Liberalism in Modern Times 9789633864852

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LIBERALISM IN MODERN TIMES Essays in Honour of Jose G. Merquior

LIBERALISM IN MODERN TIMES Essays in Honour of Jose G. Merquior EDITED BY

ERNEST GELLNER AND

CESAR CANSINO

CENTRAL EUROPEAN UNIVERSITY PRESS Budapest

London

New York

First published in 1996 by Central European University Press 1051 Budapest, Nador utca 9, Hungary Distributed by Oxford University Press, Walton Street, Oxford OX2 6DP Oxford New York Athens Auckland Bangkok Bombay Toronto Calcutta Cape Town Dar es Salaam Delhi Florence Hong Kong Istanbul Karachi Kuala Lumpur Madras Madrid Melbourne Mexico City Nairobi P aris Singapore Taipei Tokyo Toronto and associated companies in Berlin Ibadan Distributed in the United States by Oxford University Press Inc., New York © Central European University Press 1996 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission of the publisher. British library Cataloguing in Publication Data

A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library ISBN 1-85866-052-1 Hardback ISBN 1-85866-053-X Paperback ISBN 978-963-386-485-2 ebook library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data

A CIP catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress

Designed, typeset and produced by John Saunders Design & Production, Reading, UK Printed and bound in Great Britain by Biddles of Guildford, UK

CONTENTS

Notes on Contributors

vu

Acknowledgments

1X

Post Scriptum Triste

X1

1

Introduction

Ernest Gellner

Part I On Merquiorian Thought 1. A Panoramic View on the Renaissance of Liberalisms Jose G. Merquior

7

2. Merquior and Liberalism

21

3. Modernity and Postmodernity in the Thought of Jose Merquior Gregory R. Johnson

37

4. Merquior the Liberalist

65

5. Variations on a Theme by J. G. Merquior

77

Helio Jaguaribe

Roberto Campos Ghita Ionescu

Part II On Merquiorian Themes 6. Liberalism and Trust

101

John A. Hall

-v-

Contents 7. Adam Ferguson and the Surprising Robustness of Civil Society Ernest Gellner 8. Politics and Morality Norberto Bobbio

119 133

9. On Deliberation: Rethinking Democracy as Politics Itself 145 RamonMaiz 10. On 'Postmodern' Scepticism Raymo�d Boudon 11. The Futures of Latin America: Conservative or Liberal-Democratic? Cesar Cansino and Victor Alarcon

173

201

Part III On Merquior's Life and Work 12. Jose G. Merquior, 1941-1991 Celso Lafer

213

13. Annotated Bibliography ofJose G. Merquior Cesar Cansino and Victor Alarcon

219

Index

229

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CONTRIBUTORS

Victor Alarcon is Professor of Political Science at the Centro de Investigaci6n y Docencia Econ6micas (Mexico City), and a faculty member at the University of Notre Dame. Norberto Bobbio is Professor of Political Philosophy at the University of Turin and the author of several books, including The Future of Democracy (1987) and Which Socialism? Marxism, Socialism and Democracy (1987). Raymond Boudon is Professor at the University of Paris­ Sorbonne. His books include Theories of Social Change: A Critical Appraisal (1986), The Analysis of Ideology (1989), A Critical Dictionary of Sociology (1989), and The Art of Self-Persuasion (1991). Roberto Campos is a Brazilian intellectual whose writings include Reflexoes do crepusculo (Rio de Janeiro, 1991), and O Seculo Esquisito (Rio de Janeiro, 1990). Cesar Cansino is Professor of Political Theory at the National Autonomous UniveISity of Mexico and author of several books, including Ernst Bloch, Sociedad, Polftica y Filosofia (Mexico, 1987), and Carl Schmitt: Ensayos Criticos (Mexico, 1988). Ernest Gellner was Director, Centre for the Study of Nationalism, Central European University, Prague, and a Fellow of King's College Cambridge. His many books include Nations and Nationalism (1983), Relativism and the Social Sciences (1985), Culture, - vu -

Contributors Identity and Politics (1987), Plough, Sword and Book (1988), Encounters with Nationalism (1994), Conditions of Liberty (1994), and Anthropology and Politics (1995).

John A. Hall is Professor of Sociology at McGill University; his books include Powers and Liberties (1985) and Liberalism (1987). Ghita Ionescu is Professor of Political Science at the London School of Economics and Political Science and the author of several books and essays, as well as editor of Government and Opposition. Hello Jaguaribe is Professor of Political Science and Director of the Instituto de Estudios Politicos e Sociais (Rio de Janeiro); his several books include Sodedade, Estado e Partidos, na atualidade Brasileira (Sao Paulo 1992). Gregory R. Johnson is an independent scholar residing in Athens, Georgia, USA. He is Executive Editor of Reason Papers and was formerly Executive Editor of Critical Review, of which Merquior was a Contributing Editor. Celso Lafer is Professor of Philosophy of Law at the University of Sao Paulo and the author of several books, including Ensaios sobre a liberdade (Sao Paulo, 1984), Hannah Arendt, pensamiento, persuasiio e poder (Sao Paulo, 1979), A reconstrufiio dos direitos humanos (Sao Paulo, 1991), and Ensaios Liberais (Sao Paulo, 1991). Ramon Maiz is Professor of Political Theory at the University of Santiago de Compostela (Spain) and the author of several books and essays.

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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

The editors wish to express their deep gratitude to Hilda Merquior and the Colombian journal Ciencia Politica for permission to reprint Jose Merquior's article as the first chapter of this volume, and to the translators. Alan Hynds translated, from Spanish, the chapter by Norberto Bobbio and the one written jointly by Cesar Cansino and Victor Alarc6n, and also, from Portuguese, the chapters by Celso Lafer and Roberto Campos. Nevin Siders translated, from Spanish, the chapter by Jose Merquior. Ernest Gellner and Cesar Cansino

- lX -

POST SCRIPTUM TRISTE

Owing to an inexplicable turn of fate, this book, which was coedited by Ernest Gellner as a tribute to the philosopher Jose G. Merquior, has now become Gellner's own posthumous work - one of the last books he would ever write over his prolific career. Gellner died just as this tribute to Merquior was going into production after a period of careful editing. Although Gellner will no longer be able to see it, the book contains, as do all of Gellner's works, a profound commitment to and respect for knowledge. Perhaps this is precisely Gellner's legacy to those of us who knew him and learned to respect and admire him. May the very words Merquior used to describe his professor in England serve as a testi­ mony of this, so that the remembrance will remain en famille: Gellner undoubtedly conquered a strategic place in the interpretation of modem culture. He has [written] a set of works that is extraordi­ narily suggestive of a veritable sociological explanation of fundamental phenomena, such as the role of science in society, nationalism, countercultures, as well as, more generally, the moral profile of modem man or of man who is becoming modem. Moreover, Gellner is a first-rate writer. His mastery of the essay reveals the temperament of a moralist whose message is as humanistic as it is lucid.

As for myself, I believe that the best tribute we can pay to Merquior, and now to Gellner, is to reread their works with the same dedication and respect with which they wrote them. We will all come out ahead if we do. Cesar Cansino 20 November 1995

INTRODUCTION ERNEST GELLNER

Liberalism, unlike Marxism, has no ponderous theory of the Unity of Theory and Practice. However, if liberalism did possess its authoritarian party, its Faith and Ethics, and its hallowed person­ ages, then without any shadow of doubt Jose Merquior would stand there as a shining exemplar to the Komsomol of liberalism, as a man who knew how to combine these two commitments as few other men have done. At, so to speak, the other pole from Merquior, there is Grillparzer's devastating account of the Slav soul: Blind when it acts, Deedless when it thinks . . That was not Jose Merquior's way. He was active and he thought; and, far from finding this a strain, he gave the impression that each of these forms of self-expression was the necessary complement of the other. He loved thought, and he loved the life of politics. He loved even the politics of thought and its social infrastructure (his home was a place in which one could imagine oneself in one of the great salons of eighteenth century Paris or nineteenth century St Petersburg, blending elegance and brilliance), and he loved the intellectual content of politics. One does not always feel this, but in his presence it seemed almost inevitable that it should be so, and he did more than anyone else to ensure that it was so. - 1 -

Ernest Gellner

The liberalism to which he was committed, in thought and action, has had a strange fate in this century. The First World War was ambiguous: to some of its nationalist beneficiaries, it looked like the blessed completion of the work of the French revolution; to others, it heralded the end of nineteenth century optimism, the coming of a dark age. Liberalism was rapidly confronted by powerful enemies claiming, when they condescended to argue at all, that their perception of man and society was deeper than that of the liberals. They, and they alone, were au fait with the dark forces, whether of the human heart or of history, or both, that really govern us. For a time, they carried all before them, and the liberals seemed doubt-ridden and ineffectual, and on occasion worse. A return to hierarchy, authority, violence and dogma seemed for a time to be Europe's destiny. In the end, the romantic antiliberal irrationalism was defeated in the war that it had itself preached, though this was achieved only with the help of another dogmatic authoritarianism, one that proclaimed, but did not practise, the values of the Enlightenment. For a time, this second wave of antiliberalism also looked like the voice of the future, or so it seemed to many intellectuals. When the Soviets took the lead in space, Franco, a traditionalist authoritarian and hardly suspect of sympathy with their views, nevertheless could not refrain from commenting on the event as evidence of the superiority of authority over chaos . . . 'Authoritarians of the world, unite!', he might well have said. Things did not look any better from the viewpoint of that cultural marchland of Europe which is Latin America, from which Jose Merquior came and whose problems meant so much to him. . . Latin America is the offspring, on the European side, of that Iberia in which the Counter-Reformation prevailed, and which for a long time paid the price of this in terms of political and economic backwardness. For a long time, Latin America also seemed destined to pay the price of the Original Sin of being born of conquest in pursuit of loot rather than liberty. Independence when it came seemed to mean the establishment of a social order in which the state or the instruments of coercion dominated civil society, or were the expression of the landed interest, with or without an alliance with foreign capitalism. Then, later in this century, it became one of the last hopes of the messianic left: there was a time at which you could tell left activists in Hampstead or Islington by their excellent Spanish - 2 -

Introduction

accents, which they kept in readiness with their passports for the moment when, as they confidently expected, the Che Guevara island bridgehead would be established. It was not to be. Jose Merquior, one should add, was particularly good on this theme: one of my favourites among his essays contains his comments on the then fashionable 'dependency theory' as a continuation of Latin American self-pity in Marxist rather than the earlier cultural-racist terms. Merquior, with his degrees from both Paris and London, also perhaps embodied that reincarnation of Latin America in a wider world, the liberation from the erstwhile Latin polarization between Catholicism and Marxism. Jose Merquior was a realist-liberal. He worked through existing institutions, not because he idealized them but because, in most circumstances, it is more effective than the pursuit of absolutist discontinuities. Those of us who saw him in action as a kind of cultural impresario of apertura were much impressed. Suddenly, the century of troubles and tribulations of liberalism is all over. A century that often looked as if it were to witness liber­ alism's demise, in fact documents its almost embarrassed triumph. It does not quite know what to do with it. We did not know our own strength, and still do not really believe in it. Enemies on the left as well as those on the right have collapsed, those on the left, once so feared, without even a push from the outside, virtually without a shot inside. Liberal consumerist pluralism has been hailed as the residual legatee of history. In Latin America, 1993 saw the end of the last military regime . . . The situation is not, in fact, quite as rosy as that. It is true that the subjection of the world to Trial by Economic Growth has, for the time being, awarded the palm to the liberal societies. It appears that they used to say in medieval Spain that warfare was a quicker as well as more honourable way to wealth than commerce. So it may have been. The twentieth century has demonstrated that, so far at any rate, pursuit of wealth is a far better and quicker way to power than the direct pursuit of power in the old style. We pluralist liberals have triumphed, on the coat tails of the success of economic liberalism . . . In my heart of hearts, I feel that the liberal ideal has and deserves a better foundation than this, though I have trouble in locating it. An instrumental and accountable state monopolizing violence but neither truth nor morality; free individual creativity unstifled by requirements of either honour or faith . . . I know that this vision - 3 -

Ernest Gellner

has historic roots and conditions, and that there are social circum­ stances in which it is barely articulable, let alone realizable. So why should I dare claim an ultimate validity for liberal values? What answer is there to those who point out that liberalism absolutizes a relative position, that it is a philosophy of sour grapes of rootless men who have lost all full identification with a community or commitment to a set of values, and who make a virtue of the necessity of their interminable quest? Moreover, the spurt of discovery and wealth-creation that has so favoured liberalism will not last for ever; or, at any rate, the law of diminishing returns will apply to its social impact. And then? So the present triumph of liberal ideas is precarious and fragile. Legitimacy by Economic Growth is unlikely to be persuasive for ever, potent though it is for the time being. Comsumerist societies are not always capable of coping with ethnic tension, with the violation of that cultural homogeneity which a mobile and techno­ logically advanced society seems to require. They cannot cope with the cultural pluralism inherited by the past or engendered by contemporary labour migrations. The new practitioners of sophisti­ cated technologies are no longer necessarily predisposed to a liberal turn of mind. Innovative entrepreneurs and intellectuals may be natural liberals, for only a liberal society can give them the elbow room they need and like; but mankind is not, and cannot be, made up of innovators. Can the preconditions of innovation be the basis of a permanent value orientation? I feel that such a foundation will, in the end, lack authority or persuasiveness. Liberalism needs to face at least two questions: how can it validate itself, other than as the natural predilection of professional innova­ tors; and how can it institutionally establish itself in conditions of very advanced industrialism? When limitation of the catastrophic side-effects of technological advance (ecological, terrorist or social counterproductiveness) becomes more important than further incre­ ments of wealth, preconditions of growth will no longer settle moral-political issues. Perhaps they will fail to do so even sooner. These questions have no easy answers. Perhaps they simply have no answers. But the attempt to cope with them would have better prospects, if only Jose Merquior were still with us. Twice over, for he would be contributing both politically and intellectually. And, without any doubt, it would also be a great deal more fun discussing and implementing the answers if he were here.

- 4 -

PART I

On Merquiorian Thought

-1A Panoramic View on the Renaissance of Liberalisms JOSE G. MERQUIOR

'A conservative', said Irving Kristo!, 'is but a liberal attacked by reality'. The same motive for this epigram seems to indicate that the current 'wave' in political theory is conservative, but in reality this is not quite exact. Judging by the doctrinaire fermentation of the eighties, and even by the experimental and theoretical bookshelves in the libraries of Europe and the United States, the present moment belongs to liberalisms. It is necessary, however, to insist on the plural. Under an ethic often employed to classify a Friedrich von Hayek as well as a Raymond Aron, or to a certain degree a John Rawls as well as a Norberto Bobbio, it is obvious that not all liberalisms are alike. That same old word, liberal, takes on the new look of the right, and the most recent remaking of democratic socialism. Under these conditions, how can we under­ stand the rise of liberalisms without falling into pure, simple ideological confusion?

The Nature of Power It might not be a bad idea to begin by pointing out the political­ ideological atmosphere surrounding the renaissance of the liberal idea. In the past, liberalism lived on the defensive because the imperfect, incomplete and - to a great extent, and with a clear disadvantage - unjust liberal regimes were always compared to the - 7 -

Jose G. Merquior socialist ideal of liberty in justice. But the ageing of political realities after the Second World War, when state socialism was imposed by authoritarian means, made the ills of 'real socialism' more and more visible. If liberalism has currently gone on the offensive in the production of theory, it stems from the fact that its second great historical adversary, socialism, is far from having clean hands or a guiltless heart. According to the observation by Ralf Dahrendorf, liberals rarely need to be ashamed of events created in their name. Or, when necessary, they are consoled by finding that the un­ liberals of the left Gust as yesterday's un-liberals of the right) have many more skeletons in their closets. We can arrive at the same conclusion through a more theoretical prism, bearing in mind the evolution of the critidsm of power. According to what I presented in O Argumento liberal, 1 the language of the criticism of power has seen two basic transformations: one referring to the object and the other to the nature of power. Concerning the object, criticism of arbitrary power was first expressed in the language of class oppression, and only later dealt with the topic of the individual victimized by illegitimate domina­ tion. The bourgeoisie of the communes of the Middle Ages demanded, and won, franchises and estate privileges. Only much later, during the century of the Enlightenment and the Atlantic revolutions (American and French) did the discourse of liberty, along with that of human rights, gain individual emancipation. Strangely enough, Marxism in a certain way recovered this resource: first and foremost, it spoke of class exploitation; then, late post-Marxian Marxism stressed the theme of alienation, the subject of which, rigorously speaking, is not the working class but humankind, and, consequently, the individual. And regarding the nature of power? Here the evolution was from the criticism of political power to the questioning of sodal power. The first classics of liberal doctrine - Locke, Montesquieu, Constant - were still essentially concerned with the problem of despotism; they were obsessed with the excessive extension of political power, with the arbitrariness of government. Nevertheless, with the two main classics of Victorian liberalism - Tocqueville and Mill - the core of liberal concern shifted towards the topic of the 'tyranny of the majority', or rather, towards the evils of an oppression more 1 Nova Fronteira, 1983, pp. 99-104.

8 -

A Panoramic View on the Renaissance

of Liberalisms

sodal than political: the weight of mass conformism on the 'different'

individual, a product of the progress and glory of civilization. It so happens that the advent of modern tyrannies - totalitari­ anisms - forced liberal theory to focus on power as political domination. In the past, liberal thought had striven to defend the institution of the separation of powers as a check on the potential despotism of political control. Classical liberalism had perceived that autocrats were or tended to be principally the head of a monoc­ racy - that is, of a situation in which unique and absolute power ruled without limit or changes - and the efficacious antidote to this evil was the separation of authority into institutionalized powers, functionally diverse and equally sovereign. In our century, totalitarian regimes posed the same problem, but from a different angle. By concentrating political power in a single structure of authority - the one-party system - and of economic control, these regimes exhumed the spectre of monocracy. Whence the neoliberal thesis of indivisible liberty, based on the recognition that there can be no liberty where political decisions and economic decisions remain, normally, in the same hands. The preliberal state monopolized ideology (through state religions) and the economy (mercantilism); then the liberal state monopolized, as Weber wanted, only the legitimate use of force. The - sovereign - state holds the monopoly on political authority, but it does not harbour or constitute any monocracy of an unlimited politico-social scope.

The Idea ofJustice The thesis of indivisible liberty represents a modern sociologically shrewd broadening of the old, healthy liberal tenet of the separation of powers. What is more, modern society - based on technology and consumption - requires not only justice; it also demands efficiency. And efficiency, in turn, implies economic freedom, rather than the rigid command economies of the monocratic Minotaur. Hence, to moral and political liberalism is added free economic competition, fuelling the strength of the liberal renaissance. Economic liberalism still takes on an extreme, virulent form at times, in which antistatism - one of the most lucid positions - turns into a generalized statephobia, often accompanied by antidemocratic sentiments. These two features - statephobia and antidemocratism -

-9-

Jose G. Merquior are perversions made up of deep conceptual confusion, of a good double motivation, political and economic, of contemporary liber­ alisms. We should examine them briefly. In Western thought, two principles of justice govern, norma­ tively speaking, the interaction between individuals and the organi­ zation of institutions. Both go back to Roman law. The first principle says neminem laedere - harm no one. Its purpose is to protect the independence of the individual, the free enjoyment of freedom, understood as the broad sphere of lidtude, where every­ thing is, in principle, licit, permitted to each person as long as the equal rights of others are not infringed upon. It was this freedom­ licitness that Hobbes defined in Book XIV of his Leviathan (1650) as the 'absence of external impediments'. Mill was thinking of this when, in his On Liberty (1859), he wrote on the equation happiness = freedom = personality. The second traditional tenet of justice says suum cuique tribuere give to each his own, which is to say that which, and the amount, owed. This rule - which can be seen through its very etymology is eminently distributive. Leibniz felt neminem laedere suitable for the regulation of the right of property, and suum cuique for the ordering of social law (jus sodetatis). Now, it suffices to consult the history of j udicial-political ideas to understand that the liberalism of the crassly ideological Victorian age - of Spencer, for example - saw only neminem laedere, almost totally forgetting the tenet of distribu­ tive justice. With this, Bobbio noticed, liberalism reduced public law to mere penal law - and mutilated political theory. Yet there is a branch of contemporary neoliberalism that openly relapses into that mutilation. When Hayek exorcizes the idea of social justice the idea of social justice per se, not one or another of its more or less unsatisfactory historical materializations - he is rewriting Spencer. Meanwhile, the excommunication of social justice is in no way a consequence of automatic logic, an evident corollary of the Hayekian defence of economic liberalism. It is perfectly possible to defend the value of the market, and at the same time redistributive taxation - as is done, brilliantly, by the English neoliberal Samuel Brittan. 2

2

The Role and Limits of Govemment, 1983.

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A Panoramic View on the Renaissance

of Liberalisms

Statep hobia and Antistatism Neoliberals of a neo-Hayekian lineage scored quite a few points with the denouncement of economic statism. Statism in the economy does not mean the bureaucratic pachydermism of regimes that want to be productivist but that reject economic logic; rather, it means only the tentacular expansion of state companies that, far from being slaves of a political elite, normally behave as unassailable economic-financial forts, colossal examples of true bureaucratic feudalism. The industrial state does extremely poorly in terms of performance. It is unrealistic to think that the state can cease to manage finances or plan the economy - but between that and absorbing the latter there is a vast distance, never surmounted with economic success by any modern or modernist country. However, neoliberals of the right do not stop there. They try to make the modern welfare state, together with economic statism, another bicho-papao. 3 It is - they allege - a fundamentally unliberal, though 'paternalistic', system. That may be, Bobbio replied; but it is no less true that, in liberal-type industrial cities, these welfare systems were established by democratic governments, under the exigencies of well articulated popular demands in the political market. And from there arises the conclusion, impeccable in my opinion, of the Italian maestro: democracy, as we have it today, is a consequence or at least an extension of liberalism; but democratic practice led to a form of state that is not at all 'minimal', in the ideal sense of classical liberalism. And might it be that, as statephobic - statephobic and not just antistate - neoliberalism would have it, the planning welfare state, a consequence of democratic freedom, is a perverse consequence? The most categorical positive response continues to be Hayek's. In his famous book The Road to Serfdom (1944), he put forward the thesis that the progressive development of the state in the economy and in society, even if by way of particular, topical interventions, fatally refounds totalitarian subjugation in the long run. However, the four decades that have passed since the war show that Hayek deceived himsel£ In the postwar West and Japan, planned capitalism and the welfare state helped to avoid totalitarianism because they contributed decisively to the neutralization of political 3 Bid,o-papao: fictitious monster that frightens children. [Tr. : Footnote in original.]

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Jose G. Merquior movements that carry a model of totalitarian socialism. Who was right was Elie Halevy, author of The Era of the Tyrannies (1938): totalitarianisms were born of violence and revolution, not of the foreseeing pilot-state circumscribed by the juridical order of institu­ tional liberalism. In societies like Brazil's, I never tire of repeating, the problem of the state does not have one, but two, faces. Now, the truth is that we have, at one and the same time, too much state and too little state. Too much, certainly, in the economy, where, in diverse areas, the state hinders development, puts a brake on movement and spends excessively. We have too little state on the social level, where so many deficiencies in health, education and housing are still scandalous - and have become inadmissible. For this reason, to a large degree, we see the crossfire in a dialogue of the deaf: on one side, many (but not all) antistatists 'forget' to prevent our tremen­ dous needs in welfare; on the other side, various paladins of 'social' matters, under the pretext of justice and egalitarianism, end up condemning, en masse, antistate positions, as if they did not include the well justified criticism of bureaucratic feudalisms in the economic sphere. During the very death throes of the Weimar Republic, Hermann Heller (1891-1933) promoted a fertile renovation of the theory of the state. Heller saved the idea of the state from Marxian oppro­ brium by trying to demonstrate that modem society is incapable of a complete and satisfactory self-organization. With this Hegelian­ type perspective, he attempted to overcome the paleoliberal notion of a guardian state, determined to preserve public order, and in its place introduced the dynamic conception of a state based on the soda[ rule of law ( Sozialer Rechtsstaat). The state was, indeed, the principal, if not the only, social mecha­ nism by which it was possible to give strength to law, rather than law to force. The neorepublican social state in Brazil intends to do exactly that: like Heller's, it wants to be social without for a moment ceasing to be a state based on the rule of law - that is, a juridical-liberal construction. The true strong state, made of authority rather than repression, consists of the authority of the law and knows - as Tancredo Neves says in his never-delivered inaugu­ ration speech - that law in modem society is 'the social organization of freedom', of freedom and of justice, without which the first diminishes or drowns in privilege. However, on this point, naturally, - 12 -

A Panoramic View on the Renaissance of Liberalisms

no statephobia can be justified. Finally, as Serge recalls, 4 liberalism does not mean less state - it means more freedom. And the social state may be a powerful instrument of the universalization of liberty. It was not by coincidence that the embryo of the British welfare state, the famous Beveridge Report, was written in the library of the Reform Club - the very historical temple of Victorian liberalism. Bobbio was right: the social dimension of democracy, as well as its political aspect, is an unfolding of liberalism.

Neocontractualism How are neoliberalisms situated vis-a-vis the question of Democracy? Keynes, who so deeply transformed economic liber­ alism, and in more than one way belongs to the English line of social liberalism (the school that runs from Mill to Green and Hobhouse, at the end of the nineteenth century), imagined he was saving capitalism without deserting democracy. That meant rejecting both the Leninist option (extinguishing capitalism while sacrificing democracy) and the fascist option (sacrificing democracy to save capitalism). Commenting on this Keynesian position in The Future of Democracy (Turin, 1984), Bobbio observed that neoliber­ alisms now in vogue attempt to realize the inverse operation: they hope to preserve democracy without departing from capitalism. With due permission from the maestro Bobbio, I consider some current neoliberalisms to be quite cold on the issue of democratic fervour. Hayek himself went as far as toying with ideas on institu­ tional alternatives to democracy, and (in his New Studies5 ) felt that it is conceivable that an authoritarian government could act based on liberal principles. Nevertheless, it would be highly unjust to suggest that neoliber­ alisms, on the whole, resist democracy. After all, a current of today's liberalisms is no more than a restoration of the democratic contractualism we find in the first classics of democracy, beginning with Rousseau (for a closer analysis see my Rousseau and Weber 6) . Christophe Kolm, The Soda! Liberal Contract (Paris, 1985) . New Studies in Philosophy, Politics, Economics and the History Ideas (London, 1978) . 6 Rousseau and Weber: Two Studies in the Theory Legitimacy (London: Routledge &

4

5

of

Kegan Paul, 1980) .

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of

Jose

G.

Merquior

We are living the very rebirth, not only of liberalism, but also of the idea of the social contract. In our polyarchic societies, many of the main decisions are collective deliberations based on accords of a contractual nature; and the so-called crisis of the welfare state has succeeded only in heightening the urgency of maintaining and placing in an essential position tripartite social contracts (business, wage earners and the government) that manage, expressly or tacitly, the social peace of pre-recession 'affluent society'. The high priest of the neocontractualist perspective is John Rawls. This Harvard professor gave liberal Americans - who, as we know, are liberals of the left - his ethnic-political bible: the spirited A Theory efJustice of 1971. As a prologue to rationally deducing the fundamental principles of a just social order, Rawls describes a situation of a totally hypothetical choice. He supposes that citizens, as future parties to a social contract, have access to only a bare minimum of information on social reality and about themselves. The Rawlsian contractors know they live in a world dominated by the scarcity of goods and positions, in which conflicts of interest arise for this very reason - but a hypothetical 'veil of ignorance' conceals all knowledge of their own inclinations, talents or position on the social ladder. Each individual should choose the most appro­ priate social order without knowing whether he or she is rich or poor, qualified or unqualified, black or white, etc. Rawls' objective is to deduce a social contract dictated by pure prudence and self-interest from this hyp othesis of a 'blind' choice that is, without reflecting any altruism on the part of the contrac­ tors. Otherwise, he maintains, the equity of the contract would only be truly persuasive for the most ethically endowed citizens, but not for all parties to the contract. Given these hypothetical conditions, what would the contractors choose? As rational beings, mindful of their own interests, they would be led to adopt two principles of justice or equity: firstly, each individual should possess as much freedom as is compatible with the freedom of others (and thereby return to our old neminem laedere) ; secondly, all inequality should be instituted to benefit the least privileged citizens. Why? Because only in this way - in the uncertainty over the consequences of their actions - will the contractors always want, for the sake of sheer prudence, to exaggerate the risk of being individually harmed; hence, they will try to stipulate as fair only those situations of inequality in which - 14 -

A Panoramic View on the Renaissance of Liberalisms

the harm for each individual is minimized, guaranteeing that all inequality will become an advantage in the distribution of goods. In other words, in a blind vote, the contractors would choose a kind of social security: trying to reduce the possibility of harm to a minimum, the citizens, by maximizing that risk, would arrive at a social contract of greater equity.

The Shortcomings of Neocontractualism Rawls's model - the maximin social pact, a deliberately abstract parameter of justice - has been criticized from various ideological angles. For many socialists, the scheme commits the sin of being insufficiently distributivist: it is but a simplistic idealization of the present-day welfare state. Yet liberal critics point out other short­ comings. They believe Rawls's original hypothesis to be an overly restricted and abstract characterization. For example, in Rawls's hypothesis the original position includes implicit personal attitudes towards risk (the risk of winning or losing in the roulette of life, of being one of the disadvantaged). Nev�rtheless, everything indicates that some contractors would normally choose risk. They would prefer to subscribe a social contract that entails a 'bet' than one that constitutes 'security'. The choice under the 'veil of ignorance' described by Rawls is also too abstract - so abstract that all contrac­ tors think and act the same way. The social contracts of classical theory (those of Hobbes, Locke, Rousseau and Kant, for example) did not assume identical contracts. It is not surprising that Rawls placed less emphasis on the 'veil of ignorance' in his later writings. But in A Theory ofJustice his insistence on pure hypotheticality of the base contract between isolated and uninformed citizens gave us everything - everything except a theory of modern society or the passions of its children. Fortunately, history offers us what theory denies. The history of political liberalisms provides some solid examples of concrete 'social contracts', motivated by the rich vegetation of the interests and not by the geometric area of the calculus of unreal conditions. At times these social pacts, or politico-social alliances, took on a markedly liberal-populist form. Such was the case of the socialistic Colorismo of Jose Battle in Uruguay's belle epoque, or of Edwardian England. The latter has a special significance, because the liberal-populist - 15 -

Jose G. Merquior

experience then arose as an answer to economic crisis. In the last decades of the nineteenth century, the British economy faced industrial decline, with chronic unemployment of unskilled labour. In a context of growing middle class anxiety, welfare reforms began between 1906 and the Great War; as a prelude to the welfare state, they were guided by a Liberal party that had decided to renew its popular credentials to confront the challenge of rising trade unionism. Social-liberalism - at the beginning pure academic speculation at Oxford and the London School of Economics became a politico-social lever of irreversible effect. And as can be seen from the style of the great leader who emerged during this phase and from this current - Lloyd George - liberalism was never intimidated by popular matters; on the contrary, it knew how to exploit and conquer them at the same time, in a creative leap of leadership.

Criticisms of the Panorama Keynes - and here he was a typical social-liberal - accepted the economic intervention of the state, and advocated a balance between liberty, efficiency and a considerable dose of social justice. In his opinion, capitalism was simultaneously the 'habitat' of 'the diversity of life' and the most efficient economic machine. The theme of 'diversity of life', whose natural protagonist was 'renais­ sance' personalities such as the very same Keynes, was a direct descendant of Mill's liberal-humanism. But the appraisal of capitalism's capacity for expansion (which places Keynes very far from Schumpeter's mourning the 'suicide' of capitalism) clearly broke with Mill's digressions concerning the ambition to achieve a 'stationary state' of the economy. As much as Keynesian recipes, or those adopted in his holy name, have been discredited, and are today considered unsuitable (or, according to some, responsible for the present recession-infla­ tion cycle), I cannot help sympathizing with his historical optimism. It is not a matter of agreeing with Bobbio when he cites, as a right-neoliberal substratum, a restorationist philosophy of history. Minimal-state fanatics do not hesitate to demand the dismantling of the welfare state, the adoption of private armies, even the use of private currencies. Robert Nozick, Rawls's adversary at Harvard - 16 -

A Panoramic View on the Renaissance of Liberalisms

and author of the right-wing libertarian classic Anarchy, State and Utopia (1974), went as far as comparing income taxes with forced labour. These neoliberals want in fact to turn back the historical clock. Their vision of history assumes a simplistic model in which negative phases alternate with positive periods, recuperation of 'wise' epochs to correct 'deviations' of institutionally and ideologi­ cally evil periods. . . . I confess that I prefer the old liberal histori­ cism, in which history is not a balance but rather an evolution, made up of stages, and not of monotonously alternating phases. Well-said, by Hayek, to the contrary of what occurs with the rest of the neo-Victorians among today's liberals: historical vision is more complex. In his writings, according to what was stressed by Brittan in the best critical essay written about Hayek to date,7 faith in economic liberalism meshes with a reverence worthy of Burke for the efficiency and wisdom of traditional institutions. The differ­ ence (I would add) is that the wise institution, though immemorial, was in conservative Burke the oligarchic parliamentary monarchy, which contrasted with French revolutionary republicanism; whereas for Hayek the useful and sensible institution par excellence is the market, the same mechanism that, even more than the French revolution, universally undermined the social hierarchies that Burke tried to preserve. The thing is that Burke thought in terms of religious values; Hayek in evolutionary terms. For Hayek, the market was precious, not because it constitutes the best means for distributing resources (a computer could do that better), but rather because of its ability to deal with uncertainty and the emergence of newness: previously unknown knowledge, new techniques, unexpected reactions by consumers, etc. And here, the key word is not tradition but progress. If, for liberal historicism, history is evolution, it is not possible to portray this evolution outside of the mould of techno-economic progress. It is in this respect, by underlining the functional require­ ments for the economy, that neoliberals of the right are correct. The most archaic of dogmas in our ideological panorama is undoubtedly the a priori hostility to economic motivation - a refrain that distinguishes post-Marxist radicalism, well represented by Cornelius Castoriadis. The need of the economy, which implies 7

Times Literary Supplement, 9 March 1984.

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Jose G. Merquior

respect for the logic of economics, triumphed and will continue to triumph in all of its utopian negations - and over any statism that tries to ignore or distort it. I hope that this point has been made perfectly clear: if statephobia is a happy deception, then statism is much more than this - it is an enormous prej udice. For the neoliberalism of the right, economic liberty is, in addition to necessary, sufficient. This is why Hayek has been criti­ cized in England and the United States, by neoconservatives. For the most eloquent of them, Irving Kristol, it is not sufficient to demonstrate, as Hayek and Milton Friedman have done, the positive role of the market. This is not sufficient, Kristol affirms, to confront the challenge of the New Left, because the New Left swears by romantic, expressivist and communitarian values, and not, as was the case of traditional Marxism, by utilitarian and productivist ones. In sum, man does not live by bread alone. The same criticism is aimed at Hayek from the English New Right by the philosopher Roger Scruton, who pontificates in the Salisbury Review.

