ISSN 0014-1690 The Ethical Record Vol. 98 No. 4 El April 1993
THE STORY OF THE SOCIETY Nicholas Walter 3
THE POLITICS OF
SIMONE WEIL: THEORY • AND PRACTICE Christopher Hampton 10
TOYNBEE HALL: SELF- SERVING OR ACCOUNTABLE? Prof. Gerald Vinten 14
SOCIAL CHANGE Margaret Chisman 16
VIEWPOINTS M Neocleous, P Cadogan, Alireza. 16
SCIENCE AND THE EDITORIAL — HIGH HUMANIST HOPES GENERAL READER Peter Reales 21 In our 200 year progress from dissident congregation to humanist society, we have shed, ATHEIST ASSOCIATION? along with the dogmas of religion, its symbols Harry Whitby 24 and trappings too. Nevertheless, the apparently ephemeral event of the release of 200 balloons ATTACKS ON SCIENCE - on the 14th February 1993 can perhaps be seen in retrospect as a symbolic act. GOOD AND BAD ColM Mills 25
The event was the brainchild of Michael SHOULD HUMANISTS Newman; he felt the need to commemorate the PLAY DICE? bicentenary in a more graphic way than could be Ronald Skene 29 done by speeches alone. As we stood in Red Lion Square, watching the balloons soar ever ETHICAL SOCIETY higher over London, some of us may have been EVENTS 31 moved to wonder...
Could those balloons, imprinted with SPES — FREETHOUGHT — 1793-1993 and gradually diffusing over the capital, symbolise the 'dissemination of ethical principles' for which the Society still stands and for which the world has such sore need? SOUTH PLACE ETHICAL SOCIETY Conway Hall Humanist Centre 25 Red Lion Square, London WC1R 4RL. Telephone: 071-831 7723
Trustees Louise Booker, John Brown, Anthony Chapman, Peter Heales, Don Liversedge, Ray Lovecy, Ian MacKillop, Barbara Smoker, Harry Stopes-Roe. Appointed Lecturers Harold Blackham, T.F. Evans, Peter Heales, Richard Scorer, Barbara Smoker, Harry Stopes-Roe, Nicolas Walter. Officers Honorary Representative: Nicolas Walter. General Committee Chair: Diane Murray. Vice Chair: Louise Booker. Treasurer David Williams. Editor, The Ethical Record: Norman Bacrac. Librarian: Edwina Palmer. Registrar James Addison. Secretary of the Society: Nina Khare. Hall Manager Steven Norley. New Members Lenore Blegvad, Odin Dekkers, Darragh Morgan. Obituary
Marthe Sinha It is with sadnessthat we report the death of Marthe Sinha on the 13th March. She was a member of long-standing and a Life Member of SPES who served for many years on the general Committee and for some time was a Trustee.
Marthe was an accomplished teacher, and travelled widely. Unfortunately during recent years she had an illness that restricted her mobility. However we remember her at her best when she would give balanced views, and always produced reasoned arguments. Her opinions were definite, ethical and well expressed.
Marthe will be missed for her sound judgements and her pleasant personality.
Louise Booker
LIBRARY NOTES The following books by Professor G.A. Wells, whose recent lecture was printed in the March issue of the ER, are now in the Library: Belief and Make-Belief (1992) Did Jesus Exist? (rev. ed.) (1986) The Historic Evidence for Jesus (1982)
Erratum Does Clio have Secrets? (March ER, top of page 9). A line was omitted from the above article by Prof. George Schwarz. The paragraph in question should read: To Hegel, the whole dynamic, organic movement of humanity in its course is activated by Spirit, with its built-in energy for drawing all mankind, despite many relapses and setbacks, up to the Absolute. History is like a drama, with Spirit as the dénoument, while Spirit at the very apex is total freedom. In this drama people like you and me are the actors, while the Absolute Spirit is the producer and, yes, playwright.
2 Ethical Record, April, 1993 THE STORY OF THE SOCIETY
Nicolas Walter Summary of a Lecture to the Ethical Society 14 February 1993
[Nicolas Walter. the present Honorary Representative, began by mentioning that he was introduced to the Society by his grandfather, S. K. Ratcliffe. who had first attended South Place 100 years ago, had first lectured there 80 years ago, had been an Appointed Lecturer until his death 35 years ago, and was the author of the last history of the Society]
Exactly two hundred years ago today, on 14th February 1793, this Society began its formal existence. Our bicentenary is being celebrated by all sorts of special events this year, but this is the only one directly connected with that event and specifically concerned with the whole course of events since then. Of course it is impossible to give the full story at a single meeting. When Moncure Conway told the story of the first century, he gave four lectures (May-June 1893) which were printed in his Centenary History of the South Place Society (1894). When S. K. Ratcliffe brought the story up to date for the first half-century of Conway Hall, he wrote twelve articles (Monthly Record, February 1952 -January 1953) which were reprinted in The Story of South Place (1955). And many other lectures and articles have covered particular aspects and topics. I have told the story of the first two centuries in a forthcoming book, We Move on, but even this still barely covers the essential events. Here it is possible only to consider a few particular points.
Facts and fallacies Virtually every account of the Society during the century since Conway's is marred by errors and omissions, most of them trivial but some of them serious. Many will be silently corrected in my forthcoming account, but the carelessness of historians, both professional and amateur, never ceases to astonish. For example, it is often said that the original name of the congregation, the Philadelphians, means 'loving brothers'. Well, that is the meaning of the word in the original Greek but not the reason for its use here. Like everything else in the Protestant Christianity from which we came, it is in the Bible. A passage in the Book of Revelation concerns 'the church in Philadelphia' — not the town in modern America, but a town in ancient Asia Minor — to which God says: 'I have set before thee an open door, and no man can shut it.' The point is that Parliament Court was not a gathered church of the elect, like most Puritan congregations, but an open church based on the Universalist theory that all shall be saved and the Universalist principle that all were welcome to attend. (There was actually a group of Philadelphians in England a century earlier, based on the same text, but there is no other connection with them.) Again, it is often said that Universalism denies Hell. Well, some Universalists believed that no one would go to Hell, but most believed that sinners would go to some kind of temporary Hell, rather like the Purgatory of the Roman Catholics. The point was that God was too good to damn anyone (even the Devil) for ever, and that the worst man (even the Devil) isn't bad enough for such a fate. Here is the tiny humanist seed in the compost heap of Protestant speculation.
Periods and patterns Fixing periods in history is necessary — necessary to put chronological development into an intelligible framework, but dangerous in raising artificial chronological barriers. Finding patterns of other kinds is also necessary but also dangerous. Bearing this in mind, what are the significant periods and patterns in our history? They may be listed according to different criteria, as follows.
Ethical Record, April, 1993 Premises We were at Parliament Court until 1824, at South Place from 1824 to 1929, at Conway Hall from 1929. (When the Society left Parliament Court, it became a Baptist chapel and then a Jewish synagogue, which it is still; it was turned back to front, so that it now opens into Sandys Row. When the Society left South Place, the old chapel was demolished and replaced by an office building, which was itself demolished and replaced by another one sixty years later; there is still a wall plaque marking the site of the chapel.)
Affiliation We belonged to Christian denominations until 1835, were an independent society until 1887, and have belonged to the Ethical and then the Humanist movement since 1888.
Numbers We started at about 250, rose and fell to reach about 650 in the early 1930s, then again to reach about 850 in the late 1960s, then down again to about 400.
Leaders We had Winchester and Vidler from 1793 to 1816, Fox from 1817 to 1853, lerson and Barnett from 1853 to 1863, Conway from 1864 to 1884 and from 1892 to 1897, Coit from 1888 to 1891, Appointed Lecturers from 1900, General Secretaries from 1966 to 1981, Honorary Representatives from 1982, and Committees and Trustees throughout.
Doctrine Christian heresies — Universalism (the belief that no one will be damned for ever and that everyone will shall be saved) until 1802, Unitarianism (the belief that God is one and that Jesus was human) — until 1835; free religion — moving from Theism (undogmatic belief in a personal God) to Humanism (undogmatic belief in Humanity) until 1884; ethical Humanism since 1888. To put the sequence in epigrammatical form: during the first century, Winchester taught that God is love, Vidler taught that God is one, Fox taught that God is everything, Conway taught that God is nothing; during the second century, we have talked about goodness and humanity, and argued about religion and worship.
Forms We began with normal Christian church services — prayers and sermons, hymns and anthems, baptisms and funerals (and weddings from 1838 to 1977), and communion (we still possess the communion plate). We gradually discarded religious observance the Minister's title of Reverend and the administration of communion in 1833, the Minister's gown in 1864, prayer in 1869, the pulpit and pews in 1872, services in 1938, hymns in 1961. However, all three sites were registered as places of religious worship until 1977, we claimed to be a religious organisation until the end of the court case in 1980, and our principles still theoretically include 'a rational religious sentiment', even if this has been practically modified to 'a rational and humane way of life'. In fact the only surviving remnant of our Christian heritage is the Sunday morning meeting, which now shows virtually no other sign of its religious origin.
Words How much trouble is caused by the careless use of words, and how much could have been saved by more care? Most of what Winchester and Vidler wrote seems pure verbiage today. Conway remarked wearily: 'It is difficult now to estimate the writings of men whose art was:required to say so much to the point about what is now nothing to the point. Indeed, at every step of these investigations I have felt some pain, along with admiration, at finding great-hearted, scholarly intellectual men expending their strength, their lives, through long years, in merely clearing away the dogmatic rubbish for the of a rational temple.' I agree; with the addition that the same is true to a lesser extent of the writings of Fox and Conway, whose writings on religion are so much inferior to those on politics or literature. Almost all the talk about God during our first century
4 Ethical Record, April, 1993 seems a complete waste, and the same is true of almost all the talk during our second century about religion, worship, the sacred, ethics, and so on. How many of our disagreements could have been avoided by an agreement to disagree?
Divisions Every organisation which lasts a long time has shifts and splits. Ours are interesting in themselves and also because they symbolise shifts and splits in society at large. Universalism, where we began, was itself a split from the Calvinist doctrine of most Protestants. Our history begins in 1793, but our prehistory goes back earlier. James Relly, a follower of George Whitefield, Wesley's colleague in the early Methodist movement, was converted to Universalism in 1750, preached in several parts of England and Wales, and settled in London. One of his converts was John Murray, who went to America and founded the First Universalist church there in 1779. Reify ended his career as the minister at Crosby Hall, Bishopsgate, from 1769 until his death in 1778. Also in 1778 a Universalist group led by John Cue began to practise house-worship in the same part of London (they may well have been members of Relly's congregation). In 1793 they acquired Parliament Court for Winchester, who had worked with Murray in America.
