Christina Tarnopolsky on Plato's Noble Lie

WPES: December 4, 2009


[For High-Resolution photos, click the picture]

Today at the Political Theory Workshop Christina Tarnopolsky of McGill University presented a paper entitled "Plato's Mimetic Republic: A Preliminary Treatment of Plato's Preliminary Treatment of the Gennaion Pseudos."  This was the final workshop for the fall semester, so let me start by congratulating Dr. Frank Lovett on finishing his first semester as director of the Political Theory Workshop.    The semester has been a terrific one.

[For a copy of Tarnopolsky's paper, click here]

Tarnopolsky's paper puts forth a rather unconventional interpretation of Plato's Republic.  Whereas the "traditional" view of Plato sees his Republic as a lengthy argument against democracy, Tarnopolsky argues that Plato's concerns with democracy - such as its tendency to devolve into demagoguery and flattery - are not actually that far removed from our own.  

Tarnopolsky (center) argued that Plato is not 

the authoritarian many portray him as.


[To see Christina Tarnopolsky's personal blog, click here] 

The respondent for Tarnopolsky's paper was Eric Brown of WUSTL Philosophy.  In a presentation that was undoubtedly among the best in the history of the Political Theory Workshop, Brown staunchly (and quite humorously) defended the anti-democratic interpretation of Plato's views.

Eric Brown's response was a tour de force.

This week on the WPES blog we have a special treat for the political theory community.  Brown and Tarnopolsky have offered to share their follow up emails to each other with the whole workshop group.  Both are well worth reflecting on at length, and they give a fantastic insight to both presenters' ongoing thought process.
-Greg Allen


Eric Brown's Post-Workshop Email to Christina Tarnopolsky:


Christina,

Since you asked about the way I ended my remarks, I realize that I probably put my point too glibly.  Since I have accused you of wishful thinking, I wanted to acknowledge that I am working with some wishful thinking, too.  But I think we are wishing for very different things.  You are wishing for a democratic Plato.  Your wish is fulfilled if Plato's dialogues point to the endorsement of a particular (set of) claim(s).  I am wishing for a philosophically rich Plato.  My wish is fulfilled if Plato's dialogues offer some powerful arguments for stimulating conclusions (and I find more stimulation in conclusions that I *disagree* with). That's the point of wishing for a Plato whose Socrates occasionally outrages us: I want him to be committed to claims I reject so that I can consider his reasons for those commitments.  To my mind, a Plato who writes every so cleverly to shroud his view that it would be nice to have a democracy of critically reflective citizens is much less interesting than a Plato who cleverly argues for views that I find repellent.  But de gustibus non disputandum est, probably.

I also wanted to follow up on a few points from the discussion, and I've cc'ed Andrew, Frank, and Ian in case they want to jump in.  I hope you'll forgive my bluntness.  I've long been intrigued by esoteric readings of Plato--I took classes from Bloom and Cropsey as an undergraduate, and have read more than a few esoteric interpretations--and I've long been frustrated by how little actual dialogue there is between those scholars who are more fond of esoteric readings and those who are less so.  Please read this as a clumsy attempt to build a dialogue of that sort.

First, three small points about the details of the noble lie.

1. I think that the concern about the words pseudos and apate is a red herring.  A pseudos is a falsehood, and a pseudos told by someone who knows that it is a falsehood as if it were true is a lie.  The founders of the sketched city are to tell a falsehood that they know is a falsehood as if it were a truth.  That is, they are to tell a lie.
2. I take it that the citizens are supposed to believe the whole lying story--that they were born of the earth and that a god mixed different metals in different citizens' souls.  You might have suggested that they are supposed to see through the obviously false bits here and to accept the upshot, and you might have supported this thought by saying that *of course* no one could be expected to believe that they were born in the earth and divinely injected with metal.  This went by fast, and I am not sure I heard you right.  But if I did, I disagree heartily.  The supporting thought is plainly false.  People are ludicrously credulous. Right now, millions believe in transubstantiation, and a staggering number of Americans believe that Obama was born in Kenya.  In Plato's time, many Greeks believed that their grandfather's grandfather's grandfather or so was the son of Zeus.  Indeed, in ancient times, as Socrates suggests, there were groups of people who believed that they were born of the earth.  It is surely possible to imagine a society in which everyone believes that they are born of the earth and divinely injected with metals.  I agree that it would not be easy to get a group of people who currently do not believe this to believe it.  But that is exactly what Socrates and Glaucon say, and the difficulty they highlight is an excellent reason for thinking that the point is to persuade the citizens to swallow the whole story and not just the inner normative truths of the story.
3. I think that the question of whether the rulers lie to the citizens is more complicated than you make it seem.  Socrates is clear that the founders of the city are initially to tell the whole city the lying story.  But the story will be repeated to future generations after the founders have died.  Who will repeat it?  I presume the rulers.  Now, will these rulers believe the story, or will they tell a story they know to be false as if it were true (that is, will they lie)?  There is some reason to think that at least some of the rulers will be in the latter category, since Socrates and Glaucon are clear that the rulers will be especially difficult to persuade.  Maybe the future rulers who repeat the story will believe the story hook-line-and-sinker.  But there's no evidence to warrant this conclusion, and thus no evidence that the rulers who repeat the story are not lying.  Indeed, the hints tell the other way.

