Ping Pong 17: The Conjuring
The deep problem with the Humean theory of morality discussed in last week’s Rant was that it assumed that societies developed not only at a steady pace, but also that all humans were fundamentally the same. Hume no doubt reached this slow and steady view of human nature as a product of his own historical research, into European and Scottish history. His assumption was then that the narrative method which he found he could apply with some efficacy to the study of history within a confined geographical area revealed a more general truth about how humans developed. That is, the model that he found he could apply across time could just as easily be applied across space. The problem was of course, that while narrative history is a viable way to treat the study of the past (although very few modern historians will use it), it is utterly useless as a methodology for anthropology (no anthropologist since Malinowski has followed it). Differing human societies really do imply differences in human nature. Moreover, the intermixing of societies is not only violent and problematic, but also constantly happening. Societies, even relatively stable ones, are therefore perpetually taking up and being transformed by new influences and new moralities, at a speed which is quite incompatible with the slow and steady approach advocated by Hume. Our problem has been then, since the eighteenth century, to try to fix morality within a turgid stream of events, that appears to make every system highly volatile and short lived. The issue is then, how can we establish any account of human nature given this volatility?
It is from this point that Hume’s great friend Adam Smith, by and large starts his theorising. Smith will in the course of his work offer us two rather different takes on how to handle this turgid world of change; The first being morality, and the second the free market. And yet for Smith (if not for us) these two count as really part of one and the same project, and cannot therefore be left to stand alone. In this Rant I will develop the interconnections between these two accounts, before in the next Rant attempting to assess Smith’s actual legacy (which became rather different to his own thought!).
Smith’s first book advocates perhaps one of the oldest takes upon the nature of morality. Morality he suggests, is defined by sympathy. To be moral is therefore to no longer think from one’s own particular interests, but rather one becomes capable of understanding the interests of others. That is, to be moral is to understand that everyone else has their own little world, centred around them and their immediate concerns and family, and to be moral is to allow for this fact. Morality therefore calls for a humanity defined within a locus of a personal universality. As I am moral, I stop simply being me, but rather float above my own concerns, and attempt to float into and through the minds of others. I judge from this neutral position all the conflicting and torrid streams of feelings and actions that encompass me. The aim being then to define in the space of quiet, a degree-zero morality. That is, an axis within which the different actions of others can be legitimately assessed without individual interests getting in the way.
This theory of collectivity, cute as it might be, failed to convince Hume. Hume very politely tells his friend that this was a theory that Bishops liked (and therefore was not real philosophy). The reason why Hume should not care for such an account, is clear enough. Hume thought morality could be separated from human interests, and therefore any attempt to reach a year zero of morality was flawed, for three reasons.
Firstly it is doubtful whether such a point of nothingness is reachable by humanity. That is, Hume clearly thinks that while it is very easy talk of sitting around nodding and agreeing, and hence eliminating all individual interest, actually doing so is rather more problematic. At each and every point one’s own position will creep in. This position-creep in inevitable, as the action of eliminating one’s own position of course (paradoxically enough) is carried out from one’s own perspective. To say that one’s own view does not matter is therefore to hold a viewpoint: Moreover as this viewpoint now claims to be somehow universal, one’s own remit, that is one’s own notion of oneself, is in fact very greatly advanced by this very claim not to matter. In not mattering, one can very easily become once again the centre of the universe. This paradox is one that haunts modern liberalism and that oxymoronic phrase ‘political correctness’. We, in a certain subset of the West seek to ‘understand’ and sympathise with other peoples, and seek to allow them their voices and to tolerate their differences, and in doing so we assume that we are somehow reflecting a deep effect of human nature (and not merely creating the obverse of our normal practice). We therefore become arrogant once again, and look down on all those who are not capable of making this move. Or to pick another example this problem haunts the BBC. The BBC’s remit is to float in this middle position, and never to take a particular viewpoint or side. This is no doubt a noble sentiment, but it very much breeds on the behalf of the BBC an arrogance which makes its employees see themselves as somehow the apostles of light, and therefore justified in all their actions.
Secondly there is the deep problem first raised by Hegel, that one struggles to think of suitable content to fill this universal moral mind with. The point of moral situations is that they are individual amalgams of occasions and people. It is this very singularity that makes them so difficult to cope with, and to understand. And yet it is just this singularity which the Smithian take on morality loses. Whatever will stock the world of universal sentiment, will therefore necessarily be at some distance to the individual occasions which the mind will attempt to tackle. This problem has its modern avatar in the George Bush appeals to ‘freedom’. His take on freedom is very much the creature of a universal mind. Bush feels then that he does not need to worry overmuch about the niceties of individual circumstances or even historical precedence. The definition of the universal which he has been given (by God and his nation) is enough, to allow him to do whatever he wishes in the name of that higher authority. Freedom becomes thereby oppressive; and sympathy slips neatly into callousness.
