Don’t submit
Anthony Grayling points out a great and central struggle of ideas:
[A]re individual human beings capable of overcoming such limitations of circumstance…to achieve by will and endeavour what they identify as good…? Or are people, or the vast majority of them, too weak, too fallible, too constrained by those circumstances, to be able to do this, meaning that they are essentially dependent, and need to be instructed and guided by the few who assume the role of leaders, teachers, those who know the right answers and possess the truth?
I would say we’re all more or less weak and fallible and constrained, but not so weak and fallible and constrained that we are essentially dependent. That’s perhaps a somewhat optimistic view, but I do think most people can change and learn and improve.
The monolithic ideologies require a dependent, submissive mass mind; in recovering the classical idea of individual potential for autonomy – the capacity of individuals to shape themselves according to their conception of such truly human goods as love, friendship, pleasure, kindness, knowledge and discovery, creativity and achievement – the modern western liberal and secular mind has fought to break itself free from that imposed dependency.
The fight is risky, because people are weak and fallible and they can always go toddling off towards fascism or jihadism or God hates fagsism or some other combination of ignorance with bullying. But the alternative – a dependent, submissive mass mind – is so awful (and anyway also risky) that the risk seems worth it.
This is not a merely abstract point…[T]he matter is so fundamental that it merits far more than blog-bitesize examination. That examination might show why there can be such passionate opposition to anything that requires the entrapment of the human mind in the cage of one big truth that demands submission, the yielding of the autonomy that is our central human potential – think of the Christian tenet of “dying to the self” and what is meant by the “sin of pride” (viz thinking one can get by without God), remember that “Islam” means “submission”, think of Stalinism: they are all about obedience, heteronomy, dependence, tutelage, amounting even to a prohibition against thinking for oneself; for the first sin in Eden was disobedience, and the disobedient act – all too significantly – was one of acquiring knowledge. And what is this submission and heteronomy but the condition of slavery…?
Exactly. And I suppose that’s one of my most bedrock beliefs or assumptions – my ‘religion’ if you insist – that thinking for oneself is of the essence of being human, and that if you give that up you miss what it is to be human; you miss the kernel of the experience; you might as well be a cat or a potato. ‘Be a Potato for Stalin/Allah/Jesus’ – no thank you.
While I agree with the thrust of Grayling’s post, I don’t think he structures the opposing sides very clearly – especially in that first bit you quote.
Unfortunately for Grayling’s thesis, this way of framing the two sides seems to make the question hinge on some or other aspect of the metaphysical free will debate, which is simply not relevant.
On the one hand, that debate is simply over: There’s no such thing as free will under any of the traditional definitions – human minds are human brains, and human brains are shaped by genetics, development, and experience. Every other position is, as far as I can tell, hand-waving gibberish. The complicating factor is that amongst the many causes that work upon us is our own choices, which certainly seems like free will as traditionally conceived, but if what we choose is determined by our character (which is in turn determined by our education and experiences), then ‘choice’ is not equivalent to ‘free will’ in the metaphysical sense of “Whatever I do, I have the capacity to have done otherwise,” whatever the hell that even means.
On the other hand, free will as such is not and should not be relevant in the analysis at hand. The question is not whether the nature of each individual human being is shaped by her or his constraints, circumstances, experiences, education and so on: Of course that’s what shapes us. Rather, the questions we should focus on are: (1) What kind of opportunities and education ought we offer people to allow them the best chance at happiness (as aptly described by Grayling)? (2) What kind of constraints ought we to impose and refrain from imposing on people so that all may best pursue happiness?
It is in the answers to those questions that the broad outlines of the conflict Grayling is addressing play out. The forces of oppression and conformity (dogmatic ideologies, religious and otherwise) clearly work to maximize constraints and minimize/limit opportunities and education to produce more humans who conform and oppress themselves and others, which generally limits happiness to the oppressors – or at least imposes strict limits on the ways individuals can realize their potential, which limits the happiness of some more than others. In contrast, the forces of liberty (the Enlightenment and its heirs) work to minimize constraints and maximize opportunities and education to produce more humans who are capable of realizing whatever potential they have and feel no need to limit/oppress/deny themselves or others.
However it’s described, though, I know damned well which side I’m on.
Hmmm…but Grayling doesn’t say the question is whether the nature of each individual human being is shaped by etcetera…he says it’s whether people are too constrained etcetera. A small difference, but it seems to me to narrow the difference between you. And then, he’s talking about autonomy, not free will…
ob: I know an awful lot of people who don’t think for themselves in the sense that you’re using the phrase. They seem human to me, maybe all too human, to use Nietzsche’s expression. I’d just say that I prefer to converse with and spend my time with people who think for themselves. By the way, most people’s way of thinking or of non-thinking in contemporary Western society is molded by the television and other media far more than by religion. Most people prefer to have the opinions that everyone else who sees the same TV show has than to think things out. Most people desperately want to be normal.
amos,
I didn’t mean to say that people who don’t think for themselves aren’t human! In fact I took rather sweaty care to avoid saying that, especially since I just did a little rant the other day on the fact that declaring certain groups or types of people non-human is a time-honored way of justifying treating them like dirt. I didn’t mean to say that and I don’t think it – but I think people who don’t think for themselves are missing out on one of the central experiences of being human. (Mind you, people who think climbing Everest is one of the central experiences of being human would say the same of me, so there you go.)
ob: I agree that those who don’t think for themselves are missing out on something: the unexamined life is not worth living. I also affirm that those who don’t read your webpage are missing out on something.
What an interesting co-inky-dink, I’d been reading some Hume stuff today that was in this field…I wonder…
I’m sure he’d have something to say about the force of “habit” on the limitations of our self-interested actions – quite apart from the impact of the “passions”, but that’s a whole other kettle of impressions :-) – but then I’m not recalling entirely accurately (because I’m having another bout of insomnia, and it’s 3am here), so could be slightly askew…
and let us also not forget, the intellectual facility required to think for ourselves isn’t exactly evenly distributed across the population.
Quite a large lump of folk are simply never going to be up to the task, especially if it means overcoming (for them) complex arguments they’ve had ingrained for many years – just look at the numbers of the socially-disenfranchised who clung to notions of absolute monarchies in the past, fer instance.
I hope that was more relevant and useful than it seems to me on re-reading it…?
Hmm. As I said, OB, I agree with the substance of what Grayling’s saying, but I found his phrasing… infelicitous. He didn’t flat-out make the argument about whether or not we have free will – but he makes it far too easy to get side-tracked into that discussion. “Autonomy” is one of those unfortunate, tricksy words whose meaning slips back and forth between freedom in the sense of not being constrained (by other people) and freedom in the altogether less coherent sense of free will. Kant, who more than anyone else made “autonomy” part of the language of moral and political philosophy, certainly played footsie with both freedom from constraint and freedom of the will (that mystery of mysteries, “the will”!) in the ways he defined and used the word.
The thing is, the real difference between the two positions is not in the “need to be instructed and guided by the few…” We all need guidance and instruction to various degrees at various points in our lives, so Grayling is unwise to couple that phrase to just the dogmatic, one-truth side of things. The matter at hand is what kind of guidance and instruction a society makes available: Individual teachers/leaders and institutions can either teach truths (as they see them) or they can teach people both the possibility of and methodology for learning truths for themselves.
So in other words, even if we haven’t really got free will we should live as if we have?
I’m up for that…
Ah…I had the impression that ‘autonomy’ was the more careful – the less tricky and tricksy – word. More limited, less subject to rhetorical manipulation. But then ‘less’ doesn’t mean not at all, does it.