But those details are trifling next to the dialogue I really want to have. Let me return to the central, broad dispute between us.  You want to say that Plato favors some sort of democracy.  That is consistent, as you rightly say, with him criticizing other sorts of democracy or dysfunctional instantiations of a favored sort of democracy.  But the question is, why do we think that Plato favors some sort of democracy?  I mean, why do we think that Plato wants some significant political decisions to be given to all the members of a reasonably broad (for the time and place) citizenry?

That he favors critical thinking is no reason to think that he favors democracy.  (This I discussed in my comments.)  That he thinks that the masses can be persuaded that they don't have knowledge, that the philosophers do have knowledge, and that the philosophers should rule--in sum, that the masses can be made gentle toward the philosophers--is also no reason to think that he favors democracy.  (There is a huge difference between recognizing the need to secure the tacit consent of a group of people--something even a Stalin shows concern for--and turning over some significant political decision to that group--the bare minimum to expect of democracy.)  So why should we think that Plato favors democracy?  This is the question to which I would like to read an answer, and I don't recall an answer in the discussion earlier today.

Once we get an answer to that question, we would need to weigh its probative value against that of the reasons one can give to conclude that Plato does *not* favor democracy.  I gave two such reasons in my comments.  On the one hand, Aristotle treats him as an opponent of democracy and takes Socrates' sketch at face value, as something Plato endorsed.  I think you wanted to give an esoteric reading of Aristotle to devalue this evidence.  But what about my second point, the mass of evidence in Plato's dialogues that political decisions should be made by the wise and that most people are incapable of wisdom?  Is *all* of this evidence to be set aside?  Plato's characters don't mean what they say when they say these things?

I will now add, for good measure, a third general consideration in favor of thinking that Plato opposes democracy.  It seems to me that his psychology in The Republic explains why one should think that most people are incapable of wisdom and that democracy is necessarily doomed to flattery and corruption (so that the criticisms of Book Eight are supposed not just to apply to dysfunctional instantiations but to uncover the intrinsic weakness of all democracy).  In a nutshell, he thinks that most people are ruled by appetite, and he thinks that appetite cannot grasp anything but appearances.

To put all those considerations together, it seems to me that your reading requires you to "go esoteric" about Aristotle's treatment of Plato, about either a thesis about political power (that it should rest with the wise) or a thesis about the many (that they cannot be wise), both of which theses are repeatedly endorsed throughout the Platonic corpus, and about a very broad range of declarations in The Republic.  What reason could one have for doing all that?

One reason would be that reading accepting all this evidence straightforwardly is untenable.  If so, we would have to search for esoteric alternatives.  But today at least you did not try to show that more direct readings of Plato and democracy are untenable, and indeed one of my frustrations with the esoteric interpretations with which I am familiar is that they do not try to show that more direct readings of Plato and democracy are untenable.  This is one place--not the only place, but one place--where the dialogue fails to get off the ground.  Another reason for "going esoteric" on all of those matters would be that we have evidence of Plato's favor for democracy that is so strong that we should
look beyond the surface meaning of huge swaths of his work and of Aristotle's.  But I don't think that we have such evidence, and I did not hear you present any.

A final query.  On your view, Plato hides his commitment to democracy. Why?  He lives in a democracy.  Is he worried that the oligarchs will kill him as a traitor to his class?  Or is he just committed to communicating his preference for democracy to a select elite who can extract from his
dialogues the hidden message?  The first of these seems fanciful, the latter something close to self-refuting.  I would have thought that esoteric readings require some plausible story about why the author would hide his or her views.  What's yours in this case?

Thanks again for an unusually rich provocation.  I look forward to continuing our dialogue, and to reading your Gorgias book.

- Eric

Both Brown and Tarnopolsky had immensely enjoyable presentations

Thanks to the whole WPES community 
for a fantastic fall semester.

