Sandel's aim is to criticise the influential Kantian strand of liberalism. Kant was an Enlightenment philosopher of the 18th century. He wanted to find a way to make individual autonomy the basis of morality.Nonsense. Kant was a continental philosopher whose primary aims were to rescue "truth" from Humean skepticism (via a completely bogus categorization of knowledge types), and to at the same time rescue a traditionalist conception of God. Duty is the foundation of ethics in Kant...and he is quite the friend to the religious in his philosophy.
The true founders of enlightenment philosophy are from the generation before Kant, primarily in Scotland and France. Descartes posed the questions about knowledge that undermined the conservative enterprise. Locke dabbled with them, and extended the epistemology and politics further than before. And Hume finished the questions. Kant was the Alchemist who came to try to raise the traditional positions from the dead. And his big German words were confusing enough that he seems to have succeeded. Certainly all the philosophers since who were supportive of the conservative or reactionary position followed Kant's start-point.
You want to attack the liberal position. Hume is the fulcrum. Hume taught us that it's unjustifiably insane to accept the authority of those "above" us or of "God". To get a real conservativism back, you need belief in the rightness of authority...and to get that back, you must beat back Humean skepticism. Kant led that charge, and to my mind was turned back by Hume's pikes.
A more successful response to Hume was the Common Sense of Thomas Reid, which is rather easily updated to a Bayesian approach to knowledge. But really...that doesn't rescue conservativism at all, it just allows one to escape from Humean radical skepticism.
To respond then to Oz, philosophy itself is a profoundly anti-conservative endeavor. In Haidt's typology, conservativism as an ethic is marked by an increased respect for authority, purity, and loyalty. Philosophy near universally opposes authority, purity, and loyalty in favor of a quest for transcendent truth. If you want a conservative system, ban philosophy.
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As a conservative, I wish to encourage philosophy by non-conservatives, and the more stridently anti-conservative the better. I can think of no better recruitment tactic than to make sure their material is distributed as widely as possible. Oh, there should be enough conservative philosophers so we can say "Look, we have some philosophers too" but they should be few in number, and little-read.
Heh.
Though...I'm inclined to vote David Hume as best/most important thinker ever, up there with Newton + Darwin + Euclid.
I remember first encountering Hume in my high school philosophy class. That's also the only thing I remember about that class because once I read him, I remember thinking, ok, well, we've solved that problem. Now back to calculus. IOW, I'm with you: Hume >= Darwin et al.
Can I get a summary or link to Hume on authority?
Respect for transcendent truth is identical to allegiance to pure logic and the authority of reason.
By which I mean I have skepticism about Haidt's typology because used this way, it's straight equivocation, which augurs poorly for its predictive power.
I suspect that you're still right, however, in saying that philosophy is essentially anti-conservative. Haidt's theory is, as far as I've looked, pretty good descriptively.
Truth seeking in general is anti-conservative because of the difficulty humans have in saying 'I don't know.' Finding a new truth guarantees change unless the status quo can toss it down the memory hole.
An ongoing project demands the following...
Since Haidt's typology is contradictory it cannot be correct, which means reasoning forward or backward from it will end up in nonsense.
Since Haidt's typology is descriptively useful, it can probably be rectified into a consistent theory. Its fallacies are fallacies of form, not function. Nevertheless, rational reasoning can only follow from form by way of symbols, and thus the form needs correction if it is to be truly useful.
Alrenous,
I don't have anything speicifc that Hume wrote on authority. However, Hume is the universal intellectual solvent. Authority fundamentally depends on accepting them as right, not just accepting them as strong. Anyone reading Hume is less inclined to accept everything else as right. QED. :-)
OTOH, I don't understand your line on Haidt and contradictory typology. Can you expand?
Re: Hume, I see. QED indeed and thanks.
Accept for the moment as true:
Conservatism is valuing loyalty, purity, and authority.
Philosophy is inherently anti-conservative.
Philosophy is valuing transcendent truth.
Therefore:
Philosophers are loyal to transcendent truths.
