MIAMI UNIVERSITY The Graduate School
Certificate for Approving the Dissertation
We hereby approve the Dissertation
Of
Robert G. Karaba
Candidate for the Degree:
Doctor of Philosophy
______Co-Director Dr. Kathleen Knight Abowitz
______Co-Director Dr. Richard Quantz
______Reader Dr. Dennis Carlson
______Graduate School Representative Dr. James Kelly ABSTRACT
MAKING SENSE OF FREEDOM IN EDUCATION: THREE ELEMENTS OF NEOLIBERAL AND PRAGMATIC PHILOSOPHICAL FRAMEWORKS
By Robert Karaba
This dissertation interprets our current cultural educational practices of marginalizing civic education and the humanities and enacting charter school laws under “free-market” rationale as representing the erosion of the “public” in public schools in the name of a particular (i.e., neoliberal) conception of freedom, which neglects democratic goals and democratic control of the schools in favor of “market ideology.” Market ideology holds a neoliberal conception of freedom as a supreme value. By examining the neoliberal philosophy of freedom as presented by Friedrich A. Hayek in his work, The Constitution of Liberty, it is shown that within Hayek’s philosophical framework an ethical dilemma arises between democratic public goods and freedom (i.e., concern for the public good is seen as the greatest threat to liberty). And freedom most often wins. What results is economic oppression, and public spaces— such as schools, the media, and the environment—being eroded in the name of freedom. Therefore, making sense of “freedom” from a neoliberal standpoint contributes to the erosion of the “public” in public schools. Using the American pragmatism of primarily John Dewey, yet also G.H. Mead, Richard Rorty, and other more current pragmatic thinkers, this project seeks to re-construct the meaning of freedom so that it is consistent with democratic public goods, not antithetical to them. Using pragmatism as methodology means that this is not an inquiry into what “freedom” really is, but rather this dissertation is about the meaning-making experience of the significant symbol “freedom,” and the reconstruction of that experience for particular ethico-politico purposes. The reconstruction of “freedom” that I seek will not be easy because the neoliberal conception of freedom is part of our dominant, cultural discourse of freedom. This neoliberal notion of freedom logically fits within certain other central elements or philosophical tenets within what Charles Taylor calls the “modern Western identity.” These include core beliefs about 1) the ontological status of the individual, 2) the aim of an onto-epistemological project, and 3) the source of moral authority. Thus, I claim the dominance of the neoliberal discourse of freedom is partially due to the internal consistency of its specific meaning of freedom with these three central elements of the current, modern Western philosophical framework.
MAKING SENSE OF FREEDOM IN EDUCATION: THREE ELEMENTS OF NEOLIBERAL AND PRAGMATIC PHILOSOPHICAL FRAMEWORKS
A DISSERTATION
Submitted to the Faculty of
Miami University in partial
fulfillment of the requirements
for the degree of
Doctor of Philosophy
Department of Educational Leadership
by
Robert G. Karaba
Miami University
Oxford, Ohio
2007
Dissertation Co-Directors: Dr. Kathleen Knight Abowitz and Dr. Richard Quantz Table of Contents
Page # Introduction 1 Why Neoliberalism? 3 Why Pragmatism? 6
Chapter 1: Hayek’s Neoliberal Philosophical Framework of Freedom 8 Individualizing Freedom 10 Naturalizing Freedom: The Laws of Liberty 13 Submitting to Freedom 19 Summary of Hayek’s Neoliberal Philosophical Framework of Freedom 28
Chapter Two: A Pragmatic Philosophy of Self 32 Mead’s Pragmatic Project of the Self 33 Mead’s Biosocial Explanation of the Self 35 The Myth of Autonomy 39 Chapter Summary 43
Chapter 3: On Pragmatism as Methodology 45 Pragmatic Ontology’s Focus on the Intersubjective Experiences of Making Meaning of Significant Symbols 46 The Edificatory Purpose of Philosophy: Re-naming of Significant Symbols for Ethico-Political Purposes 54 The Place of Reason 58 Summary of methodology 63
Chapter 4: Reconstructing the Experience of Freedom 65 Pragmatic Sources of Moral Authority: Intelligence, Caring, and Diversity 67 Freedom as a Concrete, Relational, Intelligent, Positive Power 76 Contextualizing Freedom: Asymmetry of Power Today 80
Chapter 5: Neoliberal Philosophy of Freedom in Education 85 Neoliberal Discourse about the Control of Public Schools 85 The Neoliberal Discourse of Civic Education 92 Concluding Remarks and Guidelines from Pragmatic Discourse 94
Works Cited 97
ii ACKOWLEDGEMENTS
This dissertation would not have been undertaken if it were not for the support of Miami University’s Department of Educational Leadership, and in particular, Dr. Richard Quantz and Dr. Kathleen Knight Abowitz. I thank them both for encouraging and supporting me before I ever physically arrived. My independent study with Prof. Knight Abowitz, in which she led my investigation into just what philosophy of education means, was particularly important to my understanding of pragmatism. Her detailed comments and well-placed questions proved invaluable to strengthening the project. Prof. Quantz seemingly knew where I was going before I got there. He shared some of his apparently limitless breadth and depth of knowledge with me in a patient manner. I am truly grateful to you both for all the time you have spent reading, criticizing, editing (from the technical to the substantive), and sharing your wisdom with me. I would also like to thank my entire committee, which included Dr. Dennis Carlson and Dr. Jim Kelly. They urged changes in my original proposal on the grounds of irrelevancy, and I am glad I followed their advice. I hope that by taking their suggestion I have produced a dissertation with more meaning for more people. Without the coaching from my wife, Donna, I would never have followed my interest in philosophy and education professionally, and thus embarked on the journey of graduate school. It’s all because of you. I would also like to thank my sons, Ty and Cole. You really did not have a choice to pack up and move from our neighborhood and friends in Colorado for Dad to pursue his interests. Living in a community temporarily for four years was harder than I imagined, and you both did it with flexibility and grace. Thank you for your sacrifice and for not complaining on this adventure with Mom and me. You are both stars.
iii Making Sense of Freedom in Education: Three Elements of Neoliberal and Pragmatic Philosophical Frameworks
Introduction Educational discourses are informed by discourses of freedom. How we make sense of freedom impacts the thought, talk and practice of education. Furthermore, in our current culture, liberty is held as a supreme value; so discourses of freedom work their way into our educational discourses even more straightforwardly than many other discourses.1 Almost every, if not all, educational theory has freedom as a general aim; whether explicitly or implicitly, knowingly or not, education, as opposed to training, is for liberation. Our ideas about freedom, for instance, directly affect our policies, practices, language and thought in regards to the curriculum of our public schools and issues of who controls schooling decisions. 2 Abraham Lincoln stated, “We all declare for liberty: but in using the same word, we do not mean the same thing.”3 Lincoln accurately points to the possibility of conceptual disagreements over what freedom means, and as such there may be conflicts in educating for liberty. Yet, I am concerned things have changed since Lincoln’s insight. In our present culture there no longer seems to be a conceptual disagreement over freedom. Do we not all have a “common sense” notion of what “freedom” means? Is there any debate over the term “liberty?” It appears the neoliberal conception has won. This victory is evidenced in the marginalization of civic education and the humanities in the public school curriculum, and in the current legislation for school choice that serves “free market” rationale. Alternatively stated, this dissertation interprets these educational practices as representing the erosion of the “public” in public schools in the name of a particular (i.e. neoliberal) discourse of freedom.
1 Throughout this dissertation I agree with Friedrich A. Hayek that there is no useful distinction between liberty and freedom; hence I will use the terms interchangeably. See F.A. Hayek, The Constitution of Liberty (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1960), 421. Page numbers for further reference (COL) will appear in text. 2 See Chapter 5 for a more complete discussion of the influence of neoliberal ideas of freedom on these two educational discourses. 3 Abraham Lincoln as quoted in F.A. Hayek, (COL, 11).
1 We make sense of “freedom” partly through the explicit expression of the meaning of the term, and that meaning coherently fitting together with other beliefs. The articulation of the term and the logical interrelation of that articulation with other ideas about the way the world is, the way we know it, and the way we should act within it is what Charles Taylor calls “inescapable frameworks,”4 and what I will name “philosophical frameworks.” So, philosophical frameworks aid in sense making by articulating and coherently interrelating explicit notions. The internal consistencies between overt ideas used within philosophical frameworks strengthen those frameworks. Discourses include, but are not encompassed by, explicit talk and thought. In other words, philosophical frameworks are part of the more general category of discourse. Discourse, as I am using the term, is meant to emphasize the often assumed, implicit, socio-cultural dimensions of making meaning. In this sense, discourses are historical traditions of language use and ways of thinking. Thus, when I say a discourse of freedom, for example, I am referring to an accustomed way of talking about and thinking about freedom. These ways are most often implicit and assumed. As such, discourses as traditions govern our thinking, practice, and meaning-making experiences and are thus infused with power. For example, one of the ways in which a discourse of freedom exercises power is that by framing “freedom” in one way precludes thinking about freedom in another way. There is an “opportunity cost” of sorts, for if one makes sense of freedom in one way then that excludes making sense in alternative ways. All discourses may have contradictions within them, but it is the aim of philosophical frameworks to attempt to coherently and explicitly articulate consistencies between ideas, which produce a kind of logical structure that fosters making meaning in particular ways. As such, philosophical frameworks are mutually supportive with discourses. It is not the project of the dissertation to uncover the inconsistencies within discourses of freedom. This dissertation is meant to unveil two different philosophical frameworks of freedom, that is, the logical consistencies between their explicit notions of freedom and how those notions fit with their respective ideas about the way the world is, the way we know it, and the way we should act within it. Alternatively stated, my project
4 Charles Taylor, Sources of the Self: The Making of the Modern Identity (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1989). Page numbers for further references (SOS) appear in text.
2 is, in part, to show how two discourses of freedom overtly make sense of their particular notions of freedom. I start by offering an explanation that the neoliberal conception of freedom is part of our dominant discourse of freedom because it logically fits within certain central elements within the modern Western identity’s philosophical framework.5 For our purposes here, a particular discourse or way of making sense of “freedom” relies partially on coherently connecting a specific notion of freedom with other philosophical tenets. More specifically, this dissertation examines the philosophical framework of Friedrich A. Hayek as representative of the neoliberal philosophy of freedom. 6 In other words, I seek to uncover the explicit philosophical ideas that directly relate to how freedom is made sense of from a neoliberal perspective. This is a framework that includes core beliefs about the ontological status of the individual, the aim of an onto-epistemological project, and the source of moral authority. Thus, I claim the dominance of the neoliberal discourse of freedom is partially due to the internal consistency of its specific meaning of freedom with these three central elements of the current, modern Western identity. Chapter 1 also points to what I consider to be problems with the neoliberal conception of freedom and its associated philosophical framework. Thus, in Chapters 2-4 I will re-present a pragmatic philosophy of freedom with its alternative chief elements that make up its philosophical framework. Yet, the question remains, why neoliberalism and why pragmatism? I will take each issue in its turn. Why Neoliberalism? I claim that the neoliberal discourse of freedom dominates our culture at present, and thus that neoliberal discourse and its respective philosophical framework of freedom influence certain current educational debates, policies, and practices.7 Neoliberal discourse gives rise to what Michael Engel calls “market ideology.” Because of the ascendancy of neoliberal discourse and market ideology in the public discourse today, the Deweyan ideals of democracy get short shrift. Engel laments that
5 I will be using the term “modern Western identity” throughout, and all uses correspond to Charles Taylor’s usage of the term in Sources Of the Self (op. cit.), where he depicts the modern Western identity as fractious, yet with certain dominant strands. In other words, the modern Western identity is used as an ideal type in the Weberian sense. 6 I use Hayek’s The Constitution of Liberty, (op. cit.) as the main presentation of his philosophy of freedom. 7 Again, see Chapter 5 for a more complete discussion of two examples.
3 Current-day discussions about the future of education are conducted almost entirely in the language of the free market: individual achievement, competition, choice, economic growth, and national security—with only occasional lip service being given to egalitarian and democratic goals… market ideology’s virtually unchallenged dominance threatens the very existence of public education as a social institution, because its logic ultimately eliminates any justification for collective and democratic control of the schools.8 A cursory look at recent media reports and political discussions reveals school officials and politicians justify “investments” in education as a way to compete in the global economy, and as a way to grow a local economy to develop a larger tax base. The banality of headlines such as, “Schools a strong investment, universities to tell law makers,”9 and “Award lauds efforts to prepare students for workforce” 10 corroborate and provide verity to Engel’s depiction of the supremacy of neoliberal discourse. Thus this dissertation starts with the assumption that we ought to take neoliberal discourse seriously. This is because I agree with Engel that neoliberalism is the dominant ethico-politico11 discourse of liberalism within the current modern Western identity. Although some may not see this as a problem, its dominance concerns me for many reasons—one of which is the same as Engel’s concern that American educational discourse is being usurped by neoliberal ideology resulting in the erosion of “collective and democratic control of the schools.” Suffice it to say at this juncture that I concur with Richard Quantz that neoliberalism’s success in infiltrating the national discourse and the modern Western identity shuts out alternative discourses and appears to render them
8 Michael Engel, The Struggle for Control of Public Education: Market Ideology vs. Democratic Values (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2000), 3-6. Page numbers for further references (SCPE) appear in text. 9 Lori Kurtzman, “Schools a strong investment, universities to tell law makers,” Cincinnati Enquirer, 8 March 2005, sec. A, p. 1. 10 John Wright, “Award lauds efforts to prepare students for workforce,” Oxford Press, 21 October 2005, sec. A, p. 12. 11 The term ethico-politico is used from Richard Bernstein, TheT New Constellation: The Ethical-Political Horizons of Modernity/Postmodernity (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1992) who attributes the use to the ancient Greeks to depict the distinguishable, but inseparatability of ethics from politics and social philosophy.
4 irrelevant in everyday American culture.12 And neoliberalism’s success means it must be taken seriously. In particular, Chapter 1 of this dissertation takes neoliberalism seriously by looking at Hayek’s philosophical language in The Constitution of Liberty. Hayek is oft cited as the father of neoliberalism and his Constitution of Liberty is the book that Margaret Thatcher held up for all to see and slammed down on a table in a meeting at the British think tank’s Conservative Research Department. Then she proclaimed, “This is what we believe.”13 It is important to note that Hayek himself came from the specific socio-cultural-historical context of Europe in the first half of the 20th century. Furthermore Hayek himself explains that his ideas were written for that particular audience and not the United States.14 Still, thinkers such as Milton Friedman have imported his ideas to America and those notions have found fertile soil and taken root.15 Nevertheless, because of Hayek’s formulation of freedom and the clarity and detail of his philosophical language in The Constitution of Liberty, I suggest that his is the quintessential representation of how neoliberal philosophy conceives of and makes sense of freedom. Although Hayek’s neoliberal philosophy of freedom comes from the seeds of the liberal tradition, I do not equate neoliberalism with all liberalism. As is more explicitly treated in Chapters 1 and 4; other strands of liberalism conflict with the neoliberal version. Neoliberalism is both similar to and distinct from more general liberalism, and I am only addressing the neoliberal strand, as expressed by Hayek, in this dissertation. As Chapter 1 reveals, my investigation into how neoliberal discourse makes sense of freedom shows that within Hayek’s philosophical framework “freedom” is positioned as mutually exclusive with democratic public goods.16 Therefore, an ethical dilemma arises between the values of “individual freedom” and democratic public goods.
12 Personal communication, Summer 2006. 13 John Ranelagh, Thatcher’s People (Hammersmith, London: HarperCollins Publishers, 1991), ix. 14 See F. A. Hayek, The Road to Serfdom (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1994). See the preface, especially xxvii. 15 Milton Friedman, Capitalism and Freedom (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1962). 16 I will use the term “democratic public goods” throughout in the Deweyan sense as collective, associative, and public goods such as social welfare and robust public spaces. See especially, John Dewey, “Liberty and Social Control,” in The Political Writings, ed. Debra Morris and Ian Shapiro (Indianapolis, IN: Hackett Publishing Company, 1993).
5 Furthermore for the neoliberal, the value of individual freedom most often trumps that of public goods. Why Pragmatism? I argue in Chapter 1 that the neoliberal philosophy of freedom results in the economic oppression of people (and thus human suffering) as well as a kind of “tragedy of the commons.” My ethico-politico commitments are for the elimination of suffering and for a Deweyan sense of democratic public goods. This dissertation also argues that a pragmatic philosophy of freedom is one that avoids the ethical dilemma between freedom and democratic public goods, and as such it is a way to make sense of the significant symbol “freedom” that is logically consistent with democratic public goods. In other words, I suggest that a pragmatic philosophy of freedom can be used to ameliorate the human suffering that arises from economic oppression and to enhance democratic public goods. Furthermore, my philosophical commitments are to American pragmatism. The three central elements of the pragmatic philosophical framework of freedom that I will elaborate on are different than those of the neoliberal framework. Pragmatism’s alternative philosophical tenets (what the ontological status of the individual is, what the philosophical project is, and what the source of moral authority is) make more sense to me, personally. So, the other reason I have chosen pragmatism is because the pragmatic philosophical framework itself is more appealing to me than the more traditional philosophical framework on which the neoliberal conception of freedom relies. 17 This project embraces the pragmatic methodology that I describe in Chapter 3. In other words, this dissertation is not a search for the True meaning of freedom. I seek not to reflect what freedom really is, nor only to mirror how our culture makes sense of freedom; but I seek to re-create the meaning-making experience of the significant symbol “freedom.” I am attempting to change what is, in the hopes of what can be. I hope to reconstruct “freedom” in a way that avoids pitting liberty against democratic public goods.
17 It is important to note, and I will elaborate in Chapter 3, that I am not arguing that pragmatism is the one “right” philosophical framework; only, that it is a framework that can be used as I have described here.
6 Noting that “freedom” is wrapped up within inescapable philosophical frameworks and discourses means that to reconstruct the meaning-making experience of the significant symbol “freedom” is to reconstruct the philosophical framework and discourse in which the significant symbol “freedom” is embedded. This is a problem because in confronting the neoliberal discourse of freedom, I am confronting the entire philosophical framework that is ingrained in our current Western identity. In other words, in challenging the dominant neoliberal conception of freedom I am challenging three dominant philosophical tenets of the tradition of Western thought. Framed in this way, my underlying task is daunting, and it is not a task I expect to accomplish here. What I do hope to accomplish is to help in the process of de-constructing the dominant neoliberal framework by pointing to some problems that I believe neoliberals must confront, and to re-construct, by way of re-presenting a pragmatic philosophical framework, an alternative way to make sense of freedom in which liberty is consistent with democratic public goods. It is in the spirit of re-presenting pragmatism that I offer Chapters 2, 3, and 4. More particularly, Chapter 2 offers George Herbert Mead’s theory of self as representative of the pragmatic philosophy of self. Chapter 3 draws upon Dewey and Richard Rorty to describe pragmatism as methodology, which is also the same methodology that I am using for this project. Chapter 4 unveils pragmatic sources of moral authority and re-presents a resulting pragmatic notion of freedom. Finally, in Chapter 5 I will connect the neoliberal discourse of freedom to our educational debates, policies and practices of school choice, and the marginalization of civic education and the humanities in the public school curriculum. In the same chapter I will briefly outline parameters for schooling debates, policies and practices as indicated by a pragmatic philosophy of freedom that uses a social sense of self, a project of making meaning instead of discovery, and humanity itself as a source of moral authority.
7
Chapter 1: Hayek’s Neoliberal Philosophical Framework of Freedom As a philosopher I tend to privilege philosophical articulations as the impetus of change and the cause of a culture’s acceptance and implementation of new ideas about the way the world is, the way we know it, and the way we should act. 18 I sometimes get caught in both the oversimplification and reverse causation trap that sees history and cultural practices as overly influenced by philosophical formulations. Consequently, I am offering a warning to others and myself against a view that sees history and cultural practices as following, and never leading to the suggestions and dictates of philosophies. In spite of Marx’s proclamation for philosophers to change the world instead of just interpreting it, it is more likely we are articulating what is already happening in a culture. This is not to deny that philosophical articulations may instigate new directions. I simply wish to issue a cautionary note: I do not intend to offer a causal explanation for current cultural discourses but merely to interpret particular philosophical expressions within the general discourse of liberalism. Furthermore, I am not looking at the entire liberal discourse of freedom, only a certain philosophical formulation. It is important to recognize the incompleteness of the project: that liberal discourse extends beyond both philosophical language and the more specific strand of liberalism I will be discussing here. This chapter is meant to unveil Hayek’s notion of freedom and its corresponding philosophical framework. In other words, I intend to use the philosophical expressions of Hayek to help explain why the neoliberal account of freedom makes sense to the modern Western identity. Given three key assumptions, or philosophical beliefs in Hayek’s framework, his particular conception of freedom makes sense. Thus, in this chapter I will be interpreting Hayek’s philosophical language as representative of the neoliberal philosophical framework in order to represent how neoliberal discourse makes sense of freedom. This chapter is not, by any means, meant to represent all liberal philosophical expressions; yet, the neoliberal philosophical framework is rooted in the general tradition
18 The theme of over emphasizing philosophy’s importance is emphasized by Charles Taylor, 1989, op. cit.
8 of liberalism and conventional Western philosophy. The terms liberal and liberalism as a particular social philosophy appeared at the beginning of the nineteenth century, although the ideas they refer to go back as far as ancient Greece.19 The liberalism I am referring to began as a response to the oppressiveness of the tyrannical governments of the early 1800’s. It was liberalism’s original goal to free the individual from those oppressive states. From this common ground sprung two different schools of thought as to how to achieve that goal: what can be referred to as the “laissez faire” and “utilitarian” strands of liberalism. “American liberalism involves both a laissez-faire theme that maximizes individual liberties and a social welfare theme that encompasses principles of equality of opportunity and justice.”20 The later social welfare theme that Knight Abowitz is speaking of comes from a utilitarian concern for increasing the greatest amount of good as expressed by nineteenth century Benthamites (LSA, p19). Accordingly, I will refer to that strand of American liberalism as utilitarian liberalism. This chapter and dissertation are more focused on what may be called laissez faire liberalism, what Dewey calls economic liberalism,21 and what the scholarly discourse of today calls neoliberalism.22 Laissez faire liberalism, or neoliberalism, is a strand of liberalism that is both congruent and conflicting with the utilitarian strand. It is congruent with utilitarian liberalism in the sense that it may still seek the same goal of maximizing the greatest good. For instance, I think Hayek has good intentions and truly believes that he knows the path to the greater good and social progress. Yet, laissez faire liberalism conflicts with the utilitarian conception because of the neoliberal belief that the path to social progress and maximizing the greatest good is un-designed, individual pursuit of private interests and goods. It paradoxically abandons concern and planning for the social good in the faith that individual freedom is the best means of achieving the greatest good. Neglecting public goods, although seemingly callous, is necessary because
19 John Dewey, Liberalism and Social Action (New York, NY: G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 1935). Page numbers for further references (LSA) appear in text. 20 Kathleen Knight Abowitz, Making Meaning of Community in an American High School: A Feminist- Pragmatist Critique of the Liberal-Communitarian Debates (Cresskill, NJ: Hampton Press, 2000), 24. 21 John Dewey, 1935, op.cit. 22 I am equating laissez faire liberalism with neoliberalism.