David Speetzen: Democratic Cosmopolitanism and Forcible Democratization

Introduction
Broadly speaking, there are two different ways of undertaking the task of rigorous political theory.  The first method begins with a philosophical conclusion in mind and then goes about exploring the warrants for such a conclusion.  The alternative method starts with a number of first principles and then traces the logical consequences of their interaction in order to reach a conclusion.  Political theorists utilizing the second technique will sometimes find themselves arguing positions very different from what they had initially expected to conclude.
  
David Speetzen's doctoral dissertation is an example of such an unexpected outcome. His dissertation with WUSTL philosophy was originally a rather mainstream Cosmopolitan evaluation of military intervention but has since undergone a 180 degree turn, with highly unexpected outcomes.  At the workshop last year, Speetzen presented a paper arguing that occupied Iraq should have been given representation in the U.S. Congress.  Though the paper persuaded few, his presentation forcefully and enjoyably challenged some broadly held assumptions of the WPES community.


Speetzen's most recent WPES paper, presented on November 20th, was similarly enlightening. It outlines criteria by which a country could justly convert another country to democracy by force.


Brandon Nelson's Summary and Response
Speetzen's discussant was Brandon Nelson, a graduate student in WUSTL Political Theory.  Nelson began by summarizing Speetzen's paper, which goes against the "traditional" view of when intervention is called for (rarely).   Speetzen derives this conclusion from the premise that democracy is instrumental to the protection and promotion of human rights and representative government.  As such, countries with the ability to promote democracy ought to do so, and when no preferable alternatives exist, this effort can rightly include use of military force.  


To explain his argument, Speetzen draws a helpful analogy between parenting and governing.  Generally, parents and governments should be accorded a large measure of independence, but in cases where they carry out their duties in an illegitimate manner, third parties have a moral obligation to intervene.  Speetzen holds that there is a further similarity in that the standards for what constitutes acceptable parenting or governing have risen along with the capacity of relevant actors to ensure better lives for children and citizens.  


In other words, the standards for what constitutes a "legitimate" government may change over time based on the social and economic capacity of a country to protect human rights and ensure adequate representation for its population.  The fact that these standards can shift complicates Speetzen's analysis tremendously, but it does seem to account for the intuition that not providing one's child an education is more morally acceptable in a society of starvation than in one of abundance.


After summarizing, Nelson raised a number of pointed arguments that challenged the fundamentals of Speetzen's thesis.  I'll mention two here: first, Nelson thought that the empirical literature which Speetzen had cited as evidence that democracies more effectively promote and protect human rights is virtually entirely based on states which became democracies of their own free will.  Since the human rights record of forced democracies is much more unknown, Nelson thinks Speetzen cannot rightly claim this empirical backing.


Second, Nelson brought up the hypothetical case of an authoritarian country which had a strong history of protecting human rights and is moreover popular among its people.  Speetzen acknowledged that this was potentially the strongest objection to his paper and said that this was conceivably a case where a country was legitimate though non-democratic; however, Speetzen thought that this may simply be a case where democracy was morally permissible but not justified.


The WPES Open Discussion
Marilyn Friedman of WUSTL philosophy opened the general discussion by raising the specter of imperialism - that the rationale of democratization could be used by the intervening country as cover for the pursuit of its own interest.  Friedman suggested that Speetzen consider including in his full dissertation a discussion of cosmopolitan safeguards to protect against such abuse.


Andrew Rehfeld of WUSTL political theory characterized the paper as NeoLockean since Locke argued that people have the right of revolution with a justification that resembled Speetzen's justification for intervention.  Rehfeld, however, also stated that Locke's right of revolution came with two caveats: (1) there must be a long train of abuses, and (2) the revolutionaries must have enough force to succeed.  Rehfeld thought that Speetzen's paper could benefit from a modified formulation of Locke's second precaution.  Speetzen agreed and is considering including this in his discussion where he states that the moral fact of whether a party should intervene is connected to the ability to accomplish goals.


Conclusion
Speetzen's paper is yet another example of his willingness to give to chase down the conclusions no matter where they lead.  While I can't say that I agree with all of his arguments, I don't think I'm alone in saying that examining the points of contention has given me a much richer and fuller understanding of my own views.  This is, of course, a hallmark of a worthy contribution to political theory, and I wish David the best of luck with the rest of his dissertation.


-Greg Allen

Anne Newman: Charter School Lotteries

This Friday Anne Newman of WUSTL Education presented a paper entitled, "Luck of the Draw?  On the Fairness of Charter School Admissions Policies."  The paper is a joint project between Newman and Jonathan Dolle of Stanford University.  (Unfortunately Dolle was unable to make it out to Saint Louis for the workshop.)  