Nevertheless, neoconservatives - just as all those who look at society in terms of a substantial, not processual, consensus, a global communion of values instead of a simple accord on the rules of the game - forget just one detail: nobody has sufficiently specified the kingdom of values beyond bread. And if they are unable to do that, how can they elude the uncomfortable impression that on D-Day these common values would be dictated by the right, in a manner strangely similar to the way the ideocratic elites of authoritarian socialism operate? No: overcoming the manifest inadequacies of right liberalism does not reside in this false spiritualism. What is fair is to deepen the analysis of what Aron called liberal democratic synthesis: to add democratic rights to the catalogue of civil liberties and political rights that form the valuable legacy of the liberal tradition. In industrial societies with polycentric power structures, heteroge­ neous and frequently conflicting demands by society on the state constitute the rule, pari passu with competition between parties, which parties are in turn permeated by these same demands. In this way, both on the social as well as on the political side, industrial polyarchies increasingly experience diverse contracts between diverse forces, institutions and powers. As Bobbio indicates, the privatist logic of the accord increasingly invades the public scene and - 18 -

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substitutes or imposes itself on the publicist logic of authority. From politico-party coalitions to the great Matignon- or Moncloa-type social-financial pacts, the sap of social contracts goes on to feed the legitimacy of the imp erium - of effective political authority. Otherwise, there seems to be no better means to put a brake on a certain highly harmful phenomenon, inherent to a democratic society endowed with stable institutions. I am referring to the tendency observed by Mancur Olson (Rise and Fall of Nations): the longer an industrial country enjoys an uninterrupted period of democratic liberties, the more its economic growth will suffer due to the actions of organized group interests. Brittan agrees with this diagnosis, and warns of the paradox this engenders: democracy experiences tensions produced by freedom, that is, from its very own raison d 'etre - also observe that the same problem is structurally possible, even probable, in a socialist-type democratic regime. Now, how do we overcome, or at least find halfway solutions to, the particularism of these organized special-interest groups, other than by the negotiated formula of long-range social contracts?

Without Purisms or Unilateralisms The classic image of democracy assumed an individualistic view of society. Today, however, politically relevant subjects in the democ­ ratic order are collective: government, congress and parties, trade unions and associations representing civil society, the Church and the armed forces. When these fail, or mutually condemn themselves to complete impasse, the institutions cease to function and the putrefaction of politics leads to an emergence of praetorian domination, whether or not preceded by chaotic revolutionary miscarriages. The hegemony of the group as political actor naturally anguishes the democratic libertarian; and it is true that a great number of democrats have libertarian souls. How can one be enthusiastic about the expansion of social contracts when one recognizes that they are largely hemmed in and constrained by the relentless power of the technocracy (indispensable to the manage­ ment of modern economy) and the bureaucracy (generated, to a large degree, by the very pressure of social demands on the state)? Deep down, the prestige of neocontractualism only makes virtue of necessity, in that, partly, it just barely conceals the growing - 19 -

Jose G . Merquior

ungovemability of this complex and contradictory animal: the technological republic. In the meantime, the absence or impossibility of the optimum solution does not impede the acknowledgment of what is best. If all industrial societies are necessarily technocratic and bureaucratic, not all of them are so in the same way. One difference continues to be decisive: that which separates demotechnocracies, or demobureaucra­ cies, liberal hybrids (in spite of everything), from the liberal and, naturally, not-at-all democratic ideocracies. How, then, are we not amazed by the fact that liberalisms are alive and rejuvenated? The important thing is to know how to choose among them. The way I see it, the greatest theoretical architectures, either Hayek-style (on the right) or Rawls-style (on the centre-left), are less penetrating and relevant - especially for the construction of freedom in devel­ oping countries - than the dispersed and fragmentary analysis, however consistently lucid, of critics such as Aron, Bobbio or Samuel Brittan. Liberals, all of them, without either purisms or doctrinaire unilateralisms and without regressive velleities. These political liberalisms of a social-democratic or proto social­ democratic inclination, such as Uruguayan Battlismo and post­ Gladstonian renouveau of the British Liberal Party, constitute historic paradigms of social-liberalism. And the relevance of social-liberalism to our political moment is evident. Finally, as the social-liberal Celso Lafer observed in a beautiful and groundbreaking meditation on Bobbio's analysis of neocontrac­ tualism, 8 the growth of the state in Brazil did not derive from a social demand but from the logic of authoritarianism. And what is more, for the same reason the liberal message that rings most true among us has not been the criticism of social-democracy, but that aimed at the bureaucratic-authoritarian colossus. To repeat, at the risk of being fastidious: our best liberalism is not and does not have to be statephobic; it is barely - and here, with increasing vigour antistatist. 8 Liberalism, Contractualism and the Soda/ Pact (Sfo Paulo, 1984).

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-2Merquior and Liberalism

HELIO JAGUARIBE

The Politically Engaged Intellectual Jose Guilherme Merquior (1941-91) - who died, at the height of his creativity, before reaching the age of fifty - was recognized both in Brazil and internationally, as one of the most gifted essayists of our times. Combining a swift and acute intelligence with excep­ tional learning, he excelled with great competence, lucidity and fine critical reasoning in the widest domains of culture. His cultural production ranges from literary criticism to a critical history of ideas, from philosophy to sociology and political science. In the field of international relations, he gained prominence both theoret­ ically as an essayist and operationally as an excellent diplomat. His last posts were as Brazilian ambassador to Mexico and as head of the Brazilian delegation at Unesco. As a multifaceted and polyglot intellectual, he accomplished, extraordinarily well, that rare feat of matching immense knowledge with an exceptional creativity placed at the service of a politically engaged agenda. His political engagement was best expressed not in the practices of a party militancy, but in the domains of the militancy of ideas and in the construction of his thought in relation to the public interest. Having been attracted in his youth to the ideas of social democracy as envisaged by San Tiago Dantas, he later underwent, as also did Roberto Campos, a profound disenchant­ ment with the state machinery and this led him towards liberalism - 21 -

Helio Jaguaribe a liberalism that was initially of a conservative cast, bearing similari­ ties with von Mises and with Hayek. But in his maturity, his liberal convictions would shift towards a social liberalism in the tradition of Thomas Green and John Hobson that was, ultimately, closer to the ideas of Raymond Aron and Ralf Dahrendor£ In December 1990, I had the opportunity of participating with him in a seminar about Brazil that was being held in Paris. He was terminally ill with the cancer that would end his life the following month. Surmounting the most adverse physical conditions, he was able to deliver, in impeccable French, an extraordinary presentation about the several projects of national organization that have been developed in Brazil since the nation's independence - from Jose Bonifacio to our own time. It was a momentous experience, from a double standpoint. From an intellectual perspective, his fine critical intelligence led him to analyse the meaning and the scope of the great proposal that shifted from the parliamentarism of the Second Reign, republican positivism, the ideology of the 'tenentes', the Estado Novo, the democratic liberalism of the Constitution of 1946, the saint­ simonism of the two military decades, and finally, the frustrated social democracy of the New Republic. From a human perspective, his presentation was a dazzling victory of the spirit over a frail body. Although devastated by a terminal illness, he was able to masterfully articulate his last message. Alongside this conference - whose publication by Ignacy Saches is anxiously being awaited - there is Merquior's last work, the monumental Liberalism Old and New. 1 Merquior did not live to see his final work published, but he did correct the proofs. This book constitutes, in a sense, the intellectual testament of the politically engaged essayist. In the following pages, I will offer a synthetic critical commentary of this work.

General View Liberalism Old and New constitutes, despite its selective character, the widest critical survey of liberal thought during these three last centuries. The book is organized in five long chapters: (1) 1 Liberalism Old and New (Boston: Twayne Publishers, 1991).

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Definitions and Starting Points, (2) The Roots of Liberalism, (3) Classical Liberalism, 1780-1860, (4) Conservative Liberalism, (5) From New Liberalism to Neoliberalism. These chapters are followed by a brief general conclusion and by extensive notes and references. Merquior's study possesses a breadth of knowledge that makes it tantamount to a comprehensive critical encyclopedia of liberal thought and movements. There are two particularly distinctive features of this op us magnum. On the one hand, his study goes beyond the narrow territory that usually confines works about liberalism that devote excessive attention to Anglo-Saxon formula­ tions. Together with the Anglo-Saxon canon, Merquior also contemplates the French, German, Italian, Spanish and other contributions, as well as including the thought of the Argentine thinkers Sarmiento and Alberdi. The second distinctive quality of this book is rendered by Merquior's admirable ability to synthesize, starting from a medieval and a renaissance protoliberalism, the thought of the important figures of the various liberal tendencies with a lucid critique of the meaning of the contribution of each thinker in the context of his time and place. The book is consistent with its aim of presenting an objective critical survey of the multiple currents and personalities of liberal thought throughout the last three centuries. It does not, therefore, explicitly represent the author's ideas. One senses, however, the master lines of his convictions and predilections in the affectionate treatment that Merquior displays towards the social liberalism of the New Liberalism, from the end of the nineteenth century to the present; in the respect with which he approaches the liberist Neoliberalism of von Mises and Hayek; and in the appreciation he demonstrates vis-a-vis Raymond Aron and Ralf Dahrendor£

What is Liberalism? What is liberalism? How can it be possible to encounter consistent characteristics in a movement of ideas and practical initiatives that has developed throughout three centuries and that frequently presents, within the same epoch, diverse tendencies and social formulation? Merquior evokes this question and proceeds to answer it affirma­ tively. Liberalism is not a hollow expression. Within its variations of - 23 -

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schools and epochs, liberalism upholds, albeit in different propor­ tions, four fundamental liberties. These are: (1) the (negative) freedom of not being subjected to arbitrary interferences; (2) the (positive) freedom of participating in public affairs; (3) the (interior) freedom of consciousness and beliefs; and (4) the (personal) freedom of self-development for each individual. These four liberties will always pertain, in a lesser or greater degree, at times explicitly and at other times implicitly, to the historical canon of liberal thought. As seen in its entirety from the eighteenth century until today and given the characteristics of each epoch, liberalism presents differences in regard to the greater or lesser emphasis that it delegates to these four liberties in relation to the individual, society and the state. On the other hand, liberal thought also reflects the predominant tendencies of the national cultures in which it develops. In regard to the historical development of liberalism, Merquior identifies, initially, a protoliberalism that traces its roots back to the medieval defence of rights and the humanism of the Renaissance. He could have reached even further back by mentioning the emergence of an internal freedom with Socrates and Plato and by tracing the beginnings of the universal rights of man to the Stoics. Merquior then proceeds to distinguish six main currents within the history of liberalism: Classical Liberalism, Conservative Liberalism, New Liberalism, Neoliberalism, Sociological Liberalism and the Neocontractarians. In respect of the schools of liberal thought, influenced by the characteristics of the main national cultures where they were devel­ oped, Merquior distinguishes three currents. The English school, from Hobbes to Locke and Bentham and Mill, defines liberty as personal independence. The French school, based on Rousseau's legacy, fundamentally locates liberty as an exercise of self-govern­ ment. The German school, in accordance with Humboldt, finds the essence of liberty in personal self-fulfilment.

The Roots of Liberalism According to Merquior, ultimately Christianity, in a general sense, and particularly the Reformation and the French revolution, constitute the basis from which liberalism develops. - 24 -

Merquior and Liberalism

The remote roots of liberalism can be found in medieval thought. Marcilio de Padua in his Defensor Pads (1324) introduces as an imperative of governmental legitimacy the necessary consent of those being governed. Ockham (1583-1645) and Johann Althusius (d. 1638) are important precursors of several aspects of liberalism. In modern terms, the second of John Locke's Two Treatises on Government constitutes the foundation stone of liberal thought. Among remote precursors, Merquior recognizes the influence of ecclesiastical conciliarism in the configuration of constitutionalist thought. However, as I previously noted, he failed to mention the Greek legacy that shaped the notion of interior freedom, one of the touchstones of liberal thought, and furthermore this same Greek legacy was also responsible for the formulation of democracy as a political regime. Moreover, the Stoics also merit recognition for their relevant contribution since they preceded Christianity in the apprehension of the universal dignity of man, independently of his citizenship or social condition. Notwithstanding its remote roots in the past, liberalism, as a movement of ideas and social practices, is an outcome of the Enlightenment. The Enlightenment was, in the last analysis, the intellectual movement that raised the fundamental problem of the relation between men-society and the state. This relation is on the one hand negative, in the sense that it is not coercive, but also positive, in the sense that it foments public participation. Yet, it demands a public rationality that opposes populist practices and lobbyist modalities of democracy. The eighteenth century oscillated, therefore, between the public rights of citizenship, as emphasized by the French revolution, and the demands of a public rationality, emblematized by the 'enlightened despotism' of Frederick the Great or of the Marquis of Pombal. (The latter's rule, lacking despotic influences, should instead be called 'enlightened authoritarianism'.)

Classical Liberalism 1 780- 1 860 Classical liberalism is a reflection on the conditions of the formation and the legitimacy of the state and a defence of both the negative and the positive freedoms towards the government and within the ambience of the state. Hobbes maintains that the preservation of the well-being of the people and their basic rights leads to the - 25 -

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delegation of power to the Prince, who becomes the administrator of these values. In contrast, Locke advocates, within the basic social contract, the consent of the governed as a necessary condition for the legitimacy of power. The Whigs, the first organized party of liberal tendency, incor­ porated Locke's demands of popular consent, and attenuated this requisite of governmental legitimacy by absorbing Hobbes's notion of the preservation of princely authority. Classical liberalism produced a brilliant constellation of thinkers: Benjamin Constant and Alexis de Tocqueville in France, J. S. Mill in England, Giuseppe Mazzini in Italy and Alexander Herzen in Russia. Locke, who was only moderately influential in the Glorious Revolution, would become a decisive influence in the formation of the liberal thought of American independence.

Conservative Liberalism The excesses perpetuated during the French revolution by Marat and Danton's populism, by Robespierre's jacobinism and terror policies, and the final culmination of Napoleon's authoritarian imperialism incited a conservative reaction in liberal thought at the end of the eighteenth century and during the first half of the nineteenth century. It became necessary to shield society against the shattering oscillations of irresponsible populism and dogmatic repression. In his critique of the French revolution, Edmund Burke (1729-97) shapes the profile of conservative liberalism. He will be followed in England by Thomas Macaulay (1800-59), John Dalberg, Baron Acton (1834-1902), Walter Bagehot (1826-77), the great editor of The Economist from 1861 until his death, and by the Darwinist evolutionism of Herbert Spencer (1830-1903). In France, conservative liberalism will be introduced by Franc;:ois-Rene Chateaubriand (1768-1848). French liberalism of the conservative tendency will differentiate between the positive moment of the Great Revolution in 1789 and a negative one in 1793. With variations that conform to the vicissitudes of French politics, one may include in the category of conservative liberalism: Michelet (1798-1874) who supported the Second Empire, Remusat (1797-1875) who defended Thiers but maintained his - 26 -

Merquior and Liberalism

preference for a constitutional monarchy, Edgar Quinet (1 803-75) who sustained the feasibility of liberalism without class antagonisms, and Ernest Renan (1 823-92) who defended a non-democratic liberalism. The fourth chapter of Liberalism Old and New deals with the analysis of conservative liberalism and also includes a section that explores a particular trend within this liberalism denominated as the 'liberalism of nation builders' represented by the works and activi­ ties of two prominent Argentine thinkers: Domingo Sarmiento (1 8 1 1-88) and Juan Bautista Alberdi ( 1 8 1 0-S4). As an heir of the political beliefs of the Enlightenment concerning the necessary compatibilization between the negative and positive freedoms of the citizen and the imperative need of a public rationality, Sarmiento demonstrates that the basis for this compatibilization is the universalization of popular education by means of the public school. In his seminal book Facundo: dvilizadon o barbarie (1 845) he places himself decisively in favour of urban civilization against the mandates of rural caudillismo. Alberdi faces another dilemma: an Argentina invaded by masses of immi grants. Given his preoccupation with salvaging a sense of Argentine nationality, Alberdi advocates the denial of political rights to the immi grants. Natalie Botana, quoted by Merquior, defines Alberdi as the Edmund Burke of European immi gration. His proposal consists of a conservative modernization that would favour industrialization and progress in conditions that would protect the republic from the irrationality of the masses and preserve Argentine culture from the denationalizing influence of the immi grants. Merquior's fine analysis of Sarmiento and Alberdi constitutes a most welcome innovation since it surpasses the narrow limitations of the discussions of the great public ideas that are usually restricted to the Euro-American ambience. Nevertheless, his lucid and unprejudiced discussion is hampered by the lack of inclusion of fundamental exponents of other Latin American liberal traditions. Notably absent are the representatives of Mexican liberalism as embodied by Benito Juarez and the conservative-progressivist policies of Porfirio Diaz. Both Brazilian liberalism as exemplified by Antonio Carlos de Andrade and Ruy Barbosa, and the extraordi­ nary effort of nation building undertaken by the Chilean Diego Portales, were also neglected. - 27 -

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Merquior's study of conservative liberalism ends with an analysis of German thought linked to the idea of the Rechtsstaat, and it includes a penetrating discussion of Max Weber. This analysis is followed by a critique of the thought of Benedetto Croce in Italy and of the ideas of Ortega y Gasset in Spain. German thought is guided by two main tenets: Wilhelm von Humbolt's concept of the limits of the state, envisioned as a 'watchman' overseeing the welfare of the civil liberties; and Kant's concept of self-cultivation as the supreme object of being, which requires the adequate supervision of the state. Within this line of thought, the figure of Max Weber (1864-1920) is foregrounded as the thinker who admirably united the German historicist tradition to the demands, impregnated by positivism, of a scientific sociology. Weber realizes that the process of modernization consists of an expansion of instrumental ratio­ nality and that the social agent of this instrumentalized rationality is an entrenched bureaucracy. Thus, modern societies confront a double peril: bureaucratic despotism, and in the rebuttal of bureau­ cracy the advent of a charismatic authoritarianism. In order to overcome this double risk, Weber emphasizes the merits of a parlia­ mentary regime as a democratic-rational form of selecting political leadership. Benedetto Croce (1866-1952) is the other eminent figure analysed by Merquior. From the perspective of a profound histori­ cist commitment (that reincorporates the legacy of Giambattista Vico), Croce sustains liberalism as a moral need, in contrast to the notion of liberalism as economic utilitarianism. Croce's great contribution is the identification, within the historical process, of a cumulative growth of liberty that is neither progressive nor linear. This compromise, with liberty as a moral imperative but also as an evolutionary tendency in history, led Croce to consistently maintain an antifascist opposition. Merquior's discussion of the great exponent of conservative liberalism ends with an analysis of Ortega's thought. Ortega (1883-1955) faces contradictory demands. On the one hand, he displays a profound liberalism that stems from his all-encompassing humanism. On the other, he expresses an acute rejection of mass man. This mass man should not be identified as a member of the proletariat, but rather as psychocultural type to be found in all social classes. He represents the being devoid of superior ideals - 28 -

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whose sole commitment is centred on his own welfare. Ortega's liberalism leads him to support the initial efforts of the republic and to oppose Franquism and communism. Ortega's psychocultural elitism induces him, in my opinion, to a modality of conservative liberalism that could be best defined as the universal maintenance of negative freedom and a selective meritocratic approach towards positive freedom. Merquior's analysis bypasses what I consider to be this crucial aspect of Ortega's thought. Concluding his masterly discussion of liberalism from the classical to the conservative modality, Merquior distinguishes, within this process, five central notions expressed by: (1) natural rights, as upheld in the works of Locke and Paine; (2) civic humanism, as portrayed by Jefferson and Mazzini; (3) historical stages, as formu­ lated by Smith and Constant; ( 4) utilitarianism, as explored by Bentham and Mill; (5) historical sociologism, as featured in the thought of Tocqueville. Liberalism is a process that emerges from the Whig's demands of religious liberty and constitutional government. Such revindications were perceived as the necessary steps towards the achievement of democracy. The excesses of democracy became a source of concern for the conservative liberals who, in the guise of neo-Whigs, sought to moderate democracy according to more conservative guidelines. This resulted in three modalities of liberalism: (1) the Burkean variety that encompasses Macaulay, Maine, Alberdi, Renan, Acton; (2) Spencer's Darwinist idiom; (3) historicism with its elitist impli­ cations as represented in the thought of Weber and Ortega.

The New Liberalism Albert Dicey, whom Merquior quotes, observes that legal reformism in England had two phases in the twentieth century. The first phase from 1825 to 1870 was directed towards the defence and expansion of individual liberty. The second, from 1870 onwards, had as its main goal the achievement of social justice. The strong social commitment of late nineteenth century liber­ alism characterized it as a social liberalism. The great British repre­ sentative of social liberalism was Thomas Hill Green (1836-82). From the starting point of a Kantian Hegelianism, Green affirmed the need to maintain the principle of liberty free of coercion and - 29 -

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guided towards a positive freedom that would guarantee all men the plenitude of their self-development - the German Bildung. The aim of public action should be social improvement. That implies that alongside the defence of individual rights, there must be a demand for equal opportunities and an ethical community. John Hobson (1858-1940) and Leonard Hobhouse (1864-1929) share Green's social concerns. Hobhouse insisted on the demands of a positive freedom. Renowned for his 1902 Imperialism, Hobson claimed that imperialist practice implied an excessive accumulation of wealth and saving and that, consequently, it required the coercive conquest of new markets. Green's ideas were maintained and put to practical use by William Beveridge (1879-1963). From the Reform Club in 1942, Beveridge elaborated the original statutes of the British welfare state. In France, social liberalism was imbued with republicanism. After the debunking of the Second Empire, the issue at stake was how to promote institutional reconstruction without resorting to the populism of the Commune and without resurrecting the conserva­ tive monarchy. The basic ideas of the movement were launched by Claude Nicolet in L'Idee Republicaine en France in 1870. Social liberalism in France was subdivided into several modalities: the neo-Girondistes with Quinet, neo-Dantonists with Michelet and Victor Hugo, republican positivists identified with Jules Ferry and Gambetta, and republican spiritualists such as Charles Renouvier. Social liberalism in France undertook the defence of Dreyfus. The most recent exponents of this modality of social liberalism were Emile Durkheim (1858-1917) and Leon Duguit (1859-1925). With Alain (Emile Chartier, 1868-1951), the ultimate expression of this tendency acquired an extreme connotation of utmost individu­ ality that bordered on anarchism. Alain would prove to be vastly influential in the intellectual formation of Sartre, Simone Weil and Raymond Aron. This same tendency, with greater social propensi­ ties, will be espoused by Albert Camus (1913-60) in his novels. Social liberalism had important defenders. In Italy, Piero Gobetti (1901-26) assumed an antifascist position and rose in the defence of an idealist social liberalism based on the masses; and Carlo Roselli (1899-1937) sought to shape a democratic socialism without Marxist affiliation. In Spain, Salvador de Madariaga (1886-1978) would propound an organic vision of democracy. - 30 -

Merquior and Liberalism

In Germany, social liberalism can be identified with the support it lent to the Weimar Republic. The most prominent exponent is Hans Kelsen (188 1-1 973). In a work written in 1 930, Concerning the Essence and the Value of Democracy, the eminent jurist suggests that the essence of democracy consists in the autonomy to generate norms within a multiple party system. The United States offered a relevant contribution to social liber­ alism with the policies of Woodrow Wilson (1 856-1 924) embodied in his 'New Freedom' programme, and with John Dewey's (1 859-1 952) emphasis on education. In more recent terms, Britain has provided an important contri­ bution to social liberalism in the figures of Keynes (1883-1 945) and the novelist George Orwell (1 903-50). Within a conservative tendency and a neopositivist perspective, Karl Popper develops in antistatal terms his famous dictum: 'minimize misery, instead of maximizing happiness'. In this same line of reasoning, the intellec­ tual relevance of Sir Isaiah Berlin can be measured in his Two Concepts of Liberty (1958). In this work, the distinction between the negative and the positive freedoms highlights the imperative need to seek rational goals by avoiding the pitfalls of authoritarianism.

Neoliberalism 'New Liberalism' as defined by Merquior is characterized as liberal thought impregnated with social concerns. Neoliberalism, on the other hand, assumes a distinct confi guration and constitutes itself as a harsh critique of state paternalism. Von Mises (1 88 1-1933) denouncing the abuses of social regulation with his libel Sodalism (1 922), Hayek (b. 1 899) sustaining market liberalism with minimal government interference, and finally, Milton Friedman (b. 1912) with his unrestrained defence of the market economy - all exemplify the extremely conservative demarcations of Neoliberalism. Neoliberalism reappropriates the individualist theme of classical liberalism as defined by the conservative stance of Burke, Macaulay and Bagehot. The great influence of this line of thought is quite evident in contemporary politics and is represented by Thatcher in Great Britain and Reagan in the United States, and has become widespread in other nations, most notably in the Third World. The fact that economically neoliberal governments - despite the - 31 -

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evidence that they are frequently based on political authoritarianism - have achieved important economic feats in southeast Asia, in Latin American countries such as Pinochet's Chile (whole economic policies are being continued in the democratic govern­ ment of Aylwin) and in Mexico, has conferred great popularity on the neoliberal ideology. Merquior evaluates the main neoliberal thinkers with great compe­ tence. However, he regrettably fails to differentiate between the proven validity of a market economy that relies on the dynamic impulse of the private corporation as a means of assuring the best allocation and management of resources, from the purely ideological aspects of Neoliberalism that demonizes the state and, upon its dismantling, enforces the law of the jungle on societies whose stability was obtained thanks to the healthy effects of the welfare state.

Sociological Liberalism Merquior's fifth and last chapter contains two final sections. One section deals with what we could denominate as 'sociological liber­ alism' and consists, fundamentally, of a critical analysis of the thought of Raymond Aron and Ralf Dahrendorf The other deals with the Neocontractarians, such as Rawls, Nozick and Bobbio. In a narrow sense, one cannot ascribe Aron's and Dahrendorfs thought to sociological liberalism. Such an ascription only makes sense if it is applied to the liberalism of Spencer and Durkheim. Spencer belongs to this category due to his determinist evolu­ tionism, and Durkheim belongs to the same category due to his sociological determinism. Aron and Dahrendorf are both eminent sociologists and staunch liberals. For both thinkers, liberalism is not a consequence of sociological norms. As competent sociologists they go beyond the merely ideological aspects of various forms of liberalism that are equally present on the left and on the right. Raymond Aron (1905-83), who was endowed with the same multifaceted traits as Merquior (in fact, he expressed his admiration of the latter with the famous exclamation 'ce gar�on a tout lu'), upheld a moderately conservative liberalism with regard to the relation between individual-society-state and emphasized negative freedom and the relevance of the market. On the other hand, he favoured prudent state regulation of economic relations (anticyclical - 32 -

Merquior and Liberalism

measures) and social relations (equal opportunity and protection of the impoverished social sectors). Aron's militant denunciation of the fallacies of communism and leftist populism made him - during several long years - the butt of the hostility of most members of the intelligentsia. His extraordi­ nary intellectual honesty, enormous competence and exceptional lucidity won him the admiration of all serious intellectuals, even before the collapse of communism in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union historically confirmed the justness of his critique. Merquior's analysis of Aron is centred on his historical-sociological works, rather than on his conceptions of liberalism which were predominantly disseminated through his ample journalistic output. Ralf Dahrendorf, born in 1929, shares with Raymond Aron the analysis of contemporary industrial society, and he has dedicated himself to interpreting the conflicts that are inherent to it. Particularly relevant in regard to this issue is Dahrendorf s book The Modern Soda[ Conflict (1988). Dahrendorf illustrates how in contemporary industrial society (soon transforming itself into a postindustrial society), class struggles in their nineteenth century format are overtaken by another type of conflict. The universaliza­ tion of educational opportunities and the widespread adoption of a middle class style greatly reduced class differentiations. A large salariat extracted from both blue and white collar workers was formed. Despite their profits and decision-making power gained from capital accumulation, even entrepreneurs form part of the salariat sector as company executives. The new social conflict in contemporary advanced societies is between 'provisions' and 'entitlements'. Social legislation and union agreements confer 'entitlements' independently of the specific 'provisions' that exist, and thus frequently foment conflicts based on the disparities between acquired rights and the actual material means of satisfying them. The current debate in Brazil vis-a-vis the demands of retired employees is an evident example of this issue. This type of conflict elicits two opposing socio-political movements: on one side the majority (the employees) with their entitlement demands; on the other side the 'Thatcherites', who guard the limited provisions and impose restrictions on the admin­ istration of entitlements. Within this framework, both Dahrendorf and Aron favour a radical liberalism that assures a healthy equilib­ rium between provisions and entitlements. - 33 -

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The Neocontractarians John Rawls (b. 1921) became famous relatively late with his book A Theory of Justice (1971). Rawls's reconsideration of the social contract thesis involves a perception that what is pre-eminently at stake is not really the legitimacy of power that so preoccupied the utilitarians, but rather the rules of justice. Rawls's social contract is expressly hyp othetical. It seeks to explore what kind of social contract rational beings would produce if, ignorant of both their material resources and social ranking, they had to establish the laws ofjustice. According to Rawls, this situation would lead to the adoption of two norms: (1) each individual must have the right to a maximum freedom that is compatible with the freedom of other individuals; (2) social inequality can be admitted as long as it benefits those who are in less advantageous positions. These postulations place Rawls within the lines of reasoning of social liberalism. Robert Nozick (b. 1938), in his Anarchy, State and Utopia (1974) adopts an opposing stance maintaining, also on neocontractarian premises, the need to minimize the role of the state. This character­ istically places him within a neoliberal tendency. One of the greatest intellectual figures of our time, Norberto Bobbio (b. 1909), has been concerned with the future of democ­ racy and with the feasibility of a good society and a good govern­ ment. His book State, Government and Sodety (1955) can lay claim to being the best contemporary survey of political theory. According to Bobbio, the good state should present five basic characteristics: (1) its insertion within a polycratic environment; (2) the presence of limitations on power; (3) an assurance to its citizens of their participation in its norm-making; (4) the possession of democratic means of electing its political representatives; (5) respect for civic and civil rights. Similarly to Rawls, Bobbio is a social liberal and a democratic liberal.

Conclusion In a brief final summary, Jose Guilherme Merquior presents a synthesis of his own book. Liberalism is a process of ideas and practices that has developed throughout the last three centuries. In - 34 -

Merquior and Liberalism

practices that has developed throughout the last three centuries. In order to understand this lengthy and varied process, it is important to define six main points: 1. Protoliberalism The notions of rights and constitutional narrowness stem from the Middle Ages. The Renaissance contributed with the ideology of humanism and citizenship. The culmination of the formative process of liberalism is rendered in the Enlightenment of the eighteenth century. With the Enlightenment, a secular and progressive understanding of history is given. From this basis, romanticism emphasizes the importance of the individual. 2. Classical liberalism Classical liberalism shaped the theory of modem liberty (Constant) and of the modem political system (The American Founding Fathers). The thesis of classical economics (Smith, Ricardo) and the theory of economic liberty constitute a central legacy of classical liberalism. The theory of democracy with Bentham and Tocqueville, as well as John Mill's theory of liberal individualism, form part of the classical canon. 3. Conservative liberalism Towards the middle of the nineteenth century, the excesses of the French revolution and the advent of Napoleon Bonaparte gave rise to a search for a protective mechanism against the negative aspects of democracy. Bagehot, Spencer, the Germans of the Rechtsstaat, Croce and Ortega advocated an elitist liberalism. 4. New liberalism The end of the nineteenth century witnessed the emergence of a form of liberalism that was strongly committed to social welfare. Green, Hobhouse, Kelsen, Keynes and Dewey formulate the position of social liberalism. On the other hand, communist totalitarianism and fascism generate a liberal counteroffensive with Popper, Orwell, Camus and Berlin. The Neocontractarians Rawls and Bobbio espouse the new modality of social liberalism. 5. Neoliberalism In opposition to social liberalism, Neoliberalism retains a conservative position and advocates the minimization of the state and the growth of the free market. 6. Sociological liberalism The great contemporary thinkers of modem society, Aron and Dahrendorf, emphasize the necessity of a - 35 -

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equilibrium between entitlements and provisions, between the expansion of freedom and a great social equity.

Liberalism Old and New, the last work of the great essayist Jose Guilherme Merquior, is also his most representative work. It illus­ trates the author's immense erudition, exceptional mental acuteness and intellectual lucidity, and, implicitly, his political convictions. This book constitutes the most comprehensive contemporary study of the process of liberalism throughout the last three centuries. It represents a veritably encyclopedic critical survey of this theme. As I previously mentioned, it would have enhanced the author's unprejudiced inclusion of important Latin American thinkers such as Sarmiento and Alberdi if he had also commented on the most relevant liberal ideas and experiences of such nations as Brazil, Chile and Mexico. Jose Guilherme Merquior underwent a gradual change in his political convictions: from an initial social democratic tendency modelled on San Tiago Dantas, to a severe critique of the limitations of the state that led him towards a conservative liberalism; and finally, in his maturity he veered towards a social liberalism. The high regard he manifested towards the great representatives of conservative liberalism, notably Hayek, inhibited him from critically uncovering the ideological elements contained in Neoliberalism. In my extensive conversation with Jose Guilherme Merquior I had the opportunity of perceiving that his exceptional lucidity and intellectual honesty led him to critically recognize the marked ideological colouring that is embedded within neoliberal thought. Similarly to Aron and Dahrendorf, Merquior supported a liber­ alism that would balance the maximization of freedom with an ample element of social equity. The critique of neoliberal ideology, although not directly expressed in Liberalism Old and New, is nevertheless a feature of Merquior's thinking and is apparent in his comments on new liberalism and in his evaluation of the works of Aron and Dahrendor£ The series of articles that were initiated on 5 January 1992 and published by President Collor were directly conditioned by the theme of a text that Merquior had given the Brazilian President at the end of 1990. These articles make explicit the social-liberal contents of Merquior's last intellectual formulations. - 36 -

-3Modernity and Postmodernity in the Thought of Jose Merquior GRE G O RY R. JOHNSON

J.

G. Merquior was a friend of reason and a defender of modernity. His many works defy easy disciplinary categorization, ranging from aesthetics and literary criticism, to politics and social policy, to what might be called 'interdisciplinary social theory', which includes his best known English-language works - The Veil and the Mask, Rousseau and Weber, Foucault, From Prague to Paris, Western Marxism and Liberalism Old and New - treating such topics as the sociology of modernity, ideology, and legitimacy; the philosophy of history and of the human sciences; and liberal political theory. 1 These works are unified and animated by a sustained defence of moder­ nity - social, political and intellectual. This defence has two moments: a positive account of modernity, and a negative critique of antimodern and postmodern thinkers. In this essay I wish to survey and assess both moments of Merquior's defence of modernity. I shall argue (1) that Merquior's defence suffers from an overly oppositional understanding of the

1 The Veil and the Mask: Essays on Culture and Ideology (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1 979) ; Rousseau and Weber: Two Studies in the Theory of Legitimacy (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1 980; henceforth cited as RW) ; Foucault (London: Fontana, 1 985; Berkeley: University of California Press, 1 987; henceforth cited as F) ; From Prague to Paris: A Critique of Structuralist and Post-Struduralist 111ought (London: Verso / New Left Books, 1 986; henceforth cited as PTP) ; Western Marxism (London: Paladin, 1 986; hence­ forth cited as WM) ; and Liberalism Old and New (Boston: Twayne, 1 991 ; henceforth cited as LON) .

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relationship between modernity and its postmodern critics, leading him to overlook the fact that both the positive and negative features of postmodernism are simply radicalizations of the positive and negative features of modernity itself; and (2) that the strengths of Merquior's work are best affirmed and its weaknesses best overcome by appropriating it within the context of a 'critical modernist' approach to the understanding and legitimation of the institutions and practices characteristic of modernity and liberalism - an approach that draws much inspiration from unlikely sources and places Merquior in rather strange company: Kant, Hegel, Merleau-Ponty, Ricoeur, Oakeshott and, especially, Gadamer and Hayek.