9 concern for the social good is contradictory to individual freedom, and individual freedom is what maximizes the greatest good. This is the American liberalism that finds itself in the expressions of Hayek, and it is his philosophical language that I am addressing in this chapter. Considered to be the founder of neoliberalism23 Hayek’s writing is well suited to represent neoliberal discourse. I believe it is important to see both what ideas Hayek relies on and how those ideas interrelate with one another to form a neoliberal philosophical framework, because Hayek’s philosophical formulations help show how a dominant discourse within the modern Western identity makes sense of “freedom.” His writings reveal how neoliberalism constructs freedom as conflicting with democratic public goods. Hayek aids the neoliberal understanding of freedom by consistently fitting a certain idea of “freedom” with the other ideas that make up a neoliberal philosophical framework. In this chapter I will interpret Hayek’s philosophical language about freedom (what it is, where it is found, how it is known, and how we should act in respect to it) to reveal how these ideas fit together within a seemingly internally consistent philosophical framework. The three elements within Hayek’s philosophical framework that directly relate to his philosophy of freedom are: his idea of self (individualizing freedom), his notions of what the philosophical project is (naturalizing freedom), and where he locates the source of moral authority (submitting to freedom). Individualizing Freedom Hayek and laissez faire liberalism begin with the central concept that the world consists of individuals who are separate from, but together make up, society. Liberalism is equated with individualism.24 There is, an inevitable antagonism between the individual and society. The individual is not taken as someone who is essentially a social being, but rather as an atomistic, vulnerable being who needs to be protected from an abstract entity called ‘the society’. 25
23 Yildez Silier, Freedom: Political, Metaphysical, Negative and Positive (Burlington, VT: Ashgate Publishing, 2005), 11. 24 Barekh Parekh, “The Liberal Discourse on Violence” in Selves, People and Persons, edited by Leroy Rouner (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1992), p. 188. 25 Yildez Silier, 2005, op. cit., 9.
10 An individual is seen as existing prior to and separate from society, finding itself in the world. While recognizing the multifarious views of humans and society within the liberal tradition, E. M. Adams highlights the, “basic tenets that have been widely accepted which may be taken as defining the position.”26 The first tenet is that, “everyone is capable of being a free, responsible person in society.” 27 By using the prepositional phrase, “person in society,” as opposed to person of society, Adams reflects liberalism’s central ontological concept of a dichotomy between the individual self and society. This conception of self did not arise from a vacuum but rather was enmeshed in other historical and cultural developments of the West.28 Recorded Western philosophies of self began with recorded philosophy itself, namely Plato. For Plato and the ancient Greeks, human selves shared participation in the form of humanity. By definition, human selves had certain eternal characteristics that made them human. If a being did not have those essences, then it was not a human self. More particular selves, (that is me, you and every individual self), also had certain characteristic essences that make me “me,” you “you,” and every individual self “itself.” The human self was an objective, everlasting spiritual entity that participated in the form of humanity and had eternal defining essences. With Descartes, the Western world moved into modernity. According to Oliver, “We must conclude that Descartes invented the modern notion of the subject which has been pervasive in most Western philosophy.”29 Descartes’s legacy is one in which most often the subject, or separate and distinct self, has been subjectified. What this subjectification means, is that the self, “can’t be easily conceived as just another piece of the natural world. It is hard for us simply to list souls or minds alongside whatever else there is” (SOS, 175, emphasis in original). We do not like to think of ourselves as subject to the causal laws of nature. Our bodies may be part of that external noumenal world, but we would like to think that our souls, and therefore our selves, are not. They exist on a
26 E.M. Adams, “The Liberal View of Man and Society,” Carolina Quarterly, Fall-Winter, 1958: 214. 27 Ibid 28 Charles Taylor, 1989, op.cit. 29 Harold Oliver, “The Relational Self,” in Selves, People and Persons, edited by Leroy Rouner (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1992), 38.
11 different ontological level. As science became better at explaining the casual factors in the external world, our concept of selves became further removed from that world and the chasm between the objective noumenal world and the internal subjective world grew.30 Yet, the ontological split between self and society does not necessarily mean subjectivism. Although it may be true that all subjectivism is individual, the converse is false. Tauber, for example, examines numerous naturalistic accounts of an individual self from the biological discourses of genetics, evolutionary theory, and neuroscience. He traces these naturalistic accounts of the self back to Locke’s empiricist tabula rasa that is objectively in the world being acted upon by sense data.31 These reductionist accounts of the self are also consistent with liberalism because they still posit an individual, in this case a material individual, as separate from the society that groups of individuals form. Thus, individuals who are material, spiritual, objective, and subjective are all represented in liberal discourse. It is the subject’s condition in the world as separate from society that is important, not the ontological form that subject takes. The split between self and society, also, does not necessarily negate influential interaction between the social and the individual, which means society (i.e. the conglomerate of other individuals that make up society) and other separate beings can causally influence individual selves. However, society and other individuals do not constitute the self in any meaningful sense; the individual self is seen as ontologically distinct from society and others. Appeals to common sense examples, such as when someone else is tortured, we know it is not I that is being tortured, 32 are effectively used to support this position. The argument is reminiscent of Descartes’s: we can distinguish between individuals; therefore, they are distinct and separate individuals. These premises are used not to deny the social aspects of the self, only to demonstrate that the social influences of self do not exhaust the entirety of the self. Thus, the neoliberal philosophical framework includes the central concept of the common belief in the binary metaphysic of an individual self that is a distinct entity that
30 Charles Taylor explains that within the modern Western identity, as the world became more objectified through science, the view of our “selves” became more subjective, 1989, op.cit. 31 Alfred Tauber, “The Organismal Self in Its Philosophical Context.” Selves, People and Persons, edited by Leroy Rouner. (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1992). 32Lawrence Cahoone, “Limits of the Social and Rational Self.” in Selves, People and Persons, edited by Leroy Rouner. (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1992).
12 exists discretely from the society that it inhabits. It is the separation of the subject from society that is important, not the specific form of that subject. This dichotomy is important because the conflict between public goods and freedom arises from a framework that utilizes a dualistic ontology of self and society as one of its central tenets. Naturalizing Freedom: The Laws of Liberty Hayek’s philosophical framework constructs freedom as antithetical to democratic public goods, especially political action and social control policies for social welfare and enhancing public spaces. Part of making meaning of freedom in this way is connected with the dominant Western view of a self as ontologically distinct and separate from the social world that it inhabits. This view of self also fits with a specific onto- epistemological33 project, one that is equivalent to traditional philosophy’s project.34 In short, because the self, qua knower, is separate from that which is to be known, the onto- epistemological goal is to “discover” what is “really” real about that externality’s properties as opposed to what only appears to be real, and then to make true statements about those properties. This is how Hayek sees his philosophical project, and it is the second element in his philosophical framework that also appeals to the current Western identity. He sees, as I suggest most in our culture also see, a project about freedom as discovering the truths of freedom. To discover these truths Hayek locates “freedom,” as he positions all social mores, in the external world of society. As such, his goal is to discover freedom, and contribute to the “science of liberty” (COL, 148). With this particular onto- epistemological project, Hayek confronts the problem of how to learn and inquire about “freedom” as located in the external world. He describes his dichotomous choice as that between British Empiricism and French Rationalism, and Hayek clearly sides with the empiricists. With Hayek’s picture of a self/knower as separate and distinct from that which is to be known, the onto-epistemological project becomes one in which the knower needs to figure out how to discover truths “about” freedom. Hayek believes in a binary relationship between the empiricist tradition that sees social rules and mores as evolving through the natural processes of trial and error, a
33 I will use the term “onto-epistemological” to refer to the interconnection between how something is conceived and how one learns about it. 34 I more fully depict what I mean by “traditional philosophy” in Chapter 3.
13 survival of the fittest if you will, against the rationalist tradition that sees social rules and mores as developing by human design. If we adopt this dichotomous relationship, then these contrasting explanations are mutually exclusive and cannot both be correct; either the British Empiricists are right, and, therefore, social mores, (such as freedom), are part of the natural process, and thus discovered, or the French Rationalists are right and the mores of society, including freedom, are created by human reason and will. In arguing for British empiricism, Hayek uses the premise that social rules and mores exist without rational consciousness. Life of man in society, or even of the social animals in groups, is made possible by the individuals acting according to certain rules. With the growth of intelligence, these rules tend to develop from unconscious habits into explicit and articulated statements and at the same time to become more abstract and general. Our familiarity with the institutions of law prevents us from seeing how subtle and complex a device the delimitation of individual spheres by abstract rules is. If it had been deliberately designed, it would deserve to rank among the greatest of human inventions. But it has, of course, been as little invented by any one mind as language or money or most of the practices and conventions on which social life rests. (COL, 148) So, according to Hayek, social rules, including morality and freedom, are not created, but discovered in the external world of social action and then put into words by humans. Hayek uses an example of a social rule that is found in animal societies. A degree of order, preventing too frequent fights or interference with the search of food, etc., here arises often from the fact that the individual, as it strays farther from its lair, becomes less ready to fight. In consequence, when two individuals meet at some intermediate place, one of them will usually withdraw without an actual trial of strength. Thus a sphere belonging to each individual is determined, not by the demarcation of a concrete boundary, but by the observation of a rule—a rule, of course, that is not known as such by the individual but that is honored in action. (COL, 148-149, emphasis added)
14 Hayek uses this example of the abstract rule of territorial defense to argue that through observation, humans discover, and do not create, rules of social action because the social rules of behavior exist before the articulation; action that conforms to social rules is there, whether there is consciousness of that conformity or not. Thus, the rules and mores that guide society are not pre-planned by the intelligence of man, but have developed from a course of nature, like the passage of time. For Hayek, rules that guide social action and the development of social institutions evolve through a natural process of trial and error, not by human rational design. From these conceptions gradually grew a body of social theory that showed how, in the relations among men, complex and orderly and, in a very definite sense, purposive institutions might grow up which owed little to design, which were not invented but arose from the separate actions of many men who did not know what they were doing. (COL, 58-59) Thus, Hayek’s metaphysical view is that social rules and institutions arise from natural processes, not from intelligent forethought of individuals. Social rules are followed even if they are not consciously discovered and articulated. In other words, we follow natural social rules whether we have “discovered” them and are aware of them, or not. Therefore the source of social rules, mores, and institutions is nature, not reason. In addition, for Hayek, not all social mores are good; some may lead to a society’s demise. These considerations, of course, do not prove that all the sets of moral beliefs which have grown up in a society will be beneficial. Just as a group may owe its rise to the morals which its members obey, and their values in consequence be ultimately imitated by the whole nation which the successful group has come to lead, so may a group or nation destroy itself by the moral beliefs to which it adheres. Only the eventual results can show whether the ideals which guide a group are beneficial or destructive. (COL, 67) The rules, institutions, and mores of a society that are empirically successful are the ones that result in the survival of that society. These are the beneficial mores. Although Hayek does not use these terms, he is, in a sense, saying that the survival of the fittest and
15 natural selection also applies to societies, and that the survival of a society is evidence that its particular social mores are the right ones. Morality is an empirical matter. And it is social theory’s task not to create, but to discover and articulate the social mores that are part of nature, and that result in the continued survival of a society. From Hayek’s self-described British empiricist roots, freedom is one of those social mores that are part of the laws of nature. In other words, freedom is not a human invention and idea, but exists in the natural order and rule of things that, in principle, can be observed and discovered. As such, Hayek sees his task as discovering the abstract rules and laws of freedom in order to formulate those laws into words. He sees himself as articulating the eternal, objective form of freedom, which exists in the observable, natural order of things. Thus he declares his intention to contribute to the “science of liberty”(COL, 148). This is an important metaphysical point because if the laws of freedom are laws of nature, then they are as unalterable as, say, the law of gravity or laws of genetics. So, if the laws of freedom are objective, natural and discovered in the world, then if we manipulate them, as we do with say manipulating the genetic manipulation of plants, then we are going against nature and the responsibility for that choice lies with humans, not with nature. Nature exists separately from human will and reason. We, as humans, should at least know that it is we who are altering nature in the name of another value, such as the social good, in lieu of the natural value of freedom. As such, a distinction arises between inability and unfreedom. For instance, because we are not naturally flying animals, it is not an unfreedom that I cannot jump out my window and fly down to the office. That is a natural inability. For Hayek, when action is restrained by the natural order of things, then that restraint is not an unfreedom, but an inability. It is only when action is restrained or coerced by other humans, not nature, that inability becomes unfreedom. For Hayek, only human reason and will, (as dichotomous with nature), are threats to freedom. Freedom, for Hayek, is located in the objective external world, and his tactic for discovery is to use reason to grasp the abstract principles that can be observed empirically. Thus, Hayek naturalizes freedom. He sees his task as discovering the natural laws of liberty. What attributes of laws of liberty has Hayek discovered through
16 his work? What principles must all legislation conform to in order to preserve and enlarge freedom? What are limits to legislation if the legislation is to be a law for freedom? Hayek outlines three meta-laws of which the second seems trivial for our purposes, but which the first and third are all-important. Hayek’s first discovered attribute is for the law to recognize the public/private distinction. Once again relying on the individual/social dichotomy, Hayek sees the private, individual realm as separate from the public, social world. There is a private sphere that should not be infringed upon, and any infringement into the private sphere is an infringement of freedom. The public/private dichotomy is one that is shared by all liberalism because it stems from the root of the individual/social distinction. “The two strands of liberal theory—individual autonomy and social welfare—are united by one central theme that runs throughout these sometimes conflicting streams of liberalism: the segregation of public and private interests.”35 Thus, Hayek’s first principle of law and liberty is a principle shared by the general discourse of liberalism, the recognition of a binary split between the public and private realms. In this case, the laws of liberty are laws that are restricted to either the public sphere or to protect the private sphere from infringement. Hayek’s second law of liberty and legislation is that the law must be known and certain. But for our purposes here, his third attribute of the meta-laws is of utmost importance. “The third requirement of true law is equality” (COL, 209). What Hayek means by this third principle is that all must be treated equally under the law. Although classification of people under the law is inevitable, the law should not benefit certain groups over others. For example, a law may classify vendors of food in order to prohibit the serving of rotten meat. This particular law is not an infringement of freedom because it is not advantaging one class of people over another. Thus some classification of people may be required, but the distinctions involved must not benefit some and harm others. Another way of expressing this is that the meta-law of equal treatment is “aimed at equally improving the chances of unknown people” (COL, 210). So, Hayek’s third attribute of a law of freedom (excluding necessary, albeit sometimes problematic distinctions) is equal treatment under the law.
35 Kathleen Knight Abowitz, 2000, op cit. 31.
17 What results from this attribute of the laws of freedom is that material equality and equality under law are mutually exclusive notions. Equality before the law and material equality are therefore not only different but are in conflict with each other; and we can achieve either the one or the other, but not both at the same time. The equality before the law which freedom requires leads to material inequality. (COL, 87) Any law that redistributes wealth to aid in social welfare and equality is not treating people equally under the law. We would be taking from one class and giving to another, and this classification is harming one class while benefiting another. It is not aiming at improving the chances of unknown people, but aiming at improving the chances of a particular class of people. Under this view, “If the state further takes on positive duties, such as providing welfare services and adopting redistributive policies, then it would transform from a friend to a foe of individual freedom.”36 Classifying people by their wealth is an unjustified distinction and a breach of the principle of treating people equally under the law. And any law that breaks the meta-rule of freedom is contradictory to freedom. Thus, for Hayek, social equality and freedom are naturally mutually exclusive, they are contradictory values. Hayek’s philosophical framework, as representative of neoliberal discourse, naturalizes freedom. A natural byproduct of the natural process of freedom is social inequality. Freedom exists in the natural world and inequality is part of the natural order of the laws of freedom. Thus, social inequality is a restraint imposed from nature, like the inability to fly. Social inequality, then, is not unfreedom, but inability. Any attempt to rectify social inequality is imposed by human will and is the opposite of freedom and nature (COL, 93). There is no reconciling social equality policy with the natural laws of freedom. In the first two sentences of The Constitution of Liberty Hayek defines freedom as the absence of coercion. “We are concerned in this book with that condition of men in which coercion of some by others is reduced as much as possible in society. This state we shall describe throughout as a state of liberty or freedom” (COL, 11). In other words,
36 Yildez Silier, 2005, op cit. 15.
18 Hayek conceives of freedom in a purely negative way. The notion that freedom is only the elimination of barriers is known as negative freedom, not in the sense that negative is bad, but in the sense that freedom is defined negatively, as the absence of something, namely coercion. Furthermore, Hayek defines coercion, as stemming not from nature, but from the “arbitrary will of another or others” (Ibid). Coercion, the opposite of freedom, for Hayek, is defined as a human’s action that is made to serve another human’s will. Social planning and social control policies, i.e. political actions that aim at equalizing results or opportunities, result from the will of others, so they therefore necessarily coerce individuals into certain actions. Thus, this coercion to follow the will of others is considered an unfreedom. Only reason can coerce, nature only provides inability. Lex Rex, the rules of law that support the natural laws of freedom, is the law of natural design. Social control policies that aim to enhance public goods are laws of will. A sense of self that is ontologically separate from that which is to be known results in an onto-epistemological project that seeks to discover and reflect that externality. In the case of Hayek’s onto-epistemological project of liberty, his goal is to discover the natural laws of freedom and make true statements about those laws. In this way Hayek naturalizes freedom. Therefore, Hayek’s second element in his neoliberal philosophical framework is a view of his project as one that discovers the natural laws of freedom. I have suggested this methodology of the onto-epistemological project of freedom is shared by our cultural discourse, it is our “common sense” of inquiry, which also connects with our ‘common sense” of an individual self. This is part of how the current modern Western identity makes sense of freedom. Furthermore, Hayek dichotomizes nature with human reason. Freedom is in the realm of nature, and reason is not. Nature can only result in inability, whereas threats to freedom can only come from human reason and will. Submitting to Freedom In this section I suggest that within Hayek’s philosophical framework a seeming paradox arises, resigning ourselves to the natural laws of freedom. Hayek’s basic argument is this: Freedom is located in nature (and social inequality is an inevitable, natural result of the natural process of freedom).
19 The moral authority is located in nature. Therefore, we should submit to the natural laws of freedom. In the previous section I hope I have highlighted the first premise. I will continue Hayek’s case for the naturalization of freedom in this section as I shift the focus to the second premise, the conclusion, and some implications of that conclusion. Earlier, I interpreted Hayek’s onto-epistemological project as discovering the Natural laws of freedom by retrospectively observing human behavior. 37 In doing that Hayek follows the footsteps of Adam Smith and the Humean tradition that assumes, “Psychological laws, based on human nature, are as truly natural as any laws based on land and physical nature” (LSA, 21). Consequently, Hayek locates the abstract rules or laws of freedom in human psychology that, in turn, is rooted in fixed essences of humanity. The laws of freedom are a subset of the psychological laws of human nature, which are fixed prior to experience. Seen as such, human nature is unalterable; that is just the way it is. Hayek and the neoliberal framework pick up on the tradition of Hume and Smith, that sees one of those psychological laws of fixed human nature as operating in one’s own self interest. Acting in self-interest is seen as a natural law and eternal property of humanity. Since this property is part of human nature and unalterable, Hayek and neoliberals concur with Adam Smith who believes that social welfare is promoted by the un-designed and unplanned efforts of individuals seeking to better their own individual positions. In speaking of Adam Smith, Dewey says, Although he was far from being an unqualified adherent of the idea of laissez faire, he held that the activity of individuals, freed as far as possible from political restriction, is the chief source of social welfare and the ultimate spring of social progress. (LSA, 19) In other words, without the natural motivation of self-interest and the freedom from restrictions in acting for that self-interest, material and social progress would not occur. The empirical evidence of cooperation that exists between individuals and which can result in material and social progress, Hayek explains, “is as much a part of competition
37 I will use the convention of the capitalized version, “Nature,” to emphasize Hayek’s use of nature as a static moral authority.