Unlike most of the papers presented at WPES, Newman and Dolle's work is aimed at the policy-making community, rather than the academic one.  In other words, their recommendations on how to reform charter school lotteries are ultimately going to be presented to individuals and committees with the power to implement those recommendations, which is quite an exciting prospect.  We wish Newman and Dolle the best of luck in their persuasive efforts.

Newman began her presentation by pointing out that there is a gap between the rhetoric supporting charter schools and the reality of their implementation, and "the integrity of findings about charter schools' [generally positive] outcomes is contingent upon the integrity of their admissions processes."  Though most charter schools utilize a form of lottery system so that the opportunity for attendance is randomized, Newman argues that many of these lotteries are often operated in ways that may compromise these lotteries' seeming fairness.  

Our discussant today was Zach Hoskins of WUSTL Philosophy.  He began by summarizing Newman's argument:

the only way to know that a charter school lottery had a fair outcome is to know that it used a fair process.  Unfortunately, such lotteries are difficult to conduct in ways that are publicly fair and transparent.  For instance, though "federal law explicitly prohibits charters from incorporating certain types of preferences into their lotteries, charters can easily influence the pool of students seeking admission (and therefore the final student body) through targeted marketing practices outside the lottery admission process."

Thus, Newman argues that such lotteries need to meet three standards of fairness in order to be truly impartial in their allocation of a vital but scarce good:

1.  Procedural fairness - does the procedure used treat like cases alike?

2.  Substantive fairness - is the procedure used a fair procedure?

3.  Public fairness - is the procedure understood and accountable publicly?

To meet all these standards, Newman recommends that charter schools make three main changes to the admissions process:

1.  "Establish clearer laws on allowable preferences" since some deviations from the lottery are acceptable (e.g. sibling preferences) while others may be a mask for discrimination.

2.  "Establish clearer laws about what constitutes a 'public lottery'" to make sure that lotteries are public and accessible to participants.

3.  "Require that lotteries be conducted by independent third-parties" to prevent conflicts of interest by those conducting the lottery.

4.  "Require annual admission audits" to increase accountability.

Hoskins generally thought the paper was reasonable and compelling.  Moreover, he thought the policy recommendations presented were all quite apt ways to better the charter admissions process.  Thus, his comments focused on the philosophical underpinnings of the paper's recommendations.  Specifically, Hoskins focused on the conceptual distinction between fairness and justice.  Such a distinction is useful in clarifying, for instance, why it may be just (though unfair) to allow sibling preferences in charter school admissions.  Hoskins worried that some parts of the paper "risk diluting the notion of fairness such that it is essentially synonymous with the word bad," and he saw the distinction between justice and fairness as a way to preempt this problem.

This was most applicable on the Newman's standard of public fairness.  Hoskins argues that transparency is good, but that it isn't good for reasons of fairness: "A policy that is equally opaque to everyone doesn't seem to treat anyone unfairly" though it does treat everyone badly.

The general discussion at this workshop was a bit different than usual.  The crowd was a tad smaller, and this allowed for a measure of cross talk that was productive in a way that isn't very easy to capture in my writing here.  

Ian MacMullen of WUSTL Political Theory opened the discussion by building upon Hoskins' argument: MacMullen questioned whether publicity and transparency are merely items with instrumental value towards achieving goals of procedural and substantive fairness.  He also, said, however, that if publicity does have some value, that one of the most persuasive ways of demonstrating this might be a case where publicity conflicts with other important values and is still desirable.  

Here Newman defended her characterization of public fairness by saying that such transparency is required in order to not just actually have a fair procedure but also to treat fellow citizens as civic equals in their right to know and check that the procedure was fair.  She agreed that the conflictual example would be helpful and plans to include it in the next draft.


-Greg

Andrew Rehfeld: Representation and Democracy

WPES: October 30, 2009

Hello Political Theory Community.  Before I begin writing on Andrew Rehfeld's paper, there are a few housekeeping matters to take care of regarding this blog:

First, if you wrote a comment on the last post regarding Professor Rubenstein's paper on Oxfam and representation, Professor Rubenstein has taken the time to post lengthy and worthwhile responses to all of your questions and arguments.  I hope you'll all get a chance to take a look at what she wrote.

Second, I apologize for those of you who wanted to comment on Rehfeld's paper but were unable to do so on account of the lag in posting this response.  In the future, I'll write up a short teaser post that will be up the day of the workshop, so you can comment immediately following the session, before I've gotten a chance to write my summary of the workshop discussion.

Finally, we've got a lot of high quality photographs this week thanks to a good friend of mine, Jake Laperruque, donating his time and camera.  Click any of the images in this post to see a much larger and higher resolution photo.

With that, let's move to the workshop of Professor Rehfeld's paper.