In Defence of Modernity The positive aspects of Merquior's defence of modernity can, for the most part, be found in three books: The Veil and the Mask: Essays on Culture and Ideology, Rousseau and Weber: Two Studies in the Theory of Legitimacy, and Liberalism Old and New. Merquior's

conception of modernity - deeply influenced by such theorists as Hegel, Weber and Gellner - is essentially that of the Enlightenment. Modernity is a cultural movement characterized by the progressive social concretization of reason and freedom. By 'reason' is meant, primarily, modern science, which - breaking from classical science's valorization of contemplative (that is, useless) knowledge - is conceived as a techne directed towards the domina­ tion and transformation of nature, nature too having been recon­ ceived. In contradistinction to the classical idea of nature as a fixed and eternal order founding and bounding the realm of human action, modern science conceives of nature as, in theoretical terms, simply the level of analysis at which science is currently stalled, the answers to the latest set of scientific questions - questions which are, in principle, always open to revision and replacement with a new set of questions and a coordinate set of answers in an open­ ended, potentially infinite progression. In practical terms, nature is the latest obstacle to be overcome in the expansion of human power, the latest problem to be solved, after which a new obstacle will present itself and a new solution will be demanded in what is, again, an open-ended, potentially infinite progression. In short, for - 38 -

Modernity and Postmodernity in the Thought ofJose Merquior

modernity, nature does not provide the immutable outer bound­ aries of human action; rather, nature itself has become the bound­ less arena of human action, the 'situation' in which we exercise our freedom, all of the problems and impediments we encounter being regarded as, ultimately, soluble. This progressive overcoming of all merely temporary impedi­ ments provides a clue to the underlying teleological subordination of reason, actualized through the progress of science, to freedom, actualized through the progress of emancipation: the emancipation of all individuals from all limits to autonomy - natural, social and psychological, whether imposed externally or internally. Autonomy, then, is the ultimate telos of modernity; modernity is the progressive concretization of the universalistic - that is, egali­ tarian - individualism which ultimately has its historical roots in Christianity, and, to a lesser extent, Stoicism. In concrete terms, modernity is characterized by the progress of science, secularization and industrialization; the rise of the market economy and modem 'civil society', and beyond them the rise of socialism and the welfare state; the spread of liberalism and democ­ racy; the origin of nationalism and the nation-state; the end of the oikos (the family primarily as social production and reproduction unit) and its replacement with companionate marriage and the modem family, a social unit ideally based on love; 2 the decline of republican virtue, direct democracy and 'the public realm', in favour of increasingly mediated, professionalized and bureaucratic political orders (part of an overall trend towards abstract, institu­ tionally and symbolically mediated social relationships); the growth of global trade, communications and cultural formations; and so forth, without bound or measure. 3 Merquior sees the legitimation of modernity as the task of 2 For indications that the 'modem' family has appeared in premodem times, particu­ larly in England, see Alan MacFarlane, The Origins of English Individualism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1979) , and Jack Goody, T11e Development of the Family and Marriage in Europe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983). 3 John R. Love, in Antiquity and Capitalism: Max Weber and the Sodological Foundations of Roman Civilization (New York: Routledge, 1991) , argues persuasively that central features of modernity, such as the end of the oikos and the rise of market capitalism, were present in Roman civilization. Hegel, in the Philosophy of Right, trans. T. M. Knox (Oxford: Clarendon, 1952) , points out other, more negative features of modernity that were present in Roman civilization: the loss of a common ethical life, the usurpation of the public realm by the imperial bureaucracy, the rise of atomistic individualism constrained by abstract and mechanical laws, etc. See especially pp. 221-2.

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Gregory R. Johnson modern social theory, which he describes in the Introduction to Rousseau and Weber. Modern social theory is characterized by four main elements. First is materialism, broadly defined not as a form of reductionism, but simply as 'a concern for determinisms affecting social processes'; 4 by 'determinisms' Merquior means not simply causal necessitation, but also the objective constraints imposed upon free agents by their historical situation. Second is empiridsm, again broadly defined as the abandonment of rationalistic speculation about the essences of man and social phenomena in favour of historical investigation into the evolution, structure and functioning of actual societies. Third is what I shall call antireductionism; Merquior gives only one example of this in his Introduction - the analytical separation of society from the state, that is, the recogni­ tion of the autonomy of social phenomena and their irreducibility to other sorts of phenomena - but his work is marked throughout by a general antireductionist strategy. Fourth is an 'emandpatory drive'. 5 Merquior illustrates this in terms of Kant's essay 'What Is Enlightenment?' which defines Enlightenment in terms of autonomy, and emancipation as 'man's release from his self­ incurred tutelage'. 6

Modernity and Individualism Merquior's own positive vision of modern society emerges most clearly between the lines of Rousseau and Weber. The book consists of two long essays, on Rousseau and Weber respectively, framed by an Introduction and a long Conclusion. I regret that my attention to the political subtext of these essays makes it impossible to linger over the texts themselves, for they contain many exegetical and argumentative felicities which deserve careful consideration. Merquior's basic method is to set out both the strengths and weaknesses of Rousseau's and Weber's works, using Weber to criti­ cize and complement Rousseau and Rousseau to criticize and complement Weber. What emerges is a hybrid intellectual who is neither Rousseau nor Weber, but who speaks, to put it diplomati­ cally, with a slight Brazilian accent . . . 4 RW, p. 10. 5 RW, p. 11, emphasis in original. 6 RW, p. 11.

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Modernity and Postmodernity in the Thought ofJose Merquior

What Merquior takes from Rousseau is the idea that the egali­ tarian individualism of modernity is best realized politically by 'participatory democracy': Put in a nutshell, the greatest achievement of Rousseau 's political philos­ ophy was the reasoned identification of legitimacy with the idea of participa­ tory deliberative democracy. As a result of such constant individual participation in the politics of sovereignty, the general will encom­ passes an optimum of liberty and equality. If political equality is indeed . . . the hard core of the democratic ideal, and if on the other hand, political equality depends to a large extent on other dimensions of equality, then Rousseau's concern for liberty within maximized equality is simply the best classical formulation of the very idea of democracy. 7

While Merquior affirms both Rousseau's egalitarianism and his individualism, he is concerned to reject the rest of Rousseau's ratio­ nale for democracy, particularly his moral antimodernism, revulsion against history, attachment to the polis and republican virtue, and contempt for specifically bourgeois culture and institutions. Merquior is also masterful in rebutting the common criticisms of Rousseau: the conservative criticism that Rousseau is an antinomian individualist; the liberal criticism that Rousseau's account of democracy is illiberal and even proto-totalitarian; the view, held by some contemporary French anthropologists, that Rousseau's work offers only a sweeping critique of modernity rather than a project of reconciliation with it. Merquior puts forth instead a radically individualistic interpretation of The Sodal Contract. He emphasizes the role of individual self­ interest and utilitarian reasoning in creating the social contract in the first place. He also stresses that, once the social contract is entered into, Rousseau's general will contains within it an intrinsic space for individual rights and private interests: The strength and freedom of the individual, says Rousseau, are the prime instruments of his ability to survive. How can he, as he becomes a member of an all-demanding social covenant, surrender them to society without doing harm to himself? . . . The answer to this question lies in the idea of 'a form of association that will defend and protect with the whole common force the person and the goods of each associate, and in which everyone, while uniting himself with all, still obeys himself alone and remains as free as before' (bk. I, ch. 7 RW, p. 202, first emphasis added.

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VI). Have we not indeed seen that the prime cause of the social bond was the general realization by men of their 'common interest'? To a quite utilitarian question, a perfectly utilitarian answer. 8 Having rejected the antimodernist elements of Rousseau's thought but accepted his egalitarian-individualist rationale for democracy, Merquior turns to Weber for a new, more satisfactory theory of modernity to complement Rousseau's participatory democracy. He finds this account in Weber's conception of rational­ ization. At the root of Weberian rationalization is a revolution in thinking, the 'disenchantment' of the world which can be expressed in specifically philosophical terms as the fragmentation of the true, the good and the beautiful, which in classical and Christian thinking are treated as transcendental aspects of the One, and which in Kantian philosophy are the objects of the three critiques. In modernity, the 'true' - that is, what is ultimately real is reconceived as matter in motion, stripped of all teleology and form, and therefore of all intrinsic goodness and beauty; goodness and beauty are then subjectivized and aestheticized. Corresponding to the reconception of the true is the reconception of that faculty directed towards knowing the true: reason. In classical philosophy, reason is teleologically subordinated to the pursuit of the intrinsi­ cally good and to the contemplation of the intrinsically beautiful that is, form. By contrast, in modernity the good and the beautiful are subjectivized; and reason, deprived of its natural ends, is subor­ dinated to the passions: that is, reason becomes instrumental, and the processes of life and society are brought under increasing instru­ mental-rational regulation in the name of economic and adminis­ trative efficiency - for the satisfaction of desire, and under the guidance of increasingly impersonal, formal, ultimately arbitrary (though not necessarily unreasonable) norms. In an age of disenchantment and rationalization, all forms of legitimation based upon appeals to faith, a teleological conception of human nature, or the inherent sanctity of tradition lose their power to persuade. We live in an age in which human autonomy, reason and freedom have reared up to their full height and have cast off all beliefs that cannot offer rational validation for themselves - that is, which cannot be subordinated to the conquest of nature and the emancipation of mankind. 8 RW, p. 21.

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It is in this context that Weber develops his theory of political legitimacy, with its taxonomy of legal-bureaucratic, traditional and charismatic forms of legitimacy. It is a theory that Merquior subjects to a sustained and withering - sometimes nitpicking critique, the essence of which is that Weber's understanding of legitimacy is recalcitrantly 'culturalist', meaning that it locates itself in a realm of belief, meaning, values and ineffable historical particu­ larities that lie outside the ken of instrumental reason and utilitarian calculation and therefore place moral limits on their scope and power, rather than falling within their boundaries and thus under their critical scrutiny. In rejecting Weber's culturalism, Merquior is rejecting any values that impede the utilitarian satisfaction of natural (that is, bourgeois) passions through the application of instrumental rationality. Merquior ejects Weber's theory of legitimacy from his theory of modernity in order to replace it with one that is wholly instrumental-rational or utilitarian. Merquior held that this utilitarian criterion of legitimation is best satisfied politically in Rousseauian democracy - suitably stripped of its antimodernist, 'culturalist' republican sentiments, reconciled to bourgeois civilization, and subordinated to the satisfaction of consumer desires. In short, the only institutions and norms that can claim legitimacy are those which we have freely given ourselves through a process of collective deliberation and decision-making that is entirely utilitarian: directed towards the preservation, enhancement and satisfaction of specifically bourgeois cultural values. What is the scope of Merquior's Rousseauian democracy? How far does it extend into the economic realm? Does it lie closer to the libertarian minimal state, or to social and economic democracy? Merquior was a classical liberal insofar as he thought that social and political institutions should arise out of, express and satisfy the value preferences of self-interested individuals. He was not, however, a libertarian. He was critical of what he called (quite unfairly) the 'rabid "statephobia "' of Hayek and Nozick9 and believed that the market alone could not adequately express and satisfy the values characteristic of modernity. Specifically, he believed that the market must be supplemented by social democracy, bureaucracy, and even the democratization of the workplace. Who are to be the legislators of Merquior's social democracy? 9 LON, p. 1 46.

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Who is to harmonize the general will with the will of all by carefully crafting the proposals and programmes to be voted upon? One particularly revealing moment of Merquior's critique of Weber's theory of legitimacy is a long discussion of a hybrid possi­ bility neglected by Weber: charismatic bureaucracy, a form of techno­ cratic steering legitimated ultimately by material success and utilitarian reasoning, but which gives rise· to secondary forms of symbolic legitimation, such as democratic elections. Although these forms of legitimation originally gain their value through their instrumental relationship to material success, they gradually come to be valued in their own right. 1 0 In sum: from Rousseau, Merquior takes egalitarianism, individu­ alism and participatory democracy. From Weber he takes a theory of modernization which stresses the progressive triumph of instru­ mental rationality, value-relativism and bureaucratic administration. In the process, however, both theories are stripped of all 'culturalist' elements, all appeals to non-utilitarian criteria and non-instrumental rationality. Through this fusion, Merquior emerges as a virtual paradigm of the secular, technocratic, liberal democrat: somewhat like a contemporary American liberal, though his moralism was held in check by his knowledge of social science and social possibil­ ities; somewhat like a neoconservative, though without the faith in the effectiveness of legitimation by remnants of premodern tradi­ tions and belief systems.

Post-Liberalism and Historical Humanism What is one to make of this? My first reaction was, frankly, aston­ ishment. This is a vision of modern society rejected by social theorists from Daniel Bell and Edward Shils to Jurgen Habermas, one seemingly more at home in the pages of modernity's enemies than its defenders. Following theorists like Bell, I simply do not believe that Merquior's vision of a disenchanted, instrumental-utili­ tarian modernity is possible on its own terms; modern social and political institutions arise from and are sustained by premodern and even antimodern social factors - the common life of evolved tradi­ tions and practices; the Protestant ethic of self-denial, hard work 10 RW, pp. 1 22-30.

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and capital accumulation; religion and other forms of spiritual community; non-calculating, magnanimous civic virtue - all of which are in turn disenchanted and pulverized by modernity's all­ consuming drive for emancipation from any externally imposed limitations on the exercise of the will. It is, therefore, perhaps unsurprising that to my knowledge Merquior never so much as states, much less defends, his vision in positive terms. Nor does he deal, in any sustained and serious fashion, with the neoconservative and civic republican thinkers who are the most profound - indeed, to my mind, unanswerable critics of his position. Nor, too, is it surprising that we find that Merquior himself cannot sustain his own hyper-rationalist, hyper­ utilitarian account of modern political legitimacy, for when we ask not 'What legitimates modern political regimes?' but 'What legiti­ mates modern political legitimacy?' Merquior has no answer beyond the claim that his democratic, utilitarian technocracy makes the most sense, given modernity. But then the obvious questions are: What is modernity? Is it coherent or self-subverting? Why take it as given? Why not question its legitimacy? What legitimates it? Is Merquior's vision of modernity really 'given' at all? Here is where Merquior really gets interesting. Merquior legiti­ mates his rationalist-utilitarian account of modern political legitimacy by what is, in effect; an appeal to existential thrownness. It makes no sense to ask 'Why take modernity as given?', simply because it is given; we find ourselves thrown into the midst of the modem world. When we reflect upon our situation, we are faced with essentially two options regarding its legitimation. First, we can seek to under­ stand, criticize and transform our situation from within, drawing upon and thus affirming the self-critical and self-correcting impetus of modernity, particularly modernity's commitment to reason. Like Rousseau, we can ask not how to break out of the 'chains' of our historical situation, but how to make them legitimate, rational, bearable. Second, we can cast aside self-understanding and the self­ critical, self-correcting values of the Enlightenment, embrace any number of irrationalist 'total critiques' of modernity, and bash our heads against the walls of an uncomprehended reality - or, what is more likely, dissipate ourselves in an essentially aestheticist antipolitics of symbolic acts and rhetorical gestures. Merquior calls the second option 'hysterical humanism' or, more commonly, Kulturkritik. He himself embraces the first, calling it - 45 -

Gregory R . Johnson

'historical humanism'. It is the most provocative and least devel­ oped aspect of his thought. Historical humanism is charged with the task of tracing out and understanding - and then criticizing or legitimizing - the roots of the modem world into which we are thrown. The nature and parameters of this project are, I believe, best programmatically sketched not by Merquior, but by such thinkers as Gadamer, Hayek and Oakeshott. From this perspective, political theory is no longer about offering abstract arguments to 'found' political practices. Rather, it begins with an established set of political institutions, practices and tradi­ tions into which we are thrown - in our case, modern liberal democracy - and then seeks, through an act of historical­ hermeneutical retrieval, to uncover their historical roots and to articulate their structural logic. Once the historical roots and structural logic of the modem situation are exhumed, they are subject to critique, reform and legitimation. This, however, is not a task for the theorist as such. Postmodern political theory is, in general, loath to launch projects of cultural-political criticism and reform from some allegedly superior 'critical' viewpoint, preferring instead to leave criticism and reform where they have, for the most part, always been and should be: in the hands of situated, knowledgeable, practical agents. This does not, however, imply that a theorist cannot offer concrete plans for reform, but only that he cannot do so simply qua theorist, but only qua experienced, engaged agent drawing upon a store of specifically practical knowledge. Indeed, since theoretical reflection is situated in the matrix of practical knowledge, rather than detached from it and opposed to it, a purely theoretical intellect is impossible; therefore, it is unavoidable that all theorists are to some extent qualified to pronounce upon practical matters. By the same token, a purely practical agent, one whose actions are completely uninformed by theoretical presuppositions, is impos­ sible also. Such an agent would have to be incapable of reflecting upon and conceptually articulating his situation and practices. He would, moreover, have to be isolated from the theoretical presuppo­ sitions embedded in language, culture and tradition. It is necessary, therefore, to be able to separate those theoretical presuppositions that are enabling from those that are disabling. Thus postmodern theory has a second aspect: the sceptical-prophylactic project of deflating the pretensions of false philosophies and ideologies and of

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checking their deleterious effects on society. 1 1 Although Merquior's historical humanism embodies both the hermeneutical and the sceptical-prophylactic aspects of this postmodern approach, it is the latter aspect that is most developed. It is to this side of his work that we now turn.

Against Kulturkritik The opposite of modern social theory and historical humanism, what Merquior calls hysterical humanism or Kulturkritik, is the topic of three largely polemical works: Foucault, From Prague to Paris: A Critique of Structuralist and Post-Structuralist Thought, and Western Marxism. By Kulturkritik, Merquior simply means hatred (his word) of modernity. Of course, defined this generally, Kulturkritik is a phenomenon that spans the political spectrum, from conservatives longing for an idealized past to radicals longing for an idealized future. Merquior's actual use of the term is, however, usually much more specific and delimited. It refers to the hatred of specifically bourgeois institutions and culture. As such, Kulturkritik is primarily a phenomenon of the left: from its mildest expression in the progres­ sive, scientistic, industrialist anti-capitalism of the Old Left, to its most virulent manifestation in the New Left animus against science, technology, industry, progress and even rationality itself Merquior's concept of Kulturkritik refers, therefore, to approximately the same phenomenon that today's neoconservative cultural critics call the 'crisis in the humanities' or the 'politicization' of higher education. A close synonym is 'postmodernism', especially of the Francophone variety: Foucault, Lyotard, Derrida. The common denominator of instances of Kulturkritik is not their critical aspect, nor is it their cultural orientation. Merquior clearly believes that there is a legitimate realm for the criticism of modern culture, for he practises it all the time. The common denominator is, rather, the resources deployed in effecting cultural criticism. In WesternMarxism, Merquior claims that: 1 1 For two accounts of the nature and consequences of the deformation of practical reason by foundationalism, see Hans-Georg Gadamer, Reason in the Age of Sdence, trans. Frederick G. Lawrence (Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 1982), and F. A. Hayek, The Counter-Revolution of Sdence: Essays on the Abuse of Reason (1952), 2nd edn (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 1979).

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Gregory R. Johnson Kulturkritik exhibits little sense of social constraints, particularly of an economic or socio-economic nature. Indeed, what sets [it] apart, beyond a mere shift from economics into culture, is the combina­ tion of a cultural thematics and the near absence of infrastructural weight in the explanation of cultural and ideological phenomena. 12

Instead of drawing on social science as both a tool of cultural criti­ cism and as a critical delimitation of the powers and likely conse­ quences, intended and unintended, of social action - particularly emancipatory praxis - Kulturkritik draws upon purely moral motiva­ tions and criteria, specifically a progressively radicalized egalitarian individualism, which offers criticisms and pursues ideals without concern for social causes, social contexts and social consequences. The basic strategy of Merquior's critique of Kulturkritik is aston­ ishingly simple, but for all of its simplicity it is one not often tried or appreciated. A significant portion of antimodernist and postmod­ ernist Kulturkritik consists of factual claims - empirical claims, historical claims, claims about the interpretation of texts - which are either true or false in a fairly straightforward and unproblematic way. Merquior simply asks, 'Which is it? True or false?' and goes about assembling the best available evidence upon which to make the decision. If, however, one attempts to raise such factual considerations, the defender of Kulturkritik almost inevitably responds with a philosophical objection, specifically an epistemological objection to empiricism or to truth as such. Foucault, Derrida, etc. are said, for example, to 'problematize' truth and empirical knowledge; therefore, any attempt to confront them with facts is beside the point; it is simply a case of question-begging, for the status of facts is precisely what is at issue in the first place. The Kulturkritiker render themselves immune to all rational criticism by totalizing this sceptical gesture. By disavowing any explicit and substantive moral, political or epistemological commitments (which, of course, remain operative as unshakeable and dogmatic - because critically inaccessible - convictions), the Kulturkritiker render question-begging all criticisms that are not similarly totalistic, since these criticisms presuppose something - anything - that has been suspended in the 'scare quotes' of 'problematization'. Consider, for 12 WM, p. 4.

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example, the following passage from Mark Poster's negative review of Foucault: Theoretical and empirical work are interconnected: neither is very satisfying without the other. Concepts, principles of selection of data, explanatory strategies, hypotheses, political perspectives - all of these inform discourse in every discipline. At a minimum these elements of theory are reminders that no one has unmediated access to truth, that data are always shaped by the concerns of the knower in his/her present, that an insurmountable gap exists between the knower and the known, one that is always bridged in the produc­ tion of discourse but one that always bears the traces of the bridge being crossed. To accuse someone of having a theory that ' distorts the truth' , as Merquior does Foucault, is to say that one does not have much liking for that particular theory. 13

Passing by the self-contradiction of asserting that there is an 'insurmountable' gap that is 'always bridged', the thrust of this argument is clear. The criticism of a theory by reference to facts presupposes an essentially mystical 'unmediated access to the truth'; there is no such access; therefore, no theory can be criticized by reference to facts. Leaving aside the irony of the Cartesian odour of this allegedly postmodern scepticism, what is one to say to it? First, one should note that these 'problematizing' gestures are almost never followed up by any actual, serious epistemological analyses of truth and experience. Because of this dearth of serious analysis, one is led inevitably to suspect that one is being hoodwinked by a largely empty rhetorical gesture. More substantively, there is a very bad argument at work here: to wit, that because empiricism is certainly a bad account of our knowledge of the facts of reality, we now have licence to treat reality, facts, objectivity and reason themselves in a cavalier, even contemptuous, manner. But this, of course, is a disastrous non sequitur. Dispensing with empiricism does not license dispensing with empeiria, but simply demands that we undertake anew the task of accounting for the undeniable facts of our common world. In Merquior's words, 'the laudable desire to escape from the triviality of empiricism ought not to take the form of a neglect of the 13 Mark Poster, 'Why Not to Read Foucault', Critical Review 3 (1989), 155-60, 158.

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empirical . . .' 1 4 The drift of Merquior's attitude is, I think, well captured in a brilliant passage from Hannah Arendt's 'Truth and Politics': Do facts, independent of opinion and interpretation, exist at all? Have not generations of historians and philosophers of history demonstrated the impossibility of ascertaining facts without inter­ pretation since they must first be picked out of the chaos of sheer happenings (and the principles of choice are surely not factual data) and then be fitted into a story that can be told only in a certain perspective, which has nothing to do with the original occurrence? No doubt these and a great many more perplexities inherent in the historical sciences are real, but they are no argument against the existence of factual matter, nor can they serve as a justification for blurring the dividing lines between fact, opinion, and interpretation, or as an excuse for the historian to manipulate facts as he pleases. Even if we admit that every generation has the right to write its own history, we admit no more than that it has the right to rearrange the facts in accordance with its own perspective; we don't admit the right to touch the factual matter itsel£ To illustrate this point . . . During the twenties, so a story goes, Clemenceau, shortly before his death, found himself engaged in a friendly talk with a representative of the Weimar Republic on the question of guilt for the outbreak of the First World War. 'What, in your opinion', Clemenceau was asked, 'will future historians think of this trouble­ some and controversial issue?' He replied, 'This I don't know. But I know for certain that they will not say that Belgium invaded Germany. ' 1 5

We are, in short, dealing here with the kind of brute historical data which cannot be dismissed by any amount of epistemological or hermeneutical handwaving, simply because our knowledge of such data is always more certain and vivid than any of the sceptical arguments and rationalistic constructs that might be offered in their place. 1 6 14 RW, p. 221 . 1 5 Hannah Arendt, 'Truth and Politics,' in Between Past and Future: Eight Exerdses in Political 17iought (New York: Viking, 1968) , pp. 238-9. 1 6 This principle - that our knowledge of our common world and its contents is always more vivid and certain than any sceptical arguments against them - is the core of G. E. Moore's commonsensical refutations of various forms of scepticism about the external world. John 0. Nelson calls this 'the principle of weighted certainties', formulating it as 'we ought never give credence to that of which we are less certain over that of which we

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Third, even if we were to grant that there is no unmediated grasp of facts - and as a Gadamerian I see no good reason why we shouldn't - Poster's argument still does not stand. Every theory deals with a delimited realm of phenomena. To criticize a theory on the basis of fact is to argue that it deals with certain facts badly or not at all. In order to deploy these facts against the theory in question, one need not have an unmediated access to them; one need only have an access to them that is not mediated by the theory to be criticized, or by a rival theory which is being advanced, for that would involve question-begging. One could, for instance, simply grasp the facts in question by perception or any other form of mediate awareness besides historical and scientific theories. These theories do not, moreover, create out of whole cloth the facts that they attempt to interpret; rather, they attempt to interpret facts which we initially encounter by other (mediate) means: perception, hearsay, historical records, anomalies in previously accepted theoretical frameworks, etc. Finally, I think that in order to defend Merquior's approach, we must go beyond his own writings and self-understanding. The objection in question is specifically epistemological. I believe that Merquior eludes it ultimately because he implicitly presupposes a post-epistemological position: a non-foundationalistic, pragmatic account of ordinary and scientific knowledge, and a descriptive, that is, non-prescriptive, phenomenological account of the nature of philosophy. On such an account of knowledge, the existence of ordinary and scientific knowledge is a fait accompli, not an open question. Hence the descriptive, phenomenological conception of philosophy: if knowledge is an accomplished fact rather than an open question, then the real task incumbent upon philosophers is to give a descriptively adequate account of such knowledge fidelity to ordinary knowledge being the measure of what counts as genuine philosophy, rather than philosophy being the measure of what counts as genuine knowledge, as is the claim of foundation­ alism. If a philosophical account of knowledge ends up arguing for the dubitability, obsolescence or non-existence of ordinary knowl­ edge in order to offer something else in its place, then we know that such a philosophy has failed in its proper task, for instead of are more certain' . See his excellent little essay 'In Defense of Moore's "Proof of an External World"', Reason Papers, n. 15 (1990), 137-40. The quotes are from p. 139.

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conforming its categories to the contours of ordinary knowledge it is demanding that true knowledge conform to its categories, which are usually no more than rationalistic and reductionistic abridge­ ments of experience. As for the foundationalist contention that ordinary knowledge is criterionless and therefore uncritical and dogmatic prior to the philosophical legislation of norms: nothing could be further from the truth, for given a certain level of cognitive and cultural devel­ opment, what is more ordinary, more 'natural' - that is, traditional, habitual, second-natural - than rational criticism and persuasion? Critical criteria for evaluating what is and what is not knowledge are not created by philosophical legislation, but rather are the evolved products of the 'common law' of ordinary and scientific practice. Critical rationality is not exercised by suspending oneself in a basket outside of the world, but merely by taking up one's pen and responding to an offensive newspaper editorial. In short, ordinary and scientific knowledge provide us with the tools and purchase necessary to criticize philosophical constructs, and this, precisely, is what Merquior does.

Polemic versus Dialogue To a superficial reading, Merquior's polemical works often seem . . . superficial. This impression stems from several factors. First is the ease, elegance and humour of his writing, which - reminiscent, for instance, of Hume - allow the reader to glide swiftly and friction­ lessly past subtleties and difficulties that might better show up if he were forced to trudge slowly through thickets of a more Teutonic prose style. (I am reminded of Wittgenstein's exhortation against purified ideal languages: 'Back to the rough ground!') Second, Merquior often succumbs to the intellectual vices of substituting exegesis for argument, and irony for refutation. He is frequently just too polemical, delivering aphoristic potshots against psychoanalysis, modern art, hapless neo-Marxists, etc. where more sustained, subtle and charitable arguments would be appropriate. Third, for all of his erudition, Merquior has a tendency to argue like a lawyer rather than a scholar. Typically, a chapter of one of his polemical works consists of a quick synopsis of his chosen victim's ideas followed by a sometimes tedious brief reporting of the divergent opinions of

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other scholars. Frequently, these opinions are fascinating and illuminating. But frequently they are just as tendentious and questionable as the views being attacked, leaving one with more questions than answers and the sneaking suspicion that Merquior is grabbing any stick that he can to beat his opponents. This impres­ sion is reinforced by the contradictory nature of some of his arguments. For instance, in Western Marxism he reproaches Habermas for being excessively subject-centred in his criticisms of the spontaneous, undesigned, 'systems theoretic' forms of social integration characteristic of advanced industrial societies. 1 7 In Foucault, however, Merquior takes Foucault to task for analysing forms of domination in terms of spontaneous, undesigned systems rather than in terms of subjects who exercise power. 1 8 Finally, Merquior has a tin ear for philosophical themes; I find that he is too often just plain wrong when dealing with thinkers such as Heidegger. 1 9 Foucault and From Prague to Paris are, for instance, extremely thin when it comes to accounting for the absolutely crucial influences of Husserl, Heidegger and Nietzsche on Foucault and Derrida. (The account of Hegel in Western Marxism is far superior in this regard.) The critics, for the most part, have not been kind - with some justification. 20 17 WM, III, ch. 3. 18 F, ch. 8. 19 On Heidegger, see Merquior's 'El Logocidio Occidental' , Vuelta n. 149 (April 1989) , 7-11, and 'Heidegger: mas alla del nazismo', Vuelta, n. 142 (September 1988) , 58-61. 2° For mixed reviews, see, for instance, my review essay of From Prague to Paris, 'Without Sense or Reference', Reason Papers, n. 17 (1992) , and Ziad Elmarsafy's review of Foucault, MLN (Modert1 Language Notes), 103 (1988) , 1185-9. Two relentlessly hostile accounts of Foucault are Paul Bove's, in his 'The Foucault Phenomenon: The Problematics of Style', Foreword to Gilles Deleuze, Foucault, ed. and trans. Sean Hand (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1988) and Mark Poster's 'Why Not to Read Foucault' , cited i n note 13. Among Foucault's admirers are Allan Megill, author o f Prophets of Extremity: Nietzsd1e, Heidegger, Foucault, Derrida (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1985) , who provides a dust-jacket encomium for the American edition; Kenneth Minogue, in his review essay 'Domination-Obsessed' , Government and Opposition, 22 (1987) , 115-18; and Camille Paglia, who refers to Foucault as 'excellent' for 'hilariously expos[ing] elementary errors made by Foucault in every area he wrote about' in her 'Junk Bonds and Corporate Raiders: Academe in the Hour of the Wolf , Arion: A Journal of Humanities and the Classics, 3rd series, 1 (1991) , 190. See also Sonia Kruks's negative review essay of Western Marxism, 'Western Marxism: Tale of Woe?' , Critical Review, 2 (1988) , 114-26, and Raymond Tallis's positive review essay, 'A Cure for Theorrhea', Critical Review, 3 (1989) , 7-39. Merquior responds to Poster's review in Critical Review, 4 (1990) , 286-9 and to Kruks's in Critical Review, 3 (1989) , 200-2.

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The overly polemical, uncharitable quality of these works is no mere accident either; it is deeply rooted in Merquior's whole intel­ lectual project. It is important to note that Merquior's defence of modernity is primarily negative and indirect rather than positive and direct. Unlike such rare thinkers as Hegel or Weber or Gellner who, in effect, accept the burden of legitimating modernity through sustained historical investigations and systematic theoretical arguments, Merquior begins by accepting the legitimacy of the modern age and then seeks simply to ward off its critics. Describing the critics of modernity, he writes: 'Let no rhetoric conceal this: the burden of proof belongs to the accusers. '2 1 In other words, Merquior is a merely a defender, not a theorist of modernity. Now there is, of course, nothing intrinsically wrong with this sort of project. After all, not everyone can be a Hegel or a Weber or a Gellner. Furthermore, intellectual etiquette aside, there is a certain pragmatic justification for such tactics. It is impressive to see just how well Merquior's polemics, like those of some contempo­ rary neoconservative cultural critics, can clear away a certain amount of the epigonic underbrush that impedes intellectual progress (a flame-thrower being a more practical tool for this job than goat-like ruminations). The trouble with this approach, though, is that it is suited best for one-sided ideological polemics, not for serious intellectual dialogue. In spite of his occasional gestures of conciliation, Merquior's critical works give the impression of someone impatient with the give and take of dialogue, closed to the possibility of enriching or revising his own perspective by learning from his opponents, and, intellectually speaking, out for blood. Genuine intellectual communication does not, for instance, begin with the adversarial gesture of shifting the burden of proof onto the shoul­ ders of one's opponents. Rather, it requires that one always shoulder the burden of proving one's convictions against the most powerful arguments possible, even if that means one has to invent them oneself. In short, it requires that one adopt a permanent attitude of self-reflection and self-criticism. One must not argue like a lawyer, but listen like a judge. It is not enough to be a friend of reason; one must be a lover of wisdom as well. 21 PTP, p. 1 06.

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The Cultural Contradictions of Modernity Merquior's overly polemical style both supports and is supported by another shortcoming of his thought, one he shares with some neoconservative cultural critics. It is possible to begin a polemic only if the object of criticism is seen to be sufficiently different from one's own position. Furthermore, once one is committed to a polemical project, this will tend to head off the discovery of roots and goals common to both sides of the quarrel. This, however, is a failure of hermeneutical-historical reflection and self-knowledge, leading Merquior and the neoconservatives to a modernism that is more hys terical than historical. Specifically, it leads them to an overly oppositional understanding of the relationship of modernity to its postmodern critics. Their polemics are founded upon treating leftist Kulturkritik as something foreign and inimical to the mainstream of the Western tradition. But this is simply not the case. As Carl Rapp has argued brilliantly, postmodernists such as Lyotard and the deconstruction­ ists simply recapitulate, unconsciously, the narrative of high moder­ nity as articulated by the Enlightenment and Hegel: to wit, that the progress of human knowledge, both of self and world, leads to the progressive emancipation of mankind from limits to autonomy externally imposed by nature and history. 22 Kulturkritik simply represents a radicalization of modernity's universalistic ethics of egalitarianism, individualism, autonomy and emancipation. Further evidence for this thesis is provided by Merquior himsel£ For example, the portrait that emerges from Foucault - less as a conclusion than as an unintended consequence - is that Foucault's work illustrates the incompatibility of negative liberty (Merquior's ideal value) and modernity (Merquior's ideal era), specifically the incompatibility of negative liberty with progressive social rational­ ization, identified by Weber as an essential aspect of modernity. The ideal of negative liberty is one of the central and enduring aspects of cultural modernity. Negative liberty demands the creation of a social space in which the choices, preferences and will of each individual are sovereign - consistent with the equal 22 Carl Rapp, 'The Crisis of Reason in Contemporary Thought: Some Reflections on the Arguments of Postmodernism' , Critical Review, 5 (1991), 261-90.