20 as individual efforts” (COL, 37). So, Hayek’s framework makes sense of cooperation as a form of group competition in which individual members see it in their best self-interest to cooperate. Cooperation stems from individuals naturally operating in their own best interest and is a form of competition for self-preservation. This competitive, never-changing essence of humanity naturally results in material and social inequality. Nevertheless, Hayek praises material and social inequality because he sees it as a necessary condition for material and social progress. This is because, for Hayek, material progress comes from a leisured class that has the time, capital, and self- interested motivation to create for more material reward. In time, “new things will become available to the greater part of the people only because for some time they have been the luxuries of the few” (COL, 43, emphasis in original). By emphasizing the conditional term only, Hayek implies material inequality is a necessary condition for progress, without it, no progress will occur. Hayek, representing neoliberal discourse, sees innovation and progress as requiring material inequality. Hayek approvingly quotes G. Tarde, “the luxuries of today become the necessities of tomorrow” (COL, 43). Or in correlative words, the poverty of today contains the luxuries of yesterday. Eventually the material progress of the elite will trickle down to those in poverty, therefore rendering poverty a relative notion. We can think of the fact that people living in poverty today may likely have a television set and in yesteryear they did not. Or the fact that the hamburger is more plentiful and cheaper than it was before the industrial revolution. Hence, Hayek uses this empirical evidence to support his case that material advancement for all only stems from inequality. In effect, he lauds Nature’s design as a way to locate the moral authority there. To further his case, Hayek asks us to consider the industries of golf, tennis, and museums as developments that have resulted from the luxurious class and that have trickled down to benefit those lower down the economic order.38 Think of the golf professional, the pro tennis player and the museum curator who have benefited from these developments that were birthed from the leisured class. In Hayek’s favor, these three examples he cites have blossomed into entire industries that have materially benefited those involved, such as golf course designers, golf club manufacturers, golf
38 See COL, 129-130.
21 course maintenance staff, et al. Material inequality exists and those not in the leisured class will eventually reap the material rewards that result from the bourgeoisie operating in their own self- interest.39 Hayek uses these positive consequences of material inequality to justify the natural order and exalt Nature’s design. He argues that the natural, unchangeable, psychological property of humans operating in their own best interest results in material inequality, which in turn results in material progress for everyone, including those less fortunate—thus resulting in social progress. To summarize Hayek’s sub-argument presented here: operating in self-interest is a natural law of human nature. Furthermore, following this law results in material inequality, and material inequality is necessary for progress to occur.40 Hayek uses empirical cases of progress to justify material inequality and the natural order. It is in this way that Hayek locates the source of moral authority in Nature. Once again relying on his established dichotomy between reason and nature, Hayek discounts reason’s place in morality and upholds Nature’s. We would destroy much successful action if we disdained to rely on ways of doing things evolved by the process of trial and error simply because the reason for their adoption has not been handed down to us. The appropriateness of our conduct is not necessarily dependent on our knowing why it is so. (COL, 64) In other words, we must trust that even if we do not comprehend the reasons for doing things the way we do them in society, these processes have evolved over time and reflect true morality because these social mores have been “successful,” meaning that the society is still active. The source of social mores is objectively in the natural processes in the world and is discovered by empirically observing society and social action retrospectively. Thus, for Hayek, morality is located in Nature, not reason.
39 In this section it is only my intention to trace Hayek’s argument back to a particular source of moral authority. It is not my intention to dispute his argument, though I think this could be easily done, since although his examples of golf, tennis, and museums show some progress may result of inequality, it in no way proves all social progress stems from material and social inequality. 40 Tangentially, although Hayek comes close to equating material progress with social progress, he does not; for he believes that cultural and social progress occur after rapid advancement in material progress. “But the great outbursts in the creation of non-material values seem to presuppose a preceding improvement in economic condition” (COL, 49). Thus, Hayek positions material progress as a necessary condition for social progress.
22 While this applies to all our values, it is most important in the case of moral rules and conduct. Next to language, they are perhaps the most important instance of an undesigned growth, a set of rules which govern our lives but of which we can say neither why they are what they are nor what they do to us: we do not know what the consequences of observing them are for us as individuals and as a group. And it is against the demand for submission to such rules that the rationalistic spirit is in constant revolt. (COL, 64-65, emphasis added) So, according to Hayek, we must have faith beyond our reason and follow the social mores that have evolved even if we are not privy to the reasons why. “We have thus no choice but to submit to rules whose rationale we often do not know, and to do so whether or not we can see anything important depends on their being observed in the particular instance” (COL, 66-67, emphasis added). Because morality is found in nature and is above human understanding, we must have faith and submit to the un-designed rules that evolve through the trial and error processes of natural evolution. We must trust in Nature because we do not and cannot know it all. While the rationalist tradition assumes that man was originally endowed with both the intellectual and moral attributes that enabled him to fashion civilization deliberately, the evolutionists, made it clear that civilization was the accumulated hard-earned result of trial and error; that it was the sum of experience, in part handed down from generation to generation as explicit knowledge, but to a larger extent embodied in tools and institutions which had proved themselves superior—institutions whose significance we might discover by analysis but which will also serve men’s ends without men’s understanding them. (COL, 59-60) Thus, for Hayek, it is a mistake to think that society’s developments have resulted from humanity’s rational powers that have been intentionally implemented. Our rational powers can be used to find morality that manifests itself in the rules and mores of society. Social institutions “evolve” over time through a natural process of trial and error, but it is beyond reason’s powers to purposely design the institutions and mores and rules of society. To think reason, and not natural evolution, is responsible for social institutions
23 and morals, is to subscribe to the great anthropocentric conceit of man. Thus, the place of reason is for instrumental purposes only, to discover what the design of nature tells us. Because humans cannot know all, and because morals and social rules and institutions are discovered as part of natural processes, social planning is to participate in the arrogance that man knows best, not Nature. Social rules and mores exceed the capacity of reason and the individual mind, and because of the limited powers of reason, social planning would result in unintended consequences, and therefore, should not be used. British empiricism is correct; therefore, French rationalism is wrong. To plan society is to believe the powers of humanity are above those of Nature. The answer to these rationalistic demands is, of course, that they require knowledge which exceeds the capacity of the individual human mind and that, in the attempt to comply with them, most men would become less useful members of society than they are while they pursue their own aims within the limits set by the rules of law and morals. (COL, 66) Whether for egalitarian aims or to form a structured society like Plato’s Republic, using reason to intelligently attempt to design social institutions and mores is wrong. Assuming the dichotomy of British empiricism and French rationalism, and believing British empiricism is the correct explanation for the existence of morality leads to the negation of social planning and implementation. Following the Natural law of operating in our own self-interest results in social progress. Hence Hayek concludes we should submit to Natural law; unplanned and un-designed by humanity, the Natural design is the moral authority. Moral responsibility is tied to moral authority, for if one is in the position of authority then that one is also ultimately responsible. Hence, by locating the moral authority in Nature—or, if you so choose, God as the designer and creator of that Nature—then the moral responsibility is also located in Nature/God. So, for Hayek, social and material inequalities are not human’s responsibility because social and material inequalities are part of the moral authority of Nature/God. Human Nature is what it is, humans did not design it this way, Nature/God did. Social inequality is the way things are ordained either by God or by Nature, and therefore is not humanity’s responsibility. Thusly,
24 Hayek uses the dichotomy between human nature and human reason to defer moral authority and moral responsibility of social inequality to Nature/God. Reason’s place is to observe and name the social mores, not to create them. Furthermore, retrospective empirical observation of social progress reveals it is individual freedom that has proven itself as the way to a society’s survival, flourishing and growth. Hayek argues that material inequality, as a natural result of freedom, is responsible for progress.41 In fact, progress requires inequality because progress comes from the privileged, leisure class. Therefore, if we want a progressive society, it must be an unequal society. And submitting to the “natural laws” of freedom is the path to achieve progress. So, Hayek argues that submitting to the Natural laws of freedom produce both material inequality and progress. Social justice and planning policies that seek to remedy that inequality result in coercing men and women to follow the dictates of another’s will. Consequently, Hayek concludes, social control and planning policies contradict the true essence of freedom. Isaiah Berlin takes up Hayek’s argument against the French Rationalist position and points to the use of social control and planning policies to justify totalitarian measures. In this way the rationalist argument, with its assumptions of the single true solution, has led steps which, if not logically valid, are historically and psychologically intelligible, from an ethical doctrine of individual responsibility and individual self-perfection to an authoritarian state obedient to the directives of an elite of Platonic guardians.42 Thus, according to Berlin, if we allow social policies to be rationally planned and implemented, even if presumably for social goods, then this will lead to a slippery slope in which tyranny is justified because someone else knows better than us what constitutes the socially just society. For Hayek and Berlin, social control policies result from rationalist planning and the will of others, and alter the natural order. Thus, if we follow this logic, policies for
41 See all of Chapter 3, “The Common Sense of Progress” (COL). 42 Isaiah Berlin, “Two Conceptions of Liberty” in Four Essays on Liberty (Oxford, Great Britain: Oxford University Press. 1969), 152.
25 democratic social goods coerce individuals into certain actions that follow the will of others, and are, therefore, sources of unfreedom. What results from this framework is that Rex Lex, the rule of law, is connected to the natural laws of freedom because the goal of True legislation is to support the laws of freedom. The end of law is, not to abolish or restrain, but to preserve and enlarge freedom. For in all the states of created beings capable of laws, where there is no law, there is no freedom. For liberty is to be free from restraint and violence from others; which cannot be where there is no law. 43 For Hayek, with the natural laws of liberty come implications for the law of laws, or meta-laws. These are rules that legislation must comply with in order for freedom to be supported. Rules of law are limits to all True legislation; otherwise they sacrifice freedom. Hayek’s philosophical framework views the rules of law, like freedom itself, as found objectively in nature. Furthermore, freedom, as a social more, has proven itself successful empirically, which means that a society continues to survive, and the best social mores are the ones that have been proven empirically to foster the survival and progress of society. 44 Therefore we should submit to the laws of individual freedom, and we ought to follow the social mores that are found in Nature. There is a science of liberty and we ought to adhere to its rules, not the will of humanity. Thus, along with the neoliberalist paradox that the lack of concern for the common good is the best thing for the common good, within Hayek’s framework another paradox arises; resigning or submitting ourselves to the Naturalistic laws of freedom. As we have seen, Hayek positions individual freedom as antithetical to political action and control for pursuing democratic public goods. In this way Hayek champions exclusively the negative conception of freedom; that is, freedom as negative interference or the removal of obstacles. This form of “liberalism as individualism” locates the moral authority in Nature (or potentially God as the creator and designer of nature). Therefore, Hayek views Natural Law as more fundamental than man-made law.
43 John Locke as quoted by Hayek, (COL, 162). 44 See Hayek, COL, Chapter 3.
26 Dewey’s criticism of laissez faire liberalism implies that there is an ethico-politico position in Hayek’s onto-epistemological project that Hayek in his most honest moments would admit, but which is mostly hidden, obfuscated and neglected. The ethico-politico dimensions of laissez faire liberalism hold Natural Law as the moral authority over man- made law. “Natural law was still regarded as something more fundamental than man- made law, which by comparison is artificial” (LSA, 20). Hence, the ethico-politico position that Hayek, as representative of neoliberalism, takes is that the positive consequences of following Natural Law are greater than the positive consequences of man-made policies. Stated as the negative corollary, the negative consequences of disobeying Natural Law are greater than the negative consequences of obeying them. Hence, Hayek’s purpose in “discovering” the “natural laws of freedom” is, ultimately, to obey those laws. The laws of freedom are our guide to action, and as Hayek nicely shows, have made their way into the social structure of the laws of our land. Our legal system is built on some of the natural laws of freedom Hayek describes, such as the “law of freedom” of equal treatment. So, though Hayek and neoliberals position themselves as not involved in social control, there are social and structural manifestations (i.e. forms of social control), which rely on the neoliberal ethico-politico position of adhering to Natural Law. In alternative words, the laws that Hayek “discovers” about freedom are implemented and become part of the broad social structure that control social action. Furthermore, these structures hegemonically inculcate the view that the way nature is is the way it ought to be. Neoliberalism is not absent of social control—it is a controlling of society and an influencing of culture through social structures that are designed to control social action to follow the Natural Laws of freedom. Neoliberal discourse, as represented by Hayek, locates moral authority and moral responsibility in “natural laws.” The social control implored by neoliberal policy is to construct society (i.e., our social structure and our cultural representations) to follow the natural psychological laws, which include operating in one’s own self-interest. Once again relying on the individual/social, human nature/reason dichotomy, the “is” of nature becomes the “ought.” Hayek believes we ought to follow the laws of human Nature because moral authority and moral responsibility are located in the inherent design of Nature.
27 Thus Hayek, as representative of neoliberalism, solves the ethical dilemma of contradictory values and goods by upholding freedom as the supreme moral principle. Speaking of individual freedom, Hayek says, “Like all moral principles, it demands that it be accepted as a value in itself, as a principle that must be respected without asking whether the consequences in the particular instance will be beneficial” (COL, 68). 45 A choice must be made between freedom and social control policies in the name of democratic public goods, because they are set up as contradictory values. Furthermore, it is better to err on the side of individual freedom. Hence, Hayek agrees with Mill who wrote of material inequality, “the inconvenience is one which society can afford to bear, for the sake of the greater good of human freedom.”46 Summary of Hayek’s Neoliberal Philosophical Framework of Freedom In this chapter I have taken the neoliberal discourse of freedom seriously by looking at the philosophical language of F.A. Hayek as representative of a neoliberal philosophical framework. This is a framework that makes sense of freedom in a way in which freedom is antithetical to democratic public goods. Yet this conception of freedom fits within an overall framework that relies on: 1) a sense of self that is ontologically distinct from society (individualizing freedom), 2) a methodological onto-epistemological project that seeks to discover the true Natural laws of freedom (naturalizing freedom), and 3) the source of moral authority that is in those Natural laws, thus an ethico-political commitment to follow Nature (submitting to freedom). Hayek locates freedom in the individual and natural sides of their respective dichotomies. He finds the role of humanity’s reason is for discovery and articulation purposes only. Furthermore, freedom has empirically proven itself as the best social arrangement. Unfortunately, material inequality is a natural result of freedom; it is just the way things are. That same material inequality that may be looked on as a problem is also what is responsible for the progress of a society. A society’s survival and flourishing requires the inequality that comes from individual freedom. Thus, by submitting to the social more of freedom we are doing what is best for society. In this
45 This quote seems curious because, as we have just seen, Hayek himself justifies freedom with empirical consequences. 46 John Stuart Mill. “On Liberty.” In John Stuart Mill: On Liberty and Other Writings, edited by Stefan Collini. (New York, NY: Cambridge University Press, 1989), 82.
28 way, Hayek’s philosophical framework of freedom does not abandon the social good out of spite. Hayek, as representative of neoliberal discourse, posits concern for the social good as mutually exclusive with individual freedom, the two values are contradictory and cannot be reconciled. Thus a paradox arises in the neoliberal philosophical framework. Stated pointedly, neglecting the social good maximizes the social good. In other words, privileging individual goods and interests, (i.e., maximizing individual freedom), is seen as serving social progress and advancing the greatest social good. Hayek’s project is to contribute to a science of liberty by discovering “natural laws” of freedom that are as unarguable as the laws of gravity and the laws of genetics. Therefore, Hayek’s naturalized version of freedom declares social inequality as an inevitable result of the laws of freedom. The laws are the laws; whether we can manipulate them or not is a different question. In the case of the manipulation of natural laws it will be humanity’s, not nature’s, responsibility for the transgression. Hayek’s meta-philosophy naturalizes freedom in which only reason can coerce, nature is just inability. Yet another paradox arises for the neoliberal framework presented here. On the one hand, Hayek deplores social control. On the other hand, he advocates for laws based on his naturalized version of freedom, which, when instituted through the social structure of laws, become a form of social control. Hayek, as representative of neoliberal discourse, claims to be innocent of social control. He, at best, lives with the paradox, and at worst deliberately constructs a veil to obfuscate the social control inherent in his neoliberal framework. I have stated that my concern is that Hayek’s version of freedom results empirically in economic oppression and in public spaces— such as schools, the media, and the environment—being eroded in the name of freedom. The domination of our culture by the neoliberal discourse of freedom is dismantling public spaces, for one of the tragedies of neoliberal discourse is the tragedy of the commons.47 In fact, concern for the public good is seen as the greatest threat to liberty and progress, 48 because whenever we
47 “Tragedy of the commons” refers to exactly what I have portrayed here; those seeking self -interested gain use up common, public spaces. The classic example is that of a common field being over-grazed and thus destroyed by individuals each seeking to fatten their herd by as much as possible. 48 See Hayek, COL, p. 262.
29 enact policies in the name of the public good we are acting on rationalistic ideas that try to create a common good, not what the common good really is, (i.e., individual freedom). Social control policies, like the redistribution of wealth, are logically inconsistent with freedom; they are sources of unfreedom. A philosophical framework of freedom that includes ontologically distinct individuals, a philosophical project of the discovery and reflection of natural laws, and a submission to those natural laws that are discovered results in social inequality and the economic oppression of people. Alternative discourses that compete against the dominant laissez faire liberalist discourse may need to contend with the entire philosophical framework and discourse of neoliberalism. Yet the task is worth trying because the stakes are high. I propose that reconstructing the meaning making of the significant symbol “freedom” so that democratic public goods (such as public spaces, social welfare and other social control policies) are not seen as antithetical to freedom, may require reconstructing the entire philosophical framework that the neoliberal notion of freedom makes sense within. In other words, one does not make sense of freedom in a vacuum. When recreating another conception of freedom, one must keep in mind the logical connections between “freedom” and the three major elements of a philosophical framework as outlined above. Thus, the key elements of the neoliberal philosophical framework of freedom may necessitate reconstruction for the reconstruction of the meaning-making experience of freedom to take place. For those with alternative inescapable frameworks that may better suit our needs in the 21st century, the neoliberal discourse also presents a problem because it is entrenched in the current American modern Western identity.49 The embeddedness of the individual self within the neoliberal framework in the modern Western identity has a rich history dating back to the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries and even further, all the way back to Plato. We, in this country, have a long tradition of the rugged, independent, American individual, and this identity will not be displaced easily, and the re-creation of an individual sense of self may be a Sisyphusian task for our culture. Yet, our sense of an individual, ontologically distinct self is only one of three elements within this philosophical framework, and I am suggesting a reconstruction of all three. The
49 See Charles Taylor, 1989, op. cit.
30 traditional philosophical methodology that seeks to discover reality, and the reliance on a moral authority that is outside of humanity, need to be reconstructed as well the sense of self that is so prevalent in our culture. So, without the reconstruction of the philosophy of self, philosophy itself, and the sources of moral authority, reconstructions of freedom may prove unfruitful. Once again, nothing less than Herculean efforts will be required to reconstruct these, and yet this still may prove to be an un-accomplishable feat. Reconstructing the self may prove to be the toughest of the three elements outlined in this chapter. Yet, I will begin in Chapter Two by re-presenting George Herbert Mead’s pragmatic theory of self.
31 Chapter Two: A Pragmatic Philosophy of Self Within the philosophical framework of the Chicago School of American pragmatism the paradox of the social good and freedom does not arise; that is, concern for and political action for democratic public goods does not necessarily erode freedoms. Within this alternative framework, no ethical dilemma arises between the values of the public good and freedom because they are not constructed as mutually exclusive and contradictory. This is because the pragmatic philosophical framework that I will be re- presenting in the rest of this dissertation includes a contrary philosophy of self, a contrary meta-philosophy, and a contrary source of moral authority. In other words, pragmatic discourse makes sense of freedom in a different way than neoliberal discourse because of varied philosophical tenets in its philosophical framework. Through describing, or better, re-presenting, these three elements of the pragmatic philosophical framework, I am essentially arguing for the use of pragmatism. As referenced earlier, this current project seeks to cohere to a pragmatic methodology. 50 It is not my intent to “prove” that the pragmatic philosophical framework is the “right” one. Regardless of that issue, I merely intend to argue that the pragmatic philosophical framework can be used to make sense of freedom in a way that is for, and thus consistent with, democratic public goods and political action to foster those goods. In Chapter One I attempted to make the point that Hayek’s neoliberal philosophy of freedom relies on an individualistic sense of self, and thus he “individualizes freedom.” Berlin points to the connection between notions of self and ideas of freedom. Conceptions of freedom directly derive from views of what constitutes a self, a person, a man. Enough manipulation with the definition of a man, and freedom can be made to mean whatever the manipulator wishes. Recent history has made it only too clear that the issue is not merely academic. 51 Of course, Berlin thought his conception of self as the “right” one, and that others were the guilty parties of manipulation of the truth of the self. Yet, the central point of his passage is that varied philosophies of self fit with varied philosophies of freedom.
50 See page 6. 51 Isaiah Berlin, 1969, op. cit., 134.
32 Hayek’s neoliberal conception of self as ontologically separate from society fits with his neoliberal conception of freedom that I have described as problematic. George Herbert Mead, an associate of Dewey’s at the University of Chicago, is well known for his pragmatic philosophy of the self. Mead’s work on the self is an exemplar of pragmatic methodology52 at that time because he was not asking the metaphysical question of what the self is, but rather was asking the question how the self is experienced. What results is not a metaphysically distinct self that separately exists from society, but ontology of a social experience of self. The main purpose of this chapter is to outline G. H. Mead’s philosophy of self as a key element in the pragmatic philosophical framework of freedom as one that differs from the neoliberal element of an ontologically distinct self. I do this for the more comprehensive goal of telling a story in which freedom is not antithetical to concern and action for democratic public goods. Mead’s Pragmatic Project of the Self In Chapter 3 I will say much more about pragmatic ideas of what philosophy is, that is, its methodology or meta-philosophy if you will. Yet some minimum must be said here in order to more fully understand G.H. Mead’s philosophy of self. As Hayek was enmeshed within a tradition of ideas, so was Mead. Mead was immersed in the beginnings of American pragmatism in the early 20th century. Mead was working within a tradition that saw the task of philosophy as something different than Hayek. He saw the philosophical project, in part, as avoiding metaphysical issues and describing human experience. Thus Mead was not out to mirror nature (to use Rorty’s expression) and describe a metaphysical picture of the self, but rather to explain how the self is realized, or how the self becomes present to the mind. Mead saw his project as explaining the self’s occurrence in human experience. He avoided the metaphysical question of what the “true” self really is by inquiring into the experience of self, not inquiring into the “real” nature of the self. We all have a notion of our “self.” We experience the internal dialog of talking to “ourselves.” We all experience a self. Some Eastern philosophies claim the self is an illusion and therefore not real. Yet, Mead deliberately evades addressing the question of the metaphysical makeup of the self. He starts with the assumption that the experience of a self is universal. Therefore, Mead’s theory of self is
52 See Chapter 3 for a complete discussion of pragmatic methodology.
33 not an argument to prove the self exists or what the self is, but it is an explanation of how the self arises in human experience. Although Mead did not see his project and theory as a metaphysical one, he was enmeshed in an inescapable framework that has a different ontological picture than the neoliberal one of an isolated individual self as separate and dichotomous with society. In describing Mead’s pragmatic project in the “Introduction” to Mind, Self and Society, Charles Morris writes, It has been the philosophical task of pragmatism to reinterpret the concepts of mind and intelligence in the biological, psychological, and sociological terms which post-Darwinian currents of thought have made prominent and to reconsider the problems and task of philosophy from this new standpoint… But the outlines of an empirical naturalism erected on biological, psychological, and sociological data and attitudes are clearly discerned, a naturalism which sees thinking man in nature, and which aims to avoid the inherited dualisms of mind and matter, experience and nature, philosophy and science, teleology and mechanism, theory and practice. It is a philosophy which, in terms used by Mead, opposes “the otherworldliness of the reason….of ancient philosophy, the otherworldliness of soul….of Christian doctrine, and the otherworldliness of the mind….of the Renaissance dualisms.”53 The pragmatic project of Mead made an ontological commitment to a non-dualistic picture of the world. So, Mead represents the pragmatic discourse theme that seeks to avoid dualism and thus avoid dichotomies, such as the individual/social dichotomy. By making a commitment to avoid dualistic explanations of human experience, pragmatism inescapably makes an ontological commitment to earthly explanations.54 The Cartesian or dualistic legacy explains the experience of the self via a transcendent entity, one that comes from another kind of reality or world, namely the
53 George H. Mead. Mind, Self and Society, (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1934), ix-x. Page numbers for further references (MSS) appear in text. 54 It is important to note that in a commitment to deconstructing dualisms, Mead’s meaning and use of the term “nature” is quite different than Hayek’s. For Mead, nature is both biological and social, unlike Hayek’s dichotomy of nature and human culture. Thus, Mead’s sense of nature is our biosocial environment, which includes culture.
