminous with this rise was our forgetting. To save ourselves from a radical relativism, MacIntyre argues, we must recover what was lost.

I agree with MacIntyre’s diagnosis of the contemporary situation but I do not follow him in his recovery. That is because MacIntyre grounds the virtues in practice and tradition and leaves untouched the question of truth and the already problematic notion (from my perspective) of a virtuous unity. MacIntyre is, I think, too quick in passing over the tragedy of political life. To be fair, such a blind spot is unsurprising given that he is concerned with virtue or practical wisdom and not theoretical wisdom. Nevertheless, it means that

MacIntyre’s account does not address the essential problem, as I see it. His account requires that we equate truth with a tradition. While this might be politically prudent, the tragedy is buried and goes unnoticed. The desire for truth remains. The tragedy, as I see it and will argue, is revealed only with some understanding of what is questionable about ourselves.

In a more optimistic spirit, Mills’ The Sociological Imagination (2000) seeks to revive a broader sociological enterprise against the increasingly abstract nature of modern sociology.

As he sees it, sociology has found itself split between the abstruse heights of ‘grand theory’ on the one hand, and an encroaching technophilia, in the form of ‘abstract empiricism’, on the other. Each leaves behind the world of politics. By rising above politics, grand theory tends toward empty verbiage. And abstract empiricism, by placing itself beneath politics, becomes the handmaiden of vested interests, tending thereby toward the aridity of bureaucratic process. Playing the part of a mere functionary, such an approach has no interests of its own other than method (Mills 2000: 95-96). Defending a sociology broader in scope, Mills would return us to the grand issues which occupied the founders of sociology. All sociologists equate truth with fact (2000: 178), but only those who approach facts with a view to what is common to all societies – as is revealed according to Mills by way of biographical and historical analysis – are in a position to grasp the predicament of their own time. Max Weber is a prime example (Mills 2000: 6).

Moreover, as Mills understands it, since we find ourselves politically in an age which values facts, the sociologist is necessarily pushed to the fore. Surpassing the poets, authors of fiction, and philosophers, he or she is a better fit with the democratic times than they (2000: 17).

Politically, then, Mills tends towards the pragmatic. In the spirit of that great American pragmatist, Dewey, his aim is to ‘help build and to strengthen self-cultivating publics’ (2000:

186). For only then, ‘might society be reasonable and free’ (2000: 186). In ‘practising the politics of truth’, Mills (2000: 178) combines a factual understanding with a political

aspiration defined by this understanding. The political work of social scientists is, then, ‘to clarify the ideal of freedom and the ideal of reason. If human reason is to play a larger and more explicit role in the making of history, social scientists must surely be among its major carriers’ (2000: 179). The social scientist might clarify the ideals of freedom and reason by studying history in order to rise above it (2000: 184). He or she might then be in a position to identify those with the potential to act rationally and freely, and thus those with the power to alter the ‘structure’ of ‘society’. The social scientist educates such people by alerting them to the consequences of their actions (2000: 185). For others, the social scientist shows how their personal problems are in truth social problems, thereby paving the way for the resolution of these problems with a modification of ‘social structure’ (Mills 2000: 187).

There is some similarity here with MacIntyre’s critique of contemporary social science insofar as what is called for is a return to a broader, more unified understanding. The difference between the two thinkers is, however, significant. Where MacIntyre would return us to the lost unity of practical virtue, rooted in a philosophic tradition, Mills, in equating virtuous practice with rational (scientific) thought, would liberate us from ‘freedom-limiting’ traditions, understood in terms of social structure. We might characterise these differences as a meeting of the conservative and the progressive. How to judge one against the other? This question is important; for without posing to ourselves this question we risk reducing this confrontation to mere politics.

Underlying a merely political understanding is the assumption that there is no overarching vantage point from which to judge. By contrast, in order to make a more than subjective judgement, either we must: (1) defer to some understanding of human nature, or (2) believe that a political science in the fullest sense of the term is possible; that the ambiguity, and ultimately the divided nature, of the political might be overcome scientifically. The first defence is scientific or philosophic in the broadest sense, while the second is broadly

pragmatic, and assumes that the first (‘human nature’) defence is merely a relic of times past.

As a defender of the first position we would take seriously MacIntryre’s challenge to Mills’ kind of scientific outlook. From the vantage point of the second (‘scientific’) defence, any such consideration is a product of nostalgia; it is time to practice (politically) what we now know (and might yet know) scientifically. Social science is itself political practice, rightly informed.

This second position in its applied and critical variants is what defines the world of public policy, ‘on the ground’, as practiced by state bureaucrats, and, ‘from the air’, as critiqued by public policy (state-funded) academics. On the ground, the experimental method (and kindred empirical and positivist approaches) is king because such inquiry, so it is held, provides a definitive answer to the question of ‘what to do?’ It provides, so it is assumed, a ubiquitous or universal knowledge, with ample room left on the edges for political guidance. (In practice, those questions which cannot be answered definitively are typically held to be matters for political debate, and such debates draw on ‘evidence’ not ‘theory’ to triumph over the opposition.) What is discovered in Canada might be applied in Australia, and this straightforwardly, by way of what might be easily manipulated, namely, the independent variable. It makes perfect sense that ‘nudging’, based on behavioural economics, should be so popular. It draws not on arguments about the foundations of social science, but on ‘what works’. Indeed, applied social science in general – psychology, sociology, economics, criminology – is popular because it offers solutions. Here the experimental method is the

‘gold standard’ simply because it would appear to offer a universal solution no matter the political context.

From the air, as it were, the positive social sciences are viewed as politically tainted insofar as they are unaware of their own political proclivities. Social scientific critics of applied social science have, therefore, sought to make a broader and more sophisticated integration of

social science and political life. Some draw on Harold Lasswell (whom Mills also cites favourably) in developing a broader and more politically inclusive social science (e.g.,

Torgerson 1985). In these approaches, education comes to play a larger role in the work of social scientists than it otherwise would in the work of the ‘abstract empiricists’ (see Fischer

2007). Such an education is in keeping with the tenor of these approaches as it is pragmatically oriented.

I similarly trace the pragmatic tradition in seeking to discover a more coherent or comprehensive resolution, a resolution in which human nature, and so too the perennial problem of truth and politics, is more fully confronted. My ‘method’, consonant with what I have presented thus far, is broadly dialectical, insofar as I seek the roots of the problem and its possible resolution, guided by what I take to be the most comprehensive of perspectives.

Given that truth and method are not wholly distinct affairs, it should come as no surprise that such a ‘method’ would bring us back to the everyday; for the everyday is, obviously, the most comprehensive of vistas. It is not itself merely transparent, though, as witnessed by the need to move beyond it (and hence the impetus for the political and social sciences). The everyday calls out for interpretation. Most comprehensively, such an interpretation, I argue, must account for ourselves, as ones who seek and value the truth.

I begin my enquiry with contemporary debates in the policy sciences, in which various, ever more inclusive attempts are made to integrate social science into political life. These attempts follow what is seen to be the failings of a strictly utilitarian social science, or a social science unaware of its own political limits (see e.g., Fischer 2007). What is needed, so it is argued, is a more thorough integration of social science and political life, founded on a social science aware of its own political proclivities. This collusion of science and politics is the focus of the first question of my thesis, namely: how coherent is the contemporary reformation of politics by social science?

Once the terms of this question have been exposed, so to speak, I aim to unearth a more coherent resolution to the problematic relation of truth to politics. To do this I return to the foundational thinkers. Since my concern throughout this thesis is with the nexus of truth and politics, I have chosen foundational thinkers each of whom occupies an important position in this debate. Their respective positions are taken here to exemplify an increasing degree of coherence. Specifically, I have chosen Harold Lasswell, who is recognised as the social scientific father of policy sciences; John Dewey, the philosophical father of pragmatic social science; Max Weber, a profound social scientific critic of applied social science; and Georg

Hegel, who offers, I believe, the most coherent resolution of the problem posed by truth to politics (and vice versa), cast in terms of self-knowledge. (Here we must entertain self- knowledge not as would a psychologist, but philosophically, by which we would attain scientific knowledge of ourselves as beings who know, and thereby knowing things as they are. This entails, then, scientific knowledge of the subjective and the objective, as well as their unity.)

I have chosen each of these thinkers because they offer a clear line to the applied social sciences from the philosophical foundations of a particular resolution of truth and politics.

This line covers the territory of philosophical pragmatism, as well as the social scientific critique of utilitarian social science.

Of course, there are many others on whom I could have drawn in this debate. I may have reached beyond Hegel to Hobbes, Machiavelli, and Rousseau, among others. I have not done this, for the reason that Hegel might at least be considered to be the apotheosis of the modern and radical project of rational self-determination. Indeed, Pippin (1997: 6) argues that Hegel

(along with Kant) ‘had diagnosed the real intellectual sources of a modern break with the prior religious and intellectual tradition, and...had correctly thought through the only consistent philosophical modernism.’ We might also note that Hegel, at the same time as

thinking through most thoroughly this modern self-understanding, sought also to encompass

(and regain thereby) the philosophical breadth of the ancients (such as Plato and Aristotle).

I might also have drawn in those who have been deeply critical of the state and its associated technocratic institutions. Here I might have called on Nietzsche, or Heidegger. The reason I have not, and instead chosen the more conventional Max Weber, is that in this thesis I am not proposing a political revolution (which must follow if we seriously adhere to what Nietzsche,

Heidegger and others offer us), but a more sober, less poetic (and might I say, less modern) confrontation with our current politics and political institutions. Max Weber points out our political problems with a nod to Nietzsche. That he does not step beyond Kant, however, is for my purposes significant, insofar as we still, and our political institutions remain as ever, bound by the upper limits of thought set down by Kant. Being served by these institutions, and retaining all the good things that they bequeath, while also recognising their rightful limits is what I hope to point towards in this thesis. To justify my position, I might here quote

Heidegger (1993: 333) (quoting Hőlderlin) from his The Question Concerning Technology:

‘But where the danger is, grows the saving power also.’ I disagree only insofar as I do not endorse the substitution of one danger for another.

Structure of the Thesis

In the next chapter I plumb the relevant debates in the academic public policy literature. As I show, the combatants in these debates each fall into the political genre of ‘modern political advisor’. This genre, defined by the impartiality of the judge and the prescience of the law- giver, is exemplified by those social sciences which would find their legitimacy in impartial political decisions. I take up these public policy debates with an initial assessment of those who favour the rationality of political advice, and move on to those who would reform this position but always under the guise of impartiality. I show that these debates necessarily

oscillate between the poles of theory and local political practice, each animated and united by rationality. They are, when all is said and done, interminable.

In chapter three I move on to Harold Lasswell. I take up Lasswell because, firstly, he is regarded as the founder of the policy sciences, and one of the founding fathers of modern practical political science (or politically applied social science) and, secondly, because

Lasswell attempts to ground political science in the whole of political experience. Lasswell moves under the shadow of the perennial problem, in other words. He seeks a more comprehensive perspective; this in order to reconcile the problem of truth and politics. This is a step-up from modern day practical political and social science insofar as he recognises the need for a broader defence; for without this, political science simply mirrors the ongoing fragmentation of modern political experience. Lasswell recognises the need for a unity not itself subject to the vagaries of self-interest.

Even if moving under the shadow of the perennial problem, however, Lasswell does not move beyond its contemporary resolution. Lasswell, we might say, rises to the problem in defence, but given the very fact that it is a defence, he does not address the problem directly.

Indeed, we may well argue that he can’t, since, for Lasswell, political experience is knowable only as construction. Beyond this we remain unself-conscious, or naively conventional. To rise above our naivety, following Lasswell, we must fabricate for ourselves a political whole, or the space wherein we might become conscious of ourselves and so recognise why we do what we do. Our political constructions, along with any true political experience, are especially precarious, then. Politics and science are united as consciousness, or the true creativity which transcends convention, and yet this consciousness is constructed empirically, from the conventional. Lasswell makes a compromise, therefore, between the creativity – or the irrationality – of the political character, and its realisation as modern science (with reference to the empirical method and a mathematical rationalism). This compromise is, for

Lasswell, the whole of political experience understood as symbolic and as enacted by the policy scientist – the master technician, as it were. The political whole is for Lasswell, then, rightly understood as the union of productive self-interest and modern scientific rational and empirical thought. It is a construction from the perspective of the contemporary resolution, in other words. Or, it is still yet a denial of the depths of the problem.

And so I turn to Dewey in chapter four. Dewey is a forerunner of Lasswell and popularly associated with the ‘pragmatic’ branch of philosophy. I turn to Dewey because, firstly, he breathes life back into everyday experience, and, secondly, he attempts to transform political life under the ethos of social science. In breathing life back into everyday experience, we might contrast him with Lasswell, for whom everyday experience is revealed truly as symbolic. For Lasswell, political wisdom arises, thereby, with the technical-rational reformation of the irrational. The human whole, in a similar fashion, emerges as a technical construction. By contrast, Dewey is more comprehensive: the psyche is never for him simply polymorphous. The psyche, like nature, or as natural, arises in its ends (understood by Dewey as interaction). And so he has no need to construct the whole of human political experience.

Rather, Dewey sees that our common everyday experience is inescapable, but it is not without foundation. Indeed, the foundation of everyday experience – its truth – is exposed in natural biological life. Biological life is a deeper unity than Lasswell’s symbolic synthesis, as it contains already within itself truth fashioned not just according to our own political desires, or self-interest (or what, for Lasswell, is no different to irrationality). The true political potential of the social sciences arises with the fact of this natural foundation to political life.

And so Dewey draws together the political potential of the social sciences and the natural

(i.e., biological) truth which this would emulate, in the form of craftsmanship. This is possible since for Dewey science is, as it were, a verb rather than a noun. As a project of

doing or making, Dewey solves the perennial problem of truth and politics in human fabrication, as sanctified in nature.

As is discovered, though, we strike a problem of both coordination and realisation. The citizen as amateur social scientist, as craftsman of his own ends, would desire what could only be realised in active coordination with others. Just as in the natural world, the truth arises in interaction. Absent this, though, absent the coordination found in nature, it would seem that the state (and statecraft) must bring to fruition what is desired by citizens. Given that the state is in no position to realise this – as statecraft is not the same as citizen craftsmanship – the unity cannot hold. We would find, as in our contemporary situation, frustration, arising with an unrealisable desire on one side (citizen fabrication) and the inadequacy of statecraft on the other.

Plumbing further this problem of meaning and truth, and the part played by social science, I take up the thoughts of Weber in chapter five. Weber is important to my thesis in a number of respects. Firstly, he understood full-well the problem faced by someone such as Dewey. A meaningful life cannot be realised as merely a pragmatic pursuit. Meaning, and so too politics, is much deeper than this. Secondly, he saw the problem posed by modern social science. If democratised, if playing a part in active political life, social science would tend to dissolve meaning and give rise to the ‘iron cage’ of bureaucracy, or the liberalisation of state executive action. Weber’s solution to the perennial problem is to dissociate politics from truth, bringing them together only in the form of a personal ethic – that is, the politician with a serious character and a measured outlook. This much, so I argue, is fine. The problem is that this personal construction of Weber’s is such that the social scientist’s truth can play no part (and this, as we know from policy science, will inevitably be violated). With the separation by Weber of these two realms we run into all sorts of difficulties, both practical and theoretical.

Practically, we find that state executive actors are bound by Weber to rational action, in their capacity as administrators. The ends of their action are, however, irrevocably tied to the meaning bequeathed by their political masters. Problematically, political masters my well be good or evil (for an example relevant to Weber we need only consider the Third Reich).

Theoretically, we discover that these problems are deeply hermeneutical, insofar as they are concerned with the broad question of meaning (or politics) and truth. Indeed, we run into these difficulties almost immediately, for following Weber’s understanding of political life to the letter, we ourselves are precluded from understanding Weber. In claiming that we have understood Weber as Weber (and not merely as an historical character) we transgress

Weber’s own laws on politics (meaning) and rationality (or truth) – that is, the truth shall only be revealed as what you yourself find meaningful. Weber, by separating politics and truth to address the perennial problem, leaves no room for the meaningful and truthful reality of everyday life.

In seeking to reconcile truth with politics, Dewey by way of craftsmanship and Weber by way of political personality, each would resolve the perennial problem according to how the scientist stands politically. For Dewey, the community of citizen-scientists are themselves the producers of political communities. For Weber, the scientist as scientist destroys political communities. In either case, Dewey and Weber are separated from the everyday political world in which you and I arise; if this is a world in which truth is to count as something meaningful (as worth pursuing relative to other pursuits), and meaning is not dissolved by truth (what is meaningful is not merely a fantasy). This intimacy of truth and meaning is denied by Dewey and Weber, according to their science. For Dewey, truth is wholly political or public – just as with nature, there is no private end which would trump others. What’s meaningful is the fabrication of ‘what works’. Weber is more conservative: truth is revealed as rationality, and should be distinguished from what emerges for us (historically) as

meaningful. We, by contrast, are left nonplussed. Although the perennial problem has not been disregarded, as with the policy scientists, it has been resolved in a way which would deny from the start any hope that we could disclose the truth of what we are doing. Put differently: with the collapse of truth into fabrication, or with the separation of politics and truth, we are hamstrung, caught in the nether worlds of either endless production or a knowing inactivity (or non-knowing activity).

What’s called for is a return to ourselves, in a way which confronts head-on the perennial problem. Such a return must honour the fact that what we take to be doing now, we take to be both meaningful and true. Such a confrontation is necessary if we are at all to come to terms with ourselves. Without this, we would always be playing the role of the political advisor unaware of the real significance of our own actions; either following dogmatically the prescriptions of others, or seeking truth in the denial of (or irrespective of) the most comprehensive problems. Such a return to ourselves has been undertaken, and in the most comprehensive fashion, by Hegel. Hegel, we might say, prepares the way for the resolution of politics (what we deem valuable) and truth (what is) in self-knowledge. Self-knowledge is key, as it is only now, in this modern age, that we can confidently say that we are in a position to understand as false the byways of the past. Self-knowledge is also rational. And so only now are we in a position to truly act impartially. Indeed, Hegel shows why, now, in this modern age (with the absence of a tradition), we must make this claim to self-knowledge, and, given where we have found ourselves, how we must make this claim. In this respect,

Hegel would rescue from self-ignorance the thought of a Dewey or Weber. He also solves or terminates the circular arguments of the policy scientists: only with a rationally realised self- knowledge can we be said to be truly acting with impartiality.

But, as the poet Ted Hughes writes: ‘Nothing is free. Everything has to be paid for. For every profit in one thing, payment in some other thing. For every life, a death.’ What, we wonder,

had to die for Hegel’s rational life to emerge? What must be paid in return for this audacious attempt of Hegel’s to realise human wisdom, in an age in which wisdom is everywhere contested? Firstly, in considering Hegel’s enterprise, as he puts it, to ‘think God’s thoughts before creation’ we can see what challenges Hegel sets before himself. Hegel must be able to understand our own genesis if he is to deliver on his promise. For Hegel must be able to show that he has, now, encompassed all possible positions and counter-positions. In having exhausted them, as described by his dialectical logic and as revealed phenomenologically by

Hegel in his understanding of spirit or Geist, only now might we know our own ignorance.

Indeed, in surpassing Socrates (who only claimed to know two things: his ignorance and eros), Hegel would say that our ignorance has been transformed into wisdom. The price we must pay for knowing that we have realised this rational self-knowledge is, then, our acceptance of Hegel’s dialectical logic, a logic which would claim to account for all possibilities, including its own.

This liberation, though, strikes us already as a restriction. The restriction is metaphysical, and so more broadly philosophical, as it were. Why wouldn’t we jettison this metaphysics (even if only understood as dialectical logic), while still holding on to what it promises – that is, a rational self-determination? And so we return to Dewey and the possibility of policy science, or to Weber and the impossibility of political wisdom (but the preservation of politics).

But giving up Hegel’s dialectical logic has profound consequences for what we could understand of the universal estate or the civil service. For the state is essential to the realisation ‘in time’ of Hegel’s philosophical understanding. Jettisoning Hegel’s dialectical logic, while retaining what it promises, would, as I argue, dissolve the state’s institutional bonds. This is because any conservative understanding of the state – that is, the limits which must define the state – is by Hegel’s account, and without his logic, merely historical; it is not derived from what the state is. It has no natural or necessary founding, in other words.

Hegel’s logic gives it a necessary founding. In giving up on Hegel’s logic, therefore, we would come to see the state as unfairly limited. We might claim that the state is oppressive, for example. So it follows that liberty would be understood as, ironically, affording all people the opportunity to realise what was traditionally the state’s prerogative – a rational self- determination. This, as I showed in my critique of the policy science debates, is where we have found ourselves (by way of Dewey and Lasswell, and as unsuccessfully arrested by

Weber).

In the penultimate chapter I approach a resolution to these problems. I argue that we must return to the everyday in order that we might understand ourselves, and thereby approach what Hegel desired. I begin first with a critique of Steven Pinker’s position. Pinker assumes that we are already realising what Hegel promised, and without his metaphysical baggage.

Indeed, without it we have realised our better selves (as he puts it). What we are, and the superiority of who we have become, is self-evident. His position, as I show, is untenable. And so I argue that we must return to our own understanding, comprehensive in a Hegelian sense if it is to account for the political, but not perversely scientific as was his. Which is to say that any comprehensive return must start where it ends – at the beginning – and should take neither the rational and retrograde step of returning to the beginning of all beginnings (as with Hegel), nor the myopic, beginning-free path of empiricism (as does Pinker). This is to approach the perennial problem of politics and truth from the most comprehensive of perspectives, so I have been arguing. Following a brief critique of two possible paths back to the everyday, that of Ludwig Wittgenstein’s and Hilary Putnam’s, I suggest that to return to the everyday we must move further into it. It is the everyday which will reveal the truth to us, in other words, and so it is only in the everyday that we might, as Stanley Rosen puts it, come to some extraordinary understanding of it, thereby enabling us to distinguish one theoretical perspective from another.

In the final chapter I show that in pursuing this we come to see the comprehensiveness of ordinary experience, and come to see what would or could regulate its realisation. With this, the perennial problem of politics and truth is revealed as being of utmost importance, if also irresolvable. The reconciliation of politics and truth, as the perennial problem, must remain just that. As such, state executive action is no fitting substitute. With an awareness of this, state executive action becomes the province of state executive actors, aware of the limits of their own actions. The education of these actors would not be modelled on the political advisor (by way of social science), so it follows, but would begin with a serious philosophical study of the everyday. I conclude this thesis with a discussion of the implications of this for public policy.

CHAPTER 2: TRUTH, POLITICS, AND PUBLIC POLICY

In this chapter I plumb the relevant debates in the academic public policy literature. Despite their differences, the combatants in these debates each fall into the political genre of ‘modern political advisor’. This genre is defined by the impartiality of the judge and the prescience of the law-giver. It is exemplified by those social sciences which would find their legitimacy in impartial political decisions. I take up these public policy debates with an initial assessment of those who favour the rationality of political advice, and move on to those who would reform this position but always under the guise of impartiality. I show that these debates necessarily oscillate between the poles of theory and local political practice, each animated and united by rationality. They are, when all is said and done, interminable.

According to the Evidence

Amongst politicians and policy makers it is no revelation to state that evidence-based policy is the current fashion (see e.g., Haynes, Service, Goldacre, and Torgerson 2013). Under evidence-based policy we find a social science which gets things done, hand-in-hand with the state, impartially and for the good of all, so it is presumed. As a union of theory and practice, evidence-based policy follows what was already underway with the practice of general medical practitioners (see Goodman 2003). Medical practitioners, it was proposed, could make better judgements if they were to follow more closely the results of medical experimental studies. As with the experimental method itself, the aim was to replace opinion with knowledge (even if regarded as provisional). The art or technique of doctoring would consist less in judging unique human beings and more in the specialised or methodical technique of matching symptom to condition. The subsequent rule would then be applied or followed; such a rule being more comprehensive than the initial judgement, as it is the

common condition rather the individual human being which would provide the limit or foundation to knowledge.

It is this universal rule which evidence-based policy seeks. So it follows that the experimental method arises as the standard of judgement (see Welsh, Braga, and Bruinsma 2013, on criminal justice research and policy). Even if not always executable in practice, the logic of the experimental method is held aloft. Indeed, this logic – that of separating causes, effects and their interactions, from chance – is not limited to fabricated or hypothetical situations, but might also encompass complex human communities such as cities (see Sampson 2013).

Although at this broader level, experimentation has given way to observation, the intent remains the same: to unearth causes or patterns according to specified conditions. In fact, with the linking of huge private and public administrative datasets, the aim of experimentation might even be realised without any physical manipulation. Here, the independent variable is defined according to what could be manipulated (be that criminal sentencing regimes, classroom sizes, urban design, regulation of alcohol and other drugs etc.), either in practice (in a quasi-experimental design, for example) or ‘in theory’ (using statistical techniques such as multiple regression and structural equation modelling).

Insofar as this union holds, the promised alliance8 of social science and politics would seem to have been realised, especially if we consider more tangible aspects of contemporary government life, such as (1) the ongoing professionalisation of the workforce, a professionalisation in which policy officers are trained in the areas of sociology, psychology, and numerous other applied social scientific ‘fields’, (2) computing power and software sophistication enabling quick and easy calculations of multiple series of inferential statistical

8 See Gunnell (1993: 264); Ricci (1984: 232-235).

algorithms, and (3) large administrative datasets (making way for the so-called ‘big data’ revolution – see United States Government 2014).

The partnership between the state and social science is, though, not all that it appears. One reason for this, as can be seen from the difference between evidence-based medicine and evidence-based policy is that, in contrast to the former, the latter seeks to realise in practice what has only been promised by the relevant ‘science’ (see Macintyre 1972: 22-23). For the practice of evidence-based medicine follows what has been prescribed in theory. The practice has shown itself to be a success in the past and that it will continue to do so in the future.

Evidence-based policy, by contrast, is based on research (and associated theoretical constructions) rooted in particular times and places. Since times and places differ (in a much more radical way than that exhibited across physical bodies) research must be applied. This application requires interpretation and discretion. To make good on its promise, the social scientist must know more, and do more, than what he has learnt by way of his science. The social scientist requires some alliance with political power, and the requisite political knowledge which accompanies this (see Gunnell 1993: 122). In a way not exhibited by medical research – as medical research is not brought to fruition and so not mandated by general practitioners – social scientists are dependent on their political masters (see e.g.,

Stoker 2010: 80; Stoker and John 2009: 369-370). This dependency requires an appeal to the political master’s interests. And so we find, for example, social science advocates such as

McDermott (2002: 33-34) and Stoker (2010a: 314-315) appealing to what appeals to the state executive: the impartiality of social science research. In this way they would secure their place at the political table.

With such an appeal, social scientists would see themselves legitimated even if they cannot find philosophical support in the natural sciences (c.f., Crick 1959: 217-221), for the social sciences attain some legitimacy with their usefulness (see Easton 1969; c.f., Rorty 1981). It is

no sign of inadequacy, then, if the proposed causes and their effects are deemed merely local or temporary, for social science attains its legitimacy with the promise of impartial political decisions.

Considering these differences (between the natural and the social sciences), we can see that the social sciences are realised politically in a way which the natural sciences are not. Sure, natural scientists must convince nay-sayers, and secure for themselves public funding, but over the political decision itself they hold no sway. Social scientists, by contrast, are concerned with political decisions themselves. Social scientists appeal directly to the decision-makers, or to those who must also in some way be elevated. For the value of the social sciences resides as much in this elevation, as it does in the promised results. Indeed, what matters is the impartiality of the political decision, which, for the natural sciences is of no interest (the natural scientist cares only for the result).

We can see this when we look to the nature of the problems which would concern each. The problems addressed by natural science are technical – such as the science of transferring data via physical networks. This is so even if we take a particularly contentious issue: climate change, for example. In addressing climate change, climate science would reveal the facts, and climate scientists argue for the validity of their methods. The nay-sayers are either convinced by the addition of a hitherto missing scientific fact...or not at all. Simply, the methods of climate science are either accepted as exhausting the political – or even the scientific – debate or not. No further argument from the scientists will change the mind of those who do not regard these methods (and the ‘facts’) as the final word – nor, indeed, those who point to what would seem to be disregarded by the climate scientists themselves: empirical science discounts implausible hypotheses, it does not offer proofs. The debate moves either into broader concerns about the scientific method and the nature of proof, or the broader political territories of national interest, economic stability, and the just distribution of

resources etc. Since it is unlikely that proof will ever be proof-enough9 the political debate will continue to kick on. For even with proof-enough, extra-scientific problems remain. These are problems, broadly, in which this natural science plays no part.

These broader political problems require arbitration. The foundation to this is our impartial political institutions, or the realm wherein people might come together in the mixed-spirit of persuasion and impartiality: to hear the concerns of others, to convince others of the value of their own position, and, if possible, to attain an amicable compromise.

In stepping into this human realm, the social sciences enter this mixed-spirit arena of persuasion and impartiality. In emulating the natural sciences they would present themselves as absent persuasion, or as the epitome of impartiality. It is here that they find some concord with state executive government agencies. These agencies also value impartiality; persuasion taking the form of a technique or rational prescription. The state executive steps to the fore under these conditions. When it is a question of, for example, school education, the arguments of social scientists are taken up by the executive as a substitute for political debate

– simply because the executive seeks to end such debate. The state executive, if seeking anything of the social sciences, seeks to argue as per the social sciences; in this it would direct its political masters – that is, elected representatives. The union of social science and the executive is shown up in their political aspirations, therefore, as expressed in the appeals by each to impartiality. Social scientists and the state executive hold mutual political interests because each aspires to transcend self-interest.

Take, for example, bio-chemical research. Our bio-chemist works in the scientific arena of water bacteria. This is of obvious interest to the Department of Environment; as it is to both

9 On the scientific method, one could say that, on face-value, the debate could only be settled with an authentic scientific experiment, which would require control conditions and the possibility of replication. At the cosmic level this is simply not possible.

major political parties, and to their constituents. Her research has been funded under a federal grant and has attracted much interest from departmental officials. Studies of hers have shown that under conditions of high algal infestation the addition of a particular chloride compound removes dangerous bacteria, and reduces the risk of harm to humans when drinking the water. Further, she has shown that the treatment is reliable, defining those conditions under which the effects of the chloride compound are weakened. Opposition to her research has come from the Treasury Department. It is expensive. Cost-benefit analyses have determined, however, that it would be viable, but only in those areas currently immune to other treatment regimes.

As our second example we introduce a sociologist. He is a specialist in the area of ‘well- being’. Studies by him have shown that according to the ‘already accepted’ definition – a compilation of ‘indicators’ across education, health, employment, and other relevant ‘areas’ – well-being is most closely associated with variations in school practices. Using a quasi- experimental research design, he has found that as schools tie their lessons into the career aspirations of students there is a corresponding decrease in the risk to well-being as posed by other ‘factors’. Tying education to career aspirations makes students more ‘resilient’, in other words.

As with the natural science example, the end is generally accepted as good. In contrast to the natural science example, the end has been constructed from what might be realised given the means available. Indeed, the end is significant only in terms of these means. For the end – well-being so defined – is, along with being accepted as a good, constructed in a way which would dissociate it from deeper political questions, without altogether leaving them behind.

Any questions about well-being, so it is presumed, have already been answered. All we are awaiting are the actions associated with the answer. These actions too are desired by the executive; that is, the transformation of (what from its perspective are) self-interested

political questions into tractable and seemingly impartial answers. The appeal of this social science to the executive is that ‘well-being’ might well be attained, therefore, along with the possibility that it was shown to have been done so (i.e., it is ‘scientifically’ defensible). Ends are exposed in the means, and vice versa. The decision, previously counted as political, is instead amenable to a technical or impartial resolution (and shown to have been resolved or realised as such), insofar as the executive might itself act as per social science.

In this realisation – or at least in the acknowledgement by the executive of its importance – the end is sanctified or legitimated. Without this, ‘well-being’ remains merely an historical description (and, in this respect, quite different to the discoveries of natural science); still only a possibility, or an ‘as-if’, bound to the hypothetical reality from which it arose. The sociologist who rests content with such a description cannot obviously place himself as high as the sociologist who helps with its birth into reality. A description of a possible political reality is not yet as valid as the description of an actual political reality – according to a scientific understanding. This is no worry for the natural scientist, for the bio-chemist can rest assured that even if not taken-up politically, the associations which she has discovered hold for all time (or close enough to it).

In summary, then, we could say that the social sciences and the executive are closer now than ever before. This relationship is based on a union – an appeal to impartiality – indicative of social science’s lack of actuality, and the state executive’s need to transcend political partiality. For even if the state executive is already an impartial institution, as an active institution it seeks also to realise itself according to its own interests. The social sciences, in a similar fashion, would seek to activate or draw on these interests to actualise themselves.

But this comes with its own problems, given the need for the social sciences to overcome their own political partiality. For the social sciences do not themselves represent all political

positions. The social sciences, it could be argued, are still politically partial. It is this dilemma which drives the public policy (or policy science) academic debates to which I am about to turn. Considered under the lights of social science, the social sciences are themselves only legitimated when, finally, they themselves become the political masters (of impartiality). This path, as I show below, moves through various levels of political comprehensiveness, from the recognition of the various ends of rationality – or multiple rationalities – through to a social scientific crafting of politics, then to the recognition of the interpretive nature of political perspectives, and finally to the politicisation of rationality itself. These arguments all seek to redress the political partiality or political obliviousness of the straight-down-the-line empirical social sciences, such as those who class the experimental method as the ideal method of discovery. Beginning with multiple rationalities, these look to what the social sciences share with other political positions, arguing that the social sciences might rationally reconstruct institutional political decisions in light of this. The intermediate positions – the social scientific crafting of politics and the interpretive understanding – attempt to rationally account for the different contexts in which political things arise as meaningful. The final position, or the most comprehensive – attempts to overcome rationality itself, for the sake of impartiality.

In the end, as I show, in seeking their political legitimacy the applied social sciences would undermine it. This is only retrieved, on their terms, with active bureaucratic practice, or the transformation of all citizens into quasi-social scientists. If pursued with some vigour by the executive, it would dissolve politics (i.e., what could be meaningful) in order that it may more easily (i.e., administratively) account for the ‘political’ positions of all. In the end we would need return to a ‘rational’ social science (whether positive or otherwise) to arbitrate or decide between impartial political decisions. And so the arguments continue, each around a common desire to attain an impartial political position, as distinguished from the broadly self-

interested positions of everyday political actors. The circularity of the arguments, combined with the need to actualise social science, means that it moves forward at increasing speed, not toward a resolution but toward political and theoretical dissolution.

The Political Limits of Social Science

Policy science is a pragmatic academic discipline. It is a discipline at the cross-roads of social science and public policy. It is a discipline which looks to the social sciences as the bearers of truth, but also looks more broadly to what role they could possibly play in political decision making. As such, it is under this discipline that we find the social sciences critically appraised, from the perspective of the social sciences themselves. Under this discipline we discover how impartiality might be realised, finally, in the overcoming of political self- interest. This, as I will show, is the realisation of a wholly impartial perspective, insofar as it might also account for its own partiality.

As a pragmatic discipline, it is not surprising to find that for some, in taking the perspective of real-life policy making, the social sciences are seen to be limited practically. Social science, so it goes, is limited because what it offers is only a small part of what is needed in the public policy real world. Social science should play a part in prescribing ‘what works’, but in other practical deliberations on public policy it is not thereby authoritative (e.g., Head

2010). These deliberations include the necessary accommodation to partial political decisions and other contingent practical matters; matters which by this account are unconcerned with impartiality (see Gregory 2009).

This sets the scene for us, insofar as social science is distinguished by its impartiality. The state executive would naturally favour the impartial development of public policy. Without control over our democratic institutions, though, the executive must bow also to unscientific or political demands. Given that this would seem to be a question of control, it is natural to

wonder, how far should social science extend into politics? If we argue that those who deliberate over public policy should be led by social science at all times, if only they could gain control over their political masters, then our base assumption is that the true end of politics ends in science. Or, we might argue that even though social science might deliver what is impartial, impartiality is only one among many ends out of which the political fabric is woven. As with the former, the truth rests with an apolitical science. But because practice or politics is more comprehensive than any science, science is in reality defined by its partiality.

I turn now to the academic public policy debates themselves. Here we’ll see, as I mentioned above, attempts to account for and overcome the political partiality of social science. These attempts seek to make social science legitimately political and politically legitimate.

Furthermore, as we’ll see, these are attempts to account for both the political practice of the social scientist (and so cover off on the concerns that it is, politically, merely one self- interested position among many), while holding still to the root assumption that it is only by way of social science that truth is distinguished from self-interest.

Overcoming Self-Interest or Politics

I discuss first the multiple rationalities thesis. Under this thesis we would make the reasonable assumption that it is not only the social scientist who honours rationality. Whereas positive social science would disregard what others find rational in their everyday practices, if we suppose that there is some rationality shared by all then we are in a position to argue that the social scientist’s rationality is, along with being impartial, not also politically blind.

In taking account of the rationality of others we attain a more comprehensive impartiality in other words. What’s problematic about this, as I will argue, is that the very thing which makes it partial or tyrannical (as with the positive social sciences) is what would elevate us

above self-interest. The truth as disclosed by rationality is a double-edged sword of liberation and bondage, in other words.

As a response to the potentially tyrannical nature of rationality, while holding still to its promise of liberation (from political partiality), the approach of Kay’s (2006; 2011) is representative. Kay proposes multiple rationalities (see also Andrews 2007; Behagal and Arts

2014; Thurmaier and Willoughby 2015) in order to reconcile – as we must assume – the truth as realised impartially (i.e., rationally) and its significance from within the partial perspectives of political life. With this he would hope to expand the usefulness (see Kay

2011: 239) of rationalism from within the limited sphere of social scientific studies to encompass also the political sphere of ends or values. Acknowledging multiple rationalities, as Kay (2011: 243) puts it, ‘means that there is no one superior rationality, but rather alternative arguments can be put forward as a consequence of different assumptions, values and criteria.’

What concerns us here is the most comprehensive – or most political – of these rationalities.

This, as Kay (2011: 242) points out, is raised above the others by its power to judge reasonably, for it would – as Kay states – replicate in some sense Aristotle’s understanding of phronēsis. Saving it from self-interest (as merely one opinion among many) and from hegemony (limiting it to one among many) is its rationality. Following Kay, rationality both reveals and denies the truth of any judgement, in other words.10 Rationality, we might say, reveals the truth of any judgement insofar as it is the standard by which we distinguish the meaningful from the absurd, and rationality denies the truth of any particular judgement, since it is evoked in support of all judgements (for in persuading others, no one appeals to irrationality).

10 As ‘reasonableness’ would save any policy decision from ‘relativism’ – see 2011: 243.

In playing this double role, however, rationality is being called upon to adjudicate in a way which must assume that it is divided within itself. As divided, though, how in the end do we judge what is rational and what not? To judge rationally between one opinion and another would, rather, seem to require a unified not a divided rationality. Consider that we all hold opinions, and in holding opinions we are all rational creatures. Based on this we might conclude that all opinions are equally rational, insofar as any or all opinions might be rationally defended. But we must also concede, then, that this conclusion of ours – about rationality, and about persons – is rational not merely because we hold an opinion. This is a rationality which strives for the truth. Indeed, we might well argue that the opinions which others hold are themselves a result, or not, of striving for the truth. The distinction amongst opinions comes down to the truth, then, and the truth does not merely reflect the fact that all of us hold opinions (given that in holding and defending an opinion we are all, equally, rational creatures). And so a rationality internally divided, which would give equal weight to the truth and to the fact that a striving for the truth is shared by all, cannot hold. As divided, it is not sufficient to ground judgement in an Aristotelian sense (i.e., habitual deliberation following some awareness of natural ends – see Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics 1140b4-30).

The discriminatory power of phronēsis is lacking. As a rule of thumb, it pays, I believe, to commandeer Aristotle only as support for arguments which he himself broached.

Straying from Aristotle, phronēsis is apt to be stretched beyond recognition.11 Indeed, attempting to make rationality universally diverse while holding it up as the criterion for distinguishing between what is true and false tends to dissolve its own foundations (c.f., Ricci

1984: 17, 185). At the core of this problem is that the addition of one rationality to another, or

11 Such a transformation could be described following Garver (2011: 3), insofar as it arrives at practical wisdom from the perspective of modern constitutional thought: it ‘looks for a single correct framework that will let people pursue a variety of good lives, [but] Aristotle’s thought is just the reverse: there is a single best life, but a variety of correct institutions.’

the division of rationality according to the interminable ends which it might serve, is no different to an unlimited division or addition. As unlimited, any division or addition cannot be distinguished by a more comprehensive rationality, as this rationality does not exist. To put it another way: there is no unity to rationality if one rationality is equivalent to any number of other rationalities. Without a unified rationality, the distinction between rationalities is not itself rational – the distinction is, rather, best described as wholly contingent. And so, if taken all the way to the end, it follows that the search for a universally diverse rationality leads to the thesis that the rational is irrational.

In this respect, neither those who fashion public policy nor their academic advisors are immune, unless they were to hold a privileged position according to rationality. And in this we can see its allure, for the work of academic advisors or policy scientists is meaningful only to themselves and others if their rationality is not one among many, but an overarching rationality as it were. If there is nothing substantial which would separate this rationality from any others, though, then the meaningfulness of the whole enterprise becomes questionable (if not absurd). It is not surprising, therefore, that the arguments are broached not by business leaders or others of this ilk, but by those who might find legitimacy in contemporary

‘universal’ institutions – the university and the civil service. But these institutions are themselves historical, and so any support which they might provide is merely accidental: the argument must support itself, otherwise it is circular.

Delving further, the problem is, more broadly, that because any arguments like these must detach rationality from truth (and so they are understood as being merely useful or

‘multiple’), all the while appealing to rationality as the means of attaining truth, they are bound to fail in the quest to bring truth (whether called reason or rationality) to politics or practice. Following this path to the end there is no way to determine whether truth is merely political or the political is wholly irrelevant to truth (e.g., Steinberger 2015: 761-762). And

thus rationality cannot be but either irrelevant, or defenceless against, or simply no different to self-interest. The stage is thereby set for those who would argue that rationality itself must be overcome for the sake of impartiality more generally.

Limiting Rationality

I will now consider three possible kinds of argument against rationality, each which maintains in some respects the distinction between truth and self-interest as vouchsafed by rationality itself. The first kind – which I call ‘normative judgement’ – includes arguments about the rational prescriptions of social scientists insofar as they do not match the reality of policy work. These are not arguments against rationality itself, but about its redundancy if detached from or not wholly rooted in the empiric. The second kind – what I have called

‘rational interpretation’ – encompass also the political aspirations of the public, and make the case that there is an inherent discord between this and what rationalists find meaningful – differently situated as they are. This discord would invite a more comprehensive social scientific understanding, of which rationality narrowly understood is merely one of many ways to understand political things. The third kind – the ‘a-rational’ – delve deeper and include arguments against rationalism per se. These arguments follow the split within modern science itself. On the surface, they rally against the mathematical or self-certifying side, in which everyday reality is made axiomatic. No argument is made against the sceptical side, or against the scientific method itself. Rather, in denouncing rationalism they would appear to be favouring methodical craft over theory, and the empirical over the universal. With this, as

I will argue, impartiality is moved from the realm of theory into the realm of technical or bureaucratic practice.

Normative Judgement

Following from the argument in support of multiple rationalities, as detailed above, we might broaden our scope. For public policy is not made in a rational vacuum, as it were. As a first step, it could be argued, for example, that instrumental rationality is too narrow to fit the different ‘contexts’ in which public policy is fashioned. Rather, as Majone (1989: 43) points out, the normative or conventional context should be the final arbiter of truth: ‘if there is no demonstrative certainty for the conclusions of science, their “truth,” or at any rate their acceptability as scientific results, can only be established by convention.’ And further: ‘Craft knowledge – less general and explicit than theoretical knowledge, but not as idiosyncratic as pure intuition – is essential in any kind of disciplined intellectual enquiry or professional activity. It is especially important in policy analysis.’ (Majone 1989: 44).

Sanderson (2006: 126) draws out the consequences of this normative or conventional approach, and proposes in the place of a bare rationality what he calls ‘practice wisdom’ – its end is the resolution of ambiguity and its means the ‘craft’ of professional practice. ‘Practice wisdom’ is attained by way of the common experience made available by public institutions

(what Sanderson refers to as the normative and organisational context) (Sanderson 2004: 370;

2006: 126-127; see also Norgaard 1996). We can see that practice wisdom shares something with the multiple rationality thesis introduced previously, insofar as reconciliation is the aim.

It is broader, though, insofar as it attempts to account for the norms of its own practice.

Norms, let us say, would provide some context and guidance to deliberation.

Even with this brief overview, though, we can see a problem emerging. For, by this account, if ‘practice wisdom’ is merely a normative or professional way of doing things then it is, in the end, no more comprehensive a truth than the more limited practice of instrumental rationality. Only as a conscious orientation – or as Sanderson (2006: 122) describes it

(following Giddens): ‘reflexive monitoring of action’ – would it distinguish itself from

instrumental rationality. ‘Practice wisdom’ could, in this respect, be described as an awareness of, and so as allowing a certain control over, those conditions responsible for its own existence – it arises from and would seek to return to what is institutionally acceptable.

And with this none could distinguish, by the ends which they seek, the craft of ‘practice wisdom’ from the craft of instrumental rationality. For both, ends are unlimited. These differ only insofar as instrumental rationality seeks its truth in theory (as a mathematical coherence and associated correspondence with the empirical) and ‘practice wisdom’ would exhibit its truth – becomes ‘wise’ – when practice corresponds with institutional or social norms, and institutional norms in turn are made universal, or as Sanderson (2004: 370-371) puts it, rendered unambiguous.

Despite his argument otherwise, the ‘craft’ to which Sanderson refers is mere technique: the means are wholly impartial and could potentially realise unlimited ends. Essentially the craft is that of self-conscious bureaucratic practice. On this point, Sanderson makes reference to

Aristotle (Sanderson 2004: 370; 2006: 125), but misleadingly, for in reality he follows

Dewey (see Sanderson 2004: 376; 2009). There is in the end only pragmatics – what works.

Professional practice is the foundation of practical judgement, and so too wisdom is equivalent to institutional practice. This is to say nothing more than that bureaucratic practice

(coupled with everyday human actions such as speaking and arguing etc. – see Sanderson

2004: 376) is the realm of wise or ‘intelligent policy making’ (Sanderson 2009: 715). The subsequent ends are empty and thus there is no way to distinguish between what is better and what worse. Indeed, Sanderson (2009: 710) states that truth is equated with success. Reason is thereby reduced to the apolitical or technical mediation and amelioration of self-interested groups.

Although there is some value in acknowledging that it is experience and not just a bare rationality which would deliver a well-considered public policy, in deriving wisdom from

convention the argument cannot be saved from a more radical critique of rationalism, in which the ideal of ‘practice wisdom’ would be embroiled. For ’practice wisdom’, here, is equated with nothing more than what has already transpired. As simply given, as transparent, this ‘wisdom’ cannot be distinguished from belief, tradition, or, more crudely, any politically partial position. This leads me to the second kind of argument (and my third in this chapter), in which good public policy is sought by way of an ‘interpretive’ social science, or a deeper exploration of what people already understand.

Rational Interpretations

Having realised that a wholly rational science is not meaningful in the same way for all people, better public policy, so the argument goes, can be had with a more inclusive definition of ‘evidence’ (see Majone 1989; Stone 2002; Yanow 2000). This definition of

‘evidence’ encloses rationality within a more comprehensive, but strictly empirical, understanding of science or knowledge (e.g., Torgerson 2013: 452; Wilkinson 2011).

Following this empirical approach, knowledge is reduced to meaning.

As Yanow (2000: 5)12 explains:

Interpretive methods are based on the presupposition that we live in a social world

characterized by the possibilities of multiple interpretations. In this world there

are no “brute data” whose meaning is beyond dispute. Dispassionate, rigorous

science is possible—but not the neutral, objective science stipulated by traditional

12 Yanow (2000: 7) goes on to explain that ‘[t]hese ideas became increasingly known in the United States when many of their proponents arrived as refugees from the Nazis. Here, their ideas intersected at times with the work of John Dewey and George Herbert Mead, contributing to the development of symbolic interactionism and ethnomethodology. These ideas began to enter the realm of the policy sciences in the 1970s and 1980s, through the work of Murray Edelman, Martin Rein and Donald Schon, John Dryzek, Frank Fischer, Bruce Jennings, David Paris and James Reynolds, Douglas Torgerson, Mary Hawkesworth, and Deborah Stone...as Torgerson (1985) notes, some of these ideas can be traced to the work of Harold Lasswell.’

analytic methods (as represented by the scientific method). As living requires

sensemaking, and sensemaking entails interpretation, so too does policy analysis.

To this we might not take umbrage, simply because it describes a world of which we are all familiar; a world in which we understand ourselves as akin to some and unlike others. Where

I hesitate, is the equation by Yanow in the last sentence of policy analysis with living! Could there be something to living which might well be reconstructed for the purposes of policy analysis? How does one equate a natural or organic capacity with a technical ability? Why not just say that we must understand what it is to be human before we can undertake well- considered policy analysis? – that is, people hold varying opinions, some better, some worse, not all the same. To say this, though, does not require a technical competency. Rather, it must be that for Yanow there is some concordance between the technical activity of policy analysis and the activity of living, as interpreting beings. Somehow, in living and interpreting, we must also be undertaking what is akin to a technical activity. Only with this might we equate living with policy analysis. And, indeed, this is what we find; for Yanow (2000: 90) argues further that the

phenomenological and hermeneutic philosophies that underpin interpretive

approaches...assume a situated knower: an analyst whose interpretation is shaped

by prior education and training, family and communal background, societal

position, and experience, whose knowledge constitutes a frame itself. Neither this

person nor the knowledge he possesses is or can be objective: there is no point of

view outside the matter being studied from which to observe it; following

Heisenberg's uncertainty principle in physics, acts of observation themselves

affect that which is being observed. In this sense, analysis—although made

dispassionately, with reason and logic—is not and cannot be value-free. It is not

adequate to say, along the lines of one response of policy analysis to this critique,

I'll make my values or bias explicit up front and then proceed with objective,

dispassionate analysis...this is philosophically and logically not possible.

Rather, as Yanow continues, the interpretive researcher ‘can be seen as a translator, bringing other interpretive communities’ stories to her employing policymaker, agency, or community group, helping each to understand the stories of the others’ (Yanow 2000: 90).

Let’s take a moment to reflect on what all this could mean for us. We can reduce this to a few relevant points. Firstly, the main argument is that we all make sense or interpret the world in some way. This is a basic point in my opinion. If reality is not somehow meaningful to us, if it is meaningful to others for example, and only to them, then this reality is not ours to discover. The only argument against it – that we do not interpret the world, or that interpretations are essentially irrelevant – would of course need to prove that this holds in all cases; that what we find meaningful is merely accidental, and that underneath it all is a necessity which holds no matter. This is, of course, to deny how we, as opposed to others, make our way about in the world. It is naive.

But even if we cannot hold to this argument regarding necessity and meaningfulness, it does not follow that reality is, simply, an interpretation. And so Yanow’s reference to Heisenberg is misguided: for if all is interpretation then the last person one should call on for support is a follower of mathematical physics – a follower who’s in the game, what is more, to discover the necessary truth (expressed probabilistically or otherwise). It is misguided because it draws a parallel between the theoretical indeterminacy of the sub-atomic world (in which the uncertainty of measurement has no bearing on our relation to everyday objects) and the relation of ourselves to others and the shared world we inhabit. If we take this at the level of metaphor it is not only saying that we interpret reality. It is saying that interpretation goes all

the way down (to the metaphorical sub-atomic level), so far indeed that any distinction between interpretations must itself be an interpretation.

But how then can we then hold up as exemplary the virtues of the technician – dispassion and rigour? What is there to be dispassionate and rigorous about? For if our interpretation of the world is no truer than that which might otherwise be provided by those who we are interpreting, then there is no ‘about’ about. With this lack of an ‘about’, I might add, we can make sense of Yanow’s equation of living with the technical activity of policy analysis (and so too her reference to Heisenberg). Consider that in everyday life there is always an ‘about’ and so always a desire to act. Leaving behind the question of ‘about’ we fall back on technique, or those means by which desire might be suspended. On a similar note, if interpretation is a technical enterprise we can put it to use for any or all ‘abouts’. Thought of in this way, it is easy to imagine that interpretation (technically understood) is itself equivalent to understanding, simply because it might be considered independently of the

‘about,’ or the thing which might be known..

And with this question of the ‘about’ we get to the bottom of Yanow’s concern. For analysis

– ‘dispassionately, with reason and logic’ – is somehow the bridge which would link the interpreted to those who desire such an interpretation: the social scientist acts as translator, between the public and those political authorities which instigate policy. But: a translator of what? Thinking for a moment about what the translator does – which is to render the speech of one language in another language as close to the original as possible – we see that it is different to what the interpreter does. Translation is different to interpretation, as interpretation begins with the assumption that what is being interpreted is not fully disclosed on the surface. This equivocation by Yanow is telling. For here emerges the crux of the matter: how does one make sense of what the ‘employing policymaker’ desires? This needs no interpreting, following Yanow. Rather, what is being interpreted, or transformed into a

technical language, is the understanding of the everyday man and woman. Herein lies the political agenda, for the social scientist understands directly the edicts of her employer but must interpret (for whose benefit?) the desires, practices, thoughts, of the public. Even if

Yanow would present her program as one of merely ‘getting in touch’ with the concerns of everyday people (and so there is some disconnect between her philosophical underpinnings and political motivations) this requires by her estimation not merely the organic variety of interpretation (what we do in living) but its technical equivalent. If we count this as an improvement on the blinkered perspective of the positive social sciences – and I do – it is still, like them, the circumvention of politics, and its substitution with a technical understanding.