Incidentally, Universalism was not Winchester's only heresy. He was also an adherent of apocalptic millennialism, and his first sermons at Parliament Court — in February 1793, just after King Louis XVI had been guillotined — argued that the French Revolution was the prophesied sign of the coming of Christ, the thousand-year rule, and the end of the world, (So the apocalyptic humanism preached here nearly two centuries later had a curious precedent!) Yet he strongly opposed Deism and even Unitarianism, and sections of the congregation always either refused to accept later changes or insisted on more changes. As early as 1798 a minority led by Samuel Thompson seceded and formed the Free-Thinking Christians, who survived for at least thirty years, abandoned all hierarchy (including the Minister) and ritual (including worship), and held meetings at which Christian doctrine and scripture were subjected to critical discussion (sounds familiar?). When the majority of this congregation adopted Unitarianism in 1802, the Universalist minority seceded and continued a separate existence until 1808. Again, when the congregation split over Fox's views about and conduct of marriage in 1834, a large minority seceded and joined various other Unitarian congregations. When we became an Ethical Society in 1888, several people objected, and some left. When we ceased to have a minister and to have any real religious identity, from the beginning of the twentieth century, many people who wanted real religion went elsewhere.
Principles The Society has outlasted all these divisions for two hundred years because of its physical rather than philosophical premises, but there must have some uniting principle or principles with survival value in the struggle for existence. For the first forty years the Society was based firmly on the Bible. Every argument in Winchester and Vidler and the early Fox depended on searching the scriptures and quoting texts. Both Universalists and Unitarians seemed unorthodox to other Christians, but their belief in the restoration of all things and the unity of God and the humanity of Jesus was based not on reason but on revelation as recorded in the New Testament. The difference began with the belief in and practice of freedom. When Fox came to Parliament Court, in 1817, he proclaimed 'the duty of free inquiry and right of religious liberty' and 'civil and religious liberty, all over the world'. These were stock Unitarian slogans, deriving from their long campaign against the laws of heresy and blasphemy which had always banned any denial of the Trinity. The last heretics burnt in England, in 1612, were Unitarians; and Unitarianism was technically illegal until 1813. Yet freedom is dangerous to religion; freedom and
Ethical Record, April, 1993 5 reason together are fatal. When Fox opened the new chapel at South Place, in 1824, he dedicated it to Christianity and Unitarianism and to liberty and reason; by following the last two, the society abandoned the first two. As soon as free inquiry was directed to a rational investigation of the Bible, the whole fabric began to unravel. So the underlying principle in the end was not any particular Christian doctrine but a free and rational discussion and eventually destruction of all doctrine.
But freedom of expression applies not only to our selves but to others. Winchester and Vidler had little interest in what happened outside their congregation, and Winchester actually published a book against Thomas Paine's Age of Reason. But Fox had much interest in outside events, and he publicly condemned the blasphemy prosecutions of Richard Carlile in 1819 and of G. J. Holyoake in 1842. Similarly Conway condemned the prosecutions of Bradlaugh and Besant for birth control propaganda in 1877 and of Foote and Ramsey for blasphemy in 1883. These actions were remarkable enough in religious ministers; but what is equally remarkable is that they were supported by their religious congregation.
During the 1970s this issue was revived in the particular area of letting policy at Conway Hall. The question is whether our general principle of freedom of expression and assembly involves an obligation to let our premises to particular organisations advocating policies which we strongly disapprove of. In the 1890s the Committee banned anarchists who advocated violence at South Place, but in the 1970s the Committee and several General Meetings refused toban fascists who advocated racism, or people who wanted to discuss paedophilia, or anti-Zionists who verged on anti-semitism, or Irish nationalists who approve of terrorism. And of course many other organsiations who use Conway Hall are objectionable in various ways, whether political or religious. The question is a hard one, and it remains open.
Politics This is not a political society, but neither is it a non-political society. Winchester showed little interest in political events (apart from expecting them to bring the end of the world!), and Vidler showed even less; but they opposed slavery and cruelty to animals. Fox showed not only interest but involvement in political events, became one of the best-known radical figures of the early nineteenth century, and became a Member of Parliament while he was the Minister at South Place. (He was responsible for the introduction in 1850 of the first Bill for a national system of secular education.) Conway was very political in America, but moderated his commitment in Britain — though his hatred of war alienated him from both countries at the end of his life. For half a century, from the 1870s to the 1920s, the Society was political enough to pass several radical resolutions on political topics, especially on foreign affairs, and since then it has been affiliated to peace and civil liberties organisations. In the first batch of three Appointed Lecturers, one was a Marxist (as well as a Theosophist!), one was a Liberal economist, and one was a Liberal Member of Parliament. Among later ones there were more Liberals and also Socialists, Communists and Anarchists, and two elected during the 1960s were Life Peers who had been Labour Members of Parliament. And all the time South Place and then Conway Hall were best known to the general public as places where political —especially left-wing — minorities could hold public as well as private meetings on unpopular subjects. So the Society is political in that it has long been involved in political activity of a generally left-wing kind; but it is non-political in that it has never been committed to any particular political party or line.
6 Ethical Record, April, 1993 Personalities and powers Histories of religious denominations and congregations are generally written by ministers, and therefore exaggerate the role of ministers. Accounts of South Place exaggerate Winchester and Vidler, Fox and Conway, lerson and Barnett, Coit and Cadogan. What is really important is the interaction between the strong personalities and the ordinary members. We were founded not by Winchester but by the couple of hundred people who acquired and administered Parliament Court chapel. When Vidler turned to Unitarianism in 1802, he succeeded only because he took the majority of his congregation with him. When Fox left his wife in 1834, he survived for the same reason. When Fox took the society towards Theism and Conway took it on towards Humanism, they had to keeep the society with them. When Barnett tried to go backwards and Coit tried to go forwards too fast, they failed because they didn't take the society with them. When Appointed Lecturers and other strong speakers tried to influence the society, they depended on persuading and not bullying it. When leftists tried to take over in the 1930s and again in the 1960s, they failed to persuade the majority. When Knight and Cadogan tried to take it into new or old paths, they succeeded only as long as they kept their majority; similarly when Barbara Smoker or Eric Willoughby tried to make the Ethical Record more than just a record. The Society can be led, but not driven. We should not forget the apparetly less important personalities. The old South Place families kept the Society together from decade to decade in a way which is impossible to trace on paper but is crucial in reality, and it still relies on individuals who devote forty, fifty, sixty, or seventy years to it. Remember Caroline Fletcher Smith, who was actively involved in the Society for more than seventy years, married the Librarian and acted as Secretary from 1882 to 1929 — and when she resigned after 47 years it was not because she was 88 but because she opposed the move to Conway Hall. Remember Frank Overy, who was involved in the Society for more than thirty years, led the campaign to leave South Place, discovered the new site, named the new building and brought us here — only to fall in love with his young assistant, suffer a breakdown, and kill himself in 1932.
Women When Hypatia Bradlaugh Bonner spoke at the meeting celebrating the centenary of South Place chapel, in 1924, she pointed out that the part played by women in the Society was generally ignored. This part goes back before the beginning. Winchester acknowledged that a chance meeting with a young woman in the 1770s had helped to convert him to Universalism — incidentally it was not in a stage-coach, as is generally said, but in a house —and on a negative side it was his unhappy fifth marriage which drove him back to America in 1794. Vidler was first converted to Evangelicalism by the young woman who became his wife and supported him for the rest of his career. Fox, who was unhappily married like Winchester, was profoundly influenced by his ward, Eliza Flower, who became housekeeper in his home and foster-mother to his children as well as his stenographer and sub-editor and general assistant until her death in 1846. She and her sister, Sarah Flower Adams, were the leading musicians of the Society, as Josephine Troup was later. Conway was strongly supported by his wife throughout their marriage over nearly forty years. The women who spoke at South Place during the nineteenth century included Frances Wright, Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Julia Ward Howe, Ernestine Rose, Annie Besant and Olive Schreiner. Caroline Smith 1 have mentioned. There are other women still with us who have contributed more than their share. (Edwina Palmer, who is present with us, has been a member since 1927, has done all kinds of work here, and is still the Librarian.) Women have played an increasing part in running the Society for more than a century, yet it is a shocking fact that no woman became an Appointed Lecturer before 1986. Much of the essential but unrecorded work here has always been done by women. Putting an apparently trivial but actually serious question, who had done most of the cooking and cleaning here (as elsewhere) for two hundred years?
Ethical Record, April, 1993 7 Music The Society began with the usual musical accompaniments of a Christian congregation. It is amusing now, though it wasn't then, that there was trouble with the choir and the organ throughout the nineteenth century. But more significant are two other aspects of our musical life. One is the hymns that used to be sung here until 1961. Various Universalist or Unitarian collections were used until 1841, when the Society produced its own hymn book, nominally edited by Fox but actually compiled by the Flower sisters, who also wrote the words or music or both for many of them — including Sarah Flower Adams' Nearer My God to Thee, which became one of the favourites of the English- speaking world. There were several revisions, ending with Josephine Troup's collections of 1901 and 1912. It may be hard now to accept the idea of singing hymns together here, but it is hard to tell how much is lost by having no such collective activity. The other musical aspect of South Place is the chamber concerts which have been given here on Sunday evenings since 1882. The first seasons were organised by the People's Concert Society, as part of the campaign to free Sunday from the old sabbatarian rules. But in 1887 they were taken over by a Committee of the Society, which has organised them ever since — with a four-year break during the Second World War — and they became one of the most strikingly successful activities of the Society.
Society A society is social in its relations with society at large, but also in itself. How far is this society social, or sociable? At one time it was the centre of a very lively social life, growing from the usual ancillary activities of a religious congregatiOn to something much deeper and wider. At one point in its history, when it reached its first peak of membership in the early 1930s, as well as the Sunday lectures and concerts, there were discussion groups and study groups, socials and soirees, rambles and holidays, dances and country-dancing, lantern lectures and card-playing, poetry and play reading, literary circles and choral groups, and children's clubs and parties. There were events at Conway Hall on every day or evening of every month with breaks for Christmas and summer, involving not outside organisations but this organisation. We cannot expect this kind of thing again, or at least not for the time being, but we could surely become much more of a centre of activity for the humanist movement.
Movement The Society has been moving from the moment it began. It moved through various Christian heresies through Theism to Humanism and Ethicism. During the mid- nineteenth century it belonged to the free religious movement, with links to Unitarianism and Utilitariansim and Positivism, and from the late nineteenth century it belonged to the new Ethical movement. It remained slightly aloof from the rest of that movement, because of its early difference with its main leader, Stanton Coit, and it didn't actually to the Ethical Union until 1951. But from 1899 it held an Annual Reunion every September for Ethical and Positivist societies, later including the Rationalist Press Association, the Progressive League, and the National Secular Society; and it provided a meeting-place for all sorts of Ethical and Humanist meetings first at South Place and then at Conway Hall. It is now established as the physical centre of the Humanist movement, and at the same time it has moved further away from its religious origins towards a general non-religious view of the world. Let us hope that it will continue both to serve the wider movement and also to consider further movement itself, and also that it will preserve the principle of mutual toleration of opinion and courtesy in discussion.