34 “spirit” world. The self is seen as otherworldly first, a pre-existing entity that enters the material world; thus the self is in the world. Society subsequently arises as the result of these individual spirits, (i.e., selves), being in the world. Mead’s project was to circumvent metaphysical questions and explanations and instead concentrate on the experience of the self. Mead did this by embedding the self in nature and not appealing to another world. Thus he avoided an unnecessary assumption of another kind of reality. Mead explained the self in secular and biosocial terms, without the aid of another otherworldly realm. As such, the Meadian and pragmatic ontological commitment is to a self that is of the world. Stated nicely by Joas, Mead’s three fundamental themes were, “confidence in the emancipatory prospects of scientific rationality; a striving to root ‘mind’ or ‘spirit’ in the organism; and the attempt to elaborate a theory of intersubjectivity that would conceive of the self as socially originated.” 55 By giving an earthly, biosocial account of the mind and self, Mead embedded the experience of thinking man, a person, a self, in nature. Mead sidestepped the metaphysical question of what the “real” self is. It is not his or pragmatism’s project to mirror the way the self really is, but to explain the human experience of the self without the aid of an otherworldly realm. Mead’s Biosocial Explanation of the Self For Mead, there are certain requirements for the human experience of the self to occur. First, there must be a natural organism with a mind. Secondly, that mind must have the capabilities to use “significant symbols,” or participate in the signification process. This is because, for Mead, the self itself is a sign. So, to become self aware, or to have an experience of self, a mind must be not only conscious, but must have a kind of consciousness that is able to use signs, that is, participate in the signification process. For the self to have meaning, one must be able to participate in a meaning-making process. Furthermore, the use of signs and the process of meaning making are social. It is in the sense of self as sign and the usage of signs that the experience of the self is a social experience. Therefore, the self, or better, the experience of the self, is biosocial; it is the bio-sociality of an organism’s mind participating in the signification process. Let me explain further.
55 Hans Joas, G.H. Mead. (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp-Verlag, 1980), 33. (Emphasis added.)
35 Mead’s first prerequisite for the experience of self is that there must be a mind, (i.e. the capability of having a conscious experience), in an organism which is in nature. This is because in order to be conscious of the self one needs to be conscious. Consciousness requires a mind, and a mind requires an organism. Mead embeds “thinking man in nature” by positing the mind in the organism. We have undertaken to consider the conduct of the organism and to locate what is termed “intelligence,” and in particular, “self-conscious intelligence,” within this conduct. This position implies organisms which are in relationship to environments, and the environments that are in some sense determined by the selection of sensitivity of the form of the organism. (MSS, 328) Although this statement says many intricate things about organisms and their relationship to their environment, the limited point I want to make from the quote is that a biological, material organism is necessary for a particular kind of intelligence to develop into having a sense of self. Self-consciousness, as in the consciousness of all objects, requires a kind of intelligence that is located in an organism. As such, Mead naturalizes the self in that the experience of the self requires a conscious mind, and a conscious mind requires the biology of an organism in nature. For Mead, mind is not descended from a transcendent, other kind of reality. Conscious experience is rooted in nature. Participating in the Meaning-Making Experience of the Significant Symbol “Self” Although mind, for Mead, is biological, he cautions not to equate mind with self: We can distinguish very definitely between the self and the body. The body can be there and can operate in a very intelligent fashion without there being a self involved in the experience. The self has the characteristic that it is an object to itself…It is this characteristic of the self as an object to itself that I want to bring out. (MSS, 136) The self requires the biology of an organism embedded in nature, but it is not the organism itself. For Mead, the organism and its mind are necessary, but not sufficient conditions for the self to arise, the self does not come from the material body alone. The experience of self requires the additional prerequisite of a special kind of
36 intelligence, i.e. “self-conscious intelligence,” which is the kind that can make the self “an object to itself.” What Mead means by the ability to make the “self as an object to itself” is that the self, itself, is a sign, i.e. “self” is a significant symbol to itself. When we think about the self, as when we think about anything or assign meaning to anything, we use significant symbols. For Mead, any kind of thinking is meaning making and takes place with significant symbols. “Only in terms of gestures as significant symbols is the existence of mind or intelligence possible: for only in terms of gestures which are significant symbols can thinking…take place” (MSS, 47). Turning gestures into significant symbols (i.e. a gesture that signifies a certain meaning) is when thinking takes place. Thus when we think we use significant symbols. Furthermore, all meaning making, that is the signification process, is social. Meaning is not in the world itself, but in the social act of signification. For Mead, the triadic process of signification is a social process. Meanings emerge from social experience as colors emerge from visual experience (MSS, 88). Sign making and meaning making, whether of the sign “self” or any other sign are social events and thus require social interaction. When we think about the self, when we have self- consciousness and self-awareness, when we have the experience of self or make meaning of the self, we are using the social process of the signification of the symbol “self.” Once again it is important to remember Mead is working within the pragmatic tradition, and when he says that the self becomes an object to itself he means that the experience of the self is an experience of using the sign, or significant symbol, “self.” Thus, not only a conscious mind is required for the experience of self to occur, but a particular kind of consciousness, one with the ability to use signs. Mead’s theory of the self, as an experience of making meaning of the significant symbol “self” converges with Peirce’s semiotic conception of self. The experience of the self is made up of the sign “self” and its usage. So, contrary to the Cartesian outlook that presupposes preexisting individual selves that are in the world and which in turn make up society, Mead presupposes society prior to the emergence of the experience of self. The experience of self is a social experience.
37 To elaborate on the signification process in general, and the specific signification process of the self, that is, making the self an object to itself or how the self is signified, Mead employs the idea of one “taking on the attitude of the generalized other.” The individual experiences himself as such, not directly, but only indirectly, from the particular standpoints of other individual members of the same social group, or from the generalized standpoint of the social group as a whole to which he belongs. For he enters his own experience as a self or individual, not directly or immediately, not by becoming a subject to himself, but only in so far as he first becomes an object to himself just as other individuals are objects to him or in his experience; and he becomes an object to himself only by taking the attitudes of other individuals toward himself within a social environment or context of experience and behavior in which both he and they are involved. (MSS, 138) Only when we see our selves through other’s eyes do we become an object to ourselves and thus develop a sense of self, or do we experience the self. Although using the gender biased language of the past, Mead further explains that, “ only by taking the attitude of the generalized other toward himself, in one or another of these ways, can he think at all; for only thus can thinking—or the internalized conversation of gestures which constitutes thinking—occur” (MSS, 156). Thinking, which is the talking to ourselves using significant symbols, requires that we are able to take on the attitude of the generalized other. So, only by taking on the attitude of the generalized other do we become an object to ourselves, and only via significant symbols and communication can we take on the attitude of the generalized other.56 The end result regarding the experience of self is that Mead sidesteps the metaphysical question of what the self is, and instead focuses on how the self is experienced. The result is that the experience of the self is constituted socially, through and through. A self does not extend beyond the social. The experience of self requires the ability to take on the attitude of the
56 For Mead, a child starts to develop a sense of self when she/he is able to take on an attitude of a specific other ( as in her/his particular mother or father) but must eventually take on the attitude of a generalized other for a fully developed sense of self.
38 generalized other, signification, and language, which are all socially constituted experiences. The experience of the self is one that requires a mind that is located in an organism in nature. Furthermore, that mind must have the ability to use signs, because self –awareness, i.e. the experience of self, itself, is a process of signification. So, for Mead, the self occurs when there is a mind in an organism that is able to participate in the intersubjective social process of signification and to “take on the attitude of the generalized other.” A social process is required for one to have an experience of self, to think about the self, and to make meaning of the sign, “self.” Self-identity, making meaning of self, occurs through taking on the attitude of the generalized other toward one’s own action and thoughts and is therefore defined by sociality, i.e. others. Therefore, the self is social, or more exactly, biosocial. The experience of the self is both a natural (biological) and social event. In effect Mead shifts the focus from the self as an ontologically distinct and separate individual to the experience of self as social. As Hayek neglects and/or obfuscates the social self in his philosophy of freedom, a pragmatic philosophical framework, based on Mead’s theory of self, highlights the social self. In fact, with Mead’s sense of self, there is no autonomy in the strict sense. The Myth of Autonomy57 Mead’s theory of self explains human action or the conduct of the individual in terms of an organized conduct of the social group. Human deliberation and deliberative action are based on the signification process. How one thinks and acts is a social process. In other words, Mead emphasizes a social behaviorism to explain human action. Contrary to a conception of an ontologically distinct self and a radically individualist sense of self, Mead’s theory of self implies there is no completely autonomous self. The experience of self is social. Because the self is social, autonomy (the belief that individuals are capable and morally obligated to think for oneself outside of any socio- cultural influence) is a myth. Yet, a problem seems to arise for Mead, for if there is no autonomy, if the attitudes of the generalized other are ingrained and inculcated through social systems and
57 Much of this section is derived from Richard Quantz’s lectures in the summer of 2006.
39 institutions that reflect the dominating power, cultural, and ethical paradigms that foster social reproduction, then how can novelty occur? If social behaviorism determines our beliefs, attitudes, and subsequent actions, how do the narratives that justify the status quo change? Social behaviorist psychology, that is social behaviorism, seems deterministic. Where is the space for free will? If self is formed by social interactionism then autonomy is destroyed and free will seems an illusion. Mead’s philosophy of self does allow for free will, not in the form of autonomy, but in the form of creative agency, the creative agency that results from the transaction of the “I/me.”58 To further explain the experience of the self, Mead adopts William James’s psychology of self as consisting of an “I” and the “me.”59 In other words, Mead uses the metaphors “I” and “me” to describe the constitutive elements of the self. “Both aspects of the ‘I’ and the ‘me’ are essential to the self in its full expression” (MSS, 199). It must be recognized that by positing the self as constitutive of the I/me, Mead does not mean a dialectical relationship between two separate entities (“I” and “me”) that interact with each other to form a self. The “I” and “me,” for Mead, are only used as heuristic devices to help explain his theory of self. Thus a caveat must be kept in mind during the following re-presentation of Mead’s discussion of the “I” and “me;” that they can never really be pulled apart and separated from each other, the “I” and “me” help constitute each other. They are only used as aids in articulating Mead’s theory of self. Mead offers a middle way between the myth of autonomy and the nihilism of a completely socially determined self. Mead uses the metaphor “me” to refer to the process of social interaction and his emphasis social behaviorism. The “I” is metaphorically used as the unpredictability of what is done with the “me.” Thus, a
58 The term “creative agency” is not used by Mead, but is my interpretation and language based in part on Hans Joas’s Creativity in Action, (Cambridge, UK: Polity Press in association with Blackwell Publishers, 1996). As alluded to earlier in this chapter, Mead has faith in the “emancipatory prospects of scientific rationality,” thus allows for free will via reason. Both Dewey and more recent pragmatists have disrupted the notion of “scientific rationality,” so I am choosing the term “creative agency” to reflect these developments. (See the section on “The Place of Reason” in Chapter Three of this dissertation, and the section, “Caring” in Chapter Four for further description.) 59 The relation between Mead and the earlier pragmatist James is discussed in several places by Steve Odin, The Social Self in Zen and American Pragmatism, (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 1996). See especially pp. 189-190. Page numbers for further references (SSZAP) appear in text.
40 creative agency stems from the transaction of the I/me with the world.60 In other words, Mead locates free will not in an autonomous self, but via the agency of the creative act of the I/me transaction. One could think of the “I” as that which decides what to do with the factoids and the social determination of the “me’ part of the self. The “me” is the self that is an object of consciousness, and the “I” is the space in the self that allows for freedom of human action. It is the wild card of the “I” that allows Mead an escape from complete social behaviorism and hard determinism of the self. The constitution of the self includes the “I,” which is Mead’s metaphor for what is done with the “me.” There is a “trans” action of the “me” and “I,” and the process of that action is the self. The resultant human action, or transaction, cannot be predicted because of the “I” pole of the self. I have purposely avoided use of the word “interaction” because the prefix “inter” may imply two separate entities. This implication does not accurately reflect Mead’s theory because Mead’s bipolar notion of self is not of two separate entities that are acting with each other; the self is a transaction of two poles within the constitutive makeup of the self. The word “transaction” better represents Mead’s theory of self because we never experience the self as either the “I” or “me” pole separately, that is we never experience the “I” as isolated from the “me,” or the “me” as isolated from the “I.” This is so, even though the “me” pole of the self can become an object to itself, but the “I” cannot. Once an act has occurred, it is a result and only weighs on the “me” pole of the self. It is this part of the self that becomes an object to others and an object to itself. However, this “me” pole that becomes an object to itself cannot be separated from the “I.” To paraphrase an unpublished paper from Richard Quantz, when a self takes the attitude of the generalized other, and thus the self becomes and object to itself, the attitude is only an approximation of the generalized other’s actual attitude for it is my self, the I/me, that is interpreting that attitude.61 The self and the making of the self are transactions of the “I” and “me” in which we never experience the “I” and “me” poles of the self separately, we can never distinguish what part of my self is the “I” or the “me.” We can only experience their integration. And because the poles cannot be separated, there is no way
60 Odin, (1996, op. cit.), claims Mead actually uses the term “transaction” although he does not reference where. I have found no evidence of Mead using the term. Regardless, transaction is the better descriptor. This is defended in the next few paragraphs. 61 Richard Quantz, “A Transactional Theory of Self,” unpublished paper, 4.
41 to give priority to either side, thus helping Odin to conclude that Mead’s theory is a middle way between individualism and collectivism, autonomy and determinism. Therefore, the “me” is partially constituted by the “I,” and the “I” is partially constituted by the “me.” The “me” pole of the self is not just an object of others’ views; it is also how I perceive and interpret the attitude of the generalized other toward myself.62 So, the “me” pole of the self is never experienced in isolation from the “I” pole. Furthermore, the “I” side of the self can never be isolated from the “me,” for it cannot become an object to itself. In other words, when we think, that is when we talk to ourselves, we can never tell which side is the “I” or the “me” doing the talking/thinking. We cannot identify or distinguish what is the “I” from the “me;” or better, we do not experience an isolated “I” that is talking to the “me,” for the “I” is also partly constructed by the “me.” Thus it is important in the understanding of Mead’s theory that the “me” and the “I” are partly made up of each other and that when Mead adopts James’s psychology of the I/me bipolar dialectic it is only a metaphor to help describe the experience of self; the “I” and “me” are not separate entities that have interaction between them because the “I” and “me” help constitute each other. Because the “I” can never be completely separated from the “me” and vice versa, transaction, rather than interaction, better represents Mead’s use of James’s “I” and “me.” Alternatively stated, it is an I/me that constitutes the self, not an “I” and “me.” Another way to express Mead’s theme of the I/me is to look at the “I” as representing the creative process of the organism/ environment transaction. The self is not just an equation and therefore determined because novelty does occur (MSS, 198). For Mead, there is a creative, aesthetic dimension to human action, and that is what the “I” in the I/me interaction represents. The “I” pole is how Mead explains novelty and creative human action. For Mead there is no autonomy, but there is free will. Free will is located in agency and the creative act of the I/me transaction. Mead denies the autonomy of self, but he does not deny freedom or agency. It is simply that the self is not an isolated subject; it is not autonomous. Yet neither is it a prisoner to be determined solely by
62 Ibid.
42 society. The concept of agency eliminates the trappings of the extremes of individualism and collectivism. The metaphor of the “I,” although we never experience “I” as isolated from “me,” is the location of agency that may culminate in creativity and novelty. The agency that results from Mead’s theory of the social self as an I/me transaction explains the experience of novelty and creativity, and freedom. So, Mead’s theory offers a middle way between the extremes of complete autonomy and utter determinism. When we expose the myth of autonomy we gain an understanding of self as an encultured being. What is gained is a constitutive view of self, in which there is no sense of a completely autonomous individual—even how we view the self is not autonomous. We may think we come up with ideas on our own, but we cannot separate our cultural influences from our individualism. Denying autonomy is to emphasize the social self, not neglect it. It is to recognize the significance of the social self. This element of the pragmatic philosophical framework, the understanding of the self as an encultured being, will connect to its own conception and understanding of freedom. Chapter Summary Mead was working within the discourse of pragmatism and was constructing a philosophy of self within that same tradition. Mead’s project exemplifies pragmatic philosophy’s methodology because he was not out to mirror the true nature of the self, but to explain the experience of self. Mead’s theory of self asserts that for one to have an experience of self, both the biology of a mind in an organism and the conscious ability of symbolic interaction are necessary for the self to become “an object to itself.” So, a sense of self, or the experience of self, arises biologically, semiotically, and socially. Because the experience of the self is constituted socially, it cannot be dichotomous with the social. The individual is a social individual, not an autonomously distinct and separate individual. For Mead, the experience of self is not one of complete individualism, but it is not an experience of complete determinism either. It is an experience of the agency and creation that results from the transaction of the two indistinguishable and mutually constituted poles of the “I” and “me,” or better—the transaction of the “I/me.” The thrust of this chapter has been to describe Mead’s theory of the self. It is a theory that explains the experience of self in biosocial terms. Alternative philosophies of self connect with alternative philosophies of freedom. Mead’s theory of self as different
43 than the neoliberal conception will lead to a different philosophy of freedom than that of neoliberalism. Mead’s theory of self was the result of a different conception of the philosophical project. Of course, a social sense of self that denies autonomy and relies on creative agency is not an answer to the question, “What is the self?” but rather an answer to the question, “How the self is experienced?” Mead, as representative of pragmatism, avoided the question of the metaphysical makeup of the self to focus on the self as experienced. This focus on experience and avoidance of metaphysics is part of the philosophical framework of pragmatism and its views on philosophy itself. Pragmatism’s philosophy of philosophy, or pragmatism’s meta-philosophy, its methodology, is the subject of the next chapter.
44 Chapter 3: On Pragmatism as Methodology In The Constitution of Liberty F.A. Hayek describes his philosophical project as creating a “science of liberty” by discovering the “laws of freedom.” Ultimately, his reason to discover those laws is to advocate following them. The same may be said of a traditional philosophical project of education that seeks to discover the true nature of education in order to fulfill that nature. This chapter’s aim is to describe another way of looking at what a philosophical project may be. I will be explicating a pragmatic methodology based on the ideas of G.H. Mead, John Dewey, and the further expansion of those ideas by Richard Rorty. By methodology I mean a philosophical framework for inquiry. Within inquiry we can distinguish between ontological, epistemological, ethical and political notions, yet they are inseparable within a philosophical framework and methodology. Methodology is the onto-epistemological-ethico-politico project that is being undertaken, for these dimensions are all interconnected within a philosophical framework. As stated in Chapter One, by “philosophical framework” I mean the interconnection of ideas. Thus, a philosophical framework of inquiry entails the ontological, epistemological and ethico- politico ideas that are used, and the interrelation of those ideas. In spite of those who claim neutrality in research, and thus emphasize only the onto-epistemological dimensions, ethico-politico notions are embedded in onto-epistemological projects. For example, choosing which onto-epistemological project to undertake, what we decide to give our attention to, is an ethico-politico issue. Yet, while recognizing their inseparability, this chapter initially distinguishes and focuses on the onto-epistemological dimensions of a pragmatic methodology. Then I will shift the focus toward the ethico- politico dimensions of pragmatic methodology, which is where pragmatism deems the spotlight of inquiry should be. The connection between ontologies of self with notions of freedom was emphasized in the previous chapter. Within philosophical frameworks, ontologies of self are also interconnected with epistemological goals, strategies and tactics. Hayek’s philosophical framework that includes the ontology of a self that is separate from that which is to be known is consistent with an epistemological goal to accurately reflect that which is external to the self. In Hayek’s case, his onto-epistemological goal is to
45 discover a “freedom” that exists objectively in the noumenal world, and to make true, and not false, statements “about” the “laws of freedom.”63 By positing freedom as objectively existing apart from self, the question becomes how do we come to know about freedom? Do we gain knowledge Platonically, through disciplined thinking about freedom, or empirically through sense data from the world? Thus, Hayek confronts the dichotomy between the French Rationalist and the British Empiricists, and, as we have seen, Hayek sides with the empiricists. Consequently, he chooses the a posteriori strategy resulting in his tactic of learning about freedom by empirically observing the social behavior of humans. Hayek sets up his task as discovering freedom by observing social behavior retrospectively. This does not mean that there is no place for reason, for the place of reason is to discover and grasp the true essences of freedom. Reasoning power is needed to find and comprehend the never- changing laws of freedom that reveal themselves in the external world of social human interaction and behavior. How does a pragmatic philosophical project of freedom differ from Hayek’s? Why a different project? These are the questions that this chapter intends to address. In addition, because I am ensconced in pragmatic philosophy and discourse, the purpose of this chapter is conjointly to clarify and justify the methods that I am employing for this dissertation. In other words this chapter is meant to explicate my methodology. Pragmatic Ontology’s Focus on the Intersubjective Experiences of Making Meaning of Significant Symbols A discourse of a self that is distinct from the object to be known results in an onto-epistemological project that seeks to discover Truths about the “laws of freedom.” Beginning with Mead’s theory of a social and intersubjective self that is not seen as separate from both society and the external world to be known coheres with a different philosophical project and methodology than that of traditional philosophy’s. All Western philosophy is but a footnote to Plato. More than one of my philosophy professors has uttered this remark, which reflects Plato as credited with setting up and articulating the problems of Western philosophy. More specifically, in the Republic Plato lays out his theory of the forms in which one of his primary goals is to