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freedom of others. Although negative liberty is often defended as necessary for the pursuit of the good, such pursuit is not what defines the essence of negative liberty; negative liberty is not simply the liberty to do right, but the liberty to do wrong as well; it is compatible with both the pursuit of the good and of the evil, the common denominator of the two being the will, the choice, of the individual to do one or the other. Thus negative liberty is dedicated to securing the freedom of the will as such, abstracted from anything that would sway it either towards good or evil, such as education into a communal ethos or complete sociopathy, adherence to a code of abstract moral principles or an unprincipled emotivism. No idea makes more sense in the modern world than negative liberty, than the political right to do wrong - so long as this wrong does not violate the equal rights of others. Modernity, after all, was born not simply out of philosophical and scientific innovations, but out of the Reformation and Counter-Reformation, in which Europe was plunged into decades of bloodshed because differing religious groups could not agree to disagree, could not grant the right of others to be and do wrong. This political experience, amply confirmed in the centuries since, is the true foundation of liber­ alism, and the only foundation that it needs. Unfortunately, however, one might say that negative liberty makes too much sense. There is a pervasive tendency to totalize negative liberty by abstracting it from the concrete institutions and practices which actualize it and from the context of the other, competing values against which it is balanced. From the standpoint of such an abstract and totalized conception of negative liberty, all externally imposed restraints, standards, procedures and hierarchies - and the systems of surveillance, information transfer, rewards and sanctions that implement and perpetuate them - must show up as coercive intrusions upon the freedom of the will, even those of liberal regimes themselves. Now, Weber identified the progressive spread of precisely these kinds of institutions and practices as one of the central features of social modernity, a process he called 'rationaliza­ tion'. But if the ideal of negative liberty requires the individual to press back against all external intrusions upon the freedom of the will, whether these are rational or irrational - and if the central thrust of modernity is precisely the growth and ramification of techniques of administration, surveillance, control, domination - then, in the heart of modernity, there is a deep conflict between negative liberty, one - 56 -

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of its central cultural ideals, and progressive rationalization, its central social phenomenon. There is also an underlying causal connection between negative liberty and social rationalization, for the prime motivating force of social rationalization is negative liberty itself Whether one pursues negative liberty through socialism, the welfare state or the free market, its pursuit requires the progressive mastery and administration of the natural and social worlds, creating, as an unintended consequence, the subordination of the individual to pervasive forms of social integration and discipline. Life becomes progressively bureaucra­ tized and administered, until negative liberty itself is undermined by the very institutions that were supposed to secure it. The preser­ vation and exercise of freedom requires mastery. And just as mastery is the other side of freedom, so domination is the other side of mastery. Although Weber does not spin out this profoundly pessimistic scenario, the U,form of Horkheimer and Adorno's Dialectic of Enlightenment, in terms of negative liberty as such, he expresses its ultimate end quite vividly in the immortal 'iron cage' metaphor on the gloomy closing pages of The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism. This dialectic of Enlightenment presents us with a choice: either rebel against negative liberty in the name of social rationalization, or rebel against social rationalization in the name of negative liberty. Weber himself refused to make this choice, but the thrust of his work points to the latter option, for the only glimmer of light that he saw through the bars of the iron cage was from the realm of the expressive, the aesthetic - in political terms, the charismatic - a topos later embraced unreservedly, but in rather different ways, by Horkheimer, Adorno, Marcuse, Heidegger, Derrida, Lyotard, Foucault and others. This conflict between negative liberty and social rationalization also accounts, more than any other factor, for the contemporary revolt against reason in the humanities, the pervasive view that reason is not a force for meliorism or emancipation, but instead is implicated in or responsible for domination and patriarchy, social and political oppression, psychological and sexual repression, terrorism and totalitarianism, Auschwitz and the Gulag. The equiv­ ocation at work here - of reason with social rationalization - is truly breathtaking. Returning now to Foucault: the deeply Weberian structure of - 57 -

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Foucault's thought is as striking as it is unexplored. Both possess a deep emotional commitment to egalitarian individualism and negative libertarianism. Both analyse the progress of modern society in terms of the growth of forms of domination which, in Foucault's analys es, become progressively more systemic, in the sense that domination is no longer exercised primarily by agents qua subjects, but rather by agents qua functionaries in progressively autonomous systems. Both were pessimistic about the direction of history and the prospects for progressive human emancipation, taking solace in the realm of the expressive: that which struggles to elude the domination of social reason, that which resists being coopted by 'the system'. In Weber's case this antinomian element is charisma, heroically struggling against its destiny, its bureaucratic routinization. In Foucault's thought the expressive has two foci. First is politics, of a sort: a theoretically evasive post-Marxist activism, a sort of perma­ nent revolutionism of symbolic acts and rhetorical gestures, of demonstrations and protest marches, which never allows itself to issue in institutional - that is, lasting and practical, but also limiting, dominating and unromantic - solutions. It is as if Foucault wished to avoid totalitarianism by, in effect, advocating it piecemeal but refusing to stabilize and synthesize the pieces into a whole. 23 The second focus is individual self-creation, a process of aestheticist Bildung explored in his later works, particularly volumes two and three of the History of Sexuality: The Use of Pleasure and The Care of the Self. 24 What, I submit, could be more crudely modernist in its designs and sensibilities than this allegedly postmodernist libertarianism? What postmodernism amounts to in Foucault, Derrida, Lyotard, etc. is little more than a hypermodern left political activism combined with an enormous, systematic failure of self-reflection which allows them to believe that they are world-historical figures ushering in a new age rather than just the self-forgetful epigoni of the old. 25 23 For a positive account of Foucault's theoretically evasive activism, see Thomas R. Flynn's ' Foucault as Parrhesiast: His Last Course at the College de France', in James Bemauer and David M. Rasmussen, eds, Tiie Final Foucault (Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 1988) , and especially Thomas R. Flynn, 'Foucault and the Politics of Postmodemity' , Nous, 23 (1989) , 187-98. 2 4 Michel Foucault, Tiie Use of Pleasure, trans. Robert Hurley (New York: Pantheon, 1984) , and Tiie Care of the Self, trans. Robert Hurley (New York: Pantheon, 1986) . 25 To be fair to Foucault, Lyotard and Derrida, the value of their work cannot be

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(With Marx, at least, there was no pretence: his 'libertarianism' was unabashedly modernist. )26 This failure of self-reflection is not, however, a postmodernist monopoly. It is as much the vice of those neoconservative cultural critics who simply take the postmodernists at their word when they claim to be breaking with modernity and Western culture and then set to work defending 'Western culture' from the barbarians at the gates. Like them, Merquior shows little sign of recognizing the connection of his own egalitarian individualism and negative liber­ tarianism with the corrosive antinomianism of the postmodern left. Nor does he appreciate the presence of positive features of modernism in postmodernism, particularly the continuity of the critical rationalism of Kant and Hegel with various postmodern critiques of reason. To his credit, however, Merquior does sometimes refer to the continuities between modernism and postmodernism. In a manner that brings to mind Daniel Bell, Merquior describes Kulturkritik as the clash between cultural modernism and modernity. Furthermore, he describes postmod­ ernism as 'still largely a sequel to rather than a denial of modernism without any visible improvement of it. The postmodern is at most an ultramodernism - an extreme remake of avant-garde tics. '27 reduced solely to the value of their stances vis-a-vis modernity. Their stances, moreover, are somewhat ambivalent. Foucault, for instance, in his late lecture on Kant's essay 'What is Enlightenment?,' identifies his own form of critique with the tradition of Kantian critical philosophy, thus resituating himself within the horizon of modernity. See Michel Foucault, 'What is Enlightenment?', in Paul Rabinow, ed., The Foucault Reader (New York: Pantheon, 1984) . See also Jurgen Habermas's 'Taking Aim at the Heart of the Present: On Foucault's Lecture on Kant's What is Enlightenment?', in his 11,e New Consen,atism : Cultural Critidsm and the Historian's Debate, ed. and trans. Shierry Weber Nicholsen (Cambridge , MA: The MIT Press, 1989) . Carl Rapp has suggested to me that the pragmatic paradoxes of Lyotard's stance towards modernity are so glaring that his 11,e Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge, trans. Geoff Bennington and Brian Massumi (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1984), might well be a giant exercise in Swiftean irony - an irony which, it should be noted, has been lost on Lyotard's devoted readers. Finally, Derrida is reported recently to have claimed that deconstruction is not antirational, but rather an attempt to build a more reasonable form of rationalism which takes into account such things as psychoanalysis. Deconstruction too, then, is an attempt to use reason to trace out or delimit the powers of reason, which is precisely the task of the Kantian critical philosophy. See Peter Aspen, 'An anxious 60 minutes with Derrida', Times Higher Education Supplement, 21 February 1992, p. 4. 26 See Agnes Heller, 'Marx and Modernity', in Agnes Heller and Ferenc Feher, 11,e Grandeur and Twilight of Radical Universalism (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction, 1991) . 27 J. G. Merquior, 'Spider and Bee: Towards a Critique of the Postmodern Ideology', in Lisa Appignanesi, ed., Postmodernism, ICA [Institute of Contemporary Arts] Documents (London: Free Association Books, 1989), p. 46.

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Unfortunately, though, Merquior confines these comments specifi­ cally to aesthetic postmodernism. Furthermore, he one-sidedly stresses only the negative continuities. Thus, in the end, he ends up simply an inverted image of his opponents, affirming a conservative form of egalitarian individualism while criticizing a more radical one. And because he does not recognize the identity between his own thought and Kulturkritik, he never adequately articulates the difference. This leads to a disastrous misdiagnosis of the seemingly perma­ nent 'crisis' of Western culture. If Kulturkritik is inimical to the West - but if it also represents the highest moral ideals of the West - then the West is not being murdered; it is committing suicide, and the medicine being prescribed turns out simply to be a diluted, conservative version of the very poison that is killing it. This does not, however, imply that the cure is to junk the entire Western tradition from the fifth century BC on, to become really antimodern, a la certain Straussian 'conservatives'. This would simply be to replace slow suicide with outright self-destruction. 28 Perhaps this is simply a confession of a lack of moral imagination, but I cannot conceive of any serj.ous alternative to some version of egalitarianism, individualism and emancipation. What, after all, would such an alternative consist in? The legitimation of totalitarian or authoritarian dictatorship? The legitimation and even the revival of slavery? The legitimation of privilege and pull, vendetta and lynching, imperialism and plunder, oppression and domination, crime? To the extent that any of these phenomena exist today, they exist precisely as illegitimate, as moral anomalies, accidents to be progressively eliminated. Can anyone read the Old Testament accounts of tribal genocide and enslavement; the monuments of Assyrian kings boasting of entire populations slaughtered, enslaved or transported; the histories of the Roman empire or any oriental despotism; stories of the Huns, Mongols and other barbarian tribes spilling out of central Asia; reports of Aztec orgies of human sacri­ fice; or the countless eyewitness accounts of the horrors of Nazi and Communist extermination camps, and not take seriously the idea of egalitarian individualism, no matter how committed one might also be to a Herderian sort of tolerant cultural pluralism 28 See Stanley Rosen, 'A Modest Proposal to Rethink Enlightenment', in his 77,e Ancients and the Modems: Rethinking Modernity (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1989).

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(itself a deeply egalitarian conception)? And if there is no alternative · to egalitarian individualism, then any diagnosis and cure for the contemporary crisis of culture must come from within the Western tradition, but it cannot come about before we soberly realize the self-negating nature of our own highest ideals and deepest values.

Towards a 'Critical Modernism ' I wish to conclude this essay on a note that seems hopelessly hackneyed, cliched and obvious. It seems to me, however, that the humanities have now reached that state which Orwell described: in which the first duty of intelligent men is to restate the obvious. Although the chief moral values of Western culture are self­ negating when abstracted and totalized, we are fortunate that our chief cognitive values are self-critical and self-correcting, allowing us to concretize and delimit, and thus harmonize, our conflicting values. I am talking, of course, about reason. Not the boundless rationalism of the French Enlightenment, reason red in tooth and claw, frenziedly pulverizing the natural and social worlds to replace them with its own artefacts. Rather, the reason of Hume, Rousseau, Kant and Hegel, and in our own day Hayek: the restless, critical self-consciousness of the Enlightenment turned back upon itself, self-reflective, self-critical and self-delimiting; reason become aware of its own limitations, its own finitude, its historical situated­ ness and thrownness, yet still the defining characteristic of the rational animal. Self-critical reason can never err or sin. Only unself-critical 'reason' can, and the corrective for the errors of 'reason' is precisely critical reason itsel£ (A remark of Erich Heller's comes to mind: 'What is Faust's sin? The restlessness of spirit. What is Faust's salvation? The restlessness of spirit. ')29 In concrete terms, a political commitment to critical reason means at least three things: (1) the historical humanist project of uncovering the roots and structural logic of the modem situation, of recollecting who we are; (2) the sceptical deconstruction of the false and pernicious ideologies spawned from the vanity of modem foundationalism; and most importantly (3) the concretization and 29 Quoted in Daniel Bell, The Cultural Contradictions of Capitalism (New York: Harper Torchbooks, 1978), 160-1.

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delimitation of Western libertarianism. To delimit negative liberty means to recognize that, although it is an undeniable political value, it is not the only political value, and to treat it as such places the least realistic among us at war with the constraints of civiliza­ tion. This is disastrous, for human flourishing is always concrete and particular, conditioned (but not overdetermined) by the histor­ ically evolved goods ingredient in the different cultures and communities into which we are thrown. Participation in the common life of a culture or tradition requires, however, not libera­ tion, but the submission of the individual to constraints, that is, to evolved norms, customs, practices and institutions. This is as true of the most liberal society as it is of the most conservative, for liber­ alism requires the submission of the individual to the forms of social discipline, integration and uncertainty intrinsic to the market system. It also requires the delimitation of spheres of individual rights and obligations. 30 Such a project of delimitation can be executed only through the evolution of a vocabulary of enabling constraints. All civilizations are founded upon difference, repression, constraint; the solution to the alienation of civilized life cannot, therefore, be to abolish constraints as such, for that would be to abolish civilization. Rather, the solution lies in using the best evidence of the social and human sciences to sort out which constraints enable us and which disable us in pursuing the concrete, historically given goods of our partic­ ular cultures and communities. A commitment to a specifically self-reflective, self-critical conception of rationality also allows us to break down the sometimes overly facile distinction between intellectual modernism and postmodemism that Merquior holds. 'Postmodernism' is an extremely ambiguous term, indiscriminately conflating many radically different strands of thought. 3 1 At its worst, postmodernism combines the posture of total criticism of modernity with a totally dogmatic commitment to hypermodern Left political activism. 30 Hegel's Philosophy of Right is my model for the delimitation of the public ethics of negative liberty (and of its private, subjective counterpart, the Protestant or Kantian ethics of equality, dignity and individual conscience) by sublating them within the common or 'ethical' life (Sittlichkeit) of tradition and culture. Although I would quibble with some of Hegel's economic policies, I find his overall argument, and its dialectical method of unfolding, to be utterly compelling. 31 On the manifold meanings of 'postmodem', see Allan Megill, 'What Does the Term "Postmodern" Mean?', Annals ef Scholarship, 6 (1989), 129-51.

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Such postmodernists are hopelessly enmeshed in performative self­ contradictions: the use of reason to overcome reason, the use of the Western tradition to overcome the Western tradition, the use of technical-instrumental arguments against technical-instrumental rationality. However, at its best - in the works of such writers as Gadamer, Merleau-Ponty and Ricoeur - postmodernism situates itself within the horizon of modernity; it is modernity's self-reflec­ tive, self-critical, self-correcting moment. In order to avoid this ambiguity - and to acknowledge a crucial debt to Kant's critical philosophy - I think that it is best to follow James L. Marsh in labelling the latter form of postmodernism 'critical modernism'. 32 G. B. Madison expresses the critical modernist project well: I may tend, in some of my writings, to portray 'postmod­ ernism' as some kind of new 'period' - but it isn't. Postmodernism is simply . . . a critical reflection on 'moder­ nity' - and a critical attempt to appropriate, in a nonfounda­ tionalist, postmetaphysical way, what is of worth in it - which is a lot. 33 It may be stretching a bit to incorporate Merquior's work into such a liberal critical modernist project, but advocates of critical reason need all the friends they can get. 34

32 See James L. Marsh, Post-Cartesian Meditations: An Essay in Dialectical Phenomenology (New York: Fordham University Press, 1988), xi, 254-7. For clear exemplifications of the differences and conflicts between the critical modernist and uncritical modernist strands of postmodernism, see James L. Marsh, Merold Westphal and John D. Caputo, eds, Modemity and its Discontents (New York: Fordham University Press, 1992), and Diane P. Michelfelder and Richard E. Palmer, eds, Dialogue and Deconstruction: The Gadamer-Derrida Encounter (Albany: SUNY Press, 1989). 33 G. B. Madison, personal correspondence. Other thinkers whom I would include under the general rubric of ' critical modernism' are Jurgen Habermas, Thomas McCarthy and other members of their school; Calvin O. Schrag; and Luc Ferry and Alain Renaut. 34 The clearest expression of a sympathy between Merquior's work and the critical rationalism of Kant, Hegel, etc. is Merquior's review essay on the work of Luc Ferry and Alain Renaut, two Fichtean (!) liberals with whose position I have much sympathy. See J. G. Merquior, 'The Renaissance of French Political Theory', Gavernment and Opposition, 22 (1987), 101-14. See especially Merquior's positive remark (on p. 109) on Ferry and Renaut's 'D'un retour a Kant', in their Systeme et critique (Brussels: Ousia, 1984). It is from this essay by Merquior that I crib the phrase 'friend of reason'.

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Merquior the Liberalist ROBERTO CAMPOS

This is a liberal book on liberalism, written by someone who believes that liberalism, if understood correctly, resists any vilification. Merquior, in the Introduction to Liberalism Old and New

Jose Guilherme Merquior's demise, at 49 years of age and at the climax of his productivity, seems a cruel waste. God does such things; he makes geniuses and then breaks the mould. At times he makes people want, as in the case of Murillo Mendes's poem, to ask the Creator to not repeat the 'chirp' of the Creation. Merquior left us a rich corpus of work, ranging from literary criticism to philos­ ophy, sociology and political science. He wrote in English and French, in both of which he showed fluency equal to that of his mother tongue. Merquior today, as a sociologist, has an interna­ tional reputation comparable only to that attained in his era by Gilberto Freyre, in his groundbreaking sociological studies - with the difference that Merquior's work is more diversified, as it includes important incursions into philosophy and political science. Merquior's masterpiece is undoubtedly Liberalism Old and New, written when he was still ambassador to Mexico, in the short period of four months. Only the prodigious erudition he had accumulated allowed him to put together, in such a short time, that vast mural depicting the long and zigzagging human pilgrimage in

a

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search of an open society. Perhaps Merquior foresaw that the Fates were circling him and he forced himself to take his work to its highest expression. We had been lacking, in relation to liberalism, what Toynbee called a 'panoramic, rather than microscopic' vision. That gap was filled by the towering intellect of Merquior, who covered nothing less than three centuries. His book would become an essential source of reference, as it analyses the different currents of liberalism with abundant erudition and an immense capacity for appraisal. More than a simple history of ideas, it is an essay in philosophical criticism. The publication of Liberalism Old and New could not have come at a more opportune moment. This is because the world is now watching the victory of liberalism in its two phases - political democracy and market economy - not only as an intellectual doctrine, the evolution of which Merquior traced masterfully, but as political praxis. We can say that in the annus mirabilis of 1989, with the fall of the Berlin Wall, the Cold War between capitalism and communism came to an end. The latter ceased to be a paradigm. For some this is a nightmare, for others it is a source of nostalgia; but for no one is communism a model. This annus mirabilis will be seen, in retro­ spect, as one of the great historical watersheds, comparable perhaps to 1776, when the great passage began from mercantilism to liberal capitalism and constitutional democracy. The eighteenth century, which I have elsewhere called the 'exquisite century', watched the death and resurrection of liber­ alism. The economic liberalism preached in 1776 by Adam Smith would only become a victorious doctrine in the middle of the nineteenth century. It contributed to the strengthening of political democracy and to the prosperity of the belle epoque. The socialist challenges were doctrinaire, more than they were government practices. The 1917 Soviet revolution began a left­ wing 'collectivist era', while Nazi-fascism came to represent direct 'collectivism'. The Great Depression of the 1930s weakened liberal capitalism, and Keynesianism emerged as a saving doctrine. This was based, however, on an overestimation of government's ability to manage the economy through the 'fine-tuning' of macroeco­ nomic variables. Economic neoliberalism only re-emerged as polit­ ical praxis in the 1980s. If the period between 1920 and 1980 was - 66 -

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the 'collectivist era' , as Paul Johnson called it, we are entering this last decade of the liberal age. Or, as Merquior quaintly pointed out, 'At the end of the 1 940s, socialisms were in the role of judges, and in the 1 980s in the role of "prisoners ofjudgment". ' In a beautiful recent study, Milton Friedman, the great patron of liberal economics, interprets the wave of economic liberalism that was sweeping across the world as the 'third wave' since the annus mirabilis of 1 776. In that year, three things happened simultane­ ously, though contemporaries failed to foresee their majestic conse­ quences: the birth of economic liberalism, the rise of the Industrial revolution, and the creation of a model of political democracy for the American revolution. Someone who lived in 1 776 would not have known that through one book - The Wealth of Nations - and one short political document - the Declaration of Independence American rebels would change the face of the world. That was the first wave. After it would come the 'collectivist wave' , which took over during most of the twentieth century. Friedman called that wave, which spread to state intervention and reduced individual freedoms, the 'Fabian wave'. He attributed the intellectual ferment in favour of collectivism to the founding of the Fabian Society by English socialists in 1 883. The Fabian Society preached 'the gradual march to socialism'. This attribution is arbitrary, since we might argue that the great challenge to liberalism came from the Communist Manifesto of Marx and Engels, written in 1 848. The third wave, which is awakening in the 1 990s with the resur­ gence of economic liberalism, may have begun with another book: Hayek's The Road to Serfdom, published in 1 944. Friedman points out interesting characteristics of these waves of history. The first is that they began as a purely intellectual phenom­ enon - a heretical challenge to prevalent doctrines. Years or decades went by before they turned into political action. Adam Smith realized that, in preaching free trade, he was preaching utopia. Nevertheless, 70 years later, with the repeal of the Corn Laws in England, restrictions on grain trade were lifted; and, 86 years later, England and France signed the Cobden Treaty on free trade. The collectivist ferment, which began on the European conti­ nent with Marx and in England with the Fabians, set out to invade the world, following the collapse of the old order in the First - 67 -

Roberto Camp os

World War, and the advent of the Russian revolution nearly seventy years after the Communist Manifesto. The almost mortal blow to liberalism would be the Great Depression of the 1930s. It was the breakdown of private enterprise that weakened liberalism, in the same way that in the 1990s the death of the state began to destroy collectivism. Hayek's theories had to hibernate for forty years. In that period - beyond Marxism - Keynesianism flourished, overestimating government's ability to manipulate fiscal instruments in order to stabilize the economy or avoid unemployment. The second interesting characteristic, according to Friedman, is that the new waves were formed when the old ones reached their apex. Marxism and Fabianism were born after liberalism had given the world nearly a century of economic prosperity and as it was leading to growing political freedom. The neoliberal wave began, paradoxically, when government intervention was at its apex, during the Second World War. Nevertheless, only in the 1980s, after the failure of the collectivist experiences - Nazism and communism - and a dirigiste experience - Keynesianism - has neoliberalism attained political power. The elections of Margaret Thatcher in the United Kingdom and Ronald Reagan in the United States represented a watershed. The third characteristic is that the periods of economic liberalism induced a certain degree of political freedom, whereas economic collectivism is habitually associated with political despotism, as occurred with Hitler and Stalin. Will the present neoliberal ascent tum out to be a mere ebb of the tide, or are we facing a new historical phenomenon: the marriage of political democracy with the market economy? A US State Department official, Francis Fukuyama, in a controversial article entitled 'The End of History', claimed that the history of thinking on the fundamental principles that govern political and social organization has ended, with the victory of political and economic liberalism. This marked not only the end of the Cold War, but, especially, the prevalence of a political-social format with characteristics of 'sustainability' and 'universality'. Fukuyama gives more emphasis to political liberalism. But the phenomenon is more comprehensive, since the market economy also defeated dirigiste regimes. It is precisely the conjunction of political liberalism with economic liberalism that can be called 'democratic capitalism'. Before being proposed for the condition of universal ideology, - 68 -

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however, politico-economic liberalism has had to face dangerous challenges during the twentieth century. A serious 'internal' challenge was the 1 930s Great Depression, which created doubts regarding the market economy and encouraged dirigiste experi­ ments. Many people spoke at that time of the 'end of capitalism'. Nevertheless, there were two 'external' challenges: Nazism, princi­ pally in the political sphere, and communism, mainly in the economic sphere. With the defeat of those two challenges, thanks to the burial of Nazism and the agony of communism, no alternative ideology is able to compete with democratic liberalism in its ambition to become a universal, definitive, form of government. That is the new reality of human history. There remain few doubts that this political-social format will consolidate during this fin de siecle and during the coming millen­ nium, even if it does so by exclusion. The alternative ideologies have spoken. 'Real' socialism exhibited two baneful ingredients its machine of terror and its economic inefficiency. The ideological experiments in the Third World, such as Islamic fundamentalism, brought about violence and poverty. Nationaloid populism, so widespread in Latin America and Africa, led to a rosary of failures. Finally, due to its very nature, nationalism does not have universal­ izable characteristics. We may speak, as well, of a 'crisis of nation­ alism', since this fin de siecle offers us exquisite contrasts. We have the failure of the nationalism of the nation-state. What has been strengthened is the 'nationalism of ethnic groups' seeking to strengthen their identity, to preserve their native tongue and administrative autonomy without, however, negating their desire to integrate into larger economic blocs. More and more, the 'Daniel Bell paradox' is acknowledged: 'the nation-state is too big for small problems and too small for big problems'. Within that world-view we can consider countries as belonging to two large groups. The first contains those that have attained the stage of 'systemic tranquillity', in which the basic institutional options are not at stake; the remaining conflicts are related to partisan programmes, personalities and priorities in the allocation of resources. Hence, within the limits of the human condition, after a secular search, a form of government allowing for a reconciliation of the threefold objectives of political freedom, economic efficiency and reasonable social satisfaction (insofar as no alternative system - 69 -

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offers better perspectives for social welfare) has supposedly been attained. The areas of systemic tranquillity are basically North America, Australia, Japan and Western Europe. The resurgence of economic liberalism as an idee force in this fin de siecle is surprising. It supplanted Keynesianism, the welfare state, dirigiste planning, and, finally, social democracy, as the modem European economies conform more and more to the principles of the market economy, substituting equality with efficiency as an idee force. Except in Brazil, where ideas arrive late, as if we were dealing with cheese that needs to be aged, and social democracy is not perceived as the last redoubt of dirigisme but as the first chapter of liberalism. European governments have various labels: conservative, social democratic, Christian democratic, centre-right and socialist. Nevertheless, the integration foreseen for 1992 arrived stuffed with a harmonization of policies based on two principles of the modem market economy: 'globalism', as factories become global and finan­ cial markets become integrated; and 'clientelism', since the will of the consumer, not of the planner, will rule. French socialist Michel Rocard - a former prime minister - calls himself a 'free-market socialist'. Spanish socialist Felipe Gonzalez speaks of 'supply side' socialism, of a clear concern for production before distribution. There is less emphasis on independence and more emphasis on 'interdependence'. The end of history as ideology, observes Fukuyama, would not mean the end of conflict; rather, it would mean that any conflicts that arise will probably not be global. They will be the product of local outbreaks of nationalism, of sources of religious tension like Islamic fundamentalism, of the Third World's frustrated search for a third path between capitalism and socialism. The only governments able to provide systemic tranquillity will be those that show two characteristics: sustainability and universality. In other words, there is a need for a non-excluding ideology based on consensual methods and capable of being universalized as a paradigm. Most of the countries of the world, however, are in a state of 'systemic intranquillity', in various processes and at various degrees of transition. This is what is occurring in the socialist world and in the great majority of countries that are conventionally called 'Third World'. The two great socialist powers, the former Soviet Union and China, are, each in its own way, seeking a stable political and

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social format. China began with economic reform, but it suffers political paralysis; the Soviet Union carried out its political glasnost, but it failed in its economic perestroika, since its market economy was still a distant vision. The formerly communist countries of Eastern Europe are attempting a simultaneous transition from polit­ ical authoritarianism to representative democracy and from a command economy to a market economy. The Asian Pacific is also experiencing a transition process: South Korea and Taiwan have market economies in the process of political democratization. Thailand, Malaysia and Indonesia combine authoritarian vestiges in politics with attempts at introducing a market economy. India is a large and robust political democracy, though, dominated by a socializing bureaucracy, it is far from resembling a market economy. In Latin America, democratic capitalism is practically non­ existent. It is true that there has been a reflourishing of democracy. Dictatorships are out of fashion, with only Cuba remaining as a teratological case. In the south of the continent, Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay and Peru have made their democratic transition. Nevertheless, none of these countries, with the possible exception of Argentina, accepts the discipline of the market economy. All insist on bureaucratic controls, maintain bloated state machineries, and protect themselves through closed markets. Those are the characteristics of 'mercantile' societies. Moreover, only three countries - Chile, Bolivia and, more recently, Mexico - adhere explicitly to the liberal ideal of a market economy and, if comple­ mented with political liberalization, will be the first examples of democratic capitalism in Latin America. The present victory of liberalism over alternative ideologies is the culmination of a long and complex process that Merquior unveils for us in his great mural, with a fine perception of the nuances of thinking - but without ceasing to point out to us that the 'rebirth of greater economic liberty - the liberalist tendency - does not constitute a mortal blow for egalitarian impulses'. Society, he says, continues to be characterized by a continuous 'dialectical tension between the growth of freedom and the aspiration to equality'. As opposed to the radical utopias, which simplify reality barbarously, liberalism entails a broad variety of values and beliefs. That stems from the perceived difference in obstacles to liberty and in the very concept of liberty, beginning with Isaiah Berlin's classic distinction between 'negative liberty' (the lack of coercion) and - 71 -

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'positive liberty' (the presence of options). As Merquior points out, there are historical stages in the search for liberty. The former is freedom from oppression, an immemorial struggle; the latter is freedom of political participation, an invention of Athenian democ­ racy. The third freedom is freedom of worship, which was painfully attained in Europe as a result of the Reformation and the religious wars. The fourth and most modem freedom is the freedom of self­ fulfilment, made possible by the division of labour and the emergence of the consumer society. Merquior's pages on 'classic liberalism' are enlightening, with their three components: the theory on human rights, constitutionalism, and liberal economics. Much more than a political formula, liberalism is a conviction, which found its more practical, concrete expression in the forma­ tion of American democracy whose patriarchs combined, during the forming of the republic, Locke's lessons on human rights, Montesquieu's lessons on the separation of powers, and Rousseau's lessons on the democratic contract. One curious observation made by Merquior relates to the vocational difference between the theoreticians of liberalism. The English liberals were principally moral philosophers (Adam Smith and John Stuart Mill); the French liberals were mainly historians (Guizot and Tocqueville); and the German liberals were mainly jurists. In English theory liberty meant independence; in French theory it meant self-government; in German theory it meant self-fulfilment. With extraordinary erudition, Merquior dissects the different liberal languages: human rights, civic humanism, historical stages, utilitarianism and historical sociology. He makes original observa­ tions on the emergence, in the hundred years between 1830 and 1930, of liberal conservatism, which was faithful to individualism and freedom of worship; nevertheless, he was pessimistic regarding democracy of the masses. In the delicate balancing act between the two aspects of liberalism - libertarianism and democratism - liberal conservatives, such as Spencer and Burke, favoured the former. Among modem thinkers, Germany's Max Weber, Italy's Benedetto Croce and Spain's Jose Ortega y Gasset, by stressing the importance of 'charisma' and of 'cultural elites' in making democracy viable, concurred in what Merquior calls the 'curious allergy of the modem intellectual vis-a-vis the modem society'. Something parallel occurred recently within Marxism, as Jose Guilherme pointed out in his important work Western Marxism.

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Disappointed with the totalitarian inflexion of Soviet socialism, Western Marxists in Germany and France abandoned their obses­ sive criticism of the democratic format of liberal economies, to concentrate on the cultural criticism of the productivism and technicism of bourgeois society. Perry Anderson's verdict is incisive, and correct: Western Marxism adopts 'method as power­ lessness, art as consolation, and pessimism as quiescence'. Merquior's thoughts on the principal postwar languages of liber­ alism are enlightening: the criticism of historicism (Popper), anti­ totalitarian protest (Orwell and Camus), the ethics of pluralism (Isaiah Berlin), neo-evolutionism (Hayek) and historical sociology (Aron). The most fascinating chapter of Merquior's masterpiece - partly because it is less well travelled ground, partly because I personally met some of the authors - is entitled 'From new liberalism to neoliberalism'. Merquior examines one of the old dialectical tensions of liberalism in a scholarly manner: the tension between the growth of freedom and the impulse to equality. There is nothing better for understanding the difference between 'new liberalism' and 'neoliberalism' than contrasting Keynes with Hayek. On both, Merquior wrote brilliant vignettes - more generous with Keynes, less generous with Hayek. As is well known, Keynes favoured government intervention to correct the market, whereas Hayek described that action as presumptuous 'constructivism'. For Hayek, the role of government is solely 'to provide a structure for the market and to furnish services that it cannot provide'. In our last conversations, I felt that Jose Guilherme was becoming increasingly 'liberalist'. In that creed, we partook in communion. The 'liberalist' is one who believes that if there is no economic freedom, other freedoms - civil and political - disappear. In Latin America, the concentration of economic power is a freedom-killing exercise. Our diagnoses on Brazilian troubles converged. The Brazil of today does not lack freedom; it lacks liberalism. Two of the masters - Ralf Dahrendorf and Raymond Aron, whose thinking Merquior brilliantly unravelled in a chapter named 'Sociological Liberalism' - were our mutual friends. Dahrendorf was, in the late 1 970s, Director of the London School of Economics, where Merquior was studying for his doctorate in sociology. 'I don't know why', Dahrendorf told me, 'since he has more to teach than to learn'. - 73 -

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Dahrendorf liked to debate with Merquior on his favourite theses on modern social conflict: the dispute between those who advocate greater 'freedom of choice', and those who want a greater 'repertory of rights'; that is, as Merquior noted, the basic opposition between 'provisions' and 'entitlements'. In the first case we are dealing with alternatives in the supply of goods, an incremental concept; in the second, we are dealing with the right of access to goods, a distributive concept. In a felicitous antithesis, Merquior points out that the Industrial revolution was a revolution of 'provi­ sions', whereas the French revolution was one of 'entitlements'. Closer to home, the 1970s was, according to Merquior, a period in which concerns with 'entitlements' prevailed, whereas the 1980s saw a shift of policies towards those that stress production more than distribution (that is, provmons before entitlements). Moreover, Brazil's new constitution, passed in 1988, exemplifies this conflict very well: economic freedoms were restricted; social guarantees were broadened. The only problem was that they both became unviable. With Aron, I frequently found myself in a debating group presided over by Henry Kissinger. Aron always asked me about his beloved disciple, 'the young man who had read everything'. Still, the impressive thing about Jose Guilherme was not his absorption of readings; rather, it was his metabolism of ideas. He did not resign himself to being an 'engaged spectator' as, with exaggerated modesty, his French teacher described himself He was an activist. For that reason he went from 'liberal conviction' to 'liberal preaching'. He strove in the last days in a double task - the enlight­ enment of liberalism, by searching among its philosophical roots, and the demystification of socialism, through the denunciation of its historical failure. That led him, on various occasions, into intel­ lectual skirmishes with Brazilian leftists - an exercise in which his overwhelming intellectual superiority caused in his challengers the most painful of wounds, the wounding of their pride. It is not easy to discuss with our left-wing guardians, vitiated in the 'seduction of myth and the tyranny of dogma', comfortably encrusted in the media and effectively brandishing two weapons: adulation and intimidation. They coopt idiots, calling them 'progressive', and intimidate patriots, calling them 'sell-outs'. Merquior's eyes were not opened until he discovered that in the Brazilian left there are still people who do not realize that the Berlin Wall fell. - 74 -

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Merquior did not go from the polemic of ideas to political activism, limited as he was by his diplomatic duties. How did he fit into our confused political panorama? Certainly, he was among the 'classic liberals' or 'libertarians', if we use David Nolan's classifica­ tion - that is, those who wish to preserve freedom, from either political authoritarianism or economic interventionism. The classic liberal ( or the 'liberalist' - which is a term Merquior liked to use, going back to the Italy of the 1920s, among Einaudi and Croce, in which the former defended the incompatibility of political freedom with economic interventionism, whereas the latter did not refute that coexistence) differs from his 'conservative' counterpart in that the latter admits restrictions on political freedom in the name of traditionalism, organicism, and political sceptidsm. The traditionalists believe that political wisdom and wisdom of a historical nature reside in the institutions that have passed the test of time. The organicists believe that society is more than the sum of its members and, thus, has a value much greater than the individual. And the cultivators of political scepticism distrust thought and theory applied to public life, especially when it is directed towards ambitious innovations. The antipode of the classic liberal is naturally the 'socialist', who believes that it is society's role to redistribute the product of individual labour and who accepts political coercion to guarantee egalitarian utopias. It would be illusory to think that in the Brazilian political class there exist positions of that clarity. The most numerous tribe is that of what Nolan would call 'leftist liberals'. These individuals believe in political freedom, though they accept economic intervention:, according to various branches: the 'assistance' branch, which believes in welfare government; the 'nationalist' branch; the 'protectionist' branch; and, finally, the 'corporatist' branch, which is, in tum, subdivided into three groups: the business corporatists, the union corporatists and the bureaucratic corporatists. These diverse nuances colour the abundant fauna of the false liberals. Upon Merquior's death, after months in which he courageously ate the bread of sorrow and drank from the waters of affiiction, an enormous cultural vacuum was created in our landscape, a landscape in which the bushes are much more numerous than the trees. Now, in the sorrow of that emptiness, we have only to - 75

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paraphrase Manoel Bandeira: 'Little horses walking. Big horses eating. Brazil politicking.' Jose Guilherme dying. And so many people surviving.