8 Ethical Record, April, 1993 Conclusion What is the Society now, apart from the owners of a hall offering the general public a high degree of freedom of expression and assembly, and particular humanist organis- ations a physical centre? Our positive principles — ethicism (in the sense of seeking and doing good) and humanism (in the sense of the mental and moral improvement of humanity)— are really very weak, as may be seen in the way we conduct our affairs; and it sometimes seems that what actually unites us is our negative principles — naturalism (in the sense of the rejection of the supernatural), and atheism (in the sense of the rejection of a belief in God). This is not enough for our third century.
When I spoke at the Annual Dinner here, exactly eighteen years ago today, I argued that our basic principle is the defence of free thought, free expression and free assembly. The most recent occasion on which this principle was vindicated by the Society was in July 1989, when it sponsored the first public reading in this country from The Satanic Verses; and, as a member of the International Committee for the Defence of Salman Rushdie and His Publishers, I take this opportunity to point out that today is the fourth anniversary of the fatwa by the Ayatollah Khomeini ordering the assassination of the author for writing the book. But we need a more positive basis than mere libertarianism. Freethought must be thoughtful as well as free, and another essential principle is rationalism. I take this opportunity to point out that today is also — by a remarkable coincidence — the two-hundredth anniversary of the publication of William Godwin's masterpiece, An Enquiry Concerning Political Justice and Its Influence on General Virtue and Happiness— one of the first great attempts to show how social and political life could be rebuilt on the basis of reason and liberty. But we still need a more collective basic principle. I take one from William Morris, who spoke to this Society more than a century ago and about whom I spoke here more than a decade ago. His political fantasy, News front Nowhere (1890), is perhaps the most attractive picture ever painted of a future society; but I shall take my last lesson from his earlier political fantasy, A Dream of John Ba//(1888). The narrator returns in a dream to the Peasants' Revolt of 1381, and hears the priest deliver a sermon to the rebels:
Forsooth, brothers, fellowship is heaven, and lack of fellowship is hell: fellowship is life, and lack of fellowship is death: and the deeds that ye do upon the earth, it is for fellowship's sake that ye do them, and the life that is in it, that shall live on and on for ever, and each one of you part of it, while many a man's life upon the earth from the earth shall wane. Therefore, I bid you not dwell in hell but in heaven, or while ye must, upon earth, which is a part of heaven, and forsooth no foul part.
There is no centenary to invoke this time, but that seems a pretty good message for Valentine's Day. And it takles us right back to the beginning. For the original congregation at Parliament Court started when it rejected hell, opened its doors to all, and formally 'entered into Christian fellowship' on 14 February 1793. Two hundred years later, let us resolve to find heaven on earth and enter into human fellowship. •
Bicentenary Congratulations from the Progressive League
We send our warmest congratulations to SPES on the occasion of the Bicentenary. The Progressive League started 60 years ago, and looking back in our journal PLAN, it seems that we held our 1st AGM in Conway Hall in 1934, and probably ever since, and Country Dancing for a long time too. Dorothy Forsyth, Chair
Ethical Record, April, 1993 9 THE POLITICS OF SIMONE WEIL: THEORY AND PRACTICE
Christopher Hampton Lecture to the Ethical Society, 25 February 1993
When Simone Weil died at the age of 34 in 1943, she was almost unknown as a writer; but the short life of this fragile, introverted, difficult woman is distinguished by the extraordinary intensity with which she responded to the momentous events of her time. In fact, in a posthumous appreciation of her work , Albert Ca m us has claimed that "Western social and political thought has not produced anything more penetrating or more prophetic since Marx" (AC, 8). This may be taking things a little too far; but the fact remains that today, fifty years after her death, in the light of the unprecedented changes that have taken place over the last few years and all that has been opened up to question with the fall of the Soviet Union, the objectivity and rigour of her thinking about the problems of European society in the 1930s takes on a special kind of urgency and relevance. Present Relevance This is not only because of the acuity and harshness of her analysis of the confrontation between socialism, capitalism and fascism in the 1930s, or the uncompromising support she gave to the oppressed proletariat in the Western democracies, which led to her condemnation of Stalinist bureaucracy as a betrayal of the revolutionary process and of the working class. What also has to be taken into account is the movement of her mind toward the peculiarly difficult form of Christian mysticism she opened herself up to in the last five years of her life, which may well present a few problems to those whose thinking is anchored in the contradictions of materiality, but nevertheless has its crucial bearing on certain fundamental concerns of human society at this bitter end of the twentieth centuiy.
Most of her work comes in the form of separate essays, notebooks or lectures- and she completed only two books. In the first of these, Oppression and Liberty (1934), Well had concluded from the evidence of the Stalinist regime that conditions in the real world were incompatible with Marx's "sublime confidence that the task of the revolution was simply to liberate the productive forces, which would themselves create the pre-conditions for Communism" (SW, 70). And it is hardly surprising that Trotsky (with whom she argued the issues through at a personal meeting in her parents's flat in Paris in December 1933) should have accused her of 'reactionary individualism' and 'idealistic revisionism'. For this view of Marx not only reduces his dialectic to a kind of parody; it also seems to suggest that Marx's theory of revolutionary struggle and transformation cannot work—that it is itself an idealist illusion whose irresistible appeal leaves it fatally exposed to the kind of abuse Stalin subjected it to, because it leaves unresolved the problems of institutionalised power. • Weil a Marxist? True, Weil accepts "the Marxist view, according to which social existence is determined by the relations between man and nature established by production"; for she stresses that it "remains the only sound basis for any historical investigation". However she immediately qualifies this by stating that "these relations must be considered first of all in terms of the problems of power"; and that "a scientific study of history would thus be study of the actions and reactions which are perpetually arising between the organisation of power and the methods of production; for although power depends on the material conditions of life, it never ceases to transform these conditions themselves" [my italics].
As she sees it, "once society is divided up into men who command and men who execute, the whole of social life is governed by the struggle for power" (OL, 71). Which is to say that "human history is simply the history of the servitude which makes men — oppressors and oppressed alike
10 Ethical Record April. 1993 — the plaything of the instruments of domination they themselves have manufactured", since "it is things, not men, that prescibe the limits and laws governing this giddy race for power" (OL, 69). Thus, the 'revolt of the productive forces' invoked by Marx and Trotsky as the means of liberation is no answer. These forces, being "the chief weapons in the race for power" (OL, 68), are also instruments of oppression; and no revolution can achieve its emancipatory ends with abolishing oppression, which "would mean first abolishing the sources of it, abolishing all the monopolies, the magical and technical secrets that give a hold over nature, armaments, money, co-ordination of nature" (0 L, 70). And Weil does not believe this can be done; for it would involve the abolition of power itself; and certainly no revolutionary class, having seized power, could afford to abolish it without surrendering the means to establish a non-oppressive, emancipatory system.
Looking closely at the record of history, and acknowledging that from the beginning "men have struggled, suffered and died to free the oppressed", she is driven to the conclusion that they have nowhere succeeded. No non-oppressive workers' state, she says, "has ever yet existed on the earth's surface, except for a few weeks in Paris in 1871, or perhaps for a few months in Russia in 1917 and 1918. On the other hand, for nearly 15 years now, over one-sixth of the globe, there has reigned a State as oppressive as any other which is neither capitalist nor a workers' State" (OL, 6).
As Weil seems clearly to perceive, such conditions — based upon the "degiading division between manual and intellectual labour" (OL, 14) — were as total and as oppressive in the United States as they were in Russia. For though in Russia they had taken the form of a totalitarian dictatorship of the Party by which "the heroism of the Russian workers was shattered", and could thus be ideologically opposed in the West as a 'barbaric' and 'evil' empire, in the US there existed an equivalent stranglehold of power. The latter form is, of course, represented as 'free', with a 'free market' embodying all the democratic values, and organised "in such a way as to give to everyone the maximum leisure and comfort possible" (OL, 15). For while it seems that "capitalism as such is only a system for exploiting productive work", and that at certain levels this system gives "scope, in every branch of activity, to initiative, free inquiry, invention, and genius" (OL, 16), the threat of the new technocracy as a commodifying system is that it "would methodically destroy all initiative, all culture, all thought" (OL, I7)....
Weil's Optimism So what is the answer? Not for Weil any sort of facile optimism, any vague hope that sometime in the future everything will somehow work out differently, but at the same time she refuses the temptation to collapse into pessimism. "With us-, she observes defiantly, "the very word discouragement ought to have no meaning. The only question that arises is whether we should or should not continue the struggle; if the former, then we shall struggle with as much enthusiasm as if victory were assured. There is no difficulty whatever, once one has decided to act, in maintaining intact, on the level of action, those very hopes which a critical examination has shown to be well nigh unfounded; in that lies the essence of courage. Now, seeing that a defeat would run the risk of destroying, for an indefinite period, everything which lends value to human life in our eyes, it is obvious that we must struggle by every means which seem to us to have some chance of proving effective" (OL, 22). This despite the obstacles, the apathy and disarray of the masses, the power of the forces ranged against them. One has to do what one can to help the workers "to prepare themselves, to think things out", to resist the apathy, and where possible to act. "The only hope of socialism", as Weil points out bluntly, "resides in those who have already brought about in themselves, as far as is possible in the society of today, that union between manual and intellectual labour which characterises the society we are aiming at" (OL, 23).
Ethical Record, April, 1993 II lf, that is, we are to resist the forces that are out to crush us, we have to insist upon the closest interaction between theory and practice. For it is by dividing people from each other, and thus depriving them of the strength and will to fight, that these forces are able to keep the workers subservient to their demands. As soon as people begin to understand what is being done to them, and start to resist the seductive deceits of the ideological process that is at work upon them, such forces begin to lose the power to impose the oppressive conditions by which they maintain control.
Though they may still have sufficient power, as Weil gloomily observes, to "prevent us from existing fully, that is to say from stamping the world with the seal of our will", she nevertheless insists that "there is one sphere in which they are powerless. They cannot stop us from working towards a clear comprehension of our efforts"; and "nothing in the world can prevent us from thinking clearly" (OL, 23). Which leads her to the defiant insistence that "there is no contradiction whatever between the task of theoretical elucidation and the tasks set by the actual struggle. On the contrary, there is a correlation, since one cannot act without knowing what one intends and what obstacles have to be overcome. At all events, the greatest calamity that could befall us" in the attempt to stamp the world 'with the seal of our will' "would be to perish incapable of either winning or understanding" (OL, 24)
At this late stage of 20th century European culture — in the wake of the break-up of the Stalinist bloc and above all the Soviet Union — the writer is likely to be faced with the kind of disorientating contradictions which Simone Weil spent her life wrestling with and which she knew had to be confronted.