63 See Hayek, COL, 149.
46 separate appearance from reality. He seeks to free us from our chains in the cave in order for us to see the true nature of reality. True reality, for Plato, is not the world of fleeting experience on Earth, but the everlasting, never changing, eternal forms. For instance, Plato’s metaphysics posits that the idea of circularity is more real than examples of circles as they appear in nature. The form of circularity, that includes the property that all points are equidistant from the center, will never change, and thus is more real than any imperfect copies found in the world. The same is true of all worldly manifestations of the forms. Thus, the task of the philosopher is to discover true essences of kinds, such as the eternal essences of what it is to be an eagle, dog, or human, as opposed to accidental properties. Plato and traditional philosophy saw the goal of metaphysics as discovering what was “really” real (i.e. the forms), as opposed to the appearance of reality. This theme continues with Bertrand Russell in the canonical text, Problems of Philosophy. Russell prods us to look at a table in order to problematize what the real table is. He invokes Galileo’s distinction of primary and secondary properties to question the “real” color of the table, and he extends this notion to even the shape and texture to question the nature of the “real” table. The same thing applies to the texture. With the naked eye one can see the grain, but otherwise the table looks smooth and even. If we looked at it through a microscope, we should see roughness and hills and valleys, and all sorts of differences that are imperceptible to the naked eye. Which of these is the ‘real’ table?64 Russell, too, sees traditional metaphysic’s project as separating appearance from reality. “Here we have already the beginnings of one of the distinctions that cause the most trouble in philosophy—the distinction between ‘appearance’ and ‘reality’, between what things seem to be and what they are.”65 For Russell and Plato and traditional philosophy, the aim of metaphysical philosophy is to discover reality, it is the philosopher’s job (more specifically the metaphysician’s job) to discover the true essence(s) of reality. But how do we know what true reality is? Our senses can be fooled. To my immediate senses I live on a flat earth with the sun rotating around it. How can we ever
64 Bertrand Russell, The Problems of Philosophy, (New York: Oxford University Press, 1972). 10. 65 Ibid. 9.
47 be assured that our knowledge claims about that true reality are accurate representations of that reality? Credited to Descartes, this is the articulation of traditional philosophy’s epistemological project. Descartes, known as the father of modern philosophy, put the epistemological question first. In other words, Plato’s philosophical project was to discover the true nature of reality, and Descartes wanted a foundation as to how Plato knew what true reality was. Descartes framed the aim of modern epistemology as discovering a foundation that guarantees that our perceptions of the noumenal world are accurate. Traditional, Cartesian epistemology depicts the philosopher’s job (more specifically the epistemologist’s job) to increase truth and decrease the falsity of representations of that noumenal world. One way in which a pragmatic onto-epistemological project is different is related to Dewey’s extension of Mead’s intersubjective self to intersubjective experience. According to Dewey all that we can know and experience is intersubjectivity. In other words, the objects that are to be known are intersubjective as well as the knower (i.e., self). “We do not introduce, either by hypothesis or by dogma, knowers and knowns as prerequisites to fact.” 66 Dewey immediately shifts the ontology of that to be known away from objectivity. This means that within the pragmatic philosophical framework, freedom is not seen as an external, preexisting entity to be known. So the question of how do we gain access to and knowledge of that external entity, either rationally or empirically, does not arise. If both knower and the known are intersubjective then there is no “view from nowhere” nor object to be known from nowhere. William James’s “radical empiricism” helps illuminate this shift of the pragmatic project away from objective, noumenal reality. James’s “radical empiricism” states, “There is only one basic ‘stuff’ of which the universe is composed, ‘pure experience’… By ‘pure’ experience, he meant the feeling and/or sensations one has prior to analyzing an experience and breaking into pieces.” 67 As an illustration, common sense says it sure does seem that when I sit down in my favorite reading chair that I am directly
66 John Dewey and Arthur Bentley, Knowing and the Known, (Boston, MA: The Beacon Press, 1949). 59. (Original emphasis in italics, my emphasis in bold.) Page numbers for further references (KK) appear in text. 67 Eric Bredo, “The Darwinian Center to the Vision of William James,” in William James and Education, ed. J. Garrsion, R. Podeschi, & E. Bredo, (NewYork: Teachers College Press, 2002).18. Page numbers for further references (DCWJ) appear in text.
48 experiencing its feel and touch, color, smell, its overall sensation. Yet, “For James there is no outside realm, for the real world is within the experiential realm that also houses the knower.”68 For James, we do not experience the noumenal world; we experience our experience! In other words, how I think about and interact with an object, changes the way that object is experienced. Therefore, we do not directly experience the object, but we experience the experience of the object. Because no objective world exists for us, the ontological focus shifts away from objective reality and toward experience. James helped alter the pragmatic philosophical emphasis away from an objective externally existent object which is to be known, to knowing about our experience. Yet as James zeroed in more on that experience as subjective, Mead and Dewey accepted the center of attention as away from an objective object, but alternatively put the spotlight on that experience as intersubjective. This is because both Dewey and Mead emphasized that experience is filtered not only through our organic senses but also mediated through socially, historically and culturally influenced notions. We experience an intersubjective experience, not a subjective experience, because we are not separate, subjective selves; we are social, intersubjective selves. Dewey and Bentley clearly lay out their particular philosophy’s ontological assumptions and ideas of knowing by listing eight points in their book, Knowing and the Known. To put succinctly, numbers 1 through 4 regard their rejection of Cartesian dualism and the position of the knower as inseparable to that which is to be known. Dewey and Bentley use the event of a business transaction as an analogy to the knowing transaction. “No one exists as a buyer or seller save in and because of a transaction in which each is engaged” (KK, 270, emphasis in original). There cannot be a buyer without a transaction with a seller. 69 Specifically because of this point Dewey and Bentley prefer the term “transaction” to “interaction,” for interaction may still connote preexisting entities in causal connection with each other. Dewey and Bentley intend transaction to connote the inseparatibility of knower and known. The title of their book, Knowing and Known, and not Knower and Known, reflects the inseparatibility of knower
68 Denis C. Phillips, “From Radical Empiricism to Radical Constructivism, or William James Meets Ernst von Glaserfeld,” in William James and Education,. ed. J. Garrsion, R. Podeschi, & E. Bredo, (NewYork: Teachers College Press, 2002). 124. 69 See also KK, 59, 133-134.
49 and known. There is no preexisting entity of a knower prior to that of the known, and vice versa. Thus, in regards to the inquiry of “freedom” within a pragmatic philosophical framework, liberty is not seen as an object to be known about by a separate knower. Point 5 states, “We recognize no names that pretend to be expressions of ‘inner’ thoughts, any more than we recognize names that pretend to be compulsions exercised upon us by ‘outer’ objects” (KK, 121). This reveals their congruence with James’s shift away from external objects, but split with James’s subjectivism, and a move toward intersubjectivity. So in respect to liberty, freedom is not seen as a subjective experience, but as an intersubjective one. Points 6 and 7 express their belief that there is no view from nowhere that can lead to foundational truths, and positions “knowings” as events of human behavior, more specifically, “naming behaviors as organic-environmental transactions” (KK, 121). Inquiry itself is not foundational, but positional, contextual, and behavioral. Hence, from this standpoint, Hayek’s, Mead’s and my inquiry undertaken here are all seen as actions coming from a particular socio-cultural-historical viewpoint. Point 8 is worth quoting in its entirety. To sum up: Since we are concerned with what is inquired into and is in process of knowing as a cosmic event, we have no interest in any form of hypostatized underpinning. Any statement that is or can be made about a knower, self, mind, or subject — or about a known thing, an object, or a cosmos – must, so far as we are concerned, be made on the basis, and in terms, of aspects of event which inquiry, as itself is a cosmic event, finds taking place. (KK, 121) In Biesta and Burbules’s words, “One of the key ideas of Dewey’s pragmatism…is that reality only ‘reveals’ itself as a result of the activities—the ‘doings’—of the organism.”70 Further, “Knowing is an activity, it is ‘a mode of doing’” (PER, 85), a kind of action, or better a transaction, taking place within organism/environment. Thus, Biesta and Burbules refer to Dewey’s theory as “transactional realism” which is the only reality we experience because, as stated earlier, how we think about, how we “transact” with the
70 Gert Biesta and Nicholas Burbules, Pragmatism and Educational Research, (Lanham, MD: The Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group, Inc., 2003). 10. Page numbers for further references (PER) appear in text.
50 noumenal world of which we are a part of, changes the intersubjective experience. And without that transaction there is no knowing event. Epistemology, knowing itself, is an action, which is why Dewey prefers the verb “knowing” and is suspicious of the noun “knowledge” unless the noun form refers to the action or event of knowing. Therefore, both freedom as inquired into and the knowing process itself are intersubjective experiences, or transactions. Not only is freedom seen as an intersubjective experience, but also the process of inquiry is seen as not objective but an intersubjective, transactive experience and process. Yet, knowing is not just any action or transaction of organism/environment. Not just any experience is an educative one in which knowing takes place. All modes of experience are equally real since they are all modes of the transaction of living organisms and their environments. Yet Dewey argued that experience is also real in another sense—and the latter point is of crucial importance for an adequate understanding of the difference between experience and cognitive experience, “ a distinction without which my view cannot be understood” (Dewey 1939b, 33). (PER, 43) The transactional event of knowing requires a particular kind of action, that is, intelligent action. Furthermore, according to Dewey, intelligent action requires a purpose. “The net conclusion is that acting with an aim is all one with acting intelligently.”71 Aim-full action is equated with intelligent action. Action without purpose is not educative and knowing-full action. Thus for us to participate in the knowing process requires not only action, but also a particular kind of action—action with a purpose. An aim, for Dewey, is something that gives meaning to action, and without meaning there is no intelligence and no knowing. “To have an aim is to act with meaning.”72 Thus a knowing event starts with a purpose, and purposeful action is meaningful action. Knowing is the action of reconstructing experience for making meaning. In discussing Dewey’s “reflex arc” model, Biesta and Burbules point out that, “Dewey connected coordination with the dawning of intelligence because increased coordination implies a change and increase of meaning”(PER, 33, emphasis in original).
71 John Dewey, Democracy and Education, (New York, NY: The Free Press, 1916). 103. 72 Ibid, 104.
51 Pragmatism as methodology sees knowledge as the intersubjective experience of making meaning. How does the process of making meaning, intelligent action, and inquiry occur? According to Biesta and Burbules’s interpretation, inquiry, as expressed by Dewey, requires both existential and conceptual operations. What distinguishes inquiry from trial and error is the fact that the transformation of the situation is controlled or directed by means of reflection or thinking. The process of inquiry thus consists of two kinds of operations: existential operations (the actual transformation of the situation) and conceptual operations (reflection or thinking). In some phases of the process of inquiry, the emphasis will be on conceptual operations, while in other phases the existential operations will be more prominent. (PER, 59, emphasis in original) In the example of inquiry into “freedom,” Jay Rockefeller “existentially” experiences freedom much differently than I do, but it is possible we make sense of freedom, we think, reflect and conceptualize freedom in similar ways. How we make sense of freedom, or how we think of freedom is what Dewey means by “conceptual operations.” Thus, the phase of inquiry that emphasizes conceptual operations focuses on the reflective aspects and the meaning-making event. In addition, reflection (i.e., thinking), for Dewey, takes place by performing symbolic operations.73 And we perform symbolic operations with significant symbols, some of which are words. “Words are ‘sound-events’ that, through a process of experimental learning, have become ‘objects’—events with meaning” (PER, 49). The construction of the significant symbols of words is a form of knowing for Dewey, called the naming process. “Naming is seen as itself a form of knowing, where knowing is itself directly a form of behavior; it is the naming type of knowing behavior” (KK, 147). Naming is an action, a way of making meaning. It is a conceptual action of knowing. Biesta and Burbules caution us not to construe Dewey’s idea that performing symbolic operations happens only mentally, in our heads. “For Dewey, meaning is primarily ‘a property of behavior’” (PER, 36). Thus, the sense-making process is seen as
73 See Biesta and Burbules, (PER, 12).
52 a particular kind of behavior or intersubjective human action. The naming process, i.e. knowing, is one of those meaning-making actions. Of course, just because we name something does not mean it fits with existential operations. This is why Dewey considers both conceptual and existential operations as necessary for inquiry. But it is conceptual operations that give direction and meaning to our transactive experiences. “Ideas, in other words, give direction to our observations, just as they give meaning to what we observe” (PER, 60). Naming, as a conceptual operation of inquiry, gives meaning and purpose, and thus intelligence, to action. For the transactional process of knowing that they articulate, Dewey and Bentley go to great pains to strongly emphasize that their assertion is not the way inquiry really is, but one manner of inquiry. It is a system of description and naming without reference to detachable and independent entities. In sticking with our examples of “education” and “freedom,” then, when using the significant symbols, “education” and “freedom,” no detachable independent entities are referred to, but rather the naming process, the intersubjective experience of making meaning of the significant symbols “education” and “freedom.” For, with Dewey’s process of inquiry, “There is no distinction between the thing and what it means” (PER, 48). So pragmatic inquiry into “education” implies there is no distinction between “education” and what education means; there is no distinction between “freedom” and what freedom means. Pragmatism as methodology proposes that the area of inquiry is the naming process of significant symbols. So a pragmatic philosophical project is not to empirically observe an objective entity that exists whether we are cognizant of it or not. The area of inquiry for pragmatism as methodology is the naming behavior, or how we make sense of significant symbols. Pragmatism as methodology focuses on the meaning-making, intersubjective experiences of significant symbols. Applying this methodology to education for freedom means to inquire into how educators and others do make meaning of the significant symbol “freedom,” and additionally how educators and people could make meaning of the significant symbol “freedom.”
53 The Edificatory Purpose of Philosophy: Re-naming of Significant Symbols for Ethico- Political Purposes As stated at the beginning of this chapter, ethico-politico dimensions are embedded in onto-epistemological projects, and methodologies and philosophical frameworks consist of all of these dimensions. A pragmatic philosophical framework of inquiry emphasizes ethico-politico dimensions, whereas Hayek’s philosophical project emphasizes onto-epistemological ones. Pragmatic methodology is not so much about something as it is for something.74 It is for re-descriptions, for re-presentations, for taking part in re-naming processes for specific purposes. Thus pragmatism as methodology is for particular ethico-politico projects. This is in part because pragmatism is about action and change. By focusing on intersubjective experience, pragmatic philosophy is not as interested in the noumenal, static world. By viewing the only reality we can know as intersubjective, pragmatism reconstructs Plato’s metaphysical emphasis on the eternal and everlasting to the world of change and flux. As Bredo asserts the connection of this view to the contribution of Darwin is interesting to note. First, Darwin argued that species evolve rather than being immutable. This belief is now commonplace, but as Dewey (1910/1997) noted, one needs to recognize that it overthrew 2000 years of philosophy. In Platonic and Christian thought, the emphasis was on the eternal and universal form of things rather than on changes or variations in form. The universal, eternal, or final character of a thing (Being) was used to explain its particular, present, or changing character (Becoming). Being was reality, Becoming mere appearance. Darwin reversed this priority, viewing organic forms as emergent within a historical and contingent life process. In doing so he used “Becoming” (varying events) to explain “Being” (structures or forms), rather than the reverse. (DCWJ, 9) A goal of pragmatic inquiry is for what can be, not about what is; and therefore stresses the ethico-politico dimensions. Research’s purpose, from this point of view, is not
74 Ibid, 1.
54 discovery but creation. So, for example, inquiry into education for freedom is not about discovering what freedom really is, but how can we use the significant symbol “freedom” for particular purposes. The reason for a philosophical project, in this sense, is to aid the becoming, not reflect the being; the descriptive function serves only as a catalyst to prescription. Research “for” as opposed to research “about” stems from pragmatism’s critiques of the traditional philosophical goal of mirroring reality. Pragmatism believes the tightly knit metaphysical and epistemological philosophical system set up by Plato and Descartes fails to recognize the split between objective reality and language. Traditional philosophy conflates epistemology with metaphysics. To say that the world is out there, that it is not our creation, is to say, with common sense, that most things in space and time are the effects of causes which do not include human mental states. To say that truth is not out there is simply to say that where there are no sentences there is no truth, that sentences are elements of human languages, and that human languages are human creations.75 Truth, for the pragmatist, is in language, not in the world. This does not disvalue truth, the external world, and language. It simply locates truth in language, in the active naming process. Truth, therefore, is created not discovered. When truth is seen as something to be discovered, statements are made that attempt to mirror the external to be known. Following a pragmatic philosophical framework the focus of truth shifts to action and intersubjective experience. This methodology hopes to abandon the traditional mirroring language of philosophy; it wants to get away from the onto-epistemological project that seeks to increase the truth and decrease the falsity of statements that are to accurately reflect the external, noumenal world.76 It attempts to jettison mirroring language and to embrace sentences as connected to each other and not the world. In this sense, pragmatism as methodology
75 Richard Rorty, Contingency, Irony and Solidarity, (Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University Press, 1989). 5. Page numbers for further references (CIS) appear in text. 76 See Richard Rorty, Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature, (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1980). Page numbers for further references (PMN) appear in text.
55 hopes to escape from the philosophical project as linguistically framed by traditional/conventional/ normal/standard philosophy. Traditional philosophy’s project is so caught in the terms “metaphysics” and “epistemology” that Rorty advises using a new vocabulary: from metaphysics to irony and from epistemology to hermeneutics. He defines an ironist, as opposed to a metaphysician, in part as, insofar as she philosophizes about her situation, she does not think that her vocabulary is closer to reality than others, that it is in touch with a power not herself. Ironists who are inclined to philosophize see the choice made between vocabularies as made neither within a neutral and universal metavocabulary not by an attempt to fight one’s way past appearances to the real, but simply by playing the new off against the old. (CIS, 73) Anti-foundationalism uses language to create. Consequently, the goal of a pragmatic philosophical project is not the aim of traditional metaphysics, that is, to discover eternal, never-changing, objective reality. It is not pragmatic philosophers’ job to prove reality and to make claims that represent and correspond to the way the world really is. It is a language of becoming. It is pragmatism’s project to mix the old language with the new for ethico-politico aims. To see keeping the conversation going as a sufficient aim of philosophy, to see wisdom as consisting in the ability to sustain a conversation, to see human beings as generators of new descriptions rather than beings one hopes to be able to be describe accurately (PMN, 378). Normal/standard discourse is only one way to describe us. Pragmatic discourse sees “humans as generators of new descriptions rather than beings” to be described accurately, for normal discourse objectifies humanity. Thus, Rorty prefers the philosophical project of edification and “bildung” (i.e. self-formation), rather than discovery of any kind of essence of humanity.77 In this vein, the work of a philosopher is never done, but always to “break the crust of convention.” For once we think we have it right, that we have discovered core essences, the
77 See Rorty, PMN.
56 conversation stops. This pragmatic methodology is not about “getting it right,” it is about extending the conversation about what something can mean. Dewey and Bentley, Rorty, and Malachowski all offer cautionary language that the pragmatic philosophical project is not any closer to the real essence of philosophy than traditional philosophy’s project. For example, Rorty pens, In this view, substituting dialectic for demonstration, as the method of philosophy, or getting rid of the correspondence theory of truth, is not a discovery about the nature of a preexistent entity called “philosophy” or “truth.” It is changing the way we talk, and thereby changing what we want to do and what we think we are. (CIS, 20) Rorty does not see pragmatism’s version of philosophy as closer to the real essence of what philosophy is. Malachowski states, “They are wrong in thinking that philosophy has an essence at all.”78 Classic/traditional philosophy is wrong in thinking there is only one kind of philosophical project. Yet, this is not an argument that concludes Rorty’s philosophical project is right and classic philosophy’s project is wrong. It is an argument that concludes that there is not one answer to the question of what philosophy is. Rorty “re-describes” what “philosophy” is, and as such demonstrates a different form of inquiry; it is the inquiry of re-description.79 In summary, the edificatory purpose of pragmatic methodology focuses on ethico- politico notions. It is not focused on the onto-epistemological task of mirroring reality and reflecting what really is. It recognizes its vocabulary is not closer to the objective external world, nor does it attempt to correspond to that reality. Its strategy is to interpret and use language to re-describe in specific ways. It is an attempt to re-name significant symbols for particular ethico-politico purposes. For example, the ironist would say that she is not inquiring into the true nature of “freedom,” but she is inquiring into and creating a new human experience of making sense of the significant symbol “freedom.” So, inquiry into freedom is about how we do, and how we can, make sense of freedom, (and the subsequent educating for that specific meaning of freedom) for specific ethico-politico purposes.
78 Alan Malachowski, Richard Rorty, (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2002). 61. 79 By re-description I mean the ability to “make sense” in a new way.
57 The Place of Reason Rorty’s anti-foundationalism, ironic strategy, and focus on language are often equated with postmodernism. Ironist pragmatism gets accused of radical relativity and antirationalism because of a lack of objective grounding. Sometimes I find myself being called a “postmodernist” because of my pragmatic views about truth and rationality. But I am nervous about being thus labeled, since in many contexts the term “postmodernism” is used in another sense, to refer to an attitude of political hopelessness.80 In other words, Rorty happily admits a pragmatic anti-foundational view of truth and rationality, but does not give up a sense of social progress. This follows from his distinction between the philosophical and political projects of the Enlightenment. His distinction is useful in describing to the reader the place and role of reason as viewed by the methodology of this dissertation. Summarily, reason is seen not as foundational but as contextualized. A long tradition of irrationalism or antirationalism from Friedrich Nietzsche onward has been based on a conception of reason as a social construction meant to preserve social order and guarantee the survival of the members of society. Reason in this context is a sociohistorical projection, a device to tame desire and passion and control the instincts of a being perpetually at war with other humans and with nature. 81 In this passage taken from “Reformulating Reason for Philosophy of Education,” Papastephanou summarizes the postmodern attack on rationality. The tradition of Nietzsche, Foucault, Derrida, and Lyotard has exposed the dark side of reason. That dark side is the socio-historical account of the way reason has been co-opted to subjugate and control populations. In the name of rationality, those in power have perpetuated social and class distinctions. Reason is power, and socio-historically that power has been used to dominate and oppress. Critical pedagogues and theorists who see specific forms of rationality perpetuating class society, through the Horatio Alger myth among other
80 Richard Rorty, “The Continuity Between the Enlightenment and ‘Postmodernism,’” in What’s Left of Enlightenment?: A Postmodern Question, eds. Keith Michael Baker and Peter Hanns Reill, (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2001). 20. Page numbers for further references (CEP) appear in text. 81 Marianna Papastephenou, “Reformulating Reason for Philosophy of Education,” Educational Theory, 51 (3). (2001): 294.