That this technical practice is not also a relativistic enterprise must be defended on theoretical grounds, if we are to count technically gained knowledge as essentially truer than mere opinion. For if interpretivism is merely a technical practice, as with Yanow’s, it is a politically subordinate practice and so can play no part in the distinction between true and false, better and worse. The most it can claim is to provide a technical advantage over what bureaucrats already do (if these bureaucrats are following the advice of the positive social scientists). For this reason, it is not surprising to find that attempts have been made to rescue interpretive practice from an inferior relativism, thereby enabling it to stand on its own feet

(i.e., not just as subordinate to a partial political position).

As Bevir and Rhodes (2005: 182) complain: ‘Arguably the most prevalent misconception about an interpretive approach is that it is inherently relativist.’ This is unwarranted, according to them, for it ‘ignores the many efforts of proponents of an interpretive approach to state their epistemological position’ (see also Bevir and Rhodes 2006; 2016). We must take this to mean that an interpretivist epistemology, or a theory of knowledge as derived from interpretation, would be enough to save it from relativism. Which is to say that if anything is

going to save an interpretivist approach it will be a theoretical account of knowing interpretively (and not merely an epistemology, or a theory of what we can know – there are plenty of epistemological positions which support the case for relativism). As I understand it, however, Bevir and Rhodes are unsuccessful in rescuing an interpretive approach from relativism despite (or, indeed, because of) the fact that they would present an interpretive- focused theory (or an internally consistent account) of knowing.

In honour of theory, Bevir and Rhodes (2005: 183), begin from the brute facts of everyday experience and build up from there:

Everyday experiences incorporate a wide range of realist assumptions, including:

objects exist independently of our seeing them, objects persist over time, other

people can see them, and they sometimes act causally on one another. To insist on

the role of prior categories in perception is not to argue that categories determine

experiences. No doubt objects can force sensations on people. It is to argue only

that categories influence how people experience sensations. People use prior

categories to make sense of the sensations that objects force on them.

This is clearly an attempt to rebut relativism from the ground up, as it were. For it is an attempt to distinguish the facts of everyday lives from any unorthodox interpretation or construction of them – ‘Objectivity arises from using agreed facts to criticise and compare rival interpretations. A fact is a statement, typically about a piece of evidence, which nearly everyone in the given community would accept as true’ (Bevir and Rhodes 2005: 183). This theory of knowing may well be internally coherent. But it also stipulates that what we have come to know over and above the brute facts of everyday existence (on which most of us agree) – what is meaningful to us, and to others, precisely because it is contested – is what we ourselves have constructed (whether communally or otherwise):

Because we can rely on the broad content of our perceptions, we have good reason

to assume that the facts on which we agree are reliable, for facts are simply

exemplary perceptions. Finally, because we have good reason to assume that

accepted facts are broadly reliable, the best available narratives based on these

facts are secure. In sum, we can relate objective narratives to truth because our

ability to find our way around in the world vouches for the basic accuracy of our

perceptions (Bevir and Rhodes 2005: 185).

Just as we might hold a generic map for the construction of buildings, in which the identification of objects for construction are readily identified by us – choose a rock not a tree, collect gravel not water, etc. – this map gives us free reign to construct whatever edifice counts for us as a building. What counts for us as a building is what we recognise of buildings according to their purpose. If we construct something more suitable for being walked on than for being inhabited then we have clearly not constructed a building. In constructing a building, though, we might well construct a monastery or a slaughterhouse.

Here we come back to meaningful practices, which are the bedrock for Bevir and Rhodes

(2005: 183) of what would make a thing the thing that it is: ‘The nature of a perception depends on the prior web of beliefs of the perceiver...Perceptions always incorporate prior categories.’ The objectivity of this web of beliefs is determined by the basic facts out of which it has been constructed: ‘Objectivity arises from using agreed facts to compare and criticise rival narratives’ (Bevir and Rhodes 2005: 184). And yet, pretty much all meaningful practice arises from facts rooted in an inherited criterion of reasonableness: ‘Change arises as situated agents respond to novel ideas or problems. It is a result of people’s ability to adopt beliefs and perform actions through a reasoning that is embedded in the tradition they inherit’

(Bevir and Rhodes 2005: 173).

Knowledge we must thereby define as internal to meaningful practices, simply because what things are (e.g., this monastery, that slaughterhouse) must have been built up from brute facts not themselves constructed by us; they’re either agreed-upon by all, or they’re what we have inherited. In constructing a slaughterhouse I may well use the same bricks and mortar as in constructing a monastery. Indeed, in constructing each I am fabricating a building which, in each case, is distinguished by all from a footpath.

But as an ‘interpretation of interpretations’, as Bevir and Rhodes (2005: 170) describe the interpretive approach they are defending, we can see that any appeal to brute facts does not address the real question. For it is not the ‘building’ question which is being interpreted, rather it is the question of what this building means insofar as it is tied into meaningful practices more broadly. This is a different question to the ‘epistemological’ question which takes its bearings by things internal to meaningful practices (wherein what is sought are the simple ‘agreed upon’ facts prior to any construction – what might be known despite construction). The meaning of a slaughterhouse is miles away from that of a monastery. And if these are simply reduced to categories of meaningful practice or ‘webs of belief’ then we have found ourselves stuck in relativism. One man’s slaughterhouse is no different to another’s monastery insofar as each might be constructed meaningfully or authentically; each according to their respective traditions. This remains the same with the recognition that we

(the interpreter) and them (the believer and the butcher) are each able to distinguish rocks from trees: that is, objectivity at the brute level of agreed upon fact does not equate to objectivity at the level of deeper meaning.

We see this if, for example, an interpretive social scientist were to take up an argument with a builder of monasteries – the religious believer. This could not be settled on the level of agreed upon facts – of rocks and trees, for example. The argument would, in fact, be problematic for the social scientist, especially since, as Bevir and Rhodes (2005: 184) state,

their position rests on a mere preference for facts transparently understood: ‘Because we should respect set standards of evidence and reason, we will prefer narratives that are accurate, comprehensive, and consistent. Our standards of evidence require us to try to support our narratives with as many clearly identified facts as we can.’ Possibly less problematic would be engagement with a builder of slaughterhouses – the butcher. In any respect, to rescue ourselves from relativism (to attain some objectivity) we must address this higher level, not merely the construction process itself. This is the ‘about’ of which I referred to above – the desire to seek out some things and not others, and so act in this way and not that etc.

In the following I address those who take this even further, by bringing theory wholly back to practice. No one interpretation is better than another, so it is argued. What is best, though, is the concordance of theory with practice. No theoretical account will rescue an interpretive approach from relativism but, rather, theory is only redeemed with the transformation of research subjects (or political actors) themselves into rational meaning-seekers. In so doing, however, for those who work in the executive, for those who would fashion public policy, truth would come to be associated with the administration of rationality, as I will argue.

Overcoming Rationality

What is merely implied with the previous arguments is openly stated in this final attempt to make social science politically relevant. The aim here is to transcend political self-interest – even the theoretician’s own – and so realise social science as truly and politically legitimate.

We’ll see that since even theory – or the perspective of science – is equated with self-interest, it is only by way of political practice that truth is realised. The impartiality of this practice, moreover, might only be realised technically, or with the politically active transformation of all into technical replicas. In the end, what emerges is an enterprise torn asunder by its

overwhelming allegiance to theory, insofar as a theoretical account of theory shows itself as politically subservient or compromised.

In a paper which lays the foundations for this (public policy) enterprise, Fischer states that the

‘social sciences, as empirical sciences of society, have largely failed’ (Fischer 1998: 129;

2003: 117-118; see also Fischer, Torgerson, Durnová, and Orsini 2015). Following Kuhn

(1996) he argues that we should look to ‘what social scientists already do’ (Fischer 1998:

131; 2003: 117) rather than what they aspire to know, in order to address the ‘the quality of policy argumentation in public deliberation’ (Fischer 1998: 130) and thereby improve public policy more generally (Fischer 1998: 131).

We might well wonder, though, why change anything? Why change anything if social scientific practice is currently regarded as the foundation of good public policy? Why change what from this perspective is already appropriate? It comes down to what Fischer sees as ‘an epistemological misunderstanding of the relation of politics to knowledge’ (Fischer 1998:

130; 2003: 11). And thus Fischer sets out to bring social scientific knowledge within the fold of politics, in order to clear the way for a more comprehensive theoretical understanding (he seeks a coherent epistemology – see also Fischer 2007: 100).

It is this theoretical understanding, coupled with his desire to banish theory, which lies at the heart of Fischer’s enterprise, an enterprise in which politics or practice (which includes their symbolic expression – see Fischer 2003: 56-57; Fischer and Gottweis 2013: 429) is approached under the lens of both science and the sociology of science (Fischer 1998: 133; see also Dunlop and Radaelli 2013: 614). Fischer understands politics as the ground of science, and social science (sociology) as the only means by which politics might be understood. Given this, the social scientist shares something with the natural scientist, but is also raised above him insofar as he might well understand politics.

Following this distinction, Fischer would see his ‘post-positivist’ enterprise as an improvement over positivism (or neopositivism) insofar as it does not follow the ‘rigorous separation of facts and values’ (Fischer 1998: 132; 2007: 100). This separation has arisen, according to Fischer, because the ‘social’ has been inadequately understood (Fischer 1998:

133; 2007: 100). And so Fischer would make the understanding of the ‘social’ a prerequisite to any further theoretical understanding. And thus it would seem that social science might provide a truer account of the natural world than even natural science insofar as social science can explain more than what natural scientists themselves understand of their own enterprise. For by not privileging any one perspective or understanding of the world (Fischer

1998: 142) the social scientist lays bare the various interpretations of reality (see Fischer

2007: 102). In this sense, Fischer argues that it is in fact more ‘rigorous’ than the formal logic of usual scientific practice, which in any case would misrepresent how scientists actually go about their work (Fischer 1998: 144; 2003: 132).

On more prosaic matters, Fischer argues that a so-called Aristotelian ‘practical reason’ would bind together, or encompass, the mélange of personal interpretations, while conforming to what is ‘already exhibited in real-world policy analysis and implementation’ (Fischer 1998:

146; 2003: 133). And ‘practical judgement’ would provide ‘the mechanism for not only identifying the incompetent charlatan, but investigating the more subtle errors in our sophisticated approximations of reality...and probing the much neglected contextual dependence of most forms of argumentation’ (Fischer 1998: 147; 2003: 134).

This is not relativistic, according to Fischer, because the ‘process is typically initiated by external stimuli in the object-oriented world...[which] work to limit the number of plausible interpretations’ (Fischer 1998: 148; 2003: 135). And yet, since science is really about persuasion rather than truth, any conclusions are best thought of as ‘arguments’ rather than proofs (Fischer 1998: 149) which means that all those conditions which have given rise to

and made significant what has come to count as knowledge must be laid bare – the more comprehensive this exposure the better the conclusions (Fischer 1998: 150). Ultimately this will make public policy more democratic as the expert serves as a facilitator ‘to assist citizens in their efforts to examine their own interests and make their own decisions...[as well as] bringing together the analytical perspectives of social science and the competing normative arguments of the relevant participant’ (Fischer 1998: 154; 2003: 216-217; Fischer and

Gottweis 2013: 426).

Fischer, it seems, would like to have it both ways: he provides arguments about reality which follow from a mathematical physics (e.g., Fischer 1998: 130), but which he then uses to buttress the argument that natural science is merely an interpretation of the world (Fischer

1998: 132; 2003: 50-51). This latter argument he takes to be supported by the sociology of science. Not only this, he treats natural science as if it were a cultural artefact (e.g., Fischer

1998: 135); and in uncovering the true nature of this as ‘scientific practice’, social science would show its legitimacy (Fischer 1998: 141, 156; 2003: 54). In effect, the practice of natural science might only reveal the truth to those who look to its social or political foundations. Theory is unintelligible as theory, in other words, but is made intelligible by the scientist who studies the ‘social’. But as it stands, this intelligibility is subject to the same conditions under which the scientific enterprise is understood to be merely an interpretation.

Therefore, the social scientist’s account of the social world, following Fischer’s understanding of science itself, must be circular, or an interpretation of an interpretation (see

Fischer 1998: 137). It is as if Fischer heard Nietzsche’s famous claim about the death of God

(see e.g., Nietzsche 2005: 11) but was unwilling to grasp its full significance: if rationality

(Fischer’s god) is indeed dead then the pious belief in empiricism is false. One is either a believer or not.

And thus Fischer’s contradictory statements: on the one hand, objects are real but cannot be known except as an interpretation (Fischer 1998: 141-142; 2003: 48), and, on the other, that scientific theories are held back from revealing the truth by convention (Fischer 1998: 138;

2003: 130), or what might itself be described as interpretation. Ultimately, interpretations made by social scientists themselves can only be saved from an infinite regress by the very thing which was proposed by Fischer to be the source of their circularity and which thereby results in a reality reified – that is, socially constructed perspectives misunderstood as facts

(Fischer’s ‘external stimuli in the object oriented world’ – Fischer 1998: 149).

Fischer, we might say, suffers from the absurdities of attempting to apply Foucault, or to render Foucault directly and politically relevant. For Foucault, and his critique of rational- political power, is at the heart of Fischer’s practically-oriented enterprise. Whether or not we find these absurdities in Foucault’s own work is beyond the scope of this thesis to describe.

However, it is telling that Foucault could so easily be recast as a ‘discourse analyst’, as do

Fischer and others (see Fischer 2003), to be put to work as both the means and the end of liberation. Such a soft revolution is an attempt to hold to the critical political program of

Foucault’s, while making him useful, or directly relevant to the politics of the day. To remain useful, Foucault must be re-thought in terms of the everyday facts of the policy analyst. As

Fischer (2003: 229) puts it:

Whereas the Foucauldians emphasize the large historical questions, they have

neglected the normative questions of agency in the life-world...The task ahead for

critical planners and policy analysts is to develop a theory of agency that is

appropriately situated in the larger macro political contexts in which they take

place.

We might describe this as the technical equivalent of Foucault’s own turn, later in life, to an aesthetics of the self. As a technical equivalent, though, it simply reproduces the object of

Foucault’s earlier political-genealogical critique.

There is clearly something amiss here, and it is followed through into the conclusions which

Fischer draws for public policy more generally. The policy scientist has no more access to the reality of things than anyone else, and so must follow the natural scientist in relying on what

Fischer calls ‘argument’ (see also Fischer 2007a), but which can only be described as persuasion given the absence of any other way of showing what is and is not the case (Fischer

1998: 149). Fischer imagines that the practice of the policy scientist would come to the rescue, as this is about ‘connecting theory and techniques to concrete cases’ (Fischer 1998:

147), and so, we might presume, would also distinguish a true from a false understanding of reality. However, given that by Fischer’s account there is no theory separable from an ever- changing reality, and that the various interpretations of reality cannot be separated by any rational or universal account, deference to the practice of those who do this very thing is empty.

The only support which Fischer might provide for this argument is ‘philosophical’; that somehow he would have transcended the fact-value distinction of positivism by including also the political realm within the theoretical. And thus we should take our theoretical bearings by practice or politics rather than by any rational account of how things are. But with this the argument is split into two incoherent halves. For if his aim is to give a wholly theoretical account (as he states, for he sets out to offer a more coherent epistemology) then he must follow on one hand the paradigm of mathematical physics, which is a positivistic understanding of the way things are, and on the other take just as seriously what by this account is other than rational – that is, a political understanding. And since this is what he is compelled to do, Fischer’s argument vacillates between these two sides, variously bringing

politics under the realm of theory by way of sociology – all is fact – and at other times following the opposite side already defined by a mathematical account of reality. In this latter side all that is not rational is deemed wholly political or relative which, given that we are political and not just material beings, must include any or all rational accounts. This second account is supported by the first only insofar as the social scientist is removed from the reality under study, insofar as his or her practice is technical or objective, and insofar as this practice would ostensibly transcend the relative political positions of others. And thus from this perspective all is relative and equivalent insofar as what can be known (as knowledge is wholly political); but the realisation of this requires a technical practice in which politics is replaced by the impartiality of the scientist. And so what natural scientists have been doing is more important, because more universal, than what they have come to know (see Fischer

2003: 54, 130).

Since by this account the separation of science and politics occurs only in the realm of practice (it is what social scientists do which matters), policy scientists and those who fashion public policy, if they are to act truly, must act as technicians (the ‘political’ equivalent to the social scientist’s practice). The aim of these technicians would be to transform citizens into a copy of themselves (as per the social scientist’s understanding – see Fischer 2003: 216-217;

Fischer and Gottweis 2013: 430). Following what has been described above, this would culminate in the dissolution of political understanding (or the significance for us of ends or our desires). In an unsurprising twist, politics would be replaced by the unlimited false interpretations of the lapsed irrationalist, saved or redeemed through rational, technical production. In the end (or its absence!) it is a circular endeavour: a pious libation to rationality, offered in recompense for the sin of rationality. It is this which Fischer would call democracy (Fischer 1998: 154; 2007: 102-106).

Fischer is not alone in making arguments such as these. Parsons (2002), for example, argues along similar lines. Following Rorty’s idiosyncratic understanding of Dewey’s pragmatism

(see Festenstein 2001: 730), Parsons describes policy making as a muddling through (see

Rorty 1980: 39). According to Parsons (2002: 49), ‘Government cannot fix things because things are never fixed: all is flux and uncertainty...[and] [t]he shift to communicative modes of policy making involves the recognition that although we cannot know, we can learn and the role of government is to facilitate private and public learning.’ But learning what? Since, in fact, there is nothing to learn. He suggests that an Aristotlean phronimos is required (see

Parsons 2002: 55). But as he describes the world according to (the textbook understanding of)

Heraclitus on one hand, and modern political theories of communication on the other (see

Parsons 2002: 49), there can be no difference between those who act well and those who don’t, and so no possibility of phronēsis, except by way of what is a human construction – which is to say institutional or bureaucratic practice.

Frieberg and Carson (2010) offer a similar formula, but substitute emotion for what Fischer calls practice. This is with a view to not only attaining a more coherent epistemology (see

Frieberg and Carson 2010: 157), but also to enhance the rhetorical force of public policy (see also Gottweis 2007). But as with Fischer’s, the arguments against rationality are incoherent insofar as they also presuppose its pre-eminence: rationality is problematic because it does not accord with policy practice and it is relative because defined by power (Frieberg and

Carson 2010: 156); and yet the ‘policy process’, following good technocratic practice, should be modelled (i.e., replicated rationally) to include emotions (Frieberg and Carson 2010: 159).

This would suggest that the emotions are of mere rhetorical utility, and play no essential part in the fashioning of public policy. But it is also argued that the emotions of ‘policy-makers themselves must be examined in order to understand how they are influenced by the evidence’ (Frieberg and Carson 2010: 159). Emotions are also tied up with perspective

therefore: they have a natural place in political thought, but possibly a corrupting influence, and so should be studied and ameliorated. They are both separable from and also constitutive of any possible understanding. Following this reasoning it make senses that the social scientist – the rationalist – is to examine those who imagine that they are rationalists (those who fashion public policy) in order to understand why they are not! What distinguishes the social scientists from the political lot of others, therefore, is that through their practice they have transcended emotion (empirical evidence must be scientifically rigorous they argue –

160). In the end, a technical practice separates science from politics. Rationality is discounted, except when it is the rationality of the social scientist. The same problems which arose with Fischer’s thesis arise here also.

It is not necessary to provide more examples, as my contention is that any attempt to rationally overcome rationality so as to attain political legitimacy, even if done only partially simply invites a more thorough transcendence in which thoroughness is traded for coherence.

To argue that rationality is merely another form of self-interest – that it is merely political – while holding fast to the understanding by which this separation was made in the first place

(i.e., between rationality and self-interest) cannot but help reduce theory to interpretation, and render practice wholly technical. Attempts to save this, by extending rationality into politics cannot be sustained because by doing this rationality is transformed into irrationality. And if a return to the naivety of the simple rationalist – the positive social scientist, for example – for whom the political body is equivalent to the material is out of the question (other than in those circumstances wherein we can legitimately claim to recognise its limits), neither can there be a resolution on these terms.

We can see that in bringing to the partiality of political action the insights of a theoretical or contemplative perspective, in which rationality is the epitome of truth, the final resolution of truth and politics can only legitimately end in the transformation of all political actors into

technicians. The executive in coming to realise itself, would seek to realise all as itself, in other words. This purely formal solution to the problem of politics and truth would seem to have no end. And, if pursued with some vigour by the executive, it would enforce its own administration of political renewal – which is to say, it would dissolve politics in order that it might more easily (i.e., administratively) account for the ‘political’ positions of all. This

‘administration of justice’ – in which some distinction must be made amongst essentially equal political positions – would quite likely see a return to the rational prescriptions of the positive social scientists, in other words.

Concluding Comment

In the academic public policy debates I identified four possible perspectives which would attempt to more fully integrate the social sciences into institutional political life: (1) the partial nature of politics can be overcome with multiple rationalities; (2) rationality does not accord with the empirical reality of politics and so a normative, disinterested judgement is required; (3) impartial political positions can be understood empirically as the culmination of subjective rationalities (or interpretations), and this knowledge used for political purposes; and (4) rationality, understood rationally, is political or no different to self-interest broadly understood, and so social science is legitimate only as a liberating practice, so administered.

But having come to an impartial practice by way of a critique of rationality as self-interest, we must wonder how this practice is to be judged? For this practice, by its own terms, cannot be distinguished from self-interest or partiality, however broadly or democratically understood. And yet the realisation of this is the final culmination of a rational understanding of politics. For with this rational understanding, in which we would have abstracted ourselves from everything, even from what we esteem most highly (i.e, rationality), any estimation of political ends is always merely partial. In the end, we would need return to a rational social

science (whether positive or otherwise) to arbitrate or provide impartial political decisions.

And so the argument continues, each around a common desire to attain an impartial political position, as distinguished from the broadly self-interested positions of everyday political actors.

The centre around which this argument moves is an expanding awareness of the political legitimacy of rationality, but this awareness is itself driven by the rational desire to transcend all political positions. With this triple necessity – (1) to encompass politics in order to (2) transcend it and (3) thereby return to it as the impartial judge – the social sciences would find their legitimacy. The movement therefore presupposes rationality in its attempt to overcome it, all the while seeking some return to politics in the form of politics transcended. What this means is that the expansion of the political legitimacy of the social sciences (with the encompassing of all political positions) is accompanied by an ever decreasing separation from politics (since politics and its transcendence are, according to science, politically equivalent), and vice versa. We cannot but conclude that in seeking their legitimacy the social sciences would undermine it. I suggest, therefore, that the debates in which social science must find its legitimacy in politics are interminable.

Although we see in these positions a progression of comprehensiveness, the common denominator is clear. Following the progression to the end, it must be presupposed that rationality (as the mathematical, or purely formal, mode of thinking) is equivalent to truth even as it is equated with self-interest. The reason for this is that the emptiness of rationality equates to both impartiality and an infinite variety of political or self-interested perspectives.

Rationality, when itself viewed from the perspective of rationality, is wholly formal or empty, and so along with being infinitely diverse is at the same time and for this reason (i.e., it is self-referential) distinguished from self-interest. With this it would both judge the truth of any perspective and present as the form of any or all perspectives. And so it would define, on one

hand, what truth is and, on the other, serve to liberate it. It is thus, by these terms, that the path out of the relativism of liberal politics would lead straight back into it, in the form of rational or bureaucratic practice. The only way out of this regress, the only way that truth can show itself as politically legitimate while distinguishing itself from a mere diligent and efficient public service is with the possibility that what we can know is more than what rationality would either limit or liberate. In this, the overriding desire to seek the legitimacy of social science in politics (see Easton 1969) is rendered questionable.

As an initial suggestion on how we might proceed, I can offer at this stage only thoughts on what we should not do. What is not required are more of those techniques in which the legitimacy of social science is sought. So where does that leave us? On one hand, it might be claimed that only social science can distinguish truth from opinion; that technique might allow a theoretical perspective insofar as the political body is the same as the natural body.

On the other hand, in keeping with social science, but recognising that in practice it is part of a greater political whole, technique or method might itself be understood as true political practice. The vicious circle which is engendered with these two positions can only be broken,

I argue, with a deeper consideration of politics and our desire to understand. For if understanding is only legitimated or realised in creation, fabrication, or production then it is bound always to be subsumed by politics. Given that we cannot understand the difference between knowledge and ignorance by way of production, their distinction must be regulated somehow else. Technique cannot fulfil this role as it is the means of production not its end: the desire for technique would end not in truth or humanity but altogether different productions. This desire might only be reformed, I argue, with the possibility of a truth which is neither mathematical (which, in practice, is nothing but endless production) nor transcendent (in which practice is impossible).

This comes down to the question of whether theory – or a truly comprehensive perspective – within practice is possible. My argument (as I will explore in greater length in the final chapters of this thesis), in contrast to the empirical understanding, is that there is something uncommon or extraordinary about truth. Indeed, if truth were merely what is common or what everybody agrees upon, then the disputable theoretical perspective of ‘interpretivism’, or any other theoretical perspective which is founded similarly, is by its own definition merely a prejudice. Of the moderns, it could be argued that it was Hegel who pursued this question the farthest. For him theory within practice is possible, as Hegelian science or wisdom, and as realised in practice by the universal state – but theory is for Hegel ultimately another species of history (as I will argue in chapter six). However, if with this question we answer that either only theory or only practice but not both then we are on our way to dissolving the realm within which this question might reasonably be posed; for surely the question is significant insofar as we value understanding over ignorance, not only for itself but so that we might live well.

This, in a nutshell, is the possibility of self-knowledge, of knowing what we are doing.

Although we must begin in self-interest, in desiring to understand self-interest we already encompass and so move beyond our origin. If, by contrast, we claim with dogmatic authority that self-knowledge (broadly understood) is, in principle, impossible, then we must also hold that all is self-determined (as knowing is no different to doing), or that self-delusion is itself an illusion, or cannot be distinguished from self-interest. It is this impossibility of self- knowledge which rationality enforces as a matter of principle. For in abstracting from self- interest, and thereby conceiving as disinterested what began first as the self-interest of truth- seeking, the meaning of our quest is rendered absurd. And, on the flip side, in conceiving of politics as nothing but self-interest, we are denied in principle the place from where we might begin to understand the structure of our everyday existence, and the fundamental questions

which this imposes on us. Consideration of these questions is doubly important for those whose job it is to develop public policy, as it is within the executive arm of the state that a mathematically inspired rationality would most tempt one into believing that it is equivalent to truth, and, on the flip-side of this, that politics would offer nothing more than a reflection of our own self-interest.

To properly consider the terms of these arguments I believe that a return to and critical appraisal of the writings of Harold Lasswell (the founder of policy science) is required. For those who would bring politics – more specifically, democratic politics – back into the fold of political science, Lasswell is seen as a guiding light (see e.g., Durose and Richardson 2016: 3,

23, 199-200, 203; Parsons 2002). Indeed, the Policy Sciences journal has as its primary aim the resurrection of Lasswell’s thought.13 According to Lasswell, the reformation of democracy (see Lasswell 1977: 37) is possible only by way of the productive nature of social science. The measure by which any production might be judged is political experience as a whole, as understood scientifically. It is this conflict – modern science as both liberation and bondage – that Lasswell sought to resolve. And it is this understanding, and its attendant deficiencies, which must be considered more deeply in order to address the concerns raised here. For we must first come to understand what politics is, in order that we might traverse it safely.

13 The subtitle of the journal is: Integrating Knowledge and Practice to Advance Human Dignity.

CHAPTER 3: HAROLD LASSWELL AND THE POSSIBILITY OF POLITICAL

SCIENCE

In this chapter I interrogate the thought of Harold Lasswell, the founder of the policy sciences, and a founding father of contemporary practical political and social science.

Lasswell is important to my thesis in a number of ways. Firstly, he remains the guiding light for many insofar as the political and social sciences might make a difference, might show themselves as directly relevant to the world of politics. This is an important and necessary achievement for these social sciences. For if the subject of political or social sciences is real- world political phenomena, and if these sciences do not attain some real-world political significance, they’d be much like a medical science with no direct applicability to human bodies – trivial, in other words.

Secondly, Lasswell strives to capture the whole of political experience, conceived by him under a ‘contextual orientation’, or as theoretical and practical knowledge. As Torgerson

(1985: 245, 249, 252) says:

The project of contextual orientation conceived by Lasswell is highly ambitious

because it seeks a knowledge of the whole… Through the ongoing interplay of

knowledge of and knowledge in the policy process, moreover, the analyst attains a

creative orientation which renders him a self-conscious actor… the whole

prospect of policy analysis as a collective rational enterprise depends upon the

establishment of procedures and institutions advancing the project of contextual

orientation. Consequently, anyone committed to policy analysis is in principle

also committed to creating and maintaining certain social and political conditions

necessary for collective rationality [italics in original].

And, thirdly, Lasswell brings us back from the sub-specialties of various applied social sciences to the shadow of the perennial problem, the problem posed by truth to politics (i.e., the problem of ‘what to do?’ given our understanding of ‘what is?’):

Fragmentation is a more complex matter than differentiation. It implies that those

who contribute to the knowledge process lose their vision of the whole and

concern themselves almost exclusively with their specialty. They evolve ever

more complex skills for coping with their immediate problems. They give little

attention to the social consequences or the policy implications of what they do

(Lasswell 1971: 440).

This is a step-up from modern day practical political and social science insofar as Lasswell recognises the need for a broader defence; for without this, political science is merely a reflection of the fragmented or increasingly specialised outlook of modern-day political experience.

Plumbing first Lasswell’s understanding of political science, I show that he understands it as the perfection of all previous political thought. Whereas previous political thought was mesmerised by metaphysics, modern political thought is unduly limited in its reach. Each remains unconscious of its own potential. Policy science, or practical political and social science, by contrast, emerges as a fully realised capacity to make things happen – it is political in the decisive respect. It emerges with a clear understanding of the distinction between human nature – the realm of the political – and nature more generally.

Guiding this politically aware, or self-conscious action, is – following modern science – what might be uncovered empirically. As guided by the empirical, however, Lasswell’s political science would, as I argue, tend to find itself split between the absolute originality of making things happen and the eternal unoriginality of the already happened. Obviously, what is

needed is some third element to bind these together. Performing this function is, for Lasswell, the psychic realm of human symbols. As I argue, though, this realm is beset with its own internal divisions, in much the same way as his political science is itself split between original creation and its end. Lasswell, despite a valiant attempt, is unable to overcome these deep divisions. More importantly, though, in presuming that he has, the division is overlaid with (and so hidden under) the promised impartiality of a politics which bows to social scientific practice.

Given what I have argued above, it is no stretch to say that Lasswell would provide us a peek behind the scenes, as it were. Here we are provided a peek into the foundation of the political realisation of the social and political sciences. We are provided not only the reason for why such a realisation is now possible, but also what we must understand of humanity (defined as a symbol-manipulator, for example) given this possibility.

Introducing Lasswell

Lasswell, along with being the founder of what he and others have coined the ‘policy sciences’, was a leading figure in the founding of contemporary political science (see Farr et al. 2006; 2008). Bucking the trend towards specialisation, Lasswell sought to return political science to its pre-eminence (see Lasswell 1956: 961). He sought to crown it once again

‘master science’ just as it had been by Aristotle.14 Such a return was deemed by him necessary because of the fragmentation of political experience, as wrought by modern science.15 As a follower himself of modern science and in particular modern social science, though, Lasswell was attuned to its liberating and progressive political agenda. And yet,

14 See his Nicomachean Ethics (1094a20-b10) and Politics (1282b14-16). 15 ‘The modern approach...often fails to grasp the wholeness of the intellectual enterprise of dealing with human affairs, and thereby neglects to perceive the wisdom of keeping the scientific part of the endeavour properly related to the total context’ (Lasswell 1951: 470).

given its rejection of natural teleology, he was also aware of its political limits – that is, that political ends remain always beyond its intellectual reach.

With these we might well consider that never the twain shall meet. No return to a ‘master science’ is possible on terms dictated by modern natural or social science. Politics and science are fundamentally different. Or, we may well count this as a misunderstanding of politics, or an understanding in which we have not yet grasped the full political potential of the sciences. For the political limits of science might well be surpassed – legitimately so – if politics itself were to become a science. The intellectual reach of the sciences we might well consider limited only by their reach, in other words. What is needed is the re-orientation of scientists, from mere contemplators of natural or political reality to active participants in political life. It is this line of thought which Lasswell pursues.

Such an enquiry remains important in this age of hyper-specialisation and associated indifference to broader questions about the usefulness or value of political and social science research.16 For if the political sciences are not to be counted as mere trivia, then the knowledge which they seek must include or presuppose some awareness of their political implications (c.f., Dryzek 1992; Farr et al. 2008: 29-30; see Gerring and Yesnowitz 2006:

102-114). These implications are tantamount to what we must judge as desirable and undesirable political consequences. As what is implied by any science if it is to count itself as a political science is that it would in some way, whether directly or indirectly, improve political communities (c.f., Easton 1950: 451, 461, 476-477; Mansbridge 2014). This means that what is implied must be more than just an assumption, therefore. For if it were to remain merely this, political science would be indistinguishable from secular prophecy: it may well hold or be true to its own conventions, yet still unaware or unconcerned with its own

16 Brunner (2008: 4, 14-15) brings up a similar point, but for a wholly different line of enquiry than I am presenting here.

implications. Political science must recognise or know itself in some way, it must be able to explicate its own foundations for it to be more than just wishful thinking, in other words.

Since this foundation is, broadly speaking, equivalent to the fabrication of political communities (what Plato described in his Statesman as weaving, 279a7-283b3), a political science which has some awareness of itself must know what it is producing. This, so it follows, means that any political science worthy of its name would be master of its own productions. Indeed, Lasswell (1970: 11) outlines what this entails, for the policy sciences would cover in systematic fashion the following:

One is the clarification of goal, or the formulation of the value postulates to be

pursued in policy analysis. By tradition this has been the concern of

metaphysicians, theologians, and ethicists... Another dimension is oriented toward

trend, toward the succession and distribution of past and present events. By

tradition this is the historian’s province. A third intellectual task is scientific. Its

scope is explanatory. The fourth task is the projection of future possibilities and

probabilities of value institution change, especially in reference to postulated goal

patterns (such as widespread rather than narrow sharing of values). In modern

academic tradition there have been few specialists on the prophetic or forecasting

role... Finally, we come to the invention, evaluation, and selection of alternative

objectives and strategies. Obviously this is the principal frame of reference of a

policy scientist, whether his concern is with an instrumental change in the domain,

range, and scope of outcomes, or with revolutionary transformation of systems

[italics in original].

And so what Lasswell shows, with his science of politics (see Dryzek 1989: 97; Turnbull

2008: 73), is a political science which would know itself. It is an example of political science

becoming genuine, or of a science in which political understanding, or theory, is reconciled with careful observation, or empiricism, as well as action (see a call for this by Gunnell 1988:

86; Thompson 2008: 516).

Policy Sciences

The founding of the policy sciences, as described by Lasswell, was made possible by the unrealised potential of the social and natural sciences. With the re-orientation of the natural and social sciences this potential, so he thought, would be realised as the policy sciences.

This orientation would point towards the future; a future as worthy of investigation as the past. With this orientation, the social sciences would finally have come of age, because social scientists would realise the ‘social consequences and policy implications of knowledge’

(Lasswell 1971: xiii).

This ‘coming of age’ takes us back to questions of the impetus or of the motivation behind the policy sciences. It takes us back to their birth place. And to unearth the birth place of the policy sciences would seem to take us as far back as at least the modern revolution in political philosophy, as initiated by Hobbes and Machiavelli amongst others (see Strauss

1988: 40-49). This revolution could very roughly be sketched as the emancipation of politics from metaphysics by way of human fabrication and associated arts. With these arts, and with a newfound awareness, the comfort and safety of humanity might be advanced and republics reign with impunity both human and divine. The birth of the policy sciences, by this reckoning, would be coeval with these particular political desires and the arts which accompany them, desires in which the prejudices of the past were denied for the sake of humanity’s artistic (or technical) power over the present. Policy sciences would be tied into this modern revolutionary re-determination of ends, in other words.

By contrast, the ends of politics could be understood as more closely aligned with our own capacities. In this we would understand political distinctions as distinguished by our abilities to realise what we desire rather than by a variance in the ends of this desire. In this case, modern revolutionary political thought we would class as no different to the political conservatism of the ancients insofar as each is a species of political desire in general. The only difference between these is one of execution or capacity. The moderns are simply carrying out what the ancients would have done if they could have. Considered in this way, the birth place of the policy sciences (and therefore political science) might well be sought at least as far back as the beginning of political philosophy itself. It would be necessary to return to the dawn of the Western tradition, to Plato or indeed to Socrates – who ‘first called philosophy down from heaven, and gave it a place in cities, and introduced it even into men’s homes, and forced it to make inquiry into life and morals, and things good and evil.’

(according to Cicero 1886: 257). And if all political thought no matter its expression is rooted in the same desire, then any contemporary political science would be distinguished from opinions past not by what it seeks but by how well it is sought. Political science would find its perfection, then, in (1) technical achievement and (2) comprehensive awareness.

These brief reflections are important, I believe, because they allow us to consider the implications of any justification of political science as a science. If not merely with an appeal to technique, political science might only justify itself with support of what is understood as true – by way of what we have come to know, in other words. What, by consequence, comes to count as true is what we have technical mastery over, combined with a broad awareness of what would guide this mastery. These are obviously related affairs, and in the deepest sense they come together in the insight that we know only what we make. So too, at this depth, arises the profound problem of distinguishing between the things made by us, and what exist otherwise, or the problem of distinguishing between one already made-product and another.

This distinguishing – we might claim – is not a matter of making. For if it were, then all distinctions, insofar as they are merely a matter of making, deny the insight itself – namely, that we know only what we make. Indeed, if we do know only what we make then we give still some credence to knowing. Put differently, knowing is distinguished from making only if we make so as to know (we do not, for example, create scientific methods merely for the sake of fabrication). But what could we know of that which hasn’t been made by us? With this question we move into broader territory (e.g., the political or historical territory of things not made by us, but made by others, as it were). Nevertheless we do not simply find our initial question of making and knowing side-lined, for we return to the original predicament: that of distinguishing between one made-product and another – not as a matter of making, but of knowing (revealed, though, only as what has been made).

Any solution to these problems would need present itself as both a measure and the true means of production – each falling under the original insight (that we know only what we make). Which is to say any solution would need to show that it could (1) make what needs to be known, (2) know what needs to be made, and (3) distinguish between one made-product and another. Any solution, we can see, would tend to collapse the distinction between knowing and making, while at the same time maintaining their independence. In collapsing the distinction between knowing and making we bow to unlimited production, and in maintaining their distinction we bow to objective measure. As a solution, though, we belie this problem’s depths, for the problem reoccurs, this time on each side of the solution – on one side we encounter a knowing collapsed into making, and on the other side an untenable distinction of knowing and making, because measure is, in the end, no different to our own perspective. The problem has been resolved too hastily, let us say. Such a resolution, as I hope to show, is central to the justification of the policy sciences.

Politics and Non-Politics

That Lasswell writes about politics there would seem to be no argument. One need only turn to the titles of his books: Psychopathology and Politics, Politics: Who gets What, When,

How, World Politics and Personal Insecurity, Power and Personality, Power and Society,

Pre-View of Policy Sciences and more. To understand what Lasswell writes about politics, however, requires us firstly to understand what it is that Lasswell understands of politics. And for this more than a passing reference to the titles of his books is required. For this we must turn to his writings and delve into the intricacies of his argument. It is with this that the broader and unrecognised implications of his own arguments might be uncovered.

The political thinkers of the past, according to Lasswell, desired or sought the same things as the policy scientist, and yet they were unable to attain what it is that they desired. That

Lasswell can recognise in the founding fathers of the Western tradition both the beginning of political thought and by this fact the pinnacle of comprehensiveness (see Lasswell and

Kaplan 1950: xiii, 1, 11; Lasswell 1971; c.f., Easton 1950: 452) and yet also an ignorance of their own enterprise (see Lasswell 1971: 10) is revealing for the present enquiry. The political thinkers of the past, exemplified by Plato (see Lasswell 1951: 468), might be distinguished from the common lot by their desire to understand so as to act, following Lasswell’s analysis

(see Lasswell 1951: 472). The understanding which these political thinkers sought, given this fact, was that of humanity’s place within the whole. Politically, this is the city (see Lasswell

1951: 465) and, naturally, the cosmos (see Lasswell 1971: 11). What distinguished political thought was therefore the desire to know the human things and not just the natural things more generally. Against those who believe that Plato was ‘indifferent to the descriptive facts of human relations’ Lasswell states that ‘we do not need to believe that Plato was uninstructed by, or unintrigued by, human appearances’ (Lasswell 1951: 470).

Drawing this out, we can see that what unified political and the natural philosophers, at least in this past age, is that they sought knowledge of the whole. What separated them is that the natural philosophers, if they did desire to know, sought not to know what is human, but only what is more broadly cosmic. Plato himself would seem by Lasswell’s description to have stood on the cusp of the political and the natural insofar as he could easily be mistaken for just another metaphysician unconcerned with human affairs. But as it stands, Plato, and those following him such as Aristotle, were, according to Lasswell, concerned with understanding human things and so might rightly be classed as political thinkers (see Lasswell 1936: 384).

According to this account of Lasswell’s, therefore, political thought must have arisen from common opinion in two stages. The first stage, in which humans reflected on the nature of cosmos, made it possible for the second stage to occur – the political – in which humans might reflect on their place in the cosmos, and on themselves more generally. The first stage is indispensable to the second stage insofar as political thought must begin with reflection so as to emerge from tradition. The second stage emerges from the first but does not thereby transcend it. And thus Plato’s understanding of the soul is for Lasswell a pinnacle of political thought if still limited by his predilection for metaphysics (as were others of the time – see

Lasswell 1971: 12): ‘it is no exaggerating to say that no one went beyond Plato’s insight into the dynamics of the human soul until Freud penetrated once again into the lurid depths of the unconscious’ (Lasswell 1951: 469).

So, even though the political philosopher would long not only to understand himself and others, his longing – like the natural philosopher’s – remains bound to something other than itself. For both the political and the natural philosopher, the true context remains hidden or unconscious. It is for this reason that the politically oriented philosopher’s desire to see beyond himself, rather than into his own time and place, ties him to convention. As Lasswell and Kaplan (1950: xi, xxi) explain:

Many of the most influential political writings – those of Plato, Locke, Rousseau,

the Federalist and others – have not been concerned with political enquiry at all,

but with the justification of existent or proposed political structures. We say such

works formulate political doctrine rather than propositions of political

science…generalizations of social theory, to be of service in the continuing

process of social research, must be restricted to specified social conditions...To

omit this context is not to universalize the proposition, but rather to hide its

particularized reference to the situations characteristic of our own culture [italics

in original].

Philosophical desire frustrates political desire, therefore, because in reaching for the cosmos it forgets the ground upon which it stands. The psychic cosmology of Plato’s is thus politically enlightened and conventionally ignorant. As politically enlightened it exemplifies the desire for a practical wisdom, as conventionally ignorant it remains too philosophical or nature-orientated. The same holds for the common person, who cannot see past his or her own self-interest. The understanding of the common person and the political philosophers is thereby limited to the same thing, but in a different way: one is myopic and the other hyperopic. This first does not desire to even begin to think politically, while the other almost passes right over the top of it.

But in passing over the top of it the political thinker nonetheless desires what is underneath, so says Lasswell. For political philosophers from Plato on have desired ‘the connection between knowledge and choice’ – as, indeed, does the policy scientist (Lasswell 1951: 472).

The reason why they didn’t achieve this, we might surmise, is because they were unable to grasp or fully understand how to enact what they desired. Although equivalent to the desires of the policy scientist, which ‘is symbolic of the same concern for the making of decisions

which, in our case, are intended to implement human dignity’ (Lasswell 1951: 472), their ability was nonetheless insufficient in some crucial respect. To attain the wisdom of the policy scientist, to overcome this insufficiency, desire must have found its appropriate realisation in the growing awareness or knowledge of human things, and the techniques which would support it (as I will discuss in the next section).

This, according to Lasswell, is equivalent to power, as fortified through science, and with a view to the politics of the day:

Our aim is to discover whether the recent expansion of the social, psychological

and medical sciences has added to our knowledge of power and the power seeker.

It is true that the inquiry is not an end in itself. We have a sociopolitical objective,

the more perfect instrumentation of democratic values. When we arrive at a basic

analysis of the interplay of personality and power, a further step is the

consideration of how to put what we have learned in the service of human dignity

(Lasswell 1948: 9).

Power, for Lasswell, is the capacity to influence. The political sphere arises with the domain of power, which is the domain more broadly of those who would exercise influence and those subject to it. Of interest to Lasswell is the personality of those compelled by nature to influence others. With some such science of the ‘political man’ Lasswell (1948: 19) would hope to ‘make recommendations with more confidence regarding the development of an elite appropriate to the needs of a society that aspires toward freedom.’ With a study of power and personality Lasswell would hope to realise the dignity of humanity which, in our day, is tantamount to the integrity of democracy.

Further, according to Lasswell:

If there is a political type in this sense, the basic characteristic will be the

accentuation of power in relation to other values within the personality when

compared with other persons…Men and women have often had brilliant careers

for a time in politics, yet they have brought blight upon themselves and upon

those who believed in them because of the warping effect on judgement and

action of certain unconscious tendencies…The implication is that there is room

for a social psychiatry of society which is in fact the social psychiatry of

democracy...What we are calling for is a more perfect intelligence function which

embraces the highest as well as the humblest forms of pertinent knowledge on the

basis of which rational decisions can be made. Decisions are rational when they

do, in fact, enhance the probability that preferred future events will occur [italics

in original] (Lasswell 1948: 22, 94, 118, 125-126).

Politics would only seem to arise therefore, and by this account of Lasswell’s, when purified of what remains unconscious; which, in other words, is what’s essentially conventional and what, thereby, we would mistake for nature. Only in seeking the whole which is wholly human is the political realised, in other words. Hence, we can argue that from Lasswell’s perspective, the beginning of the political tradition was the high-point of political thought insofar as it was still concerned with the whole (Lasswell 1951: 468-470) but was a delusion insofar as the whole was understood as transcendent. In sum, to understand the whole rightly must be to understand human things: ‘The policy sciences as we see them today cut across the traditional division of intellectual labour...At the core is the theory of human behavior, the theory of society, which includes a systematic account of the factors controlling personality and culture’ (Lasswell 1948: 124). This ‘core’, as Lasswell puts it, is comprised of any science which might contribute to the ‘decision-making process’. Psychology is an obvious candidate, so too are sociology, anthropology, and social history (Lasswell 1948: 125).

Purged of all that is not strictly human, however, what we desire would seem to be endless, insofar as it would mirror human desire itself. And thus for Lasswell the end of politics must be also the perfection of convention, or what is esteemed by people of a particular time and place. This, in Lasswell’s terms, is ‘the integration of values realized by and embodied in interpersonal relations’ (Lasswell and Kaplan 1950: xii). What makes this intrusion of convention less than surprising, given what I have already argued above, is that any reliable understanding of the ends of politics, by Lasswell’s account, cannot be philosophical (i.e., an understanding of nature). Rather, political ends must be limited to an empirical understanding of the whole. As exposed empirically, the conventional understanding is the only end remaining after the partiality of philosophical perspectives has been resolved. Consequently, although the policy scientist’s desire is the same as that of the philosophers’ insofar as the philosophers would also seek to master or guide their own communities, he or she is able to perfect convention because not bound to unconsciously follow it.

Having thereby stepped into Lasswell’s arguments, we have discovered that what was presumed to be an inquiry wholly restricted to the facts (see Lasswell and Kaplan 1950: xiii) rests now, implicitly at least, on an understanding of ends. It is by this understanding that any approach to political problems, or problems which would involve reforming the common lot or the non-philosophers, is defined. As an understanding of ends it is, though, also a philosophical enterprise along the same lines as those which have sought to distinguish the natural from the conventional. But since this is not acknowledged – indeed it is denied

(Lasswell 1936: 295; Lasswell and Kaplan 1950: xiii) – we may wonder whether nature has been misunderstood by Lasswell in his very attempt to overcome it.

In returning to chapter two, it can be seen that Lasswell’s approach to the problem of truth and politics, as distinguished by him from earlier thinkers, involves a reduction of politics to mastery, and the equation of truth with those ends revealed as what we ourselves might

fabricate. These ends are no different to the dawning awareness of what might be fabricated, as seen under the scientific gaze of what has already been fabricated (i.e., conventional ends).

Only if there is some essential difference between pre-fabrication (what to do?) and post- fabrication (what has been done) do we strike a conflict. Indeed, only if there is some such thing as ‘pre-fabrication’ are we caught out following Lasswell. If, for example, we hold that our judgement of ends cannot follow simply from our fabrication of them, then we cannot answer the question of their worth by deferring to what has already been fabricated. What is best to do might differ in some essential respect to what has already been done (or what has been fabricated). By contrast, in holding that it is we who fashion ends, we vouchsafe already for what we might know of them. And, what is more, in knowing something of these ends through fabrication, we might – somewhat paradoxically – claim to have overcome self- interest, or claim that we are putting into practice more than what we ourselves esteem. Think of the difference between a magnificent dream building, and the accolades awaiting it upon construction. Upon construction the building invites public not merely private recognition.

This overcoming in practice of what could well be tautological in theory (i.e., to make and to know are equivalent) is, indeed, the foundation of Lasswell’s political program. Consider

Lasswell’s (1971: 1) ‘knowledge of and in’ unique to the policy sciences, in which what scientists know is both what they have discovered methodologically, and what they would help to create practically. At the deepest level, then, Lasswell’s future orientation of the social sciences saves them from the charge of tautology, or self-ignorance.

Technique

There is another side to the story which extends further back than Plato, or the desires of the political thinkers. For the emergence of the policy sciences is equated by Lasswell with self- awareness and systematic organisation (see Lasswell 1971: 11). The political is distinguished by reasoned administration and specialised knowledge, combined with a comprehensive

awareness of what is to be done – the rise of ‘professionalism’ to use Lasswell’s word

(Lasswell 1971: 12). Following this story, the distinction between past political thought and modern day policy science turns – along with an awareness of human things – on our capacity or ability to bring about what we desire, as fortified through technology. As

Lasswell argues (in Simon et al. 1950: 423): ‘Aristotle would look with warm approval at many of the methods and findings of modern research into political personality and perspective. His broad experience in empirical enquiry would probably render him peculiarly alert to advances in procedures of observation, no less than findings.’ The modern advantage is that techniques of discovery are intimately tied into techniques of implementation. Such progression brings a more detailed understanding and an enhanced capacity, enabling us to grasp ‘what works’ in political affairs. Following Lasswell:

The early thinkers were believed by themselves and others to possess a cognitive

map of the ego in reference to the universal configuration of events. They were

perceived as having skills at their disposal appropriate to the task of influencing

the trans-empirical realm...[by contrast] anyone who has undergone a long

experience of research, critical analysis, and imaginative activity has acquired a

highly differentiated cognitive map (Lasswell 1974: 174, 180).

The important thing about a profession is not conveyed by the traditional assertion

that it has a distinctive literature. Today, practically every craft or trade meets this

criterion. More relevant is the distinction between the exercise of a skill, and the

coupling of skill with knowledge of the aggregated process to which the skill is

intimately related (Lasswell 1972: 306).

The classical writings of Kautilya, the East Indian, or Aristotle, the Greek, or

Machiavelli, the Italian, testify with sufficient eloquence to the penetrating

detachment with which some men have become equipped. But the growth of a

sizeable body of scholars devoted to history and the social and psychological

sciences is quite recent (Lasswell 1936: 384).

Technique derives its power from the fact that it has come to be intimately equated with knowledge itself. Technique and knowledge, we might say, are only fully realised when each support – or would find their substitute in – the other. Rather than being rooted in an understanding of the ‘trans-empirical’ (see Lasswell above) in which we might, for example, claim to know the orthodox techniques by which the gods would be appeased, our modern- day techniques point towards a ‘cognitive map’ which is itself constituted through technique.

The craft or techniques of a profession take on a special significance, then, not because sanctified by trans-human entities, but because they might show what has been promised before it has been delivered. And so the differentiation of the ‘cognitive map’, in the sense described by Lasswell above, follows the differentiation brought about by technique itself.

Thus the techniques of policy and administration would bring on the satisfaction of political desire, because its end has been, or may well be, actually realised. Further, as history unfolds, the means of production come to supplant the desire for the natural whole, as it is these means which would fabricate the whole (i.e., as the ‘cognitive map’) into existence. It follows that as technique – both scientific and practical – improved so too did, on one hand, the political separation of technicians (or the fabricators of the whole) from their research subjects and, on the other, the integration of technicians with their subjects, by way of the technical exposé of what subjects value (understood symbolically).

A few quotes from Lasswell draw this together in his own words:

The emerging policy scientist in our civilization is not only a professional in the

sense that he combines skill with enlightened concern for the aggregate processes

and consequences of decision. He belongs among the systematic contextualists

who are also empirical. It is the steady rise of the empirical, or scientific,

component that separates the fully developed policy scientist from the appliers of

dogmatic theology or metaphysics (Lasswell 1971: 12).

...if a ten per cent increase is made in the funds available to combat mental illness,

what effects on mental illness can be predicted? To what extent will funds

available for other health related programs be reduced or increased? With what

probable effects on aggregating health? How will the outputs in the mental illness

field affect outcomes in economic, family, scientific and other sectors? These

reminders are enough to suggest why the high speed computer has been such a

revolutionizing tool. In effect it allows a contextual, multi-valued (“philosophic”)

point of view to pass from fantasy and exhortation to reality (Lasswell 1971: 444).