To evade these contradictions would be to evade the challenge of late-20th-century crisis. The fundamental questions raised by such radical thinkers as Simone Weil and Antonio Gramsci in the 20s and 30s were addressed to the perceived dislocations they had experienced between the demands of revolutionary theory and the contorted actualities of the practices these theories were translated into. The huge gaps between the project of an emancipatory politics and the operative systems into which it was subsumed appeared to Well and (in face of the evidence) to Gramsci to be impassable. Of course the great difference between the two is that, whereas Gramsci's dialectic remains thoroughly materialistic and Marxist in its rigour, Weil was already shifting her ground. Gramsci's 'pessimism of the intellect' was matched by his 'optimism of the
Weil's Pessimism Weil's pessimism, loosed from its roots, drives her towards mysticism and the exploratory metaphysics of her last book, The Need For Roots (1943) in a quest for the grounds of belief and of value against a world disfigured and deranged by the dominant forces of state power and their dehumanising impact upon the oppressed. This pessimism (much like that which colours the a-historical indeterminacy of the post-modernist 90s) springs from what she registered as "both increasingly characteristic of her age and increasingly oppressive — the impact of modem technology on social relations and the spread of bureaucracy" (SW, 84), or "the subordination to inert matter" of people (SW, 85); because for her "technology had gone beyond the control of society, whether collectively or individually" (SW, 86), in that, as analysed in Oppression and Liberty, "the main institutional clusterings of modern society —capitalistic enterprise, production, surveillance, and control of the means of violence — are all run managerially" (SW, 87)
One has to ask what the path chosen by Simone Weil in her last years has to contribute to any sort of renewal for the individual-collective forms of social existence, especially in the light of the unprecedented upheavals of the last few years. Certainly she remained committed to the
12 Ethical Record, April, 1993 problems of the oppressed and their subjection to the technological-bureacratic tyrannies she saw developing on every side; though for herself personally the passionate quest for religious truth had begun to take over, to flood her life, to dictate the terms of her response the outside world. And no-one can doubt the intensity of her intellectual challenge — the seriousness with which she confronted the crises of her time in trying to reconcile the fundamental questions of human existence — the immanent and the substantial, spirit and matter, the self in society; for she had no desire to escape responsibility or to renounce the world. But there is now an idealist double quest — to engage with the contradictory forces of material reality, and to attempt the distancing heights of ontological inquiry; an interactive pursuit of the numinous with an almost puritan desire to lose herself in action.
Last Work During the four months immediately preceding her death when whe was working for the Free French in London, for instance, she produced what amounts to about 800 pages of printed material, tackling all the documents that came to her from inside France in the boldest terms —looking ahead beyond the war, again and again setting out markers for ways out of the impasse of collaboration towards a newly-constituted politics, in studies which analysed the causes of European dislocation, those condition under which (as she puts it in The Need For Roots "men of the white race have everywhere destroyed the past, stupidly, blindly, both at home and abroad") (NR, 49). Now, however, knowing she was dying, and dominated by a mystical sense of vocation, she believes there can be no remedy for "the appalling evils in the midst of which we struggle" (NR, 249) except through the reconciliation of science and religion, and the rediscovery of "the spirit of truth" in both (NR, 249-250). To achieve that, she demands of her compatriots a form of attention and a voice "whose authority is not based on physical power, which was destroyed by the defeat, nor on glory, which was wiped out in shame; but, first, on an elevated plane of thought in keeping with the present tragedy, and, secondly, on a spiritual tradition graven in the hearts of the people" (NR, 189).
This was not what her colleagues had asked from her; and no-one was prepared to take seriously these imperious recommendations. It was not this abstract appeal to the spirit of truth that was needed, as they knew; but rather what she had argued so forcefully for in Oppression and Liberty in her analysis of the material contradictions of social existence and its divisive systems of power. Not that the awkward, abrasive integrity of her later writings is to be so easily dismissed. For it speaks with characteristic urgency as an impersonal accusatory voice against the visionless mediocrity and brute force that dominate our world and it has difficult and discomforting alternatives to offer ...
To sum up. Simone Weil is an outsider — in David McLelland's striking phrase, "the patron saint of outsiders" (SW, 261). Anarchic, anti-Stalinist, anti-Marxist in her rejection of the revolutionary process but with an idealist respect for Marx, she remains politically unclassifiable — at once radical and reactionary, Catholic and Jewish, and anti-establishment Christian and a materialist, who conceives physical labour as "the spiritual core" of the social order (NR, 288). Above all her strength lies in the fact that "it is her life, not her psyche, that is the essential counterpart of her thought" (SW, 271) —the practiceof her life that demonstrates the validity of her theoretical understanding of reality and her vision of truth. •
Bibliography: AC — Albert Camus: Introduction to Oppression and liberty by Simone Weil (Gallimard 1955) OL — Simone Weil: Oppression and Liberty (Ark 1988) NR — Simone Weil: The Need For Roots (Ark 1987) SW — David McLeIland: Simone Weil: Utopian Pessimist (MacMillan 1991); the main source for this study, as (among other things) a critical analysis of her intellectual life and her developing philosophy.
Ethical Record April, 1993 13 TOYNBEE HALL: SELF-SERVING OR ACCOUNTABLE?
Professor Gerald Vinten. Whitbread Professor of Business Policy, Luton College of Higher Education.
Summary of a lecture to the Ethical Society, 17 January 1993
Introduction Toynbee Hall, legally registered under the name "The Universities' Settlement in East London", was founded in 1884. Situated near A ldgate East underground station in the Spitalfields ward of the London Borough of Tower Hamlets, it has established an international reputation with its work, sometimes of a pioneering nature, in research, second-chance education, children's activities and youth clubs, social welfare, health issues, legal and citizen's advice, employment initiatives, care of the elderly, and ethnic minority provision.
Arnold Toynbee, the social philosopher, dicinot live to see it, but Toynbee Hall was based on his idea of the inter-class harmony he believed had characterised pre-industrial society. Canon Samuel Barnett, the first warden and his wife Dame Henrietta, believed that poverty and sin were inextricably linked, and therefore considered that the well- heeled University settlers, imbued with a passion for righteousness, would benefit the poor with whom they came into contact.
With an increasing role being taken by charities, and increased state f unds being pumped into many of them, comes a demand for more accountablility. Prof Vinten took each element of a definition of accountability in turn, and discussed how far Toynbee Hall complied.
Accountability The need for accountability was implicit in the statement of the purpose of a settlement adopted by the British Association of Settlements and Social Action Centres in February 1973:
"to encourage and enable people to move towards the vision of a caring, sharing society; to bring about the maximum involvement of the group, neighbourhood or community in solving the problems that concern them, in participating in the decisions that affect them and in running their own affairs."
The statement continues by disavowing manipulation and assuming prerogatives —elitist, paternalistic, professional — i.e. behaviour which tends to create or perpetuate unequal relationships.
It is fashionable to talk about accountability, and the notion is contained in the official definition of 'settlement'. Without fulfilment and disclosure there can only be sham or pseudo -accountability. Toynbee Hall achieves only partial fulfilment. Toynbee Hall fails to comply with a significant part of both its Memorandum and its Articles of Association. Memorandum paragraph 9 permits the members of the company to examine the detail of income and expenditure in the accounts at any reasonable time personally. This has been denied.
The spirit if not the letter of Article 3 is certainly contravened. This sets out the different ways in which an individual may become a member of the company, and includes donors
14 Ethical Record, April, 1993 of not less than 50p or £2.50 and residents of three month's standing. The membership elects the Council, which also forms the directors (Companies Acts) and trustees (charity status). In practice the membership consists almost entirely of present and former Council members. Until recently it was common for the self-perpetuating oligarchy of the Council to elect to the Council, via the old boys' network, someone deemed to be useful, without their being among the membership. Nowadays the technical obstacle is overcome by first electing to the membership. The Council has stated that, except in exceptional circumstances, it will refuse to admit to membership under Article 3. This means that there can only be a very restricted accountability to a self-perpetuating body that forms variously both the council and the membership.
For many years Toynbee Hall dispensed with having the legally required annual general meeting. Just under ten years ago a new warden decided to regularise the situation and reinstate the meeting. This also involved going before a judge in chambers so as to legalise all the various decisions, contracts and expenditure that had been entered into retrospectively.
Annual general meetings have of late become less of the set-pieces that they traditionally are. Former resident representatives tend to raise issues of accountability, but the meetings are subject to manipulation and time pressure by the governing Council. Toynbee Hall does not believe in open government, but in controlling access to the areas of information, and only releasing as much as it wishes to release and on its own terms.
Purposes This is vitally important, since otherwise there is no yardstick against which to evaluate an activity as it proceeds. The purposes of the settlement are contained in the 'objects' clause of the memorandum of association. This talks about relieving and assisting persons afflicted by poverty, age, infirmity or other disability, advancing education and the arts, undertaking social welfare work, relieving prisoners by visit or after-care, to conduct advice centres, to pursue research, and to provide places of residence or recreation. Although Toynbee Hall is often in danger of spreading itself too thinly, it has always managed a catholic range of endeavours, with the above emphases ebbing and flowing.
Principles The principles of Toynbee Hall have always been ill-defined, and some have argued none the worse for that. It has been described as a social workshop of the world, a pioneering endeavour that plugs gaps in state provision or anticipates initiatives that may later be taken over by the State. Whatever principles there are remain implicit, and this may engender latent conflict. Toynbee Hall is no longer the national institution that it once was and its national impact is meagre. Locally it often competes with other agencies.
Conclusion On the criterion of accountability, it is impressionistically clear that it is likely to be below par. The question is, does it matter? If Toynbee Hall were completely self- sufficient, or relied entirely on the self-perpetuating oligarchy for funds and labour, then perhaps it would not matter. Its impact would be much reduced, but it would do good for those prepared to make use of its services, and not bothered by its century old style of operating. As it is, the settlement is not self-sufficient in any sense, and if it wishes to become more than a social workshop museum then it must adjust to the contemporary situation of increased accountability; be pleased to be, and to be seen to be, a leader in acCountable management. Regrettably Toynbee Hall long ago lost the opportunity to be a pioneer in this respect. • 15 Ethical Record, April, 1993 SOCIAL CHANGE
Margaret Chisman Summary of Bicentenary talk, 15 February 1993
Social change is history in the making. It goes on all the time — when rapid and violent the result could be civil war or revolution. Mostly it is slow and almost unobtrusive, rather like straws in the wind.
There will be many changes in the run-up to year 2000. Many folk are deeply affected by numbers; there will be much millenial madness.
An unusual grouping, arising from different sources, is known as 'The New Age'. I have made a study of its literature and have listed many of their ideas and activities — about 180. Some of these sound silly, many hilarious, a few could be beneficial. Many, alas, seem to have been taken over by commercial interests charging high fees.
A few examples illustrate:- Crystal Healing, Flotation Tank Meditation, Hemisphere Synchronisation, Holistic . Camping, Mongolian Overtone Chanting, Negative Electo-magnetic Dispellant, Primal Integration, Psychognostic Realisation, Seaweed Body Wrap.
Other straws in the wind are the indications of major reductions in the Welfare State. The Prime Minister, besides threatening Workfare, is now floating the idea of slashing state pensions, child benefits and income support, under the spurious notion of 'targeting'.