58 hegemonic narratives, share this postmodern suspicion of reason. Reason is a power that is wielded against the masses to ensure class and social reproduction. The critique of reason can be very informative in all those cases where theory appears to neglect the ideological and historical dimension of what is proclaimed to be absolutely valid knowledge. It is also very effective when it exposes reason’s complicitous role in phenomena of racism, sexism, exploitation, and violence.82 Both pragmatism and postmodernism argue against Platonic conceptions of reason, philosophy, and the truth. A pragmatic philosophical framework built on the ideas of Dewey and Rorty agree with Nietzsche when he said, “God is dead!” if Nietzsche meant that dogma is dead, even the dogma of rationality. It is in this sense that pragmatism shares postmodernism’s anti-foundationalism of reason and disdain of it as an ultimate power as that of God. Nietzsche’s popularity has obscured the fact that James and Dewey agreed with him about the need to get rid of the Enlightenment’s notions of Truth, Reason and Nature, while disagreeing with his politics. They were equally anti-authoritarian, but less individualistic. (CEP, 30) Pragmatism is postmodernism’s partner in abandoning the philosophical project of the Enlightenment, but parts company when it comes to a sense of progress (i.e., the political project of the Enlightenment). James and Dewey, Rorty continues, wanted to substitute, “we will” for power, in lieu of Nietzsche’s “I will” for power. “They heartily endorsed the Enlightenment’s political project while abandoning its intellectual project… Their version of anti-authoritarianism was communitarian rather than individualistic” (CEP, 30- 31). The communitarian version of Enlightenment’s political project, in Rorty words is, “to create heaven on Earth: a world without caste, class, or cruelty” (CEP, 19). Thus, the pragmatism of Rorty is for the political project of the Enlightenment. According to Rorty, the rejection of the philosophical project of the Enlightenment, the anti-foundationalism, or non-objectivity of reason, nature and truth means,
82 Ibid. 295.
59 that anything you can do with notions like “Nature,” “Reason” and “Truth” you can do better, with such notions as “the most useful description for our purposes” and “the attainment of free consensus about what to believe and to desire.” (CEP, 27-28) Rorty’s pragmatic framework abandons the philosophical project of the Enlightenment, which requires authorization for its political project from Reason. “To those who ask ‘What’s so desirable about diminished cruelty?’ there is, as far as I can see, nothing to be said. Enlightenment rationalism…insists there is a lot to be said” (CEP, 28). Rorty abandons the need to justify the political project on rational grounds, and accepts them on humanitarian grounds. Rorty wants nothing to do with reason, if reason “dictates” more cruelty. Pragmatic and postmodern critiques of the socio-historical use of reason are legitimately concerned with rationality’s power to oppress, the way some used God to oppress before the Enlightenment. But, does admitting the socio-historical abuses of reason commit one to not using reason at all, to be nonrationalist or antirationalist? Does believing that reason and philosophy arise out of historical, concrete situations, and that reason is not some a priori reality, but is formed via particular contexts suggest jettisoning the concept all together? In dislodging Reason, Truth and Nature from its objective foundation, are we left with no uses for these three? Some poststructuralist thinkers follow the vitalism and antirationalism of their predecessors even more forcefully. It seems that for this line of thought once reason has lost its ahistorical, transcendental character it also forfeits its universality. Moreover, by being attached to self-preservation and survival, it becomes ineluctably power-loaded and identified with conservation, denial of desire, and oppressive order. Its universalistic aspirations are nothing but its own centripetal imperialist tendencies against nonrationalist modes of existence. Its claims to absolute transparency and mirroring of the world are only a myth invented to mask its origins lying in the will to dominate and control. 83
83 M. Papastephenou, 2001, op. cit. 294-295.
60 Yet, another pragmatist, Burbules, cautions us not to set up the tempting, yet “tedious and counterproductive dualisms,” 84 of postmodern/analytic philosophy, Continental/Anglo- American perspectives, and rationality/irrationality. Lyotard bases his philosophy of language in Wittgenstein. Elsewhere, Pradeep Dhillon (1996) has argued for congruities between Lyotard and Roderick Chisholm. Richard Rorty is forever combining sources from across these traditions. Are these people deluded? How can they be attempting to combine traditions that, on some accounts, are incompatible and antagonistic with one another? 85 Burbules suggests a troubling and complication of these easily formed dichotomies. He argues for the importance of the categories, but against the positioning of them as binaries. He advocates a view of reason as a “pharmakon.” Pharmakon, Burbules explains, is a Greek word that means both medicine and poison. Depending on dosages, medicines may become poisons. The point to make here is that reason is not an all or nothing proposition. To rely on the binary of rationalism versus antirationalism is to commit the perfectionist fallacy form of a false dichotomy. Because reason is not grounded in objectivity does not imply a wholesale rejection of reason. Reason, taken in the wrong dose, may become a poison. Yet this does not mean a dosage of zero. As an example of the contextualization of reason, the seemingly sound reasoning system of math can lead to contradictions and absurdities. According to a mathematical proof, there are as many even numbers as there are even and odd numbers. In other words, the cardinal set of even numbers is equal to the cardinal set of even and odd numbers. This is demonstrated by a correspondence proof. Doubling 1 corresponds to 2, 2 to 4, 3 to 6, etc. Every even and odd number corresponds to an even number, its double. Therefore, there are as many even numbers as even and odd numbers, which is an absurdity. So, mathematical reasoning can lead to absurdities. Yet, because the logic of math proves a contradiction within itself, should we discount all mathematical reasoning? Is math rendered useless? No. I trust in the reason of math when I’m cutting
84 Nicolas Burbules, (2000). “Postmodernism for Analytic Philosophers of Education,” Educational Philosophy and Theory, 32 (3).2000:311. 85 Ibid, 311-312.
61 a 2 x 4 to measurement. The point is that mathematical reason is not objectively grounded and has limits; but this does not mean that it is not useful in certain contexts. Dewey adds to any discussion that seeks to break down binaries and dichotomies, and the dichotomy between rationalism and antirationalism is no exception. For Dewey, the cure to reason’s limits is not less reason or no reason, but the awareness of reason’s limits, its contextualization. In his chapter on logical reconstruction it should come as no surprise that Dewey sees logic, as he does reason and philosophy, as embedded in experience and concrete situations. “Logic is a matter of profound human importance precisely because it is empirically founded and experimentally applied.”86 Logic is experimental and learned through experience. Reason does not lose it importance and power because it is not ahistorical. The contextualization of reason and philosophy is exactly what makes reason and philosophy so important for Dewey. Dewey argues against the objectivist, true, ideal, Platonic form of logic, reason and philosophy, but this does not make him a subjectivist. “Rules are softened into principles” (RP, 161). For Dewey, reason is not idealized or subjectified, but contextualized. Being aware of reason’s limits does not require a complete abandonment of reason. In this sense logic is a tool that is used within specific contexts. Dewey locates the power of reason and philosophy not in universal forms but in contextualization, and he stresses the awareness of its context and the limits of that context. A Deweyan framework will argue against antirationalism, and advocate for “rationalism plus,” that is, rationalism plus the understanding of reason as contextualized; a reason that is aware of its own limitations. Dewey’s Reconstruction in Philosophy called for a recognition of the power of reason as an apologetic to preserve the status quo, and that reason and philosophy arise from concrete situations embedded in experience. This does not devalue reason, but simply locates it. The intersubjectivity of reason, its contextualization is in part what makes it so useful. In this sense the pragmatism of Dewey and Rorty extend Nietzsche’s emphatic statement, “I alone have questioned the value of truth,” to the question, “What is the value of reason?”
86 John Dewey, Reconstruction in Philosophy, (Boston: Beacon Press, 1920). 138. Page numbers for further references (RP) appear in text.
62 How can reason be useful for our purposes? Nature, Reason and Truth are instrumental tools to be used to “reshape our environment to our needs” (CEP, 21), not to justify what those needs are, or “to grasp the intrinsic structure of reality” (ibid). Thus pragmatism as methodology does not advocate the abandonment of reason’s power, but the ethical use of its power for the purpose of Enlightenment’s political project. Reason should not be used to bully people into submission. Reason can be used to help communicate and to aid in the process of attainment of a freely chosen consensus. Although not embedded in a priori reality, reason can help in sense making. Reason is seen, not ahistorically, but as the adhesive of philosophical frameworks, as aids in making meaning. Summary of methodology Pragmatism as methodology emphasizes possibilities of creation (becoming) rather than essences of discovery (being). The aim of a pragmatic philosophical project is not to discover an objective form and then make true statements about it. It is an inquiry into and for creating intersubjective experiences, the intersubjective experiences of making meaning of significant symbols. For example, pragmatism as methodology proposes that a philosophical project regarding “freedom” is about reconstructing our meaning-making experiences of the significant symbol “freedom.” It is not about freedom, but for a sense of freedom for particular aims. It is about using reason to build optional ways to make sense of significant symbols for political projects. It is to use reason to help communicate and attain a freely chosen consensus. Pragmatism as methodology aims to help create meaning-making events of significant symbols for ethico-politico purposes. Contrary to Hayek’s philosophical framework that has the key element of a meta- philosophy that seeks to discover true freedom, and then offer articulations that reflect that, a pragmatic philosophical framework employs a methodology that seeks making meaning of “freedom” for ethico-politico purposes. This varied element within the pragmatic framework seeks to create making sense of the significant symbol “freedom” for ethico-politico aims, as in my case the ethico-politico aims of lessening human suffering and enhancing democratic public goods. Thus, another alternative element
63 within the pragmatic philosophical framework will lead to a varied way to make sense of freedom.
64
Chapter 4: Reconstructing the Experience of Freedom In Liberalism and Social Action, John Dewey tells a story of liberalism as one that began with John Locke’s philosophy of social change, but which eventually transformed into an apologetic of the status quo. In responding to unrepresentative taxation in the late seventeenth century, Locke based his liberalism on pre-existent individual rights not to be usurped by the state. The usefulness of his articulations is evidenced in his theory being used to justify the French and American revolutions. Thus early liberalism was laudable because of its political ambitions and consequences. Yet, “The whole temper of this philosophy is individualistic in the sense in which individualism is opposed to organized social action. It held the primacy of the individual over the state not only in time but in moral authority” (LSA, 16). Early liberalism used a philosophy of an individual, external and preexisting self, a self that is separate from society and that has been previously described in this dissertation. Thus, the early, radical thought of Locke contained the seeds of an individualism that eventually produced laissez faire liberalism, or neoliberalism, which emphasized Locke’s individualism. In American media and culture today, the label “liberalism” tends to be equated with the utilitarian conception of liberalism87 that encourages social planning and action. Speaking of the utilitarian formulation of liberalism Dewey writes, It came surely to be disassociated from the laissez faire creed and to be associated with the use of governmental action for aid to those at an economic disadvantage and for alleviation of their conditions. In this country, save for a small band of adherents to earlier liberalism, ideas and policies of this general type have virtually come to define the meaning of liberal faith. (LSA, 30) What Dewey wrote in 1935 is still true today. Currently the term “liberalism” tends to be equated with the utilitarian conception of liberalism, as in the distant past liberalism was equated with the individualism of the laissez faire creed. It is utilitarian liberalism that is alluded to when neoliberal opinions refer to “liberalism” as a dirty word today. The main
87 I discuss the difference between utilitarian and laissez faire liberalism in Chapter One.
65 point is that from the same early liberal roots of Locke’s articulation of liberal philosophy, two incompatible and competing discourses of liberalism and definitions of freedom arose. In our current culture, as I have suggested, neoliberal discourse dominates. Neoliberal thought has taken the individualism of Locke and Hayek’s notion of freedom to justify the status quo of our current socio-cultural-philosophical environment. Dewey writes of the history of liberal thinkers, The economic and political changes for which they strove were so largely accomplished that they had become in turn the vested interest, and their doctrines, especially in the form of laissez faire liberalism, now provided the intellectual justification of the status quo. (LSA, 41) What started out as a radical philosophy for social reconstruction turned into a philosophy for social reproduction. Dewey intimates that the split between laissez faire and utilitarian conceptions of liberalism resulted from varied philosophies and discourses of self. Hayek, as we have seen, built neoliberalism on the foundation of an individual self as dichotomous with society and this results in neoliberal discourse as experiencing freedom and social control as antagonistic. Yet, this is exactly what Dewey warns against. And let those who are struggling to replace the present economic system by a cooperative one also remember that in struggling for a new system of social restraints and controls they are also struggling for a more equal and equitable balance of powers that will enhance and multiply the effective liberties of the mass of individuals. Let them not be jockeyed into the position of supporting social control at the expense of liberty...88 So, how can we make meaning of liberty in which freedom is not antithetical to social control policies? How can concern and action for democratic public goods be congruent with freedom? How, precisely, does Dewey’s philosophy make sense of freedom as consistent with social control?
88 John Dewey, “Liberty and Social Control” in The Political Writings, eds. Deborah Morris and Ian Shapiro, (Indianapolis, IN: Hackett Publishing Company, 1993). 160, emphasis added. Page numbers for further references (LSC) appear in text.
66 Before I address the specific question of how pragmatism makes sense of liberty, I will re-present the third alternative element in the pragmatic philosophical framework. The previous stated analysis of Hayek’s neoliberal framework revealed his disdain for human reason and will as a source of moral authority, and his upholding of the Natural laws of freedom as the source. Dewey and pragmatism’s alternative philosophical element is their faith in humanity as a source of moral authority. Pragmatic Sources of Moral Authority: Intelligence, Caring, and Diversity Neoliberal policy is a form of social control. Hayek conceals the social control that is inherent in neoliberalism by framing his position as for individual liberty and against social control. Yet, there is no escaping social control. Neoliberal ideas are instituted through social structures such as legislation, as Hayek himself demonstrates. Our structural economic policies also control and influence society, culture, and cultural discourse. There is no eluding social action and control. The neoliberal discourse, which believes in minimizing social control, is at best naïve and at worst deliberately misleading. It is an illusion that social and cultural controls are absent in their position. By exposing the fanciful position that is for freedom and anti-social control, the question, for Dewey, becomes not whether there should be social control or not, but what kind of social control? There is no denying the influences of the socio-cultural milieu, because we all are, after all, social selves. Hence, what kind of social control allows for the maximization of freedoms? Of course, Dewey is aware that some social control may be injurious to freedoms (this is so obvious it barely needs mentioning), but it is a mistake to think all forms of social control and political actions are detrimental to freedoms. For Deweyan pragmatism, there is no dichotomy between self and society, (or in Mead’s language—no separation of the “I/me”), and this extends to the breakdown of the dichotomy between human nature and human culture. It follows, then, that human nature/human culture cannot be separated either. Individuals are not ready made entities. The self is an encultured being. We are biosocial creatures, so there is no human nature as opposed to and separate from human culture. This is one of the main themes Dewey develops in Freedom and Culture. Allow me to quote Dewey extensively here, in one paragraph, which summarizes Dewey’s understanding of human nature/human culture.
67 In any case, the idea of culture that has been made familiar by the work of anthropological students points to the conclusion that whatever are the native constituents of human nature, the culture of a period and group is the determining influence in their arrangement; it is that which determines the patterns of behavior that mark out the activities of any group, family, clan, people, sect, faction, class. It is at least as true that the state of culture determines the order and arrangement of native tendencies as that human nature produces any particular set or system of social phenomena so as to obtain satisfaction for itself. The problem is to find out the way in which the elements of a culture interact with each other and the way in which the elements of human nature are caused to interact with one another under conditions set by their interaction with the existing environment. For example, if our American culture is largely a pecuniary culture, it is not because the original or innate structure of human nature tends of itself to obtaining pecuniary profit. It is rather that a certain complex culture stimulates, promotes and consolidates native tendencies so as to produce a certain pattern of desires and purposes. If we take all the communities, peoples, classes, tribes and nations that ever existed, we may be sure that since human nature in its native constitution is the relative constant, it cannot be appealed to, in isolation, to account for the multitude of diversities presented by different forms of association.89 Dewey uses the causal reasoning pattern that because there are so many variations in outcomes, i.e. “patterns of behavior,” the constant, i.e. human nature, cannot be used to explain the variations. Differences in inputs must be looked at, which in this case are varied cultures. Accordingly, Dewey chooses the term “native tendencies” to express the pliability of human nature. Human nature is like Play-Doh.90 Although we cannot make a working supercomputer from Play-Doh, there is still an infinite amount of forms Play-
89 John Dewey, Freedom and Culture, (New York, NY: G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 1939).18-19. Page numbers for further references (FC) appear in text. 90 The Play-Doh analogy is from Jim Garrison, Dewey and Eros: Wisdom and Desire in the Art of Teaching, (New York, NY: Teachers College Press, 1997).
68 Doh, or human tendencies may take. Humanity is not fixed by nature. Human “nature” is pliable and directed and composed of culture. This point of view is consistent with Dewey’s argument in Chapter 3 of Reconstruction in Philosophy, in which he makes a case for the field of philosophy to incorporate the changes that have occurred in the scientific worldview. Dewey beseeches philosophy to jettison the obsolete scientific worldview that sees the world as finite, closed and fixed. With the turn instigated by Darwin, modern science emphasizes change, process, and the understanding of movement. In Aristotelian terms, science has moved its focus away from the ancient one of final, formal and material causes, and has shifted the lens to efficient causation. Dewey is interested in efficient causation, or the “certain complex culture” that results in the diversities of forms of association. The efficient cause of, say, American rugged individualism, then, is not the material cause of a fixed, innate human nature, but is an American culture that fosters and directs human potentialities in a particular direction. American individualism and the attitude that is expressed by the popular phrase, “looking out for number one,” is not explained via the material structure of a human nature in which individuals operate in their own self interest, as in Hayek’s case. The efficient cause of American individualism is our culture. Thus, Dewey would charge Hayek with using the antiquated scientific worldview that sees nature as fixed, closed and finite. Hayek, as representative of neoliberal discourse, focuses and relies on eternal essences of humanity to explain and argue. He depends on the dichotomy of human nature and human culture, and locates the source of moral authority, that is, our guide to social action, in static, eternal properties of human nature. Of course, there is security in dreams of a nature being fixed and thus closed, because moral authority, responsibility and purpose are located there. If there is no moral authority, responsibility and purpose in Nature/God, then the moral authority and responsibility falls on our shoulders. Social inequality, if not part of Nature/God’s design, is our problem and responsibility. Some people may get uncomfortable because moral authority, moral responsibility and purpose are shifted to humanity. Humanity is now responsible for social injustice and social inequality—not Nature/God. It can be terrifying to have authority and responsibility; it can also be liberating.
69 Dewey’s philosophy incorporates the contemporary scientific focus on becoming and change, rather than on being and fixity. Because human “tendencies” are molded by culture, and there is no escaping culture, human nature cannot be divorced from human culture. Yet, the neoliberal position of following human Nature for social organization assumes human nature can be separated from human culture. Then, it defers moral authority to something non-cultural, it shifts the moral authority away from culture and humanity and to Nature/God. Hayek and laissez faire liberalism see culture, or social action and control, as external limitations rather than positive forces. Regarding this position Dewey concludes, “It is the tragedy of earlier liberalism that just at the time when the problem of social organization was most urgent, liberals could bring to its solution nothing but the conception that intelligence is an individual possession” (LSA, 52). Laissez faire liberalism could only bring the solution of no solution, or to be more exact, the solution of following Natural Law of operating in self-interest to the problem of social organization, planning and control. The early liberalism used the idea of a fixed human nature to free humanity in the 19th century, but then it did not change when conditions called for a new kind of fight for freedom.91 By recognizing the impossibility of separating human nature/human culture, the question becomes, how can we arrange social action and control for maximizing the opening of opportunities for individuals to fulfill their potential—that is, how do we intelligently organize and use social control as a positive force to enhance freedoms? The socio-cultural environment is part of who we are, and this must be recognized and used as a positive power for maximizing freedoms for the most people. Dewey’s pragmatism does not locate the moral authority in the design of God or Nature. Interpreting Dewey, Rorty writes, “He viewed the theory that truth is correspondence to Reality, and the theory that moral goodness is correspondence to the Divine Will, as equally dispensable.”92 If not Nature/God, then what is a legitimate form of authority for organizing social action and control to enhance freedoms? Dewey argued
91 See Dewey, LSA, 49-51. 92 Richard Rorty, “Pragmatism as Anti-authoritarianism,” in A Companion to Pragmatism, eds., John R. Shook and Joseph Margolis, (Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing, 2006), 258.. Page numbers for further references (PA) appear in text.
70 against the social control of laissez faire liberalism but he also argued against state socialism—the authority of social control in the bureaucratic state. “A corporatism dominated by a bureaucratic state was no more satisfactory to Dewey than a corporatism dominated by big business.”93 Dewey’s moral authority is not located in the “planned” society by experts.94 So, where is the source of moral authority for organized social action? Rorty describes Dewey’s pragmatism as anti-authoritarianism.95 But, his label of anti-authoritarianism may be misleading. Rorty foreshadows in his opening, “As Dewey saw it, whole-hearted pursuit of the democratic ideal requires us to set aside any authority save that of a consensus of our fellow humans” (PA, 257). This condition of a consensus, or what Rorty calls elsewhere, “freely chosen consensus” is important because this is a source of moral authority for Dewey. Dewey’s stories are always stories of the progress from the need of human communities to rely on a non-human power to their realization that all they need is faith in themselves; they are stories about the substitution of fraternity for authority. (PA, 262) Discounting Rorty’s unfortunate use of the male-biased language, “fraternity,” Rorty and Dewey press us to have faith in each other rather than some non-human, external authority, be it Reason, Nature or God. 96 I suggest that for Dewey and Rorty, this faith in ourselves means a faith in humanity’s reason and emotion, intelligence and caring, consensus and diversity, for like all good pragmatists they shun the binaries that these pairs often evoke. Intelligent Consensus Yes, some social control may be antithetical to freedom, but that does not mean all social control is antithetical to freedom. As Westbrook indicates, Dewey strove for a decentralized authority of consensus, but this does not mean there is no authority at all. Dewey asks us to consider rules of a game and the changing of the rules. “The control is
93 Robert Westbrook, John Dewey and American Democracy, (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1991). 452. Page numbers for further references (JDAD) appear in text. 94 See Westbrook’s (JDAD), 452-458. 95 Richard Rorty, 2006, op. cit. 96 See Richard Rorty, “The Continuity Between the Enlightenment and ‘Postmodernism, ” in What’s Left of Enlightenment?, eds., Keith Michael Baker and Peter Hanns Reill, (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2001).