Professor Andrew Rehfeld

This past Friday, October 30, WPES had the special pleasure of welcoming back the workshop's founder, Andrew Rehfeld, to the head of the table.  Rehfeld presented a paper that will eventually be the introductory chapter in his forthcoming book on Representation in Politics.  The book expands upon Rehfeld's recently published article in the American Political Science Review.

From left to right: WPES director Frank Lovett, presenter 
Andrew Rehfeld, respondent Chad Flanders

The paper Rehfeld introduced this past Friday outlines the core features of his theory on representation.  It's worth noting that while the examples he is interested in are generally political ones, his argument's scope is not limited to the political sphere.

Rehfeld's formal, quadratic definition of representation is as follows:

1) some entity, X, who/that

stands in for

2) some other entity, Y

in order to

3) perform a particular Function/Activity, F

corresponding in some way to

4) some feature of Y

The first thing to notice is that Rehfeld makes no attempt to confine the concept of representation within any normative dimension.  This stands in stark contradiction of virtually all of the writing on political representation.  What Rehfeld terms the "standard account" (best shown in Pitkin, 1967) would argue that a congressman who rigged his election could not possibly represent his home district because political representation only occurs in cases where democratic norms are upheld.  Thus, even if Congress officially accepts this corrupt individual as the representative for that constituency, in truth he is not.

Rehfeld counters this account by positing that "representation is an instrumental good; one does not have representation for its own sake."  In other words, the central failing of the standard account is that it conflates normative and positive representation such that it order to represent at all, one has to represent justly.  Rehfeld's contribution, therefore, is that his account separates what it means to represent from what it means to represent well.  A corrupt Congressman may have rigged the election that led to his being recognized as the representative of his district , but this injustice does not change the fact that, for the purpose of national legislating and with the audience of the federal government, he is that district's representative.  His corruption makes him a bad representative.  It is only his impeachment or death that could make him a non-representative.

Friday's discussant was professor Chad Flanders of Saint Louis University's School of Law.  

Chad Flanders

Flanders and Rehfeld actually have an interesting history together.  The two both spent the first half of this decade at the University of Chicago and even took a class together in which they studied Rawls.  Not surprisingly, then, Flanders had a lot of nice things to say about Rehfeld's paper (and rightly so!)

 

Old friends

Flanders' main critique of the paper was that Rehfeld's quadratic equation lacks the crucial stipulation of the role of the audience.  Though Rehfeld repeatedly states in the paper that audience recognition is essential for representation, the analytic structure of the quadratic equation leaves this out.  Rehfeld responded that who the relevant audience is and how they go about recognizing a representative is subsumed within the function category, F. 

For example, when dealing with the purpose of making national legislation, the relevant audience is Congress, and the process of their recognition is explicitly laid out in the same rules that guide legislating.  This may indeed be a sufficient response, but I'm still left agreeing with Flanders that the role of the audience was a point of confusion (in an otherwise astoundingly clear paper).

Professor Flanders provided an excellent summary 

and response of Professor Rehfeld's paper.

Flanders also took issue with the role of correspondence between the representative and the represented in Rehfeld's account.  Rehfeld's paper states that "there is always some sense of correspondence, minimally arising from the standing in relationship of the two entities."  Flanders found this quote problematic: if in some cases correspondence is merely this relationship, "doesn't it follows that [in a minimalist account of representation] correspondence is a superfluous notion?"  Rehfeld agreed he needed to reconsider the issue.

 Workshop attendees have a variety of different

academic backgrounds and perspectives

The general discussion of Rehfeld's paper was particularly lively.  Right off the bat, Professor Gerald Izenberg of WUSTL History challenged the core argument of Rehfeld's paper, that representation implies a positive dimension apart from its normative one.  Izenberg argued that legitimacy in appointing a representative is built into the representative relationship such that normativity is a necessary part of the account.  Rehfeld deftly responded that "legitimacy" was subject to the exact same criticism as representation in that it has a sociological dimension (who do we think has the power to select a representative?) and a normative dimension (who do we think ought to have the power to select a representative?)

Professor Randall Calvert of WUSTL Political Science offered Rehfeld some helpful advice for structuring the presentation of the argument.  Since Rehfeld's account of representation applies to politics but is not limited to it, Calvert suggested that Rehfeld consider opening the paper by describing a series of questionable instances of representation and thereafter demonstrating how the new account both clarifies and resolves the confusion.  

Piggy-backing off Calvert's comments, Anne Newman of WUSTL Education suggested that Rehfeld distinguish that his paper presents a general theory of representation (which applies to art and literature just as easily as politics).  As such, Newman recommended that Rehfeld change his topic name from "political representation," which does seem to hint at arguments and issues closer to those of Pitkin, to "representation in politics," which better expresses that Rehfeld's theory is a general one applied to a particular topic.  Rehfeld enthusiastically agreed.