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- 5Variations on a Theme by J. G. Merquior GHITA IONESCU

Theme The formative struggle of liberalism was the vindication of rights religious, political and economic - and the attempts to control polit­ ical power. Historically one can say that liberty has to do with the rise of modem civilization, first in the West and then in other areas of the world. The formula, therefore, seems to be liberty equals modernity equals individualism. The scale and growth of individu­ alism is a trademark of modernity. 1

1 Merquior preferred to explain liberalism by following its history, rather than by providing new interpretations of its premises, indeed new speculations. The probity of his approach was rewarded by the basic distinctions he was able to draw between the historical kinds of what is now called liberalism. He left aside the more indirect phases, which he called protoliberalism, unlike many other authors, who took it for granted that these were the long gestations of the ultimate liberalism (the expression 'liberal' was born in 1812 as the name of a parliamentary group in the Spanish Cortes). And he then divided post-nineteenth-century liberalism into classical liberalism, social liberalism, conservative liberalism, revolutionist liberalism, 1

J. G. Merquior, Liberalism Old and New (Boston: Twayne), p. 16.

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Ghita Ionescu nation-building liberalism, new liberalism, neoliberalism and socio­ logical liberalism. Each is distinct, with the hallmark of its Zeitgeist and its national political psychology, but all together form the continuity of the aspiration of peoples since the nineteenth century towards the institutionalization of freedom. A more sceptical observer would perhaps be less convinced by the historical and geographic varieties of liberalism than, perhaps, by the characteristic vagueness of the conceptual ensemble of liberalism itself, a vague­ ness due, above all, to its etymological matrix: liberty itsel£ But while this brings us back again to the initial choice of analyt­ ical approach, historical or synoptical, the aim of these variations on Merquior's theme is to look more closely, even if evidently fragmentarily, at the symbiotic links he finds between liberalism and individualism, liberalism and constitutionalism, and liberalism and the present spirit of 'globalization'.

2 Let us start with individualism. The notion of individualism has not been particularly carefully clarified by political philosophy, desirable as this would have been. As is usually the case, economic and polit­ ical philosophers had two different views of the concept of individ­ ualism, but also mixed them more often than not, in most confusing ways. And political philosophy has also been divided ever since the condemnation of Socrates by the polis. Some exalted and some deprecated individualism. Monotheism, Judaic and Christian, and especially the latter, elevated the individual to his rightful level of superiority for it proclaimed him to be the unique communica­ tion between every single human being and the one God, thus giving to the individual worshipper his or her acknowledgment of transcendent uniqueness - one of the conditions of individuality. But the political philosophers, concerned ever since the nineteenth century with the rules that protect its individual citizens and members within that association - tainted as it was by egalitari­ anism and collectivism - have oscillated ever more violently between praise and condemnation of individualism, thus amplifying to an extreme degree Rousseau's schizophrenic approach to the problem. The case that troubles me most in this respect is that of - 78 -

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Tocqueville. He, one of my masters, resuscitated the idea and the word 'individualism' and then tried to kill it again. Merquior reminds us that the word 'individualism' made one of its first appearances in English in Reave's translation of Democracy in America. But Merquior also remarks that Tocqueville saw individu­ alism in the democratic context as a social pathology, a widespread self-centredness, arising from an egalitarian society ridden by materialism, competition and resentment. 2 Indeed, every time that my eyes fall on that remark3 (and remark is the apposite word, given that this unexpected idea, in total contradiction with what we know now to be Tocqueville's deepest belief, never reappears in his whole oeuvre) , I always hoped to find that it was due to a misprint or a mistake in the editing. Alas, no. Tocqueville's miscon­ ception is there to stay. He does literally give to individualism an egalitarian connotation, and differentiates it from egoism only in its degree of morality. To situate individualism in the civic context has been, ever since Rousseau, obviously difficult insofar as the human substance of individualism transcends the legal and administrative formalities. The contrast has been accentuated in the modem politically egali­ tarian democracy. For, in spite of the increasing similarity of outward appearances (the conformism of blue jeans!), and of the welfare and other legal entitlements of most citizens, the loneliness of the life-to-death - to paraphrase Heidegger - of each human being encased within the citizen was being increasingly felt. But to situate individualism, as Tocqueville seems to be doing in that remark, in the exclusively economic context of materialistic competitiveness and greed for profit in a politically egalitarian democracy (as Tocqueville rightly thought American democracy was bound to become) - is unjustifiable. The sense of Tawneyan acquisitiveness of the individualism may be fitting in a socialist or collectivist background. Indeed, as is only too well known, in Marxist-Leninist states - states which had eaten alive not only individuals but also the whole civil society - the word 'individual­ istic' was both an insult and a crime, like 'bourgeois' for example, and usually associated with it. Happily enough, today individualism even as a school of thought (if it can be reduced to that) has been rehabilitated, m common 2 Liberalism Old and New, pp. 54-5 . 3 Quoted at the end o f this chapter.

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parlance and in dictionaries, as that school of thought which encourages the free activity of any human being in whatever polity he or she may be living.

3 I would like to explain further why I insisted in the preceding section on Tocqueville's profound personal individualism and why, therefore, against the background of what I described as his deepest beliefs, the critical economic-egalitarian sense he gave in that remark to the word 'individualism' was literally out of context in his oeuvre. For as it has already often and especially recently been explained (and nowhere better, it seems to me, than in Luis Diez del Corral, Pascal y Tocqueville4) , Tocqueville's sense of this life is that of the 'generations of human beings tottering towards the abyss'. That sense of life inspired his melancholy scepticism both towards the achievable perfectibility of the human condition and, consequently, towards the perfectibility of human associations. Tocqueville was not a progressivist, or even an optimist. He never forgot that although generation after generation of the citizens of democracies might be better educated in the spirit of togetherness, social justice and human care, yet each generation would still find two shortcomings in their lives as citizens and in their ultimate obligations as servants of Time. The first shortcoming lies in the effort to catch up with the societal changes produced by unexpected scientific discoveries as well as by uncontrollable events in collective behaviour itself Each generation has not only to learn to live in society, with the same trajectory from the unjustified enthusiasm of youth to the unassuaged bitterness of old age, but also to live in societal condi­ tions obviously different from those in which their parents lived. The double effort to adapt, which they have to experience first, might lead, given the different historical generations, either to the wisdom of gentle reforms or to the follies of 'revolutions' or reactions. It all depends on how elastic the brain of a given genera­ tion proves in the end to be. 'The problem is big and the brain 4

L. Dfez del Corral, La mentalidad poUtica de Tocqueville con especial referenda a Pascal (Madrid, 1965).

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small', said the modem economic philosopher Eric Lindblom. But more of this later. The second shortcoming (and here the word sounds like a pun) of any generation of human beings lies in their mortality. All people should be able to, and presumably could, live together even if in the most collective, indeed gregarious, way. But no pluralism, let alone egalitarianism, can remedy the essential singularity of the individual's fate. Progress, which is said to be the guardian angel of humankind, stops at the threshold of any person's death. Or, the other way round, it can be said that the only true human egalitari­ anism is the equality of all human beings in the face of death. This is also where Tocqueville's liberalism differs in essence from the Bentham-born felicity-seeking liberalism.

4 There is a peculiar etymological problem to be noticed in the word 'individualism'. Etymologically, the word 'individual' derives from the Latin individuus (indivisible) and individere (not to be divided). Why should the indivisible have become the individual? The sense of specificity might be one reason; that of peculiarity another; and that of wholeness or indeed wholesomeness is possibly another. Or was it because the individual was like electrons, that is, the smallest unit carrying the finally indivisible negative charge of electricity, but this time of human indivisibility? Was the Latin expression a premonition of what was to become, theologically, the divine essence of individuality in every son of the Christian Church; and, politically, the slogan of liberalism: one man (later also woman), one vote? The controversies around the validity of the principle of 'one man, one vote', that sine qua non of the modem political condition, throw more light on the difference between liberalism and individ­ ualism. The Marxists, justifiably and mockingly, asked what is the good of the vote to a person who, in his or her economic reality, is starving in the street? However more convinced we are now that economic democracy cannot be the alternative to proper democ­ racy as a whole ( or liberal democracy as political scientists call it in a conciliatory way), we also know that the more democracy matures, the more economic prosperity is seen as the condition of stability. - 81 -

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But, apart from and above the economic relevance of the 'one man, one vote' principle, there are many other irrelevances in the relation between the vote-caster and, on the other hand, the policy orientations, or indeed changes, the count of the votes cast may set in motion. To be sure, the representative system which is the end­ result of the one man, one vote operation is still the only system that ensures political cohesion in a state, or even more convincingly in a canton (Rousseau's 'general will') . But what is in question when the operation is considered from the point of view of the 'individual' is the relation of causality between the vote of one given single person, and the huge, anony­ mous arch-collectivist numbers which, in the end, divide the numerical majority from the numerical minorities. That relation of causality is questionable for two reasons, and those reasons, alas, are more evident now that the information revolution has altered, and is continuously altering, traditional political procedures. The first reason that questions this relation of causality between 'one man' (note, not one citizen) and the general remit raises the problem of the influences which may be exerted on the judgment and the will of the one vote-caster and on the act of vote-casting. There may be overwhelming inner, personal reasons that blur the objectivity of his or her public decisions: a doctor might have thrown serious doubts on the duration of his or her life; he or she might be totally absorbed in a mathematical calculation, a musical composition or a financial operation of some magnitude, etc. , etc. But - and this is where the information revolution comes in with its new means of all-invading media publicity, and its computerized predicting 'polls' of anonymous interviewees - there are now also more and more external influences on the vote-caster's final and formal decision. Even if it is true that the religious and especially the erstwhile 'ideological' persuasions have less influence than in the past 130 years of democratic politics, or perhaps because of this new vacuum of beliefs, the exposure of the average 'individual' vote­ caster to the deafening technical means of modern opinion-forming devices hamper his or her innate capacity to form a personal opinion more than ever before, and will increasingly do so. And the second question to ask, again in terms of the individual 'cause and effect' in elections or popular consultations (and which is again aggravated by yet another impact of the information revolu­ tion discussed in section 10) is that concerning the impact of the

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transnationalization and interdependence of real political causality. Or the question of the inability of the average vote-caster to compre­ hend (in the double sense of the expression) the real givens of the problems refracted on his or her circumscribed national or cantonal horizons. Most people deplore and denounce the further distancing of the already remote modern decision-making institutions. This is a real impression, which can create either adverse votes of antipathy or electoral apathy, even abstentionism, but nevertheless it is basically an impression. For it is not the geographic or rather geopolitical remoteness of the sites of the International Monetary Fund, of NATO or of the UN which alienate the minds of the local vote-casters. What alienates them is the esoterically scientific character of most problems, the worldwide interdependence and the supranational incommensurability of the 'right' decision to be taken in a given problem submitted to the individual's vote. In these two new conditions of traditional political consultation such a consultation becomes increasingly symbolic for the individual vote­ caster and increasingly orchestrated, yet without an intelligible score. To this must be added, even if somewhat briefly, the question of the relevance of the national vote in problems of international import. By this I mean problems which can be properly examined and understood only when they are situated at the international or transnational level in which the national and local meanings, inter­ ests and sentiments are subsumed. The French referendum on the treaty of Maastricht in September 1 992 remains the best example of the incompatibility of motives at the national and international levels. For there was a treaty of Maastricht which 1 1 out of 1 2 national representative governments had signed, after prolonged negotiations and discussions in the European Council of Ministers. The text finally accepted was patchy and esoteric. But it can be assumed that the spokesmen of representative governments knew and understood it. Therefore the idea of inviting the represented to examine the same problem by means of a 'one man, one vote' popular referendum was mistaken twice over (and President Mitterand will always be blamed for having tried to play with these constitutional and continental problems for French electoral purposes). It was mistaken first because the answers to a specifically European question lacked European significance. Most of the answers took the question to be whether France should remain in - 83 -

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the European Community or whether the socialist president of the republic and the government of the Socialist Party should resign. Answers to such questions missed the European point. Secondly, it is seriously to be feared that the natural public backwardness in understanding, in specialized knowledge and, above all, in the elevation of the average national voter to the European level or to that of the mentality of the 'highly developed countries', with their vaster perspectives, will for some time reflect adversely upon consultations on national or international problems. What is now needed is to re-educate the political mentality of the voters. However emotionally powerful the feeling, or justified the interest, of the national vote-caster, this will not turn him or her into an objective and knowledgeable observer of transnational problems, which have to be seen in a transnational context. During the period of transnational re-education, representative govern­ ments will be well advised to avoid embarrassing quid pro quos with the representatives thinking of one thing and the represented thinking of something different. The democratic transnational consultations should be limited to the very general horizon where national consent is demanded for the first time (usually the initial accession to a treaty) and not at every subsequent development of the initial experiment. Above all, what should be avoided are allegedly transnational consultations for national electoral purposes.

5 There is no doubt that both liberalism and individualism have in common the pursuit of liberty. But while their purpose may seem to be identical, what emerges from the common pursuit is evidently the dissimilarity of its motives. To take an otherwise inadequate metaphor, this would amount to saying that both the doctor and the patient seek health. The metaphor, though, fits the real case - that is, the relation between liberalism and individualism in the act of prescription, which is as essential in the relation between doctor and patient as it is in that between liberalism and individu­ alism. The purpose of individualism, and of the individual, is to ensure his or her freedom to act. Because of its intrinsic 'individual­ istic' character, its aim cannot be to be of service to others (within the limits of Isaiah Berlin's differentiation between positive and - 84 -

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negative freedom, or in other words up to the point where and when his or her freedom of action impinges on, and therefore obstructs the freedom of others, which thereupon limits it). It is a contradiction in terms to say that individualism is altruistic, though the actions of an individual can obviously be altruistic. Individualism can prescribe only to the self; if it were to prescribe to others it would compromise the very legitimacy of its principle. But liberalism, which never knew whether it was an ideology, let alone a philosophical system, is directed towards general humanity, precisely because its intrinsic motivation is prescriptive. Its vocation, indeed raison d 'etre, is how to give freedom to all individ­ uals. Even its most popular slogan 'Laissez-faire, laissez-passer', which is apparently nonsensical, because it can be taken to mean 'stand still and do nothing', is nevertheless a prescription. Evidently, the do-nothing prescriptive non-sense was afterwards grafted onto and consolidated with the more positive precepts of constitution­ alism. Constitutionalism is a system which goes particularly well with liberalism because it indicates to authority - that is, the state how to proceed in order to do, if not nothing, at least the minimal amount; and it indicates to individuals, qua citizens, how to defend their freedom without violating that of others. Raymond Aron's formula of 'constitutional pluralism' is so much more precise than that of 'liberal democracy' preferred by political scientists. Further 'variations on Merquior's theme' will also examine the relation between liberalism and constitutionalism, which we have just touched on. Here what should be added is that liberalism attempts to help self-isolated, inner-concentrated, indeed deaf individuals to hear each other, to rescue them from their ultimate sense of 'absurd' (absurdo) . Thus for that reason liberalism deserves to be considered as the protector of individualism. For indeed, as we have seen since the period of the school of existentialism's domination of philosophy, total or totally deaf individualism is so 'absurd' that it ends by negating even itself and proclaims with Foucault the 'death of man'.

6 In spite of my general respect for Norberto Bobbio's political philosophy, I wish I could believe him when he proclaims that 'the - 85 -

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practice of democracy is an historical consequence of Liberalism' and that 'all existing democratic states were originally liberal states'. It is not only the gross approximativeness of the historical etymology which surprises me: it took twenty-two centuries for the word 'liberal' to be invented by the liberals of the Spanish Cortes (and for the term 'liberalism' to be forged by Madame de Stael in relation to Benjamin Constant's political thought), while Plato and Aristotle give us ample written evidence of how frequently the word 'democracy' was used in the fourth century B C in Athens. Etymological metaphors are frequent in political philos­ ophy and it takes Merquior's historically precise mind to call protoliberalism all those fourteen centuries of intellectual struggle for freedom, a struggle which, by now, is usually called liberalism. One single continuum of gestation of the same body of ideas? Bobbio is one of those who do not object to that verbal oversimplification. No, where I do not follow him is where he does not follow Constant, Tocqueville and John Stuart Mill. Constant in particular, and especially in his differentiation between the Ancients and the Modems, also stressed the difference in the kind of civic spirit between the notion of democracy and that of liberalism ( even ignoring the pejorative sense that the Greeks gave to democracy, as a politeia unbalanced by the domination of the policymaking processes of the polis by 'the poor'). Liberalism concerns the individual, even the individual citizen; democracy concerns that unit called the polis or city in which the polites or dves are members of an interrelated and dominant community. It is this difference in structure, I would even say in texture, between the publicly motivated democracy and the privately dominated liberalism that is dialectically difficult to weave. Nevertheless, political practice and conciliatory political theory have actually produced the political­ theoretical hybrid called liberal-democracy (at a time when Western 'democracy' found it necessary to be differently character­ ized from the Marxist-Leninist 'popular democracies', based on illusory economic egalitarianism). In connection with that, I found very refreshing Giovanni Sartori's recent furious reiteration of Constant's much calmer discussion of this perennial argument. Sartori proclaims: The ancients did not, and could not recognize the individual as a person and, concurrently, as a 'private self' entitled to respect, for

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the obvious reason that this conception came with Christianity and was subsequently developed by the Renaissance and by Protestantism and by the modern school of natural law. What the Greek individualistic spirit lacked, then, was the notion of a legiti­ mate private-space conceived as the moral as well as the juridical projection of the single human person. The fact that an impassioned individualistic impetus flourished throughout Athenian democracy does not therefore contradict the assertion that the individual was actually undefended and remained at the mercy of the collective body. But democracy did not respect the individual, it tended rather to suspect him. A free city is one thing, free citizens quite another. Greek democracy was, I submit, a past that we would not want back at all. 5

Don't we indeed? It depends who the 'we' is in this context. I am sure that Giovanni Sartori, the Prince of Wales, Mia Farrow, you and I do not like the kind of plebeian and muck-raking democracy which has emerged today. But the publishers and readers of tabloids, the makers of investigative television programmes and the tens of millions of their addictive readers and viewers believe that the great symbol of political egalitarian democracy is, to paraphrase Edward Shils, 'the torment of privacy'. This means the right of the public through the 'media' to torment private citizens by prying into the secrets that every human being should be allowed and that the great majority keep to themselves. By an ironical twist, while we are so proud to make privatization one of the pillars of our modem economic life, we have allowed the commercial enterprises of the media to de-privatize individual lives, 'tormenting' everyone in public sight. Nor do we want 'rave' and 'acid' parties polluting our own backyards and obscene images illus­ trating children's textbooks and television programmes. The city oppresses the individual today more than in Athenian times, but by open vice and corruption rather than by the compulsory abiding values allegedly imposed by the gods and by the public sense of collective pride. But 'curiouser and curiouser', what we still do not know is whether it is democracy that has corrupted liberalism or rather, the other way round, liberalism that has vitiated democracy. In the remaining sections of this chapter I will examine this very point. 5 G. Sartori, The 286-7.

Theory

of Democracy, vol. 2 (New York: Chatham House, 1987) , pp.

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7 It is taken for granted that in the history of political philosophy two consequences follow from the 'break' brought about by the French revolution. Secularism, either as agnosticism or as straightforward atheism, has since replaced, first in France and then in Europe, the religious stance of the state. Hence liberalism, born after the revolution, should be historically predisposed to make agnosticism, if not atheism, preside over its political philosophy. Indeed, in the most current definition, liberalism and especially constitutional liberalism is not only religious agnosticism, but also political agnos­ ticism. The most current definitions are not always the most complete. The abovementioned definition glides over the question of whether even at the very origin of liberalism in the nineteenth century it did not show in its essential depths an abdication from human reason, a recognition of more mysterious rules and obliga­ tions. Take the case of Benjamin Constant, the founder of liberalism. The logic of the argument of his work is confirmed by that of its gestation. The one subject that Constant ruminated over throughout his life was religion. It was the first subject he ever wrote about while still an adolescent, and it was the subject of his last published work (the final volume came out posthumously). This was not unusual for an alert intellect of his period, since the separation from the old religion left every idealistic mind (as distinct from the materialistic Helvetius or his pupil Bentham) tortured, after the first joys of liberation from the discipline of the Church, by what appeared terrifyingly as the black hole of rationalism. Even Robespierre felt the need to create a goddess to whom to devote his need for prayer. Constant's essay on religion obviously leads on to an anticlerical and pantheistic conclusion, but the main line of the argument is the affirmation of what he calls 'the religious sentiment', which he describes as the essence, the initial spark, of 'those principles of justice and pity which no human beings can cease to observe without degrading and denying their very nature'. Once we discuss this premise of Constant's reasoning, and once we realize that for him the basic feeling of every individual human - 88 -

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being is 'this mysterious sentiment', the religious sentiment, through which we find 'in the physical world all that belongs to nature, to the universe, to its immensity; and in the moral world all that arouses pity or enthusiasm; the spectacle of a virtuous action, of a generous sacrifice . . . of the sorrows of others assisted or assuaged . . . contempt for vice. . . and resistance to tyranny', then it becomes easier to follow his liberal trend of thought. It is a trend that begins and ends with the individual and his or her conscience in the world - in the world, not only in society, it is the idealistic liberal trend of thought. Once we are aware of the depth from which his theory of liberal constitutionalism sprang, we are no longer surprised to find Constant stating at the very beginning of his Prindpes de politique that [my emphasis] : since the constitution is the guarantee of the freedom of a people, everything that is related to that freedom is constitutional, but nothing which is not related to it is constitutional; that to extend the constitution over everything was to open up dangers for it everywhere, and to surround it with shoals; that there are basicfounda­ tions which national authorities could not touch.

The limitation of the constitution is then logically presented by Constant as the consequence of the prior limitation of the sover­ eignty of the people. Thus: When one assumes that the sovereignty of the people is unlimited, one is setting up and throwing into human society in haphazard fashion a degree of power too great in itself, and which is an evil regardless of in whose hands it is lodged. It is the degree of power which is at fault, not those who wield it. One must act against the weapon, not against the arm which brandishes it. Some bodies are too heavy for the hands of men to bear their weight . . . Of necessity there is some part of human existence which remains individual and independent, and which by right falls outside all social competence. Sovereignty exists only in a limited and relative manner.

Further, Constant extends this principle of limitation in an apparently more controversial way to human law itself: No authority on earth is unlimited, neither that of the people, nor those who claim to represent it, nor that of kings, under whatever title they reign, not even that of the law, which being only the expression of the will of the people or of the kings, according to

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Ghita Ionescu the kind of government, must be circumscribed within the same limitations as those of the authority which issues it . . . No duty can bind . . . to those laws which not only restrict our legitimate liber­ ties, but order us to act in ways which run counter to those eternal principles of justice and pity which no man can cease to observe without degrading or denying his very nature . . . The will of a whole people cannot make just what is unjust. This critique of the law itself might seem controversial, indeed bordering on anarchy. But it is clear that Constant is situating the laws made by human beings under those prindples ofjustice and pity that are sown in every human being by that mysterious 'sentiment of religion', the ultimate source of individual morality. In his recent study of Constant, Pierre Manent asked whether the limitations he placed on sovereignty were of an 'historical' or of a 'natural' order - that is to say, did they derive from the historical mutation perceived by Constant between the society of the Andens and the Modernes, or from the, by then, seemingly obsolete Law of Nature? The answer, this time, is categorically in favour of the latter. The 'bodies which are too heavy for the hands of men to bear their weight', 'the basic foundations which national authorities cannot touch' and 'the principles of justice and pity which no man can cease to observe' emanate directly from the religious sentiment. Even if this sentiment is emancipated from the established Church, it is still that 'certain inclination to know the truth about God and to live in society' described by St Thomas Aquinas, who also concludes in his Summa Theologica (la, 2ae. 94, 2) that 'in this respect there come under the Natural Law all actions connected with such inclinations'. 6

8 Coleridge 's 'Relative Individualism ' I have asked then to its birthplace in all that constitutes our relative individuality, in all that each man calls exclusively himsel£ It is an alien of which they know not; and for the question itself so purposeless, and the very words that convey it are as sounds in an unknown language, or as the vision of heaven and earth expanded 6 See G. Ionescu, 'The Theory of Liberal Constitutionalism' in Constitutions in Democratic Politics, ed. V. Bogdanor, (London: Policy Studies Institute, 1988).

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by the rising sun which falls but as warmth on the eyelids of the blind. To no class of phenomena or particulars can it be referred, itself being none; therefore to no faculty by which these alone are appre­ hended. As little dare we to refer it to any form of abstraction or generalization; for it has neither coordinates nor analogon, it is absolutely one . . . The truths which it manifests are such as it alone can manifest, and in all truth it manifests itsel£ By what name then canst thou call a truth so manifested? Is it not a revelation? Ask thyself whether thou canst attach to that latter word any consistent meaning not included in the idea of the former? And the manifesting power, the source and the correlation of the idea thus manifested, is it not God? 7

9 If the liberal political system was in trouble in the constitutional states, it was for subtler and deeper reasons than those hurled at it by its antiparliamentarian adversaries. One was that, having sunk all its energies, indeed its very raison d'etre, in establishing the constitu­ tional system, once this had been achieved liberalism could have faded away like the Cheshire Cat in the atmosphere it had itself created in the nineteenth century. This did happen in France, where to this day there is no party going by the name of 'liberal', and where liberal parties have called themselves, in an intelligently functional way, 'of the centre'. But insofar as the world in the age of planetary communication became interdependent, the first mission of liberalism was now to extend the economic system of market liberalism and the political system of constitutional pluralism as widely as possible, so as to enable the whole world to adapt itself freely to the new demands of world trade and interdependence. GATT was the new paradigm. And the second task of liberalism in Europe, its birthplace, was to pave the way, in the new world formed by massive geopolitical regional units, for the regional unit of the European union. Instead, 'progressive permissiveness' became the ideological slogan of liber­ alism, with the accent laid on the negation of ethics, and its replacement by hedonistic utilitarian catchwords, in rivalry with those of the post-1 968 'left'. But the repetition of progressive 7 S. T. Coleridge, On Method, Essay XI.

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permissive slogans proved to be disadvantageous to liberalism. For, from the philosophical, political and, last but not least, the moral point of view, those slogans and ideas were out of tune with the real developments of the modern world. From a philosophical point of view, the very word 'progress', in which the nineteenth century had so fervently believed, was - after the new epistemological pessimism of science, after Stalinism, fascism and Nazism, after the First and Second World Wars, after Vietnam and the development of nuclear weaponry - badly shaken. The credibility of 'progress' was less convincing. Politically too, 'progressive permissiveness', with its overtones of egoism and hedonism, ran counter to the mentality of a citizenry prepared to make socio-economic sacrifices and to let the state curb some citizens' rights provided it could redress some of the blatant injus­ tices of the industrial society. But it was on the moral plane that the modern liberal slogan of 'progressive permissiveness' encountered its gravest dilemmas. Here the heritage of hedonistic utilitarianism has had deleterious effects on the education, and subsequently on the behaviour, of people within the framework of liberal constitutionalism. The utilitarian slogan of the 'pursuit of pleasure and the avoidance of pain' was taken increasingly literally in a society which put more and more temptations in the way of a public moulded by purely secular education. The phenomenon was general in the Western European constitutional states that tried to follow the glittering example of the United States. By 1968 the whole Western hemisphere had entered into a general moral crisis. It was at this moment that the materialistic liberal ideology of progressive permissiveness came into conflict with its twin: consti­ tutionalism. Indeed, it could even be said that the two former partners had now become opposed to each other: the constitutional system is asking citizens to observe the laws and abide by civic and other virtues, while the ideologies of progressive permissiveness still continue to try to 'liberate' man from 'old prejudices' and/or 'class injustice'. And yet the more one looks at the history of constitutionalism, the more one realizes that true constitutionalism is bound to be liberal. Liberalism is featherweight in structure, miraculously flexible in its adaptability to all economic and social requirements, and it may prove to be useful in the future unification of national

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sovereignties into one single European constitution. For it fits human life itself, not only civic and political life. Its dual link, polit­ ically with the individual, economically with the market, renders it so normal that any attempt to replaced it soon shows up its intrinsic abnormalities for human life. Thus the general conclusion of this section can be summed up in the following syllogism. If [first premise] the constitutional liberal state is guided by individuals, and if [second premise] individuals are guided by their moral conscience, ergo the constitutional liberal state is guided by the moral conscience of individuals. Or conversely, constitutional liberalism can only thrive if the moral conscience of the individual citizens is in harmony with the moral principles which underlie it. 8

1 0 'Globalized Liberalism ' The principal aims of liberalism were obviously greatly furthered and to some extent independently achieved by the technological information revolution, which had overwhelming effects on the modern economy and politics though its causes were purely scien­ tific and technical. Communications (both transport and informa­ tion) are free and usable now from any latitude to any longitude, from one pole to another, and from any distance from the equator, up and down the globe. Moreover, the USSR was shattered by the irresistible pressure of technology both on its backward armament industry, and on its ability to seal off its population from the information pouring in upon it and to conceal its military secrets from the satellites photographing its territory. As a result, the collapse of the Soviet bloc removed the last obstacle, indeed 'wall', in a world now 'liber­ ated'. All the markets now form a single economic and financial market; and almost all units of rule in the world, minus China and Cuba, etc., claim to be 'liberal democracies'. Is liberalism then still needed; or, because what it stood for during two centuries has now been largely achieved by those means, should liberalism now say, like the old servant, 'Nunc dimittis . . .'? The answer is no, because with the help of modern technology, 8 G. Ionescu, 'The Theory of Liberal Constitutionalism' .

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liberalism has not fulfilled either the aim of peace or the ultimate freedom of societal human beings. The victory over the Marxist-Leninist states and ideology was, almost tautologically, a double victory. The 'Cold War', inter­ spersed with some very hot episodes and some very costly armed preparations, was fought by the two superpowers and by their respective blocs. There was no possibility of conciliation. One of the camps had to be conquered by the other. This was because the origin of the Cold War was ideological: Marxism-Leninism was and remains the only ideology to have achieved power in history, from its absolute Weltanschauung to its unprecedented technique of corrupting the mind and the will of the individual and the collec­ tivities with its virus. In comparison, liberal democracy was a reaction (the attitude of opposition to an ideology is by logical necessity a counterideology). Ideology and counterideology inevitably pursued their struggle but military aggressiveness and its corollary, preparations for defence, seemed to be taking the battle onto their fields. Yet the true character of the Cold War was confirmed by its conclusion. Held in check by the firmness of the resistance of the humanly normal counterideology of liberal democracy, the abnormal and inhuman Marxist-Leninist ideology, forced into military 'containment ', was slowly devoured by its own internal contradictions. No final military intervention was necessary. And once ideology was dead and officially buried by Prime Minister Yeltsin (who proved in this respect to be more courageous than President Gorbachev) the Cold War ceased and normality began to come back to where it belonged, in the world of human beings. We are now, I wrote elsewhere, in the narrowly but exactly defined situation, for the present and the future, of 'No More World Wars', or NMWW. There are already, and there will be in the future, many local wars, some affecting their respective conti­ nents more, some less. But in the absence of a really world­ dividing ideology, the world which in the meantime had achieved global interdependence, with globally circumambient communica­ tions of all kinds, has 'localized' those wars, turned them into what they are in reality. No other World War will be caused by a local inflammation. But NMWW is not world peace either. World peace, the real peace, needs a clearly pronounced agreement of the 'states' (the 154 'sovereign states', members of the United Nations). They must - 94 -

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pledge themselves to work together, irrespective of the degree of development - that is, every polity must content those it rules over without fostering nationalistic jealousy of its better-off neighbours. It must show respect for the obligations of interdependence, for each unit is a smaller or bigger link in the chain, obliged to play its part in it, and not to obstruct it. The lesson of interdependence should especially be followed by the bigger, or more central, or more determining, links of the chain, which although engaged in the form of competitiveness and differences of development, should never forget that interdependence relativizes all power. However powerful a nation-state or even a regional formation could ever feel itself to be, and however much therefore it manifested indifference towards those it seemed to dominate, it would soon, by the logic of interdependence, feel the repercussions of the poverty and weakness of others. This would end in the destruction of its own wealth and power, sustained as they were by interdependence alone. Real and universal peace needs guardians. The reinstitutionaliza­ tion, or rather the substantialization, of some of the post-Second­ World-War-facade transnational institutions, is one of the first and most arduous tasks facing the liberal mind in the NMWW era. For, as in the nation-states, where liberalism, through constitutionalism, sought to limit the power of the guardian-state, so the modern 'liberal imagination' will have to discover how to establish the new protecting power - this time of the transnational guardians of peace - without letting them be carried away by the mechanical, almost automatic, power-accumulating national and probably suprana­ tional bureaucracies. The second duty facing liberalism, namely to ensure the freedom of the societal human being, is deliberately rendered ambiguous by the different meaning which can be given to the word 'societal'. Here the term was chosen to indicate that it is no longer the individual alone, untouched by any contacts or associations with other individuals, families or groups, who is being considered in this context. What is under consideration here is the contemporary individual threatened not only by the power of the 'sovereign state', which keeps individuals and the whole civil society under its authority, or by modern tranmational decision-making institutions, though, thanks to interdependence, their power is essentially diffuse and decentralized. The contemporary societal individual, or he - 95 -

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who has tried to find his balance between positive and negative freedom, is threatened not only, some would even say not mainly, by the central authority (state, or super-state), but by contemporary society itself which has become uncontrollable and ex-centric. It is at this significant point that modern liberalism should be asked how much responsibility it should itself bear for the apparent origin and proliferation of the now terribly distorted, deformed and perverted ideas of 'liberty' on which post-1968 society thrives. In many respects we live now in a caricature of the liberal society as visualized by its founders. The information revolution has fostered a vertiginous speed and a colossal multitude of developments. We are aware that in economic life, the market knows neither justice nor pity. But it was not possible before the coming of instant communications for anonymous and mysterious 'speculators' to shift public and private fortunes - causing even the seemingly strongest liberal states to be faced overnight with humiliating bankruptcies. We know that capitalism also has an 'ugly face'. But we do not know the faces or the names of the mafiosi-speculators who alone seem to be profiting from adventures that risk destroying all traditions of honour and public consideration. Politically, it has long been known that a degree of corruption serves as a traditional and gentle lubricator of administration. But in the past, we did not read in the same newspaper, all in one day, that high state officials and leaders of political parties in Japan, Italy, the United States, Germany, Israel, Brazil and Spain were being indicted for fraud. Nor did we ever conceive that a great British publisher and millionaire, Robert Maxwell, buried with official pomp by the Shamir government of Israel on the Mount of Olives, was apparently little more than an ordinary crook on a very large scale. Morally, the post-1968 liberal society has dissolved families and marriages, has exchanged love for sex, has set women against men (politically correct?) and children against parents, even single parents, and has experienced for the first time in history the gener­ alized habit of drugs and the generalized danger of AIDS. This of course is not the overall image of the present liberal society; but it is a list of some of the differences between the present and past liberal societies. In section 4, I insisted on the inseparability of liberalism from some moral inspiration. Here, now, it is time to conclude by asking - 96 -

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liberal intellectual and political leaders to look once more very carefully at the great errors committed in the last three decades in the name of liberalism. J'ai fait voir comment, clans les siecles d'egalite, chaque homme cherchait en lui-meme ses croyances; je veux montrer comment dans les memes siecles, il toume tous ses sentiments envers lui seul. L'individualisme est une expression recente qu'une idee nouvelle a fait naitre. Nos peres ne connaissaient que l'egoisme. L'egoisme est un amour passione et exagere de soi-meme, qui porte l'homme a ne rien rapporter qu'a lui seul et se preferer a tout. L'individualisme est un sentiment reflechi et paisible qui dispose chaque citoyen a s'isoler de la masse de ses semblables et a se retirer a l'ecart avec sa famille et ses amis; de telle sorte que, apres s'etre ainsi cree une petite societe a son usage, il abandonne volontiers la grande societe a elle-meme. L'egoisme nait d'un instinct aveugle; l'individualisme procede d'un jugement errone plutot que d'un sentiment deprave. 11 prend sa source clans les defauts de l' esprit autant que dans les vices du coeur. L'egoisme desseche le germe de toutes les vertus, l'individualisme ne tarit d'abord que la source des vertus publiques; mais a la longue, il attaque et detruit toutes les autres et va enfin s'absorber clans l'egoisme. L' egoisme est un vice aussi ancien que le monde. 11 n' appartient guere plus a une forme de societe qu'a une autre. L'individualisme est d'origine democratique et il menace de se developper a mesure que les conditions s' egalisent. 9 9 A. de Tocqueville, De la democratie en Amerique. Oeuvres Completes, vol. I (Paris: Gallimard, 1 961), ch. II, p. 105.