If there is unimpeded access to progressively more comprehensive data banks, the

process of “universalization” may go forward, each participant can be supplied

with a map of the whole world and local community contexts in which he

functions. Hence he can consider the preferential significance of cognitive

expectations, discern common interests on an inclusive scale, and identify himself

with those who participate in public and civic order (Lasswell 1971: 445).

We could sum up by saying that philosophers and policy scientists are united against everyday folk by their desire for the whole. Policy scientists are united against the philosophers because only they – policy scientists – are fully conscious of political things.

The end of political things is not natural, but what might be humanly fabricated. This is supported by the mastery of those techniques – following the empirical method – which

would absolve the natural whole of its pre-eminence and thereby allow its recreation following a technical understanding of what is conventionally valued.

Truth and Convention

The above discussion of the satisfaction or realisation of political desire, and its fortification through technique, must be considered along with more general questions about the distinction between truth and convention. Such a consideration is important, for given what was considered above concerning the distinction between the political and the natural things, we would conclude that the political is distinguished by Lasswell because it is a true understanding of humanity, and not merely a result of our desire for mastery. Recall that in the previous section I had suggested that what we fabricate, given what we know in fabrication, may be taken to reflect more than a crude self-interest. Still and all, there remains the problem of truth, or the measure by which we might distinguish one made product from another. As such a measure, truth must be equated with more than merely a political understanding. Here we find ourselves in the strange predicament of having to justify politics according to mastery on one hand, and some correspondence with an already existent reality on the other. Politics would tend, thereby, to find itself split between the poles of the unconventional or absolute originality of fabrication (in which, for instance, we create what is valuable) and what we take to be true simply (what, for example, has been chosen by us because valuable – our ‘values’). We might say that this is no problem; for this is merely a description of the political fabrication of what we already hold to be worth fabricating. There is no divide, in other words, as it is akin to the union of doing and reflecting. But the union is, we might say, especially precarious. For, ultimately, there can be no union (as, really, it is an equivalence), unless there is some tension or some common term which transcends each. For otherwise political judgement, we can see, has nothing to grasp other than what it is left behind. It has no way of knowing itself. Or, put another way, it finds its truth or measure only

in what it counts as false – that is, either nature, or the past. Without being a part of some greater whole this becomes an unself-conscious politics, as per Lasswell’s (interpretation of the) ancient political thinkers. Truth and politics must arise in some higher or fully reconciled

(with itself) consciousness, therefore.

Lasswell would overcome this divide with his understanding of symbolism, which for him would unify democratic politics, human dignity, and the human whole. I will argue, however, that instead of overcoming the divide, it pushes it into another realm – that of the philosophical (c.f., Easton 1950: 455). This is a problem for Lasswell who, as I have argued above, must have (or would presumed to have) settled all philosophical questions before setting out on his own endeavour. Without the settling of these philosophical questions, in other words, political science cannot in all good faith proceed. And if it does, ignorant of its own foundations, it would be forever unaware of the collapsing ground beneath itself. Any cracks in the structure would be misdiagnosed and remedied accordingly, with the result a hastening construction of its own destruction.

Before moving to a discussion of symbolism, I would like to delve a little more into

Lasswell’s understanding of science and its relation to rationality and convention. This consideration is important, as it shows why symbolism (as a psychic construction) would be taken up by Lasswell in order to reconcile political fabrication and truth. As Lasswell (1930:

14) says, ‘science cannot be science and limit itself to the conventional.’ The scientific understanding is for Lasswell an understanding of what is more than conventional. What is conventional still reeks of the human, given that the perspective of humanity is on the whole merely a partial perspective. A conventional perspective is one wherein humanity is unable, through ignorance or a lack of appropriate techniques, to rise above itself and survey what is real. The beginnings of science appeared when humanity attempted to describe the natural world. Such a description, though, was still only partial and thereby a conventional

understanding – such as the perspective from the city or of the gods anthropomorphised (see e.g., Lasswell 1971: 12).

As with Auguste Comte, Lasswell imagines that with the culmination of a universal perspective (see Lasswell 1971: 445), humanity would have finally matured and moved beyond earlier childlike stages. Humanity would finally have become rational. Such rationality is only completed once it has been put into action – analogous in this way to

Aristotle’s understanding of political science as the master science. In Lasswell’s (1971: 120) words:

The contemporary policy scientist perceives himself as an integrator of knowledge

and action, hence as a specialist in eliciting and giving effect to all the rationality

of which individuals and groups are capable at any given time. He is a mediator

between those who specialize in specific areas of knowledge and those who make

the commitments in public and private life.

From the vantage point above action, though, we can see that this is problematic, as indeed

Lasswell recognises. An empirical understanding of modern scientific rationality shows that it is not itself universal – it arose in history and only in certain places (Lasswell 1935: 268).

So it follows that only by surpassing this narrow definition of rationality might truth emerge from convention. This indeed is the only rational response to the conventionality of rationality, because it is the only response in which truth is rescued from the clutches of history.

From Lasswell’s writings we cannot tell whether science or rationality is a conventional phenomenon or not.17 It is this ambivalence which, we are led to surmise, drove Lasswell to settle on neither. He defers instead to the psyche, wherein convention (patterns of thought) and human nature (as revealed symbolically) converge, or, more precisely, where the difference between convention and human nature is irrelevant to political desire. With psychic creation we are liberated from the bondage of scientific routine, therefore. In slightly different terms, psychic creation in perpetually overcoming what were its own limits exposes its own significance as the whole (Lasswell 1935: 271). The psyche would, in sum, liberate us from the constraints of convention or unconscious habits of thought and action:

Logical thinking is but one of the special methods of using the mind, and cannot

itself achieve an adequate inspection of reality because it is unable to achieve self-

knowledge without the aid of other forms of thinking...Free-fantasy is not a

momentary relaxation of selective criticism, but prolonged emancipation from

logical fetters...The world about us is much richer in meaning than we consciously

see...Good intentions are not enough to widen the sphere of self-mastery. There

must be a special technique for the sake of exposing the hidden meanings which

operate to bind and cripple the processes of logical thought. With practice one

may wield the tool of free-fantasy with such ruthless honesty that relevant

material comes very quickly to the focus of attention which we call “waking

consciousness” (Lasswell 1930: 32, 36).

17 However, since he argues that ‘speculative fantasy turns again and again to symbols which stand for routines in externality.’ (Lasswell 1935: 269) we might assume that rationality arises from convention. And yet he also says that ‘[t]he direct disciple of Nature may request the rearranger of very abstract symbols to direct him where to look, as when the modern experimentalist comes to the mathematical physicist for “tips”.’ (Lasswell 1935: 269). This would suggest that rationality is rooted in nature. Still further, though, ‘[t]he prestige of the analytical pattern of thought is due to the receptivities which have been developed for any expedient which could furnish “leads” for the discovery of routines in nature which might be presently utilized in partially remodelling the environment’ (Lasswell 1935: 269-270). We have returned to convention (with its prestige), but at the level of the psychological and of routine, both of which could very well be natural.

Still, it is important to consider that even if rationalism is conventional, in the sense that it has become a matter of habit,18 it also reflects what underlies convention, because, as with mathematics, it would – following Lasswell – mirror the ongoing structure of material and social reality. As both true and conventional, then, the only apparent non-conventional or external touchstone for the psyche is a rationality as confirmed empirically, for here it encounters its other. The empirical and any associated techniques derived from this must be the foundation to science, therefore. Indeed, for Lasswell (1971: 1), empirical observation is the distinction between science and non-science. He says that:

The whole aim of the scientific study of society is to make the obvious

unescapable...The task is to bring into the center of rational attention the

movements which are critically significant in determining our judgement of

subjective events, and to discover the essential antecedents of those patterns of

subjectivity and of movement (Lasswell 1930: 250).

If we distinguish science from non-science by way of empiricism, then so too any theoretical account of the psyche must answer to the empirical. Since the psyche is subordinated to what is empirical it is also open to technical manipulation. The psyche is revealed as true only under its aspects relevant to human fabrication or technique, in other words. In the end, as we find, since the political is equivalent to the true, both are defined in opposition to convention, but since fabrication is unlimited, each is identified historically or conventionally; each is tamed, as it were, by way of technique. And so the problem rests, ultimately, with a deeper unification of politics and science; a problem in which Lasswell would attempt to overcome with his understanding of the symbolic.

18 And is thereby a technique following the breakdown of meaning in the later Middle Ages (Lasswell 1935: 268).

Symbols

Lasswell, as I will explain below, reconciles politics and science in the symbolic productions of the psyche. At first blush, this makes sense. Only because humanity is able to survey itself in speech could Lasswell refer to the symbolic as exemplifying humanity’s significance, or what he regards as its ‘dignity’ (see Lasswell 1957: 3-7). And given that symbolising is essential to human nature (and would link the inner world with the outer – see Lasswell 1951:

494) it also makes possible its contrary – tyranny or the denial of dignity.

Following Lasswell’s understanding, the symbolic arises with a consciousness of what would otherwise have been unconscious. It is, given my previous discussion, the realm of the political therefore. It is also a maturity of thought, in much the same way as Comte’s positive philosophy. It could be described, thereby, as the realm in which humanity finally comes to realise itself. For without access to the psychic whole by way of the appropriate symbols people become anxious and political in the narrow sense of the term (Lasswell 1935: 271).

Only with a proper understanding of the symbolic might people once again be integrated into the psychic whole (Lasswell 1930: 23, 219-220). Since policy scientists would properly understand this realm, they are best placed to manipulate symbols for the dignity of humanity. Such a manipulation would best honour dignity when it is democratic (Lasswell

1951: 473), as it is ‘characterised by wide rather than narrow participation in the shaping and sharing of values’ (Lasswell 1951: 474), and is ‘incompatible with any form of authoritarianism, regardless of the benefits accruing from such concentration of responsibility’ (Lasswell and Kaplan 1950: 234). Symbol specialists in a democracy are most likely to engage in discussion rather than any form of violence, therefore: ‘Any form of rule where the elite consists of symbol specialists we designate as an ideocracy...of the many meanings of “democracy,” those which characterize it by the important role in the political

process played by discussion call attention to its aspects as an ideocracy’ (Lasswell and

Kaplan 1950: 212; see also Dryzek 1989: 111-112).

Why is democracy accorded such pre-eminence? It would seem to come down to what

Lasswell views as the respect accorded symbols under a democracy; the recognition under this regime that the symbolic is the epitome of human dignity. The weight accorded the symbolic, since it is somehow representative of the dignity or essence of humanity, is what separates a democracy from a tyranny (see Lasswell 1951: 471, n.14). In democratic regimes symbols are respected for what they are, whereas in tyrannies they are manipulated or abused.

Symbols are what link humanity to the whole and so any politics which severs these from the whole is not based on political wisdom, thereby.19

Pausing here for a moment, it is possible to see a rift emerging akin to the distinction between the communal or conventional whole and the psyche. What I mean to say is that there is an important difference between the communal whole and the psyche; indeed, a difference as reflected in the distinction between politics and truth. As a creative (and destructive) activity, psychic activity would tend to dissolve community or conventional ways. With the dissolution of the communal whole irrational forces are set free. According to Lasswell, without convention, without a place in the world, anxieties are released and politics degenerates into self-interest. Indeed, Lasswell (1935: 268) argues that the rise of science in the West was conterminous with ‘the tendency toward the externalization of fantasy which has characterized our society since the later Middle Ages’ [italics in original].

19 And thus we find that the ‘analytic pattern’, because it is disconnected from the whole, dissolves the unity of the psyche. Without the unification of holistic symbols, underlying insecurities emerge (Lasswell 1930: 271; 1933: 93), and the psyche is corrupted: ‘It is the recurring surge of insecurity that, however initiated, places a premium upon incessant innovation of detail, both in keeping and taking power. Boredom with one symbol signifies the importance of another symbol’ (Lasswell 1936: 446). The psychic whole is restored only when the hidden conflicts are settled (Lasswell 1930: 25). And hence the political art; which is necessary because of the chaos or conflict from which all things would emerge. The political art would stabilise what is at bottom all- consuming: ‘The stable is a special case of the unstable, to put the ultimate paradox’ (Lasswell 1930: 260).

The symbolic would, for Lasswell, encompass and so reinstate the distinction (according to dignity) between a self-interested politics and a politics rooted in truth. We might best understand it under three aspects. Firstly, by way of mathematics (see Lasswell 1935: 269).

This is a truth which would transcend mere appearance, and so is in effect the sine qua non of the symbolic. Mathematics, even if it does not exhaust what it means to be a symbol, is at least an analogy which would expose the symbolic for what it is. For the symbolic, we could say, is the human appropriation of what in nature would otherwise be oblivious to our desires.

Using symbols we make something ours, and thereby bring it under our power. Secondly, symbols are what connect us to that whole of which we are a part – they are psychic in the broadest sense, and so would be the realm wherein human dignity is realised. And thirdly, they are political insofar as the political whole would mirror the psychic whole and so require the same reforms, according to the distinction between what is dignified and what not.

In the latter two cases, the symbolic would bring to the surface all that is irrational, so that it might be symbolised or made rational, and in this way so too encourage an emotional unity, bond, or cohesive political community. In Lasswell’s (1930, 184-185) words: ‘politics is the process by which the irrational bases of society are brought out into the open...politics is the transition between one unchallenged consensus and the next...the solution is not the

“rationally best” solution, but the emotionally satisfactory one.’

Only with the first aspect, only with a natural physics based on mathematics would the symbolic find its truth in some stability beyond itself, or beyond human fabrication

(remembering that symbols are themselves a human appropriation).20 And this is what defines the symbolic as more than just fantasy. For the symbolic equations of mathematics

20 This is a disputed notion in contemporary philosophy of mathematics, wherein camps are broadly divided into the constructivists and the realists (see Ernest 1998). As far as Lasswell understands it, mathematics would describe nature and so he could be placed in the realist camp.

accord with objects (Lasswell 1935: 269) – not just subjects. In transcending the object, though, mathematical symbols become potentially productive, politically. Both of these we could say make up the symbolic and distinguish it from fantasy. Mathematics thereby defines the symbolic. But in this it is also deficient when it comes to Lasswell’s understanding of politics. For mathematics is constrained by what makes it true – it is rooted in nature.21

Lasswell, so it follows, must draw on the productive potential of the symbol, without transcending what would make mathematics by analogy the essence of the symbolic. This is the basis to what Lasswell describes as the art of the comprehensive ‘symbol specialist’ or professional policy maker.

In Lasswell’s own words, ‘[t]he emerging class of educated men were the ‘symbol specialists’ of society. We are particularly interested in those members of the class who achieved a relatively comprehensive view of public policy’ (Lasswell 1971: 11). And, ‘[i]n contemporary terms those who combine skill with enlightenment are professionals...the true professional can manipulate an armory of skills with awareness of aggregate consequences in mind’ [italics in original] (Lasswell 1971: 12). It is the professional who would be productive and it is the professional who would take up what was initially made available by mathematics. The policy scientist, in other words, would manipulate reality under the guidance of what is ‘true’. However, since the truth is rooted not in nature but in convention it would, by consequence, appear to have transcended mathematics. On a second pass, though, we see that this is not the case. For Lasswell’s symbols are symbols of symbols, as it were. The symbolic, understood as convention, is what has come to sanctify itself as true.

This is akin to a cultural or social understanding of mathematics, with the added twist that society and culture are themselves taken to be mathematical constructs.

21 On the modern origins of this understanding of mathematics, and its pervasiveness in modern thought more generally, see Lachterman (1989).

Politics, following Lasswell, is, though, concerned also with fashioning the community so as to promote the psychic wholeness of its citizens. This is, as Lasswell (1951: 482-483) puts it, the ‘self-system of the person’, and the unity of ‘character’ which would arise when we have

‘sufficient command of the resources of the whole personality.’ This is where some stability would be found, as opposed to the creative essence of the psyche. This is the psyche tamed by convention, or realised as a symbolic unity. The psyche is tamed by the symbol specialist, following the truth uncovered by the scientific observer, or someone who is not themselves bound to reveal themselves in the activity of discovery. This is the scientific view of politics, in which the symbolic is now itself merely an object for empirical investigation. From this perspective, the symbol is not a symbol of anything more than its function within the psychic whole. It has become a means. The end of politics, or the end of production, is a psychic or communal wholeness, achieved by bringing to consciousness, through the appropriate techniques, that which was previously hidden or unconscious. From here the symbol specialist would recreate the political fabric.22

This, however, is a far cry from the common perspective. For the common world is only possible according to Lasswell if, from this perspective, the whole is concrete rather than productive (see Lasswell 1930: 184). The distinction emerges when we consider the symbol specialist’s legitimacy, which is tied up with his capacity to transform a concrete unity into

22 With this we are reminded of Aristotle’s critique (in his Politics) of Plato’s Republic, insofar as the human psyche would be inappropriately equated by him with the polis (1261b7-15). Of course, the difference between the Platonic psyche and Lasswell’s is that Plato’s is divided philosophically rather than productively. Political discord is inherent so long as there is a difference in the psyche, and so in the political community, between eros (desire) and thumos (spiritedness). This is a natural distinction according to Plato and so cannot be fully overcome without perverting nature. But in Lasswell’s account politics is equated with a complete unity or accord, which is the psyche becoming whole. This fits with the perspective of the observer. And so from this perspective the difference between and within psyches could not be anything more, for to uncover more the observer must inquire into the psyche and would cease thereby to be observing it. In the end, the equation of truth with impartiality is in keeping with the technical apparatus (be that psychoanalytic or otherwise) by which the psyche would be known. Such an apparatus would replace the natural or objective necessity which was displaced with the inversion of mathematics (of which the result was pure production). With this the symbol would have been wholly liberated while being entirely contained.

the symbolic (or the mathematical or rational). Pursuing this further, we see that discord is introduced with the scientific or symbolic perspective, as the symbolic would always tend to point beyond itself: it is always in the process of self-dissolution. In sum, a unity between the psyche and the whole is possible only when the common lot do not understand the whole as symbolic (their political understanding is emotional more so than logical – Lasswell 1930:

185). As a consequence, the symbol specialist is condemned to follow what is commonly understood despite their essential differences. The only distinction between the symbol specialist and everyday folk is, therefore, their ‘awareness’. The awareness of the former is naïve or untrue (values are ‘hidden’, for example) and the awareness of the latter is wholly self-conscious and, for this reason, true.

It is here that technique would seem to come into its own, given that anxiety, as symptomatic of a fractured psychic whole, is for Lasswell political corruption exemplified (at least in the modern age). For the technician, it might be said, has transcended or been liberated from anxiety by the promise of what might be created, particularly the symbolic in which reality would come to fruition (see Lasswell 1960; 1970; 1972). Lasswell (1935: 285) says that

[c]learly, insofar as politics is the management of symbols and practices related to

the shape and composition of the value patterns of society, politics can assume no

static certainty; it can strive for dynamic techniques of navigating the tides of

insecurity generated within the nature of man in culture.

The technician is thereby the epitome of a secure and productive rationalism. This for

Lasswell is the true nature of freedom (Lasswell 1951: 524), or absence of tyranny. It is, as I have been arguing though, a Pyrrhic victory.

Since the mathematically derived symbol separates the subject from the object, and so makes possible the distinction between truth and fantasy, and combines them, making possible

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political action, the technician is condemned to oscillate between both: taking up one would necessarily deny the other. The social scientist in political action, for example, acts under the faith that truth is on his side, while in returning – in theory – to confirm this, the whole disappears, reappearing as the symbolic. This is no problem if we simply give up on the whole, as do most politically inclined social scientists; for the whole is accepted already as whatever passes for conventional wisdom. In fact, this is where the social scientists would find some accord with the political authorities of the day. If we are to count this as more than merely the tyranny of a majority, though, then it requires further backing than prejudiced acceptance. Lasswell’s return to the nature of the psychic whole provides this. My point is that it does not exceed what is merely accepted without question by most social scientists; or if it does, it cannot return on its promise of a scientific politics, in which dignity is rescued from tyranny. For without returning on this promise the political remains without the scientific and vice versa. These are by themselves, and by the terms of the debate, tyrannical

(which is to say wholly arbitrary), as neither can reconcile creation or fabrication with the psychic whole. Only with their reconciliation is freedom attained, and so too the psychic whole is realised. But since such freedom, as we saw above, is bound to convention, the dignity of the whole is realised only with the symbolic. And so the oscillation of resolution and dissolution continues, not towards a synthesis, but towards their further separation.

Conclusion

Returning to the original question of this thesis, we can see that Lasswell attempts to resolve the problem of truth and politics in a union which partially transcends each. The problem is that this union is only stabilised with technique grounded in the symbolic. This highest theoretical stage cannot overcome the split engendered by the equation of truth with politics.

And so the conscientious social scientist who would seek to provide more than merely a political grounding to his social scientific practice is faced with the interminable task of

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reconciling politics with truth in the technical practice of manipulating symbols. Indeed, this remains the practice of contemporary social scientists, who would seek to realise their theories politically. The psychologist who strives to increase participation in political decision-making, for example, approaches politics as if the technical act of connecting people to symbols already in public ‘circulation’ would, without question, improve the politics of the day. This perpetuates our understanding of politics as merely symbolic, or as ripe for manipulation, given that each and every symbol (other than the symbolic understanding of politics as held by the social scientist) is equivalent under the light of truth. What remains is for this truth to be realised politically. Such a compulsion to realise or actualise these social scientific ‘theories’ finds its theoretical and so thereby practical resolution in the thought of someone such as Lasswell.

But with this resolution, politics is prematurely moved from the realm of the philosophical to the technical. And hence, according to Lasswell (1930: 203), ‘[t]he achievement of the ideal of preventative politics depends less upon changes in social organization than upon improving the methods and education of social administrators and social scientists.’ And:

If the politics of prevention spreads in society, a different type of education will

become necessary for those who administer society or think about it. This

education will start from the proposition that it takes longer to train a good social

scientist than it takes to train a good physical scientist...he must have an

opportunity for prolonged self-scrutiny by the best developed methods of

personality study, and he must laboriously achieve a capacity to deal objectively

with himself and with all others in society...values change more by the

unconscious redefinition of meaning than by rational analysis...Every contact and

every procedure which discloses new facts has its repercussions upon the matrix

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of partially verbalized experience, which is the seeding ground of conscious ideas

(Lasswell: 1930: 201-202).

This education in technique as outlined by Lasswell (1971) would resolve or would have assumed to resolve the political problems in which the philosophers of the past were entangled (as Lasswell sees it). However, as I argued above, this is not only untrue, for in seeking to overcome the separation between politics and science it would seem to have simply exacerbated it.

This problem, as I will argue in the next chapter, finds a deeper resolution in John Dewey’s philosophical ‘pragmatism’.23 For Dewey breathes life back into everyday experience, as it were. And in so doing he makes way for a more profound union of politics and truth, or the transformation of political life under the ethos of social science. We might contrast him with

Lasswell, in this respect, for whom the symbolic is key, enabling thereby psychic manipulation by way of technique. In overcoming the irrational, the technician exemplifies a true and productive rationalism. Political wisdom arises, thereby, with the technical-rational reformation of the irrational. The human whole, in a similar fashion, emerges as a technical construction. Dewey, as I will show, is more comprehensive. What passes for Lasswell as the formlessness of the psyche, and its technical rectification, does instead, for Dewey, show itself as those ends which arise in interaction. And so, as I will argue, Dewey has no need to construct the whole of human political experience, as does Lasswell. Our common everyday experience is inescapable, by Dewey’s estimation. It is not without foundation, though.

Indeed, the foundation of everyday experience – its truth – is exposed in natural biological life. Biological life shows a deeper unity than Lasswell’s symbolic synthesis. Moreover, its

23 Lasswell was a follower of Dewey, and formulated the policy sciences to overcome what he saw as the dangers of oligarchy and bureaucracy. Indeed, he says that ‘[t]he policy sciences are a contemporary adaptation of the general approach to public policy that was recommended by John Dewey and his colleagues in the development of American pragmatism’ (Lasswell 1971: xiii-xiv).

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political equivalent – craftsmanship – is without the problems which beset Lasswell’s technical endeavour, as it contains already within itself truth fashioned not just according to our own political desires, or self-interest (or what, for Lasswell, is no different to irrationality). Despite offering a deeper defence of the collusion of politics and truth in political action, however, I will argue that problems arise in execution (as it were).

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CHAPTER 4: JOHN DEWEY’S POLITICS OF POETIC CRAFTSMANSHIP

In this chapter I explore John Dewey’s pragmatic or productive political science. Dewey’s political program makes full use of the productive potential of the social sciences; the ends of which Dewey sanctifies in nature. Dewey thereby provides a comprehensive philosophical defence of the political legitimacy of modern applied social science; indeed, such legitimacy is, by his terms, the epitome of politics rightly understood. For politics, by Dewey’s account, is a form of craftsmanship. With this account he surpasses Lasswell, who sidesteps the philosophical implications, building his argument up from what he already understands to be its conclusion (i.e., that the whole is rightly understood as a political construction). Despite

Dewey’s altogether deeper understanding of the problem, I argue that he is unable to deliver on his promise. For his politics of craftsmanship, as I show, would tend to bifurcate into imagination – or poetic desire – on one side and statecraft – or bureaucratic process – on the other. This leads us back towards the problems we uncovered with Lasswell and finally on to the interminable arguments of the policy scientists.

These interminable arguments, as rooted in the challenge posed by truth to politics, find their finale in the desire to transform the public themselves into (amateur) social scientists. In this we saw the resolution of this challenge, as realised in state executive action (in cahoots with social science). The theme which concerns me here is the philosophical root of this. The questions relevant to this are: (1) what must we have understood of human nature in order to hold up applied social science as a political authority? and (2) why haven’t the social sciences delivered on their deepest promise (i.e., political wisdom), despite their ever closer working relationship with state executive agencies? The second question would obviously be debated by social scientists: surely the social sciences have delivered many good things. But it’s a moot point insofar as the real problem, I argue, is not one of realisation – for the state and academia despite working closely do not, and cannot, follow each to the letter. The former

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acts in a politically contingent world; the latter is bound only hypothetically. Given this, given that there is an interest to work together – in theory one might say – but that in practice the two remain distinct, the deeper questions relate to the driving impetus to unite, despite the equally compelling reasons for not doing so. These questions appeared for us in the policy science debates, where we saw, on the one hand, the desire of policy scientists to liberate people from the law-like edicts of positive social science (because these edicts are politically naive) and, on the other, the consequences of this, which, in the end, amounted to nothing more than the encouragement of bureaucratic practice.

Dewey24 gives the best answers to these questions I believe, and in these answers we can, as I argue, come to see why in encouraging an applied and popularly appropriated social science we end up not with a liberated citizenry, but with a tighter but more deeply frustrated union of the state and the general public. With these arguments I am not making an historical claim that we might somehow trace back to Dewey the problems which we now face. Rather, my claim is that Dewey provides a deep and relevant reference point for making sense of why some understand politics in the way that they do, and in what way they might or could justify that understanding. Such a justification is I believe tied up, in turn, with how they address these political problems and why they may just as easily discount as absurd alternative proposals.

In support of this, we should consider the depth and breadth of Dewey’s thought, of which the fundamental example is, I believe, his understanding of human nature by way of our everyday experience. Insofar as we would consider him relevant to our concerns we would point to his attempts to transform political life under the ethos of social science. As a deep and comprehensive thinker, Dewey realises that there is no everyday political whole which

24 Dewey is a forerunner of Lasswell and popularly associated with the ‘pragmatic’ branch of philosophy.

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we might construct in defence of political self-interest, no matter how broadly understood.

Rather, Dewey sees that our common everyday experience is inescapable, but it is not without foundation. Indeed, the foundation of everyday experience – its truth – is exposed in natural biological life. The true political potential of the social sciences arises with the fact of this natural foundation to political life. Dewey draws together the political potential of the social sciences and the natural (i.e., biological) truth which this would emulate, in the form of craftsmanship. This is possible since for Dewey science is, as it were, a verb rather than a noun. As a project of doing or making, Dewey solves the perennial problem of truth and politics in human fabrication. As we discover, though, we strike a problem of both coordination and realisation. The citizen as amateur social scientist, as craftsman of his or her own ends, would desire what could only be realised in active coordination with others. Just as in the natural world, the truth arises in interaction. Absent this, though, absent the coordination which we find in nature, the state (and statecraft) would seem to be required to bring to fruition what is desired by citizens. Given that the state is in no position to realise this – as statecraft is not the same as citizen craftsmanship – the unity cannot hold. We would find, as in our contemporary situation, frustration, arising with an unrealisable desire on one side (citizen fabrication) and the inadequacy of statecraft on the other. This realisation of politics as truth-in-fabrication (understood with reference to the natural world) cannot lead to what is truly – or existentially – meaningful, in other words.

A Pragmatic Approach

Dewey approaches politics according to his philosophy of pragmatism. We might, for this reason, call him the philosopher most at home in our times. For a pragmatic politics – a politics which gets things done – is the public face presented by players on both sides of the political fence. This political spirit mirrors public expectations; for the public expects solutions and berates the government of the day when these are not forthcoming (see Flinders

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2009; Taylor 2012). Even the counsel for this somewhat fractious marriage –as evidenced by the increasing ‘depoliticisation’ of modern society (see e.g., Fawcett and Marsh 2014) – follows in Dewey’s footsteps. What is required is a unification of the public and executive government, or the re-invigoration of the public’s own executive capacity – this through social inclusion, public deliberation, direct democracy, participatory democracy, deliberative democracy, policy co-design etc. (see Dewey 1920: 209, and for contemporary examples:

Dryzek 2010; Durose and Richardson 2016; Elstub and McLaverty 2014; Hildreth 2012).

These downstream policy responses find their source in Dewey because it is under a pragmatic spirit that problems are identified. Nevertheless, they depart from Dewey in important ways. For where Dewey hoped for communities of intelligent citizen-scientists, the modern varieties take it for granted that a closer relationship between state and citizens is inevitable. This is a compromised solution following Dewey and, as I will suggest below, it is a necessary modification of his position. But, nonetheless, it finds its truth in Dewey. For the ideal is provided by Dewey. This ideal – the resolution of politics and truth in political fabrication – is rooted in, as we find with Dewey, a natural philosophy. This understanding of nature is for Dewey the ground of human political experience.

Importantly, the resolution of the problem posed by truth to politics, as I argue, hinges for

Dewey on the political realisation of an analogue in political life to what we find in nature – a stable organisation of coordinated activity. This political analogue Dewey calls the Great

Community, which is, as he says, not just an association of individuals, but a unified public – defined by Dewey as having its source in ‘the perception of consequences which are projected in important ways beyond the persons and associations directly concerned in them’

(1954: 39) – or a public with a self-defined and common purpose. This is a public which has

‘found itself’, in the words of Dewey (1954: 216). Without this possibility (of being found), though, I propose that the art which properly belongs to the citizen-scientist – as promoted by

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Dewey – is taken up elsewhere, as an aspiration embraced by the commercial sector and the state, for example. The desires of the public remain, but the means to fulfil those desires are placed in the hands of others. As we find with the ‘compromised’ modern solution, this degeneration of the ideal of self-sufficient local communities into state-sanctioned techniques of social science bypasses the practical inadequacies of Dewey’s program, without giving up on the fundamental pragmatic aim of discovering ‘what works’ in public policy. Retained, then, is the pragmatic desire brought on by the popularisation of social science. Left behind, though, is the union of research practitioner and research subject. The social sciences are not put into practice by the public, but rather they are called upon to solve all manner of social and political ills. Political practitioners (i.e., the state) and the public are separated, then, insofar as the latter call on the former to deliver, and the former promise to do so, but in a way which could never satisfy the latter. In this we can see the root of the marital problems, and we can see also why the technician would come to be held in such high esteem as the counsellor (only he has the necessary skills – so it is believed – to heal this political disunity) even as he is the cause of the fracture.

Even if these problems could not have been foreseen by Dewey, they point to a lacuna in his philosophical position. This lacuna, as I’ll argue, emerges with Dewey’s problematic pairing of the imagination (which underlies the desire to solve political or social problems scientifically) with self-reliant, intelligent, local communities. Holding these together – and what is of decisive importance – is a constructed or fabricated unity of ‘ends-in-view’

(Dewey’s term). The problem is that without the possibility of a solid or enduring construction, the consequences are perverse. And this, as I’ll argue, is the case. For Dewey’s poetic craftsmanship (my term) would tend to find itself divided: poetic fabrication25 on one

25 Understood here as the bare activity of ‘making’, following its original understanding (poiēsis). As will become clear, I cannot therefore agree with Bourne (1919: 131-134) who chastises Dewey for separating what

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side and its realisation in statecraft on the other. We see here, then, at a deeper level than the modern academic policy science debates, the resolution of politics and truth. But we also see what the root problem is: the lack of a meaningful politics and its replacement by technique or social scientific practice.

Poetic Nature

In order to disentangle our confusion over politics and truth Dewey takes us back to the beginning. In the beginning, following Dewey, we find a misunderstanding, fashioned, according to Dewey, by the first philosophers, the metaphysicians. This misunderstanding – a metaphysical understanding – might be traced back to political privilege. This was the privileged position of those who produced nothing useful:

What the philosophers are responsible for is a peculiar one-sided interpretation of

these empirical facts, an interpretation, however, which has its roots in features,

although less admirable ones, of Greek culture. For the Greek community was

marked by a sharp separation of servile workers and free men of leisure, which

meant a division between acquaintance with matters of fact and contemplative

appreciation, between unintelligent practice and unpractical intelligence, between

affairs of change and efficiency or instrumentality and of rest and enclosure

finality (Dewey 1929: 93; see also 88).

What metaphysicians did produce was private, other-worldly and, as it were, a resting place for thought (Dewey 1934: 22). In this inactivity, or leisured state, these first philosophers would distinguish themselves as do fine artists from artisans. Fine artists, we might say, are

Bourne calls ‘poetic vision’ from ‘instrumentalism’. Bourne goes on to say that what is needed is such ‘vision’ or, mirroring Weber, ‘value-creators’ (135). This does not, however, surpass Dewey, as these are (i.e., poetics and instrumentalism), when thought through, two sides of the same coin.

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contemplators and interpreters of reality, whereas artisans craft objects for use. The usefulness of the artisan and the utility of his crafted objects are what might make us consider his artistry somewhat cruder than the fine artist’s. This is how the metaphysicians understood it, following Dewey’s account. For the metaphysicians encouraged this division, relegating artisans to nothing more than menial labourers (Dewey 1920: 13-15). Akin to fine artists, the metaphysicians reinterpreted the ends of artistry as a theoretical or contemplative knowledge, making this the most beautiful or noble thing of all. In Dewey’s own words:

The counterpart of the conversion of esthetic objects into objects of science, into

the one, true and good, was the conversion of operative and transitive objects into

things which betray absence of full Being. This absence causes their changing

instability which is, none the less, after the model of materials of the useful arts,

potentially useful for ends beyond themselves. The social division into a laboring

class and a leisure class, between industry and esthetic contemplation, became a

metaphysical division into things which are mere means and things which are

ends (Dewey 1929: 124).

On top of this, the ancient philosophers plundered a mythical understanding of the cosmos from the dramatic artists (Dewey 1920: 7-9; 1929: 80-84). They couched the fruits of their labour in the grandiosity of dramatic myth, thereby sanctifying these fruits under the light of eternity. We might think here of Pythagoras’ divine mathematical harmonics, for example, or of Plato’s so-called eternal ideas. In any respect, these philosophers were in the end merely another species of the sophist. But it is sophistry at its most subtle or devious we might say, for these philosophers would present themselves as their opponents. They would misrepresent their own poetic, imaginative, or created fabrications and disparage the dramatists for being mere story-tellers.

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In only believing to have separated truth from poetry, the metaphysicians would confuse a natural with a private artistry. They would, in other words, confuse their own fabrications with the real thing. Again, put differently, they would create a stable or eternal thing known, and call this the true foundation of all known things. The problem as Dewey sees it, though, is that this act of contemplation separates the thinker from the flow of life, and the further act of rendering this contemplation stable fixes this separation, and in so doing comes to displace experience itself (Dewey 1929: 123-124). And so the object of art replaces life because art has been abstracted from life. This goes as much for the so-called philosophers of flux such as Heraclitus and Bergson as it does for those of form such as Plato and Aristotle (Dewey

1922: 74; 1929: 50).

There are some similarities here with Lasswell (of the previous chapter), who thought of the metaphysicians as ensnared by received opinion. Dewey remains, however, more attuned to the political, and less to the technical, than Lasswell. This shows itself when considering

Lasswell’s understanding of the ancients.. For him they might be classed as modern rationalists in potential, for they simply lacked the tools or techniques to realise political wisdom. Lacking these they remained enamoured by cosmology, confusing this with political insight. By Dewey’s account, in contrast, the ancients either knew exactly what they were doing – that is, holding to a false understanding of nature because politically expedient (for them) to do so – or were in the service of others who did. Dewey does not sever the link between nature and truth, whereas Lasswell substitutes this unity with technique. At the deepest level, humanity is for Dewey realised in creation. For Lasswell, we realise ourselves as a technical construction.

So it makes sense that, according to Dewey, we misunderstand nature when we understand it in abstraction (Dewey 1929: 123-124). The right understanding of nature, we must conclude,

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is according to human experience itself. Just as we are by nature artistic or poetic creatures, so too nature is artistic or poetic:26

It is not egotism that leads man from contemplative registration of these traits to

interest in managing them, to intelligence and purposive art…choice is not

arbitrary, not in a universe like this one, a world which is not finished and which

has not consistently made up its mind where it is going and what it is going to do

(Dewey 1929: 76).

From the first manifestation by a child of an impulse to draw up to the creations of

a Rembrandt, the self is created in the creation of objects, a creation that demands

active adaptation to external materials, including a modification of the self so as to

utilize and thereby overcome external necessities by incorporating them in an

individual vision and expression (Dewey 1929: 282).

Oppositions of mind and body, soul and matter, spirit and flesh all have their

origin, fundamentally, in fear of what life may bring forth. They are marks of

contraction and withdrawal (Dewey 1934: 22).

If the classic thinkers created a cosmos after the model of dialectic, giving rational

distinctions power to constitute and regulate, modern thinkers composed nature

after the model of personal soliloquizing... No more in their case [i.e., humans]

than in that of atoms and physical masses is immediacy the whole of existence

and therefore an obstacle to being acted upon by and effecting other things.

26 See also: ‘Greek reflection, carried on by a leisure class in the interest of liberalizing leisure, was preeminently that of the spectator, not that of the participator in processes of production’ (Dewey 1929: 91). And: ‘While thinkers condemned the industrial class and despised labor, they borrowed from them the facts and the conceptions that gave form and substance to their own theories. For apart from processes of art there was no basis for introducing the idea of fulfillment, realization, into the notion of end nor for interpreting antecedent operations as potentialities’ (Dewey 1929: 125).

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Everything that exists in as far as it is known and knowable is in interaction with

other things (Dewey 1929; 173-175).

As we are coming to see, the misunderstanding of the metaphysicians is equivalent to the separation of ‘truth’ from nature’s poetic or artistic essence. In considering Aristotle’s estimation of poetry and history, then, it makes sense that from Dewey’s perspective Aristotle misunderstands poetry even as he divines something true about it. For poetry, following

Dewey, is higher than history, as Aristotle claims, for it is more philosophical. This, though, not because it deals in ‘universals’ but because only creation is genuine27 (Dewey 1934: 284).

As Dewey says: ‘philosophies that have been marked by bias in favour of universal natures and “characters” have always regarded only the eternal and unchanging as truly real. Yet no genuine work has ever been a repetition of anything that previously existed’ (Dewey 1934:

288).28

Dewey’s understanding of nature as artistic or poetic is, he believes, a truer understanding than previously proposed because it is more objective, or less political. Philosophers of the past were still captured by their own self-interest. The metaphysicians, for example, transformed nature’s becoming into Being simply because it was in their own best interests to do so. Dewey, by contrast, goes back to the beginning or to the genesis of experience to understand it (indeed, he follows Darwin – see Dewey 1910).29 For the matrix through which

27 As understood by the Greeks. But of course the typical Greek understanding of creation was different to that understanding typical of the Christian and post-Christian ages. 28 And this: ‘The underlying philosophy and psychology of earlier liberalism led to a conception of individuality as something ready-made, already possessed, and needing only the removal of certain legal restrictions to come into play. It was not conceived as a moving thing, something that is attained only by continuous growth’ (Dewey 1963: 39). 29 According to Dewey (1910: 8-9), ‘[t]he influence of Darwin upon philosophy resides in his having conquered the phenomena of life for the principle of transition, and thereby freed the new logic for application to mind and morals and life.’ And: ‘Intelligence after millions of years of errancy, has found itself as a method’ (Dewey 1963: 93).

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human experience exhibits its ongoing structure is defined already by the beginning of organic life. For example:

To say in a significant way, “I think, believe, desire, instead of barely it is

thought, believed, desired,” is to accept and affirm a responsibility and to put forth

a claim. It does not mean that the self is the source or author of the thought and

affection nor its exclusive seat. It signifies that the self as a centred organization

of energies identifies itself (in the sense of accepting their consequences) with a

belief or sentiment of independent and external origination (Dewey 1929: 233).

The distinction between physical, psycho-physical, and mental is thus one of

levels of increasing complexity and intimacy of interaction among natural events.

The idea that matter, life and mind represent separate kinds of Being is a doctrine

that springs, as so many philosophic errors have sprung, from a substantiation of

eventual functions (Dewey 1929: 261).

Central to this, according to Dewey, is an interactive organisation in which the neediness of organisms results in the restoration of an equilibrium or harmony. Fundamentally, the organism is not organised a priori as it were, but only according to the natural end of neediness. Although the end of neediness would seem to denote a telos, this is not teleological, for the end is not of the organism but arises with interaction:

Life grows when a temporary falling out is a transition to a more extensive

balance of the energies of the organism with those of the conditions under which

it lives...There is in nature, even below the level of life, something more than mere

flux and change. Form is arrived at whenever a stable, even though moving,

equilibrium is reached. Changes interlock and sustain one another. Wherever there

is this coherence there is endurance. Order is not imposed from without but is

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made out of the relations of harmonious interactions that energies bear to one

another. Because it is active (not anything static because foreign to what goes on)

order itself develops...For only when an organism shares in the ordered relations

of its environment does it secure the stability essential to living. And when the

participation comes after a phase of disruption and conflict, it bears within itself

the germs of a consummation akin to the esthetic (Dewey 1934: 14, 15).

Harmony, we might say, emerges only when an organism driven by its own sense of disequilibrium goes about re-organising itself and its surrounds according to the universal desire to endure. The human being is no different to the simplest of organisms in this regard

(Dewey 1922: 187; 1929: 246). It is merely more complex (Dewey 1929: 255, 258, 261, 295;

1920: 86):

Personality, selfhood, subjectivity are eventual functions that emerge with

complexly organized interactions, organic and social. Personal individuality has

its basis and conditions in simpler events. Plants and non-human animals act as if

they were concerned that their activity, their characteristic receptivity and

response, should maintain itself. Even atoms and molecules show a selective bias

in their indifferencies, affinities and repulsions when exposed to other events

(Dewey 1929: 208).

What sanctifies a politics can only be an emulation of a natural harmony, therefore; which is the desire to create or produce those conditions which would fulfil the needs, universally understood, of an organism in disarray. What we know of these needs is not thereby social or political but natural. For the political or social, as we have seen with the argument against the metaphysicians, cannot be relied upon as a judgement of harmony or of needs. To expose our needs we must emulate the artistry of nature in order to rise above its solidifying past. We

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emulate nature only when we are not prey to it. As Dewey (1929: 358) says, art is ‘the complete culmination of nature, and that “science” is properly a handmaiden that conducts natural events to this happy issue.’

Craftsmanship

Tied up with any misunderstanding of nature is an understanding of human needs. Tied up with this is our appreciation of those arts and crafts – or the tools – by which we might satisfy them. Unable to understand human needs we could not, obviously, understand politics. And in not understanding politics we would act not in truth but merely according to the desires of our class (Dewey 1929: 120). Delving deeper than class, and as a synopsis of what Dewey has to say, it is helpful to think of human arts and crafts under two aspects: the productive and the mimetic. The productive aspect appears in the guise of the craftsman, and attempts to make up for the deficiencies of nature. The mimetic aspect appears in the guise of the dramatist, and brings before us something of nature’s significance. Both are rooted in need

(Dewey 1929: 64): the first a need for protection against nature’s capriciousness and the second a desire to understand her ways. Metaphysicians (in which we can include modern mathematicians), by Dewey’s account, deny or pass over the top of this first need to proclaim for themselves a world perfected, in such a way to claim that the second has been realised

(believing they have grasped Being) – see Dewey (1929: 123). In so doing, the essential capriciousness of nature, its artistry, is resolved, and consequently human ends are denied their power. Likewise, the transformation of myths and dramatic stories into theoretical accounts would make what is essentially an expression of neediness look like necessity. And a world defined only by necessity, as Dewey points out, ‘would just be. For in its being, nothing would be necessary for anything’ (Dewey 1929: 64).

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To honour nature, poetic fabrication must replace a metaphysical philosophy. With this, contra the metaphysicians, we remain within human experience. With this we remain in close proximity to our neediness, in other words. Indeed, with this we follow the open-endedness of nature itself. For in nature we see that pre-political organisms do not move towards a fixed natural end, but re-produce themselves according to changing needs. They are driven to organise themselves in an ongoing state of unity and flux:

The existence of art is the concrete proof of what has just been stated abstractly. It

is proof that man uses the materials and energies of nature with intent to expand

his own life, and that he does so in accord with the structure of his organism—

brain, sense-organs, and muscular system. Art is the living and concrete proof that

man is capable of restoring consciously, and thus on the plane of meaning, the

union of sense, need, impulse and action characteristic of the live creature (Dewey

1934: 25).

It is here that the artisan comes to the fore. It is here that the artisan honours both the productive and mimetic aspects of human artistry. This is for Dewey the truth and the beauty of craftsmanship. For craftsmanship is, by Dewey’s account, fabrication according to nature.

It is the human fabrication of what nature would have provided human beings if it weren’t for the fact that they must create for themselves (see Dewey 1934: 25). With craftsmanship, humanity fashions itself. This is not mere fancy though, for craftsmanship emulates what is the way of nature, according to its ends as well as its means (see Dewey 1929: 352).

Craftsmanship is the natural-political culmination of our poetic desire (in emulation of nature as understood scientifically) by means of a pre-theoretical scientific art. Its exemplification is the artisan liberated:

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As the arts and crafts develop and become more elaborate, the body of positive

and tested knowledge enlarges, and the sequences observed become more

complex and of greater scope. Technologies of this kind give that common-sense

knowledge of nature out of which science takes its origin. They provide not

merely a collection of positive facts, but they give expertness in dealing with

materials and tools, and promote the development of the experimental habit of

mind, as soon as an art can be taken away from the rule of sheer custom (Dewey

1920: 12).

Men’s conscious life of opinion and judgment often proceeds on a superficial and

trivial plane. But their lives reach a deeper level. The function of art has always

been to break through the crust of conventionalized and routine consciousness

(Dewey 1954: 183).

In the manual arts we see a prototype of communal craftsmanship, for the manual artisan crafts or brings into being some product, say shoes, according to an immediate or proximate need and by way of a method (see Dewey 1929: 85). The artisan as labourer, though, is a pawn of his own non-productivity (see Dewey 1922: 71, 233-234). For the artisan labourer has not fully realised the nature of his or her craft, as this craft has been limited to the production of mere objects. The life of the craftsman has been produced by others, as it were.

Only a fully liberated craftsmanship honours craftsmanship as such, but only a community of liberated craftsmen honours politics, and so too nature.

This liberation highlights the difference between human beings and other creatures, insofar as human beings are free to pursue other than natural ends – as the metaphysicians in their ignorance show (see Dewey 2001: 100). The ends which human beings should pursue must, however, emulate the organic form of natural ends –

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Moral conceptions and processes grow naturally out of the very conditions of

human life…As soon as the power of thought develops, needs cease to be blind;

thought looks ahead and foresees results. It forms purposes, plans, aims, ends-in-

view. Out of these universal and inevitable facts of human nature there necessarily

grow the moral conceptions of the Good, and of the value of the intellectual phase

of character, which amid all the conflict of desires and aims strives for insight into

the inclusive and enduring satisfaction: wisdom and prudence [italics in original]

(Dewey and Tufts 1932: 343).

Recognising how our ‘moral’ sense emerges, and what we can understand of our ends or values thereby, distinguishes a true from a false artistry. As exemplified by the metaphysicians, a false artistry situates ends in the transcendent. A true artistry, by contrast, is organic or natural. The ends associated with this organic activity Dewey refers to as ‘ends- in-view’.

Ends-In-View

Ends-in-view are the emulation by human beings of the equilibrium or organisation in nature.

Whereas in nature an organism organises itself (becomes an organism, as it were) through an unconscious accommodation to changing circumstances, our consciousness is tied in with the fact that we must posit natural-like ends. These posited ends must be transitive, a consummation of desire, and attain equilibrium with organisation. In everyday terms, what this means is that these ends arise in interaction, and so are never actually out there waiting to be discovered.

Every perception, or awareness, marks a “this,” and every “this” being a

consummation involves retention, and hence contains the capacity of

remembering. Every "this" is transitive, momentarily becoming a “that.” In its

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movement it is, therefore, conditioning of what is to come; it presents the

potentiality of foresight and prediction. The union of past and future with the

present manifest in every awareness of meanings is a mystery only when

consciousness is gratuitously divided from nature, and when nature is denied

temporal and historic quality. When consciousness is connected with nature, the

mystery becomes a luminous revelation of the operative interpenetration in nature

of the efficient and the fulfilling (Dewey 1929: 352).

By need is meant a condition of tensional distribution of energies such that the

body is in a condition of uneasy or unstable equilibrium. By demand or effort is

meant the fact that this state is manifested in movements which modify environing

bodies in ways which react upon the body, so that its characteristic pattern of

active equilibrium is restored. By satisfaction is meant this recovery of

equilibrium pattern, consequent upon the changes of environment due to

interactions with the active demands of the organism (Dewey 1929: 253).

Ends-in-view are not subjective, however. Since ends-in-view are ‘anticipated results’ they can be attained only with our own efforts to craft what already exists (Dewey 1922: 234;

1939: 16; Dewey and Tufts 1932: 199). The consummation of ends-in-view is not merely potential, therefore, but wholly actual; just as the equilibrium of the organism when brought into harmony with its environment is a natural occurrence. Ends-in-view are thereby a natural consummation of those existential possibilities which would satisfy our needs or desires (see Dewey 1929: 112, 123, 351, 352; 1934: 25). They are, then, not merely constructed by us. For political communities are like natural environs insofar as the possibilities at this analogous level limit what might be truly created at subordinate levels.

Members of subordinate levels – for example, individuals – cannot simply claim as their own

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those ends which must emerge at higher levels of organisation, in other words. And yet, nature, by Dewey’s reckoning, is poetic. Ends-in-view by consequence are natural only insofar as they might themselves be overcome; such as when recognised as merely custom or memory (see Dewey 1922: 34, 193, 225, 232; 1929: 118, 120).

Means are means; they are intermediates, middle terms. To grasp this fact is to

have done with the ordinary dualism of means and ends. The “end” is merely a

series of acts viewed at a remote stage; and a means is merely the series viewed at

an earlier one. The distinction of means and end arises in surveying the course of

a proposed line of action, a connected series in time. The “end” is the last act

thought of; the means are the acts to be performed prior to it in, time. To reach an

end we must take our mind off from it and attend to the act which is next to be

performed (Dewey 1922: 34).

Ends are, in fact, literally endless, forever coming into existence as new activities

occasion new consequences. “Endless ends” is a way of saying that there are no

ends that is no fixed self-enclosed finalities. While however we cannot actually

prevent change from occurring we can and do regard it as evil. We strive to retain

action in ditches already dug. We regard novelties as dangerous, experiments as

illicit and deviations as forbidden. Fixed and separate ends reflect a projection of

our own fixed and non-interacting compartmental habits (Dewey 1922: 232).

For reason is experimental intelligence, conceived after the pattern of science, and

used in the creation of social arts; it has something to do. It liberates man from the

bondage of the past, due to ignorance and accident hardened into custom (Dewey

1920: 96).

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With their consummation ends become a past achievement, and so are natural only so long as they reside in the future (see Dewey 1934: 18). We desire ends-in-view to better ourselves

(Dewey 1934: 18), while desires rooted in the past culminate in rationalisations (such as metaphysics) which maintain what could possibly be better (see Dewey 1929: 119). This better future, or natural harmony, is recognised by us through language, in an imagined organisation of means and their consummation (see Dewey 1934: 286).

As life is a character of events in a peculiar condition of organization, and

“feeling” is a quality of life-forms marked by complexly mobile and

discriminating responses, so “mind” is an added property assumed by a feeling

creature, when it reaches that organized interaction with other living creatures

which is language, communication (Dewey 1929: 258).

Once again it is on the question of art, following its ambiguity or ‘open-endedness’, that human beings are distinguished from other organisms. Organisms have no need to recognise what is the consummation of their ends, for it is a wholly natural process. Human beings, by contrast, must be able to recognise and so distinguish one desire from another in order for them to act according to ends. It is only through art – the fashioning through language of what is organised – that these desires are both realised and recognised.