Congratulations all around for another productive workshop

  All in all, it was an enjoyable and interesting discussion from one of the luminaries of the WPES community.  If you'd like to continue the conversation, please use the comments section below.

-Greg Allen

Jennifer Rubenstein: "Why It Is OK that No One Elected Oxfam"

Professor Jennifer Rubenstein of the University of Virginia was our guest presenter on Friday.  Rubenstein’s paper, entitled “The Ethics of INGO Advocacy or Why It is OK that No One Elected Oxfam,” was as much of a treat as the title suggests.  The work is destined to be a chapter in Rubenstein’s forthcoming book on the political theory of International Nongovernmental Organizations.

Rubenstein’s interest in INGO advocacy stems from the intriguing theoretical characteristics of the situation in which they operate.  As primarily Western institutions acting outside the West, they justify their actions by appealing to universal global values.  This was a more straightforward defense when INGOs were interested primarily in procuring aid, but over a decade ago many groups became convinced that meaningful and lasting solutions to international crises would require not just aid but large-scale policy changes.  When Western governments and international institutions included INGOs like Oxfam in international policy-making discussions, The Economist raised the important question of “Who Elected Oxfam?”

In her complex and rigorous paper, Rubenstein concludes that, while Oxfam does engage in varying degrees of representation of those populations they seek to help, they should ultimately not be held to the same standards as a democratically elected government.  Rather than be evaluated by the standards of representation, Rubenstein argues that INGOs should be held to the standards of a theory of justice.

The respondent for Rubenstein’s paper was Professor Kit Wellman of WUSTL Philosophy.  Wellman opened his remarks by complimenting Rubenstein’s paper as a skillful example of why contemporary Political Theory is such a lively field: though traditional debates about solutions to large scale problems were debates between statists; now there are a number of plausible alternatives to state action, such as non-governmental organizations like Oxfam or inter-governmental or organizations like the United Nations.  I’m inclined to agree with Wellman on his point and his compliment.

After summarizing Rubenstein's paper (from memory, impressively), Wellman’s primary contention in his discussion was that Rubenstein’s paper was overly charitable to the arguments of those who disagree with her.  For him, the fact that INGOs do not violate human rights, do not coerce, and do not violate state sovereignty make the question of whether or not their actions are morally permissible an open and shut case.  Oxfam should no more be held to the standards of representation than The Economist should.  As he puts it, “to the extent that these groups are included in the policymaking process, it is due to the strength of the content of their claims.” 

In the ensuing general discussion, which was particularly engaging at this workshop, Professor Julia Driver of WUSTL Philosophy extended Wellman’s argument in stronger terms.  “Doesn’t morality entail it’s own authority?" she asked.

Carl Wellman, (Kit Wellman’s father, also of WUSTL Philosophy) raised a fantastic question about Rubenstein’s definition of representation.  Using an astute comparison to end-of-life medical decision-making, Wellman pushed Rubenstein on why she defines representation according to what the represented individuals think is in their best interest, as opposed to what their best interests actually are.  Rubenstein pushed right back by saying that the medical analogy doesn't quite fit since the affected individuals are not unconscious and are generally in a good position to understand their interests.

WPES Director Frank Lovett questioned why Rubenstein thought that the factors she raised which justified exempting INGOs from standards of representation—that they are “second best” actors operating in a non-ideal context—could not be included as subsets in a theory of representation.  In other words, why jump over to a theory of justice instead of create a category of representation for various sub-ideal contexts?  Rubenstein answered by referring to the allocation problem.  Given that INGOs have scare resources, they must choose whom to help, and that is a question better answered by a theory of justice than one of representation.

Thanks and congratulations to Professor Rubenstein on a great paper and a great presentation.  If you'd like to continue the conversation, please use the comments below.

Jeff Brown: Disability, Equality, and the Minority Group Model

This past Friday saw the first time WPES had a graduate student present this semester.  Jeff Brown of WUSTL Philosophy wrote a thought-provoking paper on equality and disability.  The paper will eventually be a part of his broader dissertation on disabilities, which is a positive and normative discussion on the “ideal of equality and the fact of disability.”

Brown begins by tracing historical thinking on disability.  The traditional paradigm has been the medical model, wherein individuals have a medical problem, which causes their disability.  The new paradigm, which is broadly favored by social advocates for the disabled, views disability as a consequence of discrimination.  In this model, referred to as the minority group model, it is not the individual's physical need for wheelchairs that causes disability: it is society's lack of ramps.  Disability, in other words, is a social construct.