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PA RT I I

On Merquiorian Themes

-6 Liberalism and Trust JOHN A. HALL

The most serious charge consistently levelled at liberalism is that it has no proper means to ensure social cohesion. The logic behind the accusation is obvious: selfish individuals concerned only to maximize their private interests will not cooperate or trust each other, and will accordingly not join together to protect the commonweal when it is endangered. The lights of Victorian liber­ alism were most certainly worried as to the viability of liberalism, insisting in consequence on the need to create noble and altruistic motives to provide social cement for the whole. 1 If the intention of those thinkers was to save liberalism, many notable contemporary political theorists, writing in a century which has seen catastrophic breakdowns of liberal regimes, suggest nothing less than the neces­ sity of abandoning a failed liberal individualism so as to replace it with renewed emphasis on the community. 2 The thesis of this chapter is that the accusation made against liberalism is very largely false. Most obviously, there is much to be said against the communitarian position: when it is not murky, it clearly has the potential of very great illiberalism of its own. 3 More important than this difference about the nature of the good society 1 On this point, see S. Collini, Public Moralists: Political T11ought and Intellectual Life in Britain 1 850-1 930 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1991) , especially ch. 2. 2 A representative fi re here is Charles Taylor, whose views are particularly clearly gu stated in 'Cross Purposes: The Liberal-Communitarian Debate' , in N. Rosenblum, ed. , LJberalism and the Moral Life (Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press, 1989) . 3 S. Holmes, 'The Permanent Structure of Antiliberal Thought', in Rosenblum, LJberalism and the Moral LJfe ; J. A. Hall, Liberalism (London: Paladin, 1988) , especially chs 3 and 7 .

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is basic disagreement about the sociological claim that liberal societies tend to collapse. The collapse of settled liberal democracies - as compared to the breakdown of recently created liberal regimes, from Weimar Germany to contemporary Peru - is, mercifully, historically very unusual. The fundamental stability of liberal regimes should be very much at the forefront of our minds, given the success of liberalism in comparison with state socialism. 4 Points such as these could each be debated at length. But I prefer to make my case by analysing a key theme in a single thinker in the belief that the particular will on this occasion yield striking but unpleasant generalizations. Alexis de Tocqueville seems to me the greatest theorist of trust. 5 This claim can be specified; it should not be misunderstood. 'I have only one passion', Tocqueville declared in 1837 in a letter to Henry Reeve, 'the love of liberty and human dignity. All forms of govern­ ment are in my eyes only more or less perfect ways of satisfying this holy and legitimate passion of man. ' 6 Differently put, no radical claim is being made here to the effect that Tocqueville is a sociolo­ gist of trust rather than of liberty; the claim is simply that what Tocqueville did have to say about trust in political life is exceedingly high-powered, and of particular interest in a period in which many attempts to create or to restore cooperative relations are being made. It is not of course surprising that his ideas about trust are so impres­ sive once we understand that there are several affinities between trust and liberty. Tocqueville has much to tell us about psychological and institutional links between trust and liberty, and pleasure can be derived from reconstructing his views. Tocqueville's views of a world without trust are specially striking. A particular thesis maintained here is that Tocqueville changed his mind about the circumstances that caused the loss of trust. The position at which he arrived is one in which kings rather than people are blamed for the loss of trust in society. In my view, Tocqueville's final position is not just more powerful but actually correct. 4 This stress on the sociological viability of liberal regimes need not and should not entail complacency; differently put, there remains much to be said for a shared commit­ ment to liberal society. 5 Good use of Tocqueville is made by G. Hawthorn, 'Three Ironies in Trust', in D. Gambetta, ed., Trust: Making and Breaking Cooperative Relations (Oxford: Blackwell, 1988) . This is an excellent volume, marred slightly by a lack of attention to Tocqueville. 6 A. de Tocqueville, Selected Letters on Politics and Society, ed. R. Boesche, trans. J. Toupin and R. Boesche (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1985), p. 115.

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Without further ado, let me tum to Tocqueville's view of a world without trust. It is important to appreciate that Tocqueville regarded the possibility of a democratic tyranny of the majority with visceral dread and fear. 7 Much more was involved here than such facets of the democratic era as the distaste for great men and noble literary themes. Tocqueville had been deeply influenced by Pascal and Rousseau, and accordingly believed that men could be subject to base and depraved passions quite as much as to ones more noble. In particular, he believed that human beings had within them a devil which once released could make social and political life sheer hell. The passion in question, envy, is not always properly understood. In particular, it is crucial to understand the difference between jealousy and envy. Jealousy leads an individual aware that someone else has something, including the affections of another person, to imitate and copy: it is a positive and vitalizing emotion - with links to trust - that encourages the individual to reach higher in order to achieve. Envy is exactly the opposite. 8 Its central core received inimitable treatment in Shakespeare's Othello: when Iago realizes that there is a beauty in Othello's life that makes his ugly, his response is not to emulate the Moor but to destroy him. Envy is the evil eye which seeks not to imitate but to pull down: the destruction of a quality or a person removes the offence. It is this passion that Tocqueville feared would be released by modern circumstances. At best, the release of envy would remove all distinction. At worst, Tocqueville felt that there was a natural fit between despotism and social equality: rather than allow difference and divergence, the many would prefer to suffer in common, to be equal under a single ruler. The initial presupposition of Tocqueville's thought is that the advent of democracy was responsible for releasing this passion. To hold such a view was entirely characteristic, as Roger Boesche has recently demonstrated, of a whole generation of French intellectuals. 9 Generalized dislike was shown to the individualism encouraged by bourgeois society, together with premonitions as to 7 A. de Tocqueville, Democracy in America, trans. G. Lawrence (New York: Anchor Books, 1969) , p. 12. 8 H. Shoeck, Envy: A Theory ef Social Behavior, trans. M. Glenny and B. Ross (New York: Harcourt, Brace and World, 1969) . 9 R. Boesche, T11e Strange Liberalism ef Alexis de To ueville (Ithaca: Cornell University cq Press, 1987) , part one.

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John A. Hall the political consequences of the isolation that its social form encouraged. Tocqueville insisted that individualism was a modem concept, 'unknown to our ancestors, for the good reason that in their days every individual necessarily belonged to a group and no one could regard himself as an isolated unit' . 1 0 Such individualism began by encouraging a retreat into private life, only then to create an egoism opposed to all public spirit. 1 1 This was naturally anathema to Tocqueville, given his allegiance to that republican tradition of political theory which insisted that the health of the polity depends upon public-spirited 'civic virtue' . 1 2 Admiration for Montesquieu, the most recent exemplar of republican theory and major influence on Tocqueville, stands behind most of these attitudes. Tocqueville certainly took for granted Montesquieu's view that liberty naturally characterized aristocratic circumstances: liberty was guaranteed by the presence of competing groups, each one of which generated powerful ties of mutual loyalty and support. Perhaps a shared aristo­ cratic background explains their insistence that self-restraint and self­ mastery were necessary were liberty to be sustained. But if Tocqueville shared much with his generation, he also chose to differ from it. In private life, he opposed the dictates of his family and married a middle class English woman. 13 In political affairs, he chose to serve the bourgeois republic of Louis Philippe - against the wishes not just of his father, but also of his class. This decision to adapt to the new order explains his interest in the United States: by examining the most advanced of all democracies, Tocqueville felt he would be able to say something about France's likely future. It is important at this point to be more precise than was Tocqueville himself about his exact Problematik. Confusion has been caused by the different connotations attached to the concept of democracy. Tocqueville takes democracy to be a new era of equal 10 A. de Tocqueville, T11e Old Regime and the French Revolution, trans. S. Gilbert (New York: Anchor, 1955) , p. 96. 1 1 A. de Tocqueville, Democracy in America, pp. 539-41. C£ J. C. Lamberti, Tocqueville et /es deux democraties (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1970) . 12 On this tradition, see J. G. A. Pocock, T11e Machiavellian Moment (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1975) . For an appreciation of Tocqueville's allegiance to this tradition in comparison to thinkers who endorsed bourgeois society without major quali­ fication, see A. 0. Hirschman, The Passions and the Interests (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1977) . 1 3 For details, see A. Jardin's excellent Tocqueville (New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1988) .

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social conditions. As his ultimate value is liberty, the central theme of his thought can in fact be simply stated. What will be the politics of the era of equality of conditions? Will this new age be character­ ized by arbitrary rule or by the presence of political liberty? And would it be possible, when people are so similar, to prevent a more thoroughgoing despotism than ever before? The first volume of Democracy in America produced a favourable report on the United States. But it is vital to note that Tocqueville was surprised to discover that political liberty and equal social condi­ tions could coexist. He confided to his travel journal his contempt for the middle classes, noting almost reluctantly that 'in spite of their petty passions, their incomplete education and their vulgar manners, they clearly can provide practical intelligence'. 1 4 Let us examine in turn the three factors - accidental, legal and cultural - by means of which the United States reached its happy condition. The most important accident allowing the United States to be at once equal and free is provided by geography: The Americans have no neighbours and consequently no great wars, financial crises, invasions, or conquests to fear; they need neither heavy taxes nor a numerous army nor great generals; they have also hardly anything to fear from something else which is a greater scourge for democratic republics than all these others put together, namely, military glory. 1 5

This point can be put in slightly different terms: the creation of a powerful state apparatus makes it hard to maintain liberty. The United States was saved from this fate by geographical isolation from the major centres of interstate conflict. But other accidental factors are also considered to have played a part. Most importantly, abundance of land allowed for the egalitarian spirit of the early settlers to be maintained: no hierarchy could be easily created given that a labourer could always move on towards the frontier. In these circumstances, acquisitiveness did not breed corruption: to the contrary, the ability to extract plenty from the land depended upon knowledge and independence, and this joined together with the benefits of prosperity to maintain the republic. 14 A. de Tocqueville, journey to America, ed. J. P. Mayer, trans. G. Lawrence, revised edn in collaboration with A. P. Kerr (New York: Doubleday, 1971) , p. 259, cited by Boesche, The Strange Liberalism of Alexis de Tocqueville, p. 89. 15 A. de Tocqueville, Democracy in America, p. 278.

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Liberty was maintained, secondly, by means of the laws. Tocqueville has much of interest to say about the judicial system, particularly about its capacity to restrain sudden outbursts of feeling. But of greater import here are his comments about participation. Tocqueville stresses that the American constitution managed to combine the benefits of a great power at one and the same time as it allows the involvement characteristic of smaller societies. The United States, in another of Tocqueville's formulations, possesses executive centralization with administrative decentralization. One benefit of this is that the United States is not dominated by a great capital. But of absolutely central importance is the fact that a decentralized system allows the people to engage in politics. Tocqueville was impressed by the political participation he observed in New England, and he suggested that it served as a bulwark against the tyranny of the majority. 1 6 When people are actively engaged in political life, they begin to appreciate the benefits of hearing differences of opinion; equally, they gain both a taste for freedom and the necessary skills to be free. Liberty depends upon the citizen-training that can come only from taking charge of one's destiny. Cooperation between classes and individuals is relatively easy to achieve within such a world, and this amounts to Tocqueville's genealogy of trust. His general position is made particularly clear in a passage disputing the claim that the state needs to become more skilful and active in proportion as the citizens become weaker and more helpless: Feelings and ideas are renewed, the heart enlarged, and the under­ standing developed only by the reciprocal action of men one upon another. 1 7

For Tocqueville, a state can only truly be powerful if it is in a relationship of trust with its citizens - an idea that, as we will see, became central to his later work. The third type of general cause concerns what Tocqueville felici­ tously called 'the habits of the heart'. Here Tocqueville's argument goes very much against current preconceptions in insisting that it is 16 Tocqueville's admiration for New England town meetings was, in a sense, overdone. G. W. Pierson. Tocqueville and Beaumont in America (New York: Oxford University Press, 1 938) makes it clear that by the 1 830s - in the midst of the Jackson presidency! - New England was no longer a guide to the complete political reality of the United States. 17 A. de Tocqueville, Democracy in America, p. 5 1 5 .

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respect for religion that underlies liberty in the United States. One part of his argument is particularly clear and strikingly sociologically perceptive. Tocqueville suggests that freeing the Church from state control will encourage the spread of religious faith: differently put, secularization is usually at least half a political movement, that is, it is occasioned by the need to assault the strengthening of the politi­ cally powerful by religious legitimation. Altogether harder to understand, however, is the core of Tocqueville's argument, namely, that religion is necessary for liberty because it places some limits on human behaviour. It is worth quoting Tocqueville at some length on this point. After noting that the general respect for religion supports family life, he notes: The imagination of the Americans, therefore, even in its greatest aberrations, is circumspect and hesitant; it is embarrassed from the start and leaves its work unfinished. These habits of restraint are found again in political society and singularly favour the tranquillity of the people as well as the durability of the institutions they have adopted. Nature and circumstances have made the inhabitant of the United States a bold man, as is sufficiently attested by the enter­ prising spirit with which he seeks his fortune. If the spirit of the Americans were free of all impediment, one would soon find among them the boldest innovators and the most implacable logicians in the world. But American revolutionaries are obliged ostensibly to profess a certain respect for Christian morality and equity, and that does not allow them easily to break the laws when those are opposed to the executions of their designs; nor would they find it easy to surmount the scruples of their partisans even if they were able to get over their own. Up till now no one in the United States has dared to profess the maxim that everything is allowed in the interests of society, an impious maxim apparently invented in an age of freedom in order to legitimatise every future tyrant. 1 8

This passage offers, in my opinion, a very powerful insight into American political culture, but it needs, nonetheless, some highlighting. Tocqueville's oeuvre as a whole suggests that what is at issue here is not in fact very complex. When we recall that the devil in modem political behaviour is envy, it becomes apparent that the key self-limitation imposed by religion results from it regarding that passion as sinful. Religious belief entails respect for 18 Ibid., p. 292.

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the gifts shown to humanity. What do differences between men matter, given the much larger fact of equality in the sight of God? Tocqueville's contemporaries as well as subsequent critics have found the second volume of Democracy in America less forceful than the first, despite its obvious felicities. What is noticeable here is that Tocqueville can be seen as beginning to doubt his basic argument, that it is equal social conditions which create envy and thereby encourage despotism. His chapter 'Why Democratic Nations Show a More Ardent and Enduring Love for Equality than for Liberty' begins by being true to its title. But towards the end of the chapter, the target of the discussion subtly changes: Democratic peoples always like equality, but there are times when their passion for it turns to delirium. This happens when the old social hierarchy, long menaced, finally collapses after a severe internal struggle . . . The foregoing applies to all democratic nations, what follows only to the French. Among most modern nations, specially those of Europe, the taste for freedom and the conception of it only began to take shape and grow at the time when social conditions were tending towards equality, and it was a consequence of that very equality. It was the absolute monarchs who worked hardest to level down ranks among their subjects. For the people's equality had come before liberty, so equality was an established fact when freedom was still a novelty; the one had already shaped customs, opinions and laws to its use when the other was first stepping lonely forward into broad daylight. Thus the latter was still only a matter of opinion and preference, whereas the former had already insinuated itself into popular habits, shaped mores, and given a particular twist to the slightest actions of life. 1 9

It is this line of argument that is fully developed in The Old Regime and the French Revolution, to which we can turn after making

one important prefatory point. In the most general terms, what is noticeable about the United States is that it was a cultural offshoot of England. It was created with equal social conditions and political liberty: it was born free. This renders Tocqueville's analysis essentially static: it is an exami­ nation of social and political institutions that counterbalance the 19 Ibid., pp. 505-6.

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tendency, inherent in a society of equal social conditions, towards the tyranny of the majority. The essentially cheerful report that Tocqueville issues on the United States is accordingly of limited use when it comes to understanding Europe. For European society did have the 'old social hierarchy' of feudalism, and the nature of the transition that the various national states makes towards the world of equal social conditions accordingly becomes absolutely vital. If Tocqueville's central problem - how can liberty and equal social conditions be combined? - remains the same, a key part of the agenda now becomes the historical development of both these forces. So let us tum from the striking book that he wrote when young to his masterpiece, The Old Regime and the French Revolution. We know that Tocqueville had originally set to work in the 1 850s to produce an analysis of the failure of France to embrace political liberty in the years after 1 848 - a failure which drove him to the depths of despair. 20 That remained his question: the central subject of the book is the propensity of France to embrace despo­ tism. But in seeking to understand why this was the case, Tocqueville was driven backwards in time; he found the explana­ tion less in modem social circumstances than in the nature of the old regime. Outlining his account must be our initial task. But Tocqueville's argument gains very considerable force because he has - half implicitly, half explicitly - two control groups. He devotes an appendix to Languedoc, an area of France which resisted most of the centralizing encroachments of the absolutist regime, and had, in consequence, a very different social physiognomy. Far more impor­ tant are the comments made about England, a society with a feudal past which nonetheless possesses liberty in the area of equal social conditions. Tocqueville is one of the greatest of France's anglophiles, and the English comparison serves as a foil for French developments at every step of his argument. Tocqueville was a far more systematic thinker than is often realized. When dealing with France and England, he asked about the same types of social cause that had structured his account of the United States, namely, accidents, laws, and mores or habits of the heart. We can follow him in using these categories, though clarity of presentation will be enhanced in taking them in an order 20 R. Herr, Tocqueville and the Old Regime (Princeton: Princeton University Press,

1 962) .

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different from that used when dealing with the United States. Let us begin with the laws of France. Tocqueville tells us that what surprised him most in the research for his book was the discovery that administrative centralization was the work of the old regime rather than of the revolution. Several aspects of this centralization are traced. The absolutist regime placed its own servants, the intendants, in every area of France so as to rule and tax through them. Even where old systems of authority were left, they were effectively undermined: court cases which presented difficulties for the regime were 'called' to Paris. Furthermore, the autonomy of the towns was destroyed by Richelieu and that of the aristocracy by Louis XIV - who built Versailles so as to neuter his aristocracy by removing them from their power bases and by placing them under his supervision. The consequences of all these changes were profound. Most obviously, the administration learnt to distrust the people: Any independent group, however small, which seemed desirous of taking action otherwise than under the aegis of the administration filled it with alarm, and the tiniest free association of citizens, however harmless its aims, was regarded as a nuisance. The only corporate bodies tolerated were those whose members had been hand-picked by the administration and which were under its control. Even big industrial concerns were frowned upon. In a word, our administration resented the idea of private citizens' having any say in the control of their own enterprises, and preferred sterility to competition. 2 1 In general, the administration realized that its power was negative, resting as it did on preventing linkages between the people that it could not oversee: it was able to control but not to mobilize the people. And the people, bereft of the chances of participation, looked for social improvements ever more to the state, which they came to regard almost as a deity in its own right. In these circumstances, Parisian affairs began to have a profound effect on French politics as a whole. Administrative centralization was but one side of the picture of laws and institutions. The most brilliant pages in all of Tocqueville are contained in chapters eight to ten of the second part of the book. The first of these three chapters explains 'How France had 21

A. de Tocqueville, T11e Old Regime and the Frend1 Revolution, p. 6

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become the country in which men were most like each other'. What was involved here, in Tocqueville's view and in that of later historians whose work supports this point, was the convergence of income levels and styles of life of the aristocracy and the bourgeoisie. 22 The second stage of the argument is a nice example of Tocqueville's love of paradox: chapter nine considers 'How, though in many respects so similar, the French were split up more than ever before into small, isolated, self-regarding groups'. This section begins with an analys is of local politics before the advent of absolutism. Records showed that classes had once been able to trust each other, and to cooperate with each other in defending regional interests. This spirit of class cooperation was shattered most of all by the granting of tax and legal immunities to the French aristocracy: this destroyed all community of interest, and naturally made it sense­ less to serve as leaders against the encroachments of the state. This basic separation of the classes was exacerbated by the state's raising of extra revenues by the granting of more special privileges. This was so excessive that it not only set bourgeois against aristocrat, but some sections within the bourgeoisie against many of their colleagues. The final stage in the argument, chapter ten, bluntly considers 'the suppression of political freedom and the barriers set up between classes'. It is here that Tocqueville finds an explanation for France's inability to combine equal social conditions with political liberty. The exercise of political liberty depends, as noted, upon trust between different social classes, whilst it in turn breeds responsi­ bility; differently put, participation is the only effective means of training citizens suited to liberty. The trouble with the pattern of the French past, in contrast, is that envy has been so encouraged by rulers as to make people prefer equality under a despot to differenti­ ation under liberty. The whole burden of Tocqueville's argument is thus to offer a political explanation for the rise of envy and destruc­ tion of trust. His own summary on this point is brutal: Almost all the vices, miscalculation and disastrous prejudices that I have been describing owed their origin, their continuance, and their proliferation to a line of conduct practised by so many of our Kings, that of dividing men so as the better to rule them. 23 22 P. Higonnet, Class, Ideology and the Rights of Nobles during the French Revolution (New York: Oxford University Press, 1981) . 23 A. de Tocqueville, The Old Regime and the French Revolution, p. 136.

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Tocqueville has changed his mind about the loss of trust. Liberty is undennined less by selfish individualistic passions released by the age of social conditions and much more by the strategy of the dominant elite. Let us complete Tocqueville's argument. The analysis of the 'habits of the heart' of French people is well known, both because it became a staple of nineteenth century French social thought and because it gave rise to a striking thesis by Daniel Momet on the intellectual origins of the French Revolution. 24 Three critical and mutual reinforcing points are made by Tocqueville about the political culture of eighteenth century France. First, the divide-and-rule strategy of the absolutist state meant that the intellectuals, quite as much as other social actors, lost touch with political reality. They criticized society remorselessly, heedless of social costs, and produced plans which looked perfect on the drawing board but were to prove extremely dangerous in practice. Particularly important in this regard, secondly, was their assault on religion. Tocqueville explains this assault in terms familiar from his earlier book: it was the alliance of Church and state that led to anticlericalism. That attack was, he stresses, exceedingly dangerous because it removed all limits from politics: when every­ thing is possible, in Tocqueville's eyes, despotism becomes likely. Thirdly, Tocqueville notes that a particular group of intellectuals, the economists, much preferred order to liberty. The Physiocrats sought to make the state rational unaware, in Tocqueville's eyes, that what was really necessary was a diminution of the presence of the state. The central comment made about accidental causes is a neat counterpoint to the isolation of the United States. The fundamental origin of the absolutist state in France lies in an institutional change introduced at the blackest moment of the Hundred Years War with England: It was on the day when the French people, weary of the chaos into which the kingdom had been plunged for so long by the captivity of King John and the madness of Charles VI, permitted the King to impose a tax without their consent and the nobles showed so little public spirit as to connive at this, provided their own immunity was guaranteed - it was on that fateful day that the seeds were sown of almost all the vices and abuses which led to the violent downfall of the old regime. 25 24 D. Momet, Les origines intellectuelles de la Revolution .franfaise, 1 7 1 5- 1 787 (Paris: Armand Colin, 1933).

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The basis of class cooperation had been respect for the two maxims of canon law that governed representative estates, namely, 'no taxation without representation' and 'what touches all must be agreed by all'. 26 Once these maxims were undermined, the state could divide society and perch despotically on top of those divisions. Before contrasting this portrait with those of Languedoc and England, · the nature of the case that Tocqueville has made can usefully be highlighted. We are really being told that history - and not, as Freud had it, biology - is destiny. France lost its freedom under the old regime, and it is accordingly basically incapable of having liberty in the new age of social conditions. It is not, in other words, the actual process of transition to equal conditions that matters: rather, patterns of political organization and culture persist across social transformations - a general ethic that also applies, as we shall see in a moment, to England. This is a highly deterministic conclusion, and it is depressing. Languedoc had been able to resist the centralizing tendencies of the monarchy, and Tocqueville makes much of the decision of notables of Languedoc to collect taxes locally - and this despite the fact that their total tax burden was heavier. Running one's own affairs allowed trust in society to continue; much is made of cooperation between classes. It is at this point that Tocqueville most clearly spells out an important theoretical point about the nature of state power. What he notes about Languedoc is that it was better governed than the rest of France. A lessening of despo­ tism/retention of local liberties increased total taxation since the aristocracy contributed to a government that it could control; in consequence of this and of the greater knowledge created by trust in contrast to the power stand-off characteristic of social atomism, the level of social infrastructure and general prosperity was strik­ ingly high. Constitutionalism breeds trust, and trust empowers. And this is true more generally of England as compared to France: for Tocqueville, what matters about England is that its state is far more powerful than that of France, despite - or, rather, because of - its lack of absolutist powers. 27 25

A. de Tocqueville, The Old Regime and the Frend1 Revolution, pp. 98-9. 26 A. R. Myers, Parliaments and Estates in Europe to 1 789 (London: Thames and Hudson, 1975). 27 J. A. Hall, Powers and Liberties (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1986), ch. 5. Cf. J. Brewer, T11e Sinews ef War (New York: Knopf, 1989).

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England provides a neat counterpoint to France at each theoret­ ical juncture on which Tocqueville's thought concentrates; and it equally forms a coherent and comprehensible whole. Tocqueville himself writes most extensively about the laws and institutions of England. What impresses him most is the resilience of the aristoc­ racy. That resilience is explained by continuing function. The lack of centralized state administration means that the aristocrats provide local government. As in Languedoc, the aristocracy is not exempt from taxation, with the English state accordingly being strength­ ened by large revenues; what matters most in this for Tocqueville is that the aristocrats can at times join with other members of the community in resisting any extension of arbitrary state power. Both a consequence and a cause of this happy situation is the openness of the English upper classes. In France, privileges, legal and fiscal, had turned the aristocracy into a caste separate from the rest of society. In England, the absence of such privileges encouraged intermar­ riage, and allowed the aristocracy to be opinion leaders for the whole of society. The success of that leadership was seen, for Tocqueville, in the way in which the idea of the gentleman became popular throughout society. Tocqueville's comments about English geopolitics and the habits of the heart are less developed, though the contrast with France at each point is exceedingly neat. Geopolitically, England has the advantage of being an island, far less fearful of invasion and accord­ ingly with citizens less likely to hand over their liberties because of the pains of war. Furthermore, Tocqueville is encouraging us to say simply that the presence of naval forces, rather than of a standing army, encourages liberty. 28 In more general matters of political culture, Tocqueville notes that English intellectuals are far less prone to create wild schemes because they have practical experi­ ence of political life. This is certainly an accurate description of the world of Hume and Smith, creators of the very grand theories of empiricism and capitalism, both of which are marked by and seek to encourage prudence, calculation and moderation. It is not of course true to say that these figures were themselves advocates of religion. Nonetheless, both Hume and Smith sought to discourage enthusiasm of any sort - Hume by showing a decent respect for the 28 Cf. B. Moore, Soda/ Origins 1 966) .

ef Dictatorship - 114 -

and Democracy (Boston: Beacon Press,

Liberalism and Trust

dead certainties of established religion, Smith by encouraging an increase of religious sects, able to balance and to check each other. 29 For the sake of completeness, it is well worth noting that one of the later members of the liberal and Anglophile school of thought to which Tocqueville belongs can sensibly be seen as completing his thought at this point. The first volume of Elie Halevy's celebrated history of England in the nineteenth century offered an explanation for the relative moderation of the working class in England as compared to France during the course of the nineteenth century. 30 Those attacking the upper orders in France became by necessity anticlerical, with all the increase in radicalism in this case towards Marxism - that superimposition of conflicts normally imposes. 3 1 Such a course of action was not necessary in England. The partial disestablishment of the Church meant that the working class did not need to attack religion per se: to the contrary, it could invent its own. The moderation and organization of the British working class in the nineteenth century is to be ascribed in large part to its being Methodist rather than Marxist. Let me summarize and conclude. The principal argument has been that Tocqueville came ever more powerfully to blame kings rather than people for the loss of trust with society. This is a matter of great import. Tocqueville has sometimes been utilized by conser­ vatives who wish to argue that the 'socialistic envy' of the people is both vile and a danger to settled contemporary capitalism. There is everything wrong with such a view. Most obviously, it is not correct. Tocqueville's concern with state-centred explanation can helpfully be seen, to begin with, as lying at the back of an important recent breakthrough in under­ standing the rise of socialism. There is now something of a general agreement among political sociologists to the effect that socialist militancy was not created by the capitalist mode of production but rather by ruling class strategies. 32 Differently put, the character of a 29 D. Hume, The Natural History of Religion (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1956) ; A. Smith, 11,e Wealth of Nations (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1976), Book V. 30 E. Halevy, A History of the English People in the Nineteenth Century. Volume One: Btlgland it1 1 8 1 5, trans. E. I. Watkin (London: Ernest Benn, 1934), and TI1e Birth of Methodism in England, trans. B. Semmel (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1871) . 31 The importance of superimposition is stressed by R. Dahrendorf, Class and Class Cotiflict in Industrial Sodety (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1959) . 32 There is now a large literature on this point. See, inter alia, D. Geary, European Labour Protest 1 848- 1 945 (London: Methuen, 1984) ; R. McKibbin, 111e Ideologies of Class

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social movement often results from the way in which it is treated by the state with which it interacts. In a sense this is obvious: levels of militancy within capitalism vary by nation. Before 1914, American workers famously had no interest in socialism, British workers were labourist rather than socialist, German workers were theoretically Marxist but actually reformist, whilst Russian workers were genuinely socially revolutionary. The character of the scale is best explained in political terms: whereas liberal states allow workers to become reformists and to seek gains at the industrial level, states that exclude workers thereby politicize them. Established liberal democracies within capitalist society diffuse social conflict, whilst authoritarian and autocratic ones concentrate and enhance it; differently put, capital and labour in and of themselves can quite easily coexist. A further related point should be made. The whole spirit of Tocqueville's work is one which stresses the possibility of working cooperatively, that is, of transcending material interests reductively defined. Contemporary historical sociology underlines the importance of this point when demon­ strating that European social democracy has depended on cross-class alliances, most obviously those between peasants and workers m Scandinavia. 33 Further points can be made against the conservative use of Tocqueville by considering a recent work by Robert Bellah and his colleagues. Habits ef the Heart should not be allowed to get away with its attempted appropriation of Tocqueville for its argument that American society should be reformed through reinforcing community sentiment at the expense of individualism. 34 Most immediately, Tocqueville was a pessimist, reluctant to concede that reform was ever likely to succeed. His analyses of the difficulties involved in liberalization are, of course, subtle and quite well (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1990) ; M. Mann, 'Ruling Class Strategies and Citizenship', Sodology 21 (1987) ; I. Katznelson and A. Zolberg, eds., Working Class Formation (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1987) ; and T. McDaniel, Capitalism, Autocracy and Revolution (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988). 33 G. Esping-Anderson, Politics against Markets (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1985). 34 R. Bellah, R. Madsen, W. Sullivan, A. Swidler and S. Tipton, Habits of the Heart (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1985). Striking negative comments were made by A. Greeley in his review in Sodology and Social Research 70 (1985), as was noticed by S. Lieberson, 'Einstein, Renoir and Greeley: Evidence in Sociology', American Sociological Review 57 (1992).

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known. His crucial point is that the envy encouraged by the old regime made cooperation impossible once the regime fell: It was no easy task bringing together fellow citizens who had lived for many centuries aloof from, or even hostile to, each other and teaching them to cooperate in their own affairs. It had been far easier to estrange them than it now was to reunite them, and in so doing France gave the world a memorable example. Yet, when sixty years ago the various classes which under the old order had been isolated units in the social system came once again in touch, it was on their sore spots that they made contact and their first gesture was to fly at each other's throats. Indeed, even today, though class distinctions are no more, the jealousies and antipathies they caused have not died out. 35 Differently put, once trust has gone - as anyone who has experi­ enced divorce will surely know - it can never be restored. In this context, it is worth noting that Tocqueville's passionate love of liberty did not prevent him reaching conclusions which to him were quite repulsive: The segregation of classes, which was the crime of the late monarchy, became at a late stage a justification for it, since when the wealthy and enlightened classes were no longer able to act in concert and to take part in the government, the country became, to all intents and purposes, incapable of administering itself and it was needful that a master should step in. 36 In this there is a certain grandeur. Tocqueville has sufficient stature as a think.er to be able not to write his hopes into history: to the contrary, his hopes pointed one way whilst his analys is of social and political processes often indicated another. If one hopes that his pessimism may be refuted by contemporary transitions from authoritarianism, his work does at least allow one to be armed against likely dangers. But if there is any chance for reform, the spirit and legacy of Tocqueville would certainly not see it by means of restriction and control. Most immediately, let us remember that Tocqueville liked active independence, contention rather than the dead hand of order, respectability and uniformity. At a deeper level, his injunc­ tion is always to trust the people: the only guarantee of liberty 35 36

A. de Tocqueville, The Old Regime and the French Revolution, p. 107. Ibid.

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consists in the hearts of those who know the value of liberty, and that can only be created as the result of living in freedom. This injunction has been strikingly applied to the contemporary situation of Eastern Europe by Barbara Misztal, a true Tocquevillian in insisting that the only way to deal with a decided lack of trust is to persevere with repairing the democratic deficit. 37 In the long run, liberty will teach people trust. It is accordingly appropriate to conclude with the words of Sting, an English pop star who under­ stands Tocqueville better than does Bellah when proclaiming that 'if you love someone, set them free'. 37 B. Misztal, 'Must Eastern Europe Follow the Latin American Way?', European

Journal of Sodology, in press.

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-7 Adam Ferguson and the Surprising Robustness of Civil Society ERNEST GELLNER

Historically, Adam Ferguson's An Essay on the History of Civil Sodety 1 is one of the points of origin of the use of the expression 'civil society'. However, Ferguson's work is of far more than merely historical interest. His manner of handling the problems, which clearly haunted him, help throw light on the contemporary issues connected with this notion, notwithstanding the fact that ( or perhaps all the more because) the situation he was facing was quite different from the one prevailing over two centuries later. Ferguson, like his contemporaries of the Scottish and continental Enlightenment, was an observer of the transition from aristocratic to commercial society, and of a society, though he is not aware of it, destined to become industrial. Ferguson is not an economist and disclaims, rather convincingly, expertise in this field, referring to it as 'a subject with which I am not much conversant', and refers the reader to a book which is soon to appear on the subject, by one Mr Smith, author of the Theory ofMoral Sentiments. Ferguson's direct observations on economics do indeed seem muddled and unsure. But when it comes to the social and political implications of economics, or economic sociology, his perceptions are profound and important. Ferguson anticipates and perhaps partly shares in a curious error of Adam Smith, who attributed the switch from feudal-aristocratic 1 Fourth edition, revised and corrected (London, 1 773) , reprinted by Gregg International Publishers (Farnborough, 1 969) .