Given this distinction between the artistry of human beings and that of other organisms, we are exposed to a danger of our own making, a danger not shared by other organisms. For the unity of our desires, as exemplified in Dewey’s terms by ‘organisation’, is in danger of being dissolved by the craft of fabrication.30 This is not so for biological life. In nature, unity and fabrication are a-political, and so stand on an equal footing insofar as one emerges from the other, and vice versa. The shellfish, plants, and other ocean creatures, form an ‘eco-system’,

30 Compare this with the experience of the scientist (Dewey 1934: 324).

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for example. This is itself part of a larger living ‘system’. The needs of each organism are satisfied in interaction with others, and change both individually and in unity. The ends are not fixed (but exist as unity), and neither thereby are needs. The unity of the ecosystem, likewise, arises from the needs of each organism, and so too the unity of each organism is a stable unity of subordinate needs. Disharmony arises from chance events, following which harmony is re-established. Chance events we might then count as part of this natural process, such as when ocean temperatures rise. Indeed, events are only regarded as ‘chance’ from within a subordinate unity: a rise in ocean temperatures is explainable from the perspective of a broader system, such as the climactic, but not from an oceanic, system, for example.

Changes in the unity and thereby the needs of organisms are for this reason fully accounted for by nature given that we can view them from different systems or level of organisation.

Humans, by contrast, might consciously alter their needs in a way which cannot be accounted for by a natural or systemic understanding. There is a difference of kind here (from the biological understanding), not just a difference of scope. The desires of humans are obviously artistic in a way not shared by pre-political biological life. We dream and imagine (as the example of the metaphysicians show), and in dreaming and imagining we seek to construct

(or inhabit) our world according to this. If our constructions are held together solely by our own dreaming, then obviously it is a fragile unity, prone to disintegration by the prick of reality at any moment. This unity is preserved only if organisation were to arise not from our own desires, but from what transcends any one of us. Only with this could we recognise what we desire as true, because our desires would present to us as a unity not of our own making.

This, indeed, is the political analogue of what we find in nature. For in nature, the ends of organisms arise with, and are bound by, their environment. So too we come to recognise what we desire only if what we hold dear we take to be more than merely a passing whim.

Whatever we would build for ourselves we must count as self-evidently worth building, in

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much the same way as the organism adapts in one contingent way, and only in one contingent way, to its environment. If not, what we construct is merely a self-indulgent fantasy – no different to the dreams of the metaphysicians.

In the remainder of this chapter I examine this fragile construction of Dewey’s. I show that in encouraging the poetic root of applied social science, the public are encouraged to transcend the past in the desire to realise themselves in an imagined future. The fundamental resolution is thereby the possibility of this unified future – the natural or ‘Great Community.’ Without this community, political desire would be encouraged while remaining frustrated.

At this point it is worthwhile, I believe, to return for a moment to contemporary times. For, as

Dewey himself points out, the modern state, and (technical) industrial society, cannot realise freedom – it is a form of bondage (see e.g., Dewey 1920: 207; 1922: 144; 1934: 341; Dewey and Tufts 1932: 393, 422-425). The other side of this is, of course, that unification is itself a bond, and so the state (or statecraft) would, absent the Great Community, itself offer the unity which a Great Community could not, and – it should be pointed out – has not. In this promise of a unified future, but inability to deliver, the relationship between the public and the state would be founded not on security (as per Hobbes), but the insecurity of a desired, yet unrealisable, liberating future.

Great Community

What saves Dewey’s project from collapse is his trust in the possibility of a ‘naturally-styled’ public community, a Great Community of common or communal experience, in which the good would arise through a mutual, intelligent craftsmanship (see Dewey 1929: 233; 1934a:

87). When Dewey wrote this, the Great Community did not yet exist, of course. But its realisation, he thought, is our only hope, to enable the public to recognise itself, and so come to liberate itself from its own bad habits (as brought about through industrialisation,

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technological advancement etc.). Only under a Great Community might the public come to recognise what are its true needs, and seek to satisfy these.

Without the Great Community, we might suppose, little would have changed from Dewey’s time; namely, a public without ‘form’, generally confused about its own needs and how to realise them (the problem, according to Dewey (1954: 126), is that there are too many

‘publics’). Without the Great Community it is also possible that – and this is what I am arguing – habits give way to needs rooted in the promise of technical mastery, but without the requisite and accompanying unity and coordination of activity (as provided by the Great

Community). Without this, needs would remain unfulfilled, and without even a transitory end, the public would remain frustrated.

In defending this point, I begin with the fact that the Great Community is, for Dewey, different to an association of individuals. As Dewey (1954: 151) describes it, ‘association itself is physical and organic, while communal life is moral, that is emotionally, intellectually, consciously sustained.’ What sustains communal life is common action, in which its consequences become an object of common desire (Dewey 1954: 151). It follows that only through man’s natural capacity as a maker of symbols – as a poet – is communal life at all possible:

Symbols control sentiment and thought, and the new age has no symbols

consonant with its activities. Intellectual instrumentalities for the formation of an

organized public are more inadequate than its overt means…We have the physical

tools of communication as never before...Without such communication the public

will remain shadowy and formless, seeking spasmodically for itself, but seizing

and holding its shadow rather than its substance. Till the Great Society is

converted into the Great Community, the Public will remain in eclipse.

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Communication can alone create a great community. Our Babel is not one of

tongues but of the signs and symbols without which shared experience is possible

(Dewey 1954: 142).

The Great Community is, as we can surmise from what has been presented thus far, the natural and not the metaphysical end of humanity.31 It must be created, fabricated, and encouraged to appear. It would arise in a unity which would equate human beings with, but also distinguish them from, other non-self-conscious organic associations. The natural end of this community, as shared by all, and as realised in a future-oriented common language, would arise thereby in mutual enquiry.

Underscoring this Great Community, as Dewey puts it, is ‘a kind of knowledge and insight which does not yet exist’ (1954: 166). Such knowledge can only arise with a free and public exchange of ideas, since ‘[t]he problem of a democratically organized public is primarily and essentially an intellectual problem, in a degree to which the political affairs of prior ages offer no parallel’ (Dewey 1954: 126). On a related point, only applied science is knowledge

(Dewey 1954: 174): ‘Science is converted into knowledge in its honorable and emphatic sense only in application. Otherwise it is truncated, blind, distorted.’ Pure science is akin to dreaming, in other words. Bringing these together, Dewey states that ‘[c]ommunication of the results of social inquiry is the same thing as the formation of public opinion. This marks one of the first ideas framed in the growth of political democracy as it will be one of the last to be fulfilled’ (1954: 176). Without this, as Dewey surmises, opinion will not be ‘truly’ public.

The realisation of a public is for Dewey a matter of identity and organisation. This is the foundation of a Great Community. Since for Dewey the Great Community is more than

31 Not only does Dewey follow Rousseau in using the metaphor of the general will (Dewey 1954: 153), he also follows Rousseau in equating human being with community, as realised in mutual recognition of, and satisfaction in, desire.

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merely an association of individuals, what is required is a unity of minds and hearts, as it were. Individuals must be able to recognise their interests in the interests of others and thereby identify themselves not just as individuals, but in the plural – as a public. And thus

Dewey (1954: 216): ‘Whatever the future may have in store, one thing is certain. Unless communal life can be restored, the public cannot adequately resolve its most urgent problem: to find and identify itself.’ That the public finds itself and in so doing identifies itself is necessary before any ends-in-view can be manufactured, or at least before ends-in-view can be said to be representative of not just private interests.

The idea or ideal of a community presents, however, actual phases of associated

life as they are freed from restrictive and disturbing elements, and are

contemplated as having attained their limit of development. Wherever there is

conjoint activity whose consequences are appreciated as good by all singular

persons who take part in it, and where the realization of the good is such as to

effect an energetic desire and effort to sustain it in being just because it is a good

shared by all, there is in so far a community. The clear consciousness of a

communal life, in all its implications constitutes the idea of democracy (Dewey

1954: 148-149).

The Great Community, we might say, is the final stage of the realisation of ends-in-view.

Without the Great Community, ends-in-view are indistinguishable from personal fantasy.

Only as realised in interaction with others are ends-in-view shown to be natural, or a true reflection of the satisfaction of our needs, in other words. These needs are tied up with our natural potential and remain misrecognised so long as we misunderstand ourselves. As a consequence, we would lack the means to become, politically, what, naturally, we are. As

Dewey adds, with reference to the American Transcendentalist Ralph Waldo Emerson: ‘We

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lie, as Emerson said, in the lap of an immense intelligence. But that intelligence is dormant and its communications are broken, inarticulate and faint until it possesses the local community as its medium.’ (Dewey 1954: 219).32 This ‘immense intelligence’ to which

Dewey refers is the natural intelligence of communal human interaction (which Dewey describes in shorthand as the Great Community). With this, the ends of human activity are sanctified in nature. Problematic is that these same ends, and so too the ideal of the Great

Community, are unified under the model of craftsmanship. Under this model, and following nature, ends are poeticised. Desire – putting it poetically – is gratified only by its offspring.

Craftsmanship and Community

The problem for us is in what way could a not yet Great Community realise itself? Two avenues are open to Dewey. Firstly, its realisation might hinge on the possibility of an authoritative political science, which is the possibility of a scientific crafting of society (see also Kaufman-Osborn 1984: 1152-1153). The second is more liberal, and hinges on desires liberated and their subsequent unification in and recognition by the public (see e.g., Dewey

1934a: 43 on the unity of the imagination and its power to move us). The first is limited by nature, custom, and memory. As a technical art, it must wrestle with an historical and stubborn reality. The second is poetic, which is to say it is expressed as a theoretical construction and not at all limited by craft (see Dewey 1934: 348; c.f., Morris 1999: 613-615,

626). It is limited only by what is not desirable or what is simply impossible.

And so we can see that while the first, the realisation of a Great Community from without – as political science – requires a political revolution, the second requires merely the expansion of imagination (see Dewey 1891: 890-891; 1934: 344; 1934a: 19; c.f., Fesmire 2003: 68). As

32 Taken from Emerson’s essay on self-reliance, we find that the quote containing the reference to an immense intelligence is followed by this: ‘When we discern justice, we discern truth, we do nothing of ourselves, but allow a passage to its beams. If we ask whence this comes, if we seek to pry into the soul that causes – all metaphysics, all philosophy is at fault. Its presence or its absence is all we can affirm’ (Emerson 1908: 31).

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far as revolutions go Dewey’s tends towards the latter (see e.g., Dewey 1920: 211; 1922: 65-

66; Dewey and Tufts 1932: 398-399, 405). The public cannot be moulded into craftsmen as it were, but will, it is hoped by Dewey, in emulation take up the tools and techniques crafted by experts (see Dewey 1939: 60-66).

The preeminent science in this regard is social psychology. Social psychology is the cultural science par excellence, as it is a science of the active communal psyche (Dewey 1922: 323-

324; 1929: 238; 1929a: 719-720; Dewey and Tufts 1932: 192):

the historical method, in of all the proof of past change which it adduces, will

remain in effect a bulwark of conservatism. For, I repeat, it reduces the role of

mind to that of beholding and recording the operations of man after they have

happened. The historic method may give emotional inspiration or consolation in

arousing the belief that a lot more changes are still to happen, but it does not show

man how his mind is to take part in giving these changes one direction rather than

another. The advent of a type of psychology which builds frankly on the original

activities of man and asks how these are altered, requalified and reorganized in

consequence of their exercise in specifically different environments brings with

itself the experimental attitude, and thereby substitutes the interest in control for

the interest in merely recording and what is called “explaining” (Dewey 1929a:

717).

Social psychology would provide the method of, and the knowledge for, reforming desire; from the distractedness of private interest to the common focus of the public (Dewey 1929a:

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737). It would establish the cultural or communal conditions under which desire would find its consummation in ends-in-view (Dewey 1939: 63).33

Nevertheless, even if poetic or artistic desire is stimulated by social psychology and legitimated by natural philosophy, it remains the case that the public would attain their ends- in-view by means of an experimental craftsmanship, using the tools and following the spirit of the natural and social sciences:

a genuine social science would manifest its reality in the daily press, while learned

books and articles supply and polish tools of enquiry...Even if social sciences as a

specialized apparatus of inquiry were more advanced than they are, they would be

comparatively impotent in the office of directing opinion on matters of concern to

the public as long as they are remote from application in the daily and unremitting

assembly and interpretation of “news.” On the other hand, the tools of social

enquiry will be clumsy as long as they are forged in places and under conditions

remote from contemporary events (Dewey 1954: 180-181).

It is important to consider, I think, that the ensuing constructions, even if rooted in contemporary events, would show themselves – if scientific – as not merely practical but also as theoretical (insofar as these constructions hold in the future or across varying conditions).

As theoretical constructions, especially if following the constructions of the experts (and their

33 It would produce, according to Dewey, something akin to the religious spirit. Obviously, as we have seen above, the founding text would be Dewey’s natural philosophy. For the integration of emotion and ideas and ensuing wholeness or unity is achieved only when, as Dewey (1920: 210) puts it, his natural philosophy is accepted without question (c.f., Savage 2002: 107). This natural philosophy would thereby attain a religious significance, and move people accordingly (Dewey 1920: 210). Dewey’s natural philosophy would transcend science to find itself enacted as a revelation. This ‘revelation’ would, of course, not be delivered from without, but sustained by social scientists (Dewey 1922: 324) with the promise of organisation, or personhood unified by desire with others (see Dewey 1920: 209; 1929: 303; 1934a: 26). Dewey’s natural philosophy would be revealed as the founding text of ‘revelation’ only in action with others, we might say, and in this action people would be unified by the ideals of the social group in which they have found themselves (see Dewey 1934a: 79).

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consideration of relevant contemporary practical concerns), the social sciences offer a promise to the public which, we could say, precedes (and exceeds) their reality. Put another way, the theoretical constructions of social science presuppose already their empirical realisation, for if they did not then the laws or associations being uncovered would be wholly arbitrary (see Dewey 1939: 34-35, 42). (In this case, science would be no different to the poetry or false politics of the metaphysicians.) If we take this further, we can see that as potential precedes the actual, the utility or value of the scientific method is actualised or sanctified in peoples’ imaginations without the need for it to be ‘proven’ in reality, for this has already been ‘undertaken’ in theoretical construction. The formulation of hypotheses by social scientists for communal testing amounts to the same thing insofar as the utility of the hypotheses are already presupposed in potential, even if the actual testing of the hypotheses would require the Great Community already established.34

It is questionable then, that the social sciences would or could stimulate the public to take up in amateur fashion the tools or (experimental) methods of the social sciences themselves.

This is because there is no direct link in the mind of the public between the ends of social science – imagined as a theoretical construction – and the means to attain them. Or, I should say, there is no need to follow the social scientists in this regard.35 What’s most important for the social scientist is his or her method, as it would reveal the truth. For the public the method plays second fiddle insofar as the truth is already ‘known’ – it is time now for action. It does

34 If social psychology would give rise to the desire in private citizens to form a public, then it is the state which would fulfil the role of expert and instigator (such a role we might imagine falling to the universities, while the role of coordination to that of the civil service – see Dewey 1920: 204). The manufactured desire would be satisfied by ‘communities of enquiry’ under the methodical work of craftsmanship. The citizen craftsmen would not be experts as such (experts would still conduct applied research studies), but social reformers according to their ends-in-view (c.f., Talisse 2011: 515). Their craft would be furthered and their desire invigorated by the public dissemination of the results of research undertaken by social scientific experts (Dewey 1929a: 737; c.f., Hildreth 2009: 797-798). 35 As indeed Dewey (1954: 163) notes ‘The layman takes certain conclusions which get into circulation to be science. But the scientific enquirer knows that they constitute science only in connection with the methods by which they are reached.’

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not necessarily follow, then, that the experimental mindset of the social scientists will be followed. For example, the sociologist who develops a theory of community cohesion based on the regulation of working hours comes to this understanding following some variant of the empirical method. The resulting theory, if popularly disseminated, takes the form of a statement of fact, such as ‘research shows that community cohesion could be increased if only…’ In the popular imagination the application of this requires not the method which led to its discovery, but rather some political capacity to bring about the conditions for its realisation. What people imagine could happen is brought to fruition by the fact that it has already been shown to have happened, even if provisionally, as described by social scientists.

The proclamations of social scientists lend any political fantasy a veneer of reality, in other words. This is a problem for Dewey if, on one hand, social psychology is successful (and here we might think of modern political advertising and marketing techniques etc.) in encouraging people to look toward the political satisfaction of their needs and, on the other, if the means to realise those needs are, in reality, absent, but imaginatively present. The take up of Dewey’s natural philosophy could only exacerbate the situation (c.f., Rorty 1981).

Similarly, only if the Great Community is a natural and future possibility could we legitimately posit ends-in-view, and thereby liberate craftsmanship from custom or habit – making it a conscious and natural or true production, in other words. The Great Community finds itself in these future and posited ends, for in these it would see itself united. But only with a community organised already as a Great Community is the realisation of these ends possible (c.f., Festenstein 2001: 746).36 These two cannot be separated without, on one hand,

36 Consider also Rousseau’s (1999: 78) argument on legislation: ‘In order that a people in the process of formation should be capable of appreciating the principles of sound policy and follow the fundamental rules of reasons of state, it would be necessary for the effect to become the cause; the spirit of community, which should be the result of the constitution, would have to have guided the constitution itself; before the existence of laws, men would have to be what the laws have made them. Thus the legislator is unable to employ either force or argument, and has to have recourse to another order of authority, which can compel without violence and win assent without arguing.’

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separating Dewey’s ends-in-view from nature (as it is in their very possibility which for

Dewey saves them from fantasy) and, on the other, reducing political communities to the means to realise someone else’s ends (e.g., government experts – see Kaufman-Osborn 1984:

1157-1158).

Considering these problems, what we can gather from the above arguments is that (1) the public’s emulation of social science would be mostly imaginative; not a precursor to the practice of methodical craft but rather a stimulant of poetic desire (c.f., Honneth 1998: 773-

780), and (2) it is highly unlikely that the Great Community could be realised, and certainly not democratically as envisioned by Dewey.

It is telling that 20 years after Dewey wrote The Public and its Problems (1954: 229) he lamented the fact that the scientific method had not taken hold with the public:

We have also held that a considerable part of the remediable evils of present life

are due to the state of imbalance of scientific method with respect to its

application to physical facts on one side and to specifically human facts on the

other side; and that the most direct and effective way out of these evils is steady

and systematic effort to develop that effective intelligence named scientific

method in the case of human transactions. Our theorizing on this point cannot be

said to have had much effect.

This is a comment which still holds true. The same thing cannot be said for the hold it has on our imagination. Encouraged now, in the spirit of craftsmanship, I suggest that we turn to already fabricated political, universal institutions: the executive arm of the state, for example.

Indeed, the state (and its associated statecraft) is the technical epitome of what Dewey describes as craftsmanship. As such it promises by way of technique what for Dewey’s program would or could only be realised with the Great Community. The Great Community,

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so it follows, is an unnecessary final step, or a dream not in keeping with the needs of those who feed on (and serve up) the rhetoric of applied social science.

What Remains

As I am arguing, absent the Great Community, or its possibility, it is not as if Dewey’s project is doomed absolutely. For there remain, as I have shown, aspects of Dewey’s program which could be popularly supported despite whatever else Dewey may have proposed. The uptake by the public of these aspects without the associated political supports would, of course, be realised in ways unforeseen by him. Since the Great Community has obviously not come to pass and yet, still, we dream that it might, the desires which underwrite it remain.

Given that the state would (and, indeed, does) initiate or encourage those desires necessary to form a public (as Dewey understood it) and through the popularisation of social scientific research offer hope for its realisation, it is seen as being in the best position to deliver on this hope. In a limited sense, this perspective fortifies the state’s role as merely a coordinator of varying political desires (Dewey 1920: 204).37 But in a deeper sense the state would come to replace the ideal of the Great Community; for already, as the coordinator, it would seem to be the obvious institution to unify multiplying desires following their invigoration in hope (c.f.,

Festenstein 2001: 743; Honneth 1998a). In our times, we could say that the promotion of political needs (or the hope engendered by the promises of applied social science) has indeed been taken up by the state, not in any self-conscious fashion, but by way of institutional self- interest as it were. For Dewey’s program pre-figures, or at least considers necessary, the union of the executive and universities, a union which today shows itself to be in the best institutional or limited interests of each.

37 The civil service in its active role, post manufacture of desire, was only ever for Dewey about coordination without ‘undue meddling’ (Dewey 1954: 59).

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Combine this with another of Dewey’s plans, the universal communication of research results etc. via journalism (Dewey 1954: 166, 177; Dewey and Tufts 1932: 398-399, 403), and the union of the executive and our ‘contemplative’ institutions is sealed, driven by the popular desire for solutions to current ills (c.f., Savage 2002: 27, 97,101). So even if the popular expertise which Dewey was seeking in social science did not eventuate, the general spirit of a liberated or productive social intelligence has. The form this has taken is not, of course, what

Dewey had envisioned. For it is necessary that the state would always be held in check by an already formed public (Dewey 1954: 146). This, as we have seen, is problematic.

Summing up, we find that political desire would find itself directed, at least imaginatively, in state institutions. As the state is in no position to realise, satisfy or even properly recognise the multiplicity of desires and their ends it must default to the impartiality of technique (in so doing impose its own idea of the good) in order to craft what lies within its domain. In this, the public rather than being unified with the state is separated from it. This exacerbates public concern that the state is not doing nearly enough to live up to what it should be. And so the cycle deepens.

Conclusion

Returning to the question of this thesis, we see that the resolution of the perennial problem of truth and politics is resolved by Dewey in craftsmanship – or applied social science, as made possible by ends-in-view and the Great Community. The truth of this is revealed in pre- political nature, and specifically in aesthetic human experience. But without the Great

Community, as I argued, this imagined fabrication would find its stability in those institutions wherein private interest might be united in political fabrication; for example, in the modern university or civil service (i.e., the state). The state would, and indeed must, assume the responsibility to execute what are the poetic ends of the populace. Unable to do this, yet all

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the while acting as if it might and could, the state would seek its own legitimacy in popular desire while carrying on with the only craft of which it is capable (see Blaug 2002). In this we simultaneously affirm and deny the state, not in order to resolve the problem of desire, but to further it. Sovereign legitimacy does not arise with the resolution of some prior state (such as the state of nature, following Hobbes), but with the possibility of the future as executed.

Since legitimacy arises by way of hope, the appropriate response to illegitimacy is not a denial of the ideal of sovereignty therefore, but a cynical attitude towards its execution: executive power is not representative of the public; it is incompetent; it is not transparent; or it has not fully understood how things must be done in order to enact what must be done (a common complaint of social scientists38). Cynicism arises with the inflated hopes placed in executive power and the subsequent failures of this power to fulfil them (see McLaverty

2009: 387). Following this trajectory there is no turning away. Our only hope is in the reformation of the executive. The executive must become what it promises, according to what we desire. And so the cycle of hope and cynicism continues. With regard to this, Flinders

(2009: 337) notes that in our current political climate a ‘gap has emerged, and has been emerging for some time, between the governors and the governed in terms of levels of trust and engagement. And yet the existence of a gap should not be confused with a public decline in interest in politics per se.’

In sum, as I have argued, Dewey offers a solid foundation to the practical application of social science to political problems. In this respect, it is to be noted, as do others (most notably, in the context of this thesis, Lasswell), that he is a grandfather of the policy sciences discipline. For in taking to task the philosophers of ‘form’, such as the ancient metaphysicians, Dewey describes our genesis with reference to (biological) nature, and

38 For an early account of this see Tolstoy (1952: 365): Book 9, Chapter 11.

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exposes our desires by way of human experience, in order to reveal that it is only in an interactive, constructive activity that political life might be truly founded. There is, according to Dewey, an accord between biological and political life, as rooted in neediness and resolved in poetic construction. Poetic construction, as sanctified under the Great Community, is what distinguishes a true from a false politics. If with this the state is unintentionally elevated by

Dewey it is for reasons to do with his over-confidence in communal craftsmanship. The problem for Dewey, as I argued, is that (1) this political enterprise lacks any substantial meaning, and (2) it would arise only under conditions of a public formed already as a unified community of problem-solvers. Indeed, as I hope to have shown, without this, it is inevitable that the state would present itself as the natural substitute for the coordinating and constructive activity of this absent community of unified citizen-scientists.

Nonetheless, this understanding of politics, and the central position accorded a community of citizen-scientists is, as we saw, more comprehensive than Lasswell’s, and so goes further than his to resolve the perennial problem of truth (what is) and politics (broadly understood as what is for us meaningful). For Lasswell gives up on Dewey’s attempt to provide a natural and philosophical grounding to politics. Rather, he finds truth in a technically constructed human or political whole. What emerges, as I described, is a tighter union of citizens and experts (or rational technicians). Further down the line, policy scientists continue to wrestle with the recurring problem of truth and politics on these same terms, insofar as truth is sought by way of a social science which in practice is equivalent to technique, and in theory discovers nothing more than itself.

Turning to Weber in the next chapter I present his critique of these positions, but a critique which remains within the arc of social science. Weber, as I’ll present, discerns the dangers of

‘rule by rational experts’. He discerns this along with recognising that this rationality (which underlies expertise) is what also allows us to distinguish truth from politics. The distinction

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between truth and politics is, then, for him – as is especially evident in modern rational societies – not to be collapsed in favour of rational construction, but nor can these simply remain separate affairs. Indeed, the social scientist is best placed to understand in what way politics might be reformed, simply because he epitomises the political perils we face in modern times. As both saviour and destroyer, the social scientist must enter politics conservatively, aware of the limits of his own rational understanding.

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CHAPTER 5: RATIONALITY IN ACTION: MAX WEBER’S POLITICAL SCIENCE

I will argue in this chapter that Weber is more cautious than Dewey.39 In a nutshell, I hope to show that Weber is politically conservative when it comes to social science. This for the following reasons: (1) there is for Weber an intrinsic distinction between the self-conscious rationality of the social scientist and the vitality of everyday political life; (2) given this, what the social scientist can know of political things is limited; and yet (3) underscoring social scientific knowledge is what Weber recognises as the limits of what can be known from within everyday life. Points (1) and (2) show why the social scientist must refrain from bringing his science directly to bear on politics, while point (3) suggests that there is some deeper perspective which social science may well engender, a perspective not yet visible from within the horizon of the everyday. This third point is especially pertinent to our age, wherein depth of understanding is in danger of being extinguished by an encroaching and enervating rationality.

In exploring these points, I consider politics from two inter-twined perspectives, as did

Weber. The first, following Carl Schmitt (following Weber, who follows Nietzsche), could be called ‘the political’. This is to understand politics from the first-person perspective, emerging as what we uphold as worth fighting for, or what we hold dear, given what we count as inherently meaningful. The second is from the third-person perspective, or a perspective which seeks an objective or impartial position from which first-person perspectives might be reformed and then woven together to make good (whatever we understand of this) political communities. The former tends towards fanaticism, the latter, as craft, tends towards impersonal technique. Of course, these are not mutually exclusive, as the

39 Weber was a towering figure in the intellectual life of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Ushering in modern sociology and wrestling still with the dissipating coherence of life’s significance, as initiated by modern science and so powerfully described by Nietzsche, Weber straddled the emerging separation of politics into practice and theory. He has been described as both the ‘greatest social scientist’ (Strauss 1965: 36), and the ‘last real classical political thinker’ (Hennis 2009: 241).

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latter is always, no matter how impersonal, a subset of the former: it is we who act, in other words, no matter how ‘objectively’. Indeed, Weber himself practices a science which he acknowledges is meaningful only to others of his ilk (i.e., inhabiting the same historical space, as it were) – his science is political in the former sense, in other words. So too, more generally, ‘the political’ is, according to Weber, a matter of meaning (either in the form of tradition, or, in modern times, as appearing in contrast to the mechanistic tendencies of a rationalist understanding). As a science of politically charged things, Weber is also saddled with the question of what the social scientist could or should do, politically. This is a question which falls under the latter category. This question, as we saw in the last chapter, was answered by Dewey with citizen craftsmanship. Weber answers it, according to his understanding of science, by way of ‘personality’ – so I will argue.

What’s relevant to the central concern of this thesis is that the political solution offered by

Weber to the problem of politics and truth (given that truth, as Weber acknowledges, is what the social scientist seeks) is a compromise, or balances the political limits of social science with its politically salutary possibilities; this in an age where rationality is authoritative. It is a solution which draws on points (1), (2) and (3) as I described above. For personality is, in our age, the rational equivalent of what in prior ages was unified by way of faith or charismatic authority. Here the social scientist comes to the fore, if somewhat tragically (for the social scientist is, as recognised by Weber, both symptom and doctor). And so, as I will show, in holding to personality as a resolution of the problem posed by truth to politics the social scientist – as social scientist – is precluded by Weber from re-entering everyday political life other than as an existential coach – ‘one must choose!’ – or in the form of a serious character

(à la the social scientist). Indeed, it is necessary that social science enter politics in the form of this serious character – what Weber calls an ethic of responsibility (Verantwortungsethik)

– for the other side of the social scientist’s entry – as the existential coach – is itself ground

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for political fanaticism (what Weber describes as an ethic of conviction – Gesinnungsethik).

The measured outlook and political seriousness of the social scientist balances the mania – the struggle (Kampf) as Weber calls it – of politics. Weber’s (2004: 32-33) definition of modern-day politics as a sharing of power, and as exemplified by the state, provides the background to this, insofar as it may well encompass prudent liberal democratic leadership as well as the dangers endemic to bureaucracy. Considering these things, I hope to show that

Weber takes seriously the profundity (and so too the danger in this rational age) of the political, as well as the conditions under which we might claim to have attained a science of it.

The problem with all this, as I argue, is that the misalignment of Weber’s science and the perspective of everyday actors leaves open the possibility that Weber’s enterprise be taken up politically (contra Weber). For if the distinction between these is inherently tenuous why not simply reconcile them? To move from Weber’s own conservative or cautious outlook to this reconciliation (of science and our everyday understanding) presupposes the collapse of an

‘objective’ history40 (into our own interpretation), or the dissolution of the boundary between a self-conscious rationality and meaning (or as Weber also puts it, of science and faith). In collapsing or dissolving this boundary rationality is transformed, from the discloser of objectivity to a co-creator of meaning. This allows us to return to the everyday, in spirit reminiscent of Dewey’s active social science, and in practice as policy science. This collapse is made easy by Weber, I argue, because of his understanding of everyday life as essentially in flux, stabilised only with the precarious distinction between what is meaningful and what true, as revealed by way of his hermeneutic method – his ‘ideal-types’ – and as unified by

40 C.f., Gimbel (2016: 80): ‘Gadamer’s hermeneutics point the way toward a reconfigured understanding of interpretation that exceeds the boundaries of method, and that seeks objectivity in the notion of the fusion of horizons.’

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‘personality’. Given that this is how we come to understand ourselves, why wouldn’t we construct politically what we have already constructed scientifically?

Reflecting on the previous chapter, this might all be contrasted with Dewey, for whom truth and politics is resolved in communal fabrication (and so the importance to him of the craft of social science). In contrast to Weber’s political actors, Dewey’s know exactly what they’re doing. Under everyday experience understood aesthetically, these actors would emulate what has already been sanctified in biological life. Weber, by contrast, honours ‘the political’ in a way which Dewey with his turn to biological life cannot. Weber approaches everyday life hermeneutically. For him it is not by way of nature, but by way of human history that truth is revealed. He aims to interpret what differs across historical ‘periods’ according to what is common to them. Holding this difference and unity – politicised experience and rationality – in tension leads Weber to a conservative or cautious social science, a science wary of itself, or wary of the dangers of instrumental rationality. This caution might be contrasted with

Dewey’s progressive outlook, which embraces instrumental rationality under the guise of craftsmanship. By way of a final contrast, I hope to argue that even if Weber sidesteps the problem of political dissolution associated with Dewey’s craftsmanship, his understanding of the problem is not yet comprehensive enough.

A Brief Discussion of Hermeneutics

Please allow me a brief excursus on hermeneutics in general (along with the relation to

Weber) and Charles Taylor’s hermeneutics in particular, before turning my full attention to

Weber. For the modern problem of truth and meaning is addressed by the science of hermeneutics, and the political potential of this science is taken up by Taylor, and in a way which oversteps Weber’s own conservative stance. The former, then, provides a broad introduction to Weber’s work, and the latter shows the link between Weber and modern

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applied hermeneutical social science. Obviously, both fall at the end of a long tradition, a tradition rooted in attempts to understand the unity and also the current-day meaning of biblical scripture. The modern incarnation has the same aim, but it moves beyond the strictures of revelation to encompass human productions. Which is to say, the modern incarnation seeks to attain a science of human meaning (and not as revealed by God).

I begin with an older contemporary of Weber’s, Wilhelm Dilthey (1833-1911). Dilthey sought to understand human experience following the theologians, insofar as human experience – like divine revelation – presents itself to us as a problem. For how do we make sense of or understand people with different experiences to ourselves, given that more radically these people might find these experiences meaningful or significant in a way which we don’t? Indeed, since an experience is not separable from what it means, and since meaning must be revealed in some way for it to be understood by others, we can see that – posed in this way – the problem of understanding other people is similar to the God problem.

If we require human wisdom – that is, a science – to understand what God (this unknown being) reveals to us, then it follows that we require also a science to fully grasp what is revealed by other people (whom we must assume are unknown to us). The difference is that the ‘sacred text’ has been written by us, as it were. For we come to understand other people in the same way that we come to understand ourselves (rendering sacred texts irrelevant).

What’s required is a science of meaning which begins with ourselves. In beginning with ourselves we approach ourselves as unknowns – we take the perspective of others. From here we might construct a science based on the meaningful connection of our inner experience with the outer world of objects. Since sense-making and meaning-validation are things we all share, we would have attained a universal human science (following the natural sciences, but as distinguished from them). This is the backbone to modern hermeneutics.

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It follows that social science, if it is to regard itself as properly honouring the social and political, must take meaning into account. Modern social science takes a further step beyond a universal human science, though. For modern social science, and here I mean hermeneutical social science, looks to understand or even explain the social and political worlds given this fact unearthed by the human sciences.41 The Weberian social scientist approaches history

(and its social and political products) in the same way as which someone such as Dilthey would approach everyday life. Where Dilthey attempts to attain a science of meaning, the

Weberian social scientist seeks to understand social and political meaning as it arises historically. Given this, the social scientist takes seriously those social and political experiences of different historical periods which cannot be fully described by a human science.

The social scientist enters the political realm, therefore, insofar as he would consider part of his study those human things which, from the perspective of political actors themselves, he cannot fully understand. And so in Weber, at least, is found, if not a return to, then at least an honouring of, revelation, in the form of its scientific substitute – that is, values, or what we cannot know of what other people find meaningful. An example of this is Weber’s notion of the spirit of Christian asceticism which preceded capitalism (Weber 2003: 183), and on the other side of the coin, his definition of contemporary politics, which he derives from the perspective of the state (i.e., as seeking to share power – Weber 2004: 33). And so, looking back over history as a social scientist, he or she might see that meaning arises with more than what science can provide (i.e., rationality). In looking to the historical varieties of political

41 The distinction between the social and the political I might tentatively describe by way of the distinction between (1) familial, romantic, labour relationships etc. - associations of love, lust, chance, biological and material necessity, in other words – and (2) associations in which we ourselves, attaining ourselves, are implicated, whether that be sanctified by the gods, science, laws, norms or constitutions. The political and social are obviously inter-related.

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regimes, of social authority, and attendant organisational structures, the Weberian social scientist comes to see that it is only we who find science meaningful (in the broadest sense).

Politically, this is not without its problems, given what we have found is the limited jurisdiction of science. The problem for us is if science, as rationality (following Kant, who holds up mathematics and physics as epitomes of science or epistēmē, if not philosophy – see

1988: 25), is what we find meaningful because true, and on this it is unable to deliver, we are exposed to its dangers. Indeed, the Weberian social scientist is best placed to see the dangers of the human sciences, simply because he has attempted to look through the eyes of the non- scientist and found therein something vital, animated by more than the formlessness of rationality.42 Given though that he himself has not, or could not, give up the (scientific) truth, and nor could he understand from his perspective the vitality of others – as this will always strike him as something foreign, as a revelation for others – he must refrain from interfering in those places alien to science. Given what he understands of the science of meaning, and what he has uncovered historically according to this science (including also his own period), the social scientist must keep politics and the rationality of science separated. On this point, it is worthwhile to compare with Dilthey, for whom science and ‘the political’ dovetail in his theory of human understanding.

This could also be compared to contemporary practical social scientists, who, as I showed in chapter two, collapse this distinction.43 This is not surprising in an age when history is no

42 C.f., Plessner (1969: 501) who speaks of homo absconditus, or the ‘man who knows the limits of his boundlessness yet grasps himself as unfathomable. Open to himself and the world he recognises his own concealment.’ This, as Plessner describes it, is a consequence of man’s corporeality. I suspect that what I refer to as ‘vital’ is posterior to what Plessner calls ‘unfathomable’. Since, according to Plessner, man creates history (and is created by history) he comes close to being an anthropological-styled Heidegger, whereas Weber is closer to Nietzsche. Or put slightly differently, one must work to fathom the unfathomable, but vitality is another name for the work itself. 43 This is not, of course, to describe all those who work within the hermeneutical tradition. Others are more philosophical. See Gimbel (2016), for example, who champions Gadamer’s hermeneutical method, as it forces us to reflect on the limits of our own interpretations; or Babich (2017) who holds that a hermeneutical

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longer meaningful, when indeed we have almost forgotten what was once the authority of tradition. It is not surprising that Weber the historian (and political thinker) would be dropped, and instead the interpretive (or otherwise, such as the positive) methods of social science favoured. In this, the vitality of meaning is left behind – which is, by Weber’s account, unknowable to the social scientist (as social scientist). As was argued in the previous chapter, Dewey takes up this vitality under the auspices of social science. For him, rationality is constructive, mirroring in this way biological life; for we attain meaning in what we fabricate by nature. Meanwhile Lasswell, as I argued, associated vitality with what is irrational. As the psyche, vitality is chthonian, or not rationally explicable on its own terms.

The psyche is tamed, rather, by way of technique as revealed symbolically. As is of central concern to this thesis, with this devolution of vitality from construction to technique, the dangers which Weber foresaw in the entrance of the social scientist into political reality are ignored. What is not denied is the assumption that, following Dilthey, we are, and must be, unknown to ourselves and others, only gaining access to what is characteristically human either under a scientific method (e.g., Lasswell’s interpretation of the psyche as symbolic), or by putting this method into practice (e.g., Dewey’s communal craftsmanship).

To be sure, the possibility for the rise of a hermeneutical ‘political science’, or a politics subservient to the science of interpretation, emerges with Weber (at least). For the social scientist approaches meaning, even his own scientific endeavour, as an observer – as shown with Weber’s surpassing of Dilthey. Given this, the social scientist transforms meaning into history. And yet the scientist himself comes to occupy a position elevated with the confluence of truth and meaning (just as in times past, what one counted as meaningful was sanctified and thereby made true by holy law). In occupying this position, the possibility for abuse is

understanding is relevant still to unsettle the dogmatism of those social sciences which emulate the natural sciences. These are closer to the social theory of Charles Taylor, to whom I turn in the next section.

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opened (as Weber saw). Further, in providing an historical account of reality, opened is the further possibility that we might render this merely formal, and so take control of those conditions, insofar as consequences follow their antecedents. This brings us close to positivism. Indeed, the only distinction between this and positivism is that the former has at least some awareness of the political or rhetorical engagement necessary (with what subjects understand of their own life-projects) if it is to realise the desired outcome. This, as with the positivist (and contra Weber) is to resolve the perennial problem (of truth and politics) politically, or in impartial political action.

In contemporary debates there is of course a large self-imposed divide between positive and hermeneutical social science. As a contemporary example, we might turn to the work of

Charles Taylor. Taylor has been instrumental in critiquing the positive social and political sciences, and offers as an alternative a political and scientific practice rooted in hermeneutics.

For this reason, Taylor is also important for us, as he presents as a bridge between Weber’s conservative or cautious social science and contemporary, politically active social sciences.

With this in mind, recall that the driving concern of this thesis is the perennial problem of truth and politics, and its contemporary resolution in state executive action by way of social science. As I argued in chapter two, in seeking their political legitimacy the applied social sciences would undermine it. This is retrieved, on their terms, with active bureaucratic practice, or the transformation of all citizens into quasi-social scientists. Disregarded is the perennial question, or the problematic relation of truth (or what is) to politics or political things (such as what we deem valuable). As I showed, this results in an interminable debate over political legitimacy. To get to this point (of interminable debate) is to have expanded the legitimacy of science. For it is to move from a position in which the social sciences are treated with caution, given the insight that science (or knowledge – epistēmē in the original sense) is limited, insofar as it cannot truly reveal political things (and so, in the end, cannot

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understand itself other than historically), to a social science which itself takes up the mantle of politics. This is to collapse science into theory, as it were.

On this point, it is helpful to consider that the original meaning of theory, as theōria, referred to a spectator at divine or religious festivals. Relevant also is to consider what theōria has in our day become, which in its most radical form is ‘theoretical construction’. This is certainly closer to science than religion. Both, however, are unified by the notion of the spectator, as well as by the importance to us of foundations. The difference hinges therefore on the foundation, and what we could take to be foundational, given what might be revealed to us as a meaningful spectacle. In our day, the foundations are most likely to be taken as what might be scientifically sanctified, given that what is observed are social and political practices or norms, and what is not confronted is the deepest thing honoured in any such spectacle, nor the question of what a truly just honouring might entail. To take theory (or ‘spectatorship’) as itself foundational is then to elevate science or epistēmē above what might be considered its limits politically (i.e., limited insofar as we understand science as non-foundational, or significant only as relative to our time and place). Here, theory, as sanctified by science, comes itself to wear the political crown. Indeed, theory and science are combined insofar we come to observe (as theory) a refraction of our own (scientific) knowledge, a knowledge which we ourselves have constructed (knowingly or not). The spectator and the foundation are collapsed, therefore, distinguished only by the methods (or techniques) which we presume would elevate us.

With this in mind, I will argue below – briefly – that Taylor goes beyond, both theoretically and politically, what for Weber is the limited purview of social science. In contrast to Weber,

Taylor bows to the desires of the day (for theoretical sanctification). Akin to Weber, though, he does this without embracing instrumental rationality or positivism. Put differently, Taylor finds political solace in the potentially universal meaningfulness of theory; whereas Weber’s

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political understanding is somewhat tragic, leading him to a theory of meaning prudentially limited.

Taylor understands political community as, fundamentally, an inter-subjective reality. This inter-subjectivity is the meaning which, as it were, foregrounds our lives. It is not the property of any one person, and yet neither is it separate from the people who make up a community. Rather, what we share with others is also very much a part of who we are personally. Our subjectivity is implicated in what we might understand of political community, in other words. It is this implication which the positive social or political sciences pass right over, according to Taylor. As a summary statement I quote him (Taylor:

1985: 40) directly:

Common meanings, as well as inter-subjective ones, fall through the net of

mainstream social science...For they are not simply a converging set of subjective

reactions, but part of the common world. What the ontology of mainstream social

science lacks is the notion of meaning as not simply for an individual subject; of a

subject who can be a ‘we’ as well an ‘I’...But if we free ourselves from the hold of

these prejudices, this seems a wildly implausible view about the development of

human consciousness; we are aware of the world through a ‘we’ before we are

through an ‘I’.

Fundamental for Taylor, as this quote shows, is that we are by nature firstly social beings, and only secondarily self-aware as individuals. Taylor points out that the first men and women understood themselves communally before they came to see themselves as individuals. That this is how we developed is key for Taylor, because with this he would hold the positive social sciences to account. For the positive social sciences bypass this altogether, constructing instead their science without reference to the fundament of subjectivity. As Taylor views it,

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this fundament cannot be mathematically constructed, with the calculation of an average across populations, for example. And further, in imagining that such a construction could be performed, the positive social sciences wildly over-estimate their own political potential. In disregarding altogether what must be interpreted – an inter-subjectivity in which they themselves are embroiled – their exponents imagine that they could manipulate and thereby form reality in their own image. In practical terms, this leads the positive social scientist to view all other cultures – other inter-subjectivities – through their own abstract categories

(Taylor 1985: 42), and moreover, leads them to disregard or fail to distinguish one political regime from another according to the significance accorded it by its members (Taylor 1985:

43).

Social science, properly understood, as Taylor says, cannot be a science of prediction, as with a practical political or policy science. As an essentially self-defining science, it cannot be value neutral either. Rather, how we come to understand reality, and what we have come to understand if it, alters reality (Taylor 1985: 55). And so the human sciences are an ‘after the fact’ understanding (Taylor 1985: 56). Given that they are self-defining, or are founded on how we ourselves come to understand ourselves, they are ‘moral sciences in a more radical sense than the eighteenth century understood’ (Taylor 1985: 57). Moreover, as Taylor (1985:

57) puts it, ‘their successful prosecution requires a high degree of self-knowledge, a freedom from illusion, in the sense of error which is rooted and expressed in one’s way of life; for our incapacity to understand is rooted in our own self-definitions, hence in what we are.’

For Taylor, then, these self-definitions are key. Without this, we are unable to understand others. Tying this together is ‘theory’. For ‘theory’ is the most comprehensive interpretation of ourselves; and it is under this umbrella that we might understand others. By theory, Taylor obviously means hermeneutical theory. And it is this which he outlines. We begin by interpreting our practice. With this Taylor avoids the infinite regress which would ensue if we

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were to interpret ourselves as already a prior construction, or as having already realised ourselves in our practice – as an ‘identity’ (‘working class man’, for example).44 As a prior construction, this might obviously be understood personally, and so we would be setting off, from the beginning, on the wrong foot. Making sense of this would already take us into psychological territory, and so at cross-purposes to Taylor’s (this problematic is resolved only by taking up Hegel, as I will suggest later). Same too with an interpretation of already made, fully-fledged, interpretations of practice (c.f., Taylor 1985: 27). As an interpretation of our interpretation, as an interpretation of a practice which we take to be already meaningful to us, this is endless; as already we cannot distinguish between what is a personal construction and what is not.45 Interpretation of ourselves must arise in the same way that consciousness first arose then: the social or the communal takes precedence over the individual. The science of interpretation is described by Taylor (1985: 83) thus: ‘social theory arises when we try to formulate explicitly what we are doing, describe the activity which is central to a practice, and articulate the norms which are essential to it.’

In unifying practices under the norms essential to an activity, these practices find a place in the greater whole of which they are a part. This is similar to my earlier reference to old-style biblical hermeneutics insofar as disparate texts, and seemingly conflicting statements, might be reconciled one with another under a broader unity (such as varying literary styles across history). The point of this unification is also, as with biblical hermeneutics, reformative or

44 Indeed, Taylor recognises the broadly hermeneutical problems which arise if we take ‘identity’ as our starting point: see, for example, Taylor (1991). 45 I’m thinking here of an already meaningful interpretation of ourselves. We might understand our way of life under Buddhism, for example. To interpret this interpretation is to knock this interpretation off the mantle; knock it off to a subordinate position, from which it must now derive its significance from within a broader perspective. This broader perspective becomes itself the arbiter of truth. Such a broader perspective must be psychological insofar as it is not merely historical. Say, for example, we find meaning in not eating meat. The meaning of not eating meat, if now questionable, must take us back to the meaningfulness of Buddhism. If we explain this with reference only to history – that we are (were) Buddhist because so too were our parents etc. – then we still must further explain why it’s me and not my parents or others who has discovered something questionable in the Buddhist way of life. If not tradition, then what makes the meaningfulness of my practice questionable is explained psychologically, by chance events (I happened upon a Christian preacher), not at all, or by a combination of these.

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moral. For in this unification of meaning we would uncover what is really going on with our self-understanding, and in uncovering this we challenge the sense of our previous un-thought- through descriptions of our practices. We are likely to alter our practices given that our new self-understanding leaves them devoid of meaning.46 On the flip-side they may well bring a new and more powerful meaning to practices.47 In this sense, and contra the natural sciences, theory transforms its own object (in this case practice)48 (Taylor 1985: 98). The rightness of theories is judged thereby according to the effectiveness of practice (Taylor 1985: 104). The effectiveness of practice, in other words, is revealed by how well it ties into what could be meaningfully and objectively unified: ‘What makes a theory right is that it brings practice out in the clear; that its adoption makes possible what is in some sense a more effective practice’

(Taylor 1985: 104).

Taylor confronts what seems to be the arbitrariness of theory, with reference to historical inter-subjectivity. He explains that the difference between a theoretical understanding and a mythical understanding is that theory is now something, in this age, which we need or desire.49 We turn to theory now in the same way that in the past we turned to religion. Still, theory is subordinate, as it were. For we hold theories for a purpose. This is not so with religion. Religion, if taken seriously, is our purpose. As Taylor puts it, theories help us get

46 As Taylor (1985: 94) says: ‘Theories do not just make our constitutive self-understandings explicit, but extend, or criticize or even challenge them. It is in this sense that theory makes a claim to tell us what is really going on, to show us the real, hitherto unidentified course of events.’ 47 According to Taylor (1985: 98): ‘The disruptive consequences of the theory flow from the nature of the practice, in that one of its constitutive props has been knocked away. This is because the practice requires certain descriptions to make sense, and it is these that the theory undermines. Theory can also have the radically opposite effect. An interpretation of our predicament can give added point to our practices, or show them to be even more significant than we had thought.’ 48 Following Taylor (1985: 98): ‘This will frequently mean that the alteration in our understanding which theory brings about can alter these practices; so that, unlike with natural science, the theory is not about an independent object, but one that is partly constituted by self-understanding.’ 49 Quoting Taylor (1985: 105): ‘We may be led to formulate some self-understanding in order to rescue a practice, to make it possible to continue it, to put it on a securer basis, or perhaps to reform it, or purify it...This of course is true first of all of many of our pre-theoretical formulations in myth and ritual...But with certain advances in culture, there may arise the need for theoretical formulations, that is, we feel the need to submit our discourse of self-understanding to the special disciplines of objectivity, rigour, and respect for truth which are constitutive of the activity we know as theorizing.’

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around – they’re like maps (Taylor 1985: 111). Under theory all things cohere, and all things make sense because there is some underlying common denominator. Like maps they help us get somewhere. We choose this particular sort of map because it describes the terrain in terms which are meaningful or important to us. The modern-day map differs to the old insofar as we don’t take its directions on trust but on the fact that it has been already shown to cohere with reality. These maps have been retrospectively validated (they’re not other-worldly).

They make clear what we are doing according to what we hold dear.50 They provide a unified and historically confirmed account of our practices, according to our self-definitions.

Essentially, we take on board theories, in a time in which theory is valued, in order to make our practice more coherent. The difference between a theoretical and a mythic understanding hinges on our historical situation then. This is so even if we find meaningful what theory might deliver and myth cannot – political liberation, for example. For the meaningfulness of political liberation is itself inter-subjective. Why is theory accorded such importance, now, and myth not? This is the deepest question of our practice, and it is a question which cannot be answered with reference to inter-subjectivity, because this is itself (i.e., inter-subjectivity) a theoretical understanding (derived from the theoretically understood emergence of self- consciousness).

If Taylor’s support for taking up theory is not itself a theory but merely a preference by his own account – and I am suggesting that it is – why wouldn’t we just stick to a positive science, which, even if our belief in its efficacy is misplaced, nonetheless is meaningful to those who practice it? But, of course, this is to put it in a way which recognises already that positivism is lacking (it is founded on a dream, or it does not recognise its own political

50 As Taylor (1985: 118) says, ‘in the normal case what is demanded of a theoretical account is that it makes the agent’s doings clearer than they were to him...Interpretive social science cannot by-pass the agent’s self- understanding.’

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partiality). Once we have recognised this there is no turning back, or no impartial choice to be made. Still, why wouldn’t we be just as happy with a myth if that is what is acceptable in our community? The only reason why not, is that theory must be a truer (and not merely a more useful or pleasurable) account than other world-views (and so positivism is already discounted).

If this is not reason enough, we could of course argue, further, that theory is liberal (or non- denominational) insofar as it is not concerned with, or might even encompass, ultimate political decisions in a way which, for example, religion could not. One can be religious and hold a social theory but the reverse does not hold. Just as one might believe miracles possible, and still maintain that there are permanent, natural, and worldly regularities, one could not, as a fully-fledged natural scientist, entertain the possibility of divine intervention

(or if one did it would be as a deist, and so of no scientific concern to the scientist; but it would or must be an ethical concern if taken seriously – here science and revelation are at odds, resolved only if science is religion, such that divine law is deemed to be revealed scientifically).51 But importantly, neither can social theory be merely a subjective preference.

This is an important point because for Taylor (1991) this ‘liberal’ desire to define oneself independently, and the associated political ideal of impartiality, is at the bottom of our modern political problems. Political problems shared, by contrast, bring us back to what is important or significant; they alone are authentic (Taylor 1991: 39-40).

51 Connolly (1999) might appear to refute this, as he is an avowed ‘non-secularist’ as well as an adherent of ‘social theory’. He is politically (in the third-person sense) a pluralist, and so would make room for both the secular and non-secular, or social theory and religion. From the first-person perspective, however, religion must for the religious always trump social theory. Since only social theory, and not religion, might claim itself to be merely one viewpoint among many, (as a social theory of this or that, in contrast to religion which is by necessity concerned with foundations), only it could, from a first-person perspective, hold a subordinate position to some more comprehensive understanding. If social theory is understood also as a foundational account, then religion and social theory are, ultimately, incommensurable...or simply equivalent (which, though, would transform religion, traditionally understood, beyond recognition).

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But, as I see it, holding both these positions (truth and liberality) we strike a problem. For to honour truth, our choice of one theory over another must be based on theory, not religion, not our values, and not our norms (just as Taylor defends his theoretical hermeneutics by way of a theoretical understanding). To honour truth, we need a theoretical perspective which is not itself reducible to inter-subjectivity. For sure, deference to inter-subjectivity is important as a defence against the muddle-headed notion that we can begin to understand ourselves wholly independently, but it is no defence of theory itself. Following Taylor’s path, what is needed is a ‘meta-theory’ (a theory in which disparate theories might themselves be understood under a broader meaningful unity – e.g., a theory of humanity as constituted in language). Needed is a meta-theory to decide between theories which each purport to describe the world as it is (and not just as a particular interpretation). Without this we choose politically – we choose socialist over democratic theory, for example. Taylor only goes so far as the latter. But why wouldn’t we transform this political understanding into a theoretical understanding? Why not, indeed, given that as Taylor acknowledges, in this age theory is the very thing which we desire? With this, with a meta-theory, subordinate theories would be displaced or rendered redundant; or, in other words, politics would be indistinguishable from science. With this we would make theory our religion, in line with how theory must appear to us (i.e., as the only path to true meaning).52 And so the importance of returning to Weber, for whom the problem of faith and science was as much a theoretical problem as it was political or personal.