Many suggest that our Welfare State needs rethinking after its 45 years of existence. It should now be reformed in ways not primarily to solve the Government's deficit but to embody the principle of responsibility for oneself and others. One of the main ways of achieving this would be the removal of the multiple disincentives to work which result in the poverty trap.
The Humanist movement has always supported the Charter of Human Rights. We could take a leading part in the formation of a similar Charter for Human Responsibilities.
I propose the setting up of an informal Working Party open to any member of a Humanist organisation. Its sole responsibility would be to identify straws in the wind that might be a threat to Humanist values or, on the other hand, those which the Humanist movement should support. The Working Party would have no executive power. It could meet in Conway Hall and make reports at intervals to the Humanist Liaison Committee.
VIEWPOINTS
Once again on the Philosophy of Barbarism
Tom Ruben's response (ER 97/9 Nov 92) to two essays of mine (one based on a talk at SPES) not only do not take up my claims in a serious enough manner, but his proposed 'correct' reading of Nietzsche merely reproduces the kind of mistakes that others make concerning Nietzsche, thereby leaving the gate open for the shift into the kind of barbarism propagated by Nietzsche.
16 Ethical Record, April, 1993 Rubens suggests that my claim that Nietzsche's work is political and expresses overwhelmingly a fear of socialism is an overstatement. To support this he points out that I only refer to 2 letters and 3 aphorisms, which is not sufficient. I could respond to this by asking Rubens how many references I would need to give to justify my claim: 10, 20, 30? There would always remain the possibility of saying 'not enough, more references needed'.
Yet pursuing this line will merely lead us into quote counting and a banal debate about how many references are necessary before certain claims about a writer's work can be justified. Instead I prefer to make a more geneMI point concerning how one reads philosophy. Rubens claims that my argument is an overstatement because the aphoristic nature of Nietzsche's work combined with the multi-layered and complex array of topics covered renders the work unsusceptible to singular analysis. This is nonsense. The whole point of writing aphoristically is that it makes interpretation difficult. Difficult but not impossible. Aphorisms can thereby act as a phenomenal form suggesting incompleteness, uncertainty, contradiction and so on. My point is that behind this phenomenal form there lies a real essence; in Nietzsche's work that essence is political in nature, designed to thwart human emancipation and sustain a philosophy of barbarism. Thus Nietzsche's aphoristic apereus act as vehicles for a sustained political project.
In relation to complexity, Rubens feels that a complexity of topics covered presupposes that there is no unity behind them. This I suspect is due to Rubens having succumbed to the imposition of bourgeois academic categorisations of 'knowledges' that at best can only have an overlap. This is epitomised by Rubens when he suggests (p. 14) that one 'area' of Nietzsche's work is political, another is epistemological, and then follows this by 'moving' from one area to another as though they really were boundaries ('I turn now to...'). This is one of the most dangerous assumptions one can make in relation to both Nietzsche and much modern philosophical thought, and it was partly this that I sought to bring out in my article on Nietzsche and Postmodernism. It is dangerous because epistemology is political. At a banal level a glance at any of the major philosophers would indicate how directly related the two disciplines are. Witness Plato, Aristotle, Hobbes, Locke, Hegel etc. Indeed, it is not that they believed them to be two areas that are directly related, it is that they could not possibly conceive of the two areas being distinct.
At a more substantive level, epistemology is political because what can be claimed to be known about the world, and of how we know it, may lead to certain possibilities for political practice unfolding. In this sense there is an essential connection between knowledge and human (political) interests. The denial of essence is thus not merely epistemblogical, but is political through and through. For if essences do not exist then society has no essence. If it has no essence then it cannot be changed (at least, not in essence). Thus political practice is reduced to tinkering (dare I say 'with the appearance'?).
Nietzsche himself was most acutely aware of the connection between knowledge and (political) practice. Thus he claims that 'what I paid attention to... was that no epistemological scepticism or dogmatism ever came into being without ulterior motives', thereby revealing his 'basic insight' that 'Kant as well as Hegel or Schopenhauer — the sceptical-epochistic as well as historicising or pessimistic — are of moral origin' (Werke 3:486). Indeed Nietzsche is to be commended for recognising that questions of truth are not merely epistemological. The question of how we know that our ideas correspond to the 'objective' world is unintelligible as it stands because it is removed from practice. The traditional epistemological approach presupposes a knowing subject and then asks how is knowledge of the world possible. By comparison for Nietzsche, as for Marx, questions of
Ethical Record, April, 1993 17 truth are practical questions, where what is presupposed is practice and the question that follows is how subjects and objects become categories of consciousness.
Now for Nietzsche the theory of knowledge needs to be replaced by a 'perspectivisrn'. 'As long as the word "knowledge" has any meaning at all, the world is knowable. But it can be interpreted differently; it does not have a meaning behind it, but innumerable meanings. — "Perspectivism". It is our needs that interpret the world; our instincts and their pro and con' (Werke 3:903).
For Nietzsche's followers this produces a view of truth and of history from which a certain kind of political practice seems to follow. The claim is that political resistence must be as dispersed as the strategies of power and knowledge which it resists; but in fact this often results in an outright rejection of practice altogether. Consequently at best this only produces a simplistic nihilism resulting in political indifference. Nietzsche's position, currently being revived under the banners of postmodernism and deconstruction, whereby all that is experienced is a continual restlessness of meaning, — epistemology is reduced to varieties of interpretation and 'texts' are decentered in a series of individualist and anarchistic acts — does allow great claims to be made about its anti-ideological and philosophically radical nature; but where change appears eternal even while society remains static the revolutionary gesture contained in such updated Nietzscheanism remains merely a gesture as it achieves its radicalism through the sheer novelty of interpretations. Fashion masquerades as politics.
At worst such a reading of Nietzsche ignores precisely those elements of Nietzche's work, the more directly 'political' ones, which I sought to draw attention to. Concerning this I am, frankly, baffled by some of Rubens' other comments, as many of these imply that I make certain claims about Nietzsche which in fact I do not. I make no claim that Nietzsche supported capitalism; thus Rubens' comments that he cannot be equated with capitalism opposition to socialism are simply irrelevant. I make no comment about nationalism, nor German patriotism; thus Rubens' claims denying these themes in Nietzsche's work are also irrelevant. I make no claims about Jews or race, except, concerning the latter, that Nietzsche wanted a 'master race' (but this did not contain explicit references to ethnicity and focused simply on the idea of a race of 'great men'); thus Rubens' claims denying this are also irrelevant. One is tempted to say that it is Rubens himself who succumbs to generalisations; it would appear that because 1 accuse Nietzsche of anti-socialism Rubens feels compelled to point out Nietzsche's anti- capitalism, anti-nationalism and so forth, as though being anti-socialist must mean one is pro-capitalist.
Indeed my work on Nietzsche implicitly suggests that his anti-socialism does not succumb to a simplistic pro-capitalist liberal position but is far more in the nature of an irrationalist romantic anti-capitalist position. To defend Nietzsche from the charge of anti-socialism by suggesting that he was anti-capitalist is therefore no defence at all.
However, in what seems more than slightly ironic, it is Rubens himself who provides me with my best defence against his criticisms. For despite the fact that he goes to great lengths to suggest that Nietzsche's work is so complex and cannot be reduced to any single theme, Rubens also claims that 'the one thing that can be said for certain is that Nietzsche was endeavoring...to put together a description of the qualities which, to his mind, would constitute a new governing nobility, one he felt European society sorely needed' (p.I4). So Rubens is happy to admit not only that there is something 'certain' in Nietzsche's work, but also to suggest that this one certain thing is an explicitly political project. Rubens'
18 Ethical Record, April, 1993 qualifying comment that this 'enterprise' was complex and multi-directional is clearly absurd, since it would be surprising if a project to rebuild European society were not complex and multi-directional.
It is rather odd to discover that Rubens' himself recognises this aspect of Nietzsche's work, claims that this is the one thing which is certain and yet claims that anti-socialism is not predominant in Nietzsche's work. The one 'certain' thing seems quite clearly to be a project of counter-revolution (and not of revolution as so many make the mistake of thinking). To sustain this claim I need only put the ball back into Rubens court: which other thinkers and politicians have wanted a new governing nobility in Europe? Those who have argued this have done so on the grounds that liberal democracy cannot defeat the growing socialist movement and thus a new politics is called for. (Once again I refer readers to Nietzsche's disparaging comments on Bismark's attempts to subdue the socialist movement through liberal democratic methods).
The overall point is ,that Rubens makes precisely the mistakes I accuse others of. Admittedly he would claim that it is I who am making the mistake in my 'over generalisations', but my argument is that it is simply dangerous to read Nietzsche in the way he does. His distancing himself from Cadogan's remarks only serves to confuse what they in fact have in common. He claims that Cadogan also over generalises and that what is needed is a reading of Nietzsche that recognises Nietzsche's complexity, of both content and style, and therefore avoids generalisation (for which, Rubens means `simplification'). But this kind of reading of Nietzsche is just as dangerous as Cadogan's, for it too merely allows the perpetuation of barbarian philosophy under the guise of complexity and thus, even though it may not directly assist in the shift towards barbarism, it sustains the kind of political and philosophical complacency upon which any move towards barbarism relies.
Finally I would suggest that a good indication of when this barbarism has arrived will be when, following Cadogan (ER December 92), the flag of Nietzsche is flying from Conway Hall's metaphorical masthead.
Mark Neocleous — London
Neocleous an Ego-tripper
In my judgement, the Neocleous piece (April ER) is an exercise in ill-informed intellectual ego-tripping. He is deeply and personally hostile to Nietzsche and is just using him to hang his own hat on — thus 'Perspectivism' (!).
His misuse of the word 'epistemology' is a give-away. It is the name of a subject i.e. the study of the grounds of knowledge — religious, artistic, scientific, philosophical/historical etc. To suggest that is political is absurd.
I don't want to comment further on a piece for which I have no regard. Its author is hanged by his own petard. His descent into name-calling, 'barbarism' etc. is typical and cannot be taken seriously.
Peter Cadogan — London NW6
Ethical Record, April, 1993 19 Professor Schwarz and Karl Marx.
In his talk on 'When Philosophers Look at History', (ER March 1993) Professor Schwarz said that 'Marx's economic theory of history is too well-known to be detailed here'. I think Karl Marx never had an 'economic theory of history'.
In trying to answer the question 'what is a historical fact', he distorts Marx's humanist ideas when he speaks as though Marx were an old-style materialist, with a bit of dialectical "decoration". In fact, Marx himself never used such terminology. As a scientist and a revolutionary, he never looked at nature, human beings or history in a 'mechanical' way. All his revolutionary-humaist ideas must be understood as what he called 'practical- critical activity'. Let us allow him to speak for himself a little on these matters:
"We know only a single science, the science of history. One can look at history from two sides and divide it into the history of nature and the history of men. The two sides are, however, inseparable; the history of nature and the history of men are dependent on each other so long as men exist".