71 social, but individuals are parts of a community, not outside of it.”97 This is a type of consensus that is not the will of one specific person. The action and control are done in the interest of the group, not as a display of personal power. It is this kind of consensus that can be a legitimate authority. For Dewey, science is the quintessential case of how freely chosen consensus can operate as a legitimate authority. Science is an exemplar of intelligent consensus because, for Dewey, science is a consensus that is formed cooperatively and socially. Scientific intelligence is not individual; it is organized, social, and collective intelligence. Although some industrial forms of science are used for individual profit, the pure science Dewey is thinking of is social because experiments are verified socially. He sees scientific knowledge as a public trust;98 scientific knowledge is social knowledge. The science Dewey has in mind is when people cooperate and share knowledge to solve problems. Science is a prototypical example of a consensus that is formed by social intelligence and not by the will of one specific person. It is an exemplar of an authority that was derived by intelligent consensus. The authority and consensus of science develops via reasoning and social processes. Dewey argues that the paradigm of scientific, experimental intelligence can apply to political and social action as well. We take for granted the necessity of special opportunity and prolonged education to secure ability to think in a special calling, like mathematics. But we appear to assume that ability to think effectively in social, political and moral matters is a gift of God, and that the gift operates by a kind of spontaneous combustion.99 Dewey believes that we can develop a social intelligence of social and political matters, and that social experimental intelligence requires social and political action. There is a need for the faith in others to deliberate and make choices for social and political action, and not to rely on Nature/God as our authority. Organized intelligence can apply to political and social action. Intelligent social action can be a positive power. As Rorty
97 John Dewey, Experience and Education, (New York, NY: Simon and Schuster, 1938). 54. 98 See Dewey, (FC, 151). 99 John Dewey, “Philosophies of Freedom,” in The Political Writings, op cit., 140. Page numbers for further references (POF) appear in text.
72 describes, “Dewey used the term ‘democracy’ to mean something like what Habermas means by the term ‘communicative reason’” (PA, 262). It is a freely chosen consensus that results from experimental intelligence. Within the pragmatic philosophical framework, intelligent consensus, humanity’s reason, works as one source of moral authority for social and political action. Caring Since Dewey’s days, the recognition of hegemonic forms has disrupted the notion of consensus. Intellectual bullying and the power to “manufacture consensus” are legitimate concerns to Dewey’s emphasis on scientific thinking. At these times it is important to remember both the place of reason in a pragmatic philosophical framework and Dewey’s non-dichotomous thought. As was outlined in Chapter 3, Dewey, as representative of pragmatism, contextualizes reason, seeing reason as a tool to be used rather than a dictate to follow irrespective of feeling. He recognizes what Jim Garrison would call the “philosophical fallacy” and does not neglect the context of reason and philosophy. 100 Part of the context of reason is within the lived experiences of humanity, which includes emotion. Dewey did not hold a dichotomous view of reason as opposed to emotion, and intellect as opposed to caring. “Unlike most modern thinkers, Dewey entirely rejected any dualism of reason and emotion. For him affect is a necessary part of belief.”101 Garrison names this notion of Dewey’s, “intelligent sympathy,” and directs us to neopragmatist feminists who have emphasized the caring, feeling aspects in Dewey’s ethics. Garrison quotes Dewey, “A moral judgment, however intellectual it may be, must be at least colored with feeling if it is to influence behavior…. Affection, from intense love to mild flavor, is an ingredient in all operative knowledge…”102 When Dewey contextualizes reason, he points to the limits of reason, he does not abandon reason. With the breaking down of dualisms, pragmatism sees reason and emotion analogously to the I/me of the self. The intelligence and caring of humanity are both/and, not either/or constitutive elements of the moral source of authority.
100 Jim Garrison, 1997, op. cit. 33. 101 Ibid, 109. 102 Ibid.
73 The central tenet that reason and feeling can be sources of moral authority converges with views such as John Rawls’s “reflective equilibrium,” and Michael Pritchard’s distinction between “reasonableness” and “rationality.” Rawls’s concept of reflective equilibrium in which a rationally formed moral ideal is “tried on” to see how it feels and fits with ethical situations reflect that emotion and reason are both/and not either/or sources of moral authority. Pritchard characterizes “reasonableness” as not reducible to rationality or pure reason. The ability to let sympathy and the feeling for others guide our moral actions in addition to strict rationality is how Pritchard distinguishes “reasonableness” as opposed to “rationality.”103 In arguing for educating for “reasonableness” by allowing children to work through ethical issues, Pritchard suggests a kind of moral sentiment develops that influences moral judgment. Both rationality and a caring sympathy and feeling for others are sources of moral authority for these thinkers. The feminist-pragmatist Kathleen Knight Abowitz also stresses emotion and caring as a source of moral authority within the philosophical framework of pragmatism. Like their feminist counterparts, pragmatist accounts of moral inquiry place conspicuous attention on the ways in which the affective domains of our lives play an integral role in our experience…Rejecting the reason/emotion dichotomy so prevalent in Western philosophy, pragmatist thinkers have long defended the role of affect in problem-solving.104 All of this unites with Rorty’s claim that even if rationality suggests increasing and not meliorating human suffering, then he wants no part of it. Like the transaction of the “I/me,” reason and emotion are not separate within the pragmatic philosophical framework as represented by Dewey. Moral judgment is the result of a “transaction,” if you will, between intellect and caring, as constituted by each other. The source of moral authority, for pragmatism, is humanity’s intellect/caring.
103 Michael Pritchard, Reasonable Children, (Lawrence, KS: University Press of Kansas, 1996.) See especially 2-5. 104 Kathleen Knight Abowitz, “Reclaiming Community,” Educational Theory, 49 (2). 1999. 154. Page numbers for further references (RC) appear in text.
74 Diversity The recent disruptions of consensus have pointed to an emphasis on sympathetic feeling as a source of moral authority in addition to scientific intelligence. These disruptions have also revealed the importance of the value of diversity as a moral source for Dewey’s thought. Knight Abowitz uses Dewey’s understanding of affect and sympathy, his ethic of care, to help her critique communitarians’ over- reliance on the ideal of consensus. She argues that the communitarians use the concept of “community” as “smoothing over differences, uniting a divided people, healing a broken nation, and making morally responsible those who are deemed self-centered rights-chasers” (RC, 143). She points to the importance of diversity and difference as a source of moral authority. This is also evident in Dewey’s pragmatic philosophical framework. Dewey valued diversity because it is a path to growth. Garrison proclaims, “Growth, for Dewey, is the all-inclusive ideal. ‘Growth itself,’ wrote Dewey (1920/1982b), ‘is the only moral ‘end.’”105 Dewey viewed a society that lacked diversity as a society that was stagnant. Difference cultivates social growth. Knight Abowitz emphasizes a kind of diversity that is not antithetical to community, because there is a common space of relations with others. It is a view of community, “which does not have a common set of beliefs but common activity, work, and doing” (RC, 159). Of course there is bound to be tension between consensus and diversity. Exactly how to navigate the messiness of the transaction of these two poles would be another project. What I hoped to have shown here is that intelligence, caring and diversity are all sources of moral authority within a pragmatic philosophical framework. I have now re-presented three alternative elements in a pragmatic philosophical framework of freedom as opposed to the neoliberal philosophical framework of freedom. A pragmatic philosophical framework includes varied notions of self, the project of philosophy itself, and sources of moral authority. To make sense of freedom with these three different key elements requires an alternative to the neoliberal notion of freedom.
105 Jim Garrison, 1997, op. cit. 29.
75 Freedom as a Concrete, Relational, Intelligent, Positive Power Dewey’s philosophy of freedom stems from Dewey’s overall pragmatic philosophy and philosophical framework. In other words, Dewey’s notions of freedom are consistent with his ontological, epistemological, and ethico-politico commitments. As a whole his philosophy is an attempt to take philosophy itself out of the clouds and embed it in concrete experience. This is because, for Dewey, philosophy is about meaning, it is not about discovering the truth of an ultimate reality as opposed to appearance.106 Meaning relies on experience, and experience is contingent and contextual. Dewey writes of the socio-cultural-historical situated-ness of philosophy. Different hues of philosophical thought are bound to result. Women have as yet made little contributions to philosophy. But when women who are not mere students of other persons’ philosophy set out to write, we cannot conceive that it will be the same in viewpoint or tenor as that composed from the standpoint of the different masculine experience of things. Institutions, customs of life, breed certain systematized predilections and aversions. The wise man reads historic philosophies to detect in them intellectual formulations of men’s habitual purposes and cultivated wants, not to gain insight into the ultimate nature of things or information about the make-up of reality. (FC, 34) Different experiences produce different philosophies because varied constructions of meaning result from varied experiences. Rich people read the Bible differently than the poor. For Dewey, human experience influences the meanings humanity makes, and philosophy concerns itself with meaning making, not Reality. Dewey’s contextualization of philosophy renders abstract concepts unintelligible unless they are grounded in concrete experience. The way Dewey addresses education may illuminate what that means. “And it is well to remind ourselves that education as such has no aims. Only persons, parents, and teachers, etc., have aims, not an abstract idea like education” (DE, 107). The question is not what is the one true nature of “education” in the abstract, but education for what? What are the uses of education?
106 John Dewey, “Philosophy and Civilization” in The Political Writings, op cit.. 33.
76 Dewey’s treatment of freedom is no different. In regards to the problems of freedom, Dewey pens, “They are not questions in the abstract and cannot be discussed in a wholesale way. They are questions that demand discussion of cultural conditions, conditions of science, art, morals, religion, education and industry” (FC, 134). Thus, for Dewey, freedom is not an abstract concept, but rather liberty is embedded in socio- cultural-historical situations. So, the question is not, what is freedom, but freedom for, or from, what? With Dewey’s philosophy it makes no sense to talk of freedom in the abstract; freedom needs contextualization. For example, the liberalism of the Enlightenment period constructed liberty, in part, as freedom of thought. Locke’s liberalism also fought for the freedom for the acquisition of private property and the freedom from oppressive taxation. For Dewey, freedom is located in a particular socio- cultural historical concrete context, not in “abstract rules” as in Hayek’s discourse. There are various areas of freedom, because there is a plural diversity of conditions in our environment, and choice, intelligent choice, may select the special area formed by one special set of conditions—familial and domestic, industrial, pecuniary, political, charitable, scientific, ecclesiastic, artistic, etc. I do not mean of course that these areas are sharply delimited or that there is not something artificial in their segregation. But within limits, conditions are such that specialized types of choices and kinds of power or freedom develops. (POF, 134) Are you free, that is, do you have the power to choose, not abstractly, but concretely? Choose what? Who you marry? What you do for a living? Who you vote for? What you think? Which spiritual form to believe, or to choose to not believe in spiritual form at all? Thus freedom is not abstract, but in relation to specific, concrete situations. “If we employ the conceptions of historic relativity, nothing is clearer than the conception of liberty is always relative to forces that at a given time and place are increasingly felt to be oppressive” (LSA, 54). Noting that freedom resides in concrete situations means we cannot talk about freedom in the abstract, but it does not mean that we cannot talk generally of freedom, or what those concrete situations tend to have in common. Freedom as situational, for Dewey, means freedom is relational; it is relational between two unequal powers. Issues
77 of liberty arise when there are disparities in power: for example, between the state and the citizen. This relativity of liberty to the existing distribution of powers of action, while meaning there is no such thing as absolute liberty, also necessarily means that wherever there is liberty at one place there is restraint at some other place. The system of liberties that exists at any time is always the system of restraints or controls that exist at that time. No one can do anything except in relation to what others can and cannot do. (LSC, 159, emphasis in original) Issues of liberty arise when there is an asymmetry in relations of power. Dewey’s central connection of freedom and power is revealed in his choice of words, “relativity of liberty to the existing distribution of powers of action.” Yet Hayek protests Dewey’s “ideology in which ‘liberty is power, effective power to do specific things,’” (COL, 17) by presenting cases in which people may be said to have power, but are not free. He uses the examples of a courtier, a general, and a director of a large construction project, who all have power, but are still commanded as to what to do and how to use their power by their superiors; and thus are not free.107 Hayek’s mistake lies in misinterpreting Dewey by converting Dewey’s philosophy of freedom. In other words, Dewey holds that all freedom is power but this does not mean that all power is freedom. Dewey makes exactly this point when he uses the example of a spoilt child as one who may have the power over his parents to cater to his whims, yet those whims are “blind preference” and not “intelligent choice.” 108 Dewey uses this distinction between blind preference and intelligent choice to drive home his point that intelligent exercise of preference is an additional requirement to power in order for freedom to be enacted. “But it is now intelligent choice instead of a dumb and stupid one, and thereby the probability of its leading to freedom in unimpeded action is increased” (POF, 139). The central point being that Dewey does not equate any kind of power with freedom. Power is a necessary, but not sufficient condition for freedom, for he adds the condition of intelligent preference. So, Dewey would agree with Hayek in
107 See Hayek, COL,17. 108 See Dewey, POF.
78 that the cases Hayek cites are not examples of freedom. This is because the condition of intelligent choice is missing from the general who has power but is only following orders when he/she uses it. Freedom is a power that requires intelligent choice. In the same section of Philosophies of Freedom Dewey speaks of the “intimate connection of the two modes of freedom, namely, intelligent choice and power in action” (POF, 135, added emphasis). Intelligent choice is a more reflective preference that connects actions with desired outcomes and “causes choice to be more diversified and flexible, more plastic and more cognizant of their own meaning, while it enlarges the range of unimpeded operation” (POF, 136). The mode of freedom “power in action,” contrasts with the neoliberal concept of freedom as negative.109 Negative freedom is also known as the opportunity concept of freedom, because all that is required for freedom is for the opportunity to exist, not the actual seizing of the opportunity.110 Contrarily, positive freedom is known as the exercise concept because one must have the “power-to-do,” that is the positive power to exercise the option preferred. For example, think of telling an inner-city child of poverty that he/she is “free” to be a doctor. Negative freedom would point to the existence of the opportunity for that child to be a doctor. For instance, there is no externality of, say, a caste system that might restrict that child the opportunity to be a doctor. But, positive freedom advocates would say that the child does not have the power to fulfill the opportunity because she/he does not have the economic power to pay for medical school, will not have the power of a sound early education, etc. Therefore, the child is not free because she/he does not have the power to exercise the option if chosen. Dewey’s repetitive uses of the phrases, “power in action,” and “power-to- do,” signify Dewey’s philosophy of freedom as freedom in the positive sense. Liberty involves both the elimination of barriers (of which lack of intelligence is one), and the ability to fulfill the choice. Opportunity is a necessary, but not sufficient condition for liberty. Freedom is defined as not only the presentation of opportunities, but also the positive ability to exercise those opportunities. And exercise requires power.
109 See Chapter One. 110 See Silier, op cit.
79 So, for Dewey, freedom is not an abstract set of rules or laws. Freedom is in the concrete relations of power that exist at a given time. Liberty requires intelligent choice that opens up opportunities and connects actions to consequences. And, freedom is not just the elimination of obstacles and the presenting of opportunities, but includes the ability to follow through on those opportunities (i.e. the effective power-to-do). Freedom is a concrete, relational, intelligent, and positive power. Contextualizing Freedom: Asymmetry of Power Today According to Dewey, laissez faire liberalism took Locke’s individualistic liberalism out of its specific socio-cultural-historical context. In other words, neoliberalism commits the philosophical fallacy. Locke’s liberalism was meant to confront power relations that existed before the industrial revolution. Locke could not foresee the effects that the industrial revolution would have on the reallocation of power. Industry and business conducted for profit are nothing new; they are not the product of our own age and culture; they come to us from a long past. But the invention of the machine has given them a power and scope they never had in the past from which they derive.111 Early liberalism fought against the asymmetry in the distribution of political power, and did not see the centralization of economic power that was to result from the industrial revolution. For Dewey, early liberalism was laudable because it utilized the concept of human nature to free individuals from the oppressive social forces that existed at that time. Yet laissez faire liberalism did not recognize that liberty is always relative to the oppressive forces operating at a specific time. It failed to recognize the socio-cultural- historicity of freedom. Specifically, they would have recognized that effective liberty is a function of the social conditions at any time. If they had done this, they would have known that as economic relations became dominantly controlling forces in setting the pattern of human relations, the necessity of liberty for individuals which they proclaimed will require social control of economic forces in the interest of the great mass of individuals. (LSA, 42)
111 John Dewey, Individualism Old and New, (New York, NY: Minton, Balch and Company, 1930). 18.
80 Today there are different oppressive powers at work than at the time of Locke. And a different philosophy. An era of power possessed by the few took the place of the era of liberty for all envisaged by the liberals of the early nineteenth century. These statements do not imply that these liberals should or could have foreseen the changes that would occur, due to the impact of new forces of production. The point is that their failure to grasp the historic position of the interpretation of liberty they put forth served later to solidify a regime that was a chief obstacle to attainment of the ends they professed. (LSA, 44) Pragmatic philosophy avoids the anachronistic mistake and embeds early liberalism at a specific moment in history. As such, Dewey claims the psychology of individuality was not an unbiased inquiry into human nature, but a “political weapon devised in the interest of breaking down the rigidity of dogmas and of institutions that had lost their relevancy” (LSA, 49). Dewey’s philosophy is not interested in abstractions. It prods us to ask, how are the abstractions used and applied? In other words, Dewey does not want to get into an argument with Hayek over what the abstract rules of freedom are, but rather pushes us to look at the concrete human application of those abstractions. And in the neoliberals’ case, the “abstract” Laws of freedom are used to subordinate political action to economic action.112 Locke’s early liberalism fostered the concept of individuals as pre-existing entities, as selves that are separate from society and thus “social arrangements and institutions were thought of as things that operate from without not entering in any significant way into the internal make-up and growth of individuals” (LSA, 47). Neoliberals have co-opted Locke’s concept of an individual self and used a specific concept of freedom to justify social inequality and neglect of social action. Once used to liberate, freedom became an instrument of oppression. The concreteness of freedom embeds problems of freedom contextually and contingently on our time in history. What is relevant for the power of people to open up opportunities and to take advantage of them today? Currently, most of humanity suffers, not because of natural causes, but because of an asymmetry in the distribution of powers
112 See Dewey, LSA, 16.
81 between humans. We now live in a time of plenty. Frances Moore Lappe’s work provides an example. Diet for A Small Planet makes the convincing case that there is plenty of food produced to feed the world; people starve because of distribution.113 The philosophy of the individual self worked for early liberalism, but the industrial revolution and the rise of capitalism has resulted in a time of plenty where production is no longer the problem, but rather distribution. Dewey’s philosophy of freedom reconstructs liberty from eternal, natural laws to concrete power relations. Dewey argues that in the distant past humanity was much less free because of the asymmetry of the power between nature and humans. Scientific experimental intelligence has opened up opportunities and the ability to exercise opportunities that were once restricted by environmental conditions. Now, Dewey claims, “The conditions that generate insecurity for the many no longer spring from nature” (LSA, 64). Because of scientific intelligence, we are no longer completely at the mercy of the natural world.114 Our more recent past indicates sources of insecurity mainly coming from the asymmetry in the distribution of powers among humans. Steven Covey uses the example of architectural changes in Salt Lake City as representative of the general power shift in more current American history.115 He points out that the biggest building in Salt Lake City used to be the Mormon Temple. This was the time when the Church held the most power. Eventually, power shifted to the state, and this was reflected in the fact that the Capitol building became the largest structure in the town. Now, corporate buildings dominate the architectural landscape and are the largest structures in Salt Lake City. Generally, in American history, power has shifted from the church, to the state, to now, business. Within America today the largest asymmetry in power is in the distribution of economic power. Both Dewey and the Continental philosopher Silier have done the work of revealing the power of the “free” market to restrict powers-to-do. What is freedom for the pike is death for the minnow. For example, Silier analyzes the concept of “freedom
113 Frances Moore Lappe, Diet for a Small Planet, (New York : Ballantine Books, 1975). 114 What I mean by this is that we have some control over the stricter interpretation of “nature,” for example medical science has enable some control over disease. 115 Steven Covey, The 7 Habits of Highly Successful People, (Provo, UT: Franklin Covey Company, 1989).
82 of contract” and concludes that this principle does not imply the parties entering into the contract are free. The voluntary consent of the worker does not imply free choice because having no other means to earn a living, he is forced to make a contract with the capitalist; most of the times he has no other reasonable alternative. He needs the capitalist more than the capitalist needs him. 116 Yet the freedom of contract was the doctrine needed by those who controlled the economic system to further their own political and economic power.117 The notion that men are equally free to act if only the same legal arrangements apply equally to all—irrespective of differences in education, in command of capital, and the control of the social environment which is furnished by the institution of property –is a pure absurdity.118 Today it is economic power that is oppressive, and thus economic power is the foe of liberty. 119 Dewey insinuates that the neoliberal philosophical framework of freedom behind economic oppression misappropriates nineteenth century liberal thinkers. They had no glimpse of the fact that private control of the new forces of production, forces which affect the life of every one, would operate in the same way as private unchecked control of political power. (LSA, 44). There has been a shift from the church and the government as the oppressive/coercive force to the economic order as the main oppressive force operating today. There is a concentration of power squarely and predominantly in economic hands. Globalization is here; and today corporations wield considerable power even over some governments. Yet, as I have pointed out, the neoliberal philosophy of Hayek argues that lack of economic power is natural inability, not an unfreedom. Dewey’s pragmatic philosophy averts deferring the authority and responsibility to Nature/God in the form of “natural
116 Silier, 2005, op. cit., 52. 117 See Dewey, LSA, 28. 118 John Dewey, “Philosophies of Freedom” in On Experience, Nature, and Freedom, ed. Richard Bernstein, (Indianapolis, IN: Bobbs-Merrill Company, Inc., 1960). 271. 119 Neoliberals may charge that the oppressive power of the state is more of a concern than economic oppression. Dewey argues against both oppressive powers.