In sum, turning to Taylor on our way to Weber, I showed that the hermeneutical social sciences, while distinct from the positive social sciences, could well – just like them – play a part in political life. While the hermeneutical social scientist interprets the interpretations of

52 Such a meta-theory would itself have to account for history, or inter-subjectivities. And this is where Hegel comes in. Hegel shows that in interpreting practice we are already interpreting ourselves. This is an interpretation which must reveal ourselves, to ourselves, as more than merely inter-subjective beings (this I’ll be taking up in the following chapter).

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others – as per Weber – the distance between his science and the political understanding of

‘research subjects’ might well be collapsed. For in this age, as Taylor points out, social theory might provide all political actors the means to interpret and thereby make sense of their own practices. This is an elevation of theory, then, insofar as Taylor would regard theory as itself politically meaningful. The limits placed on this by Taylor are, as we saw, tenuous, though.

Theory is likely to supplant what for Taylor is truly meaningful (and for this reason unknowable, such as our basic political desires). But theory is, on these terms, forever slipping away; it is an infinite regress, akin to a mirror mirroring a mirror, absent a subject.

What is the relevance of this to practical political or policy science? Aren’t these broad theoretical problems irrelevant to practice on the ground? For on the ground – so it is argued

– we have decided already what is meaningful and what is not, and so need only carry on with the business of acting. Practical political science, or policy science, is concerned with practical affairs, not ethereal musings which have no bearing on how things play out, day by day, in everyday life. However, as we saw in chapter two, these questions are not at all irrelevant. Such deep philosophical questions are either denied by practical social scientists, or taken up piecemeal as solutions to problems identified already under the political practice of social science. Important to remember is that the prior step, the step before social science enters politics, is for Weber the pivotal moment. If social science is to remain true to itself, if indeed social scientists are to pay full respect to the ground upon which they stand (and the difference between this and everyday political life), they must, as Weber shows and as I will argue, refrain from political activity as social scientists.

Returning to Weber

Having briefly introduced contemporary hermeneutics, I now give Weber my full attention.

Weber addresses the perennial problem of truth and politics in a way which takes account of

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meaning, which honours truth (as the transcendence of self-interest), and which also shows an awareness of the dangers of these one to the other. With these in mind we can appreciate

Lukács’ (1972: 398) insight that Weber ‘makes the passage between neo-Kantianism and existentialism for the first time.’53 Weber considers seriously the meaning of human action, in other words. Understandable too is Habermas’ (1988: 16) point that Weber could not go all the way, or did not explore the transcendental presuppositions of his value relations (i.e., the interdependence of social science and reality) because of his neo-Kantian positivism. Why he did not go all the way is important I think. Indeed, as I see it, this was a politically prudent decision of Weber’s. It follows, then, that what Lukács counts as Weber’s radicalism and what Habermas his conservatism are each rooted in the same concern of Weber’s for truth – both theoretical and political.

I approach this concern of Weber’s with a discussion of contemporary debates on Weber’s ideal-types. Ideal-types54 are the centre-piece of Weber’s social scientific hermeneutical methodology insofar as they allow us to interpret and understand people of different times and places according to what we and they regard as meaningful. The ideal-types allow us to understand others impartially. They could, as Weber says, be understood by people of any cultural background, even if such an understanding is not deemed by them significant (see

Weber 1949: 58-59). In this sense, ideal-types fall under the umbrella of science, for ideal-

53 He adds that ‘Weber had driven irrationalism from methodology and the analysis of particular facts in order to make it . . . the metaphysical foundations of his world-view with a radicalism of which there had been no previous example in Germany’ (1972: 398). 54 Ideal-types are constructions making use of these different classifications (which tie into broader social or historical practices, such as fall under Weber’s three ideal-types of authority: charismatic, traditional, and bureaucratic). Weber presents four orientations of social action (1978: 24-25): (1) instrumentally rational (zweckrational), in which the ‘“means” for the attainment of the actor’s own rationally pursued and calculated ends’ are pursued or a choice is made between conflicting ends; (2) value-rational (wertrational), in which action ‘is determined by a conscious belief in the value for its own sake’ or ends are chosen because they’re see to be inherently valuable; (3) affectual; and (4) traditional. Weber (1978: 25) notes that the traditional and affectual orientations stand on the borderline of what we could class as meaningful, and often each go over the line into mere habit or uncontrolled reaction. When these do become conscious they arise in the realm of the first two forms of rationality. Consciousness is key, then, insofar as with this the meaning of our behaviour is deemed by us as, in some way, rational. As such, it is thereby open to the interpreter to make fuller sense of the genesis of this rationality.

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types are limited by the rationality which they would reveal. Indeed, insofar as we find ourselves lost in the disorder of everyday life, as Weber understands it, they also allow us to understand our own times. They function as an ‘as if’, as the ideal of rationality – as Weber

(1978: 6) says, ‘the construction of a purely rational course of action...serves the sociologist as a type (ideal-type) which has the merit of clear understandability and lack of ambiguity.’

Even irrational phenomena – such as ‘prophetic and mystic modes of action’ – can reveal their meaning to the social scientist if interpreted using ideal-types (Weber 1978: 20). The bottom line is that these ideal-types abstract from reality in order to render it meaningful (i.e., what the social scientist finds meaningful). And by meaningful Weber means rationally purposeful social action. In the social world of action – where meaning is entwined with the behaviour of others – this is emulated when we understand someone to be rationally choosing means to accomplish some valued end.55 This valued end falls under what Weber deemed

‘value spheres’. These are incommensurable (they are formed under struggle) and so are not revealed rationally. Ultimately these spheres mark off the boundary of the social scientist’s intellectual reach. These must, in the end, appear as irrational to the social scientist.

In considering this we return to the concord, as it were, between the social scientist, the ideal- types, and what thereby the social scientist finds meaningful. What the social scientist finds meaningful is, quite obviously, what the ideal-types expose – that is, rationality. Since rationality is, according to Weber, liberation, insofar as when we choose rationally we are in control of our choices, or fully conscious of them, this is where social science and the world meet. This is where what the social scientist finds meaningful, and what he can understand of

55 This is the foundation of what for Weber defines sociology as deutend verstehen: ‘Sociology (in the sense in which this highly ambiguous word is used here) is a science concerning itself with the interpretive understanding of social action and thereby with a causal explanation of its course and consequences’ (Weber 1978: 4).

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others’ action converge. It is also what separates the social scientist from social actors, since these cannot understand the world from the bird’s-eye perspective of the social scientist.

Since the social scientist (as social scientist) finds truth (or rationality) meaningful, and since as social scientist he cannot plum the real core of what is meaningful – that is, our fundamental values – he must refrain from imposing his values (and his rationality) on others.

Weber, then, diverges from Dewey and Lasswell (not to mention those further downstream) insofar as for him, instrumental rationality, if understood as more than means, is the dissolution of politics, not its realisation (no matter whether understood practically, as technical construction, or as in interaction – following Lasswell and Dewey respectively). For politics (in the deepest sense, as ‘the political’) is understood by Weber hermeneutically, or as what foregrounds our action; what we take to be meaningful. By contrast, for Dewey, the ends of instrumental rationality are sanctified in interaction – as a form of poetry or making, as it were – and emulate in this way natural, biological life. Lasswell is more constructive than Dewey, so much so that the true ends of instrumental rationality would, following him, reveal themselves only as a technical fabrication. Weber stands in opposition. He is no applied social scientist, and is therefore averse to the mixing of social science and public policy. Rather, social scientists are not to act as law-givers, but as ethicists. This is because they themselves are best placed to deal with the political dangers of instrumental rationality, simply because they are closer to it, and so understand its political implications better than others.

Weber and his Method

I turn now to the ideal-types. As I will show below, what Weber could have possibly meant by his ideal-types is still up for debate. These debates reflect the broader problem of impartiality (as I introduced in chapter two). For this desire to understand people impartially

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is not universal. Or, more accurately, we might say that the desire to understand people truly is universal, but in the form of scientific impartiality it is not. Indeed, as I introduced above, it is in acknowledgement of these political differences that Weber might be distinguished from someone such as Dilthey.

In acknowledging this, Weber is sensitive to the political limits of his science. But still, even if Weber’s desire to understand people impartially – as he sees it – is not shared by other cultural groups, his must begin with a fundamental insight into the nature of everyday political life. This is a theoretical insight; it is a movement from Dilthey, who would consider psychic phenomena to be the fundament of the human sciences, to someone such as Heinrich

Rickert – a contemporary of much importance to Weber (see Bruun 2001). Against Dilthey,

Rickert (1986) conceived of the human sciences not along psychic lines, but along conceptual. The world is meaningful to us insofar as we have a conceptual understanding of it.

Weber does not diverge from Rickert’s understanding of everyday life (Aron 1964: 68-71;

1970: 194-195). Everyday life is, for Weber, at bottom an infinite manifold, a mess of meaning which makes sense only to those who have not contemplated it; it must be

‘constructed’ if it is to be understood truly. For, as he says, what we can understand of humanity – that is, culture – ‘is a finite segment of the meaningless infinity of the world process, a segment on which human beings confer meaning and significance’ (Weber 1949:

81 and see also 110). And so the human sciences are distinguished from the natural sciences by the special status they accord to history (and not just to the psyche, following Dilthey).

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Weber diverges from Rickert in bringing this back down to earth; he leaves behind what is essentially the ‘value metaphysics’ of Rickert (see Bruun 2001: 148).56

In deferring to a ‘value metaphysics’, as Bruun (2001: 149) says, Weber viewed Rickert’s science as both limited in application and overreaching insofar as it would ‘interfere’ in, or render partial, the interpretation of the values of others. In moving beyond the need for shared cultural values, human historical science might become truly universal – more akin to a science per se, as it were. It may be taken up by anybody; and in so doing there would be less risk that it would do interpretive violence to its subjects. The limits of science are thereby set already by the reticence or, we might even call it, the humbleness of Weber. This for him is a limit to what he can know. It is, though, also the elevation of himself to an objectivity not yet attained by Rickert. Indeed, Weber’s humility is tied-up with this transcendence of himself – or, contra Rickert, some disassociation from what he himself values. In leaving himself behind, he approaches agents conservatively. This conservatism, or caution, plays out two- ways, then: towards the social scientist himself, and away from his or her ‘research subjects’.

For this reason I agree with Ringer (1997: 95), who says that ‘[a]t no point did Weber suggest...that the identification of an agent’s “subjective” motive depends in any way upon the “subjectivity” of the interpreter.’57 This indeed is what would distinguish him from

56 On this point it’s worthwhile to consider that, according to Eliaeson (1990: 16-17), we can situate Weber’s methodology next to three controversies: the first, known as the Methodenstreit, was basically a debate over theory and history, between Carl Menger (an Austrian economist) and Gustav Schmoller (of the younger historical school). As a rough overview, Menger sought to ground economics in the methods of the natural sciences, allowing thereby the construction of general laws and conceptual models. Schmoller disagreed, arguing that without careful empirical study we would mistake historical for universal laws, and thereby misunderstand our object of study (see Beiser 2011). The second controversy related to the differentiation of the cultural sciences from positivism (or the natural sciences), and included Dilthey’s call for a separation distinguished by hermeneutics, and Rickert’s neo-Kantianism, in which any historical account must be founded on values universally understood (Bruun 2001: 147). The third, was the controversy over value-freedom, as it came to a head in the Vienna meetings of the Verein für Sozialpolitik. It was in the Verein that Weber – who supported a value neutral approach – debated those, such as Schmoller, who promoted an ethical or ‘normative’ social science. 57 See also Ringer (1997: 95): ‘On the contrary, following Simmel, Weber repeatedly stressed that one does not have to be Caesar to understand him. Much of Weber's commentary on Knies, in fact, was written to challenge

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Rickert, for with this Weber might remain value-neutral, insofar as the interpreter might (and indeed, must) separate him or herself from those interpreted. Further, and according to Ringer

(1997: 51), ‘what is most noteworthy about Weber as a methodologist...is his determination to reconcile “subjectivity” in the delimitation of research problems with “objectivity” in the results obtained.’ If successful, this would allow Weber to surpass Rickert’s faults, in which he would understand no more than his own values, or must presuppose that his values are universal in order to encounter history in some objective sense.

Here the debates over the status of the ideal-types gain importance. These debates show us, on one hand, a Weber who constructs the ideal-types in order to guide the formation of hypotheses (see Weber 1949: 90). For, as Weber (1949: 92) says, ideal-types are a means not an end. And, on the other hand, they show us a Weber in closer relation to Rickert. Here it is argued that Weber, in not fully departing from Rickert, holds still to his theory of concept formation, in which historical individuals are distinguished by the different meaning or value they ascribe to things. Here ideal-types fall short. For if taken by themselves they connect us back to a reality defined only by concepts. And so the scientific value of ideal-types would be circular, or essentially worthless, for they would serve merely to elucidate what is essentially another species of ideal-type.

Somewhere between the two is correct, as I will argue. Neither of these can meet Weber as

Weber. I will take up these arguments following, on one hand, the writings of Drysdale and, on the other hand, the thought of Oakes. These are worthwhile representatives of each side considering that – as I will argue – the former takes seriously Weber’s ideal-types as he understood them methodologically; while the latter explores the theoretical coherence of the

the subjectivist fallacy that interpretation is an intuitive “identification” with the persons who are “understood,” or an empathetic reproduction of their inner states.’

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ideal-types, especially in relation to everyday understanding. As I will argue, these are unable to meet Weber as Weber. I hope to show that the former in adhering to the boundaries of

Weber’s method cannot encompass the question, and ensuing problem, of what Weber could understand of everyday reality. In encompassing this impossibility of understanding the everyday, though, I argue that the latter surpasses Weber’s methodological limits as he intended them. Bringing these two perspectives together, I suggest that it is not the theoretical problem which concerns Weber, but the personal or political. Keeping this in mind, it is important to consider Weber’s apparent reticence to explore his own theoretical presuppositions (as hinted at by Habermas).

First up is Drysdale (1996). Drysdale argues that Weber did indeed transcend Rickert by way of his ideal-types. For the ideal-types are judgement free, according to Drysdale. Weber used them as points of comparison only: an ideal-type ‘enables the process of investigation and exposition; it implies no stance toward the conceptual object which would inappropriately constrict the range of alternative hypotheses’ (Drysdale 1996: 85). The ideal-types are heuristic in this sense, for they provide us a starting point of reference. The ideal-types are almost arbitrary, then; they have been chosen only because they make sense to us. Other means of making sense may well be chosen by other people.

Truth by way of comparison is, according to Drysdale, revealed, and only revealed, as an hypothesis, which ‘unlike the concept (e.g., capitalism)...serves to make a claim (empirical, historical) about reality which is subject to validation’ (Drysdale 1996: 80). Any concept, as

Drysdale argues, is merely a starting point, unable to reveal the truth unless tied together with other concepts to form a testable hypothesis against history.58 It would seem then that the

58 See also Drysdale (1996: 76): ‘no concept can be regarded as anything more than a very partial, limited, and context-bound representation of any given “phenomenon” [and] [t]he relation between concept and reality is always problematic.’

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ideal-type is something less akin to a word in a sentence, in which a word’s meaning is inexplicably tied to our intentions, and more like the components of a schematic diagram, of which reality may or may not be a reflection (since reality is, culturally speaking, itself a relative construction). But this is not how Drysdale sees words. In effect, for Drysdale, words are themselves akin to the components of a schematic diagram, and ideal-types likewise

(1996: 80).59 Considered this way, as akin to this understanding of words, the problem of the disconnection of ideal-types from reality is averted: ideal-types are connected to reality by way of the hypothetical proposition of which they are a part. The hypothesis, and what it seeks to explain, would save us from the problem of circularity (wherein the validation of ideal-types is based on a reality uncovered only by way of ideal-types). This problem (of circularity) is averted, though, only if we hold that there is no intention behind words, concepts, or ideal-types. Indeed, the strength of this claim dissipates if we consider that in order to speak we must intend to say something. And in intending to say something our words do not simply add up to a proposition which might be tested. Rather, words are inextricably bound to our intentions. If ideal-types are like words, we must also consider the intentions behind them (i.e., that they are judgemental).

These are important considerations, and they’re considerations which Drysdale partially addresses. Or he addresses them within the already limited horizon of Weber’s science. For if we regard the ideal-types as value-free concepts (see Weber 1949: 98-99),60 much the same as we might words by themselves, for example, we are staking our claim already on a judgement which limits words to their function within the self-enclosed whole of a

59 Drysdale (1996: 80) follows Christoph Sigwart (an influential logician of Weber’s time) to argue that ‘words, like concepts, cannot be judged true or false; only the proposition expressing a predicative judgement makes a truth claim…for Weber the judgement (thesis, hypothesis) is oriented to the cognitive goal of causal explanation…The concept, on the other hand, even as it is a means toward the formation of hypotheses, represents a deliberate, constructive interpretation of reality’ [italics in original]. 60 ‘An “ideal type” in our sense, to repeat once more, has no connection at all with value-judgements, and it has nothing to do with any type of perfection other than a purely logical one’ [italics in original] (Weber 1949: 98- 99).

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proposition. The more fundamental question of whether reality is or is not a schema, or whether the truth of ideal-types might well be considered apart from the part they play in predication, cannot be answered following this path.

This reflection brings Weber to the fore, then, insofar as we must ask ourselves why he did what he did, and what he understood of his own enterprise. In a couple of places Drysdale considers these questions (as did Weber himself), but without in my opinion pushing them far enough. For example, Drysdale (1996: 78) mentions that the ‘social scientist shares a common cultural status with the objects of study.’ This, as Drysdale puts it, brings in a degree of complexity not shared by the natural scientist. No mention is made of the deeper significance of this complexity, such that complexity – relative to simplicity – might well be the result of a false apprehension; following, for example, from what Weber understands of the everyday, that it is an infinite manifold. Elsewhere Drysdale (1996: 83) says that that which the scientist deems relevant or significant is subjective or relative, and even variable amongst scientists themselves. Subjectivity is rescued from a radical relativism, however, by

‘the fact that science is practiced within “scientific communities.”…The greater the agreement, the greater the constraints on individual variations or idiosyncratic value- interpretations’ (83-84). This takes us into deeper territory. If we are serious, wouldn’t we consider the truth of what is presented here as merely a socially sanctified form of group- think? Considered thus, we see that ‘agreement’ merely pushes the ‘radical relativism’ threat back a step; it does not preclude it. For agreement does not equate to truth. Or, to put it another way, how to agree on what is a true and what a false science? These questions are not taken up by Drysdale.

Plumbing this further, we might say that, broadly, ideal-types must make sense to us given what we understand of everyday life (that it is, following Weber, an infinite manifold, for example). If we claim that the ideal-types are value-free (see Weber 1949: 98-99), for

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example, then we must stake our claim on the truth of everyday life, not merely our interpretation of it. Consider that the natural scientist explicitly claims that his description of the world is value-free (if not his political proclivities, for not all value modern science). Any heuristic which he might construct to represent the world, such as for example the Rutherford planetary model of the atom, is limited to what he believes might be understood, given the terms of his science. The planetary model is not thereby a comprehensive replica of the world. Rather, it makes appear to us, or renders meaningful, what would otherwise remain hidden (as this is, truly, mere matter). Only when judged along with the broader intentions of those who fabricated the heuristic do questions of value arise. Weber puts it thus:

Whereas in astronomy, the heavenly bodies are of interest to us only in their

quantitative and exact aspects, the qualitative aspect of phenomena concerns us in

the social sciences. To this should be added that in the social sciences we are

concerned with psychological and intellectual phenomena the empathic

understanding of which is naturally a problem of a specifically different type from

those which the schemes of the exact natural sciences in general can or seek to

solve [italics in original] (Weber 1949: 74).

Here we might say that Weber finds himself embroiled. Contra the natural scientists, Weber cannot claim that his initial assumption – following the foundations of his science – is value- free, because making-sense, or meaningfulness, is at the very heart of his science. Of course, he might make the further claim that his perspective of meaningfulness is value-free (even if from a broader historical perspective it is not – that is, only at a certain point in history is scientific truth valued), in much the same way as is the natural scientist’s. It is only a difference of subject matter – one is concerned with material bodies the other with social action and associated meaning (as Drysdale argues). But this means that if Weber is to hold

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strictly to the ideal-types as value-free (see Weber 1949: 98-99), he would be wholly excluded from his subject matter, insofar as it is value-oriented and he is not. For the natural scientist this is no problem: material bodies move in the worlds of believers and non- believers alike, even if the significance of this for each differs. But for a practitioner of the human sciences one is liable to put the cart before the horse insofar as one’s theory carelessly limits everyday life, an everyday life which must be considered in its totality for us to grasp the significance of human intentions.

Here I take up Oakes (1987), following Burger (1976). Oakes holds Weber to this broader account; but an account which, I think, unduly boxes in Weber as a theoretician. Oakes attempts to align Weber with Rickert’s neo-Kantianism.61 Important for Oakes, then, is the following quote he draws from Weber (1949: 81):

The transcendental supposition of every cultural science is not that we find a

certain “culture,” or indeed any culture at all, valuable, but rather that we are

cultural beings, endowed with the capacity and the will to take a conscious

position toward the world and to ascribe a meaning to it. Regardless of what this

meaning may be, it will lead to the fact that in life we will judge certain

phenomena of human collective existence on its basis and take a position on them

as being (positively or negatively) significant. Regardless of the content of this

position, these phenomena have a cultural significance for us. Their scientific

interest rests on this significance alone [original translation slightly altered by

Oakes].

Drawing on this quote Oakes takes the position that in claiming to have attained a science of meaning, or a cultural science, Weber presupposes ‘an account of the conditions under which

61 Such an assessment is, of course, fatal to Weber’s enterprise as a whole, according to Drysdale (1996: 74).

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knowledge of historical individuals is possible’ (Oakes 1987: 117). This is where Weber is aligned with Rickert, according to Oakes. For each, the problem arises of how we come to know historical individuals. This, as Oakes points out, was not solved by Rickert, for knowledge of historical individuals is possible only conceptually. Deriving reality from concepts leaves us unable to ascribe significance to one thing over another. As such,

Rickert’s ‘value metaphysics’ is without foundation. Weber is left in the same position insofar as his ideal-types must be compared against a reality which he conceives of in the same spirit as Rickert: ‘The Weberian conception of cultural science rests on explanations by means of ideal types, the explanatory validity of which is tested by comparisons with empirical reality itself. The Rickertian theory of concept formation and its doctrine of the intensive infinity of empirical reality entail that such a comparison is impossible’ (Oakes

1987: 152-153).62

Certainly, if correct, this pulls the rug out from underneath Weber, as Weber is now a creator of meaning rather than a discoverer of its rational structure. But is it correct? According to

Oakes, Weber’s problem is epistemological. According to Drysdale, knowing (as hypothesis validation) is distinct from conceiving (as constructing ideal-types). Truth might thereby arise with the empirical verification of what can be known according to what has been conceived

(as a concept or ideal-type). For Drysdale, then, the problem of interpretation, which is the problem of an empathetic understanding and attending epistemological problems, is irrelevant. The ideal-types are interpretations of reality (Drsydale 1996: 80) but we need not understand them as being constitutive of reality, or assume that there is some essential concurrence between our value-free concepts and reality itself.63 Rather, they allow us to get

62 See also Rose (2009). 63 See also Schutz (1976: 275): ‘[Weber’s] terminology is unfortunate because the term “objective meaning” is obviously a misnomer, insofar as the so-called “objective” interpretations are, in turn, relative to the particular attitudes of the interpreters and, therefore, in a certain sense, “subjective.”’

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to the truth of reality (Drysdale 1996: 81), which is a truth of human history (see also Bruun

2001: 149).64

For this reason, Drysdale is closer to Weber in my opinion, simply because Weber himself makes the distinction between everyday speech and the truth, a truth which might only be revealed by the sociological historian (see Weber 1949: 110). Oakes, following this line of reasoning, steps beyond Weber, but only because he takes his cue from Rickert, and the broader problem which this entails. This broader problem is hermeneutical, or the problem of the truth of what is meaningful. It is not merely an empirical problem as identified by

Drysdale. Which is to say, the problem is that of the possible or impossible distinction between politics (or meaning) and science (and truth), and not the subordinate distinction between historical causality and contingency.

Well and good? Not quite. For to deny that there is a problem, as does Drysdale, is to assume that empirical science is value neutral. This is possible, as I pointed out above, only if what is disclosed to us as meaningful by this science is itself value-free (even if only historically).

Without this, we encounter the problem of disentangling ourselves from the values which we have inherited. But in holding fast to this ‘objectivity’ we encounter a problem even more threatening: what to make of Weber himself, an historical character? Following Drysdale, it should be impossible to know Weber other than empirically.65 But Drysdale does (i.e., he presents more than a Drysdalian reconstruction of Weber)66 simply because he does not

64 See also Sadri (1992: 7): ‘the ultimate criterion for the validity of the observer’s interpretations is not its agreement with the so-called native’s account. This, of course, goes against the conventional picture of Weber as the father of Verstehen sociology.’ And Ringer (1997: 69) on Weber’s probabilistic understanding. 65 See also Drysdale (1996: 75), following Weber: ‘even apart from the changing nature of both the “object” and “subject” of knowledge, the possibilities of conceptualisation of any given “slice of reality” at any given moment are manifold, perhaps logically infinite.’ 66 C.f., Drysdale (1996: 78): ‘One of the problems facing any interpreter of the “Objectivity” essay is that Weber expresses his ideas without regard for the construction of a comprehensive theory of concept formation. Therefore, anyone who attempts to “reconstruct” Weber's “theory” must resort to a strategy of idealisation to cope with the incompleteness of his arguments. This strategy runs several risks, not the least of which is

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follow Weber to the letter; or, what amounts to the same thing, he assumes already the truth of what Weber has to say, and does not thereby question the impossibility of who is saying it.

Drysdale does not consider Weber because he already accepts the coherence of Weber’s argument, in other words. Oakes, on the other hand, diverges from what Weber said (as

Ringer and others have pointed out) in emphasising the problematic character of what Weber could know if he must stand by his arguments with the dogmatic demeanour of an epistemologist. Both of these arguments draw out something of Weber, but each is deficient: neither can meet Weber as Weber.67

The problem of Weber, and with all due respect to Weber is, I suggest, as much personal as it is theoretical.68 Indeed, as I have been arguing, under a purely ‘theoretical’ or scientific understanding of Weber we must extract Weber from his own understanding, or we must hold Weber to an epistemology of which he himself had little time for. The real problem for us lies with Weber’s intentions, not only as they might be limited according to a theory of knowledge, but as they stood according to the political and, at bottom, existential problems of the modern world.69 These problems, as I have been arguing, arise at the point at which the

attributing to his theory a greater coherence than is justified. There is, however, no alternative within a reconstructive interpretation.’ 67 See also Aronovitch (2012), whose interpretation is similar to Drysdale’s: ‘An ideal-type is in effect a theorist’s interpretation of the agents’ interpretation of experience… But an ideal-type also involves evaluation as part of the theoretical explanation’ (365). And also: ‘the social theorist’s ideal-type must ultimately reveal whether and how the agents’ understanding of the situation has to be altered or amended to provide the needed explanation of it. An ideal-type is only provisional (a “work in progress”) until this last stage is completed’ (Aronovitch 2012: 361). Klimova (2012) is also worth mentioning because he takes Weber to task for not accounting for the failure of meaningful action. But in so accounting, in coming thereby to understand that failure follows a misattribution of meaning, and is recovered only categorically (or culturally), we find ourselves entangled in historicism, rescued only with a return to Hegel and his notion of Sittlichkeit. We thereby re-enter the very problem – the problem of Hegelian wisdom – which Weber was attempting to surpass (see Weber 1978: xliv; 2012: 86; and Bruun 2007: 76) without being overcome by history. 68 ‘Weber’s position . . . should be construed as a self-conscious and deliberate attempt to have it both ways. He agrees with the Positivists that the social sciences are value-free and causal. But he denies that this agreement is incompatible with the view that there is nevertheless a difference of kind between the sciences of nature and the sciences of man. Or to look at it the other way around: he acknowledges the peculiarities of human social behaviour as a subject for science, but believes it possible to allow for them without compromising scientific method’ (Runciman 1972: 16). 69 Kim (2004) follows Jaspers’ (1989) estimation that Weber was political to the core – keeping in mind that, according to Jaspers (1989: 60), Weber ‘did not have the politician’s innate will for power, the wish to rule

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scientific meets the political. And so too it is here that problems arise with Weber’s viewpoint as interpreted by us, considering how and why our interpretation must transcend what Weber discloses to us as the truth by way of his method.

To sum up Weber’s political and scientific concerns we might say that the realm of meaning or value as well as that of truth is preserved if what is revealed to us historically does not itself constitute any one historical period. Which is to say, that our understanding arises with the possibility of what could be potentially understood (verstehen) by all, but does not thereby entail that it be understood in this way by those other than ourselves. Weber does, in this sense, attempt to rise above history, but using only the levitation provided by history itself. Such levitation is not an escape from history, however. For, levitation is possible only because historical things have themselves lost their power to enchant us (see Aron 1964: 105-

106). We find ourselves elevated because history has become a problem. This problem is revealed against the backdrop of ages past, ages in which history’s reality was an unacknowledged and non-problematic background to lives as they were lived (and so the possibility now, for us, of verstehende).

As a practical or personal means to a moderate and meaningful politics, as a non- foundational enterprise, there is much promise in what Weber proposes, especially given that we are at risk of, as Weber puts it, degenerating into ‘specialists without spirit, sensualists without heart’ (Weber 2003: 182). On a similar note, Weber presents his as a humble

because this defines his life.’ According to Kim, Weber’s social science addresses the ‘distinctive ontology and genealogy of the modern self’ (2004: 27; see also 99). Despite my agreement with Kim on many points, he would tend to confound the prescience of Weber’s understanding with the results thereof. If Weber’s concern was indeed about coming to terms politically with the modern self (see also Symonds and Pudsey 2008) then it was also as much about understanding it. That Weber understood the self as essentially modern (or even only legitimately so) might well say less about the self than about Weber. And if so, Weber’s confrontation with the problem would also be tied up with how it was understood by him. Whether Weber could adequately understand the problem is, thereby, the fundamental question. I agree with Eden, however, who says that ‘Weber's enterprise is an attempt to come to terms with the role of science in a world of individualists breaking passionately with morality in its traditional, authoritatively limiting forms, seeking to define themselves through self-assertion and expression’ (Eden 1983a: 375).

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understanding,70 not prone to the vanities of the philosophers, and certainly not to the vanity of Hegel’s wisdom.71 On this score we might contrast Weber’s conservatism, or caution, with the more radical thoughts of the philosophers, in which wisdom would arise as the unity of practice and theory. In contrast to the philosophers, Weberian theory is circumscribed by the scepticism of modern science. But this circumscription is undertaken against the background of what Weber recognises as also its political dangers. As these two are related by a common term of reference, so too the political is, for Weber, defined against the boundaries of what is knowable scientifically. Weber’s political conservatism or caution (as social scientist) is then set against a somewhat radical understanding of politics (as struggle). The ideal-types are, for these reasons, emblematic of Weberian science and his associated political understanding.

Firstly, they suggest a political conservativism insofar as they presuppose a limit to what can be known of the political. Secondly, they presuppose an understanding of the political which is radical insofar as it cannot be known truly, other than retrospectively. Thirdly, tying this together is an everyday which is understood as, ultimately, or, at bottom, chaos.

The heart of this is Weber’s historical understanding of human being (‘what we are’ can only be known after the fact, as revealed to us by way of the ideal-types). This begins with a problem as recognised by Weber. For as scientists or people who now value the truth, our desire for a rational account is a double-edged sword: rationality is both true and empty (e.g., consider the desolation of bureaucracy and the prescience of social science). Since for Weber there is no escape from history, only elevation through it, the problem demands that we rise

70 See Ringer (1997: 123): ‘In short, the constructs of the cultural and social sciences reflect the values of the investigators; they do not emerge from a passively observed reality. But if that is true, then the “objectivity” of these disciplines can only lie in the fact that their inquiries, though “oriented toward ... value ideas,” do not and cannot “prove the validity” of the values involved. Our cultural concerns launch our investigations; but once at work on a set of phenomena, Weber argued, we should analyse our evidence for its own sake, without further regard for our value interests.’ 71 As Beiser (2011: 8) notes, ‘[s]ome of the most important historicist thinkers in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, viz., Humboldt, Ranke, Dilthey, Weber, were highly critical of the philosophy of history, fearing that any association with its metaphysics would contaminate or undermine the scientific status of history itself.’

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above the everyday (to attain the truth), as well as find some way of regaining what was lost with this very demand (to recapture meaning). To the scientist, or to the contemplative person, everyday life offers nothing more than an ambiguous obscurity: ‘The use of the undifferentiated collective concepts of everyday speech is always a cloak for confusion of thought and action...It is, in brief, always a means of obstructing the proper formulation of the problem’ (Weber 1949: 110). The problem of liberation begins with our immersion in everyday life, in other words: as scientist one must rise above it, but as the politically prudent scientist one must repair the damage, as it were. Only after we have secured some distance from the present does the importance to us of political action, its consequences and its meaning, become apparent (see Weber 2004a: 26).

It is as if, having finally woken up, startled and disorientated, we must find some way to recover dreaming’s significance, but without closing our eyes. This is the problem of history, and the problem which also defines for us its resolution. It is also the problem of politics and science, recognised by one with an incredible breadth of historical knowledge. And it is also a problem which, I argue, begins not with the most comprehensive understanding of the truth, but with a truth limited by what already has been circumscribed by modern science. For

Weber takes as his point of departure the fact of everyday life’s incoherence, and the necessity of its recovery by way of history.72

It could be argued that this fact (of the incoherence of everyday life) is built into the fabric of our age, as it were, insofar as everyday life has become a problem for us moderns in a way

72 See Weber (2003: 20): ‘In all cases, rational or irrational, sociological analysis both abstracts from reality and at the same time helps us to understand it, in that it shows with what degree of approximation a concrete historical phenomenon can be subsumed under one or more of these concepts. For example, the same historical phenomenon may be in one aspect feudal, in another patrimonial, in another bureaucratic, and in still another charismatic. In order to give a precise meaning to these terms, it is necessary for the sociologist to formulate pure ideal types of the corresponding forms of action which in each case involve the highest possible degree of logical integration by virtue of their complete adequacy on the level of meaning.’

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which it didn’t for ages past. But this is saying too much. For everyday life has always been a problem (for us humans). How the problem is conceived, and what its remedy entails is the important question. As a question of meaning, there is no small difference between coherence derived through historical or sociological study, and a coherence which is sought from within the phenomena of everyday life, for example.

Ideal-types and the Social Scientist

In this section I will explore what the ideal-types must mean to the social scientist. This is, as it were, the site wherein meaning and truth cohere. As the coherence of meaning and truth it presents its own dangers insofar as these are not natural bedfellows. Indeed, we might say that they are, in essence, mutually exclusive. I don’t mean to say that we cannot find anything both true and meaningful. That would be absurd. Rather, truth would itself seem to propel us beyond what is meaningful, towards bare necessity. Which is to say that (as we find with

Weber) truth propels us beyond description into the realm of explanation. For if our aim is to provide the whole account of something then we must also attempt to show how it came to be. What’s more, if we cannot know a thing as it presents itself to us in everyday life, explaining how it ‘came to be’ would seem to be the only true account. Insofar as this would dissolve meaning there is an inherent discord between the truth-seeker and the everyday person. Insofar as meaning is the political problem of the day, this discord is rendered ever more acute. And insofar as we would resolve this discord – as per a practical social science – we run the risk of collapsing one into the other, redeemed only through the impartiality of practice (as we saw in chapter two).

I have suggested above that ideal-types are indicative of Weber’s conservative or cautious response to the inscrutability of human beings. Ideal-types reflect both the scientific and political limits of interpretation. They follow the scepticism of modern science; but reflect

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also its broader political implications, insofar as a self-conscious rationality is at odds with the vitality of meaning. What, then, do ideal-types mean? Firstly, consider that ideal-types mean something to someone, and that this someone is the social scientist. Consider also that ideal-types are heuristic, and so that what they mean to social scientists must be more than a mere symbol or random sign. We know too that the ideal-types emulate, even if only in a partial way, the meaningfulness to the historical actor of his or her own social action – they offer reasons for action which actors may well have offered if they articulated these rationally and systematically.

Insofar as action is meaningful to both the social actor and the interpreter they are united by consciousness. Interpretations may well be wrong, and action may well be misguided, but in each case what is ‘meaningful’ denotes that the question ‘why pursue this action?’ might be answered: action is consciously directed, in other words. Insofar as social actors have not yet fully understood their action, rationality is asymmetrical: the interpreter attempts to complete the rationality of the social actor, as it were. This completion could not be undertaken by the social actor; for if it were, social action would be rendered meaningless. To put it another way, the genesis of what is meaningful is not and cannot be equivalent to what is actually meaningful, for the latter is value-rationality and the former we might describe in a suitably ugly phrase as an inter-subjective instrumental-rationality (and so the conflict I mentioned above between truth and meaning). This rationality must remain beyond the reach of the historical actor.

There is then some freedom or consciousness available to the social scientist which is not available to the social or historical actor, but which, nonetheless, is rooted in a shared rationality. The ideal-types are heuristic insofar as they stand between both, connecting and separating the social scientist and the historical actor. As symbolic, or as an abstraction, they enable the social scientist’s liberation from an unconscious historical necessity, and as

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meaningful to the social scientist they denote what he or she shares with the historical actor.

They are, in short, heuristic insofar as they emulate the freedom and thereby the rationality of conscious human action (see Weber 2012: 85-86).73 As Weber (1978: 8) says:

Understanding may be of two kinds: the first is the direct observation of the

subjective meaning of a given act as such, including verbal

utterances...Understanding may, however, be of another sort, namely explanatory

understanding. Thus we understand in terms of motive the meaning an actor

attaches to the proposition twice two equals four, when he states it or writes it

down, in that we understand what makes him do this at precisely this moment and

in these circumstances...This is rational understanding of motivation, which

consists in placing the act in an intelligible and more inclusive context of meaning

[italics in original].

Taking this one step further. What makes the ideal-types more than mere random or absurd symbols is their meaningful appropriation by the social scientist: only if the reality of the social scientist is a confluence of rationality and freedom are the ideal-types heuristic, or meaningful to the social scientist.74 Ideal-types thereby expose the potential freedom of the person, based on the presupposition that that freedom is actualised as the social scientist, who must be able, in some way, to exist beyond the limits equated with this potential. This

73 We might also quote Aranovitch (2012: 362), for example, who draws from Weber’s study on the Protestant ethic and capitalism: ‘capitalist behaviour of the Puritans stood out in one way as irrational because of being so continually driven and also so disconnected from their fatalistic views, but in another way, when comprehended by Weber’s diagnosis, it was seen to be instrumentally rational because of how it mitigated existential anxiety.’ 74 See Weber (2012: 45): ‘But if there is a decrease in the “interpretability” (and, consequently, an increase in the “incalculability”) [of action], we usually assume that the acting person has, to that extent, less “freedom of the will”, in the sense of “freedom of action”. (This is where the [preceding] discussion is linked to our [general] problem.) In other words: already at this point it appears that, if there is any general relationship at all between “freedom” of “action” (however that concept may be defined) and the irrationality of historical events, this relationship is at any rate not one in which their reciprocal influence is such that when one is present or increases, this means that the other one will also increase; in fact (as will become ever clearer [in what follows]), exactly the opposite is the case.’

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boundary-limit is the significance to us of history (understood scientifically, not traditionally). On the one hand (relevant to the historical actor) it is only from within history that freedom is not separated from what is meaningful, and on the other hand (relevant to the social scientist) it is only with our recognition that this same meaning is historical can we provide a (as close to possible) value-free perspective.

Insofar as this holds, Weber’s understanding (as a social scientific understanding), cannot be attained by the acting historical subject (see Brubaker 1984: 36). But Weber – as he himself acknowledges – emerged from history. Only now is it possible for the two to converge, therefore. Emergence is not the same as reconciliation, though, for what the social scientist knows is distinct from what any one of us, as historical creatures, should be, even if what we can be is defined already by the confluence of science and meaning as characterised by our age, and as understood most clearly by the social scientist. In Weber’s words: ‘An empirical science cannot tell anyone what he should do – but rather what he can do – and under certain circumstances – what he wishes to do’ [italics in original] (Weber 1949: 54). The social scientist as social scientist, in other words, can play no part in judgement other than pointing out the necessity for us to judge in a way which accords with the truth as understood by him or her.75

75 And so the possibilities available to the historical subject in this age, and the choices which they must make in order to be realised as such, are defined by Weber (1949a: 17) as ‘an irreconcilable death-struggle, like that between “God” and the “Devil”.’ In this, the historical subject would share something with the hyperborean perspective of the scientist, insofar as life which is not itself subsumed by history is realised in the act of choosing – meaning is tied up with freedom, in other words. For as Weber (1949a: 18) goes on to state: ‘every single important activity and ultimately life as a whole, if it is not to be permitted to run on as an event in nature but is instead to be consciously guided, is a series of ultimate decisions through which the soul – as in Plato – chooses its own fate.’ This is a transcendental or Kantian interpretation of Plato’s myth of Er (Republic, 614b- 621d), for Weber speaks here as if the myth, or its analogue, might in some way found our own lives (c.f., Satkunanandan 2014: 176). With this we are precluded from a deeper or ‘impious’ understanding of Plato’s ostensibly pious or edifying myth of the afterlife (c.f., Philebus 22a-b and Phaedo 107d-114c). This act of choice can occur both within and at the bounds of history, as it were. For what Weber describes here is on one hand a choice defined by the significance to us of ‘God’ and the ‘Devil’ and on the other a wholly rational understanding; or an understanding in which what is exposed is not an end itself, nor another end, but the common-to-all self-conscious choosing of ends.

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With this in mind, Weber’s description of the social scientist is prescient. In this we can see that that which exemplifies the (ethical) social scientist is his or her disinclination to actively choose (see Portis 1986: 4-5); which is to say the social scientist would exemplify a self- grounding rationality (c.f., Steinberger 2015: 761-762). This is achieved only when the scientist refrains from imposing his or her own perspective on those who are the subject of it

(Weber 2004a: 26-27).

Returning to the beginning of the previous section (on ideal-types) helps to explain why this is so. Firstly, if everyday life is understood as a phenomenal stream, or as nothing more than an ambiguous obscurity, then we only come to understand others, and indeed ourselves, historically: ‘the discursive nature of our knowledge, that is, the fact that we comprehend reality only through a chain of intellectual modifications postulates such a conceptual shorthand...social science in our sense is concerned with practical significance’ (Weber 1949:

94). Secondly, to give meaning its due, which is to limit the reach of what we can know, we must understand that what can be revealed to us historically does not itself constitute any one historical period. In sum, rationality cuts across all historical periods insofar as it is the structure of self-consciousness, and so the basis to what could be meaningful to us, without it thereby being meaningful in this way to all. These limits – scientifically grounded and politically realised – prevent the social scientist from acting in the world, as it were.

It does not prevent social science from reforming the world, however. For, as I will argue below, Weber offers a solution to this problem of science and politics. The solution is

‘personality’. This is, for Weber, the ‘unity’ which would make possible, in our modern rational age, the marriage of science and political action.

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Personality

Consider Weber’s (2004a: 30) prophetic statement, that: ‘[o]ur age is characterized by rationalization and intellectualization, and above all, by the disenchantment of the world.’

Consider also that even if rationality is the problem of our age, it does not mean that it can play no part in the remedy. Indeed, as I mentioned above, the social scientist lays bare the necessity for ultimate choices to be made. Nevertheless, these choices are made by the individual, and as an individual in history, as an active or political person, the choices are made not under the banner of truth, but under the banner of meaning.76 Here Weber’s understanding of ‘personality’ comes to the fore.

Indeed, Farris (2013: 44) argues that ‘within the Weberian methodological and theoretical framework, the idea of personality played a central role.’ Boucock (2000: 36) also points out that, ‘[h]uman action is distinguished from the causal order of the world in terms of its

“meaningfulness,” “rationality,” and “autonomy”…these features of human conduct converge in Weber’s will-centred concept of “personality.”’ And so too Brubaker (1984: 62-63), states that

Weber’s elucidation of the concept of “personality”…is strikingly similar to his

account of religious prophecy. Personality, for Weber, is constituted by that which

every prophecy demands: “a constant and intrinsic relation to certain ultimate

“values” and “meanings” of life, “values” and “meanings” which are forged into

purposes and thereby translated into rational-teleological action.”77

Brubaker (1984: 97) goes on to say that ‘only through vigilant awareness and active exertion can the individual progress from…a life governed by the chaotic impulses of his raw,

76 Social science as an empirical discipline can offer nothing by way of which choice should be made, but everything according to the fact that a choice must be made (see Weber 1949: 54). 77 See also Brubaker (1984: 95) and Davis (1999: 47).

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unformed, given nature to one governed by the coherent values and meanings of his consciously formed personality.’

As I hope is becoming apparent, there is some relation between, on one hand, the unified perspective of science as defined against the ambiguity of everyday life, and on the other, the unified activity of personality as defined against unself-conscious habitual behaviour.78

Indeed, since personality is the modern political equivalent of what in past ages was set in motion by the prophet (the epitome of the political-type: see Weber 2004a: 12-17), it might be said that rationality must, now, play the part of divine law. This is the connection between the social scientist and the political actor, as it were, for as a ‘knower of rationality’ the social scientist stands to the personality, as does the prophet to the believer. The difference is, of course, that rationality is only ever a means, it is no end. Rationality, contra divine law, offers no guide to action, no unified perspective on the meaning of the whole of life.

With this emerges more clearly Weber’s distinction from both Dewey and Lasswell.

Lasswell, as was described in chapter three, resolves the problem of politics and truth with the technical construction of the human or political realms. Dewey meanwhile is deeper, as was presented in chapter four. He reconciles truth and politics in emulation of (biological) nature. As a resolution of the perennial problem of truth and politics what Weber offers is obviously different to the contemporary solution (such as offered by Dewey and Lasswell).

The problem is not resolved with the practice of social science, but with a solution built on the recognition of the dangers of this practice. Nonetheless, it is a solution which does not pass beyond what has been revealed by social science. Rational reconstruction – as a unified

78 See Weber (2012: 85-86), who says that ‘the historian who “interprets”, “personality” is not an “enigma”. Quite on the contrary: it is the only element that can be made “understandable” by interpretation; nor are human action and [human] behaviour at any point – especially where rational interpretation is no longer possible – more “irrational” (in the sense of “incalculable” or impervious to causal imputation) than any individual event as such. On the other hand, wherever rational “interpretation” is possible, [human action] rises far above the irrationality of the purely “natural.”’

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personality – is our only hope even as rationality is our greatest political danger. In short: the unity of personality is a solution which arises out of, and does not move beyond, the revealed problem. This is quite clear if we come back to the broad level of Weber’s hermeneutical enterprise, for the unity of personality is a writ-small version of the rational unity of history as revealed to us by social science, but without rising to the ‘apex’ of history, as per social science.

What the social scientist does (and can only) provide historical subjects of a rational epoch is, as I have been arguing, a prelude to action. In terms of what this means for the social scientist, and in what way he or she could act, Weber’s references to Tolstoy – in Weber’s

‘science as a vocation’ lecture – as well as those on progress and the meaning of death, are apposite:

the man caught up in the chain of progress always has a further step in front of

him; no one about to die can reach the pinnacle, for that lies beyond him in

infinity...For this reason death is a meaningless event for him. And because death

is meaningless, so, too, is civilized life, since its senseless “progressivity”

condemns death to meaninglessness...suppose that Tolstoy rises up in you once

more and asks, “who if not science will answer the question: what then shall we

do and how shall we organize our lives?”...In that event, we must reply: only [by]

a prophet or a savior [italics in original] (Weber 2004a: 13, 27-28).

These are important quotes, because reflecting for a moment on their significance – given what Weber understands of our modern age – it can be seen that although science cannot answer the ultimate questions (in an age without prophets and in an age where death is meaningless), it must in some way play the part of a ‘this-worldly’ saviour. Science is our only hope even as it is one of our greatest dangers.

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We might shed some light on this by quoting a few passages from Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina

(the first from the only titled chapter of the work – ‘death’):

Levin knew his brother and the direction of his thoughts, knew that he had

become a sceptic not because it was easier for him to live without faith, but

because step by step modern scientific explanations of the phenomena of the

universe had driven out his faith; he knew therefore that this return to the old faith

was not legitimate, not a similar result of thought, but was only a temporary,

selfish and irrational hope of recovery...Levin involuntarily meditated on what

was taking place within his brother at that moment, but, in spite of all the efforts

of his mind to follow, he saw by the expression of that calm stern face and the

play of the muscle above one eyebrow that something was becoming clear to the

dying man which for Levin remained as dark as ever...If he had any feeling left

for him [i.e., his brother] it was more like envy of that knowledge which the dying

man now possessed and which he might not share...Scarcely had the unexplained

mystery of death been enacted before his eyes when another mystery just as

inexplicable presented itself, calling to love and life. The doctor confirmed their

supposition about Kitty. Her illness was pregnancy (1999: 495-501).

Following this, Levin would reorientate himself: from the rationalist, to one who would derive significance from life itself: ‘I, and all other men, know only one thing firmly, clearly, and certainly, and this knowledge cannot be explained by reason: it is outside reason, has no cause, and can have no consequences.’ (1999: 784). Prior to Levin’s realisation, his political life revolved around the science of farming. His existence was merely utilitarian in other words, concerned with the truth only insofar as it would fill his belly. In making the ultimate choice, though, Levin’s life, or the fact that he exists, attained a significance in which all else

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was subordinated. For Levin this was to rescue death from chance and thereby make possible the gift of life.

And so too, from within Tolstoy’s world, the social scientist would act his part as one uniquely aware of the meaninglessness of death and, thereby, as one aware of the necessity in our age for its substitute. Death is unknowable, but in coming to realise ourselves as

‘personalities’ we find a ready surrogate: a this-worldly, active, or wilful recreation of what could only exist eternally. In this mystery our lives are rescued from the meaninglessness of our all-too-human reason. And ultimately this is where, as Farris (2013: 107) states, ‘the true political man, insofar as his actions reflect a single core of values, a one and only cause, is a

“personality” in the fullest sense of the word.’

Of relevance to ‘personality’ is the fact that the acting historical subject, and indeed the social scientist in active political life, must make political distinctions. This political discernment, which is the distinction of what is meaningful from what absurd, cannot itself be reduced to merely an existential choice. These distinctions must be more than merely historical or arbitrary in order that any resolution reveals itself to us as something worth holding. We cannot resolve to live our lives according to the truth as disclosed historically, in other words.

And so we must, by these terms, live them in faith. In this way we understand ourselves as in truth historical creations, and as in life denying this truth in our estimation of what is ultimately valuable. We must therefore act and, in this struggle with others who also act, political life is sustained (see Weber 1949: 57; 1978: 1414).

It comes as no surprise then, that the social scientist is never a ‘personality’. In a prophet-less age, the truth-seeker, the social scientist who sees prophecy for what it is, must himself remain silent on the question of value: for ‘[s]cience...has no knowledge of “miracles” and

“revelation”...The religious believer has knowledge of both’ (Weber 2004a: 21). Having seen

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the tragedy at the heart of it all, the social scientist’s resolve is marked by a humble silence on things political. For politics is understood at a distance – or theoretically – by the social scientist. And yet, the impetus to a truly meaningful existence has in this rational age passed from the prophet or the charismatic individual to the social scientist: ‘If we understand the matter correctly (something that must be assumed here) we can compel a person, or at least help him, to render an account of the ultimate meaning of his own actions...’ [italics in original] (Weber 2004a: 26). This is where what the social scientist knows and his or her political understanding are inseparable. This, as can be surmised, is what is meaningful to the social scientist: the return of what history has dissolved, from one best placed to understand the terms of this dissolution. Insofar as this translates into political action or insofar as this is not merely the prelude to a choice, what is left over for social science is the distance which it might afford us from ourselves and from everyday life (see Aron 1964: 106).

Since rationality is what the social scientist finds meaningful, and given the political problems which come with it, it must be treated with full awareness of its limits and political implications. Key to this is the distinction Weber makes between a ‘psychological’ understanding and a ‘logical’. Whereas the psychological understanding is not dangerous politically, the logical understanding (which is what the social scientist finds meaningful) may well be.

On the psychological, Weber (1949a: 14) says that:

The real significance of a discussion of evaluations lies in its contribution to the

understanding of what one’s opponent – or one’s self – really means...An

“ethical” conviction which is dissolved by the psychological “understanding” of

other values is about as valuable as religious beliefs which are destroyed by

scientific knowledge.

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This psychological understanding Weber distinguishes from the historical and logical (which is not merely ‘scientific’ but ‘cultural’ knowledge): ‘empirical-historical events occurring in men’s minds must be understood as primarily psychologically and not logically conditioned.’

(Weber 1949: 96). The logical condition is different to the psychological because the former explains how we have become who we are (using the ideal-types), while the latter merely lays out the internal structure of a ‘world-view’:

the causal relationship between the historically determinable idea which governs

the conduct of men and those components of historical reality from which their

corresponding ideal-type may be abstracted, can naturally take on a considerable

number of different forms. The main point to be observed is that in principle they

are both fundamentally different things (Weber 1949: 95).