"We must begin by stating the first premise of all human existence and, therefore, of all history, the premise namely, that men must be in a position to live in order to be able to ' make history'. Life involves before everything else eating and drinking, a habitation, clothing and many other things. The first historical act is thus the production of material life itself
"The philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways; the point is to change it".
Alireza, London
Elisabeth Kondal interviewing Jonathan Miller in the Library on 25 February, 1993
20 Ethical Record, April, 1993 SCIENCE AND THE GENERAL READER
Peter 1leales
A History of the Mind by Nicholas Humphrey: Chatto and Windus; £16.90.
The Unnatural Nature of Science by Lewis Wolpert; Faber and Faber; £14.99 (now in the SPES library)
We live in an age of technical and scientific advahce. It is an age in which it becomes more and more important to understand and judge what is happening. Whether or not the generalist is in the best position to make crucial decisions, he or she has the right to know. By definition, the generalist does not have specialist knowledge and therefore relies on others for information.
Art of Scientific Writing The art of conveying scientific and philosophical ideas to the general reader eludes many writers. The general reader needs a clear and balanced exposition. Too often he is offered technicalities and a profusion of facts. I do not ask for mere popularisation. `Good communicators', can write lucidly and arouse interest. They can supply news and facts, but they may fail to convey a real understanding. Their personal commitment to the subject matter is rarely sufficient to bring out its meaning and inner structure. The need for a persuasive and clear cut `storyline' often leads an author to over-simplify and even distort the truth. The. phenomenon is nowhere more evident than in popular writing about medicine where each new advance is heralded as a `breakthrough' and can be made to appear as a panacea.
Major organ transplants, for instance, are highly complex and demanding operations, but complexity is not at the centre of the important issues involved. Most people can come to understand the main technical problems: the need for speed; the need to preserve the new organ in a `living' condition; the need for techniques to overcome the propensity of a body to reject foreign tissue; and so on. Quite a small step leads to the attendant moral issues: the quality of life experienced by the patient after the operation; high expenditure of scarce resources that might be used to help more people, or to prevent disease; the fact that major transplant surgery to help an invalid presupposes the death of a healthier person. There are, of course, no easy resolutions to these moral issues; once the parameters are understood, 'lay' thinkers may be as competent to address them as the 'experts'.
The problem is that the people who are in the best position to inform are fully engaged in the development itself. Often they find it difficult to distil the essential rationale of their research just as, say, Nigel Short might find it difficult to explain his winning chess strategy to an ordinary club player. Knowing how to do something is very different from knoWing how to explain it.
So an outline portrait of a successful communicator begins to emerge; a rare combination of abilities is needed. Probably, it will be someone who has worked in the discipline and retains some of the enthusiasm that characterises pioneers of research within it. It will be someone who can stand back a little from the heat of the activity and see it in balance. Further, our communicator needs an analytic cast of mind so that the structure of his thought emerges clearly. Facts there must be to support the rationale, but they should not confuse or overwhelm it.
Ethical Record, April, 1993 21 My enthusiasm was awakened by Sir Arthur Eddington's The Nature of the Physical Wor/d. When I read it, it was already a 'classic' (I had a well thumbed Everyman edition) and therefore out of date. Nonetheless, it had the gift of conveying essential ideas to me, and the dilemmas they presented to the scientists who had tried to use them. Stephen Hawking's A Brief History of Time is not in the same league, but deserves mention. It exudes enthusiasm and is written with remarkable clarity. Many people having read it, must understand the main features of recent theory about the origin of the universe.
Two recent books seem to me to be worthy of consideration in the light of this discussion. Both are capable of informing and, what is more important, challenging a non-specialist reader.
A History of the Mind My copy of the first is of the American edition, but the book was originally published here last year. It is A History of the Mind by Nicholas Humphrey. The author is one of those rare people whose career has spanned both the world of research and the world of communication. He is a research scientist, currently working at Darwin College, Cambridge, who has also written for the general public and made television documentaries.
Superficially, the book appears to be an attempt to do for Psychology what Stephen Hawking did for Astronomy. Like Hawking's book it maps the supposed development of the human mind whilst drawing on the history of ideas about the mind. There the similarity ends; Humphrey ranges more broadly and devotes much of his book to an examination of the diverse problems and issues that have surrounded attempts to frame a coherent theory, and still do. I referred above to the 'supposed' development of the human mind for good reason. Humphrey assumes that the problem to be resolved is how human intelligence and sensitivity have developed over aeons from a lifeless primordial world. Anyone who believes that scientific fact is absolute fact is bound to cast the problem in that form. It is, however, an approach that can be challenged on purely rational grounds. Humphrey does not discuss the issue, or meet any of the possible challenges, but at least he states his assumption clearly at the outset; an example that other authors would do well to follow. Once the boundaries within which he is working are understood, interest switches to the topics that arise within them. As might be expected from the above comment, Humphrey's rationale is drawn from biology. He holds that the character and functions of the mind evolved alongside the growing needs of organisms. The danger of a behavioural approach is that it can stifle discussion of the problem that lies at the centre of all theories of the mind: the relationship between subjective consciousness and observable behaviour. Many philosophers and scientists have opted for a purely behavioural theory because it appeared to offer a once and for all resolution of that perennial problem. The subjective/objective dichotomy does not yield to such a simplistic solution and Humphrey takes full cognisance of the difficulty. He is well aware that both the behavioural and introspective impulses in psychology have their roots in seventeenth and eighteenth century philosophy. He quotes from Thomas Reid on the difference between 'sensation' and 'perception'; from both Kant and Cezanne when considering the appreciation of beauty. He brings relevant scientific evidence to bear on the various problems he discusses but never allows it to take over from his reasoning. Some readers may find the book somewhat fragmentary as his approach is to try to 22 Ethical Record, April, 1993 build a complex picture by keeping several threads running in parallel. The uniting theme emerges soon enough; it is that there are two parallel channels of experience: perception and sensation. They are analogous to what Kant in the 1780s described as the 'outer sense' and the 'inner sense'. This is not a great book, but it is a fascinating and readable one. I commend it to anyone who feels challenged by the problems surrounding the philosophy and science of the human mind.
The Unnatural Nature of Science The second book, The Unnatural Nature of Science by Lewis Wolpert, derives from a series of lectures the author gave at Warwick University in 1990. Wolpert is a biologist who clearly feels that the discipline to which he has dedicated himself is widely misunderstood. He airs his problem with verve and elegance. I can say that I found it as good a read as any in the literature of science.
One common misunderstanding is that scientists are cool and rational. Scientists are trained to methods which, if followed rigorously, yield the best possible answers to questions they are equipped to tackle. When not at work with those methods, the men and women who practise science are as rational or emotional, objective or biassed as other human beings. There is even a possible danger that a scientist may be deceived into thinking that he or she has become rational by nature, and will therefore neglect to examine his or her prejudices.
Wolpert's book helps to remove that misunderstanding for, like many well written books, it reveals much about its author as well as its subject. Wolpert shows himself to be cogent, assertive and well informed on many subjects beyond his discipline. It also shows him to be engagingly disinclined to examine some of the judgements on which the book is based. It is possible that more objectivity on these points would have rendered the book less stimulating, less challenging and therefore less valuable.
The very title of the book prompts a critical question. If science is 'unnatural' what is it to be 'natural'? The word 'natural' has many shades of meaning, many of them judgemental. 'Natural' is often a word of approval and 'unnatural' a word of disapproval. Sometimes 'natural' can be pejorative, conveying the idea that humanity is superior to the 'natural world'. Wolpert may be leaning towards the latter.
The interesting question becomes: 'Is it natural for humans to pursue science?' The answer must surely be 'yes', for how else would our species have developed the capacity for science? It is certainly true that to be a successful scientist, an individual must tame parts of his or her nature that are inimical to methodical work. The answer to a question about a specific person: "Is it natural for him/her to follow science?" might be "no".
Analogous questions surround Wolpert's discussion of 'common sense'. This expression, too, has more than one meaning. Thomas Reid and G.E. Moore understood common sense to be 'what most people take to be true'. We all share a common understanding of how the physical world works, though each individual will have a different amount of knowledge and a different level of competence in controlling physical things. That shared understanding represents a distillation of experience and scientific explanation as it applies to everyday life. As an extension of that idea, it might be reasonable to think of common sense as related to experience. What is common sense to a research scientist would be different from what is common sense to a footballer.
Ethical Record, April, 1993 23 If common sense refers in any way to the content of our beliefs, then science necessarily yields results that are counter to it. Scientific endeavour is significant only in the face of evidence which confounds 'common sense'. Einstein's theories became necessary because phenomena were observed that would not fit accepted theory. Originally they seemed to fly in the face of 'common sense; now they are generally understood in outline, though they are little needed in everyday life. Perhaps, in the next century when intergalactic travel becomes the norm, relativity will be 'common sense'.
The expression 'common sense' can also refer to methods of tackling situations, if one has a knotty problem, it is 'common sense' to take time over its solution and test different possible answers. The driver whose car won't start and the experimenter whose results confound all previous theories both face problems which are similar in kind, if different in complexity and rigour. Each has a similar repertoire of general methods: deduction, lateral thinking, 'sleeping on it', etc. Both will be satisfied when they have found and tested a theory which meets all the available evidence. With that understanding it might be possible to argue that science involves an extension of 'common sense'.
Wolpert's discussion of science and technology is both interesting and important. It is certainly wrong to suppose that technology is a kind of appendage on the tail of science. The reverse might be nearer the truth; the modern science of astronomy grew from the technology of navigating ships and had to wait for the technology of grinding lenses before advancing. Modern sub-atomic physics would be impossible without the technology that makes cyclotrons possible. This 'either-or' discussion is misleading. I suspect that an activity that might be called 'science' has always taken place alongside the development of technology and vice-versa. They point to different interests in a single type of activity. Consider, for instance, the interest there would be for Chemistry post graduate now working in a laboratory on, say, a new lubricant for a high-performance engine, or a drug to relieve a virulent strain of cancer. Would this work be technology, science, both or neither?
These points illustrate both the strengths and the weaknesses of Wolpert's book. I consider it a compliment to his style and cogency that I find myself arguing with him in almost every chapter. If understanding is the ultimate aim, then the argument may be more important than the text that prompts it. That is not to say that the book lacks depth; it contains much sound exposition and clarification, and is based on broad experience and understanding. I suspect, however that it might perpetuate misunderstandings or confirm prejudices.