As a piece of rigorous analytic philosophy, navigation of Brown’s paper requires some introduction of ideas and terminology.  Luckily, the respondent on Friday was none other than WPES director Frank Lovett. (Professor Ian MacMullen of Political Science generously ran the discussion in Dr. Lovett's place).  I’ll try to summarize the paper and necessary background as concisely as Dr. Lovett did on Friday:

To illustrate the failings of both the minority group model and the medical model, Brown contrasts two different versions of an equality ideal: The first is "formal equality of opportunity," which defines equal treatment as when there is no active or intended discrimination based on morally irrelevant characteristics (e.g. ethnicity).  The second is fair equality of opportunity, which holds that equal treatment is satisfied when people with roughly similar abilities are able to achieve roughly similar rewards.

Brown points out that a racist society could quite easily meet the employment requirements of the formal equality model by limiting its discrimination to before the hiring process, e.g. if racial minorities are prevented from receiving an education, they will be objectively unqualified when applying for jobs. 

Brown argues the disabled situation parallels the racial one because their opportunities to gain experience and qualifications are limited due to the material and social conditions of society.  Even in the absence of formal discrimination, serious disadvantages remain.  Thus “appealing to a fair equality of opportunity justifies a reasonable accommodation.”

However, Brown makes two major criticisms of the formal equality of opportunity model.  First, it’s standards for equality are too stringent and may require the provision of material aids to the disabled even beyond “a reasonable accommodation,” and second, the model doesn’t adequately account for those severe disabilities which no amount of societal intervention can fully compensate for.  For instance, there currently seems to be no way to build planes that can be flown by the blind.

The general discussion was a particularly lively one on Friday, evidence no doubt of an interesting topic.  Here are some of the highlights:

Professor Larry May raised the issue of where one draws the line constituting objectively “disabled.”  Could Dr. May, for instance, be considered disabled relative to a pro baseball player if it would take him $100,000 worth of surgery to get his fastball up to speed?  More plausibly, what if his memory just isn’t that good, but he wants to be a lawyer or hold some other profession that demands a strong memory?

Professor Chad Flanders of SLU Law asked an interesting question about the moral implications of the cause of any particular disability: should the person whose legs are disabled from birth be on the same moral standing as someone whose legs are ruined by their own drunk driving?

I myself was curious as to how Brown’s view that equality requires reasonable accommodation might be affected by those “disabled” groups’ views.  For example,  many members of the Deaf community view cochlear hearing implants as immoral and even cultural genocide.  Would reasonable accommodation require making only those changes that accord with the Deaf person’s cultural views?

As always, it was an interesting and engaging workshop.  If you'd like to share your own thoughts on the discussion or Brown's paper, please use the comments section.

-Greg Allen

Gerry Izenberg: Individualism and Individuality in Tocqueville

Today, Gerald Izenberg of the History Department presented a paper that will eventually become a chapter in his new book.  The working title is "Individuality vs. Individualism in the European Tradition."  As the title hints,  Izenberg's overarching argument is that the canonical thinkers in Europe during and after the French Revolution saw individuality and individualism as not merely different, but conflicting notions.  

Izenberg argues that most of these thinkers were, ironically, committed to both sets of values despite their incompatibility.  Izenberg's paper is a textual/historical analysis as opposed to the normative argumentation more usually presented at the workshop.  I found the discussion a welcome change of pace.

In another happy deviation from the workshop norm, our discussant was someone from outside the Wash U community.  This generally happens at least a few times a semester.  Today's discussant, Matt Mancini, is the chair of the Department of American Studies at Saint Louis University and a distinguished Tocqueville scholar.

Mancini opened his remarks with this clever quip about America's notoriously boring former president, Calvin Coolidge: "A farmer shows up half an hour late to a Coolidge speech.  Hoping to be brought up to speed, he asks his neighbor, 'What's Coolidge been talking about?'  But, the neighbor neighbor just shakes his head and replies, 'I don't know.  He won't say."  

Mancini believes that much of the scholarship about Alexis de Tocqueville is similarly  long-winded, opaque and painful.  Happily, Mancini exempts Izenberg's paper from this description.

Izenberg's paper poses the question "What did Tocqueville understand by freedom?" and suggests that the answer has much to do with Tocqueville's position "uneasily poised between two worlds" of aristocracy and democracy.  Though the grateful beneficiary of an elite French upbringing, Tocqueville was nevertheless a "true son of the Revolution."  Izenberg suggests that this internal tension is visible in Tocqueville's scholarship and especially in his attempt to reconcile the "two worlds of individuality and individualism." Much like with his thinking on aristocracy and democracy, Tocqueville seeks to reconcile the conflicting theories by amalgamating the best aspects of both.    