Thirdly following on from the last two points, it is precisely in the name of the degree zero, of supposed universal human interests, that almost every act of modern oppression and genocide has been committed. The problem comes when the state claims that it is the living embodiment of this collectivity. It therefore claims to act in the name of the universal, and in that name ignores individual circumstances and feelings. This will have two quite distinct (and yet complementary) heads. On the one hand, individuals will be assessed only as they are seen to conform to the universals. Citizens are therefore encouraged to be a part of, or at least to claim that they are a part of, that universal. This encouragement will be in the form of either rewarding very greatly those that ‘conform’ (certain ‘worthy groups’ do very well in such societies, that is people whom Gordon Brown understands and thinks well of, such as the poorest pensioners who have done rather well under New Labour; or the state ensures that it can only ‘see’ those who fill in forms correctly (that is those who allow themselves, in the form, to be universalized); or again those who do not conform are endlessly penalized and ignored; or finally a population might be defined only in terms of statistics and so collective (and therefore necessarily universalized) data, meaning that individuals disappear within a welter of figures and probabilities.
On the other hand, and far far more darkly, in the interests of making life easy and moral (for the state at least), the state might claim the right to enforce universality on people. They will therefore be torn from their own particular lives (collectivization) and forced to be collective. The attempt is then made to ‘force humanity to be free’ or at least deeply sympathetic. The unliveable becomes the absolute norm, and the killing field results follow as humans cannot conform to such a standard.
The Smithian move to sympathy, innocent as it might sound, encompasses a galaxy of different fascisms, from the micro fascisms of everyday political correctness to the killing fields (through New Labour’s time in government). And yet for Smith this was really only half the story. Sympathy is only quite so problematic because it is being made into a universalized system. That is, one is attempting to force all others to be sympathetic; one is attempting to create an algebra or rule book of sympathy. Morality, in contrast, Smith might insist, was something rather personal. That is, I find myself to be of a sudden sympathetic, it is something deep within me, something that must be respected and so not spun out to form a society. That is, sympathy arises because I suddenly and quite irrationally slip from my own position, and become caught up in a far wider sentiment.
This last move then shifts the problem somewhat. Rather than making this wider sentiment itself a form of government, one needs to create a system where in the individual circumstances in which it arises, it can have the maximum beneficial effect. And the system which Smith thinks can best effect this mass sympathy, is that of the free market. That is, at the core of every free market lie a series of changing shared sentiments. Products are not to be manufactured for individuals nor do individuals fix prices. On the contrary, both what is made, and how much it costs, are the product of wider sentiments, that the prices (the markets) seek to mirror.
Moreover prices are not simply the mirror of sentiment, but also will articulate that sentiment in two distinct ways. Firstly they create an axis of value. Different sentiments (the life of an individual or the price of mangoes) are balanced against one another. The point here is that such an axis is not obnoxious or even that the choices that it makes are in effect impossible or problematic (we in the West choose cheap food over other human’s suffering…), so much as that this axis is better than the alternative of forming a generalized (and so fixed) moral individual. The free market scores over such an account in two clear ways. On the one hand, it is not only liveable within, but also external to humanity. One does not (or at least really should not) confuse the free market with being human. On the other hand, one has at least a chance in a free market system to allow morality to really matter. The price of coffee might be made a moral issue. The free market claims no moral authority and so theoretically allows sympathies to develop within it.
Secondly, the free market as a free flowing system will allow collective sentiments to have an effect and be judged on differing ways or values across a whole range of criteria and differing effects. Take the current surge in the price of oil. The reasons for this surge are obscure. Or rather, they lie in the fact that oil stands at the conjunction of three modern terrors: The economy, climate change, and Global politics. These terrors have clearly resonated across one another under the name of oil and bred a deep panic which is mirrored in the surging price. And yet this surge is of course individually bad news. And yet hidden within it is a redemption. For it is only when prices for oil reach these kind of heights that the researching of alternative ways of producing energy comes to the fore. The threat of global warming (and the appeal to a universal moral identity – save the planet or human) was itself never really enough. It took the market to articulate that panic, and make it real.
Markets therefore embody in a very tangible way, sentiments. They make them matter, and make them real (for right or wrong). Moreover they do so in a wonderfully non-absolutist way. Not only can sentiments come or go, but also they can also be judged by their eventual (unintended) consequences just as much as by their initial impact (George Bush’s bungling policies in Iraq which have helped put up the price of oil, really might save the planet).The Free market is therefore the territory in which an endless reserve of possibility (good or bad) or possible consequences are allowed for; and in which therefore, not only is the possibility of wide scale sentiments articulated but also these sentiments are balanced off against each other (and allowed to be born or to die).
From such a perspective the free market (that other head of the right-wing) is very much the alternative to fascism (big or little). That is, it is the doctrine which can take the collective sentiments which form fascisms (and make it superficially attractive to some), and animate them, balancing them off against other sentiments and making them sing songs that were never really their own. Unintentional good might then have a chance of following (Smith calls it the Hand of God). And yet there is a real problem with this move toward the market. One might possibly claim (in a way what Hume cannot) that all individuals ‘barter and truck’, and that therefore the market in some form or other, is universal. And yet that does not specify of course that this bartering and trucking is all that a human does. Nor indeed can it be, as the market itself (by assuming and allowing for sentiments) assumes that there are elements which are not of it. This tension will remain relatively unproblematic as long as the sentiment remains apart from the freedom of the market. And yet this is surely the norm. Sentiment and markets often (actually inevitably) run together and define one another (and so are not ‘free’). The move then to the free market runs up against the fact that it has at its base, exactly the same move as that which undermined the move to moral sentiments. The difference is of course, that this universalized individual is no longer moral. They are therefore not everyman, but rather the rational self interested consumer. But whether this really allows the free market as a doctrine to escape the fascisms that haunt morality, will be the topic of next week’s Rant.