Philosophers value most the purity transcendent truths, how they can never be contradicted. By anything. Ever.
Philosophers recognize and submit to the authority of any method that leads to transcendent truths.
Err...but how is philosophy anti-conservative, again?
It really is. It's empirically true. Either conservatives are just always wrong or else they're constantly being defeated by advances in philosophy. Since they make so many good predictions...I'ma go with door number 2. (Especially as I have a plausible causal explanation.)
Next...yeah I'm not going to reject philosophy --> transcendence. I only include this paragraph for completeness.
So I'm left with Haidt's model.
However, as (I find) Haidt's model accurately sums up current conservatives and nearby conservative actions, it also cannot be false.
So there's an apparent paradox.
A transcendent truth is that there is no real paradox. The most likely place the illusion of paradox spring from in this case is simply the words Haidt uses to describe conservatism.
At a guess I would say, "Too much soundbite, not enough details." What happens to me is that words drift in meaning as I study and understand them and their referents better, and then I forget that I'm trying to talk to someone who hasn't studied them. (Otherwise they'd already know and have no need to hear.) These words probably mean a much more specific thing to Haidt than they do to everyone else, and he needs to adjust.
One of the consequences of the apparent paradox is that if you use Haidt's model to reason about what conservatives will do, or try to interpolate what they've done in the past, you won't get very far before more paradoxes show up, because you're reasoning from paradox. (Ref: try to predict neocons before the term existed, from the model.) If your train of thought goes off the rails, juicing the engine isn't going to fix the problem.
But...if there's a real train to begin with, the problem is always fixable.
Also, there are probably applications for which Haidt's model doesn't go off the rails. This just isn't one of them.
As this is well into TLDR territory, I hope I didn't misunderstand your question. :)
Alrenous,
Thanks for the expansion.
Let me expand on Haidt a sec.
Loyalty is normally said as Ingroup/Loyalty. The essence is Loyalty to a group of people (fundamentally to the clan). And while I agree that philosophers and academics in general do have loyalty to the academic clan, it's opposed by philosophy per se.
Authority is normally referred to as Authority/Respect, and used to refer to the need for folks to know their place. A worker should obey the boss. Philosophy, per se, suggests that the idea is supreme over the person proposing the idea. Direct contradiction when I don't soundbite Haidt.
Purity (/Sanctity)....I think you actually have something here...but there's a second line in philosophy that says that it is BAD to follow any purities.
I see the 'ingroup' soundbite is on La Wik as well. Definitely agree that philosophers are, in principle, opposed to in-grouping.
It ends up being superficial, though. Can you truly tell the difference between a herd all coming to the same rational conclusion, and a herd all coming to the conclusion that they'll follow the herd? Even worse, a herd all following one rationalist? And the most fatal, a herd coming to the rational conclusion that it is best to follow the herd? If you can, please let me know how.
On the third level, though, this shows that rational conclusions can't be very common. Otherwise there'd be even more herd-like behaviour, and the herds would be even bigger.
Point two.
The authority of reason is not meaningfully different from the authority to a person.
I suppose reason can't directly speak for itself, but you have to obey something. The main options today are Reason, Authority, and Whim.
You may quibble at 'obey my whims?' but do you get to control your whims and impulses? Do you get to decide what you'll feel like doing today? I certainly don't. My options are to accept or reject my whims.
If I reject my whims it must be on the basis of something else. Basically, I can reject them because Reason tells me to, or because a Person tells me to.
Penultimately I'm still obeying something other than my whims, though.
Ultimately I can only choose to obey reason due to an impulse, a whim, you might say...
Though I imagine you'd prefer not to get into a detailed discussion of what 'obedience' means in your comment section.
"but there's a second line in philosophy that says that it is BAD to follow any purities."
My paraphrase:
"Cleanse yourself of every and all purities."
Coherence always demands at least one purity.
I was really hoping I could agree with you on that first point, but I can't.
Damn you, Reason! Damn you! *shakes fist at sky*
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