The important point for us is that the logical historical understanding must not enter the political realm. Indeed, following Weber, politically, it might enter it only in the form of an ethic (combined with a unified and dominant personality). With this we might prudentially counter the march of the bureaucratic state, which with its victory would be the historical- empirical realisation of the historical logic as pursued by the social scientist; or the devolution of personality into instrumental rationality.

In this we can count Weber as a proto-critic of policy sciences, or of practical political or social science. As he says, ‘policy-making is not a technical affair, and hence not the business of the professional civil servant’ (Weber 1978: 1419), and ‘it can never be the task of an empirical science to provide binding norms and ideals from which directives for immediate practical activity can be derived’ (Weber 1949: 52). The reason for this – as I’m arguing – is that what the social scientist knows must remain distinct from what the political actor should

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do or be, even as each are united under the enervation which, in our modern, rational world, calls out for ‘personality’.

Political Personality

What I have argued above must be considered along with what part social science might play in placating the fanaticism of politics. Fanaticism is, of course, not unwanted in this rational age. For, as Weber sees it, in an age of rationality only the originality of a charismatic personality79 would stand against the mechanical momentum of the administrative state.

Indeed, the choice as understood by him, is either (1) ‘a democracy with a leader together with a “machine”’ or (2) ‘a leaderless democracy [or], in other words, the rule of the

“professional politicians” who have no vocation and who lack the inner, charismatic qualities that turn a man into a leader’ (Weber 2004: 75).80

Considering that option (1) is wholly preferable to option (2), we must face up to the dangers which come with it, in particular the danger of a blind fanaticism. This danger Weber describes as the vanity of ‘power politics’, and is realised when the meaning of action is subsumed by the will (Weber 2004: 78). The politician comes himself to personally encompass the truth – free to create and unaware of the ‘tragedy of action’ (2004: 77-78).

The ensuing self-intoxication renders him indifferent to the meaning of human action, so argues Weber (2004: 78-79). Alternatively, politicians might be engulfed in the meaning of their own actions, such as those who follow an ‘ethics of conviction.’ These according to

Weber are ‘unable to tolerate the ethical irrationality of the world. [They are] cosmic, ethical

79 This as Weber describes it is a religious phenomenon, and in this age of rationality, it is irrevocably irrational: ‘Religion claims to offer an ultimate stand toward the world by virtue of a direct grasp of the world's “meaning.” It does not claim to offer intellectual knowledge concerning what is or what should be. It claims to unlock the meaning of the world not by means of the intellect but by virtue of a charisma of illumination.’ (Weber 1946: 352) 80 See Mommsen (1989: 19, 22): ‘In this way Weber hoped to assist a “leader democracy” to come to the fore in Germany, in which charismatically qualified politicians with a sense of foresight but also with a sense of proportion are at the helm, instead of a “leaderless democracy of professional politicians without a vocation”.’ See also Breuer and Maier (1982: 62).

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“rationalist[s]”’ (Weber 2004: 85; see also Weber 1949a: 16). Their understanding of rationality as ‘cosmic’ contrasts with the social scientist’s who, as I showed, founded his rationality through history. The irrationality of the world along with their misunderstanding of nature would motivate these ‘convictionalists’ to force it right (see Satkunanandan 2014:

172). The ‘convictionalist’ therefore ends up much the same as the ‘power politician’ (see

Turner 1992: 118), except self-intoxication is elevated, as it were. What unites these two is that neither understand force or power; for neither is conscious of action (Weber 2004: 89,

92).

What is required, then, are ‘personalities’ with an ‘ethic of responsibility’. This is a man with the decisive qualities of, as Weber puts it: ‘passion, a sense of responsibility, and a sense of proportion’ (Weber 2004: 76). As Weber adds:

It cannot make a politician of anyone, unless service to a “cause” also means that

a sense of responsibility toward that cause is made the decisive guiding light of

action. And for that (and this is the crucial psychological characteristic of the

politician) a sense of proportion is required, the ability to allow realities to

impinge on you while maintaining and inner calm and composure. What is

needed, in short, is a distance from people and things (2004: 77).

This reminds us of the social scientist insofar as the social scientist himself maintains a distance from people and things, and yet is passionate in heeding the call to his vocation

(Weber 2004a: 8). In fact, it is only in this vocation, in this devotion to his subject, might we ascribe ‘personality’ to the scientist (Weber 2004a: 8). This vocation as we recall requires an elevated perspective, so that the social scientist might distinguish the politically important from the trivial. It is not surprising then to find that from this vantage point any foray into the personal is, as Weber describes it, essentially an act of hubris or vanity (Weber 2004a: 25).

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Tellingly, it is not the initial desire to transcend history which is hubristic, but the subsequent lack of self-control wherein the scientist would either knowingly attempt to re-enter it, or wrongly suppose that he’d left it behind. In either case, it is a lack of self-control which underlies each. In the former, the scientist betrays his method, and in the latter he lacks the fortitude to realise it. As Weber (1949: 97-98) says in regard to the danger surrounding ideal- types:

They [i.e., ideal-types] regularly seek to be, or are unconsciously, ideal-types not

only in the logical sense but also in the practical sense, i.e., they are model types

which – in our illustration – contain what, from the point of view of the expositor,

should be and what to him “essential” in Christianity because it is enduringly

valuable. If this is consciously or – as it is more frequently – unselfconsciously

the case, they contain ideals to which the expositor evaluatively relates

Christianity...In contrast with this, the elementary duty of scientific self-control

and the only way to avoid serious and foolish blunders requires a sharp, precise

distinction between the logically comparative analysis of reality by ideal-types in

the logical sense and the value-judgement of reality on the basis of ideals [italics

in original].

As a conscious return to everyday life, as proselytiser, the social scientist is indeed claiming to know more than he can. He takes on the persona of an everyday actor, even as he holds to the mantle of science. He would mix and thereby contaminate the separate realms of science and faith. The reason that he can do this, and the danger in so doing, comes from what Weber refers to as the fine-line which separates faith from science (Weber 1949: 110). As Weber sees it: ‘Of all the types of prophecy, this “personally” tinted professorial type of prophecy is the only one which is altogether repugnant’ (Weber 1949a: 4).

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In an age characterised by rationality it is an all too easy slide for the scientist to replace what could only be revealed in faith, or what might well be fostered by the prudent social scientist, aware of his distinction from, and so inability to understand, the most personal questions.

Contrary to an ‘authentic prophecy’ as Weber puts it, ‘academic prophecies can only ever produce fanatical sects, but never a genuine community’ (Weber 2004a: 30). Adding to this, we must presume that the fanaticism which follows in the wake of the academic prophet is a consequence of the attempt by him to render the superficial politically important. One defends vociferously what requires for its existence a strong defence, in other words.

Rather than as a proselytiser, the social scientist should go about his political business keenly aware that his science rests on what he shares with the self-consciousness of political actors, and that, given this, for each arise a responsibility consonant with self-control. As the preeminent actor in this regard, the social scientist is under some responsibility vis-à-vis the political actor. In regard to this, Weber says that he is ‘tempted to’ say that the scientist is acting in the service of ethical forces (see quote below). This is, of course, not something which Weber could assert without qualification. Firstly, the scientist is denied knowledge of ethical matters except his own and, secondly, the ethical position of the scientist is ambiguous, given that he plays a major part in what has become the disenchantment of our age. Rather, the best that the scientist can do is force or compel others to look at themselves dispassionately, from a distance, thereby enabling them to provide an account of themselves.

If we understand the matter correctly (something that must be assumed here) we

can compel a person, or at least help him, to render an account of the ultimate

meaning of his own actions. This seems to me to be no small matter, and can be

applied to questions concerning one’s own personal life. And if a teaching

succeeds in this respect I would be tempted to say that he is acting in the service

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of “ethical” forces, that is to say, of the duty to foster clarity and a sense of

responsibility (Weber 2004a: 27).

What the social scientist offers the political actor is not a logical but a psychological understanding. In compelling people to seek out the ultimate meaning of their own actions, not only are they compelled to choose, but in this act of reflection they are elevated. In this act of choosing, in which they become conscious of their own actions, so too arises a responsibility for their own choices. This is as far as what the political actor might share, ethically, with the social scientist. The deepest ethical ‘forces’ do not to the social scientist belong (Weber 1949: 57).

Since the ethical is formed under struggle, the social scientist might promote an awareness of values and foster, thereby, the self-control which this entails. It is important to note, I think, that the political actor is precluded from the possible hubris of the social scientist. Precisely because he has not attained the scientist’s knowledge, he must remain partial in the decisive respect. And so, contra the social scientist, the vanity of the politician is defined not according to his incongruous re-entry into political life but by his inability – as with the social scientist – to distinguish the important from the trivial. The vanity of the social scientist, as I argued above, results from the mixing of the personal or political and the impartial. The vanity of the political actor arises wholly in action, as it were. It is not a mixing of the theoretical and political, for it is the vanity of someone who has yet to attain some distance from himself. As Weber says, ‘[t]he “strength” of a political “personality” means, primarily, the possession of these qualities. Thus the politician is faced daily and hourly with the task of overcoming in himself a very trivial, all-too-human enemy: common or garden vanity, the deadly enemy of all dedication to a cause and of all distance, in this case, the distance from oneself’ [italics in original] (Weber 2004: 77).

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I think it is fair to say, then, that self-control, or the responsibility which arises from self- consciousness, is the pre-eminent virtue in an age of rationality. Indeed, it is the virtue which arises with rationality. This is described by Weber as an inner sense of calm attained by a sense of proportion. Reminiscent of the Epicureans: to calm our fears and release us from our convictions, impersonal forces would replace the gods in Weber’s cosmology (see Weber

2004a: 13).

Summing up, it is the ethical politician who would exemplify the character of social science81 without exceeding its political or everyday limitations.82 Indeed, the politician would not be satisfied with the truth, because he or she wills to create history, not to transcend it (Weber

2004: 77). The politician (as Weber presents it) realises himself in faith, in other words. He does not and cannot understand himself theoretically.83 Nonetheless, this description has some commonality with what might be predicated of the social scientist insofar as the social scientist and the politician both will themselves into conscious existence, and so each might fall prey to – if in different ways – that vice of personal self-indulgence: vanity.

Conclusion: False Politics

Having worked our way through Weber’s social science, as it emerges in contradistinction to an historically uninformed hermeneutics, and as it ends in political life, we are faced with a

81 C.f., Satkunanandan (2014) who addresses instrumental reason or calculation as a limit, but does not follow the link to social science broadly understood. I would argue that for Weber the politician is defined not by an ethics which keeps calculation in its place, but by that of the seriousness of the social scientist. For if, as Satkunanandan (2014: 179) says, the only role of calculation is to make possible an ‘equality before the law’ (Weber 1978: 975) then he is unable to explain why or how this equality is essential to the ethics of responsibility (see also Brubaker 1984: 109; Bruun 2007: 255-256). As I’m arguing, only with the social scientist’s ‘serious’ distance can this equality (following an understanding of force) play a part in Weber’s ethics. 82 On the difference between science and politics Weber makes the distinction between teachers and leaders (see Weber 1949: 10-11; 1978: 445-446; 2004: 24-25). 83 As Warren (1998: 41) says: ‘Politics is the most demanding test of an ethics of responsibility, and at the same time it is the kind of activity through which personality is cultivated and manifested as the expression of responsibility. Insofar as politics has this potential within the human condition, it is valuable in itself. It is this morally significant sense of politics that guides and structures much of Weber's thinking and no doubt accounts for much of his concern with the bureaucratic displacement of politics.’

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puzzle. For this partial peace between science and politics, as exemplified in the persona of the acting or ethical political man or woman, culminates in a personal politics which is both true and false by Weber’s understanding. This fragile construction is upheld only if the social scientist does not, and cannot, act. With the entrance of the social scientist into politics

(essentially and not merely accidentally – i.e., as a social scientist, and not simply as a social scientist who also happens to be politically active) the construction fails. The failure is along the fault lines of the personal, as it were. The political actor must remain ignorant of the truth which only Weber could know. For if the political actor seeks to realise himself truly, which is the realisation of the truth as a rational self-determination, the unity of personhood dissolves – this for two related reasons: personhood is an illusion according to science, and as an illusion politics or meaningful action is impossible. Weber’s practical solution to this is the clear demarcation of the state executive functions from the political.

What would make absolutely sure that the political actor does not engage in theory (or

Weberian social science), though, is what would make Weber’s social science impossible: our complete subordination to history. With our possible liberation, however, we are forever at the mercy of a dissolving politics and the ascendency of the merely personal.84 This threat, which arises with the possibility of a social science, would be ameliorated following the inner connection between truth, self-consciousness and personality. Only this connection saves us from vanity, for only with this do we unify and create what is truly meaningful.

But if we are not as cautious as Weber, and would bring the rational perspective of the social scientist into politics, then, following Weber’s understanding of truth (as rational and

84 Consider also the arguments of Steinberger which would invite such a critique: ‘the tradition I have been looking at understands truth claims to be inherently provisional. They are the upshots of conceptual schemes, and insofar as such schemes evolve over time, as they are wont to do, our understandings of metaphysical and moral reality will change as well. But those understandings, however formulated, will always be thought to reflect, explicitly or otherwise, arguments of reason embedded in the particular discursive networks out of which they have emerged’ (2015: 762).

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historical) our attempt to rise above vanity would tend to either recreate the personal as the rational, and so the acceleration of the bureaucratic as itself the mark of personhood (c.f.,

Weber 1949a: 46-47) or instigate a search for the lost unity of the historical subject (c.f.,

Eden 1983: 214). Coming at this from a different angle: since vanity is the mark of the merely personal, what’s required – in the name of science – is a recovery of what’s true to itself; hence, the vanity of rational fabrication is overcome when either (1) all that’s personal becomes self-consciously rational, or (2) self-conscious rationality is reunited with faith, or its irrational foundations. In the former, the impetus is instrumental rationality; the outlook progressive and active. The impetus for the latter is meaningfulness; the stance archaeological and contemplative. Each share a common ancestry: that is, the equation of truth with rationality, and human understanding with history.

More pressingly, we see that similar problems arise in coming to understand Weber.

Following Weber, we must surpass him to understand him. Indeed, this would seem to follow

Weber’s understanding of everyday social action, insofar as only social scientists understand its true or logical-rational significance; over and above those who might offer subjective reasons for acting as they do. But here we are not following Weber, for here we must surpass

Weber’s method to understand him. Ironically, we come back to the position of the naïve everyday actor. For the fact that we have understood Weber requires of us that we do not surpass Weber the man himself. What Weber meant to say, and how he saw the world, we cannot reduce to or explain away by an interpretation under a broader interpretive scheme.

To do so would be to understand not Weber, but only an arbitrary understanding of his function in a causal or historical chain. Since we must assume that we can understand him, we must implicitly hold that there is something to truth not itself defined by the unknowability of others to us. We must assume that to understand an other’s understanding of the world as it is a method will only send us in the wrong direction. If we do this all the

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while clinging to the perspective that people are unknowable to us truly without some method

– such as per the ideal-types – then we must confront the problem which follows: as everyday actors we remain unknown to ourselves except politically and/or as a scientific reconstruction.

And so we return to Taylor (and on our way to a political science realised as meaningful in practice for the social scientist). Taylor, as we saw, takes up where Weber leaves off. In so doing, Taylor solves the problem of the everyday which beset Weber. For Taylor conceives of the everyday as, ultimately, our theoretical construction. Nonetheless, we (and our constructions) are subservient to politics; which, we might say, saves the everyday from radical dissolution. Even as he brings theory into political life, while attempting to preserve politics from its deliquescent effects, he paves the way for a radical appropriation of politics under theory, or the transformation of everyday political action into science. Such a transformation, rendered as a political practice, would attempt to generate the world in its own image. This practice would go even further than the positivistic sciences then; since it is not only the desire to command behaviour, but to render meaning itself subservient to method. As I argued in chapter two, such practice finds itself seeking impartiality once more, and so the need to refer back to some positive understanding, to render politics impartial once more – in this the perennial problem of politics and truth is resolved in impartial state executive action.

In sum, Weber is indeed still worth learning from on the danger of science to politics. He takes the conservative path in the end only because he cannot distinguish truth from politics, except with their complete separation. Neither can those who come after him. All they do is, like Weber, count truth (or, as they see it, theory) as something now valued by us. Other ways of engaging with the world may be just as valuable. Truth is in the end political; and the reason for this, following Dilthey, is that we are unknown to ourselves in the same way that

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others are unknown to us. Science is no different to a human construction; so too we can know ourselves as nothing more than what we have fabricated.

If we follow Weber, and take heed of the problems which this perspective raises, we find ourselves adrift as it were. In recognition of the perennial problem of truth and meaning we are either unable to act or, if acting, as those political actors relevant to this thesis – the state executive – the preferred path is that of a rational subordination to political masters of unknowable worth. The divide between knowing and acting is insurmountable, and if it is surmounted (following Taylor, for example) action surrenders to theory as politics (i.e., it is indistinguishable from faith).

These problems, I argue, are resolved with Hegel. For Hegel resolves the perennial problem of truth and politics. Indeed, Hegel also solves or terminates the circular arguments of the policy scientists: only with a rationally realised self-knowledge can we be said to be truly acting with impartiality. The price we must pay for knowing that we have realised this rational self-knowledge is, then, our acceptance of Hegel’s dialectical logic, a logic which would claim to account for all possibilities, including its own. This liberation, though, strikes us already as a restriction. Why wouldn’t we jettison this metaphysics (even if only understood as dialectical logic), while still holding on to what it promises – that is, a rational self-determination? And so we return to Dewey and the possibility of policy science, or to

Weber and the impossibility of political wisdom (but the preservation of politics). However, jettisoning Hegel’s dialectical logic, while retaining what it promises, would, as I argue, dissolve the state’s institutional limits. This, as I showed in my critique of the policy science debates, is where we have found ourselves (by way of, amongst others, Dewey and Lasswell, and as critiqued – in preliminary fashion – by Weber).

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CHAPTER 6: HEGEL’S RESOLUTION

At the beginning of this thesis I spoke of the questions we face when putting theory into practice. In facing these questions, and in attempting to find our way, we submit to what we hold as authoritative. The depth of these questions, and our responses to them, illuminate what we understand of ourselves. In a nutshell, this is a question of self-knowledge. Here I do not mean knowledge of ourselves as individuals; as in an audited account of who we are personally, had been, or might be. Rather, it is the deepest understanding of what we are as human being. Wrapped up in this understanding, then, are questions of politics and epistemology, or questions which plumb the distinction between what we hold to be authoritative and what true, and their possible union. With this understanding, to put it another way, we submit ourselves to truth, all the while recognising that it is we (and all that we entail) who submit.

As I will argue, Hegel’s understanding exceeds the accounts offered by Dewey and Weber

(not to mention those further down the line, such as Lasswell and the policy scientists) insofar as it draws together history, politics, psychology, and logic. Recall that Dewey’s philosophical understanding is psychologically deficient, insofar as any deep meaningfulness is displaced by an interactive practice, with a reliance on a community of practitioners. In jettisoning a ‘metaphysical’ account of the world, in viewing it as a prejudice, the onus is on us (in the spirit of liberation) to fabricate what we might count as true. Even if somehow sanctified in natural biological life, though, this truth reveals itself only in the future. This, following Dewey, would require of us to leave behind, or regard as an impediment because it smacks of political prejudice, who or what we have become. Our practice, or the actualisation of our science would replace therefore, or increase in significance over and above, what might be constrained in theory (or what shows itself in the present).

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So too Weber avoids mixing science with what we might hold as a matter of faith.

Sidestepping this he offers a rational account divided, as: (1) conscious political action subordinated to history, and (2) the wide-awake social scientist who reveals this subordination (and his own liberation). Weber attempts to retain a coherent politics safe from the enervating effects of modern rationality. Best for political actors to remain less than fully conscious of what is true. Indeed, if rationality enters too far politically – as indeed the social scientist is best placed to recognise – remedial action is required. This remedial action attempts to recapture the vitality of politics, but without its monomaniacal tendencies. Politics must remain an illusion from the perspective of the truth-seeker, and vice-versa. This unstable balance is likely to be breached, though, and the results as I argued are perverse.

Both these leave Hegel’s ‘metaphysics’ behind while holding still to other aspects of Hegel’s philosophy. Why each turned away from Hegel (given what they understood of his

‘metaphysics’) is of obvious importance.

In consulting Dewey directly, we find two related reasons for such a turn. Firstly, Dewey understood Hegel to be a Christian metaphysical philosopher, and in this fashion understood him to be captured still by tradition or what he had inherited from his country and his predecessors: ‘To Hegel, for example, the substance of the doctrines of Protestant

Christianity is identical with the truths of absolute philosophy except that in religion they are expressed in a form not adequate to their meaning, the form, namely, of imaginative thought in which most men live’ (Dewey 1915: 94).

Secondly, and relatedly, the driving force behind Hegel’s metaphysics – and so too his political philosophy – is, as Dewey saw it, the overcoming of individuality and its realisation, politically, in the state. With this Hegel imagined that (by Dewey’s reading) we would have finally merged with God:

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The State is God on earth. His depreciation of the individual as an individual

appears in every theme of his Philosophy of Right and History...A large part of

the intellectual machinery by which Hegel overcame the remnants of

individualism found in prior philosophy came from the idea of organic

development which had been active in German, thought since the time of Herder

(Dewey 1915: 111, 112).

Given this, and given the fact that American democracy was substantially different to the

Prussian state monarchy, Dewey turned to an ‘experimental philosophy of life.’ With this he retained the credo of Hegel’s that philosophy is its time comprehended in thought, but gave up on the metaphysical or final realisation of this comprehension. Rather, we must comprehend things via the future, not via an historical revelation.

As Dewey explains,

instead of confining intelligence to the technical means of realizing ends which

are predetermined by the State (or by something called the historic Evolution of

the Idea), intelligence must, with us, devote itself as well to construction of the

ends to be acted upon...America is too new to afford a foundation for an a priori

philosophy; we have not the requisite background of law, institutions and

achieved social organization. America is too new to render congenial to our

imagination an evolutionary philosophy of the German type. For our history is too

obviously future...We must have system, constructive method, springing from a

widely inventive imagination, a method checked up at each turn by results

achieved [italics in original] (Dewey 1915: 128, 129).

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Relevant too is the rejection by Weber of Hegel. Weber considered Hegel’s philosophy to be a form of ‘emanationism’; as evidenced by Bruun (2007: 76), who quotes from a letter of

Weber’s: ‘Two ways are open to us: Hegel or – our way of treating things’ [italics in original]. Enlightening is the following quote of Weber’s:

If [the historian] wants to avoid falling victim to Hegelian emanationism, or to

some variety of the modern anthropological occultism, the purpose of his inquiry

cannot be to acquire knowledge of why [the acting person] necessarily (in the

sense of a law of nature) had to act the way he did. This is because a human as

well as non-human (“living” or inanimate”) concrete entity, viewed as a

(somehow limited) section of the totality of cosmic occurrences, can at no point

within that totality be completely “defined” in terms of purely “nomological”

knowledge, since [that entity] is always (and not only in the domain of the

“personal”) an intensively infinite multiplicity – and every conceivable individual

element [of that multiplicity] (which can only be taken as “given” by science)

may, from a logical point of view, come to be considered causally important

within a [given] historical causal context (Weber 2012: 86).

The aversion of Weber to Hegel’s emanationism – his occultism – is also an aversion to treating the rationalisation of the modern world as equivalent to political wisdom. As Aron

(1964: p: 257) says, ‘Weber had recognized in advance that rationalization did not guarantee the triumph of what Hegelians call historical reason or what democrats of good will call liberal values.’ So it follows that the state, from this perspective, could only ever be defined by rationality narrowly understood, and not as the realisation of a politically enlightened self- consciousness. As such, and as Kim (2004: 182) points out,

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[i]n part a subtle criticism of Hegel’s glorification of bureaucracy as the sole

representative of universal interest, Weber’s point is that bureaucracy has a

tendency to form a status group of its own, in fact striving to establish itself as the

only ruling caste over other classes, and its seemingly neutral rule is motivated by

a partial class interest thinly disguised as a universal interest.

In sum, Dewey turned away from Hegel because the universal state had not truly come to pass, while Weber did so because it may well do. These differences hinge not only on an understanding of Hegel, but on that of rationality. For Dewey it might be put to use, or oriented toward the future. But for Weber it is a danger. Dewey, as Shook and Good (2010:

74)85 acknowledge, historicised Hegel to overcome him. Hegel’s rationality – or political wisdom – equalled metaphysics, and metaphysics is at bottom a false, and so merely a political understanding. Weber, meanwhile, separated self-conscious rationality from politics

(or what, for us, is meaningful). This was necessary, as the realisation of universal rationality would spell the end of the political. In each case it was some part of the equation by Hegel of history and metaphysics and its culmination in the universal state which Dewey and Weber rejected. Dewey rejected metaphysics as politics, and imagined that the universal end was, thereby, recoverable in a natural or non-metaphysical mode (as, consequently, a Great

Community liberated from the state). For Weber, rationality must itself be separated from the emanationism of Hegel’s; which amounts to his understanding that rationality is not the vital force of history, or the vital force of history (and so too the political) is not revealed as rationality. (Still and all, each remained strongly influenced by Hegel, as shown by Dewey’s organic take on political life, and Weber’s rational understanding of history.)

85 I cannot agree with them that he read and so followed Hegel in this way; for the reasons cited above.

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The possible reconciliation of rationality with politics might be described as the crux which separates Dewey and Weber. Rationality is liberated by Dewey from history and the partiality of politics, and put to work. This, as I presented in chapter four, is unsatisfactorily resolved further downstream with the tighter (dis)unity of state and citizen. Weber meanwhile fears the nihilistic tendencies of rationality and strives to keep it wedded to what would animate it.

Again since he must thereby separate, in truth, rationality and politics Weber’s solution to the problem is unsatisfactory.

And so I turn to Hegel. Hegel, one might say, resolves the problem satisfactorily; if we count as a satisfactory solution the reconciliation of politics and truth, in which what we hold dear is not jettisoned, and what remains open is the possibility that we, as political actors, might understand what we are doing. He resolves this, as I will argue, in part, by way of the state, insofar as it is the objective exemplification of the will, and insofar as the will is itself a mode of thinking, or is part and parcel with what over time – as history – we have come to know.

By way of this, it is possible now, at this point in history, for us to know what we are: we might have attained self-knowledge.

With this in mind, my focus will be on the modern institution of the state and how this relates to Hegel’s philosophy, insofar as he might claim to have attained his science. As presented in

Hegel’s Philosophy of Right, the state is the actualisation of the objective structure of the will

(whose ‘concept’ – or what we might conceive of it – is freedom). Following from above, I will argue that if we understand the state without also taking on board Hegel’s Logic, then the will is liberated, as we find in Dewey (and his promotion of applied social science), and, in the same fashion, as unsuccessfully halted by Weber (given Weber’s equation of truth with rationality, and the related and subsequent danger of the state). This liberation follows

Hegel’s ‘practical spirit’ (i.e., willing) set free from the ‘theoretical’ (i.e., thinking). The will seeks still its own objectivity; but this ends not in any science (as per Hegel’s Logic), but in

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the world as re-created. To counter what is at bottom this misunderstanding of the world (as outlined in the chapters of Dewey and Weber) we require, I conclude, some accounting for self-knowledge, but without the attendant problems which beset Hegel’s system (problems which, in part, led both Dewey and Weber to turn away from the ‘metaphysical’ interpretations of Hegel’s philosophy).

Still, we might, protest, is not the turn back to Hegel, following the theoretical failures of

Dewey and Weber, irrelevant to practice? Does this not enter at a level of abstraction which is of little concern to those on the ground? In answering ‘yes’ to this, though, aren’t we presuming already too sharp a distinction between theory and practice? For one, we have no way of deciding between Dewey and Weber with reference only to ‘practical’ criteria (absent a more fundamental reflection on theory). No empirical evidence will show us whether a progressive or a conservative social science is better politically. For we must first have some understanding of where our understanding could go wrong, or some inkling of why the ends of one trump those of the other, or simply an idea of why one should differ from the other

(essentially, and not merely accidentally). Secondly, we need only consider the depth of our own desires, as readers of this thesis, or as readers of the work of any of the authors cited herein. No matter whether it is of immediate concern to us, or whether it remains in the background, in desiring to act well politically we pay homage to the more fundamental problem posed by truth to politics. As Dewey presented it, and as we saw further downstream with Lasswell’s work, and even further down, with the policy sciences, truth is honoured in attempts to reform political practice. The theoretical understanding of Dewey’s, and the critique of Weber’s, is thereby fundamental insofar as it sets the scene for less reflective social scientific practices and agendas, the ends or the value of which are taken to be simply self-evident. Any return to Hegel, and in what way we understand him, is then of much practical importance.

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The Importance of Hegel

Hegel is becoming a philosopher much talked about; and positively, what is more, even from those who would have been traditionally opposed to him. As Nuzzo (2010: 2) points out, ‘a new “Hegel-Renaissance” has begun to take place in the English-speaking world…In addition, American pragmatism has taken important steps toward new appropriations of

Hegel.’ The turn back to Hegel is not surprising, especially considering that it was, in part, a reaction to Hegel which instigated the division of philosophy into what has come to be known as the ‘analytical’ and the ‘continental’ traditions. For what if these initial reactions were somehow false, or what if it was a misunderstanding of Hegel which led to this reaction against him? These are the arguments of those who would take us back to the whole, prior to this ‘false’ split.

Of immediate relevance to my thesis are those of the analytical tradition who return to Hegel under a ‘pragmatic’ spirit – such as Robert Brandom. These are of obvious relevance, given that such a return deals with the themes initiated by Dewey, amongst others, while also re- appropriating a Hegel too quickly jettisoned. Explaining the enduring significance of pragmatic philosophy, Brandom makes reference to the new scientific perspective brought about by Darwinian biology on the one hand, and statistical mathematics on the other. In taking up these new discoveries, pragmatic philosophy might be thought of as a ‘movement of world historical significance’ [italics in original] (Brandom 2004: 2). And thus, as

Brandom elaborates, ‘[t]he pragmatists were naturalists, but they saw themselves confronting a new sort of nature, a nature that is fluid, stochastic, with regularities the statistical product of many particular contingent interactions between things and their ever-changing environments, hence emergent and potentially evanescent, floating statistically on a sea of chaos’ (2004: 3).

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If it was the new sciences which legitimated this return to lived experience, and the elevation of doing (and making) over finding, then it was also this turn to the new sciences which all too quickly allowed claims to be made that truth is simply revealed in consequences, as successful actions and behaviours. What the pragmatists failed to consider is the human foreground which provides for the very possibility that such a truth might be meaningful to us in this way. Without this we would not or could not count the truth as revealed to us as true.

It would be indistinguishable from any other belief, in other words.86

Turning to this in more detail, Brandom points out four mistakes made by the pragmatists’

‘instrumentalist’ program. Each of these mistakes, Brandom argues, relate to the problem for us of accounting for what is truly meaningful. Brandom points to the facts that the pragmatists (1) ignore the context of our expressions in favour of consequences, (2) look only to behaviour (and not other beliefs) as the realisation of beliefs, (3) ignore broader, aims, desires, and norms, and (4) wrongly equate success of actions with the satisfaction of desires, which are then equated with true beliefs. For desires are not like this – they cannot be satisfied as if an itch put to rest by a scratch. Rather, they play a role in rationalising actions, as do our beliefs (Brandom 2004: 13). Summing up, Brandom (2004: 13) says: ‘From our privileged vantage point a century or more later, then, we can see that the pragmatists’ instrumentalist semantic strategy for explaining credenda in terms of agenda, and so their theory of meaning and truth, is fundamentally flawed’ [italics in original].

So too Brandom rejects the Hegel of these crude metaphysical readings, but returns to him with new eyes (after the problems which have emerged following a too hasty rejection). In

86 What’s more, as I showed in the chapter on Dewey, we can see that there is some paradox in staking one’s claim that ‘all is doing’ on a science purporting to have discovered what nature is. If we take the former claim seriously, then the focus of our science moves from natural to human phenomena, without giving up on the claim to objectivity. It is to this science which Brandom turns. We can see that such a move makes sense given that the pragmatists attained only a partial understanding of human making or doing.

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turning back to Hegel, in the spirit of pragmatism, but with a new appreciation of Hegel’s thought, he thereby addresses the theoretical problems of pragmatic philosophy. Hegel may be re-appropriated because he is understood in a way different to how Dewey (and Weber) understood him. As a pragmatic enterprise, in honouring the new sciences over the old, this re-appropriation takes still our relationship with the world as a matter of rational doing or making. In addressing the problems of the instrumentalist doings of the pragmatists it seeks to discover what could count for us as meaningful doings. This is a turn to the whole of human experience, as it were, but without taking on board a bluntly metaphysical reading of

Hegel. And, in this way, it would address the concerns of Weber as well (in a way not subject to the failings of his conservative project, such as arise with his distinction between science and a meaningful politics).

In returning to Hegel, Brandom is self-consciously selective (see Brandom 2009: 112-113), and in this way uses Hegel to justify what he can (or must) now know, given where, logically, he has found himself (following the mistakes of the earlier analytical philosophers such as

Russell and Frege). Brandom in fact surpasses Hegel, not because of any greater gift on his part (as he as much admits), but because of where he and, indeed, potentially all of us, have found ourselves relative to Hegel. Firstly, we have found ourselves on the other side of the early pragmatists. It is possible now to identify and overcome their own misunderstandings – misrecognised by them, of course, but nonetheless true insofar as they themselves must have

(mis)understood Hegel in a way which supported their own perspectives, following their transition from the old sciences to the new. From their perspective Hegel’s metaphysics was the final death throes of the old-way of doing science; in its overcoming, in overcoming

Hegel and jettisoning any talk of metaphysics, the way was paved to enact the new sciences of liberation (taken up progressively or conservatively by Dewey and Weber respectively).

Secondly, that we are able now to claim that we understand our own doings better than those

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who’ve come before us, comes down to the advances made in the philosophy of mind and language. What has been revealed to us with these advances is not then merely technical – as if our discoveries might now be replicated – but our own essence, or the workings of rational self-consciousness. This is a revelation which takes time to emerge, for it emerges only once we have worked through those things which we have come to recognise as not now authoritative for us, because they do not ‘hold together’ or make sense anymore. In holding to the Hegelian notion that history is the revelation of rationality, Brandom is thereby justified in surpassing Hegel.

Brandom’s political ideal is a full and universal self-consciousness as disclosed rationally, insofar as our satisfaction is of the rationality and subsequent recognition of our convictions, or what we find meaningful (c.f., Weber, for whom meaning is political and so is in the final analysis irrational). If this is a more radical proposal than Hegel’s we should not be surprised.

For the way in which Hegel is surpassed by Brandom historicises Hegel’s own enterprise.

This is, once again, not a surprise, considering that an historical-rational understanding, taken to the letter, must, if it is to become conscious of itself, be made our own. Insofar as this is the case, insofar as there is no political resolution to this, future philosophers maintain their relevance. Brandom-styled philosophers remain occupied as doers or makers – this is, we might surmise, the prospective complement to his retrospective re-evaluation of history. As a doing – as with the re-interpretation of history – we honour truth only in rational construction. And so these philosophers would prepare the way for the rational realisation of all other academic specialties (see Brandom 2009: 127-128). More broadly, the philosophers would ‘supply and deploy an expressive toolbox, filled with concepts that help us make explicit various aspects of rationality and normativity in general’ [italics in original] (2009:

125-126).

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But insofar as this is the case, how does Brandom himself know that what he is doing is worthy? This is the problem which Brandom doesn’t address (if I understand him correctly), but which is presumed by him to have been answered insofar as he might advise all of the sciences, not just on technical issues, but on what they must understand of their enterprise. If his is merely a subordinate science, then on what grounds can he claim to give such advice?

As we can see, this science oversteps its own limits insofar as it would enable practitioners of the other sciences to truly understand what they are doing – to become conscious of themselves, to rise above themselves. This is a universal science, therefore, and would direct the other sciences accordingly, if not from above, but from within. That this is how things should be is sanctified by this universality. And in such a sanctification the claim is made, if only implicitly, that the foundation of true practice is just this science. So, we end up with the situation of a self-knowledge defined as ignorance of all things other than what we identify as logically deficient in our understanding of concepts. This deficiency we identify as logical contradiction. These contradictions propel us forward, or are progressively resolved, only because of our desire (if one can call it that) for what lies at the end – that is, self-mastery of our own language, or the recognition and overcoming of language’s own deceptions. But, once again, why? I don’t believe that this question can be meaningfully posed, or answered, in these terms.

On the other side of the same coin, is Terry Pinkard, who would approach Hegel also with a view to what we must count as authoritative. Pinkard is not as analytical as Brandom, but instead defers more generally to the social authority of reason giving or of accounting for why we do what we do. In the words of Pinkard (1996: 5), this is ‘what kind of reasons for belief (or for action) can count as authoritative reasons…it must be able to show that the reasons it gives for counting those reasons as authoritative are themselves authoritative reasons’ [italics in original]. What is authoritative is when ‘a form of life takes certain types

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of reason (or, to put it more generally, norms) as authoritative for itself and the ways in which it articulates to itself why it is legitimate for those reasons to count for it as authoritative, non- optional reasons’ (Pinkard 1996: 6). Legitimacy by this understanding is not and cannot be metaphysical, and so might only be revealed phenomenologically. Which is to say that philosophy or wisdom can only ever be an explication of the phenomenological structure of history, with the proviso that this history is not itself an explication of eternity. What I mean by this is that Hegel’s metaphysical understanding (as the Logic) comes to be re-interpreted by Pinkard as instead the authority for ‘forms of life’, or that which would render the question of ‘forms of life’ significant. And so our understanding of what could count as authoritative arises when we expose what conditions must be satisfied internal to that understanding itself. With this we are in a position to understand what would make for an authoritative judgement, for authority would have exposed itself fully, in other words. In this fashion, these approaches would take seriously and literally Hegel's proclamation that philosophy is its time understood in thought (PR preface). In the words of Pinkard (1996:

124):

Understanding that being rational does not consist in expressing some natural

property of oneself or adhering to some timeless, transcendent, impersonal

standard but in acting in terms of the norms of one’s “social space” is therefore to

come to understand rationality itself as a form of ethical life (Sittlichkeit), as a

way of acting and thinking in terms of the “way things are done” understood as a

background set of norms [italics in original].

For sure, as with Brandom’s, this is a welcome critique of those who would approach Hegel’s philosophy as if it merely describes the ineluctability of spirit and of our subordination to and so subsumption in all things metaphysical. But I cannot understand why explications of the

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possible authority of reason-giving would be of interest to us. Put differently: if Hegel is neither leading us to the truth nor describing how we have been so led, but pointing out only what could count as reasonable speech in any given epoch, then why bother with Hegel? For it would seem unreasonable to seek out words of wisdom from Hegel given Pinkard’s conclusion.

The only way that we might count Hegel as himself some authority, given what he himself thought of his own discoveries, is to grant that he offers some absolute reason for all reason- giving. If this is so, then we would say that this absolute is the theoretical complement to its practical actualisation as the state. This, in short, is Hegel’s Logic. Taking up Hegel’s

Science of Logic along with the Philosophy of Right we entertain the question of metaphysics and politics. Following this line of thought, I don’t believe that we can discount either the phenomenological (or practical) or the logical (or theoretical) aspects of Hegel’s philosophy.

Indeed, one must follow Hegel, who would claim that his Logic is the culmination of his thought, and that without it we are not entitled to claim that we have understood it (see

Henrich 2003: 314). The Philosophy of Right, and so too the Phenomenology of Spirit can only be understood in light of the Science of Logic, in other words (see Padui 2013). Only in this way can we understand freedom, for only in this way can we know ourselves to be free.

Only then do we give a fair hearing to what Hegel has to say and why.87

In calling for such a return in this thesis, I will argue that not only do we return to normativity

(or what, now, we hold to be authoritative), but we must also, in honour of Hegel, return to what is revealed by his historical, dialectical and speculative logic. In this return we find a comprehensive scientific account which at its core is the disclosure of self-knowledge, or an

87 See also Ferrarin’s (2004: 79) insightful study of Hegel’s relationship to Aristotle. I agree with his judgement that ‘Hegel wants to integrate Kant with Aristotle; or, better, sublate both and all previous forms of metaphysics as one sided, proposing a completion of metaphysics through a new and final logic of it’ [italics in original].

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understanding of how we have come to know what we are doing. This is an account which weaves together a dialectical logic with a phenomenological account of history, and the culmination of these as, or in, institutions of the modern world. What Hegel covers in making good on his claim to have attained a comprehensive science of humanity is, then, a resolution of the problem of politics and truth, which is the realisation of a psychological understanding not reducible to mere fancy. This is an objective understanding of the psyche.

The Philosophy of Right88

If we want to understand Hegel’s political teaching then our first point of call would be his

Philosophy of Right. In the Philosophy of Right, Hegel shows how the modern world has emerged, and what way its emergence is tied into us coming to understand who we ourselves are. Hegel says that it is

nothing other than the attempt to grasp and to exhibit the state as rational within

itself. As a philosophical writing it must be at the furthest remove from any

attempt to construct a state as it should be; the instruction that can lie within it

cannot attempt to instruct the state in how it should be, but rather in how it, the

ethical universe, should be known (PR Preface).

Hegel states that the ‘philosophical science of right has as its object the idea of right, the concept of right and its actualization’ (PR §1). He goes on to say that the ‘basis of right is, overall, the domain of spirit; its more precise and starting point is the will, which is free.

88 Abbreviations of Hegel’s works cited (see reference list for full citations):

PR Philosophy of Right PS Phenomenology of Spirit SL Science of Logic EL Encyclopaedia Logic EPM Philosophy of Mind (Part 3 of the Encyclopaedia of Philosophical Sciences – 3rd ed.)

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Freedom thus constitutes the substance and determination of right, and the system of right is the realm of actualized freedom, the world that springs out of itself as a second nature’ (PR

§4). The will, he says, ‘contains the element of pure indeterminacy or of the pure reflection of the I into itself, within which is dissolved every restriction, every determinate content, be the content immediately present through nature, need, desire, or drive, or be it given, no matter how’ (PR §5). Further, and likewise, ‘the I is the transition from distinctionless indeterminacy to the distinguishing, determining, and positing of a determinacy as a content and an object’

(PR §6). Finally, the ‘will is the unity of these two moments: it is particularity that is reflected into itself and thereby led back to universality. It is thus individuality, the self- determination of the I: it posits itself as the negative of itself, i.e., as determinate, restricted, but at the same time it remains at home with itself, i.e., within its identity with itself and universality’ (PR §7).

There is a lot in this, and it deserves unpacking. Firstly, the science of right (Recht) – or of what is lawful, moral, and ethical – is the science which deals with freedom as it has been actualised in the world. This actualisation is as the concept of right, and begins with the will, insofar as its concept is freedom. The will is freedom insofar as it contains within itself pure indeterminacy; it is the self-relation of the I to the I, or infinite self-determination, in other words. The actualisation of this pure freedom, or its existence in time and place, is its realisation from itself as a second nature. This is, literally, the emergence of self-conscious habits from the infinite possibilities which define us as essentially human: these are not natural, but what we naturally do: the fact that our ethical, moral and lawful doings have a hold on us as if natural and we have a hold on them as if they were ours alone. We can see why, then, this actualisation, or emergence as a second nature is itself what constitutes the I, or brings it out from the indeterminacy of a pure self-relation. The second nature of freedom, or what is itself habitually free, is what is actualised, then, as who we are. We find our

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freedom, or our freedom is exercised by us, in what we take to be ours alone, not because it is ours, but because it is in itself right and true.

But recognising something as ours brings with it the possibility that we might take it in the diminutive sense, see it as merely a habit, or as just some eccentricity. We would, in effect, recognise our doings as bound by thoughts starved of what sustains them: their self-evident truth, or the fact that they reveal themselves as simply good. Having realised this we would not yet have realised freedom (as we have come to recognise its absence, as it were). In confirming for ourselves what we know, or in raising ourselves to what is more than merely ours, we must act: freedom only reveals itself to us thus – if not, it is merely the self-relation of the I, ultimately indistinguishable from what is only ours. Knowing that we are free means, in some way, exercising this freedom, therefore. In so doing, the will shows itself as a unity of self-relation and a determination of itself as other. The will is both the absolute indeterminateness of the I as it relates to itself, as well as the determination or actualisation of what it is not (because essentially a restriction), but which, nonetheless, is akin. Think of this in the same way as a second nature emerges from the first, or the difference between an indeterminate freedom, and the freedom realised when we actually do something. What makes this other than a contradiction (i.e., as in the union of other and akin) is that these are moments, or changes in time. There is some progression to this; but only as realised ex post facto, as it were. For the failings or the insubstantiality of perspectives left behind are revealed to us only once we have overcome them and moved to some more comprehensive way of acting in the world.

The realisation of this second nature is not simply an achievement of individuals, then. For

Hegel speaks also of a return to ‘universality’, as mentioned in the quotes above. Consider that in willing, or committing ourselves to some course of action, we legislate for ourselves only what we take to be rational (see Pippin 2008: 78). This rationality is of course not

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merely ours alone. For if it were, how would we ourselves come to judge it as such, as rational? Rather, our judgement of rationality is, to state it broadly, a judgement from the perspective of the universal. The universal is what would mediate subjectivity, thereby rendering it objective in its return to itself (see PR §8). Think here of whatever would authorise the impartiality of our judgements, whether that be the incontrovertible norms of our social milieu or, more universally, the rationality of modern institutions (see PR §24).

As a progression, or from the perspective of where we are now, historically – that is, as inhabitants of this modern world – Hegel shows us retrospectively what has been overcome and why. Hegel shows us the failings of subordinate perspectives; failings visible only from our own perspective, a perspective which has emerged, phoenix-like, from the ashes of what we came to realise was unfulfilling in some essential way. The course of this progression, as

Hegel presents it, moves from abstraction to ethicality. With this movement, it is revealed that the actualisation of freedom becomes ever more personal as its (i.e., freedom’s) truth is revealed as universal. And so the personal comes to encompass more than merely its own subjectivity or self-related understanding of right. There is no contradiction between what is personal and what is true, therefore, simply because one presupposes the other. For, human beings are unlike non-self-conscious creatures insofar as we must act to become ourselves.

This is our freedom, and it is what gives rise to politics; and, indeed, what renders political the endeavour of any science, since all sciences we deem important given what we might understand of freedom. If this were not the case, if the true and the personal were mutually exclusive, then science, in practice, would be no different to knowledge as revealed despite us – by instinct, for example. Under these circumstances ‘to know’ could only be a perversion of what is already known. This is fatal to any science. For such a science – as the

‘to know’ – we could not take at all seriously. Only by holding that the true and the personal are not distinct could science hold some authority for us then.

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The right of individual humans to be subjectively determined as free is fulfilled

when they belong to an ethical actuality, because their certainty that they are free

has its truth in such an objectivity; within the ethical they actually possess their

own essence, their inner universality (PR §153).

In this identity of the universal will with the particular will, right and duty are thus

united, and within the ethical order human beings have rights insofar as they have

duties, and duties insofar as they have rights (PR §155).

In coming to an awareness of ourselves as historical beings, we come to realise that the problem of our age must be already defined by what would have fully emerged, what would have allowed us this realisation. Contra the problems of ages past, in which the will had not yet emerged as subjective (it was still equivalent to tradition), our age is defined by the fundamental problem it poses (see PR §139), which is the problem of rationality and freedom, or the reconciliation of subject and object (or universal). This is a political- philosophical problematic unlike in prior ages, because it is a problematic concerning what we know of ourselves, it is a problematic which at its core exemplifies the realisation of who we are. All other problems are ancillary, as it were, not political in the deepest sense, but matters which either have no resolution or are, as Kant (2006: 90) says, matters of organisation – even a nation of devils could organise a state. In this problem, then, we find both our liberation and the terms by which it must be defined.89

This sets the scene for us. I move now to describing the actualisation of freedom. Hegel describes this as spirit, or the realisation of self-knowledge in actuality (PR §157). As we have seen above, this is knowing what we are doing, because what we are doing we take to be rational, and what is rational is for us already predisposed to be so. Willing is the

89 See EPM §539 on political freedom, or the transcendence, by way of the state, of mere personal preferences.

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actualisation of thinking by way of what is objective and universal, in other words. This requires that we understand what we are doing as not just our own personal fabrication, and neither as a law or rule which has been foisted upon us. Rather, what we do now we do because we ourselves understand that it is worthwhile.

To this end, Hegel offers up three aspects of spirit: the family, civil society, and the state.

These mirror in appropriate fashion spirit’s structure, or the different ways in which freedom is actualised as a second nature. Firstly, the family is the manifestation of spirit’s unity (PR

§158). This is a subjective union of love. The second aspect is civil society, which Hegel describes as having the character of a universal family (PR §239). Herein we attain recognition and validity in the eyes of others, and so become, thereby, reciprocally dependant

(PR §183). In this, authority is abstract insofar as laws are merely posited (PR §212). As abstract, these laws must be policed. It is this authority (i.e., the policing) which, as Hegel says, ‘actualize[s] and maintain[s] the universal that is contained within the particularity of civil society’ (PR §249). The third aspect, the state – which is of primary concern to this thesis – is objective spirit, which contains and thereby transcends the subjectivity of the family (PR §166; §258).

The state, as Hegel explains, is ‘the rational, in and as itself’ (PR §258). It is not to be confused with civil society, or the personal freedom which, as a system of rights, requires policing. Rather, the state is deeper than this, as it is here that ‘freedom attains its highest right’ (PR §258). This is the realm wherein humans are realised in truth (and not merely as free). As Hegel describes it, the ‘state is the actuality of the ethical idea – ethical spirit as manifest, substantial will that is distinct to itself, that thinks and knows itself, and that accomplishes what it knows, insofar as it knows it’ (PR §257). Only as members of the state do ‘individual humans themselves have objectivity, truth, and ethicality’ (PR §258). For it is here that rationality in the abstract becomes concrete rationality. As concrete rationality, the

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state ‘consists in action that is determined in accord with laws and axioms that are based in thought, i.e., universal’ (PR §258).

As Hegel describes it, this is not an analysis of how real states came to be, or of how any particular state might come to be. For in understanding the state in this way we leave its immanent authority behind. Rather, the state exists in the realm of spirit, not that of phenomena. Which is to say that Hegel takes the appearances of things as subsidiary to what things are in themselves, what for us is true, and not merely what we must, after the fact, take to be contingent, accidental or merely extraneous to how we come to act in the world.

Bluntly, as Hegel puts it: ‘This idea [i.e., thought as universal] is spirit’s eternal and necessary being in and as itself’ (PR §258). All else is merely historical. What we think, and our thought, is conceptual insofar as it is concerned with, or internal to, forms of right, and what thereby we count as authoritative (PR §258). As Hegel explains, with regard to the objective will,

[a]s opposed to the principle of the individual will [as in Rousseau’s general will –

see (PR §258)], we must remember the fundamental concept: that the objective

will is what is rational in itself within its concept, whether or not it be known or

capriciously willed by individuals; that its opposite, i.e., the subjectivity of

freedom, the knowing and willing that alone are held firm within that principle,

contains only one of the moments of the idea of rational willing (a moment that is

thus one-sided); and that the will is rational only in that it is not only as itself, but

also in itself (PR §258).

Taking this on board we must understand, then, that the state is not merely a contract upheld by the willing (or the general will, as Rousseau understands it), but something essential to human being. The state is not abstract. Rather, it is the rationality of willing actualised in its

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objectivity. To understand rationality and so too the will, then, we must come at it from the

‘side’ of the state as much as from the ‘side’ of subjectivity. And indeed, as Hegel, says, this structure is true whether or not we understand it to be so. What is important is that the highest realisation of the objective ‘side’ of this structure, insofar as it has been actualised, is exemplified as the state. Herein, right, freedom, and truth are reconciled in actuality.

It makes sense then, to say that what Hegel offers his readers is not advice on how to make states more universal, or some guidebook on our dealings with them, but on what, now, we might understand of ourselves given their emergence – ‘The philosophical treatment of these topics is concerned only with what is internal to them – with the concept, which is thought’

(PR §258). This, as I described above, is what can be thought. This is not without some practical benefit though. For what we understand of ourselves cannot but be tied in with what we do. As a philosophical understanding of the state, we ourselves come to recognise, to become conscious of, who we are, and thereby comport ourselves in honour of this.

As Maletz (1989: 39) puts it, ‘[t]heoretically, the goal is to observe in law, moral norms and social practices the essence and activity of free will. Practically, the aim is to reconstruct these spheres in accordance with an enhanced self-knowledge, so that an intelligent choice can be made as to what is essential and inessential in them.’ Following Maletz, the important question to be asked concerns the distinction between the essential and the inessential. This we should consider from Hegel’s perspective insofar as what can be known is only what has emerged as the actualisation of its own potential. What can be known is, as Hegel describes it, the self-explication of the concept (PS §89), or a coming to know ourselves from within what could possibly count as knowable. In this sense, we can only know or only fully grasp the significance of what has already transpired (and so Hegel’s famous statement about the owl of Minerva taking flight only at dusk – PR preface), for what we are realising is nothing

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other than our own understanding, bequeathed to us by the past, but inescapable as the present.

The will does, thereby, define for us, in part, what can be understood, because it is the source of our liberation. Houlgate draws this out with reference to its theoretical aspect:

What becomes apparent in Hegel's account is that the will or practical spirit

develops and gains in freedom as it is educated into being fully theoretical, that is,

as it comes to understand better what freedom entails. The process whereby the

will is fully liberated is thus, in Hegel's view, “theoretical in nature” (diese

Befreiung ist theoretischer Natur)...Accordingly, as the will becomes explicitly

theoretical, its conception of the modality of freedom is subtly changed. It

understands that freedom is not just possibility, but is such possibility, is the

actuality of possibility [italics in original] (1995: 868).