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independence to the fact that the nobles allowed themselves to be seduced by 'baubles', as Smith put it, by the temptations of conspic­ uous display through possession of prestige objects, and switched their expenditure to the acquisition of such objects rather than the recruitment and maintenance of retainers. Smith confused cause and effect: in an effectively centralized state, a tail of retainers ceases to be of much use, whilst baubles constitute a more liquid and storable form of both wealth and display. Ferguson notes the same tendency, but places it in the context of more centralized, monarchical government: 'The Sovereign himself owes great part of his authority to . . . the dazzling equipage which he exhibits in public. The subordinate ranks lay claim to importance by a like exhibition, and for that purpose carry in every instant . . . the ornaments of their fortune' (p. 114). This seems to be closer to getting the causal connection right, though there is still a suspicion that display may be credited with a greater political role than it really had. What, however, really distinguishes Ferguson is that he is a bemused, perplexed and somewhat worried observer of the kind of civil society which he sees emerging around himsel£ He under­ stands full well what distinguishes the society emerging in Europe in his time, from earlier societies, including those of classical antiq­ uity, and his account of the difference is very similar to the one which Emile Durkheim was due to offer a century later, using the expressions Mechanical and Organic Solidarity. Like Durkheim, Ferguson focuses on the social division of labour. 'By having separated the arts of the clothier and the tanner, we are the better supplied with shoes and with cloth' (p. 384). Nothing very contentious here, and Mr Smith was due very soon to bestow great notoriety on this idea. But Ferguson immediately proceeds to the heart of the matter, the point at which the division of labour really acquires crucial implications for society. The very next sentence reads: 'But to separate the arts which form the citizen and the statesman, the arts of policy and war, is an attempt to dismember the human character, and to destroy those very arts which we mean to improve. By this separation, we in effect deprive a free people of what is necessary for their safety; or we prepare a defence against invasion from abroad, which gives a prospect of usurpation, and threatens the establishment of military government at home.' The thought continues to haunt him: 'The boasted refinements, - 120 -

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of Civil Society

then, of the polished age, are not divested of danger. They open a door, perhaps, to disaster, as wide and accessible as any of those they have shut. If they build walls and ramparts, they enervate the minds of those who are placed to defend them . . . they reduce the military spirit of entire nations . . . they prepare for mankind the government of force' (p. 387). Ferguson's contemporary Gibbon had noted with a touch of incredulous surprise that the barbarians had gone, or at any rate had been greatly reduced in relative numbers and strength, so that the danger which had in the end overwhelmed ancient civilization was no longer present. The nobles of Poland, Germany and France can stand up to whatever the Asian steppe can throw at them. Ferguson does not think that this particular danger menaces Europe either: on the contrary, he notes the new disproportion of strength between Europe and the Rest, and perceptively anticipates the consequence, namely the emergence of the colonial empires which in fact were the fruits of that very disproportion in the nineteenth century. It isn't the external danger which troubles him; it is the internal consequences of the diminished participation in coercion by a population of a 'polished' society whose citizens turn to production rather than martial honour, and allow legitimate coercion to be not just a specialism, but a monopolistic specialism of a single institu­ tion, the state - a point which a later theorist was to turn into the very definition of the state. This surely must be a danger, Ferguson nervously insists. Here Ferguson unwittingly echoes the theorist of another civiliza­ tion, Ibn Khaldun, who made this point not as a nervous anticipa­ tion but as a simple matter of fact: producers who delegate security to others, to specialists, become politically and militarily emasculated and helpless. In the world which Ibn Khaldun knew this was indeed true, and for this very reason there was indeed no civil society in any real sense. Specialized, atomized producers were politically helpless victims of cohesive, unspecialized tribesmen, who manned the citadel and in effect constituted the state. In the world familiar to Ferguson, this was not true; it hadn't happened yet, and conse­ quently his warnings have more the tone of an uneasy disquiet, rather than a confident prediction of disaster - though he does use that word, as we have seen. He refers to Demosthenes often, and half - but only half - assumes his posture . . . - 121 -

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A Demosthenes, in fact, was not called for in eighteenth century Europe. The danger was not that concern with productive and commercial activity would turn the minds of citizens away from civic virtue to such an extent that they would no longer be able to resist an external menace, or succumb to internal coercive special­ ists whom they had called in to ward off external dangers. Ferguson wasn't really in a position to understand what the real new dangers would be: the new society had not by then revealed itself suffi­ ciently to make such discernment possible. But his reflections on dangers that were no longer real nevertheless greatly illuminate the social order with which he was concerned. He also has his half-optimistic moments, when he refuses the suggestion that men must choose between (politically participant) virtue and (politically supine) concern with wealth. He speculates that those who 'think of nothing but the numbers and wealth of a people' do so 'possibly from an opinion that the virtues of men are secure', whereas those who 'think of nothing but how to preserve the national virtues' do so 'from a dread of corruption' (p. 244). But he repudiates the fork: 'Human society has great obligations to both. They are opposed to one another only by mistake . . . ' So it would seem that we might have both modern wealth and ancient virtue, or at any rate not be wholly bereft of either, and enjoy a society based both on virtue and afiluence. In opposition to anyone who tried to impose an uncompromising dilemma, he does observe, quite correctly (p. 228), that 'the characters of the warlike and the commercial are variously combined: they are formed in different degrees by the influence of circumstances . . . ' But at times, as we have seen, he is not too sure in his guarded optimism, and it is this anxiety which inspires his excellent and profound reflections. The Romans are praised for their lack of specialization, in other words freedom from indulgence in the division of labour, even in the matter of martial skills: 'the antagonists of Pyrrhus and of Hannibal were . . . still in need of instruction in the first rudiments of their trade'. But instruction they took, even if it had to be from gladiators: 'the haughty Roman . . . knew the advantage of order and union, without having been broke to the inferior arts of the mercenary soldier; and had the courage to face the enemies of his country, without having practised the use of his weapon under the fear of being whipped' (p. 385). But Ferguson goes on to say that - 122 -

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the Roman 'could ill be persuaded, that a time might come, when refined and intelligent nations would make the art of war to consist in a few technical forms; that citizens and soldiers might come to be distinguished as much as women and men; that the citizen would become possessed of a property which he would not be able, or required, to defend . . .' Ferguson clearly credits the Romans with an aversion to specialization, and a pride in amateurism, a feeling which the English also liked to indulge later, notably in contrast to humourless Prussian professionalism. Ferguson clearly feels that the Romans had a point: he who allows the specialist to take over a crucial aspect of life is giving hostages to fortune. A more contemporary example he offers is that of an American chief, addressing the (British) governor ofJamaica, at the beginning of hostilities with Spain. The chief is astonished not only by the smallness of the body of armed men at the disposal of the governor (who was waiting for reinforcements from Europe), but even more by the presence of civilian, merchant spectators, who were not being enlisted for the conflict. The governor explained to him that the merchants and other inhabitants took no part in the service. The chief is appalled at this idea of civilian status: 'when I go to war, I leave nobody at home but the women . . . ' Here Ferguson takes on a superior air and comments that this 'simple warrior' evidently could not realize that among us, the sophisticated nations, war and commerce were not so very distinct, that 'mighty armies may be put in motion from behind the counter, . . . and . . . how often the prince, the nobles, and the statesmen, in many a polished nation, might . . . be considered as merchants' (p. 25 1). The sheer fact that it is carried on by specialists, in a sense also makes it commensurate with other activities: war is a continuation of commerce by other means, or the other way round. Ferguson does not patronize the Romans, but does patronize the chief Yet Ferguson does not always take this air of hautain superiority: In the progress of arts and of policy, the members of every state are divided into classes; and . . . there is no distinction more serious than that of the warrior and the pacific inhabitant; no more is required to place men in the relation of master and slave. Even when the rigours of an established slavery abate, as they have done in modem Europe . . . this distinction serves still to separate the noble from the base. . . . It was certainly never foreseen by

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Ernest Gellner mankind, that in the pursuit of refinement, they were to reverse this order; or even that they were to place the government, and the military force of nations, in different hands. But is it equally unfore­ seen that the former order may again take place? and that the pacific citizen . . . must one day bow to the person to whom he has entrusted the sword? If such a revolution should actually follow, will this new master revive in his own order the spirit of the noble and the free? . . . I am afraid to reply. (pp. 251-2)

Ferguson clearly is afraid of the prospect, and refers to the absence of Bruti and Fabii, once the praetorian bands became the Republic in Rome. Coercion might return in praetorian rather than pristine civic form: that is his fear. Of course, he refuses any simple binary choice between producers and coercers: his world is not that of Ibn Khaldun. The disjunction between the virtues of civilization and those of cohesion is not, in his world, absolute, which is what it was for Ibn Khaldun. So Ferguson has his sanguine (though still anxious) mood. If binary thinking - wealth or virtue - be a mistake, as he hopes, it is one which nevertheless haunts him: he is far from sure that it is indeed a mistake. He likes to think it is, but can't help wondering . . . As it happens, it is a mistake. Adam Ferguson need not have worried. Gibbon saw no danger of barbarian invasions from the Eurasian steppe, none at any rate that the nobles of Poland, Germany and France could not face. Ferguson's more sophisticated anxiety concerning possible new praetorians, or perhaps new barons or Mamelukes, also did not prove justified. But it was not a silly anxiety, and Jakob Burckhardt was to echo it in the next century. Ferguson's basic model is one involving the interaction of honour and interest: commercial societies replace martial ones, and whilst he is not unpleased about the process, clearly he is rather anxious concerning its permanence or irreversibility. To put it simply, he fears a backlash of honour, and of a rather inferior kind the domination of praetorians rather than the self-government of a free and proud people. A weakness or deficiency in his account is that, whilst describing the interplay of the two main participants, he does not consider the role of religion. In that respect he is inferior, for instance, to David Hume. Ferguson's main account of the emergence of the modern

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Adam Ferguson and the Surprising Robustness ef Civil Society

state (pp. 220-1 ) is simple: the monarch subdues the feudal lordships in alliance with the people, freeing the latter from subjec­ tion to the lords, and encouraging the practice of commercial and lucrative arts. This could sometimes strengthen the crown, but it could also turn against it, and lead to 'a spectacle new in the history of mankind; monarchy mixed with republic, and extensive terri­ tory, governed, during some ages, without military force'. This is the favourable, British variant of the story. But there is nothing in all this about the possible role of the Reformation . . . Nevertheless, there is one place where Ferguson does accord a place to religion, of a kind, in the genesis of the social forms with which he is concerned. History is not only the interaction of honour and interest; on occasion, a third partner, virtue, also enters the stage. A society committed to the imposition of virtue is different from one either addicted to honour or seduced by interest. In its uncompromising devotion to virtue, and its ruthless subjection of its citizens to its practice, it is indeed an Umma, a charismatic community, of a kind. But Ferguson is not thinking either of the Muslim or of the Puritans: what he has in mind is Sparta. He quotes Xenophon: 'the Spartans should excel every nation, being the only state in which virtue is studied as the object of government' (p. 267). Ferguson calls the Spartans a singular people, in that 'they alone, in the language of Xenophon, made virtue an object of state'. A devotion to virtue so complete does indeed make the society into a kind of sacramental community, but this one single intrusion of religion · into Ferguson's scheme does not really modify it: all that religion achieves, in this case, is to strengthen beyond all normal measure those political attitudes which are otherwise sustained by honour. The excess leads only to a quite exceptional rejection of comfort and interest, and dimin­ ishes, as no doubt it was intended to do, the danger of seduction by comfort or by greed. So all in all, Ferguson was worried about a danger that in the end did not arise, and to this extent at any rate, misread the world he inhabited. But if we ask ourselves what it was that Ferguson perceived in the current situation, and considered to be a problem, we shall see more clearly what it is that really characterizes civil society, and what its problems are. Societies are concerned with the maintenance of order and survival in the face of enerrues, on the one hand, and with - 1 25 -

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enhancement of production, on the other. The two concerns dominate societies in various proportions, but by and large, one could say, almost by definition, that the first concern predominates in 'rude' societies, and the second in 'polished' ones. The first concern can be satisfied in two ways: by centralized power (tyranny), or by participation of some kind. Participation naturally requires a manly spirit, a willingness and capacity to defend oneself against oppression, from those who take part in it. The values which encourage this kind of attitude may be summed up as 'honour'. The values which constitute the orientation towards production, commerce and comfort, may be termed 'interest'. Now Ferguson notes a strong tendency towards a shift from honour to interest in modem European nations. In itself, this makes the world richer and more populous, and there is nothing objectionable in it. But here is the rub: this enhancement of production and life's comforts depends on the division of labour. Nothing wrong with this either, when it simply involves the separation of the clothier's and the cobbler's activities, indeed of their persons. But the matter becomes graver when it also separates the citizen from the warrior and the statesman: may not the market, to put it in the simplest terms, lead to a new serfdom? Long before Hayek expressed the view that the abolition of the market would constitute a Path to Serfdom, Ferguson gave very good reason for anticipating the very opposite: the market itself, and not its elimination, would lead that way. Ibn Khaldun had brilliantly analysed a world in which precisely this had happened, though Ferguson was unaware of this. Ferguson was wrong, altogether wrong: nothing of the kind happened. We know that now. But the reasons which made him think what he did were good ones, and in looking into why they did not in fact operate in the real world, we shall learn a good deal. In other societies, the kind of situation which Ferguson observed in modem Europe did, in fact, in the end have the kind of conse­ quences which he feared. Commercial populations, which relied on others for their politics and/ or defence, were liable in the end to lose their internal or external independence, or both. Of the commercial city republics of early modem Italy, only Venice survived into the eighteenth century, and then only as a shadow of its former self - and it too fell, without resistance, at the approach of Napoleon. Participatory self-government is a sturdy plant when - 126 -

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it grows among pastoral or mountain peasant communities, and many such have survived well into the modern world: but when combined with commercialism, though liable to have a splendid flowering, the plant is seldom long-lived. Why should the free merchants of northwest Europe fare any better than their predeces­ sors, who lie buried in the historic past? Well, there are some reasons why this fate did not befall them (though these reasons escaped Ferguson): (1) Perpetual and exponential growth. What happened in eighteenth century Europe was not merely one of those revolu­ tions, which may have occurred on previous occasions, in which commerce and production for a time take over from predation and domination as central social themes and values. This had indeed happened, but this time it was accompanied by two other processes - the incipient industrial revolution, leading to an entirely new method of production, and the scientific revolution, due to ensure an unending supply of innovation and an apparently unending exponential increase in productive power. This meant that the new social system had a so to speak unlimited bribery fund. It could, in the end, bribe its way out of any external or internal threat. Its technological superiority allowed it to dispense with the need to pay any Danegeld to barbarian outsiders. (2) Civil society could do so, and only it could grow; and Europe was a multi-state system. This is important, for although the new social order could acquire the means to pay off discontent, it could only do so if it was left in peace to operate the new economy. There was no guarantee that the specialists in politics and coercion, whom it used, would necessarily allow it to operate: in their greed, they might well kill the golden-egg-laying goose. In fact, on at least two occasions, they did precisely that: the agents of the Counter­ Reformation, and the Bolsheviks, each throttled a large part (not quite the same part, though they overlap) of Europe. But in a plural state system where other states prosper dramatically and visibly, the throttling systems do in the end get eliminated by a kind of social variant of natural selection. It was possible to throttle civil society in some places, but not in all: and the civil societies which did survive them demonstrated their economic, and military, superi­ ority over the authoritarian politics which spurned interest and sought honour or virtue or both. - 127

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(3) In these circumstances, within societies that were not throt­ tled, production becomes a better path to wealth than domination. In traditional societies, he who has political power soon acquires wealth as a kind of consequence. This is not wholly unknown even in commercial and industrial societies, but it is incomparably less important. The best way to make money is to make money. It is possible to do this without acquiring or bothering with power. The economy is where the action is, and it is possible to indulge in economic activity without attending to problems of power. This is another way of saying that the law protects wealth, independently of whether one has formed special alliances for its protection. Wealth leads to power, more than the other way around. This is remarkable and exceptional. (4) The division of labour assumes a completely new form. It is not merely that there is far more specialization than there had been before; it is a qualitatively different kind of specialization. Ferguson saw some of this: he saw that what really mattered was not merely the separation of the clothier and the cobbler, but the separation of the citizen and the soldier. But there is more to it than that: it is the manner in which they are separated which has changed, and this is supremely important. This is something which even escaped Durkheim a century later, when he lumped together diverse kinds of complex, 'organic' divisions of labour, without really distin­ guishing with emphasis the difference between a complex advanced traditional civilization, and the modem industrial world. In one sense, the division of labour has gone further in industrial society than ever before. There are more distinct and separate jobs which are carried out. But in another sense, there is less of it, and far more homogeneity: every job is carried out in the same style, the manuals and the rules are articulated in publicly shared and accessible idiom, for there is mobility between jobs, retraining is relatively easy, guild monopolies rare; a generic education fitting a man for all specialisms is more important for his identity than the specific training which fits him for his particular job. In other words, men are primarily members of a shared High Culture (that is, of a nation), and only secondarily, if at all, members of a guild or caste. In consequence, although the separation of the military from other functions, which Ferguson feared as the harbinger of a new and worse rule of thugs, does occur, in another sense the military specialism is made to resemble all others: it generates no caste or - 128 -

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estate, it is a profession like any other (like agriculture, for example), movement into it and out of it is not restricted, and its remuneration follows the laws of the market rather than the law of extortion, which had in the past enabled those who could coerce to take as much as they wanted from those who could not. It is this unique kind of division of labour which explains that strange feature of civil society - most strange, in a comparative historical context - namely, that those in positions of power are not remunerated out of all proportion to all others; on the contrary, their rewards are relatively feeble. In traditional society, this could only occur in those very participatory communities which ensured the temporary nature of the occupancy of powerful positions - for instance, by selecting the holders by lot, as did the Greeks, and for a limited time only - or which, as in the Spartan case that so impressed Ferguson, made a fetish of ascetic virtue and imposed it on its own leaders. (5) Self-policing or modularity. A type of religion emerged in Europe with the Reformation, which eschewed external sanctions and the ritual underscoring of social obligations, and, on the contrary, laid an enormous burden on each individual as his own priest and internal judge. Whether this ethos engendered, or followed, an economy increasingly orientated towards individu­ alism is a big question which we can hardly settle here. The disin­ terested and individually sanctioned pursuit of virtue clearly made a significant contribution to the emergence of civil society: according to Tocqueville, it is this which made democracy work in America. Virtue as the aim of state or public policy is probably disastrous for liberty. Virtue freely practised between consenting adults may be a great boon to it, or even its essential precondition. Concern with virtue led men to speak of the disinterested pursuit of interest accumulation without enjoyment, hence reinvestment, hence continuous growth rather than transformation of wealth into power, status, pleasure or salvation. (6) The ideological stalemate. For virtue to be privatized, as it were, what may be essential is that the practitioners and preachers of uncompromising and absolute virtue, and the practitioners of the rival socially rooted ritualistic religion, should terminate their conflict in stalemate, and so in mutual toleration, as happened in England. This leads the ritualistic traditionalist to provide the overall social framework, but to do it with a light hand: their rivals, - 1 29 -

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after all, are not unbelievers, but rather those who believe with too much conviction and sincerity. It leads the puritans to turn inwards, and incidentally to disinterested and hence most effective accumu­ lation, and indeed to preach and practise tolerance, as they need it for themselves. The disinterestedness of their pursuit of wealth is not only most beneficial economically, it is also splendid politically: they do not use their wealth for the acquisition of power (any more than they use it to purchase either pleasure or salvation, as had been the usual practice of mankind), so they break through the vicious circle which in the past obliged power-holders to suppress successful accumulators of wealth as an imminent political menace. (7) Political stalemate. This is something of which Ferguson is fully aware, though he fails to link it to the ideological stalemate. The political stalemate generates that blend of monarchy and republic which he admired in England and which led to unique perfection of the rule of law. In his remarkable People, Cities and Wealth,2 E. A. Wrigley points out that the great classical economists, normally held to be the prophets of emerging capitalism, were in fact exceedingly nervous, not to say pessimistic, about its prospects. They saw internal economic contradictions within it which would eventually lead it into trouble (views taken over, in modified form, by their disciple Karl Marx). Ferguson should be counted alongside them, as a person preoccupied not with economic contradictions (which he did not claim to understand), but with its political contradictions, which he sensed acutely. The interesting thing is that both sets of pessimism came to be invalidated by the same factor, by the tremendous expansion of productive power consequent on the impact of scientific technology. The victory of commercial over predatory society in the eighteenth century was made permanent, and did not in the end destroy itself, because the commercial revolution, and the political one, were in due course comple­ mented by the industrial-scientific one, which supplied the means by which it could make itself permanent and secure. One may consider, in reverse historical order, two deep reflec­ tions of civil society - Leszek Kolakowski's account of what it was that bothered the Marxist tradition about civil society,3 and Adam 2 Oxford: Blackwell, 1987. 3 'The Myth of Human Self-Identity: Unity of Civil and Political Society in Socialist Thought', in L. Kolakowski and S. Hampshire (eds), Tiie Sodalist Idea : A Reappraisal

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Ferguson's as it were anticipatory concern with its political viability. The two forms of anguish are exceedingly different in style and human tone. The Marxist one belongs squarely to the world of nineteenth century romanticism; it is clearly a descendant of the Sorrows of Young Werther. Man wants to be whole, and complains bitterly if his soul bifurcates between political and economic concerns. Marxism wanted a man free of the separation of the economic and selfish man from the political and moral one: unity of soul was the underlying idea. The earthy realism of the eighteenth century Scot does not leave room for such recherche anxiety: he is less bothered about what the division does to the soul, as with what it may do to society, the danger that it may lead to a disagreeable form of servitude. In fact, this separation is an inherent feature of civil society, and indeed one of its main glories. The price of liberty may once have been eternal vigilance: the splendid thing about civil society is that even the absent-minded, or those preoccupied with their private concerns, or for any other reason ill-suited to the practice of eternal vigilance, can now look forward to enjoying their liberty. Civil society bestows liberty even on the non-vigilant. What is true is that this kind of social order is not practicable at all times and in all kinds of conditions: our task is to find out what helps and hinders it. Only the brave deserve the fair, says the poet: but may we not hope for a social order in which even the timid may enjoy the fair? Civil society is indeed an order in which liberty, if not pulchritude, can be enjoyed even by those who have given up the exercise of arms, and have no taste or inclination for it. Ferguson saw the emergence of civil society but feared for its future. By under­ standing why his fears - perfectly reasonable on the evidence at his disposal - were not justified, we also learn something about the foundation of civil or liberal society, so dear to the heart of Jose Merquior.

(London, 1 974) , and republished in C. Kikathas, D. W. Lowell and W. Malley (eds) , TI1e Transition.from Soda/ism (Melbourne, 1 991 ) .

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-8 Politics and Morality

NORBERTO BOBBIO

The relationship between morality and politics is one of the many aspects of the question of morality - alive today as never before. This problem expands as human action enters into fields previously reserved to the mechanisms of - morally indifferent - nature. Among moral questions, the relationship between morality and politics is one of the most traditional, along with the relationship between morality and private life, especially in the field of sexuality, or between morality and law, and between morality and art. The current philosophical debate deals with the relationship between morality and science, whether physics or biology; between morality and technical development; between morality and economics or, as one also hears, the business world. The problem is always the same. It stems from the verification that there is a divergence between human actions in all these spheres and some fundamental and general rules of behaviour called 'moral' without which human coexistence would be not only impossible but unhappy as well. Summarily and provisionally, we can be content to say that the purpose of moral rule is to make a satisfactory coexistence possible; I understand satisfactory coexistence to mean a relationship in wmch the suffering that is an indispens­ able part of the world of human relationships - just as it is part of the animal world, dominated by a merciless struggle for survival diminishes as much as possible. The issue of morality arises when we become aware that there is a divergence between specific - 1 33 -

Norberto Bobbio

actions or groups of actions in particular spheres, and rules that are universal - or which try to be universal - and therefore valid for any problem of morality. The simplest, yet least convincing, way to solve the problem is to uphold the autonomy of the diverse spheres of action vis-a-vis the sphere regulated by moral prescriptions. The autonomy of art: art has its own criterion for judging what is beautiful and ugly, distinct from good and evil within the realms of morality. The criterion by which science should be judged is truth and falsehood, which is also a different judgment than that of good and evil. Similarly, in economics one speaks of the autonomy of market laws, which obey the criterion of usefulness. In the business world we hear talk of the criterion of efficacy, which calls for discarding the universal rules of behaviour which, if followed, would make business, if not impossible, at least more difficult and less profitable. One of the most controversial areas, and one in which each man or woman - and not only the artist, scientist, businessman or any other human being - is very sensitive, is that of sexuality: autonomy in sexuality means freedom from common morality in erotic relationships. It means, in other words, that sexuality has no precise rules of behaviour, or that it obeys rules other than morality. The same answer has been given to politics, and it is the answer that in the fatherland of Machiavelli or Guicciardini has been called the raison d 'etat or the autonomy of politics. It is unnecessary to recall that it was Carl Schmitt who very successfully validated that thesis, attributing the political sphere with its own criterion of evaluation, which is that of the friend-enemy, and which is a different guideline than the most common ones, under which actions in other spheres are distinguished. He says, textually: 'Let us assume that on the moral plane the main distinc­ tions are between good and evil; in the aesthetic one, between beautiful and ugly; and in the economic one, between what is useful and what is harmful. The specific distinction to which it is possible to remit the political actions and motives is the friend-enemy distinction.' It is clear that the analogy between the traditional distinctions, true-false, good-evil, beautiful-ugly on the one hand, and friend-enemy on the other, does not work. These oppositions are located in different planes and cannot be aligned among themselves - 134 -

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as if they were on the same level. The traditional binomials allow value judgments to be made, in the true meaning of the term: that is, they allow approval or disapproval to be expressed in reference to an action, and therefore, consent or dissent with that action to be shown. The binomial friend-enemy, Carl Schmitt points out, stresses the maximum degree of intensity of a union or separation, of an association or dissociation. But in no way does it express a value judgment allowing politically positive actions to be distin­ guished from politically negative actions in the manner that the binomial beautiful-ugly serves aesthetically approvable or reprehen­ sible works of art to be distinguished. The friend is, purely and simply, one's ally; the enemy is the person against whom one fights. In any case, the opposition is not exhaustive, because between the friend and the enemy there can be a neutral, who is neither the former nor the latter. If we wished to place next to the traditional binomials a pair that allows a value judgment of political behaviour to be made, we would have to resort to the pair constituted by 'what is appropriate (or in accordance with the objective), and that which is inappropriate (which does not adhere to the objective)'. This is a useful criterion for issuing a positive or negative judgment on a political action, insofar as it is a judgment criterion of action distinct from that of useful-useless, through which economic action is judged, as well as from that of good-evil, through which moral action is evaluated. If we examine all the theories that maintain the autonomy of politics vis-a-vis morality, they oppose the guideline of appropriate or inappropriate to the judgment criterion of good-evil. It is felt that politics can said to be autonomous as soon as an action is judged to be politically appropriate, even if it is not ethically good, or economically useful. Schmitt's distinction between friend and enemy in no way serves to characterize politics as an autonomous sphere vis-a-vis values, but rather only to provide an explanatory definition of 'politics'. The problem of the relationship between morality and politics arises in same way as it arises in other spheres, where, to continue with the examples, there can be works that are aesthetically worthy but morally reprehensible, actions that are economically useful but morally reprehensible. I have in mind, to give a couple of examples of great importance at present, the issue of selling human organs. It has been argued that the best way to solve the difficulty of finding transplant kidneys is to classify them as merchandise, as any other - 1 35 -

Norberto Bobbio

marketable good, because there will always be poor persons who, to pay their debts or merely to survive, or, as has also been pointed out, to buy a small house, will be willing to sell a kidney. Or, to give another example, if the purpose of a company in a market society is to earn profits, it cannot be ruled out that companies will seek profits without paying much regard to the demands of persons' rights proclaimed by moral law. By analogy, the problem of the relationship between morality and politics is formulated as follows: anyone who knows a little about history and who has thought to some degree about human behaviour can verify that in the sphere of politics actions are continually taken that are considered illicit by morality or, in contrast, that actions are permitted that morality considers manda­ tory. This verification leads us to the consequence that politics obeys a code of rules that is different from and partially incompat­ ible with the moral code. The moral code, in all times and in all countries, has ordered: 'Thou shalt not kill'. Nevertheless, human history can objectively be portrayed as a long, continuous, uninterrupted chain of murders, massacres of innocents, attacks without apparent motives, uprisings, rebellions, bloody revolutions, and wars, which are normally justi­ fied with the most diverse arguments. Hegel once said that history is 'an immense slaughterhouse'. It has been observed, correctly, that the precept 'Thou shalt not kill' governs within the group, but not outside of it - that is, in relationships between groups. With this explanation, the precept that prohibits killing becomes purely instrumental, loses its character of a categorical imperative. It applies within the group because it ensures peace among its members, a peace which is necessary for the group's survival, but not for what is outside of it, because the group survives only if it succeeds in defending itself from the attacks of others hostile to it: the authorization - or, might one say, the obligation? - to kill the enemy forms part of the defence strategy. The same thing is said of the other fundamental precept of all morality: 'Thou shalt not bear false witness'. There is an immense literature on the art of simulation and dissimulation in politics. In Crowds and Power, Elias Canetti wrote very beautiful pages on the topic: 'An unequal distribution of looking thoroughly is character­ istic of power. He who holds power knows the intentions of others, but does not let his own intentions be known. He must be - 136 -

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very reserved: no one must know what he thinks, what he intends [to do] . ' As an example of impenetrability he offers the example of Felipe Maria Visconti, of whom he says: 'No one was equal to him in his ability to conceal his inner self. Anyone who wants to know more on this topic can read Rosario Villari's Praise of Dissimulation (1 987). Although it refers only to the baroque period, it offers examples and notes for all periods. Of the many quotes, I have selected a passage by Justo Lipsio, who writes: 'Shake any beautiful soul and it will shout: "May simulation and dissimulation be removed from human life. '' From private life, yes, from public life, no, and he who has the Republic in his hands can do nothing else. ' This is one of many passages in which we see that the distinction between morality and politics coincides with the difference between private and public. What is correctly called morality operates only in private life; in public life there are other rules. No political sphere is free of conflicts. No one can expect to gain the upper hand from a conflict without resorting to the art of fiction, of deception, of masking one's intentions. In nature - the kingdom of the eternal conflict for survival - the diverse techniques practised by animals of hiding, seclusion, changing colour are universal. From the true duel or the ludic duel, which in the art of military strategy means knowing how to feign, 'feigning' to deceive the adversary is part of the very conditions for success. There is no politics without the use of secrecy: secrecy not only tolerates, but demands, lying. To be bound to secrecy implies the obligation to not reveal what is secret, which, in turn, implies the obligation to lie. I will give a third example: the maxim that is the foundation of any coexistence is pacta sunt servanda (agreements must be fulfilled). Any society is a network of relationships of exchange; a society survives insofar as the security of transfers is guaranteed. Hence one of the moral maxims, which demands a reciprocal observance of agreements. One of the examples proposed by Kant to explain the meaning of the fundamental ethical principle that says 'do not what cannot be converted into a universal maxim' is precisely that of respecting agreements: 'I must respect agreements because I could not live in a society in which agreements were not observed'. To do so would be to return to the state of nature in which no one is obliged to respect an agreement because s/he cannot be sure that - 1 37 -

Norberto Bobbio the said agreement will be observed by others. Anyone who fulfils agreements in a world in which others do not feel obligated to do so is in danger of succumbing. This maxim is valid for private life as well, though it does not have the same meaning in public life. It is often said that interna­ tional treaties are only sheets of paper; acquired commitments depend on the formula rebus sic stantibus (depending on how things are). International relations are buttressed more by mistrust than trust. A contract society is, by contrast, a society based on trust. A society in which people distrust each other is one in which, in the end, victory belongs to the strongest and each person seeks salva­ tion in strength more than in wisdom. This reference to wisdom places us in front of another radical difference between the moral world and the political one, which summarizes in itself all the other differences. It is not coincidental that the maximum virtue of a politician is not so much wisdom as prudence, that is, the supreme ability to understand specific issues, to adapt principles to the solutions of particular events requiring insight and restraint. In the famous eighteenth chapter of The Prince, Machiavelli says that a 'prudent' man is not obligated to keep his word when 'such a fulfilment is unfavourable to him'. One of the masters of behaviour in the baroque period, Baltasar Graci.in, wrote: 'Serpents are the teachers of sagacity. They show us the road to prudence. ' Immediately after prudence, the politician's essential virtue which also goes back to the Greeks - is astuteness, represented not by the serpent but by the fox. Astuteness - metis in Greek - remits us to none other than Ulysses. In Dettienne and Vernant's The Tricks ef Intelligence in Andent Greece we can read: Metis should foresee what is unforeseeable. Committed with [what will] become, attentive to ambiguous and new situations, the occur­ rence of which is always certain, astute intelligence is able to affect beings and things because it is able to foresee, beyond the immediate present, a more or less broad segment of the future. Metis appears multiple, cosmetic, undulating. It possesses the duality by which it always presents itself different from what it is, and it hides its deadly reality under the appearance of security. The invention of schemes that serve to deceive the adversary traps, snares, ambushes, disguises, stratagems of the most diverse - 138 -

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kind (of which the most famous is the Trojan Horse) - is part of astuteness. In an ancient Greek treatise on hunting and fishing, the two animals that most practise metis are the fox and the octopus. The fox's astuteness consists of turning over when attacked by the eagle; the octopus's consists of becoming ungraspable because of the many forms it takes on. Its human equivalent is the 'polutropos', the person with a thousand tricks. In the last few years the use of metaphors, especially animal metaphors, has proliferated in political language. They are used continually: think of how many everyday political discourses refer directly or indirectly to 'hawks' and 'doves'. The metaphor of the fox is very well known; less common, if not altogether forgotten, is that of the octopus. This animal is capable of adapting to the most variegated situations, of assuming as many facets as there are categories of types of city dwellers, of inventing a thousand fallacies that will make its action more efficacious in the most diverse circumstances. By this inter­ pretation, it appears, rather, that today the same characteristics are attributed mainly to the political man, who with contempt is called a 'chameleon'. I would like to point out that none of these metaphors - serpent, fox, lion, octopus, chameleon - could be used to represent the moral man, who acts in consideration of the universal good, and not only for the benefit of the city. This is one more proof, if there is a need for it, of the impossibility of reducing the so-called political virtues in the Machiavellian sense of the term to moral virtue. In arriving at this point, after verifying that there always existed and, in fact, there exists today - a divergence between the rules of morality and those of politics, there arise two fundamental questions: How is this divergence explained? Is it good or bad that it exists? The first is a quaestio facti; the second is a quaestio iuris. Let us examine them separately. Certainly we cannot find a plausible explanation, as I pointed out at the beginning, in the thesis that maintains the autonomy of politics from morality. This thesis explains nothing; it is a mere tautology; it is like saying that morality and politics are distinct because they are distinct. Nevertheless, the problem of the differ­ ence is serious because, despite the historically found and proven distance, throughout our history we have also heard the demand that this distance diminish, or at least that good government be that - 1 39 -