Nevertheless I conclude that this book should become required reading for anyone who wants to explore the nature of science as both a practical activity and a theoretical concept. It is not, however, sufficient reading. Lewis Wolpert has not said the last word. - AN ATHEIST ASSOCIATION Harry Whitby I am coming to the meeting on 25 April 1993, when discussion regarding changing the name of the Society will take place, with a genuinely open mind to be persuaded. Today the concept of atheism is the essence of our moral and ethical stance. We are not against religious ethics, but rather against all forms of superstition and supernaturalism, except as fiction. When religious ideas and practice insidiously permiate the world outlook, I hope to hear members, as daring as those who founded our society in 1793, advocating an Atheist Association . Such a title will incorporate all secularists and humanists. Moreover, I assert that such an association would exist in 200 years time when the Automobile Association has long ceased to exist and the motor car become defunct! 24 Ethical Record, April, 1993 THE ATTACKS ON SCIENCE - GOOD AND BAD
Colin Mills Lecture to the Ethical Society, 31 January 1993
The theme of my talk is that criticism of science and the response to it, is sometimes misdirected; also that there are other means of achieving knowledge than science. I was inspired on this issue after reading articles by Mary Midgley and Peter Atkins in the New Scientist, followed by reviews of Brian Appleyard's recent book. Peter Atkins has since spoken at Conway Hall. (see The Limitless Power of Science, ER Dec '92)
My background is relevant here. I am a graduate in mathematics, chemistry and geology, with a long-standing interest in the history and philosophy of science as a student. I became a freethinker after leaving school (and home) nearly thirty years ago, and have been an active humanist over the past decade. After 14 years in the Labour Party, I joined the Green Party in 1989 and am currently a member of its Science and Technology Working Group.
Scope of Science The role and function of science is today being questioned more and more. It is tempting to think of this questioning as yet another battle between science and religion, a rerun of the Wilberforce-Huxley battle. The Dawkins-Habgood debate at the Edinburgh International Science Festival in mid-April 1992, addressed the issue, "Science and religion: conflict, partnership or separate compartments?"; the lions were reported to have eaten the Christians alive!
However, this is to miss the problems at issue, which have a considerable literature extending back over at least half a century, and relate to science itself — the excessive claims made "about the scope and capacity of science as a whole". The position which the philosopher Mary Midgley (and many others) are attacking is 'scientism' — "there is no question whose answer is in principle unattainable by science", to quote Rudolf Carnap; or more specifically physicalism, which claims the same role for the physical sciences. lain Cameron and David Edge wrote, "the charge is that an excessive respect for the success, prestige and authority of science results in a dangerous misconception of its scope and validity".
Myths John CastP writes that there are four current myths about science: I. the primary goal of science is the accumulation offacts — whereas a theory is needed to provide a context for these facts; science distorts reality, and cannot do justice to the fullness of human experience — whereas all disciplines select what aspects of reality they will examine, and none cover the full range of human experience; scientific knowledge is truth — whereas, to paraphrase Frank Ridley, the last word in science is that there are no last words in science; science is concerned primarily with solving practical and social problems — a confusion of science with technology.
The second myth is the anti-science position, and scientism includes the third and fourth.
Mary Midgley2 agrees with Brian Appleyard's criticism of scientism's dismissal of non-scientific modes of thought and with his claim that humankind would be better able to deal with moral questions if scientism's ideological dominace were to be halted or
Ethical Record, April 1993 25 reversed. She rejects his idea that "clearer moral judgements — of the kind that scientism has eroded — would damn liberalism by making intolerance appear preferable to tolerance". Appleyard conflates both science and liberalism, science and scientism: it is the latter confusion I wish to review.
Religion and Science Over the last century, progress in knowledge and our awareness of the existence of numerous religions have both undermined religion's claim to universality; in mediaeval times it would have been possible to talk of European science, Arab science, Indian science, Chinese science and so on, but today only historians of science would use such terms. Now science crosses cultural boundaries, holding out the prospect of the solution of all human problems.
The rapidity of social and technical change has made many people feel insecure; because science is not widely understood, many look for the certainties they need in it and many distrust it for similar reasons. Others look to fundamentalist religion for their certainties. Science has an advantage for many, that they perceive a universality in it that religions have lost over the last two or three centuries.
It is not just that cosmology and palaeontology have exposed the claims of creation myths, undermining religion as a whole. The remit of religion is "matters not fully understandable by human beings", whereas science now claims to offer fully reasoned prooffor answers to all possible questions. This goes far beyond a confusion of science with technology — the application of knowledge to, and the construction of machines and tools for, the solution of human problems.
Limits of Scientific Thinking The presumption that the solution of social problems through knowledge (technology) requires other things than just scientific knowledge is unspoken or ignored, but still the scientistic presumption of the primacy of scientific knowledge is there. John Gibson and Manjit Singh respond to attacks on science by writing that "the critics of science are trying to rationalise the fact that capitalism can offer only meagre rewards". Similarly, Joe Lamb argues that "cultural benefits, technological spin-offs and direct economic rewards justify the support of basic science through taxation".
The problems we face today are so vast that their understanding, and consequently their solution, requires a cross-disciplinary effort. But scientism arose from battles either between disciplines or with the church: all disciplines were placed in a hierarchy designed to show that all other modes of thought were "only rough approximations all reducible to science and ultimately to physics".
Midgley writes; "British scientific education is now so narrowly scientific that many scientists simply do not know that there is any organised, systematic way of thinking besides their own", often speaking with contempt of philosophy; a contempt which, for example, Albert Einstein and T.H. Huxley did not share. "Science has deliberately set narrow limits to the kind of questions that belong to it, and further limits to the questions peculiar to each branch ..." and these restrictions are what have made science effective within its field. Scientists can investigate areas outside their field, but they must change their methods of enquiry to do it.
Alan Chalmers' debunks the idea that there is a universal scientific method divorced from its historical context, desirable through a universal ahistorical scientific method might be. Scientists also do not abide by their proclaimed adherence to scientific method. 26 Ethical Record, April 1993 Harry Collins suggests that "the methods of science do not guarantee objective truth —knowledge insulated from individual or fashionable prejudices. Science and tech- nology are, in fact, craft enterprises. The universal agreements so typical of science are simply collective agreements to do things and see the world in the same way".
Different Modes of Thought Ronald Benge° writes, in discussing modernisation of Third World societies and how it is much too simplistic to set First World rational science against Third World irrational superstition: "Even in the nineteenth century it was apparent that there were different modes of thought, not just degrees of thinking, so that many anthropologists began to realise that a 'scientific' way of thinking is not so much superior to, as different from traditional thought. Furthermore, the scientific mode should not be the only one, which is what is apparently implied by modernisation ... Most people in transitional societies ... instinctively understand that there are different kinds of truth, and various modes of preception, and these can be kept separate ... A 'scientific' model may not be intended to correspond with reality, and it is this which confuses naive laymen, who tend to have an interest in a different kind of truth".
Lewis Wolpert argues that "the ideas and methods of science are counter-intuitive and against common sense". John Durant asks "if it is really all that easy to distinguish between science (which is said to be objective and successful) and pseudo-science (which is subjective and stuck fast in the sands of wish-fulfilment and make believe). A closer look at examples such as astrology, spoon bending and crop circles indicates that things are not so simple".
Scientists must also be prepared to examine critically the creative imaginative process which preceeds experimental work. To paraphrase Ronald Benge, true objectivity allows for, and makes explicit, personal involvement and commitmentVobjectivism' claims that science is value-free and the personal factor in science is denied. "The unifying factor in science is not objectivity but the striving for a consensus". Michael Polanyi argued that disciplines such as history and law are non-scientific for one or other of two reasons: either because they are 'non-consensible', or because they are 'normative', that is concerned with what should be done, rather than what might be done, or what is.
Anthropic Principles Midgley discusses the anthropic principle, based on the idea that the physical universe must contain people. This is partly driven by a need to explain the many remarkable numerical coincidences in physics, which could only have arisen, it is argued, in a universe of the right age and type to have evolved humans who could measure these quantities. Some cosmologists argue further that the purpose of the universe is to produce humans, whose purpose in turn is to do physics, and then down-load ourselves into machines which will then control the universe. It is not only Midgley who dismisses, with contempt, the anthropic principle as "morally bankrupt, which leaves it no better as a religion than it is as science" (a quote from the physicist Heinz Pagels).
Atkins was dealing with matters outside his area of competence. His response to her article was to patronise by attributing Midgley's criticisms to fear and ignorance of science and mathematics, and to a re-assertion of the claims of religion. Despite Atkins' hostility, Midgley was defending science and attacking scientism. Midgley specifically denied that the issue was a simple battle between science and religion, and it is not a sufficient response to criticism to re-assert the scientistic faith in the omni-competence of science.
Ethical Record, April 1993 27 Positivism The disregard of philosophical issues by those responding to criticism of science ignores a vital issue: the validity of the positivist position that essentially only empirical propositions are meaningful, and that metaphysical propositions are either nonsense or unprovable. Positivism originated with Auguste Comte, who believed that the final and highest stage of human thought was that of scientific description, concerned solely with observable and measurable facts. This necessarily disregarded both values, intentions and metaphysical speculation. The Vienna Circle, the major positivist school in this century, stressed the unity of science, seeking to reconstruct, in the words of Rudolf Carnap, "all of science including psychology, on the basis of physics, so that all theoretical terms are definable by those of physics and all laws derived from those of physics".
There are numerous criticisms of positivism.
To begin with, metalihysical assumptions cannot be excluded from science. Logical positivism is itself a metaphysical position, and consequently its denial of metaphysics undermines its validity.
The empirical truths of science, and the analytical truths of mathematics and logic do not exhaust the possibilities of human reason. To quote Mario Bunge, "in general, philosophy and science should interact, check and renew one another". Besides, Sidney Ross pointed out that the term scientist was first used in English about 1840 to mean a person who sought empirical knowledge, as against an intellectual who sought non- empirical knowledge.
Rejection of value-judgements may lead scientific researchers to cut themselves off from any discussion of objectives and decisions; besides, value-free research is impossible.
Unity of science and of scientific method is quite unrealistic. This is particularly so for the human and social sciences; nature can be explained, but humans have values and intentions, which can be understood and empathised with. The positivist school bases its metaphysical assumptions on naturalism and pragmatism, whereas the critical theory school derives them from hermeneutics and phenomenology, dealing with interpretation and the intentionality of conscious agents.
Facts are determined within the context of a scientific aim and of a scientific theory.
The distinction between legitimate philosophical inquiry and arid metaphysical speculation is by no means as clear cut as positivists wished to make it. The ciiterion they adopted excluded too much; for example it excluded the philosophy and methodology of science itself, and the metaphysical is by no means "not amenable to scientific check".
My conclusions are that there are numerous non-empirical disciplines — for instance, philosophy and mathematics — which may legitimately claim to offer knowledge, sometimes to higher standards of rigour than the empirical sciences. The methods of the physical sciences do not necessarily apply to other disciplines.
References: Casti, John L. Paradigms Last Cardinal 1989 Midgely Mary. Can science save its soul? New Scientist, 1 August 1992, p24-27 ' Chalmers, Alan. Science and its fabrication. Milton Keynes: Open University Press, 1990 Benge, Ronald C. Cultural crisis and libraries in the third world. Linnet Books, 1979.