83 inability,” but rather requires humanity to accept the responsibility for the economic oppression that occurs. The question of political and economic freedom is not an addendum or afterthought, much less a deviation or excrescence, in the problem of personal freedom. For the conditions that form political and economic liberty are required in order to realize the potentiality of freedom each of us carries with him in his very structure. (PW, 141) Science has helped with the opening up of opportunities and the execution of the opportunities with our transaction with the natural world. Today it is poverty, lack of economic freedom, which limits powers-to-do. Liberalism’s present need is to recognize that material security is a prerequisite for liberty.120 I hope to have shown that by embedding freedom in contextual relations of power, Dewey reconstructs the experience of freedom to one in which material security is consistent with liberty, and thus reallocations of materiality is a necessary condition for liberty, not antithetical to it. The central concern for a pragmatist is not whether a particular property is a “natural” law of freedom or not. Issues revolve around how those laws (or in Dewey’s case principles) are being used and what effects occur because of the applications. It cannot be denied that the effects of Hayek’s version of freedom result in material inequality. Hayek, as our exemplar of philosophical neoliberalism, constructs a particular notion of freedom that results in depriving certain people power in economic relations, and centralizing it with a class of fewer others. In other words, whether intentional or not, neoliberals use freedom to oppress. A pragmatic sense of freedom connects with its varied key elements within the pragmatic philosophical framework. The pragmatic philosophy of liberty embeds freedom in concrete, contextual relations of power, and by conceiving liberty as an intelligent, positive power Dewey reconstructs the experience of freedom to one in which democratic public goods in the form of social control policies, like the reallocation of materiality for security, are necessary conditions for liberty, not antithetical to it.
120 See Dewey, LSA, 62.
84 Chapter 5: Neoliberal Philosophy of Freedom in Education “A culture’s philosophy may be defined as its general theory of education.”121 Our present dominant cultural educational discourse and “general theory of education” reflect neoliberal philosophy. In this chapter I will interpret two examples of current United States educational discourse from the standpoint of the neoliberal philosophical framework of freedom. This is a framework that I have depicted as upholding a certain kind of freedom as its supreme value. In what follows, I hope to display influential connections between the neoliberal philosophy of freedom and 1) the current U.S. educational discourse about control of the public schools, and 2) the policy and practice of the marginalization of civic education and the humanities in the curriculum of our public schools. Finally, I will offer some concluding remarks and some general principles and parameters for educational policies and practices suggested by a pragmatic philosophy of freedom. Neoliberal Discourse about the Control of Public Schools By neoliberal discourse about control of public schools, I am referring to the market-based discourse of privatizing education through offering school choice in the form of vouchers that can be used for private schools. Efforts to privatize education in the name of individual choice resonate and appeal to many in our culture. The neoliberal philosophical framework of freedom is used to question and weaken the public sphere, and this extends to public schooling. The dominance of this discourse in our culture results in placing the “public school” under increasing scrutiny and critique, which also leads to educational policies that open up education to privatization and the “free market.” In other words, it is not the value of education that is being questioned; it is the “public” of public schooling that is being weakened.122 “When framing the problem of a ‘crises’ in education due to the government monopoly, school choice advocates propose market mechanisms of parent choice and competition between a broad array of schools as the solution.” 123 “Parent choice” evokes freedom (i.e., the freedom of an ontologically distinct individual). Thus, in light of the neoliberal framework, education is seen as an
121 Jim Garrison, 1997, op. cit., 63. 122 Of course not everyone sees the assault of the public as a problem. I will not take the time here to justify why I think the weakening of the public is an issue, but will continue for those that do see the dangers. 123 Chris Lubienski, “Redefining Public Education,” Teacher’s College Record, 103 (4), 2001: 639.
85 individual choice, (a consumer, private good), in which parents may choose the best educational option for their individual interests. The neoliberal thinking that results in privatization efforts and voucher programs also permeates the talk of charter schools. Though there are some who advocate for charter schools and against the government monopoly of schooling on contrary, democratic grounds,124 I am addressing the market-based discourse that includes entrepreneurs who want to privatize schools so they can reap a profit, and others who want to privatize all government/public/social programs. It is the framing of the control of schooling from the individual and market logic as a basis for school choice, not the discourse of the democratic potential of charter schools, which I am describing from the standpoint of neoliberal philosophy. Amy Stuart Wells compiles the empirical evidence of states’ charter school laws and argues that they are more likely to serve the free- market, neoliberal rationale rather than those who seek charter schools as a means to empower disempowered communities.125 By understanding the primacy of the value of freedom and how that freedom is conceived within the neoliberal philosophical framework we can understand the push for charter schools, vouchers and other recent entrepreneurial efforts, like those of Edison Schools, who seek to profit from the market of education, for these efforts make sense and fit within that framework. In “America’s Search for a Public Philosophy” Michael Sandel depicts and critiques a “liberal” notion of freedom that has come to dominate America in recent years. His analysis of what he calls the “liberal” notion of freedom applies to the more specific strand of neoliberal freedom that I have been addressing throughout. Sandel traces the history of how freedom has been conceived by American culture in terms of its politics, and more specifically its views on the role and place of government.126 His
124 See Danny Weil, Charter Schools: A Reference Handbook, (Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO, Inc., 2000). As two exemplars of the democratic discourse of charter schools see Stacy Smith, The Democratic Potential of Charter Schools, (New York, NY: Lang Publishing, 2001), and Kathleen Knight Abowitz, “Charter Schooling and Social Justice.” Educational Theory, (2), 2001: 151-170. 125 Amy Stuart Wells, “Why Public Policy Fails to Live Up to the Potential of Charter School Reform: An Introduction” in Where Charter School Policy Fails: The Problems of Accountability and Equity, (New York, NY: Teachers College Press, 2002), 11. 126 Michael Sandel, “America’s Search for a Public Philosophy” in Public Philosophy: Essays on Morality in Politics, (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2005). (I must note that I am not particularly fond of the term “America” being applied to mean only the United States, but for simplicity and communicative
86 synopsis juxtaposes what he terms the “liberal” conception of freedom with what he calls the “republican” or later a “civic” notion of freedom (closer to what I mean by pragmatic freedom, or what may traditionally be known as the utilitarian conception of freedom). Sandel relays what both conceptions of freedom have in common, “The central idea of the public philosophy by which we live, is that freedom consists in our capacity to choose ends for ourselves” (PP, 9), and that freedom consists, “in the capacity of people to choose their own ends” (PP, 10). But what does “people,” or “ourselves,” or the self, mean? How this question is answered is the difference between the liberal and civic versions of freedom. 127 The neoliberal philosophy of freedom assumes separate ontological, individual selves. The civic notion of freedom sees “people” more as the plural form, using a social sense of self, if you will. So, beyond deliberating and pursuing individual ends, a civic notion of freedom adds, “deliberating with fellow citizens about the common good and helping to shape the destiny of the political community” (Ibid). Thus, Sandel’s liberal freedom (and my neoliberal one) alludes to separate and autonomous individuals self- ruling individual selves. Civic freedom includes the recognition of the social aspects of self, and thus seeks “self as community” as a form of moral authority. The civic conception of freedom sees community rule as a kind of “self–rule,” like the ability of a group to deliberate, set up, and agree upon the rules of a game and as to when those rules apply. The self is seen as social and the social group decision is respected as a form of moral authority. “The republican conception of freedom, unlike the liberal conception, requires a formative politics, a politics that cultivates in citizens the qualities of character that self-government requires” (PP, 10). In short, a neoliberal conception of freedom focuses on individual self-rule to do, and the civic, or pragmatic notion of freedom spotlights how the public as a moral authority can collectively act. Sandel’s story corroborates the story I have told in this dissertation as one in which a particular conception of freedom has at least won the majority opinion, or more realistically and cynically, been hegemonically manufactured and usurped the taken for
reasons, I will also use the term “America” in that way.) Page numbers for further references (PP) appear in text. 127 Because of the baggage that comes with the term “republican,” I choose to appropriate Sandel’s label of “civic” instead.
87 granted idea of freedom. He uses the example of the American common sense notion that taxation for welfare redistribution is seen as an infringement on the freedom of individuals to do what they want with their money. “So familiar is this vision of freedom that it might seem a permanent feature of the American political tradition. But as a reigning public philosophy, it is a recent arrival, a development of the past half century” (PP, 10). The neoliberal philosophy of freedom is the common sense philosophy of our culture today, and this has had a direct effect on our cultural views about the place and role of government. With a neoliberal philosophy of freedom, the government cedes its role to reflect and collectively act in fostering attitudes in its citizenry. “According to this liberalism, government should be neutral as to conceptions of the good life, in order to respect persons as free and independent selves, capable of choosing their own ends” (PP, 19). Thus according to this kind of liberalism, the government that governs least governs best. If liberty can be detached from the exercise of self-government and conceived instead as the capacity of persons to choose their own ends, then the difficult task of forming civic virtue can finally be dispensed with…Tying freedom to respect for the rights of freely choosing selves dampens old disputes about how to form the habits of self-rule. It spares politics the ancient quarrels about the nature of the good life. Once freedom is detached from the formative project, “the problem of setting up a state can be solved even by a nation of devils,” in Kant’s memorable words. “For such a task does not involve the moral improvement of man.” (PP, 27) According to Sandel, the debate of the shared, civic good life was taken off the table. The formative project of politics and the government was abandoned. It denied government a stake in the moral character of its citizens and affirmed the notion of persons as free and independent selves…According to this understanding, our liberty depends not on our capacity as citizens to share in shaping the forces that govern our collective destiny but rather on our capacity as persons to choose our values and ends for ourselves. From
88 the standpoint of republican political theory, this shift represents a fateful concession; to abandon the formative ambition is to abandon the project of liberty as the republican tradition conceives it.” (PP, 19-20) The civic conception of freedom, along with the social sense of self, faded away from our cultural discourse of freedom. The triumph of the neoliberal philosophy of freedom results in the neglect of civic freedom’s project of the formation of social and civic selves. Sandel attributes this abandonment to the promise of the liberal conception of freedom because the free independent and unencumbered self is an “exhilarating ideal,” albeit a myth that obfuscates the social self. As discussed earlier, it is also a myth that neoliberal philosophy does not advance a vision of the civic and good life. It is an assumed version and one that is not talked about, taken off the table so as to avoid quarreling. It assumes a particular version of the good life and neglects the debate, and thus spares the conflict. If freedom is couched exclusively negatively and individually, and this sexy alternative “avoids” and thus diminishes arguments and debates of the good life and community rule, then where is the place for “civic freedom?” Where can we come together as some kind of community to agree and disagree upon more robust conceptions about living together? We are social selves encumbered by moral commitments to our community. Yet, within the neoliberal philosophy of freedom there is an extremely limited collective sense of shared self-rule. If we look at freedom as individual only, then “How, under conditions such as these, could the civic strand of freedom possible take hold” (PP, 24)? Sandel’s analysis of what he labels the liberal notion of freedom applied to the role of government results in a minimalist government that attempts to elude and eliminate public debate and public action toward conceptions of the good life. In terms of the government’s or the public’s role in the control of education, this philosophy of freedom locates the moral authority and decision making about schooling in the autonomous individual, with an individualist sense of choice, which overwhelmingly takes on economic rationality and action, and reduces the discourse of education for ethico-politico aims. Education is viewed as a private matter. What can schooling do for
89 me as an individual economic unit? How can I use education to advance my individual self-interests? This logic is what Michael Engel terms market ideology. Most important, however, is the fact that market ideology’s virtually unchallenged dominance threatens the very existence of public education as a social institution, because its logic ultimately eliminates any justification for collective and democratic control of the schools. (SCPE, 6) Gone is any sense of a robust public, and thus the “public” of public schooling is eroded in the name of freedom. Besides privatizing education, and thus weakening the public, the other option for neoliberal thinking is to relegate and justify the role of the public government in economic or national sovereignty terms. As Engel so lucidly analyzes, Market ideology thus dictates that the extent of government intervention in the operations of the market economy to provide educational services must be determined on the basis of the needs of national security and the market economy. (SCPE, 21) The neoliberal philosophy of freedom either erodes the “public” in public education or reduces it to the discourse of economics and national security. Therefore we hear talk of vouchers and individual choice, and we hear the talk of “investments” in our “human capital” and “human resources” in order to enhance both our local economy and our place in the global economy. My analysis of the neoliberal philosophical framework suggests this kind of thinking is a direct result of the supreme value placed on a particular notion of freedom, one that is defined exclusively in negative terms, as freedom from; hence there is no way to speak or conceive of a kind of “civic freedom” in which we have a democratic process as a way to collectively and civically self-govern. This applies to education as well, and the result is, as Sandel and Engel show, a limited sense of the public in public schooling. There is a basic mistrust of the government as representative of the public as a source of moral authority. Furthermore, our present administration is doing much to enhance that mistrust in government as a form that is representative of the public. This
90 unfortunately furthers the neoliberal agenda of weakening the public and trust in associated forms of public (i.e., government).128 What kinds of associations can have a legitimate authority? What form(s) of public(s) can we put our trust in as a source of moral authority? What kind of publics can be fostered that debate and advance conceptions of the good life? The problem is not inherently in all government as a form of representation for the public, but what kinds of public/government? These questions are beyond the scope of this project. The point I want to make is that neoliberal discourse silences these debates by sidestepping these questions. In regards to education, what is displaced in neoliberal discourse is thought and talk of civic control of schooling and civic education. They have gradually undermined democratic values in the educational system by weakening the rationale for maintaining it as a publicly controlled institution and by pushing civic education for democracy off the pedagogical agenda. (SCPE, 22) With no civic sense of freedom, no sense of collective action, schooling is looked at from the discourse of individual choice and economic benefits, and education is seen as an instrument for individual desires. If public education is talked about, it is talked about as an instrument to support the economy, not to further a more deeply active democracy. The external benefits to society of developing the good of the public in education are ignored. The public good is not considered because, as Sandel shows, debates about the public good are sidelined, or put into right field with the team up 11-3 in the late innings. Market ideology and the neoliberal philosophy of freedom controls the discourse of who controls the schools, and it is a discourse of individualization and economic action that displaces the discourse of social and political action for the public good. It is a discourse that upholds one certain kind of freedom and diminishes the democratic public good of public schooling.
128 Could it be that this is a conscious strategy by those in the government that have an attitude of mistrust of government, and that seek to weaken the public? In other words, does the current administration actively and consciously seek to be inept and mislead the public as a way to further the assault on the public? Whether intentionally or not, a mistrust in the government/public results.
91 The Neoliberal Discourse of Civic Education Title II, Part C, Subpart 3 of the U. S. Department of Education’s No Child Left Behind (NCLB) desktop reference explains that funds associated with civic education can be obtained in the form grant monies.129 However, civic education is not part of the centralized subjects in which penalties will be leveled if not performed up to a certain standard. In other words, civic education is a bonus, an extra for those who can afford the time and resources devoted to applying for grant money to fund civic education. Yes, one can apply for grants for civic education curriculum. But if I am a struggling school, I am not going to have time to be applying for funds for civic education via grant writing, I am going to be focused on the basics of my school’s very financial survival and existence. In this way, civic education is like a bonus that only a few get to participate in. The message that is received is that civic education is not something everyone should learn. Civic education is for those who have “mastered the basics,” which tend to be the more affluent schools. Civic education and participation are for the rich, and those in lower socio-economic situations learn they do not have time participate in civic matters, they are taught to just do the basic academic work that is measured for their school’s economic survival. We all learn, through the structure put in place by NCLB, that those that are advantaged get to do the participating in civics as a privilege.130 What is measured is what is focused on. As a result of describing education as a certain set of objective propositions about certain subjects, other realms of education are neglected. NCLB focuses on math, science, reading, and English, and marginalizes civic education and the humanities. Not discounting efforts to advance the civic mission of public schools from people and organizations like John Goodlad and the National Network for Education Renewal, and William Galston and the Center for Information and Research on Civic Learning and Engagement, I accept Engel’s account that market ideology is controlling our educational discourse, and this connects with our national policy that allocates financial incentives and penalties based on standardized tests of subjects that do not include civic education and the humanities.
129 No Child Left Behind: A Desktop Reference, U. S. Department of Education, 2002, 79. 130 Because money for civic education curriculum is only allotted in the form of grants might explain why some funds in NCLB grants go unclaimed, of which President Bush is so fond of referring to when defending NCLB from charges of under-funding its mandates.
92 Because civic education is not measured, the message received from NCLB, whether intentionally or not, is that the civic mission and curricula of civic education and the humanities are not important. As represented by the practice and policy of NCLB, that the civic conception and goals and roles of a public education are marginalized by the American discourse today cannot be disputed. Galston recently suggested two main reasons for the retreat of the civic purpose in public schools: 1) the norm of unfettered individual choice, and 2) an overriding concern for economics. 131 In other words, Galston is explaining, not arguing, why the civic mission of schools is being neglected and pushed to the side. The neglect of the civic purpose is the explandum. The political and civic mission and action of the schools has been reduced and or subordinated to economic action; what became central are the individual economic purposes of education. And this is reflected through the practice of the explicit curriculum emphasized by public schools today. The displacement of civic education is consistent with the neoliberal philosophy of freedom that locates the source of moral authority outside of shared deliberation. As Hayek reveals, within the neoliberal framework human reason and will are threats to the natural laws of freedom. There is distrust in humanity as a source of moral authority. A civic education that seeks to foster some form of the associative good life is antithetical to the more treasured value of the neoliberal conception of freedom. It is important to note that there are varied conceptions of civic education, and there is not agreement as to which form to implement. Engel exposes two different kinds of civic education, “Civic education can take the direction of educating young people to preserve the existing system (a conservative perspective) or to transform it (a transformative perspective)” (SCPE, 177). Still, Engel insinuates the larger problem is that these debates are marginalized in the educational discourse today. Debates on what forms of civic education are not talked about because civic education itself is marginalized in No Child Left Behind and the public school curriculum. Neoliberal philosophy dominates our current educational discourse. As a result, the educational discourse of today is dominated by the talk of individual choice and
131 William Galston, lecture delivered at Miami University, April 2007. The other two reasons he offered were, 1) the tradition of civic education in the form of assimilationist policies came under attack, and 2) a lack of consensus on what form of civic education.
93 individual control of schools, or the public in public schools is justified via economic and guardian benefits only. This ignores other debates around conceptions of the public good. And the civic mission and purpose of the public school is neglected until it is forgotten. Concluding Remarks and Guidelines from Pragmatic Discourse At the beginning of this dissertation I said this was an investigation into how two different philosophical frameworks make sense of “freedom.” I chose to investigate the neoliberal philosophy of freedom as one of those frameworks because of its dominance in our current cultural discourse of freedom, and because of what I consider to be some problems with the empirical results of that philosophical framework. I have depicted the neoliberal philosophy of freedom, as represented by the work of F.A. Hayek, as having three core elements that support its particular notion of freedom and how neoliberal philosophy makes sense of freedom. In other words, given the neoliberal commitments to the ontology of an individual self, the onto-epistemological project of naturalized and traditional philosophy, and a source of moral authority that is outside of collective humanity, the neoliberal conception of freedom makes sense. Yet that neoliberal notion of freedom results in an ethical dilemma between liberty and democratic public goods. Furthermore, within this framework, freedom wins out most often in this dilemma. Thus the neoliberal philosophy of freedom results in economic oppression of people and the erosion of the public sphere. This is evidenced in the educational discourse about control of public schooling and in the public schooling policy and practice that marginalizes civic education and the humanities in the curriculum of the public schools. While attending a rather informal gathering led by the political philosopher William Galston, he revealed what is apparently common knowledge in politics; you cannot beat something with nothing. Because of the problems I have outlined with the neoliberal philosophy of freedom, and because of my own personal philosophical commitments, I have re-presented a pragmatic philosophy of freedom based on three alternative elements within its own philosophical framework. I have argued that what pragmatism has to offer is a way to continue to uphold the supremacy of the value freedom, albeit a different kind of freedom (that is, a civic sense of freedom), without
94 eroding democratic public goods. The pragmatic philosophical framework can be used to advance more robust notions of public without sacrificing the value of freedom. Still, this dissertation also suggests recognizing the deep-seatedness of the neoliberal discourse in our current culture as a common way of framing and making sense of freedom. It also suggests that a way to disrupt this dominant sense of freedom is to challenge the central tenets of the philosophy that underlie it. I have challenged the three central elements of the neoliberal philosophy of freedom by giving the pragmatic alternatives to neoliberal conceptions of: the self (Chapter 2), what the philosophical project is (Chapter 3), and the source of moral authority (Chapter 4). The core elements of a social sense of self, a philosophical project that seeks meaning-making, and the positing of associated forms of humanity as a moral authority, result in a way to make sense of freedom that is not antithetical to democratic public goods. However the question remains, what kinds of public(s), or associated forms of humanity, can we put our trust in as a source of moral authority—and this is where I will leave this dissertation.132 The analysis of the pragmatic philosophical framework as laid out here also has suggestions for our educational discourse. It suggests developing the public of public education by having debates on appropriate forms of public governance, not how to eliminate public conceptions of the good life. Pragmatic discourse suggests debate not around whether schooling should be privately and publicly controlled, but rather what kinds of public schools? What kinds of associations can act as a moral authority? How exactly can we arrange forms of publics that achieve a source of moral authority that relies on intelligent consensus, caring, and diversity? Furthermore, pragmatic discourse suggests building a civic education curricula in a form that 1) fosters a social sense of self instead of individualism, 2) an emphasis on making meaning instead of discovering and reflecting the way the world is claimed to be, and 3) instilling faith in collective humanity’s ability to apply reasonability to the ethico- politico issues that we face. Much of Dewey’s more particular recommendations for educational practice revolve around point one, of schooling as a social endeavor.
132 This points to further research into the work of Kathleen Knight Abowitz, Nancy Fraser, and others who have theorized about multiple publics.
95 Pragmatic discourse also suggests discussion around how to structure curriculum to enhance meaning making, not just discovery. For example, pragmatic discourse might call for debates in regards to how to assess for making meaning, which may include, but is not encompassed by factual recall. Pragmatic discourse includes developing the reasonability that Pritchard talks about, through curriculum such as Philosophy for Children.133 A pragmatic philosophical framework of freedom recommends the enhancement of civic, social, and political action as superior to economic action, and as such suggests a return to the civic mission and a central place for the humanities in the curriculum of the public schools.
133 Philosophy for Children is a movement that was started by Matthew Lipman, and continues through the Institute for the Advancement for Philosophy for Children, and other avenues like the National Endowment for the Humanities seminar, “Mining for Meaning in Children’s Literature, conducted by Jim Kelly.
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100