Following Houlgate, we are led to consider the nature of the will; and of what, considering this, we may claim to know. Of immediate relevance is that Hegel understands the will as itself a mode of thinking. He says that ‘[t]hose who consider thinking to be a particular, peculiar faculty separate from willing (itself a peculiar faculty), and in addition even hold thinking to be disadvantageous to willing, particularly to good willing, thereby show from the outset that they know nothing at all of the nature of willing’ (PR §5). Considering this, we might say that the ‘objective side’ – and so too thinking or thought, or mind in the broadest sense – is either the culmination, politically, of what we have overcome in deed, and nothing more, or, it is, as well as this, the realisation that at the end of it all, we now know all that could possibly be known (qua what can be known, or scientifically, as it were). The difference between these two is no small matter insofar as the first would understand self- knowledge as a form of cultural competence, or the final stage of mutual self-recognition, and

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the second would require an emerging objectivity in order that we might claim that, indeed, we now know that what we do know is true.

Since Hegel says that the will is itself a particular mode of thought, or its actualisation, theoretical as much as practical, it makes sense to draw some connection between the will and rationality, as united in thought. On this point, Hegel says that thought is the ‘process whereby the particular is superseded and raised to the universal’ (PR §21). The actualisation of thought is as the emergence of second nature, then, and this second nature is what for us is objective, or the realm of freedom. This second nature is also, as an emergence from itself, and as the actualisation of thought, a consequence of the rationality of willing. To put it another way: will is emergence, and emergence is rational. This practical emergence is akin also to the emergence of what can be thought (i.e., theoretical spirit). Both these – the theoretical and the practical – are necessary for will to be counted as rational.

It is of much importance what we take this rationality to be, then, and in particular what we could understand of its actualisation as objectivity. Is rationality simply normative, or what is circumscribed by the authority of modern rational institutions or contemporary social mores?

Or is it less an historical, and more a unified, realisation as it were? Of help here is the difference between Hegel’s dialectic and speculative logics:90 Hegel says that the dialectical is the movement or passing of one thing into its opposite (EL §81) while ‘[t]he speculative...apprehends the unity of the determinations in their opposition’ [italics in original] (EL §82). This distinction between the movement of things toward their opposition

(such as what is shown when we consider that all existing things perish) and the unity of this opposition, is realised in rational thought. This is the pinnacle of objectivity insofar as it encompasses both the unity of things as well as their opposition. If the will is mere

90 I follow here Stein (2014: 282).

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emergence, and so too is revealed as dialectical, then it follows that the highest thought is the will’s never-ending movement (or emergence) to make rationality authoritative for itself. But if the highest thought is speculative, we must surpass the dialectical, and make room thereby for thought which need not be willed, or further actualised.

Having spoken of the will as emergence, and having mentioned the eternal structure, as it were, of this emergence (that is, Hegel’s speculative logic, or the logical identification of unity and opposition), in the next section I focus on this speculative logic (or method) with a brief outline of his Science of Logic. In turning to this logic it is important to keep in mind what Hegel mentions in his Philosophy of Right: right is ‘the existence of the absolute concept, or of self-conscious freedom’ and that ‘[o]nly the right of world spirit is absolute without restriction’ (PR §30). He makes mention also of the distinction between dialectic and speculative logic (as I introduced above). He says that – with regard to dialectic – the

‘method whereby, in science, the concept develops itself out of itself, is expounded in my

Logic and is here presupposed...[and] [t]he concept’s moving principle...I call “dialectic”’

(PR §31). And with regard to the speculative he says that to ‘consider a thing rationally...means...to find that the object is rational as itself...[and so] [s]cience has the task only of bringing into consciousness this proper work of the subject matter’s own rationality’

(PR §31). These comments tie in to what I said previously about the will and its rationality, and what for us now is revealed as rational itself. For to approach the highest explication of rationality (and as made actual) we must turn to Hegel’s speculative logic, and only here could we understand what a will actualised – or having fully emerged – is in its objectivity.

Here we see that the highest knowledge cannot be willed (for it is self-knowledge).

These are profound philosophical questions, and strike at the heart of the question which animates this thesis, that of the problem posed by truth to politics. Ultimately, as we find with

Hegel it is a question of self-knowledge. How we understand this has deep consequences. For

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the rationality which lies at the heart of state executive action, whether or not understood as the work of state executive actors, is now, more than ever before, taken to be the actualisation of freedom and is, thereby, pursued thus, in the name of truth – as in indeed I presented in chapter two with the policy scientists.

In the following sections I turn to what Hegel could have meant by objectivity, including its relationship to his Philosophy of Right. With this under our belts, I show what then we must take on board in honour of this, and what are the consequences of throwing it overboard. In a nutshell, I hope to show that we must (if we are to overcome the problems which beset

Lasswell, Dewey, and Weber – not to mention those further downstream) follow Hegel in his pursuit of an account of self-knowledge, but also, firstly, we must be wary of following him too far and, secondly, we must be equally wary of the way in which we diverge from him.

Hegel’s Science of Logic

Consider the following quote of Hegel’s (EPM §377):

The knowledge of mind is the most concrete knowledge, and thus the highest and

most difficult. Know thyself...The knowledge it commands is knowledge of man’s

genuine reality, as well as of genuine reality in and for itself – of the very essence

as mind [italics in original].

And also:

The true shape in which truth exists can only be the scientific system of that truth.

To participate in the collaborative effort at bringing philosophy nearer to the form

of science – to bring it nearer to the goal where it can lay aside the title of “love of

knowledge” and be actual knowledge – is the task I have set for myself. The inner

necessity that knowledge should be science lies in the nature of knowledge, and

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the satisfactory explanation for this inner necessity is solely the exposition of

philosophy itself (PS §5).

Next, consider more broadly that in the Science of Logic, Hegel works through the logical stages of spirit, mind or intellect’s emergence from itself, and then its return to itself, this time as self-knowing. This is, as Hegel says, a philosophical enquiry into the realm of thought and its own immanent activity (SL 21.10). The beginning is of critical importance, then. As explained by Hegel, in an enquiry such as this, we must begin with what is most familiar to us. Indeed, those things most familiar to us, such as the language we speak, and the concepts through which the world is revealed to us, are so familiar that they operate un-self- consciously, as it were. Their familiarity is what makes them to us unknowable. These unknowns are the foreground to any science, and knowing of them is described by Hegel as

‘the kind of general idea which is demanded of a science prior to the science itself’ (SL

21.12). This also serves as the beginning of the Logic insofar as the Logic would reveal to us the structure of the familiar, as the science of conceptual thought itself. For we cannot even begin, as Hegel says, if we understand science or logic in some abstract sense (as the rules by which we might judge the validity of thinking, for example). Rather, we must begin with the nature of thinking itself. As he says:

The concept of logic has hitherto rested on a separation, presupposed once and for

all in ordinary consciousness, of the content of knowledge and its form, or of truth

and certainty. Presupposed from the start is that the material of knowledge is

present in and for itself as a ready-made world outside thinking; that thinking is

by itself empty, that it comes to this material as a form from outside, ﬁlls itself

with it, and only then gains a content, thereby becoming real knowledge (SL

21.28).

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Our search begins from the wrong place, by Hegel’s account, if we follow the ill-informed presuppositions of those who conceive of logic as somehow distinct from the things through which it comes to exhibit itself. Understood thus, logic is a form of thinking which is empty insofar as it adds nothing to things other than by situating them according to its own formal rules. For only after having situated things formally can we claim ‘to know’. But in so claiming, we can see that this logic cannot rise above its own subjectivity – it is not true in itself; more like a ruler (or rule) or measure than the nature of measurement itself. We don’t get to the heart of the matter in this sense, because our understanding of logic is tautological, insofar as we claim still that it somehow is the truth.

Rather, Hegel takes us to the core of the matter. We are able to recover this core insofar as we can know, at this present time in history, the ‘concept of pure science’, or absolute knowledge (following its deduction in the Phenomenology of Spirit – SL 21.33). For over time we have become conscious of ourselves and, further, have come to realise the truth – which is tantamount to our own freedom – of who we are. In this, the tautology of logic, in which it would – as truth and certainty – still stand separated from what it knows, is resolved.

For the content of this knowing, as the Logic, as objective thinking is, as Hegel says, absolute truth (SL 21.34). To get to this point, to be able to think the form of thinking itself, Hegel leads us through his Objective Logic, which includes his Doctrine of Being (with subsections on quality, quantity, and measure) and his Doctrine of Essence (with subsections on reflection, appearance, and actuality) and then on to his Science of Subjective Logic (or

Doctrine of the Concept). In the Subjective Logic section he takes us through on one side the logic of Subjectivity and on the other the logic of Objectivity, and finally their resolution in the Idea, and then in Absolute Idea.91 This, as Rosen (2014: 459) points out is the final resolution of the conflict between subjectivity and objectivity, or thinking and being, insofar

91 A similar structure is employed by Hegel in the Science of Logic section of his Encyclopaedia.

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as it is the stage in which these are united in truth. In Hegel’s words, the ‘idea is the adequate concept, the objectively true, or the true as such. If anything has truth, it has it by virtue of its idea, or something has truth only in so far as it is idea’ [italics in original] (SL 12.173).

The idea is, as Hegel adds, the unification of the concept with objectivity, or the true (SL

12.174). It is for this reason that which makes things actual; it is their substance, for all other properties are merely accidental attributes. With the unification of concept and reality, in which being has attained its truth (see SL 12.175), we move from the world of abstractions – or to a merely conceptual understanding – to concrete description. As concrete, we describe what a thing is, since it has itself made an appearance to us. In revealing itself to us as it is, we ourselves are rightly implicated in this revelation. As against the earlier stages outlined by

Hegel in his Logic, in which our relation to objects exposed still a misunderstanding of ourselves, when revealed under the idea we can account wholly for what a thing is because we know now that that thing has revealed to us all that it possibly could, given that we know now what understanding is – that is, the unity of being and thinking grasped conceptually.

For having worked our way through the Logic, we know that we cannot be fooled into confusing appearance and reality: reality is what is revealed to us as rational, as described in its emergence by the Logic. This is not an abstract knowing, but a description of our encounter with things, or how we approach them, or even how we allow them to appear to us.

Only if we ourselves are do things show themselves to us truly, in other words. And so it is that Hegel describes the idea under three aspects: life, the true and the good, and lastly, absolute truth or the absolute knowledge of itself (SL 12.178).

In sum, we could say that the Logic is the structure of a self-revealing circle (see SL 21.58), in which we begin with the familiar and return with knowledge of familiarity. To return to the beginning is thereby to go beyond the emergence of the concept from itself; or to understand

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this emergence process itself as the object of our understanding. As Hegel says near the end of the Science of Logic (SL 12.252-253):

The idea is itself the pure concept that has itself as its subject matter and which, as

it runs itself as subject matter through the totality of its determinations, builds

itself up to the entirety of its reality, to the system of science, and concludes by

apprehending this conceptual comprehension of itself, hence by sublating its

position as content and subject matter and cognizing the concept of science.

As the subject and the object of the idea we would know ourselves absolutely (SL 12.251). In this Hegel solves the problematic relation of being and thinking, or the problem which beset

Aristotle: that is, how do we come to know anything at all? For Aristotle, mind (or nous) becomes the form of the thing being thought (see his De Anima, 429a13-18). But this leaves still unanswered the question of how? How do things become mind? Moreover, how to answer this question without reducing the world to mind or the mind to material? Indeed, without answering this question we simply cannot tell whether the world is mind, or whether the mind is material, if, contra Aristotle, we are to offer a full and systematic account of the realms of nature and politics (broadly understood). This is a metaphysical question, or a question about what things (including mind) are, insofar as we know them. And it is a political question insofar as, now, we would question, or are now in a position to question, the unity of human understanding at the highest and most problematic level.

Hegel solves the problem of thinking and being by making metaphysics concord with thinking, in order to account for the way in which the truth of things might be thought by us.

This metaphysics is not, then, of the pre-Kantian variety. Rather metaphysics is possible only as the Logic, or the structure of thinking, given the fact that this covers off on all that can be thought, and so is not merely a reduction of the world to a thinking subject. How does he do

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this? He does this by making already the collusion of being and thinking possible by making, ultimately (or ‘metaphysically’, one might say), pure being and pure nothing the same. For each is wholly indeterminate (pure nothingness is equal with itself, and pure being likewise)

(SL 21.68-69). The truth is, rather, their unity as becoming, or the ‘passing over’ of being into nothing and nothing into being (SL 21.69). Which is to say that, ultimately, we are not separated from the things being thought, because being arises with thinking. Or, to put it another way, in our thoughtful acting, over time, what is revealed to us is the structure of thinking’s own possible revelations. The final revelation is the temporality of thinking itself, which reveals also temporality – in its determinacy and progression – as truth.

The State and Science

In returning to ourselves, as beings who might now know the truth because of who we are, and what we might thereby know, we obviously come back to the political realm, broadly understood. Indeed, in the Science of Logic, Hegel mentioned in passing the significance of this absolute self-knowledge – or lack thereof – to how we might or could understand political phenomena (he makes reference to this – i.e., government – under the Mechanism section). But Hegel also makes reference to the state in the section on the Idea, where he explains the unity, by way of the concept, of ourselves and the way in which things appear to us. He says that:

Wholes like the state and the church cease to exist in concreto when the unity of

their concept and their reality is dissolved…this dead nature, then, if it is

separated into its concept and its reality, is nothing but the subjective abstraction

of a thought form and a formless matter [italics in original] (SL 12.175).

if a subject matter, say the state, did not at all conform to its idea, that is to say, if

it were not rather the idea of the state; if its reality, which is the self-conscious

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individuals, did not correspond at all to the concept, its soul and body would have

come apart; the soul would have taken refuge in the secluded regions of thought,

the body been dispersed into singular individualities. But because the concept of

the state is essential to the nature of these individualities, it is present in them as

so mighty an impulse that they are driven to translate it into reality, be it only in

the form of external purposiveness, or to put up with it as it is, or else they must

needs perish. The worst state, one whose reality least corresponds to the concept,

in so far as it still has concrete existence, is yet idea; the individuals still obey the

power of a concept [italics in original] (SL 12.175-176).

It obviously makes some difference to how we might follow Hegel in his understanding of the state, given what we understand of the Logic as a whole. We might, on one hand, take our bearings by Goodfield (2009), for example, who offers a hard-line metaphysical reading of the Science of Logic, arguing that the state, then, serves the same purpose, politically, as the

Science of Logic insofar as it would unite subjectivity with objectivity. Indeed, as he says, it unites the ‘political with the metaphysical’ (Goodfield 2009: 857). And so, as Goodfield

(2009: 869) concludes, ‘the inner truth of the state as political will, of the Philosophy of

Right, is none other than this procession of the logical and spiritual categories of dialectic given physical and historical form in the political sphere.’ By this reading, then, the state as the exemplification of the will, is equivalent to the Logic, as the self-revelation of the concept, understood as, ultimately, the resolution of thinking with being. In this respect, and insofar as the philosopher is he who has thought through the Logic to end at the idea, we must conclude that the state is essential to this endeavour.

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On the other hand, we might follow someone such as Avineri (1974), who reads Hegel as if he were a philosophical anthropologist. History, and not nature, is key for Avineri (1974), who says that

for Hegel all discussion of political issues is immediately a discussion of history:

not because of the quest for origins, for a secularized version of the legitimacy

implied in the Book of Genesis, but because history, as change, is the key for

meaning, and this meaning, as actualized in the world, is the hieroglyph of reason

to be deciphered by the philosopher (1974: x).

Consistent with this more historicist or conventional Hegel, Avineri (1974: 47, 49, 57, 85-86) argues that he was, in pro-Napoleonic spirit, a liberal partisan. As Avineri (1974: 57) writes,

‘Prussia...is to Hegel the epitome of a mechanistic, hierarchical, authoritarian political structure. In Prussia everything is in the hands of the state, regulated and regimented by it;

“sterility” reigns in the country and it is completely devoid of “scientific or artistic genius.”’

Given this, Avineri (1974: 42) argues that it is important to note that for Hegel, ‘[i]n

Germany [the] universal does not exist, hence Germany is only a Gedankenstaat, a state which exists in thought and imagination alone, not in actuality.’ This ‘universal’ is, as

Avineri (1974: 47) points out not equivalent to the authority of the state as such, since the state is following Hegel a ‘highly sophisticated and differentiated pluralistic system, where the state authority is basic and necessary – but minimal.’ What this means, according to

Avineri (1974: 101) is that the state is endowed by Hegel with a dual quality, consistent with the dialectical character of his enterprise more broadly. On the subjective level, the state acts as an instrument, or an efficient or convenient means to realise desired ends, and to alleviate those tensions or contradictions which arise in industrial society. On a level above this, though, the state is the embodiment of the universal nature of man, which Avineri (1974:

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101) describes as the ‘immanent necessity of man to transcend individualistic interests and reach a sphere which Hegel would later call “objective spirit.”’ Given this ambivalent status,

Avineri argues that it allows Hegel to conceive of the realms of art, religion, and philosophy as transcending the state while also functioning within it.

Of this ‘objective spirit’ or the ‘universal’ nature of man, following Avineri’s historical and political explication of Hegel, one would be hard-pressed to argue that it is anything more than the liberal ideal, or the perspective in which all perspectives may reside. Philosophically this arises with the perspective which transcends all political (or merely instrumental) partiality; whilst philosophy functions within the state because the state itself is liberal, and so might accommodate even those perspectives which have transcended it, such as the

‘philosophical’. Indeed, as Avineri (1974: 103) explains, objective spirit is really just the divinisation of the political act of self-recognition by way of another. Universal self- recognition is equivalent to objective spirit, in other words.

Absent reference to the truth, though, we are absent the beginning of Hegel’s philosophy

(what I described earlier as what is most familiar), or absent the full revelation of his system.

In fact, what Hegel might only reveal, following Avineri (1974: 129), is, along with any other

‘philosophy’, his own time (understood in an abstract sense). If this time is none other than the triumph of liberalism, then the revelation is not philosophical, but merely anthropological.

The state is essential not to philosophy, then, as philosophy does not exist. Rather, we might say that the ideal modern state, in honouring what is ‘universal’, would honour also any science which reveals the nature of man other than by way of philosophy.

Since Avineri leaves behind the question or the problem of nature, he finds the resolution of the problem of multiple and divergent perspectives resolvable wholly in the political realm.

This is right, in my opinion, only insofar as it would describe the exoteric end of philosophy,

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and not the more fundamental problem as revealed by this end, that of the conflict between being and thinking. This is the difference between history and eternity, as it were, or the difference between the end understood as the culmination from some beginning and the end understood as also a revelation of the beginning. The Logic describes the latter – indeed,

Hegel refers to philosophy as an ever expanding and self-disclosing circle (see PR §2; SL

12.251-252).

In looking only to the end we beg the question, for we presuppose that Hegel’s philosophy could only find itself politically, as the universal mediator of conflicting opinions; which is to say that spirit returns to its end not its beginning, or that philosophy fully realised is no more than what it has become. But even on these terms, if we go back to the beginning, back to the

Greeks as did Hegel, where decadence or the fall of tradition would seem to have provided fertile soil for the emergence of philosophy, still it was the case, as Hegel points out (PR

§552), that philosophers necessarily saw themselves as more than children of the city, for by their own understanding they were separated from the city naturally and not merely temporally (e.g., see Aristotle’s Politics 1325a3). Theirs was a first, and because of this, misunderstood attempt at grasping necessity (what Hegel will in the future describe as spirit).

This first attempt was not political but arose, we might say, between politics and nature.

Indeed, only if the political is the necessary is Avineri right. If liberalism need not culminate in universal reason then he is wrong. Since it cannot without (as Hegel is at pains to show) a logic which would transcend liberalism (i.e., as the truth) then we must also qualify in what sense he is right. It must be qualified because only universal reason is philosophical, all other partial perspectives merely strive to account for themselves. And in this philosophical age, the giving of accounts could only find its end in what must be recognised by all as the final account.

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On this score I believe that it is right to steer a path between a hard-edged metaphysical interpretation such as Goodfield’s and an a-philosophical interpretation such as Avineri’s.

Offering up such an interpretation, in which both the Science of Logic and the Philosophy of

Right (as well as the Phenomenology of Spirit) are considered together, but not simply as equivalent, is Nuzzo. According to Nuzzo (2001: 165) the Philosophy of Right is opposed to the Science of Logic insofar as it shows the immanent development of both the concept of right as well as its actualisation. These, as Nuzzo (2001: 165) explains, ‘do not relate to each other as two parallel series or orders but as intertwined and interdependent aspects of one and the same reality.’ Unifying these – that is, Hegel’s Logic and his Realphilosophie, or philosophy in actuality – is the problem with which Hegel wrestles. This, as Nuzzo (2001:

166) adds, is a problem of method. For, as she goes on, Hegel’s philosophical exposition must align concrete reality with the different moments of the concept (i.e., universality, particularity, and individuality). What this means, according to Nuzzo (2001: 166) is that

‘there simply is no given, factual reality that can provide the concepts with which the philosophical science of right has to occupy itself (or, to put it differently, what is there is not yet relevant as a content to the philosophical concept)’ [italics in original]. Rather, all that

Hegel might reveal of these political phenomena is provided by the dialectical method of the

Science of Logic. But, as Nuzzo (2001: 166) points out, given the nature of what is being presented in the Philosophy of Right, the dialectical method of the Logic cannot be simply a replication.

On this point, Nuzzo (2001: 167) suggests that history, or time, is what ‘modifies’ the ‘pure speculative logic of the concept’ (or the logic of the Science of Logic). Nonetheless, as she

(Nuzzo 2001: 168) makes clear, ‘the systematic succession of the determinations of the idea is necessarily identical with the temporal succession of the figures of its historical reality.

The Germanic "Reich" as the last epoch of world-history is not only systematically but also

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historically later than respectively the Roman, the Greek, and the Oriental one’ [italics in original].

And so, as she argues,

it is precisely this identity between logical and temporal determination of spirit

that constitutes Hegel’s notion of history and that history ultimately plays a

methodological (i.e., a necessary and not simply a contingent) role in shaping the

meaning of Hegel's notion of “right”. The object “history” is the highest – even

“absolute” – level of the determination of the concept of right, for it is only at the

level of history as Weltgericht [final judgement] that a “tribunal” is established to

assign the specific “right” of all figures of particularity. Now history mirrors the

situation of the Logic and yet reorders the whole succession of logical

determinations on the ground of the temporal succession that now takes the lead.

Consequently, history (dialectically understood), far from being, for Hegel, the

opposite of logic, is rather its methodologically closest realm [italics in original]

(Nuzzo 2001: 168).

What can be drawn from Nuzzo’s analysis is that, simply put, the Philosophy of Right is an historical description but only insofar as history is the unity of logic and concrete reality. As such, the notion of ‘right’, and so too freedom (which is the concept of the will, actualised as the concept of right) arises in truth even as this truth is itself historically conditioned.92 And so, when Nuzzo says that history is the closest realm, methodologically, to the Logic, we

92 Note also Pippin (2001: 1) who says: ‘First, according to Hegel, philosophy is not concerned with the mere concept of such freedom but with the concept and its “actuality” (Wirklichkeit). In his systematic language, this means that a philosophy of freedom is neither a rational analysis of the pure concept of freedom, nor some a priori formulation of an ideal, of what simply “ought to be.” It is notoriously difficult to know what this claim means. But at the very least this account of actualized and not merely ideal freedom means that freedom consists in participation in various, historically actual (and that means, ultimately, distinctly modern, European) institutions. Anything other than this is only an incomplete, partially realized freedom’ [italics in original].

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must take her to mean that time, actualised in political life, follows the same structure, qualified according to contingency, as set out in the Logic. The end of each is the same, and indeed it is only at the end that the structure of history, as revealed in its pure form as the

Logic, is revealed to us. Time is infused with logic simply because we ourselves are compelled to overcome and make the abstract actual. In this way, history reveals itself as more than mere temporality. Nonetheless, even if the difference between eternity and time is equivalent to the difference between the Logic and its actualisation, they are not, in the end, separate realms. Ultimately – or wholly speculatively – this is akin to the equivalence of being and nothing, or the ontology of temporal existence (i.e., the ‘first concepts or propositions of the logic’, which are the moments of becoming – SL 21.19).

Summing up: self-knowledge is made possible by the state insofar as the state is the rationality of willing actualised in its objectivity. Having now some idea of Hegel’s Science of Logic, we could add that the state is not merely a universal political institution, but is the actualisation, in part, of who we are. And ‘who we are’ is itself the consequence of spirit’s logical revelation, in time, of itself to itself. Hence the will, as Henrich (2003: 327) puts it,

‘does not accept the state because it provides for the fulfilment of all the needs of the natural individual. Instead, the will accepts the state because only with reference to it can the self- reference of the will’s own structure be completed’ [italics in original].

What Must We Hold?

In giving us an account of self-knowledge, and in holding that the state is fundamental to such an account, it pays us to think about what we must take on board in holding to this, especially so, given what I have already mentioned of Dewey’s and Weber’s partial turning away from Hegel. My concern in this section is, then, to show my support for a turning away from Hegel, but for reasons other than those offered by Dewey and Weber (given what they

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understood of him). In short, I will argue that if we take seriously Hegel’s union of the

Philosophy of Right and Science of Logic as they would culminate in a self-knowing, and even if we don’t take a hard-line metaphysical reading, we must hold still to certain bold claims, such as thinking the thoughts of God before creation, in order that we might claim to have realised what is promised by Hegel.

In affirming Hegel’s bold claims we would have, essentially, nothing more to know: all further thoughts would be repetition. Having surveyed the whole of history in all its philosophical possibilities we arrive at its end. The truth of this claim is revealed by way of

Hegel’s logic, or, to put it more precisely, the equivalence of his logic with history. History must itself reveal the truth, beginning with self-consciousness and ending with a universal or public self-knowledge. This temporal revelation is valid only if self-knowledge is realised in the time of Hegel and beyond, and only then.

If self-knowledge is realised temporally, or as a social and political achievement, though, we find ourselves at an impasse. On one hand, at the end of history we would think God’s thoughts before creation, but at the same time, and on the other hand, our wisdom is actual only if recognised by others. The problem is that here logic is separated from history (i.e.,

God’s thought is separated from our wisdom), and logic must reveal itself in history as the actualisation of wisdom. This disjunction is overcome only if the speech of Hegel’s transcends all other speech. On this, we might consider Voegelin (1972: 424), who says that:

Hegel betrays in so many words that being a man is not enough for him; and as he

cannot be the divine Lord of history himself, he is going to achieve Herrschaft as

the sorcerer who will conjure up an image of history – a shape, a ghost – that is

meant to eclipse the history of God's making.

Obviously, this is not possible so long as Hegel remains a man.

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To put it another way, consider that an insight into the ultimate can only be thought, as it were – it is a job for the philosophers to think all thoughts, so it follows. Consider also that philosophy is only now truly possible; for the emergence of this thought is itself the consequence of a progression. History is never ending in one sense, then: the actual world of political phenomena will never align with the ‘end’ thoughts of the philosopher. But in another sense it ends with the philosopher insofar as nothing more of truth can be thought. In both senses, things are revealed to us in time (as that which we come to know of familiarity).

And so the importance of history, for Hegel, as the revelation of thinking.93

In this sense Hegel is a metaphysician, simply because he has solved the problem revealed by metaphysics, and accounted for how we can know anything at all. Or, we might say that in solving Aristotle’s problem (since now he’s become aware of it), by transforming metaphysics into a dialectical and speculative logic, he understands that metaphysics is actual, comprehensible as the thought of all thoughts. This ultimate comprehension is of the temporal. To know anything at all, then, we must know all things as they have appeared to us.

This holds as much for the philosopher as it does for the non-philosopher. For since the philosopher is merely the thinker of his own time, we might say that in their political practice even the non-philosophers of our modern age know more than what could have been known in ages past.

93 In stepping this out we can see that Hegel works with the following assumptions: (1) certain knowledge eludes us so long as nothing or non-being is indistinguishable from being (such that one appearance is the same as another qua knowledge); (2) history is not meaningless, rather as we become aware of the emergence of our own consciousness, the distinction between being and non-being is revealed to us in time, until, finally, we come to understand their equivalence as time. Then (3) it is only when history has revealed in time (the movement and dissolution of being into nothing into being) the distinctions without which it could not be understood for what it is (ultimately the equivalence of being and nothing), can we reconcile being with nothing and so claim to know anything at all. Only at this moment would revelation (being) and determination (nothing) arise as the self-knowing will. But this, to state it again, only because the revelation is of time itself, as revealed in time. Only in our subordination to time are we able to overcome it therefore.

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Insofar as this is the case, we can see some purchase in the critiques of those who take Hegel to be a hard-edged metaphysician (if not for the reasons proposed by them). Indeed, as far as

I can tell, the real problem is not that Hegel would understand history metaphysically (for it is we who become what we are), but that thinking becomes its own object, saved from itself only if somehow we are thinking, as Hegel puts it, God’s thoughts before creation (SL

21.34). Hegel solves Aristotle’s problem by thinking the mind of God. Hegel, to fulfil his promise, must know time as creation (and hence the Logic). This is Hegel’s account of history. And history is Hegel’s substitute for Aristotle’s ‘thought thinking itself’ or the highest unity of being and thinking (see Metaphysics 1072b20). Whereas for Aristotle this highest unity is an absent god, for Hegel we ourselves are implicated, insofar as we are the subjects and objects of history.

On the one hand, to give up on these claims of Hegel, and then to claim that in so doing this is the true interpretation of Hegel, is to return to either some universal understanding of political authority (e.g., Pinkard and Avineri) or the universal logic of analytical philosophy

(e.g., Brandom). This is a secular Hegel, but a universal Hegel nonetheless.94 Which is to say that it is not to think the mind of God along with Hegel, but to think the mind of Hegel as a product of those historico-logical forces as uncovered by him. It is to historicise what is metaphysical in the thought of Hegel, in other words. In so doing, Hegel might himself be surpassed (or reinterpreted), given that he is merely himself a moment in what is revealed either politically or logically. On the other hand, in understanding him as a metaphysician, and taking issue with this, we would need to give up on even more than those who approach him by way of history; for we’d need to give up on what we understand his metaphysics to entail. In Dewey’s case this meant giving up on the equation of science with politics (or

94 One might say that it’s a return to Hegel by way of Nietzsche, for this is a Hegel as interpreted, or a Hegel following the death of God.

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meaning) while retaining some notion of his dialectical logic, and in Weber’s case it meant separating politics and rationality while retaining its (i.e., rationality’s) equation with truth, and politics with meaning.

When we consider each of these readings, then, we are on our way to some idea of what or how we might conceive of the state if we give up on the Logic of Hegel’s while retaining other aspects of the Hegelian philosophical system. As I have pointed out, and indeed as

Dewey and Weber see it, there is something absurdly hubristic in the Hegel who is justified by way of his metaphysics (understood as logic). And yet it is only this which would complete the projects of Dewey and Weber, or render them coherent. Taking the more forgiving path of a Hegel without the Logic, though, is beset with its own problems, not the least the problem of how we might conceive of the state, as I will argue below. What we require is what Hegel provides us in spirit – that is, the possibility of self-knowledge – but without the problems which beset a Hegel absent the Logic.

Conclusion: What Does it Mean to Give Up the Logic?

The turn to a Hegel absent his Logic invariably gives us the notion of the state absent the objective structure of the will (as itself a moment in coming to know ourselves absolutely). In place of this I suggest that we would pursue, or defer to, what we ourselves class as authoritative in Hegel. In following this we find firstly a conservative political philosophy, or a politics with no reference to the state as it is, but merely to institutions inseparable from the authority of habit (as in Pinkard and Avineri). In this understanding of the civil service and other universal institutions, a modern professionalism would regulate intention and practice under the edict of reason shared socially (see PR §205-210). In a liberal society such professionalism is shared by the other groups (or estates), such as the businessmen, except that these are bound to their particular sphere, and are universal only insofar as

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professionalism presupposes a certain understanding for it to exist. Indeed, as Pippin (2001)95 puts it, professionalism is the institutionalised boundary of a more general practical or social rationality:

In Hegel’s view human subjects are, and are wholly and essentially, always

already underway historically and socially, and even in their attempts to reason

about what anyone, anytime ought to do, they do so from an institutional

position...The conventions of ethical life governing what sorts of reasons can be

offered, in what context, and how much else one is committed to by offering

them, are not, in other words, rules that one might invoke and challenge all at

once; they are criterial for what will count as raising and challenging any claim

(2001: 14).

As noted throughout, Hegel is prepared to claim that some institutions can be said

to embody the historical self-education of the human spirit. The account and

justification of that claim to genuine education and so moral progress can be

given, but only “at dusk,” never in a way that legislates “what ought to be done”

and only for what he calls in the Philosophy of Religion lectures, the “sacred

priesthood” of philosophers (2001: 20).

Absent the Logic, the state is merely an historical construction, or an institution of liberal political universal interests as acted out in accord with our second nature – our social rationality. Only by the ‘sacred priesthood’ of philosophers, to which Pippin refers, might the state be understood for what it is.

95 See also Church (2010; 2012), and Pippin (2008: 239-272).

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Secondly, we find a progressive politics built on logically enlightened social and human sciences. This is in line with the above insofar as the state is understood as an historical construction – no different to communal habit (along with its own internal contradictions).

What is seen to be lacking in this construction is, however, what might be constructed by the logician (e.g., Brandom). What is lacking is indeed what has enlightened habit thus far. Given that we have not yet reached the thought of all thoughts – that is, the Logic – there is the impetus to go beyond Hegel, to realise the end-state in practice. The reason for this is, as we might surmise, that if not realised as theoretical spirit, then absolute knowing emerges only as practical spirit, in which the will must erase its own internal contradictions.96 Freedom is realised in a politically subordinate logic, in other words.

This turn to Hegel, such as by Brandom and Pinkard, makes up for the deficiencies of Weber and Dewey. Firstly, a conservative turn is an improvement on Weber since it would make a more coherent argument for the place of truth in politics, as the threat of rationality is averted given that it is understood now as a more general social authority. Secondly, the pairing of logic with political norms makes up for the meaning-deficiency of Dewey’s overly progressive (because denuded of the political) pragmatic politics. But still, each of these returns doesn’t go far enough, as I hold. To be coherent, as I have argued, they must take on board the Logic, or account for the equivalence of being and thinking. Rejecting this equivalence, while holding still to some universal (whether that be sociality or logic), renders this universal unknown to itself. The universal remains politically partial and so no more defensible than other political positions. However, taking on board the Logic means taking on

96 C.f., Hegel: ‘The most common notion people have of freedom is that it is wilfulness…If we hear it said that one is free when one can do what one wills, what one wants to do, such a notion can only be taken to reveal a total lack of the cultivation of thought, for it does not yet contain even an inkling of what the will that is free in and as itself might be, or of right, ethicality, and so forth…its subjective side still differs from its objective side, and the content of this self-determination remains purely and simply finite. Instead of being the will in its truth, wilfulness is the will as contradiction’ (PR §15).

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board what this entails. In which case, if we are bothered by the hubris presupposed by this, then we find ourselves siding with Dewey and Weber, and their rejection of the

‘metaphysical’ Hegel.

Herein, emerges a split, once again, between an overly progressive social science and a deficient conservative critique. In the former, true politics is distinguished from false by a nature-sanctified craftsmanship, or, as with Lasswell, distilled down to those techniques which would reveal the whole of political experience as well as enabling its construction.

Further down the line, social science continues to shape politics insofar as it would seek to actualise itself in state action. As I argued in chapter two, this emerges from the DNA of the social sciences, as it were, insofar as these sciences must both transcend politics and return to it, in order to claim for themselves the mantel of impartial judge and law-giver. This, we might surmise, following Hegel, is an act of the will, seeking to free itself of contradiction.

On these same terms, any argument against wilful creation, keeping still the assumption that truth is equivalent to an apolitical rationality, calls out this progressive stance as the vanity of those lacking self-control (as does Weber). Yet, holding to the same ideal of truth – that is, a limited or wholly mathematical rationality – this conservatism amounts to no more than keeping separate or in tension these contradictory realms (from this perspective) of actual political life and mathematical rationality. In this we are reminded of the Mechanism section of Hegel’s Science of Logic since, just like law, a mathematical rationality remains always an externality. Only Hegel’s Logic reconciles these two realms of external and internal, or objective and subjective. Insofar as this holds we require what the Logic seeks – that is, the possibility of self-knowledge – but not what it delivers.

In the next chapter I argue that only by returning to the everyday, returning home, as it were, to the most expansive and comprehensive residence, might we return to what we are. The everyday is obviously already what we inhabit (and what inhabits us), and so is also what

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would present as a unity of politics and truth, insofar as this unity is presupposed in our ordinary living – that is, we hold to be true what we consider worthy of our esteem. It is also, though, the place wherein the problematic relation of truth and politics emerges: what if that which we esteem is not truly worthy? In contemplating this we are propelled to discover what would truly count as worthy of our esteem. We are compelled to seek an extraordinary account, in other words. Such an account does, nonetheless, remain within the everyday insofar as the everyday is what gives to any speech about ourselves the character of the extraordinary. The everyday does, in short, reveal what we might possibly be, and what thereby we should do.

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CHAPTER 7: SELF-KNOWLEDGE AND THE EVERYDAY

As I showed in the previous chapter, the possibility of self-knowledge, as explicated by

Hegel, brings with it all sorts of grand claims about what is possible, now, to know. These grand claims require that we accept a logic which would reconcile being with thinking, and so too that we accept that now we are in a position to understand this logic, in full. I argued that this is to confuse ourselves with the gods. This leaves us, then, in need of an understanding in which we ourselves are accounted for, but without the logical or metaphysical structure which would support it. One option is simply to give up on accounting for our own understanding, arguing instead that we are already wiser and better people (than those of the past). In this case, we have no need to account for ourselves. This is the position of Steven Pinker, to whom I will turn to next. Following what I show is an untenable position

I argue that we must return to the everyday in order to understand ourselves. Given I propose that the everyday is the final or ultimate ground of all experience, both ordinary and extraordinary, it must (one might say, by definition) defy definition, other than as defining the possibility of all things, including ourselves as seekers of true definitions. I approach the everyday with this in mind, coming at it by way of what it cannot be on the one hand, and what must still remain for it to reveal to us things as they are, on the other hand. This I present by way of a brief consideration of the relevance of Ludwig Wittgenstein and Hilary

Putnam, and finally a brief introduction to the thoughts of Stanley Rosen.

What’s the Point?

Why does self-knowledge matter? As the policy scientists might say. If one cares not for self- knowledge, what is the problem? Why, indeed, should we care about what we are in order to realise a practical or politically relevant social science? But consider this: doesn’t the very mention of ‘political’ give us a hint? For how could one not care for what one is, if one cares

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for human things? Put another way, what does it say for who or what one is, if one does not care for this? It says that we are not a problem, or that the problem that we are is irrelevant to what we must do. It says that what we know of what we are is sufficient: what we can know would substitute for what we may not.

In this, self-knowledge may as well have been realised, precisely because it has become a question of no importance. As unimportant, it follows that the almost universal desire to know that what we are doing is worthwhile must find its satisfaction elsewhere. If the knowledge we seek would presuppose that we ourselves are wise (we know already what we are) or absolutely ignorant (no one can know what they are) then we might only find it in what is other than ourselves. What is other than ourselves by these terms is what we stand over, what might be understood by us because it is we who have created it. This, given that this creation must also benefit from our own wisdom (or recognition that any wisdom whatsoever is impossible), we might call politics. In this our knowledge would be realised and so sanctified. We would have realised Hegel’s dream without the bother and tedium of his philosophical journey.

Without Self-Knowledge

Is this a good thing or not? Can we even tell whether this is good or not? This liberation from ourselves we may well celebrate. But could we argue for the goodness of this liberation, and not merely proclaim that what we know is useful (or that the distinction between good and bad is just a matter of mastery)? Answering in the affirmative is Steven Pinker (2011). In his popular book, The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence has Declined, Pinker argues that we have been (and might continue to be) liberated; this irrespective of the problematic question of what we are. In this, Pinker would align our true (our better) natures with modern rationalism – a transcendence which has its grounding in biology (as uncovered by

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neuroscience) and its realisation as history (i.e., evolution). This transcendence is conditioned by contemporary rational-historical institutions, and the people that we have become given our predilection for modern science and the way of thinking which underlies it.

Specifically, Pinker’s thesis is that over the course of history we have become less violent.

We have realised our ‘better natures’. Pinker supports his thesis with a bunch of statistics which illustrate a decrease in violence from the pre-Christian era to the present day. He explains this reduction according to ‘evolutionary psychology’. With the confluence of certain conditions, such as the state as a neutral mediator of conflict; the distance and impartiality which arises with scientific thinking; and the technologies which unify us, we have come to be different people (2011: 923). The potential for violence remains, and would only arise given the absence of these conditions. Thus from an ‘evolutionary psychological’ perspective Pinker argues that we have realised our better natures because of the modern world. This modern world is characterised by him with reference to five ‘exogenous’ forces:

(1) the state, (2) commerce and trade, (3) feminization, (4) cosmopolitanism, and (5) the escalation of reason or rationality (2011: 896-931). This change hasn’t been forced as such

(or at least does not need to be continually forced) but has been brought about historically. It is we who are enjoying its fruits. And so we might say that this decrease in violence has not come about violently (no matter how subtly, such as with ideological ‘brain-washing’ etc.), but with a natural progress or enlightenment. This much has become self-evident.

I will show that, following Pinker, if we argue that our liberation from ourselves is a natural necessity and so good, or that reason is good only in light of its consequences, we cannot yet account for either reason or the good, and so cannot yet account for ourselves or the significance of violence we may or may not suffer. This Pinker might argue is beside the point: the results (or historical consequences) speak for themselves. But if they do, then we have an argument confined to history, insofar as we have merely identified certain conditions

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and their possible consequences. We must hold that the significance of these is of no consequence, or beside the point. What is of consequence is simply self-evident. But more than a self-evident significance is required I argue, for without it we cannot understand why or how these conditions (and so consequences) would have arisen in the first place, and so we could not thereby understand how they should be further pursued and, if not, why not. The transcendence of ourselves is also thereby the exclusion of ourselves from saying anything which might be of political importance under this understanding.

Indeed, the goodness of Pinker’s own thesis he may well regard as lying in this very fact: his is an impersonal defence. He need only point to the facts. No disciplining, no violence, no personal judgement is required. All that’s needed is someone willing to give up on his or her prejudices when confronted by the evidence. As an impersonal defence it need not get personal: truth is realised when those on both sides see what is self-evident. This may be well and good, and we may well agree that, yes, there is a coincidence of factors here – that is, with the rise of modern science there has been an associated quantitative reduction in violence. But we may well disagree too (even if we acknowledge still the coincidence of factors). If so, Pinker must explain himself. That is, Pinker must convince us, or point to more than what everybody might see. Pinker, by the terms of his own argument, cannot, then, be wholly impartial. The prejudice of this argument remains hidden if it is an argument of an

‘objective’ social scientist broached amongst an expanding community of social scientists

(both amateur and professional).

But this is to get ahead of myself. For according to Pinker, it would seem that only the truth as disclosed by modern science could save us from our prejudices. Such a truth is in essence non-prejudicial and is the epitome of what it means to be human, for in this truth we would transcend our brutishness. This is an inversion of Nietzsche’s (1997: 3, 82-83) credo that we only live well if we live according to our prejudices, our truths being the most powerful

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amongst these. Only our truths, according to Nietzsche, would save us from the nihilism of truth itself. Pinker’s argument is the flip-side of this: prejudice would reflect our baser natures. Contra Nietzsche, for whom prejudice is the genesis of humanity, we are realised not with the deepening of what is our own, but in overcoming it.

But if Pinker’s understanding is a prejudice, if by this we mean that it cannot account for itself, is it any less valuable? I mean, the fact that it is a prejudice does not necessarily make it ‘prejudicial’ in practice. For this prejudice may well be enlightening, not as an all- encompassing truth but by what it would make of us.97 The important question then becomes is it a good prejudice; or if we were to give up on this prejudice what of us? Would we be better or worse for it? Is this ‘universal’ prejudice better for us than an ‘existential’ truth, which, when judged universally, is merely ‘prejudicial’? This is not what Pinker wholly understands of his position, of course, but it follows from his argument: an existential truth is beside the point for Pinker, whereas a universal perspective is not. Unable to surpass prejudice he we would in fact be following Nietzsche, not for reasons of glory, but for that of the comfort and safety of modern life more generally.

Since for Pinker the goodness of this prejudice is merely an accident of the truth (i.e., contra

Nietzsche, for whom it would amount to the truth, by Pinker’s terms we overcome ourselves in the act of denouncing personal truths), its value must be self-evident. Indeed, the goodness of Pinker’s prejudice is not that it is a truth, but that it transcends all distinctions, because it would be universal. Comfort, or release from the threat of violence, is what we must all want

(i.e., self-evident), in other words. This is distinct from glory which, for example, following

Nietzsche, must be won (i.e., it is a ‘truth’ which must be realised).

97 And here the ‘subterranean’ connection with Nietzsche.

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But is pointing out the self-evidence of what we say sufficient if someone were to ask us whether it is better for us to live by these prejudices? Conversely, is it the sign of a quarrelsome or perverse nature to argue that it is not enough? Indeed, for Pinker this must be a sign which points back to ourselves. For self-evidence is not and cannot be a-personal, but is only evident to those, by Pinker’s estimation, of good character (i.e., the modern rationalist). But following Pinker, this character is itself realised a-personally. For this, according to Pinker, is a character which has been formed over time (and not by us as such).

Our good character is not then merely a quirk of our natures, but is the natural evolution and realisation of our own potential. Since for Pinker what we believe is sanctified by the self- evidence of what we have become – more peaceable etc. – we can automatically discount the self-indulgences of someone like Nietzsche. For the prejudices of modern science are obviously better. This is because we are naturally better people and so, finally, can directly distinguish the better from the worse. The universal truth is the truth of our evolved biology

(as disclosed by neuroscience and other psychological sciences – see p. 18); the political perspectives associated with this its consequence.

But if this is merely a general preference of peace to war, of reasonable debate to a good beating, of domestic negotiation to domestic violence, then we would be making nothing more than a quantitative distinction. With this, it could not be said that modern science is co- extensive with this self-evidence; rather, the most that could be said is that for more people it would only seem to be self-evident. For, by these terms what is understood as being self- evident has, for most people, become a common prejudice. But is not ‘seeming’ in this case all that is required? For aren’t the ‘results’ the same no matter if one has come to an understanding of something, or if one simply follows it conventionally? Or does such a way of thinking, in terms of self-evidence as understood by way of prejudice and realised quantitatively, not mean that we would necessarily misunderstand violence? And if so, does

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this not mean that even the scientist is caught in the divide between ‘seeming’ and

‘understanding’ without so recognising it? Indeed, the scientist, because he or she is the epitome of a transcending abstraction would most suffer the consequences of this no-man’s land; a land in which our own demonic natures must be ignored. Necessarily ignored in fact, for it is in this ignorance that we are elevated to the dream-land of the innocents – to our

‘better natures’ as Pinker puts it.

On the other side of the coin, we might well wonder whether a return to ourselves would entail the violence of the ‘overman’, as generally endorsed by Nietzsche? For without the innocence of angels we could, it seems, only lose ourselves in the chthonian depths of the beast. With only these two ways open to us – the way of either self-realisation or self- abnegation – we can see that what each share is defined by how we understand what we are.

What we are, is defined according to the liberating or enervating quality of transcendence: the path to ourselves and away from ourselves is determined by or in reaction to the transcending possibilities of a mathematical rationalism. Either we must create what would be denied by this rationalism, or we would immerse and thereby lose ourselves in it. Since in either case

‘desiring’ is distinct from ‘knowing’ each lack the possibility that we could understand ourselves; for what we know is always a denial of who we are. And such a possibility of self- knowledge cannot merely be sidestepped by Pinker: as a partisan of the reasonable over the chthonian he must rise to the challenge of his own arguments. To bring to light the self- indulgence of Nietzsche’s claim and distinguish it from its subtlety would thus seem to require an understanding of ourselves over and above that of prejudice based in self-evidence, and supported quantitatively.

With this I am not saying that we cannot tell whether the statement that we desire to live in peace (and not at war) is reasonable or not. Of course it is, and of course we do. It is evident to all those who have reflected on the difference between a decent and an impoverished life.

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But if we assume it to be self-evident in itself then it is empty, which is to say that we do not and need not understand it.98 In not needing to understand anything of ourselves, except what has transpired historically, we would concede that we need not understand what is political, for this is nothing more than an illusion which will inevitably fall to universal enlightenment.

And yet the truth realised in this way could be nothing other than political; which is to say natural only insofar as it would resolve the contradictions inherent within politics itself. For such a resolution – as the absolute political solution – is itself the dream of politics (no matter where one sits politically). The moderation of this political desire may well fall to science, but this science only remains a science if with it we can identify this dream of politics as it is

– without it this science is itself subordinate to the dream.

Pinker’s science cannot do this. For sure, Pinker’s science was made possible by the entry of philosophy (or the desire to distinguish the true from the false) into political life. But to equate our liberation with the demise of this mode of truth-seeking is, of course, saying nothing more than that philosophy is equivalent to ideology, or the not-yet-universal. What was introduced into political life was but merely a seed, which has now grown and along the way relinquished the flesh around which it was sustained in the early years. Since there is no guarantee that the entry of philosophy into political life will not end in ideology, the safest or most cautious option is to ensure that the seed remains forever fleshless. The safest option is to jettison what could be politically partial. With this jettisoned, the dream of politics is realised, since it has been transformed into science.

With this in mind, we might wonder whether the universalisation of people to make them a public, or to reconstruct the political as the scientific, is itself tantamount to the dissolution of

98 For example, when we say that it is good to eat food, we state what is self-evident. There is no need for us to ‘understand’ it any further. For we all, no matter what, eat food. ‘Understanding’ what we are doing (if, say, according to biology) makes no difference, as eating food is necessary. This is what makes it both self-evident and empty (we need only ask our stomach).

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violence?99 This is a liberal argument, in which politics is nothing other than violence. It follows that the expulsion of politics is liberation, insofar as liberation is equated with peace.

The question of politics is therefore also the question of what we have become, of what we are now. We might then ask the question of ourselves: are we the ‘last men’ or the ‘first angels’ (following Nietzsche’s and Pinker’s terminology)? Did Nietzsche see us more clearly, or does Pinker? But, aren’t we both? Can we not, then, describe the ‘angelic’ as the historical unfolding of philosophy in which culminates the ‘last man’? We are created as the ‘last men’ when philosophy has been left behind because realised universally. As the ‘last men’ we exemplify something of the fear of the threat of violence – the fear that the emergence of philosophy in time is the appearance of ideology. And yet in this desire for transcendence we might be described as ‘angelic’ – followers of philosophy only when it has been sanctified as science. This is our divine wisdom.

Since, however, the ‘angelic’ and the ‘last men’ are both creatures of the eternal and so are, thereby, an illusory realisation of philosophy, neither can lay claim to describing who or what we are. Each is rooted in fear, one noble and the other base: the fear of our brutishness on one hand, and on the other the fear of ourselves. This fear is self-perpetuating. For with the continuing uptake by the people of a public-forming philosophy, philosophy is itself seen to be ever more threatening qua violence. This is fodder for the rise of the ‘last man’; for our noble reaction to the threat of violence is to extirpate it. The extirpation of philosophy in contemporary times is, therefore, a noble reaction which would tend to undermine its own nobility. The ‘last man’ is a consequence of this undermining, for with the extirpation of philosophy we also extirpate ourselves. In sum, if science is seen to be the just political solution to our greatest fear, which is the fear of violence rooted in ignorance, then in

99 C.f., Schmitt (1985), who from the other side would agree: politics is substantiated in violence.

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misunderstanding ignorance we subsequently misunderstand violence and so are unable to recognise that which we seek. The angels, it would seem, are blind.

And yet: the fact that violence may have decreased with the emergence of philosophy is the other side of the coin.100 In general, we have been placated with our liberation, with the rationality associated with philosophy. This surely is a good thing, but not of course unqualifiedly so (contra Pinker) – as if somehow with more of the same we will have perfected ourselves. For the other side of rationality is romance (see the writings of Marquis de Sade, for a dark example). Pinker himself is a romantic optimist. Pinker mistakes his prejudices for the truth, for Pinker confuses ourselves and rationality. But, rationality is merely a part of our nature, or the part by which we are liberated from ourselves – the result being a placidity, but also an emptiness, and thereby a propensity for abstract and existential violence.101

None of this is to say that we must give up on science or the liberation from ourselves which it entails. What I am saying is that we need to understand it, which necessarily means a return to ourselves. Even if we argue that there is no need, the question remains: what of us? For in not having to understand who we are we must already assume that our goodness is anterior to this understanding; as Pinker understands it to be – built into our natures, as it were. But this presupposes an understanding of who we are. For even if we argue that there is an innate goodness which arises with the transcendence of ourselves (as does Pinker), we must determine whether this is disclosed by or originates in revelation, biology, or philosophy.

100 Assuming that Pinker’s statistics are generally correct. 101 Indeed, violence has become amorphous, random, and voyeuristic. It has become art, or representational. This is violence without discipline. And so depression is now pervasive; as is ‘mental illness’, suicide etc. Violence has become existential, or has been turned inward. Given the movement from the inter-personal to the intra-personal, all else being equal, the former will always exceed the latter in quantity. With our liberation, therefore, violence may well have reduced quantitatively, but possibly not otherwise. Still, this would be enough for Pinker to take it as being a good thing, for hate (or our thirst for blood) has been replaced with its dramatic shadow: we might still approve of the spectacle of violence, but we can only stomach it as an abstract spectacle – there is a big difference between a public lynching and the ‘tomb raider’ computer game, for example.