28 Ethical Record. April 1993 ETHICAL ISSUE No I — SHOULD HUMANISTS PLAY DICE? Submitted by Ronald Skene, Aberdeen
Gambling is intrinsic to mankind. "Gamenian", the Anglo-Saxon word ("to sport or play") implies a reallocation of wealth through taking a risk. To "take a risk" implies a certain optimistic egocentricity with compulsive overtones. As such, then, gambling is related to politics and religion. Economically, it manifests itself in gaming, betting, wagering, lotteries and in speculation; and in Britain the state has capitalised with legal enactments to line its own coffers.
Probably one of the earliest English Acts against gambling was in 1541 when Henry VIII prohibited games of chance to try and revitalise the declining interest in archery as a national defence. Queen Anne's reign was characterised by some minor, petty restrictions against gambling. There were Acts passed against it in the mid-19th Century, such as the Tattersall Rules, aimed at ensuring that money was refunded. The Betting Acts of 1961 and 1963 opened the door socially for private betting businesses. The 1969 Act tried to control bingo halls, one-armed-bandits and private clubs by introducing gaming board inspectors. It is debatable whether the legal enactments have proved generally beneficial.
However, as stated, gambling is a universal phenomenon. Seventy-five countries throughout the world in the 1970s offered gambling, and it has its own press. Archaeological evidence suggests that dice-playing and chariot-racing were popular with the lndo-Ayrans long before the Egyptian pyramids were built at around 3,000 B.C. There is a Greek legend about its aetiology. Anthropologists believe that the aborigines and Aztecs decided on their choice of leader by gambling, and Erikson, who sailed to Nova Scotia and then Labrador at around LOCO A.D. suggests its prevalence amongst the American Indians, The first gaming-cards were probably used in Italy in 1350. The Scottish style was to gamble on golf till the beginning of the 19th Century, now substituted by individual athletics. Crockford's Club in London has a membership of 2,500. Football Pools were introduced in Britain in 1933 and in Australia in 1940. This is a small indication of the incidence and prevalence of gambling.
Yet the evidence would suggest that in the majority of cases, the universal phenomenon of gambling meets a social and cultural need rather than an individual, instinctive need. Gambling is a social and cultural phenomenon that was considered a "sin" in this country in Mediaeval Times, a "vice" in Victorian times but which will probably increase in the 2Ist Century. It is big business and has a well-developed status structure. Thus, bingo may be considered an attempt to "keep up with the Joneses".
"Romantic" Monte Carlo Casino, a major political and social-economic force in Monaco, now runs at a loss compared with the days of its French founder, Louis Blanc from Italy who died in 1844 leaving £3,000,000. In this respect, it differs from the adjacent American casino, essentially because in the U.S. gambling is festooned with show-business personalities such as Sinatra. That non-unionised desert-stop of Las Vegas (where, averagely the punter parts with 1 million in his life-time) epitomises that in the U.S. gambling has a high criminal overtone and Mafia connections.
It could be admitted, then, that gambling, as a cultural, socio-economic activity must result in some "casualties". One way of society's coping with this, apart from within the legal system (cf. 10% of prisinors have serious gambling difficulties) is to consider the casualty as diseased and in need of medical treatment. Gambling has been described as like "being on the job". But the point is that compulsive gambling has not evidently been related to a physiological, medical disease. Despite the fact that there is comparative interest in it medically, even relative to sixty years ago, as it is being considered as a disease similar to alcoholism, there remains no conclusive evidence. Some within the medical profession promulgate the odds with
Ethical Record April, 1993 29 them of a cure-rate of 50:50 by inter-personal discussions, or generally lesser by psychoanalysis or aversive treatments. The main point that emerges is that gambling must reflect a social function.
"Gamblers Anonymous", founded in 1964 by the London Methodist minister G. Moody, and influenced by Dr Moran, has a dubiously sucressful cure-rate and they deny that gambling is a mental disease. Such a sensible approach is in opposition to that of Dr Custer of the U.S.A., instrumental in leading the influential American Psychiatric Association's decision to consider compulsive gambling as a mental disease (There, it is a secret as to how .much such "diseased patients" recoup from their casinos). It is agreed that the 6:1 ratio (men: women) of those who seek help from mental health practitioners for problem gambling are not pathologically diseased but rather represent a small percentage of gamblers suffering from a social illness. It is, then, apposite to question if there is any ethical basis against gambling, the socio-cultural factor, thai will probably develop in the politically liberal-capiralistic movements currently guiding the world.
Religious Taboos In philosophical literature, there are comparatively few references on the ethics of gambling relative to the predominantly strong religious taboos against it. Gambling is explicitly prohibited in the Koran. In Christianity, there are relatively few taboos against gambling in the Bible, apart from th.e disparaging comment about the Roman soldiers 'dicing for Jesus's cloak' after the Crucifixion. Bingo is a popular money-raiser in any Roman Catholic Church and gambling becomes a problem only when considered pathological. The Vatican's history would emphasise its dependence on gambling. Archbishop Fisher of the Church of England was not completely opposed to gambling in 1956, with the introduction of Premium Bonds, an attempt at a national lottery (like Ireland and Malta) which has paid back 81.74 billion in prizes. Evangelical Protestantism, with its hard-work capitalist ethos, abhors gambling. Southem U.S. Baptists held their annual convention in Las Vegas in 1989! Religious attitudes towards gambling are, then, to various degrees, generally hostile.
But most would ascribe to the old adage that "all life is a gamble". Professional actuaries in insurance depend on calculating the statistical odds. In radio activity, the odds against human longevity, apart from Hiroshima and Chernobyl, are substantial in Aberdeen, built as it is on granite. Yet, Einstein felt there was an order to the universe; witness his statement that "God does not play dice" Pascal has written on the odds for the existence of God. George Kelly's Psychology believes in "accidents". More recently, probably one of the best arguments on the theory of evolution is from Dawkins's "The Blind Watchmaker". Games Theory discusses the mechanics involved in one's knowing-the-odds in into Ian sonal relationships. E.O. Thorp, mathematician, became a millionaire not from gambling, but by writing best-sellers on how to win in gambling.
The cultural need for a philosophical belief in gambling as a way of life might perhaps be epitomised in the article by B. Williams ("Moral Luck" in "Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society", 1976). He persues the argument that in morality there is no intrinsic, objective criterion of what is right or wrong. The only gauge is, does it work? This is similar to Nietzsche's approach. This is a perfectly valid argument, in many respects offering greater cultural optimism than the stoic fatalism characterising the westem world recently. There can be no rational argument, other than subjective experience, as to whether or not "there is a purpose to life". There is then, no answer to the question, "Is a gamble wrong?" But, as for myself, I am still debating whether or not to head off to the "Bookies"! •
Readers are invited to submit shon articles on particular ethical issues. Ed
The views expressed in this journal are not necessarily those of the Soc ety
30 Ethical Record April, 1993 PROGRAMME OF EVENTS AT THE ETHICAL SOCIETY The Library, Conway Hall Humanist Centre, 25 Red Lion Square, Holborn, WC1 Tel: 071-831 7723 APRIL Sunday 18th 11.00 am. Bicentenary Review of some Appointed Lecturers JOHN M. ROBERTSON. P ETER HEALES.
3.00 pm THE OTHER EARLIEST APPOINTED LECTURERS. NICOLAS WALTER.
Sunday 25th 11.00 am TWO VIEWS OF EXISTENTIALISM - ATHEIST & RELIGIOUS Professor ROBERT SCHWARZ
3.00 pm MEMBERS' DISCUSSION: The Name of The Society & other matters
6.30 pm LAST CONCERT OF THE SEASON: Schubert Ensemble. Beethoven, Schubert, Dvorak.
Thursday 29th 7.30 pm Bicentenary Lecture by the 1984 Conway Memorial Lecturer THE LIMITS TO PHYSICAL EXPLANATION Sir ALAN Comma FRS MAY
Sunday 2nd No Meetings
Thursday 6th 6.30 pm Evening Course on 20th Century Writers CHRISTOPHER HAMPTON gives the first of his series of 6 lecture-discussions starting with the War Poems of Wilfred Owen. Admission £1 including tea.
Sunday 9th 11.00 am UTILITARIAN ETHICS AND LAW — JEREMY BENTHAM PHILIP SCHOFIELD of the UCL Bentham Project
3.00 pm THE VICTORIANS, GEOLOGY & REPRESENTATION. KATE FLINT discusses some of the issues which preoccupied the Victorians, illustrated by examples from their fiction, poetry and painting.
Thursday 13th 7.30 pm Bicentenary Lecture by the Rt. Hon. MICHAEL FOOT on H.G. WELLS AND THE HUMANISTS
Sunday 16th 11.00 am CITIZENSHIP AND SOCIAL POLICY: RIGHTS AND RESPONSIBILITIES MALCOLM WICKS MP
3.00 pm THE DISINTEGRATION OF YUGOSLAVIA — Personal Impressions. &WIND DEODHEKAR.
Ethical Record, March, 1993 31 EVENING COURSE 20th Century Writers Tutor: Christopher Hampton I. May 6th Wilfred Owen's War Poems (Penguin) 2 May 20th James Joyce's Ulysses (Penguin) May 27th T.S. Eliot's The Waste Land . (Faber Selected Poems) June 10th Lewis Grassic Gibbon's A Scots Quair (Penguin) June 17th Ursula K. Le Guin's The Dispossessed (Paladin) July 1st Umberto Eco's Foucault's Pendulum (Picador) 6.30 — 8.30 pm Thursdays Admission £1 per person (including tea) These lecture-discussions take place in the Library, Conway Halt
CENTRAL LONDON HUMANISTS A new group affiliated to the BHA (British Humanist Association) which has been started to create a local secular community for those who live or work in or around Central London. • This new, fun group aims to attract lively Humanists of all ages and to concentrate on socialising, campaigning and events for both adults and children. You are very welcome to come to any events. There are no fees but a donation is requested at each event. Friday 7th May, New Members Meeting 7.30 pm. Conway Hall 'Why I became a Humanist' discussion. A chance to get to know each other as everyone should get the chance to speak! Coffee and light refreshments available. For further details contact: Cherie Holt, BHA, 14 Lambs Conduit Passage, London WCIR 4RH
SOUTH PLACE ETHICAL SOCIETY Registered Charity No. 251396 Founded in 1793, the Society is a progressive movement whose aim is the study and dissemination of ethical principles based on humanism, and the cultivation of a rational and humane way of life. • We invite to membership all those who reject supernatural creeds and find themselves in sympathy with our views. At Conway Hall there are opportunities for participation in many kinds of Stand activities, including discussions, lectures, concerts and socials. A comprehensive reference and lending library is available, and all members receive the The Society's journal, Ethical Record eleven times a year. The Sunday Evening Chamber Music Concerts founded in 1887 have achieved international renown. Memorial and Funeral Services are available to members. Minimum subsniptions are: Members ZIO p.a.; Life Members £210 (Life Membership is available only to members of at least one year's standing). It is of help to the Society's officers if members pay their subscriptions by Rankers Order, and it is of further fmancial benefit to the Society if Deals of Covenant am entered into.
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