It wasn't long into Mancini's comments that those in the room not intimately acquainted with Tocqueville's scholarship (myself unfortunately included) realized what a disadvantage we were at in the ensuing discussion.  Nevertheless, Mancini's comments were a real pleasure to listen to.  


His most salient concern with Izenberg's paper was that it too often conflates key Tocquevillian terminology (always a risk in first drafts of textual studies).  Moreover, Mancini took issue with the degree to which Izenberg connected Tocqueville's writing on America to his work on individualism.  Mancini pointed out that the two chapters referencing individualism only mention America in a single sentence.


Following Mancini's comments, the general discussion ranged too widely to be effectively summarized here.  One of the more heated exchanges, however, concerned whether or not it was Tocqueville's intention to produce positive or normative science.


All in all, it was another solid workshop.  The year is off to a strong start.  If you'd like to continue the discussion, please use the comments below.


-Greg Allen

Linda Nicholson: Identity After Identity Politics

Last Friday Professor Linda Nicholson of the Wash U Women and Gender Studies program presented a strong paper that picks up where her most recent book, Identity Before Identity Politics, left off.  That work looked at the historical emergence of society's current fixation on the problem of identity up to the 1960s.  With Friday's paper, Nicholson turns her eye to the "aftermath of identity politics."

Nicholson's paper is a work with elements of both history and critique.  While she begins by sketching out some historical context for the current dialogue on identity, the bulk of her paper is concerned connecting that context with what she views as the limitations and contradictions of current thinking.  To illustrate this, Nicholson brings up the 2008 election, where the victory of Barack Obama was cited as evidence that the United States had entered a "post-racial" era.  For Nicholson, however, Obama's victory is complicated by the election's constant focus on racial identity.  If Americans are post-racial, then why do they spend so much time thinking about race? 

Part of the answer stems from the fact that identity is heavily influenced by context.  Nicholson argues that the meaning of a particular identity can "slide" based on the situation.  For example, a man wearing a tuxedo at a ball might be thought sophisticated, masculine and suave, but the same man wearing the same tuxedo would be perceived quite differently if he were to walk into a blue collar bar.  Similarly, many Americans are perfectly happy to vote an African-American senator into the White House, but those same Americans might fear an African-American youth walking past them on the street.

Ron Watson was this week's respondent.  After he provided a far more worthwhile summary of Nicholson's paper than I have here, he offered a number of questions to Nicholson.  One dealt with the fundamental issue of whether or not Nicholson's descriptions contradict.  Watson posited that perhaps the post-racial era refers to a near consensus on the normative view that individuals should not discriminate, but this consensus does not override the fact that race is still acknowledged to be a salient category of discrimination.  In short, what society agrees should happen does not always align with what we acknowledge does happen.

As always, the room had a large crowd with a diverse set of specialties, which made for a lively open discussion.  In one noteworthy exchange, Clarissa Hayward pressed Nicholson for a more specific explanation of context and, specifically, the relationship of context and identity.  Andrew Rehfeld also took issue with Nicholson's explication.  As he often does with presenters, he encouraged Nicholson to reflect on whether or not her ideas were falsifiable.

I'll conclude with the top three discussion topics:

1.  What does it mean to be in a post-racial society?
2.  How should we account for the importance of environmental influences on identity?
3.  What does it mean to possess an identity if identity "slides" with context?

WPES Fall 2009 Schedule

Aug 28

“Civic Education and Political Conservatism” Ian MacMullen, Political Science

Sep 18

“Identity After Identity Politics” Linda Nicholson, Women, Gender and Sexuality Studies/History

Sep 25

“Tocqueville’s Democracy: The Tyranny of Individualism” Gerald Izenberg, History

Oct 2

TBA Jeff Brown, Philosophy

Oct 9

 “The Ethics of NGO Advocacy, or: Why It’s Okay that No One

Elected Oxfam” Jennifer Rubenstein, Politics, University of Virginia

Oct 30

“Representation and Democracy” Andrew Rehfeld, Political Science

Nov 5

Special Event: Panel Discussion on Racial Profiling featuring Frederick Schauer, Law, University of Virginia co-sponsored by the Ethics Center, 7–8:30 pm at location TBA

Nov 6

“Luck of the Draw? On the Fairness of Charter School Admissions Policies” Anne Newman, Education

Nov 13

TBA Jill Delston, Philosophy

Nov 20

TBA David Speetz, Philosophy

Dec 4

“Interrogating Plato’s Noble Lie” Christina Tarnopolsky, Political Science, McGill University