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Wherever we end up with this determination is co-extensive with what we understand of ourselves and our own understanding.

Since the biological understanding is unable to stand by itself, we would require either revelation or philosophy to uncover its meaning. If we discount revelation or theism, then we are left with the accidental entry of philosophy into the world and its transformation into modern science. It is not tied up with who we are, but is merely a part of our biological make- up, as realised historically – it happened despite us. And so we end where we began, simply because by this understanding (if we can call it that) we are distinct from what we could understand of ourselves. Indeed, to understand this ‘nothing that we are’ must be tantamount to revelation. We can see here that there is some parallel between the theistic account and the biological. The difference is a matter of comprehension – theism accounts for the whole of understanding while the biological accounts for none of it. According to the biological account, the most we can say is that our diminishing desire for violence is merely an accident of some deeper biological desire, of which we could not understand without revelation.

The self-evidence of what Pinker is saying is thereby akin to revelation without understanding, which is to say that it is revealed only to those who would have given up on understanding, simply because understanding could only ever be revelation. In equating revelation with understanding Pinker must both deny it and hold fast to it, if he is to know what he is saying. What is revealed to Pinker is only what he has become in other words, and this he must find salutary. And here was can see that only Hegel understands what must be thought in order to claim what Pinker does. There is no turning away from the task presupposed by philosophy, in other words.

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Back to the Beginning

We must return to our own understanding, comprehensive in a Hegelian sense if it is to account for the political, but not perversely scientific as his was. Which is to say that any comprehensive return must start where it ends – at the beginning – and should take neither the rational and retrograde step of returning to the beginning of all beginnings, nor the myopic path of empiricism. In entertaining self-knowledge philosophically (and not psychologically), and in passing over the thoughts of God before creation, we are barred from attaining scientific knowledge of ourselves, or scientific knowledge of the subjective and the objective, as well as their unity. Rather, our beginning is right here and now.

This, I take it, might only be realised with a return to the everyday. Only in this return can we understand what we are, and in this way reconcile politics and science according to their own limits. It is only in everyday life that the truth of what we are is disclosed. In this comprehensive understanding of what we are, which is to understand the possibility of our own experience, we would come to see the proper place of universal and mathematical reason, and thereby come to understand the limits of the state. Our execution of the truth would be justly executed in other words.

This is to understand the state as a limited institution because it does not exemplify what is true, and yet still we might justify its existence (i.e., as the institutionalised exemplification of self-interest partially transcended). This only make senses, I argue, if we come to understand truth by way of the everyday, which is to say as disclosed not in the transcendence of politics, but from within it. In this, I will argue, we can understand what is the just distinction between our institutions of universal education and the state, as well we’ll be provided some guidance to the education of the executive (and in particular those bureaucrats who would develop social policy), and thereby define what are its rightful political responsibilities. But first, I will have a little more to say about what it is to understand ourselves not just as political

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creations of our own making (as per social science and its reactionaries). This is not just a pragmatic or useful understanding, but an understanding realised in its comprehensiveness. In this we presuppose the goodness of understanding itself (i.e., not just as a condition for something else), and conversely the corruption of a liberating truth misrecognised. This corruption, as I have been arguing, has political consequences; in our times, most urgently, as the execution of truth.

An Everyday Return

Any call to return to the everyday cannot but bring to mind Ludwig Wittgenstein and those of his followers, such as Stanley Cavell, who takes up his cause in the name of ‘ordinary language philosophy’. This understanding of the everyday might be distinguished from the work of someone such as Hilary Putnam, who approaches comprehensiveness under a more pragmatic spirit; that is, following what he sees as the incontrovertible union of facts and values. I will briefly discuss both of these approaches to the everyday, beginning with

Wittgenstein and his followers.

Wittgenstein (the later) begins with the problems which arise when we attempt to out-run or depart from our everyday or ordinary ways. Although this departure, to metaphysics or mathematics for example, might present itself as a refinement of the everyday, it is already rooted in confusion, according to Wittgenstein. For in departing from what we already understand of the world we would sever or disconnect our means of understanding – that is, by way of language – from its roots in everyday life. So severed our language dies, and in this arises, phoenix-like, problems which we mistakenly attribute to the structure of everyday life itself: ‘The confusions which occupy us arise when language is like an engine idling, not when it is doing work’ (Wittgenstein 1997: 1.132).

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Bringing words back to life (re-embodying them as it were), and in this way revealing the absurdities of those (such as the metaphysicians and analysts) who would depart from the everyday, Wittgenstein made much use of ‘language games’. Using these games,

Wittgenstein showed that there is no substratum to which we might safely flee. No such thing exists, for substrata are only meaningful from the perspective of that by which they (claim to) support – that is, everyday life. The everyday shows up the nonsense of the analytical philosophers, because it is the everyday in which they are embroiled, even as they seek to flee it. They flee not into an everyday life purified, but into what has been abstracted from it, in other words. In so departing, the analysts and metaphysicians are akin to purveyors of private pleasures – decadents, in short.

To show this, though, Wittgenstein must himself abstract from the everyday (hence the

‘language-games’), for it is not the everyday simpliciter which shows up the nonsense of the analytical philosophers, but the difference between the origins of the everyday as everyday and those origins conceived of by the analysts. What I mean by this is that Wittgenstein seeks those origins of the everyday in which it must make sense. In this the everyday is shown to be without nonsense, for even ‘nonsense’ is accounted for by its origins as the embodiment of some form of life. Whatsoever is meaningful is meaningful to at least someone, somewhere, somehow. Nonsense arises only when we depart from these origins. Philosophical problems are thereby a misunderstanding of what we ordinarily do. Theoretical perspectives must, thereby, transform sense into nonsense, for they would halt the flow of that life by which they are sustained.

We can see here Wittgenstein’s transcendence of political life. For the everyday, if it is to serve as a standard against which we can identify problems which are inherently irresolvable, must itself be free of contradiction when approached from the proper philosophical perspective. If not, then there would be some possibility of a philosophical resolution from

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within the everyday, thereby contradicting its ‘everydayness’. This ‘proper’ philosophical perspective would thereby tend to idealise the everyday even as it seeks to uncover it. What I mean is that it would transform the everyday into an artefact of the philosopher’s desire for completeness, which precludes even the necessity for philosophy (see Wittgenstein 1997:

1.133). The everyday would be philosophically justified only when politically eviscerated, in other words. Which is to say that the everyday would be justified only when all political differences can be accounted for by the everyday. The ineffability of the everyday combined with its thoroughgoing familiarity, or the disjunction and unity of surface and depth which gives rise to our varied theoretical (or otherwise) interpretations of it, and thereby both comprehensive and limited understandings of the everyday, must be counted as at bottom fabrications. Whether these fabrications are true or not is irrelevant, what counts is how well they serve us, how well they help us to get by, given our way of life. We lose our way when understanding our fabrications as more than this. For the everyday is, simply put, no problem as it is. Fundamentally unproblematic: this, I hold, is the ascetic philosopher’s version of the everyday. In sum, the everyday that Wittgenstein would return us to might resolve all philosophical problems, but in so doing it would transform life into the perfect ‘language game’, playable only by eternal innocents.

What I have been arguing is pertinent to any political appropriation of Wittgenstein’s understanding. As one follower of Wittgenstein has put it: ‘Taking my bearings from

Wittgenstein, I assert that our allegiance to democratic values and institutions is not based on their superior rationality and that liberal democratic principles can be defended only as being constitutive of our form of life’ (Mouffe 2005: 121). According to this account, a ‘form of life’ is not merely some practice or activity (see Wittgenstein 1997: 1.23), but entails also a political commitment as realised historically.

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But this, according to Wittgenstein, would be saying too much. For the concept ‘forms of life’ is, in the end, empty, except for those who would play this game; and this is a game which would return us to the everyday. If we were to justify our commitments as a certain

‘form of life’, as constitutive of our way of life, then our defence would not be philosophical as per Wittgenstein’s, but merely political. We would be transcending the everyday to justify our particular understanding of it – much as the metaphysicians attempted (se e.g.,

Wittgenstein 1997: 1.81). This is surely a misappropriation (but not wholesale) of

Wittgenstein’s thought. For Mouffe (2005; see also 2000: 60-79) perverts Wittgenstein’s

‘forms of life’ in order that they might count for something; as ciphers in a hyper-democratic politics. In attempting to honour theory in the face of its dissolution by Wittgenstein (see e.g.,

Wittgenstein 1998: 1.723) the results are perverse. Hence, what remain are mere assertions

(see the above quote) to be resolved politically.

Mouffe disregards Wittgenstein’s separation of theory and politics, and their resolution, as evidenced by the necessity for him to put things right (e.g., Wittgenstein 1998a: 1.44) and leave everything as is (see e.g., Wittgenstein 1993: 1.77). With this arises a disjunction between our understanding of the ‘form’ of the everyday and its significance as lived. This, as Wittgenstein points out, is only resolved with our return to it; if not with this return, the everyday is a utopia (see e.g., Wittgenstein 1998a: 7.26). His is, thereby, therapy for someone such as Mouffe, who remains stuck in the contradictions of someone like Lasswell (replacing

Lasswell’s psychic whole with ‘forms of life’). By contrast, Wittgenstein (1998b) judges the life lived simply and honestly the best way of life:

Our civilization is characterized by the word progress. Progress is its form, it is

not one of its properties that it makes progress. Typically it constructs. Its activity

is to construct a more and more complicated structure. And even clarity is only a

means to this end and not an end in itself. For me on the contrary clarity,

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transparency, is an end in itself. I am not interested in erecting a building but in

having the foundations of possible buildings transparently before me. So I am

aiming at something different than are the scientists and my thoughts move

differently than do theirs... I might say: if the place I want to reach could only be

climbed up to by a ladder, I would give up trying to get there. For the place to

which I really have to go is one that I must actually be at already. Anything that

can be reached with a ladder does not interest me (1998b: 9-10).

Nonetheless, we strike an ambiguity. For with the strict separation of philosophy (as either the flight to science or as the path of our return) and everyday political life, as Wittgenstein proposes, any understanding in which we ourselves figure is, on one hand, wholly arbitrary and, on the other, simply a given – ‘intuition [is] an unnecessary shuffle’ (Wittgenstein 1997:

1.213). What we are is who we are, and to seek out anything further (as truth) is a sign of decadence. The political consequence of this is that philosophy or truth might only play a part in everyday political life if it undercuts those who might imagine that their understanding could in some way transcend it. As Robinson (2011: 25) puts it: ‘If what might count as theory is a claim about the conventional and provisional nature of linguistic reality, then

Wittgenstein has a theory and is a theorist.’ It might seem from this quote that Wittgenstein could be put to work as a political theorist. But his, I think, is a negative theology, as it were.

Theory is what remains after we see that it cannot exist. Theory is, and can only be, a return to the everyday, in other words.

While I am sympathetic to such a return, I demur from Wittgenstein’s account of what we would return to. As I have been describing, Wittgenstein’s understanding of the everyday strikes me as reactionary, because it is defined already by this lack of theory so understood.

In throwing the baby out with the bath water, Wittgenstein cannot account for any

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philosophical desire from within the everyday. The upshot of this is that philosophy could not arise in the polis except on the coat-tails of the decadent scientists and metaphysicians. The everyday to which philosophy would return us thereby presents itself as an inversion of this decadence – it would be philosophically ascetic and for this reason, could not account for the everyday. Wittgenstein cannot fully understand who we are, in other words, because he must find his way back into an everyday animated only by what was previously anesthetised by the scientific philosophers.

This emaciated understanding of the everyday is exemplified in Robinson’s (2011) book

Wittgenstein and Political Theory:

In the language-game of theorizing, justice is a matter of casting out entrapments

and traversing grounds around obstacles. It is to find the good and the beautiful in

the ordinary; it is to countenance injustice on the plane in which it occurs and to

remind others of its conventionality. Finally, it is to resist the impulse to turn

inward or upward when faced with whatever ugliness and horrors exist in political

life today. The immanent theorist’s response must be to look and describe (2011:

41).

Translated into everyday language what this means is that the academic political theorist should discard his or her political theories, set things right while convincing others of their confusion, and as a ‘metaphysically-inclined therapeutic journalist’ jot down what he or she has seen. This sounds very much like a Don Quixote hoodwinked not by his chivalrous desire, but by the possibilities of his science. He sees windmills not as giants but as images of others’ confusion. This latter-day, self-conscious Quixote believes that all except him are tilting at windmills, for he sees the confusion on which they’re erected. Surely this is to enter the everyday in the wrong way, for the academic political theorist does not return to the

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everyday as an everyday person, but maintains the persona of the ‘political theorist’ – as intellectual liberator, informer, sage, for example. Which is to say, he remains who he is, even while this persona (following Wittgenstein) is shown to be based on a false understanding. This follows the ambiguity in Wittgenstein’s own position: philosophy is only legitimate as a correction to intellectual decadence – but how to distinguish between what in the everyday truly requires correction and what not? By turning a blind eye, this correction might thereby be extended to cover, potentially, any aspect of everyday life, and not just metaphysical abstractions.

And so what is believed to be the just separation of politics and the everyday is played out in arguments over whether Wittgenstein was a conservative or radical (see Robinson 2011: 87-

114), whether he was seeking to change life or leave it as it is. If he is seen to be a radical then his philosophical approach might be applied to everyday life in order to transform it.

Which is to say that the highest or best form of life is that of the anti-metaphysician, in the guise of the political reformer. Such a position presupposes that all forms of life are potentially rooted in metaphysical abstraction. However, if only the decadent scientists follow the language game of metaphysics then it is only they who would require reformation, and so it is only relative to them that this (anti-metaphysical) language game is best.

Wittgenstein’s approach would apply only in these cases, in other words. It is only here that it would be authoritative. We see once again the ambiguity. For there is some broad

‘transcending’ understanding to all forms of life insofar as any form of life is not itself isolated but is presupposed by what we esteem of it – the significance to us of our own conventional ways of acting in the world extend beyond these conventions, in other words (it just takes the right questions – as the Platonic dialogues make clear). This does not necessarily make them metaphysical abstractions however, for in coming to defend a

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particular way of life we betray something of what we must understand of the nature of human beings (and not metaphysics).

How then to distinguish a metaphysical abstraction – aka the analytical philosophers – from forms of life justified from within everyday life? The radical position would tend to view all such justifications as misrecognised conventions, and thereby place the anti-metaphysical theorist in the prime political position. In recognising that Wittgenstein was a conservative, by contrast, we separate his approach from political life because we agree with him that on questions beyond the purview of scientific or mathematical abstraction we are in no position to judge (qua anti-metaphysician). Rather, we return to the everyday not in the guise of the anti-metaphysician, but simply as any other person (who speaks and acts).

Since Wittgenstein sought to revolutionise philosophy in order to retain the everyday, he was at the same time both radical and conservative. His radicalism we see in his departure from and return to the everyday, while his conservatism is reflected in his understanding of what must hold in order for the everyday to be. To favour one or the other is to pervert both his understanding of metaphysics and his understanding of the everyday. But to remain with

Wittgenstein (as I have briefly been arguing) is to pass-over the ambiguity which arises with his separation of philosophy and everyday political life. We can see the root of this ambiguity in the irony which must remain lost on those who debate his politics: why did they not simply apply his philosophical approach to resolve it? For this is how Wittgenstein himself should proceed given that this confusion is, ostensibly, rooted in the meta-language of the everyday.

But this is senseless, precisely because there is no convention or form of life to which we might defer. The reason that Wittgenstein’s own approach couldn’t be used to solve this dilemma is that it is a question of ‘what to be?’, it is a question which only Wittgenstein could resolve according to his understanding of what we, as humans, are. This understanding is denied by Wittgenstein, however, for by his approach there is nothing to understand in this

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way: in acting, life continues (see e.g., Wittgenstein 1998: 1.875). Since we cannot rightly re- enter the everyday via Wittgenstein without also having some understanding of what we are, we must surpass Wittgenstein (to realise what he desires).

On the other side of the everyday is someone such as Hilary Putnam who, much as Dewey before him (see e.g., Putnam 2002: 9-11), would retain the everyday as a political creation

(see Putnam 2002: 34, 45). Contra Wittgenstein, Putnam seeks the everyday in the future

(and not by way of the past, as a return to the present). This is a radical understanding, which finds its limit, or is conserved, in democracy. For the truth of our values (what Putnam means by overcoming the fact/value dichotomy) is sanctified by what we are capable of doing – ‘to investigate and discuss and try things out cooperatively, democratically, and above all fallibalistically’ (2002: 45; c.f., 91). Truth is practice and theory is political, in other words.

Radical is the mastery afforded us by theory, and conservative the practical limitations of coordinated action.

As with Wittgenstein, the everyday, according to Putnam (2002), is coherent from within; it needs no metaphysical support (see his critique of Rorty – 2002: 98-101). Given the comprehensiveness and self-sufficiency of the everyday, it is this to which Putnam defers in order to overcome the distinction between facts and values. He first approaches the everyday empirically, showing that we must have already distinguished and decided upon what is valuable even as we imagine otherwise:

The realization that so much of our descriptive language is a living

counterexample to both (classical empiricist and logical positivist) pictures of the

realm of “fact” ought to shake the confidence of anyone who supposes that there

is a notion of fact that contrasts neatly and absolutely with the notion of “value”

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supposedly invoked in talk of the nature of all “value judgements” [italics in

original] (Putnam 2002: 26; see also 31-32).

If the everyday is the ground of our values, then the truth of these arises pragmatically. The everyday is a fact, in other words, in which we can see that facts themselves are valued.

However, we can also see that it is only in a certain sort of future that we might distinguish true from false values. For without some other ideal to which we could defer, which is to say the ideal of fallibility (and its associated conditions), then we could not judge one value over another. To work towards realising the truth of values is thereby also a political mandate to establish those conditions under which their truth might be realised (in the future). It is not the everyday in which the truth of values might be realised therefore but only some political construction of it. This political construction is itself only valued because of an empirical understanding of the everyday, an understanding in which values show themselves to be no more than facts. And hence their truth as values cannot be approached from within, but only from outside – they are relegated to the future. The political revelation of the truth of these values must, therefore, if it is to honour the factual as such, show that they remain unfalsified under the maximum number of conditions. What I mean is that the truth of these values would be equivalent to their utility, but only if realised democratically (Putnam 2002: 44).

The political conditions under which this might be achieved is not itself counted as a value, therefore, but more like a fact of the everyday world of facts.

What follows from this is that we are never in the everyday, for the everyday is either a fact of the past or a value yet to be realised. Putnam cannot understand the everyday, therefore, except to resolve, on these same terms, the practical dilemma at the heart of the modern scientific misunderstanding. For politics is equated with the Petri dish of unlimited conditions, in which the value of modern science is realised in its universal applicability (see

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Putnam 2002: 110). At the end of it all we remain homeless, except as political masterminds of a truth which can only exist with full agreement that it cannot, for otherwise the conditions under which it might arise would be lacking. Rather, truth arises only in replication such that, we must conclude, it is only fully revealed when all moments, in repetition, are the same. The everyday is, thereby, in truth, an unreal construction. It is necessarily an everyday without us.

And without us it is an everyday lacking the present, for the present exists only if we inhabit it.

And with this we return to the second chapter simply because there is no truth to the everyday, but merely a truth awaiting to be constructed (and identified with universal agreement). This leads to Dewey and to the state as Leviathan (see chapter four). Indeed, it is to Dewey that Putnam returns (see Putnam 2002), and it is to Dewey, with his desire to retain the whole of experience, that we might return. This, though, as we have seen, is to return to an everyday from which we have already been abstracted. For the desire to return is not equivalent to the desire that led us beyond ordinary everyday experience. In returning, we encounter the demos, and so must necessarily fortify our philosophical position (without the metaphysical supports of Hegel). For even if it was a private or embodied desire which led us beyond the ordinary, it is only by way of public desire that we might return, without jettisoning altogether the distinction between philosophy and the public (which is to remain outside of the public). In this we return in abstraction, or as the friend of all political positions (other than those which would undermine our own). With this, the everyday is understood politically, for it is as a political friend of all that philosophy might be eternally favoured.

But this is a Pyrrhic victory, for with this there is no possibility that the everyday could be understood. For with a political understanding of the everyday (as the means of our return), truth is radicalised, only to realise itself in execution. And this, as we have seen, would result

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in administration. For truth might only be thoroughly executed by its own rules: to execute truth requires that we ourselves do not desire it. And so in our return to the everyday, without thereby entering into it, the limits of an executed truth remain forever beyond us.

Conclusion

In sum, we should not consider a return to the everyday as re-entry, for in returning we realise that we have never left it. To return to the everyday we must move further into it, in other words. It is the everyday which will reveal the truth to us, and so it is only in the everyday that we might, as Stanley Rosen puts it, come to some extraordinary understanding of it. Only in the everyday, if anywhere, are politics and truth justly realised.

According to Rosen (2002: 301-302), ‘we have lost touch with the everyday, and we are therefore compelled to laboriously reconstitute it by abstract methodologies that are intrinsically unsuited to the task...We live in an age that is at once satiated by and starved for theory.’ With our ostensible transcendence of the everyday, and any return to it thwarted by the way of this transcendence, we seek what is forever slipping away. Our thirst for theory, and its oversupply, is a sign of its lack of nourishment. It lacks nourishment because it has been abstracted from the everyday. Only the everyday can provide this nourishment because in it, as Rosen (2002: 260-261) argues, we see directly ‘the goodness of reason’. Only from within the everyday is reason intelligible. For, according to Rosen (2002: 233):

everyday experience provides us with the only reliable basis from which to begin

our philosophical reflections. But it does so as the source of extraordinary or

philosophical speech, not as a distinct and paradigmatic use of language. Our talk

about the substances or things that occur within, or constitute, ordinary or

everyday experience is therefore philosophical from the outset. Philosophy is

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accordingly the process of explaining how extraordinary modes of discourse are

demanded for an adequate understanding of the ordinary.

Only from within the everyday, and with an understanding of the ordinary, can we come to judge with some insight the necessity of extraordinary speech. Only as extraordinary speech could we make a judgement of truth. Similarly, only with this would we find nourishment in theory. If it is with our extraordinary emergence from within the ordinary that we realise the goodness of theory, then it is by way of the everyday that we come to understand what we are. In this, as Rosen (2002: 205) states, philosophy is already a part of our own experience:

Ordinary experience includes the understanding of mistakes and limitations as

well as of successes and powers. It provides us with fundamental ends, but not

with an absolute ordering of those ends, and certainly not with a deductive

demonstration of the completeness of any enumeration of those ends. Ordinary

experience is not a first principle; it is just ourselves, that is to say, the speeches

and deeds with which we exhibit the regularity that underlies and encompasses

our pursuit of the ordinary (1999: 223-224).

I would never claim that only philosophers live the good life, or conversely, that

in order to live the good life, one must be a philosopher in the full sense of the

term. What I rather claim is that the good life always participates in philosophy.

We are all philosophical by nature in the sense that we aspire to wisdom and need

the love of wisdom in order to guide and regulate our desires (1999: 232).

This return to the everyday is of utmost importance for the executive. As Rosen says:

The possibility of philosophy thus rests within the obscure region in which

common sense and technē cooperate as distinguishable if not completely separate

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elements. The question is whether our primary sense of truth is more like technē

than like common sense. Otherwise stated, is there a truth that expresses the

totality of human experience without reducing theory to practice or practice to

production or technē? (2002: 220-221).

Indeed, if the escape from ourselves is an escape to technē (as we saw in the Lasswell chapter), and the executive would in this way exemplify this escape, then we would say that in seeking the truth those who occupy these institutions would seek to exemplify the roles which occupy them (as presented in the Hegel chapter). In returning to ourselves, therefore, we would not simply give up on this occupation, but come to see it for what it is. Theoretical desire, in other words, would not be inflamed by the lure of technē but by the lure of the ordinary and what is extraordinarily revealed by it. Technical practice would come to be limited by what renders it significant, in other words. In the following chapter I conclude my inquiry by considering the implications of this limitation in practice, and the possible consequences for public policy of a reorientation from a social scientific outlook to a philosophical understanding of the everyday.

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CHAPTER 8: CONCLUSION – THEORY IN PRACTICE

An aspiring apolitical activism is progressively shaping contemporary Western politics. In this spirit the social sciences step forth as a leading player, where their value is proffered in terms of their utility. By their own estimation, the social sciences stand in contrast to political self-interest and thus can identify and define what is a political problem better than can political actors themselves. In putatively transcending politics, in other words, they attain their political usefulness. However, if the social sciences attain legitimacy only through politics, they are left in a difficult position. This difficulty is compounded in moving from what social scientists do to what they find meaningful in their enterprise. For if, by their own estimation, what social scientists could find truly meaningful might only be realised as practising social scientists, then the problem gets a whole lot deeper.

In this thesis, I turned to the debates (in the academic policy science discipline) over scientific and political legitimacy to uncover the nature of this problem. As I showed, what drives these debates is the desire to expunge any unacknowledged partiality of our own understanding, be that theoretical or practical. Only by satisfying this desire, so it is assumed, might we overcome once and for all our own ignorance, and so speak with an enlightened and politically relevant authority. But with this reconciliation of politics and science their mutual disdain for each other is exposed. For a resolution is scientific only if politics is transformed into sociology, economics, psychology, or some other social science; and politically aware only if these are themselves seen as merely the partial perspectives of one among many. As I showed, if the social sciences are to be counted as legitimate because they transcend the partial political interests of the ignorant – that is, they are entitled to transcend these interests because of what they are (they are not just a more efficient means of satisfying any political position) – then any explication of their own legitimacy must be accompanied by an ever-decreasing separation from politics. This is because politics and its transcendence

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are, according to science, politically equivalent. The expansion of science thereby illuminates the shadow of politics, and would uncover all prior scientific understanding as political. In the end, this would hold for the social scientists themselves: whatever they could understand is always political, or inherently so. I argued that in seeking their political legitimacy the social sciences would undermine it. The only resolution to this dilemma on their terms is the encouragement of active bureaucratic practice, or the elevation of state executive action. The political infection of theory is cured with the salve of apolitical practice. Herein science and politics are united. But the cure is merely another symptom of the disease – namely, a misunderstanding of theory and practice.

I argued that this conundrum calls out for deeper consideration. And that such a consideration might only be accomplished on more comprehensive terrain. In pursuing this diagnosis, we move closer, I think, to what is the perennial problem posed by truth to politics. In so doing we delve into what could be understood of human political experience. I sought out this understanding, and its attendant difficulties, by exploring the writings of Harold Lasswell,

John Dewey, Max Weber, and Georg Hegel. Following this I suggested that we must re- encounter the everyday in order to seek what Hegel would purport to offer, but without embracing his wilder claims, and without treading the same path as Weber and Dewey.

Having, exposed the problem of the collusion of social science and the state in executive action as rooted in the denial or disregard of the perennial problem posed by truth to politics

(chapter two), I then turned to the writings of Harold Lasswell (chapter three). Lasswell is important, I argued, because, firstly, he is regarded as one of the founders of modern practical political science and, secondly, because he attempts to ground political science in the whole of political experience. Even if moving under the shadow of the perennial problem, however, I argued that Lasswell does not move beyond its contemporary resolution. For

Lasswell, political experience is knowable only as construction. Beyond this we remain

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unself-conscious, or naively conventional. To rise above our naivety, then, we must fabricate for ourselves a political whole, or the space wherein we might become conscious of ourselves and so recognise why we do what we do. Lasswell makes a compromise, as I argued, between the creativity – or the irrationality – of the political character, and its realisation as modern science (with reference to the empirical method and a mathematical rationalism).

This compromise is, for Lasswell, the whole of political experience understood as symbolic and as enacted by the policy scientist – the master technician, as it were. But with this resolution, politics is prematurely moved from the realm of the philosophical to the technical.

The subsequent education in technique, in seeking to overcome the separation between politics and science would, as I showed, simply exacerbate this separation.

I also turned to Dewey (Chapter four), a forerunner of Lasswell. Dewey breathes life back into everyday experience, and in so doing he makes way for a more profound union of politics and truth, or the transformation of political life under the ethos of social science. He might be contrasted with Lasswell, in this respect, for whom the symbolic is key, enabling thereby psychic manipulation by way of technique. What passes for Lasswell as the formlessness of the psyche, and its technical rectification, does instead, for Dewey, show itself as those ends which arise in interaction. And so, as I argued, Dewey has no need to construct the whole of human political experience, as does Lasswell. Our common everyday experience is inescapable, by Dewey’s estimation. The foundation of everyday experience – its truth – is exposed in natural biological life. Biological life shows a deeper unity than

Lasswell’s symbolic synthesis. Moreover, its political equivalent – craftsmanship – is without the problems which beset Lasswell’s technical endeavour, as it contains already within itself truth fashioned not just according to our own political desires, or self-interest (or what, for

Lasswell, is no different to irrationality). Despite offering a deeper defence of the collusion of politics and truth in political action, however, with Dewey we strike a problem of both

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coordination and realisation. The citizen as amateur social scientist, as craftsman of his own ends, would desire what could only be realised in active coordination with others. Just as in the natural world, the truth arises in interaction. Absent this, though, absent the coordination found in nature, the state (and statecraft) would seem to be required to bring to fruition what is desired by citizens. Given that the state is in no position to realise this – as statecraft is not the same as citizen craftsmanship – the unity cannot hold. We would find, as in our contemporary situation, frustration, arising with an unrealisable desire on one side (citizen fabrication) and the inadequacy of statecraft on the other. This realisation of politics as truth- in-fabrication (understood with reference to the natural world) cannot lead to what is truly – or existentially – meaningful, in other words.

I took up this problem of meaning and truth, still under the auspices of social science, by considering Weber (chapter five). As I argued, Weber understood full-well the problem faced by someone such as Dewey. A meaningful life cannot be realised as merely a pragmatic pursuit. Meaning, and so too politics, is much deeper than this. Secondly, he saw the problem posed by modern social science. If democratised, if playing a part in active political life, social science would tend to dissolve meaning and give rise to the ‘iron cage’ of bureaucracy, or the liberalisation of state executive action. Weber, as I showed, discerned this along with recognising that this rationality is what also allows us to distinguish truth from political things. Indeed, as I argued, the social scientist is best placed to understand in what way politics might be reformed, simply because he epitomises the political perils we face in modern times. As both saviour and destroyer, the social scientist must enter politics conservatively, aware of the limits of his own rational understanding, and aware of the distinction between a fully-fledged social scientific understanding and everyday life. The problem with this, as I showed, is that the misalignment of Weber’s science and the perspective of everyday actors leaves open the possibility that Weber’s enterprise be taken up

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politically (contra Weber). For if the distinction between these is inherently tenuous why not simply reconcile them? This reconciliation is made easy by Weber, I argued, because of his understanding of everyday life as essentially in flux, stabilised only with the precarious distinction between what is meaningful and what true, as revealed by way of his hermeneutic method.

However, I also argued that Hegel’s understanding exceeds the accounts offered by Dewey and Weber (not to mention those further down the line, such as Lasswell and the policy scientists) (chapter six). It exceeds them insofar as it draws together history, politics, psychology, and logic. Hegel confronts head-on the perennial problem. He prepares the way for the resolution of politics (what we deem valuable) and truth (what is) in self-knowledge.

Self-knowledge is key, as it is only now, in this modern age, that we can confidently say that we are in a position to understand as false the byways of the past. Self-knowledge is also rational. And so only now are we in a position to truly act impartially. In this respect, Hegel would rescue from self-ignorance the thought of a Dewey or Weber. He also solves or terminates the circular arguments of the policy scientists: only with a rationally realised self- knowledge can we be said to be truly acting with impartiality. The price we must pay for knowing that we have realised this rational self-knowledge is, as I argued, our acceptance of

Hegel’s dialectical and speculative logic, a logic which would claim to account for all possibilities, including its own.

But giving up Hegel’s logic has profound consequences for what we could understand of the universal estate or the civil service, as I argued. For the state is essential to the realisation ‘in time’ of Hegel’s philosophical understanding. Jettisoning Hegel’s logic, while retaining what it promises, would, as I argue, dissolve the state’s institutional bonds. This is because any conservative understanding of the state – that is, the limits which must define the state – is by

Hegel’s account, and without his logic, merely historical; it is not derived from what the state

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is. It has no natural or necessary founding, in other words. Hegel’s logic gives it a necessary founding. In giving up on Hegel’s logic, therefore, we would come to see the state as unfairly limited. We might claim that the state is oppressive, for example. So it follows that liberty would be understood as, ironically, affording all people the opportunity to realise what was traditionally the state’s prerogative – a rational self-determination. This, as my critique of the policy science debates shows, is where we have found ourselves (by way of Dewey and

Lasswell, and as unsuccessfully halted by Weber).

Having critically considered these classic diagnoses of the problem, I began to mount my own resolution of it (chapter seven). I argued that we must return to the everyday in order that we might understand ourselves, and thereby approach what Hegel desired. I began with a critique of Steven Pinker’s position. Pinker assumes that we are already realising what Hegel promised, and without his metaphysical baggage. Indeed, without it we have realised our better selves (as he puts it). His position, as I showed, is untenable. I argued that we must return to our own understanding, comprehensive in a Hegelian sense if it is to account for the political, but not perversely scientific as was his. Following a brief critique of two possible paths back to the everyday, that of Wittgenstein’s and Putnam’s, I suggested that to return to the everyday we must move further into it. It is the everyday which will reveal the truth to us, in other words, and so it is only in the everyday that we might, as Stanley Rosen puts it, come to some extraordinary understanding of it.

In concluding, I want now to draw out the practical consequences of this inquiry, using public policy examples. I am guided by what has been uncovered thus far – that is, only from within the everyday might we understand the problem posed by truth to politics, and so only from here can we adequately understand the limits of state executive action.

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State Execution

We are now in a position to consider the limits of a mathematical rationality, under the auspices of public policy. This consideration follows neither from the perspective of the detached observer nor from that of the political pawn, but from within everyday life, wherein the possibility of more than merely a political understanding is fundamental to its coherence.

It is this coherence by which a partial perspective is distinguished from the impartial, and a more comprehensive understanding from that which is wholly local or in other incoherent respects limited (see Meckstroth 2012: 651). And if coherence is not satisfied with the all too easy promises of a mathematical rationalism, nor the empty, relative perspectives of localised politics, and yet would share in each of these, then we can only fully grasp the significance of what we are doing with a reflection on their limits.

Such truth-seeking stands in contrast to ‘epic political theory’ as outlined to by Wolin (1969).

It would not take the form of ‘a symbolic picture of an ordered whole…[in order]…to change the world itself’ (Wolin 1969: 1080). For with this poetic ordering of the whole, everyday life is transformed, both actually and potentially, into a political production. Because theory cannot be distinguished from poetry, the everyday loses its coherence, and so too any extraordinary or theoretical interpretation of it (c.f., Gunnell 1993: 273-274). By contrast, as

I’m arguing, the extraordinary speech of theory is only revealed as extraordinary if the ordinary is more than what has been produced. This extraordinary understanding is, then, simply the desire to understand ordinary experience as it is. If ordinary experience is nothing other than production then the very attempt to understand it, or to proclaim it as nothing other than this, is absurd.102 For the desire to understand ordinary experience presupposes already a

102 C.f., Brown’s (2001) understanding of theory, in deference to Derrida: ‘He [Derrida] offers strategies for developing historical consciousness that rely neither on a progressive historiography nor on historical determinism more generally, strategies for conceiving our relation to past and future that coin responsibility and possibilities for action out of indeterminacy. It is a permanently contestable historiography, one that makes

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perspective not itself a product of this experience. To include ourselves in this experience means that we cannot reveal this fundamental desire under the paradigm of mathematics (for with this we are fabricated). Nor can we, as I argued in chapter one, reveal truth by way of philosophy of social or political science, following Dowding (2016), for example; as here theory is separated from practice: in leaving ourselves behind we already limit how and what we might know. In coming to see the comprehensiveness of ordinary experience, by contrast, which would include what would make this seeing significant, we come to understand what would or could regulate its realisation.103

In practice, and by this understanding, the executive arm of government would best act from everyday professional experience (following the instituted desire to act impartially and diligently) as constrained by the coherence of everyday experience broadly understood. The broader political implications of this are clear: if insight cannot arise in production, then neither can the political good arise in the executive’s attempt to simulate it by way of what might be produced impartially. Similarly, social scientific studies must be assessed not only according to their utility. Those cases where theory is unable to simulate insight, such as with regard to regulation by the state of capital markets do not concern us here, simply because it is not to the ordinary (in its most comprehensive sense) that we could look to ‘verify’ them – these views are not extraordinary and, thereby, not properly theoretical. They are fashioned for the purposes of tampering with some prior construction. That the ordinary may be evoked in these speeches in support, however, or that economics may be seen as itself an

contestable histories an overt feature of our political life as it encourages us to struggle for and against particular conjurations of the past. It never claims to exhaust or settle historical questions. History becomes less what we dwell in, are propelled by, or are determined by than what we fight over, fight for, and aspire to honor in our practices of justice’ (2001: 155). 103 C.f., Rawls’ (2005: 44-46) description of comprehensiveness: ‘In political philosophy the work of abstraction is set in motion by deep political conflicts…The work of abstraction, then, is not gratuitous: not abstraction for abstraction’s sake. Rather, it is a way of continuing public discussion when shared understandings of lesser generality have broken down. We should be prepared to find that the deeper the conflict, the higher the level of abstraction to which we must ascend to get a clear and uncluttered view of its roots.’

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extraordinary speech about the ordinary is, of course, another matter – Marx comes to mind here in the latter case, and aspects of microeconomics in the former.

Whereas Marxism wears its politics on its sleeve, microeconomics would leave it in the closet, as it were. Of course, microeconomics need not prevent what we might or could understand of everyday life; such as is the case of the ‘world-view’ behind the superficial policy of raising taxes on soft-drink for example or, following behavioural economics (a fusion of social psychology and economics), of making soft-drink less accessible on supermarket shelves. But since the state is a blunt instrument, and people learn how to accommodate themselves to it (and, what is more, come to some realisation of the state’s motivations), more subtle or sophisticated techniques are required to compete with those already used privately or commercially.104 In this case, we are blinded to the dissolving divide between common-sensical state practices and paternalism, for commercial interests merely stimulate desires which already exist, whereas the state must somehow thwart these or create them anew – the tools of the state, to keep up, must necessarily become ever more radical qua desire.105

Consider the current state fad of ‘nudging’ citizens (see Thaler and Sunstein, 2008). This follows the above example insofar as it adheres to an economic or strictly self-interested and rational understanding of the choices that we should make, and seeks to bring these about using techniques derived from behavioural psychology. ‘Nudging’ engages with what it terms our ‘choice architecture’, or the particular ways in which we go about making decisions. In so doing it would seek to iron out – from its perspective – corrupting ‘unconscious biases’ in order that we might make better decisions. Both the state and the citizen are reformed under

104 And so the argument that the state is not overly paternalistic if it merely engages with already existing ‘choice architecture’ (see Thaler and Sunstein 2008) cannot hold in all cases. 105 For the former are more profitable – i.e., require less work – than desires which must be crafted anew, as it were.

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this program. For where the state would previously have carried on its business of relating to the public guided by what it judges as bureaucratically expedient, it now becomes conscious of how it is seen (or related to) from the perspective of the citizen. The state, therefore, becomes conscious of its own activities in the same way, and at the same time, as it would seek to enable citizens to become conscious of theirs. For the state (in good Hegelian fashion) seeks to realise what it takes to be good for citizens, by attempting to make them think in the same way as it. Since the state regards itself as the pinnacle of rational thought, obviously, then, this ‘schooling’ of citizens it regards not as paternalistic. Ideally, the state is merely helping to clear away for us what we are unaware of, given our bad habits, or our unconscious biases. It is merely doing what we ourselves would have done if only we were aware of it. This is the ideal scenario, of course. In practice it is more than likely that what was unconscious previously, or done as a matter of habit, remains unconscious still. And so our choices are made for us, as it were. This is to bring about the desired outcome (by way of behavioural or psychological manipulation), but it suffers from the charge of paternalism.

Only a blunt rationality, it seems, would get around this. This is to steer clear of any utilitarian psychology. For as I outlined above, with the uptake by the state of utilitarian psychology – such as behavioural economics – it is already assumed that the state (insofar as it does not act paternalistically) might guide citizens in how to think, by appealing to the most utilitarian of desires in order to frame what might be thought. A blunt rationality would forgo the appeal to desire and so stop short of reforming citizens according to state based interests, or so one might assume. In line with this, Hausman and Welch (2010: 135) believe that

‘rational persuasion is the ideal way for government to influence the behavior of citizens...only rational persuasion fully respects the sovereignty of the individual over his or her own choices.’ Here Hausman and Welch mean ‘facts and valid arguments’ (2010: 130).

We might wonder, though, whether with this regression towards the mean of neutrality, in

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merely taking the first step along the path of ‘nudging’, merely does more slowly what the

‘nudgers’, with their uptake of behavioural psychology, would accomplish more efficiently.

For favouring ‘valid arguments’ as a means of persuasion shows already a disposition to live life in a certain way, a way of life which is understood to be potentially acceptable to all. No argument, according to this understanding, could be offered in support of halting the push towards a greater efficiency, as promoted by the ‘nudgers’. For such a push seeks to itself make rationality politically palatable, or to engage with more than merely the calculating aspect of human nature. And here we find ourselves back at the problem of rationality and legitimacy, as outlined in chapter two, and which, as we saw, flowed all the way through to its resolution in Hegel.

The problem for the rationalists is that as a limited understanding of humanity, it cannot be the ‘ideal’ case. There must be some more comprehensive ‘choice’ between state-derived rational arguments, and arguments tied more broadly into ordinary life. Constrained by what follows from some distinction between the realm of the extraordinary and mere calculation

(such as I mentioned above) we might navigate safely. But, if unable to recognise the limits of calculation we would be unable to recognise the lives of others. For we honour the lives of others according to our understanding of the way in which human things are revealed truly.

That is, we can only distinguish between impinging on others’ reasonableness or otherwise if we have first distinguished this for ourselves. If this is by way of a mathematical rationalism then no distinction can be made, other than by what is self-evident. Beyond the self-evident

(which applies to both the means and the ends) this crude understanding, as we saw with

Pinker (in the previous chapter), may be closer to no understanding at all.

If it is only in recognising ourselves that we can recognise others then it is from here that we must start. This is a matter of enquiring into our own unified understanding, as well as the multiplicities of human experience. The first is a philosophical questioning of the everyday,

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and the second a literary achievement. The important question is, then: how far can we transform the second into a mathematical, or universal understanding?106 With this, we must ask how far can it become a problem which the state could meaningfully resolve, in which, essentially, a unity is derived from multiplicity? We certainly cannot give a mathematical or universal answer to this. Rather we must return to ourselves, for any answer we give is necessarily tied up with this first and most important question. In this we would see that there is some distinction between the body and the psyche according to truth. Which is to say, that we might come to understand the difference between the regulations of the body from within the everyday (by which we discover the reliability of our techniques), and the regulations of the everyday (e.g., the appearance and disappearance of things; the desire which leads us to uncover what appears; and, the nature of what shows itself) by which we come to understand ourselves. With the doubt that arises with this separation, the zeal to transform the psyche into the body or, what amounts to the same thing, into the universal psyche amenable to techniques of the body (by way of social psychology, for example), is limited. We might, for instance, question by these terms the difference between the thought behind a state tax on soft-drink and that which would ‘model’ the effect of a certain sort of education on employment attainment. The first question is more amenable to bureaucratic or ‘universal’ thinking, because the effect of drinking soft-drink is clear, and the political implications of drinking it are minimal. In coming to make this simple declaration we first considered its philosophical significance. Only after this consideration might we move to the practical. That is, first we begin with what the state could be and then to what the state could achieve

(considering the difference between everyday life and the abstract rules which follow from a universal understanding). In short, the limits of state-understanding and its everyday practical potential might only be understood if we begin with ourselves. This is the foundation to what

106 Which includes so-called ‘qualitative’ research, of which Weber is the forefather.

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Kane and Patapan (2006) argue is the virtue lost to public administration – prudence, or

Aristotelian phronēsis (rightly understood):

Prudence is the virtue of practical wisdom. A truly prudent person judges

thoughtfully and acts decisively, reconciling the demands of the most important

with those of the most pressing…Practical wisdom [is] a matter of personal

character – specifically, a character that [has] been habituated to virtue and

tempered by long and wide experience (2006: 711-713).

Conversely, a mathematical rationalism in which the guiding political virtue is realised as liberation and in which truth is revealed in production (as with Dewey and Putnam) would, as

I have argued, encourage the state to manufacture those conditions under which it would be realised. How far should this manufacture extend? According to a mathematical rationalism we cannot even approach this question.

As an example, consider the increasing use of algorithms in public life. These are used to calculate the probability of ‘outcomes’ based on a set of finite parameters, and these probabilities used to construct decisions (e.g., judicial) otherwise made by humans. Given what I have been arguing, we must assess these algorithms not only on their own terms, on some continuum of ‘successful outcome’ for example, but also – and most importantly – according to the everyday. Indeed, these two assessments might well be inversely related, such that as the ‘success’ of an algorithm increases, its integrity, judged according to the fecundity of the everyday, decreases. In any respect, the final assessment must be made under what is most comprehensive. Here we see that algorithms are successful because they remove the need for us to think through the everyday: they are efficient over the long-run only because thought has been reduced to calculation. Denuded of all else, thought – as replaced by routine calculation – meets the everyday not as it is, but as what might be repeated within

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it. As a repetition, the everyday is substituted by those parts which we hold to be self-evident, and these are unified (by way of their self-evidence, or their shared transparency) as sequence. This maintains the veneer of the everyday, but depth (or unity) is replaced with statistical or mathematical inevitability. What is lost is the need for thought; and so in principle absent is the possibility of an extraordinary understanding. Absent this, absent the everyday and its call to exercise thought, surely it would not be too far from the truth to describe the effect of these algorithms as a self-induced amnesia. Another word for it is madness. By contrast, a comprehensive understanding of reason should make us pause to consider the broader implications. Which is to say that, more broadly, we might only conserve the limits of the state, or come to realise what are the real boundaries of a technical understanding, under a truth disclosed as more than mere production or mathematical construction. For with this we preserve the distinction between the state as political and the truth which might inform but could never found it.

The problem, as I am arguing, is not with state intervention per se, but the deeper problem of how we understand politics and truth. Without addressing this, we are bound to misunderstand what we are, and so misconstrue why we do what we do. If addressing this results in less ‘nudging’ or in less crafting by the state of desire, or in a greater reticence to employ algorithms, or in a diminished desire to transform citizens into quasi-social scientists, then we might well wonder what will be lost. Won’t commercial interest rule? Here, I think, we must consider, once again, the distinction between what might be employed by the state to execute the truth, and what is essentially a non-theoretical function. We should consider in this regard that the state has available to it both direct and indirect means of influence.

Taxation is relatively indirect insofar as it operates at a distance, as it were. Behavioural psychology is more direct, or more intimate. Within behavioural psychology itself, moreover, we encounter a similar continuum: from the platitudinous presented as academically

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sanctified (e.g., sending people reminder notices to pay their bills) to the more intimate, such as prescriptions which rely on the psychology of marketing (e.g., influencing the behaviour of citizens with appeals to what they might/should value). The closer we come to direct influence the more we might label this an execution of the truth. For the intimacy of persuasion is distinguished from the bluntness of state regulation by its more subtle

(mis)understanding of human psychology. So too we must be wary of the wholly indirect, which, as with algorithms, would deny the psyche altogether. Rather, the state has available to it means to counter the triumph of invidious commercialism, means which lie within the extremes of the direct and the indirect. These means may be less efficient (such as commercially-applied regulation), but, they are, following the arguments I have presented here, less dangerous. For them to be recognised as such we must at least be aware of the distinction between state and citizen, and this distinction hinges on our understanding of politics and truth.

Following through with this would, of course, diminish our expectations of the state executive. The expectations of state executive actors would, likewise, also be diminished. For following what I propose, state executive actors would give up the desire to realise truth as state executive action and, as a corollary, judge their actions according to the limitations and thereby the danger of technical-rational thought and practice. If I might mix here the high and the low: in chapter one I mentioned that for Heidegger, following Hőlderlin, the danger is also the place of the saving power; for us, I would argue, the danger (whether that be superficial, such as ‘nudging’, or deeper, such as our love of technique) offers no place for redemption, but simply the place where danger must be put in its place (and restrained).

As I’ve detailed, only the everyday can guide us. Wittgenstein, as we discovered, can take us only part way there. For he must find his way back into an everyday animated only by what was previously anesthetised by the scientific philosophers, and so is unable to account for

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philosophical desire from within the everyday: philosophy could not arise in the polis except on the coat-tails of the decadent scientists and metaphysicians. Following Putnam, by contrast, the everyday becomes an unreal construction. It is an everyday constructed without us. And without us it is an everyday lacking the present. It makes no room for the significance of our practice.

With this in mind, I suggest that we must reorientate the relationship of the state to academia; a relationship which would be founded on the unavoidable significance of practice, in which the human sciences are in the end politically (and not merely technically) relevant only when rooted in what must precede production (under a technical mastery). To quote Rosen (2002:

297) again: ‘Ordinary experience is then not the solution any more than it is the problem: it is the medium within which problems and solutions arise, but it is also the standard against which we determine the plausibility of the interpretations put forward by one extraordinary thinker or another, interpretations of the problems as well as their presumed solutions.’

An Educational Reorientation

Returning from the extraordinary to the ordinariness of everyday life, this would see – ideally

– civil servants or bureaucrats occupying a role defined only by mathematical rationalism, which is to say in recognition that their function is in essence administrative, and could not, by this fact, encompass deeper questions of truth and meaning. This is more than the equation of truth with a value-free rationalism, as per Weber, because there is some recognition that a neutral or mathematically-derived rationality does not exhaust the question of truth. Neither is it to make of the universal state the objective structure of the will, as did Hegel. For with this, since the state exemplifies the unity of politics and rationality, it is kept in check (or limited) only if this is a unity understood to have been realised absolutely. Without this, we seek to make good on this promise of absolutes, or we seek to enact what Weber feared. What was

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feared by Weber, however, was seen by him to be overcome only with the absence of rationality. The vitality of meaning is sustained with the irrational (e.g., tradition, charisma etc.). As I’m arguing, though, the reasonable limits of executive action cannot be based on

Hegelian science, but nor can they be simply jettisoned following the more restricted understanding of Weber. The limits must be more visible to reason than what Weber imagined, and so too less metaphysical than understood by Hegel.

In bringing this about universities have a fundamental role. The training of bureaucrats, or those who would develop public policy, is currently a mix of the political and social sciences, along with a dash of law.107 This is carried through to the relationship of universities and the state, in which bureaucrats regularly consult with academics on matters of public policy, and academics seek out state funding, and in so doing present themselves as useful to its interests.

Although academics would ‘dumb-down’ their ‘results’ to match that of the bureaucrats’ needs, the advice provided is mostly impractical (because of the discord between abstract rules and embodied practice) or insubstantial (banal and platitudinous because of, once again, the discord between abstract rules and embodied practice).108 Bureaucrats, meanwhile, would

107 See the U.S. News and World Report’s top ranked (2012) Masters of Public Policy (http://grad- schools.usnews.rankingsandreviews.com/best-graduate-schools/top-public-affairs-schools/public-policy- analysis-rankings) offered at the Goldman School of Public Policy at The University of California, Berkeley. According to their website (https://gspp.berkeley.edu/academics/masters-degree-mpp, accessed February 2016) ‘the curriculum is designed to enable students to achieve the following: (1) Skill in written communication and in verbal reporting; (2) An understanding of political institutions and processes, strategies, and skills associated with policy creation and adoption; (3) Knowledge of the organizational and bureaucratic structures involved in program development and implementation; (4) Skill in application of economic analysis to questions of economic trade-off and policy choice and efficiency; (5) Familiarity with cost-benefit analysis and other applications of quantitative analysis and modeling, as well as the use of statistical software; (6) An understanding of social science methodologies for dealing with problems of data collection, analysis, and program evaluation; (7) The ability to apply legal analysis where appropriate to the creation and implementation of public policy and to recognize the role of courts and administrative law in program development and implementation.’ 108 The following statement from a paper titled Life Course Offending Pathways Across Gender and Race/Ethnicity is an example of the muddle in which social scientific researchers find themselves when aspiring to be both ‘theoretically’ and ‘practically’ relevant, and misunderstanding each. Add to this the use in this paper of sophisticated statistical analyses and one is reminded of the ancient sophists, albeit in a much cruder form: ‘Addressing these questions [of race, gender and criminal trajectories] will advance our understanding of the influence of intersectionality on longitudinal offending patterns and facilitate the broader goal of testing and

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reach beyond their own instituted political limitations to realise what is promised by the social and political sciences. This promise is the complete fulfilment of the bureaucratic role, and would thereby encompass and so overcome this role’s political limitations.

As I have argued throughout this thesis, this resolution is deleterious. It is deleterious to politics because it equates truth with its execution. To counter this, firstly the social and political sciences should be separated from the executive functions of the state. If this removes their raison d’être then well and good, for the education of future civil servants should begin with a serious (and philosophical) study of the everyday. This, as I have been arguing, is the only way in which they might come to understand what they are (which is not merely universal political advisors), and thereby gain some protection from the Quixotic desire to execute the truth. For our desire for truth is at bottom the desire to live well. Since it is a desire which cannot be wholly disentangled from politics and cannot be substituted by it, we are bound to begin with what is not self-evident, namely, ourselves.

refining the theoretical mechanisms that might account for varied pathways within and across subgroups defined by the intersection of gender and race/ethnicity’ (Broidy et al. 2015: 120).

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