Norberto Bobbio

in which politics and morality tend to coincide. Or that it be recognized that alongside realistic theories, for which this difference is mandatory, there are idealist theories, for which politics should adhere to morality, and if it fails to do so, it is bad politics. In a well known book, the Diabolical Face of Power, the German historian Ritter maintains that these two forms of thought are well represented at the beginning of the modem era: realist thought by Machiavelli, and idealist thought by Sir Thomas More, who describes the Republic of Utopia in which perfect peace reigns alongside perfect justice. According to Ritter, of the two orienta­ tions, one of amoral politics and the other of moral politics, the first culminated in Hitler's Germany, the second in the Nuremberg trials of Nazi criminals, and in the United Nations. Also, we should not forget that in the same years during which Machiavelli was writing The Prince, considered the highest example of realistic politics, Erasmus of Rotterdam wrote The Education of a Christian Prince, an equally pure example of idealistic politics. The contrast between realism and idealism is recurrent in the history of political thought. No clearer example of this contrast can be cited than the opposite position assumed vis-a-vis the problem of the relationship between morality and politics by the two greatest philosophers of the modem era: Kant and Hegel. Kant's ideal was the 'moral politician', that is, the sovereign who interprets the principles of the art of politics in such a way that it can coexist with the principles of morality, and who elevates to a rule of behaviour the maxim correcting the defects of the constitution in accordance with the principles of natural law, 'even with a possible sacrifice of his particular interest'. For Hegel, by contrast, the principle of state reason in its purest form is valid - that is, the principle by which political morality, ethicalness, takes priority over morality per se, which is private morality. From this it is inferred that the affirmation according to which there is an opposition between politics and morality 'rests on a superficial manner of representing morality, the nature of the state, and its relationships with the moral viewpoint'. Despite the constant aspiration to remit politics to morality, the contrast continues to exist. And it has provoked and continues to provoke attempts at explanation. These attempts are countless. Here I will look at only three of them: (1) The distance between morality and politics arises from the - 140 -

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fact that political behaviour is dominated by the maxim 'The end justifies the means', and the end of politics - the preservation of the state, the public or common good, or however one wants to call it - is so superior to the good of individuals that it justifies the viola­ tion of fundamental moral rules that abound among individuals and in the relationships among them. Here, we see the traditional maxim: Salus rei publicae suprema lex ('The salvation of the state is the supreme law'). It would prove tedious to point out all the weak points of this maxim. The moral criticism focuses basically on the value of the end. Not all ends are so lofty that they justify the use of any means: hence the need for a government of laws, as opposed to the government of men; or even for a government in which the rulers act according to established laws, controlled by popular consensus and accountable for the decisions they make. In the same passage in which Machiavelli states and echoes the principle of the salvation of the fatherland as a supreme end, he also says, in reference to the king of France: 'the king cannot be sorrowed by any of his decisions or by his good fortune or misfor­ tune, because whether he loses and wins everyone will acknowl­ edge that these are the king's own affairs'. A similar assertion would be unacceptable in a state governed by the rule of law. Moral criticism contemplates, as well, the licitness of the means. Are all means licit? Let it suffice for us to think of the norms that have been periodically established by the so-called law of war, norms whose essential purpose is to limit the use of force. That these limits are not respected does not mean that their violation is not taken as a moral offence against civil consciousness. From this perspective, there is a difference between the democratic state and the non-democratic one, either regarding the use of more or less violent means by public forces, or with respect to, for example, the abolishment of the death penalty. (2) It is the second justification that has been offered by the theories of state reason, which maintain that politics should be subordinated to morality, but that there might be situations in which it is legitimate to repeal principles. No moral principle has absolute value; there are also exceptions. Even the rule 'Thou shalt not kill' can, in certain cases, be violated: one of these cases is provided for in any penal code: legitimate self-defence. Another is the state of need, because need has no law; it is the law itself - 1 41 -

Norberto Bobbio

An author such as Jean Bodin, who liked to portray himself as anti-Machiavellian and who felt that the absolute sovereign should be submitted to moral laws, in a chapter of his famous treatise on the republic - in which he distinguishes between the tyrant and the good sovereign who obeys the moral law - recognizes that the monarch who 'employs violent means such as murder, edicts, confiscations, or other acts of force, as necessarily [note 'neces­ sarily'] occurs in the change or resurgence of a regime' should be labelled as a tyrant. And since we quoted Carl Schmitt at the begin­ ning, we must recall here that the characteristic of sovereignty lies in the power of deciding what is a state of emergency, which is precisely the situation that, based on the principle of need, permits the silencing of prevailing laws, or the temporary suspension of their enforcement. From this perspective, there is a difference between the democ­ ratic and the non-democratic state. The Italian Constitution, for example, does not contemplate the state of exception, but rather, only the state of war. And not generically the state of need. (3) It is the third justification that locates the difference between morality and politics in the unsolvable opposition between two forms of ethics: that is, the ethics of principles and that of results (or consequences). One judges action based on what is before, the principle, the norm, the maxims 'Thou shalt not kill', 'Thou shalt not bear false witness', 'Thou shalt respect established agreements'; the other justifies action based on what comes later, that is, the effects of the action. The two judgments may coincide, though they frequently diverge. They would converge if it were always true - which it is not - that the observance of a principle produces good results or that good results are obtained solely by respecting principles. There are two examples, the first of which takes a prohibitive norm, and the second of which is obtained from a permissive norm. Let us look once again at the universal prohibitive norm 'Thou shalt not kill'. The death penalty, from the standpoint of the ethics of principles, should be repealed; however, if it is shown that it has useful consequences for society insofar as it contributes to diminishing the number of crimes, it may be permitted in some specific cases. And this is the favourite argument of its advocates. Nevertheless, it is possible to maintain the opposite, that is, that the death penalty - which adheres to the principle of retributive justice - 142 -

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- should be abolished taking into account the consequences, when it as been shown that it does not create a dissuasive effect, and that it therefore, in the end, becomes a useless cruelty. As can be seen from this, the two judgments, according to principles and according to consequences, diverge in both cases. As an example of a permissive norm I will take the abortion legislation that now prevails in many countries, including Italy. Based on the principle of 'Thou shalt not kill' there are good arguments for considering abortion a crime; however, whoever accepts abortion does so based on the consequences, for example the impossibility of properly supporting the unborn child, or even the danger of overpopulation, which all of humanity might no longer have adequate resources to face. What is the link between the distinction of these two ethics and the difference between morality and law? The link stems from the verification that in reality the distance between morality and politics corresponds almost always to the distinction between the ethics of principles and the ethics of results, in the sense that the moral person acts and values others' actions based on the ethics of results. The moralist asks: 'What principles must I observe?' The politician wonders: 'What consequences will stem from my action?' As I have written elsewhere, the moralist can accept the maxim Fiat iustitia pereat mundus, but the politician acts in the world and for the world. And s/he cannot make a decision whose consequence would imply that 'the world will perish'. The first explanation, 'the end justifies the means', is supported by the distinction between categorical imperatives and hyp othetical imperatives. It only recognizes hyp othetical imperatives: 'If you want, you must'. The second, the explanation based on annulment, is based on the difference between the general norm and the exceptional norm. The third, and last, explanation, the one that opposes the ethics of principles to the ethics of accountability, goes further and discovers that the judgment of our actions, to be approved or rejected, unfolds, even opening the way for two distinct moral systems whose judgments do not necessarily coincide. From this unfolding stem the antinomies of our moral living; from the antinomies of our moral living spring up the particular situations from which each of us forms, every day, her or his experience, and which are called 'cases of consciousness'. - 143 -

-9 On Deliberation: Rethinking Democracy as Politics Itself RAM6N MAIZ

La Republique est une forme qui entraine le fond. (Gambetta) A democracia conceito pode ate ser vitima da falta da democracia conduta. (Merquior)

Beyond the Antithesis between Liberalism and Rep ublicanism The most recent episodes in the historically recurrent dispute between the advocates of the liberal (representative) and republican (participative) models of democracy have thrown up a series of novel issues and problems that make evident the artificial nature of the conventional, facile notion of an antithesis between two mutually exclusive archetypes, and instead call for an approach which cuts across the traditional battle lines by developing arguments that in the past have been insufficiently or only narrowly explored. For the purposes of what follows, and at the risk of artifi­ cially oversimplifying an extremely complex controversy, the discrepancies between the liberal and republican stances, as expounded hitherto, will be treated as concerning six basic areas. The liberal postulates in these areas are as follows. 1. Politics is to be understood essentially as the strategic interplay of independent individuals in pursuit of their pre-existing (prepolitical), immutable preferences. - 145 -

Ramon Maiz

2. For each individual, politics is therefore essentially a mere tool for the achievement of his or her prior preferences. 3. Politics is thus a matter of the choices and actions of private individuals, and its highest expression is the secret ballot. 4. In view of the above, democracy is a means subordinated to an end consisting in the defence of the individual's subjective rights against interference from the state or other individuals. 5. The scope of citizenship is limited to the pursuit of pregiven preferences via mechanisms of representation that allow influ­ ence in decision-making processes. 6. The individual is characterized (identified) on what might be termed a purely individualistic basis concerning solely the differen­ tial characteristics by virtue of which he or she competes with other individuals, and their prepolitical and external configuration. Against the above postulates, the republican theory of democracy traditionally offers the following alternatives. L Politics is essentially an integrative, communicative activity aimed at transmuting conflicting interests into non-conflicting interests by attainment of rational agreement in pursuit of the common good. II. Rather than a means to an end, politics is thus an end in itself, a self-justified, educational, outward-looking activity seeking ever broader concord and collective ethical progress. III. Consequently, politics is an eminently public activity carried out through rational debate and communication among citizens. IV. Individual rights guaranteeing non-interference by the state are seen as the instruments of democracy inasmuch as they further the realization and development of democracy qua participa­ tion and social transformation. V. Citizenship is conceived of positively as direct, active, outward-looking participation in the genesis of public policy. VI. Finally, the republican view occasionally includes a communi­ tarian component whereby interindividual solidarity and cultural and institutional norms together constitute a collective identity in which the identity of the individual is subsumed. The following brief critical review of the antithesis between the two archetypes sketched above will reveal firstly that they share - 146 -

On Deliberation: Rethinking Democracy as Politics Itself

common flaws inherent in their semi-implicit premises and unexplored assumptions, and secondly that both contribute insights that should rightly be retained, developed and emphasized in a plausible theory of democracy. For this, it will be necessary to approach at least the following issues: • the notion of interests and preferences; • the question of ideologies and values; • the nature of political action, and with it the redefinition of individual and collective identities; • the productive function of social institutions; and, stemming from the foregoing, • the scope of democracy and of politics in general.

Politics as the Shap ing of Interests and Preferences It is a basic premise of liberal theory of democracy, and one pursued to its utmost consequences in the theory of rational choice, that interests are exogenous to political activity, that is, they are prepolitically defined individual preferences that are unaltered by the democratic political process as such. 1 The objectives of political action are considered as determined a priori by complete individual preferences, and politics is accordingly viewed as essentially consisting in the manoeuvres of individuals attempting to maximize the satisfaction of their prior preferences. In spite of the vast differ­ ences between liberal ideology on the one hand and communi­ tarian republican or Marxist traditions on the other, somewhat similar views often emerge in the latter: the postulation of social groups (class, community or nation) with prepolitically defined needs and preferences is taken to limit the political activity of such groups (and of their individual members) to the pursuit of their highest preferences. Against this attitude, advocates of participative democracy have insisted that the axiom of exogenous preferences is not, in fact, tenable; interests are not given, causal antecedents of the democ­ ratic process, but are shaped, moulded and even generated in the 1 P. Bowles and H. Gintis, Democracy and Capitalism (New York, 1986).

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course of this process. 2 To maintain that preferences, desire, needs and interests are a priori necessary, and can at most be 'discovered' by any individual to whom they are not already evident, is to overlook their incomplete nature and thus to ignore the socio­ political process of their construction. 3 This dispute can be considered as an aspect of a distinction between two kinds of traditional political theory that has perhaps received insufficient attention. For, at bottom, what seems to differentiate political philosophers such as Sieyes, J. S. Mill or Dewey from Rousseau, Pateman or Rawls is the emphasis placed by the former upon the creative, productive role of politics, upon the absurdity of considering politics as the mere expression or discovery of pre-extant priorities, as if each citizen were, ab initio, the bearer of totally determined, inalterable objectives. In fact, the assumption of pre-extant 'real' priorities determined by the nature of society (and hence inherited, albeit unwittingly, by each individual) implies, unrealistically, that politics is an essentially trivial affair in which the gradual 'discovery' of this set of priorities results in progressive convergence to the true general interest: 'Tant que plusiers hommes reunis se considerent comme un seul corps, ils n'ont qu'une volonte, qui se rapporte a la commune conservation et au bien-etre general. Alors tous le ressort de l'Etat son vigoreux et simples, ses maximes sont claires et lumineuses; il n'a point d'interets embrouilles, contradictoires, le bien commun se montre partout avec evidence et ne demande que du hon sens pour etre apen;u.' 4 Furthermore, this notion can prompt not only the exorbitant requirement of unanimity as the ultimate criterion of legitimacy, 5 but also the ingenuous (and dangerous) belief that the people's ethico-political will is self-evident. 6 For Sieyes, for example, politics is quite the contrary, consisting in the design of combinations politiques that allow the people to formulate a coherent aim. The problem of democratic representa­ tion of the people is the problem of the joint construction of a 2

C. Sunstein, 'Constitutions and Democracies', in

J.

Elster and R. Slagstad (eds),

Constitutiona/ism and Democracy (Cambridge, 1988), pp. 45ff; P. Hirst, Representative Democracy and its Limits (Cambridge, 1990). 3 Ch. Lindblom, Inquiry and Change (New Haven CT, 1990). 4 Rousseau, Du contrat soda/, IV, 1. 5 B. Manin, 'Volonte generale OU deliberation?' Debat (1985) 33: 72-93. 6 J. G. Merquior, Liberalism Old and New (Boston, 1991).

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common will. 7 For there are innumerable issues concerning which citizens in general do not have fixed prior preferences, let alone a coherent set of such preferences, and the role of politics as a process of information and communication is not only to provide new solutions to familiar needs, but also to engender, shape and enrich citizens' preferences. Sieyes and Mill admittedly shared the Enlightenment's excessive rationalist optimism, echoes of which can indeed still be detected in the Ojfentlichkeit - and even in the Kommunicativen Handelns - of Habermas. 8 Although they realized that consensus concerning the common good can require onerous, institutionally mediated public debate, and that the unrealistic unanimity implicit in Rousseau's idea of inherent, prepolitical preferences must be replaced by majority rule, they still cherished the belief that, once privilege is abolished, individual interests will tum out to be mutually compat­ ible and disagreement on the common good can be overcome by public debate. In other words, they retained an implausibly episte­ mological view of the democratic process, whereby information and communication lead unfailingly and progressively to consensus. It is hardly necessary to point out that this dream has little defence against the attacks it received from such dissimilar authors as Marx or Schmitt. The former, in Zur ]udenfrage, railed against the delusion that politics might achieve the sublimation of class differ­ ences; while Carl Schmitt, in Die geistesgeschichtliche Lage des heutigen Parlamentarismus, criticized the notion that debate necessarily gives access to truth ('la discussion substituee a la force') and stressed the existence of political conflicts in which persuasive argument will never lead to concord. At the same time, however, one must recall that neither Marx nor Schmitt comprehended the practical impor­ tance of democratic institutions, the essential autonomy of the state as an institutional framework, or the profoundly integrative, constructive nature of the political process. In open opposition to Marx's and Schmitt's attitude to politics, some progress towards breaking the impasse was made by authors such as Kaufmann and Heller. For Kaufmann, the will of the people is not an entity that is given a priori, apprehension of which requires 7 R. Maiz, Nation and Representation: The Political T11eory of the Abbe Sieyes (Barcelona: ICPS, 1 990) 8 J. Hahennas, Strukturwandel der 6.Jfentlichkeit (Frankfurt, 1 962) , and T11eorie des kommu­ nikativetl Handelns (Frankfurt, 1981).

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Ramon Maiz only its inspection, but rather something to be actively worked at and put together in some specific form via a process of demands, counterdemands and alternatives; 9 while Heller drew attention to the fact that political groups are not mere passive representative projections of their members' preferences, but are the result of inter­ active organizational behaviour among these members. 1 0 I t is here that current debate on the question of the 'general will' continues to be centred. For social choice theorists since Arrow, the problem is not so much whether there in fact exists a 'general will' underlying political discord, but rather that no such general will could ever be discovered by any 'political process', being understood as the aggregation of individual preferences by some kind of voting system with properties that, a priori, it seems quite reasonable to demand of a fair voting system. It would appear that the very heart of democratic theory is stricken by the finding that no such voting system is stable in the sense of guaranteeing the election of an alternative that would win all two-way ballots against other alternatives. Admittedly, this conclusion is based on the following set of debatable premises. 1. The set of voting agents is fixed (which ignores the question of the normative specification of admissible agents). 2. There is a single given total set of alternatives, which each agent knows and orders, prior to any voting process, in accordance with his or her own individual preferences (which in many circum­ stances ignores many, if not all, kinds of agenda manipulation). 3. The order of preferences of each agent is fixed throughout the political (that is, voting) process (which is thus reduced to a purely passive medium of expression). 4. In the usual version of the theory, preferences are purely ordinal, that is, comparison of differences in preference intensity are impossible both between agents (agent X cannot be said to prefer alternative A more than agent Y does) and within a single agent's preference order (X may be said to prefer A to B and B to C, but cannot be said to prefer A much more than B and B a little more than C). 9 E. Kaufmann, 'Zur problematik des Volkswillens', in Gesammelte (Gottingen, 1931), pp. 234ff. 1 0 H. Heller, 'Politische Demokratie und soziale homogenitat' (1928), in Sd1ri.ften 2 (Leiden, 1971), pp. 412ff.

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3

Gesammelte

On Deliberation: Rethinking Democracy as Politics Itself

5. Individual preference orderings are both complete (for any pair of alternatives A and B, the agent prefers A to B, or B to A, or is strictly indifferent between the two) and transitive (if A is preferred to B and B to C, then A is preferred to C). 6. For each particular set of individual preference orders, there exists a 'social preference order', or 'general will', that is, a complete, transitive ordering of the total set of alternatives such that, for any subset of alternatives, those chosen by the voting system are exactly the top-ranking members of the subset. 7. If there is some agent who prefers alternative A to B, and no agent preferring B to A, then B will not be chosen (the 'strong Pareto condition'). 8. The outcome of voting on any subset of alternatives is indepen­ dent of individuals' ranking of the alternatives not included in that subset. 9. The voting system treats individual agents fairly, and the individual agents behave sincerely, in the following senses: (a) all individuals are treated equally (anonymity of vote); (b) no single individual agent is able to impose his will regard­ less of the preferences of the other agents (that is, there is no dictator); (c) there is no restriction on the preference orders of the individual agents; (d) all individual agents vote in accordance with their true preferences (that is, strategic voting or vote trading is assumed not to occur). Since it turns out to be impossible for a voting system to fulfil all the above conditions simultaneously, Arrow and his followers conclude that the concepts of general will, common good and rational social choice are in fact empty. 1 1 For our present purposes, the import of the major analyses of Arrow's and related theorems 12 is that they question, directly or indirectly, their premises concerning individual preferences: either 1 1 K. J. Arrow, Soda/ Choice and Individual Values (New Haven CT, 1970) ; J. S. Kelly, Arrow Impossibility Theorems (New York, 1978). 12 A. J. Sen, 'Social Choice Theory: A Re-examination', Econometrica (1977) 45 (1) : 35-51; J. Bister, 'The Market and the Forum', in J. Bister and A. Hylland (eds) , Foundations of Soda/ Choice Theory (Cambridge , 1986) ; A. Domenech, De la etica a la poUtica (Barcelona, 1989).

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their very existence as given, prepolitical entitles; or their being sincerely respected in voting (Tversky has suggested that voting systems often conceal individual preferences rather than reveal them); or the admissibility of all conceivable combinations of individual preference orders (if, contrary to premise 9c above, it is assumed that all agents agree that the alternatives can be characterized by their position on a single dimension, and that each agent votes in accor­ dance with a utility function that is a single-peaked function on this dimension, then the social choice process is stable 1 3) . In particular, it has been argued that the reformulation of the liberalist model of democracy in rational choice terms (fundamen­ tally, the assumption of complete, immutable, given individual preferences) incurs the Benthamite confusion between the kind of behaviour that is appropriate in the market and the kind appropriate in the political forum. 1 4 In other words, it is not valid to treat the citizen choosing among political options affecting both himself and others as if he were a buyer whose choices only concern himself Although rational choice mechanisms may prevent market anomalies deriving from endowment of the consumer, or buyer, with unlimited 'sovereignty', they cannot do the same when it comes to identifying the general will. For the task of politics is not just to favour efficient government, but to achieve social welfare; and for this end the simple aggregation of prepolitical preferences, even if possible, is inappropriate. It is not only demonstrably impos­ sible (by Arrow's theorem) , but manifestly implausible, to think of the 'will of the people' as consisting of some Arrow-infringing, Pareto-satisfying combination of individual preferences. The will of the people must in general be the outcome of the revision of individual preferences as the result of inter-individual communica­ tion with a view to the common good. Put another way, the polit­ ical process serves not merely to identify the general will, but, as a process of social deliberation, to create it; the purpose of mutual communication, information and rational discussion and reflection is to transform the initial 'naive' preferences of the individual. The notion of rational deliberation thus goes beyond the limited view of politics as the arena of conflict between interests defined totally independently of the political process. Deliberation clarifies 1 3 W. Riker, Liberalism against Populism (San Francisco, 1982). 1 4 B. Manin, 'Volonte generale ou deliberation?'; ]. Elster, 'The Market and the Forum'.

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On Deliberation: Rethinking Democracy as Politics Itself

assumption and reorders preferences. It is therefore not tenable to try to divide citizens strictly, as Mill does, into choosers (citizens with full information on, and preferences among, all possible alterna­ tives) and learners (citizens lacking such information, and who are thus ignorant of their own true interests). Nor is the Marxist distinction between class an sich and class fur sich any better (in any of its several versions), for its assumption of a social structure defining a priori class interests subject to teleologically determined discovery and pursuit, effectively reduces politics to an epiphenom­ enon and 'illusory form' whose 'truth' resides fundamentally (and virtually exclusively) in production relations; 1 5 it is ingenuous to suppose that preferences determined 'socially' in this Marxist sense 1 6 can obviate the need for a constructive political process. Rather, a political process is essential for the genesis of interests and the clarification of preferences; the highest objective of politics is to emerge from an initial situation requiring not merely the strategic acquisition of the means to satisfy preferences, but the very defini­ tion of the preferences to be satisfied. In this way, making prefer­ ences constitutes the very essence of politics. 1 7 This is, if possible, even more evident in relation to 'second­ order preferences', that is, preferences about preferences, a corner­ stone of the republican model of democracy. For the latter, the general will ideally comes into being through a process of ethical self-enlightenment that is promoted by democracy not only through the convergence of preferences due to information sharing and discussion, but also through the encouragement of citizens' self-government and self-determination. 1 8 In other words, democ­ racy increases citizens' autonomy: their capacity for unmanipulated modification of their preferences and for discourse giving birth to a more fitting individual and collective political will. 1 9 Democracy 15 R. Maiz, 'Karl Marx: de la superacion de! Estado a la dictadura del proletariado' , in F. Vallespin (ed.) , Historia de la teoria poUtica (Madrid, 1992). 16 J. E. Roemer (ed.) , Analytical Marxism (Cambridge, 1986). 17 A. Wildavsky, 'Choosing by Constructing Institutions' , American Political Sdence Review (1987) 81: 565-97. 18 D. Held, Models of Democracy (Cambridge, 1987). 19 J. Mansbridge, Beyond Adversary Democracy (Chicago, 1980) ; J. G. Merquior, A natureza do proceso (Rio de Janeiro, 1982) , and O argumento liberal (Rio de Janeiro, 1983) ; J. Elster, Sour Grapes (Cambridge, 1983) ; S. Benhabib, 'Autonomy, Modernity and Community' , in A. Honneth, Th. MacCarthy and C. Offe (eds) , Zwiscl1betrachungen im Prozess Aujkliirung (Frankfurt, 1989) ; J. Habermas, El discurso .filosijico de la modernidad (Taurus, 1989) .

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Ramon Maiz both allows citizens to develop and fulfil themselves, and consoli­ dates their control over their own development and fulfilment. 20 Thus the second-order property of autonomy is both desirable in itself as the power for refinement of preferences in solidarity with others, and also as the source of voters' information and self-deter­ mination, desirable as a decisive component of the legitimacy of organs of representation. 21 Furthermore - and this is of paramount importance as regards delimitation of the scope of politics - deliberation necessarily involves certain procedural requisites (freedom, equality and access to information) which transcend the political sphere to affect the whole social order and force revision of the classical liberal view of politics as the handmaiden of economic competition. There is no doubt that in an advanced democracy the economy must be under­ stood as embracing not only the production and distribution of goods and services, but as an instrument for the promotion of a much wider range of democratic values. If citizens' wealth and income are also political resources, and are not equitably distributed, how then can citizens be politically equal? And if they are not polit­ ically equal, how can there be democracy. 22 Liberty is intrinsically inseparable from equality, one of its dimensions. 23 It has been suggested that, because of its economic roots and connotations, the concept of interest should be excluded from a theory of democracy aware of the creative nature of the political process. 24 Others, however, have plausibly argued in favour of a concept of interest as the product, rather than the determinant, of citizens' political activity. 25 The notion of the individual as the locus or seat of such politically created interests is an appropriate comple­ ment to the republican premise that the individual requires autonomy, since recognition that autonomy is reduced by divergence between needs and preferences can direct the theory of democracy towards the design of processes facilitating reconciliation of the two. 26 Furthermore, a notion of interest as the product of political

° C. Gould, Retliillking Democracy (Cambridge, 1988). 21 C. Sunstein, 'Constitutions and Democracies'. 22 R. Dahl, Democracy and its Critics (New Haven CT, 1989). 23 J. G. Merquior, A natureza do proceso. 24 P. Bowles and H. Gintis, Democracy and Capitalism. 25 M. Warren, 'Democracy and Self-Transformation', American Political Sdmce Review (1992) 86 (1) . 26 C. Offe, Disorganized Capitalism (Cambridge, 1985). 2

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On Deliberation: Rethinking Democracy as Politics Itself

activity fits in with the problem of ethical self-enlightenment and self-transformation by virtue of its implications for the qualitative improvement of the political competence and informed autonomy of the citizen. 27 However, the fundamental effect of considering the democratic citizen as the seat of politically created interests is to install him or her within a network of power relationships, a pattern of consensus and conflict. This viewpoint allows reformulation of the otherwise excessively abstract antithesis between conflict and solidarity by taking into account that the specific benefits attaching to interests generally concern other citizens as well as the particular individual, and that they are of very diverse kinds - private or social, material or (in a broad sense) ethical, scant or abundant. 28 And this will be seen to overcome both the limitations of the liberal model of democracy, which treats all interests as materialistic and pertaining to the individual, and those of the republican model, which tends to overemphasize the existence of collective and social interests. The introduction of a constructive concept of interest into the theory of democracy recognizes both the ill-defined nature of prepolitical preferences and the need to reformulate the antithesis between solidarity and pluralism in keeping with the particular characteristics of the diverse spheres of interest and their differing tendencies to conflict or concord. 29 In the next section we shall see how the required constructive concept of interest arises from consideration of interest in terms of both goods and politically relevant values, and that this more complex, less one-sided approach not only embraces the political construction of interests from ill-defined prepolitical prefer­ ences, but can go on to address the question of the integrational or aggregative nature of the political process involved.

Consensus or Conflict? Ideology, Values and Political Culture If we are to give up the notion of exogenous interests or prepolitical preferences in favour of the concept of democracy as a deliberative process in which preferences are created rather than merely chosen 27

W. Connolly, Identity/Difference (Ithaca NY, 1991) ; R. Dahl, Democracy and its Critics. 28 M. Warren, 'Democracy and Self-Transformation'. 29 J. Mansbridge, Beyond Adversary Democracy; M. Walzer, Spheres of Justice (Oxford, 1983) ; M. Warren, 'Democracy and Self-Transformation'.

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Ramon Maiz or passively learnt, then we must also reconsider the nature of ideology. For, rather unsurprisingly, the liberal, communitarian republican and Marxist viewpoints coincide in stigmatizing, as the product of 'false consciousness', 'mere ideology' or the 'distortion of preferences', any train of argument that fails to set forth the true interests of the components of society as propounded by the school in question - be these the defence of individual rights and prefer­ ences, class interests or the traditions of the community. All three regard any broader concept of values as a red herring that distracts attention from the reality of conflicting interests. The notion of democracy as deliberation, on the other hand, means that political discourse cannot be considered as merely echoing the structural interrelationships of production, communal traditions or personal preferences. The notion of political action as mere choice dictated by fixed prepolitical preferences reduces politics to a mechanism or weapon for the dispute of scant resources and the achievement of short­ term gains; broader concepts of political value are seen as a smoke screen concealing and confusing the Realpolitik of interests, which are the truly meaningful determinants of choice. In contrast, the deliberative approach seeks to recover the more demanding classical idea of politics as the creation and transformation of conceptions of life and of the world. This approach postulates that it is through politics that individuals develop and express their personal and social identities and the common good; that it is the traditions, rituals and conventions involved in their identities that allow them to achieve a coherent interpretation of the ambiguities of political life; that many political activities are defined in terms of socially current 'myths' and 'symbols' rather than material interests; and that the use of such 'symbols' is an essential part of political strategy, to the extent that decision-making is often constrained or determined by symbolic socio-political considerations. 30 In short, political action does not consist solely of choice, but also, to a large extent, of interpretation. There are occasions on which social agents are less concerned about material results or expectations than about the processes that endow their political behaviour with meaning. The involvement of cultural, ideological and ethical references in the political construction of interests from specific preferences 30

J. March and ). Olson, Rediscovering Institutions (New York, 1989). - 156 -

On Deliberation: Rethinking Democracy as Politics Itself

associated with various kinds of benefit means that preferences are essentially oversignifi.ed; and these 'symbolic' contributions cannot be treated merely as a decorative veneer overlying the coherent material reality, but are an integral part of politics, that is, of the articulation and construction of values and interests. 31 Values and symbols are neither a by-product of reality nor a means of concealing true interests, but are, on the contrary, the form in which interests normally arise in political discourse, as unstable signifiers with essentially temporary meaning that form part of a permanently open, shifting, semantic network. In view of the above, it is impossible to maintain the assumption - common to liberalism and Marxism - that it is 'contradictions' between social interests that, sooner or later, inevitably generate political antagonism. For antagonism is in fact a major dimension of the politico-ideological transformation of 'unripe' preferences into politically established interests incorporating values, myths and symbols. Politics, as a process of oversignification, takes precedence over inertial social processes as the basic premise of a transforma­ tional theory of democracy, and the imaginaire consequently emerges as central to the politico-ideological constitution of interests. Let us look at this in more detail. No need or preference can be apprehended in isolation from its semantic context. Interests emerge as relationships between signifiers and their meanings that continually outgrow the limits of denotation as values, properties, connotations. In other words, interests have connotational meanings that are neither material nor rational entities, but images. In fact, needs and interests cannot emerge as soda[ needs and inter­ ests other than via a cultural process of transformation in which preferences and benefits are moulded into interests by being valued, revalued and organized within a system of intersymbolic relation­ ships. Indeed, modem rationalism itself is in this sense an image or symbol, since in Western society, more than in any other, the artifi­ cial definition of needs in social terms only arises thanks to a degree of economic development that has progressed beyond the satisfac­ tion of basic necessities. 32 The relative shift towards postmaterialist values (such as self­ expression, sense of belonging and quality of life) that is evident in 31 32

E. Laclau, New Rteflections on the Revolution of Our Time (London, 1990). C. Castoriadis, L'institution imaginaire de la sodete (Paris, 1975) .

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current Western political culture has highlighted the metamorphosis that is slowly taking place within the civic culture of these societies. There is empirical evidence that values play an increasingly central role in this process, that is, that 'cognitive mobilization' makes a growing contribution to political militancy. 33 At the same time, the delay in the successful expression of these new preferences in the polling booth has been shown to be largely due to factors of an equally cultural nature: the inertia of political tradition, party loyalty, etc. Thus images and symbols tend to play an ever greater role in the active configuration of political understanding, and are hence a necessary condition for the emergence of interest. 34 On the communitarian republican front, the problem is different. Here, the contribution of politico-ethical discourse to the construction of preferences and identities is often treated too narrowly and unilaterally: too much reliance is placed on the potential of ethical self-knowledge for the creation of solidarity, and the contribution of pluralism is underrated. This encourages an ofThand attitude to the aggregative processes that are an inseparable part of politics, and that are indeed essential if the external and transactional costs of political decisions are to be kept within reasonable bounds. More importantly, it is overlooked that the discursive construction of conscious interests from unripe prefer­ ences can and does bring about both conjunction and differentia­ tion; it is by no means a one-way process leading necessarily to the identification and acceptance of common interests engulfing those of the individual, but can also engender awareness of differences. To be sure, it seems reasonable to admit that democratic political participation can promote substantial reorientation of prepolitical preferences towards greater solidarity and awareness of the common good, and that it can thereby achieve consensus where once there was strife. 35 Even when no specific agreement on common interests is reached, the habit of democratic interaction, of mutual communi­ cation among conflicting parties, nurtures a certain general sense of reciprocity3 6 and increases tolerance of discrepancies. But such discrepancy, such plurality, is not necessarily negligible - above all, 33 34 35 36

R. Inglehart, Culture Shift it1 Advanced Industrial Sodety (Princeton NJ, 1990) . E. Laclau, New Reflections. B. Barber, Strong Democracy (Berkeley, 1984) . C. Gould, Rethinking Democracy.

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because politically constituted individual identities are never composed of interests that are absolutely general; there is no under­ lying communal reality guaranteeing unanimous agreement on 'shared understandings'. 37 Thus communication can also generate further discrepancy, disagreement and a plurality of new differenti­ ating attitudes at the same time as, in other areas, it enables the intersubjective sharing of new aspects of the general will by the community as a whole; while favouring unanimity on some issues, it multiplies the bounds of unanimity by facilitating the emergence of new, disjoint sets of group interests. 38 The plurality of interests and values is consubstantial with politics, something that not even the most perfect process of communication and ethical self-learning could or should do away with; politics is still, as Weber put it, 'polytheistic', or in Nietzsche's words 'the wrestling of gods', however communicative the gods may be. The plurality of forms of life of the modern world, the world of 'disorganized capitalism', ceaselessly engenders values and interests that are not of general validity, but which are nevertheless in many cases deemed eligible for legal protection (for example, in view of cultural or social variety); in such cases the fact that conscious inter­ ests are politically constructed serves to check the communitarian republican tendency to homogenization of the general will, reinforcing pluralism rather than dissolving the individual or minority in communal anonymity. The social, cultural and political pluralism originated by political participation and by the prolifera­ tion of spheres of decision makes it necessary for politics to pursue both the common good and the protection of interests and values which neither are, nor pretend to be, of general scope; which may well be controversial to the point of making consensus impossible; but which, as part of society's cultural and political heritage, should nevertheless enjoy the safeguards emanating from acceptance of minimal rules of fair play. Democracy, ultimately, is not only about the discovery or attainment of common ground; it also involves collective recognition of the fact of social conflict, and of the consequent need to supply such conflict with appropriate institu­ tional arenas. 39 Recognition that, in spite of communitarian republican ideas to 37 38

39

M. Walzer, Spheres ofJustice. D. Zolo, n Prindpato Democratico (Milan, 1 992) . J. G. Merquior, A natureza do proceso.

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the contrary, the existence of a diversity of interests is an inescapable consequence of the existence of a diversity of lifestyles, means, of course, that some kind of aggregative mechanism, with all its attendant strategic activity, is necessary for political efficacy. It is the handling of practical affairs with finite time constraints that we are dealing with, not philosophical ideals, so if consensus on certain issues is impossible then non-unanimous decisions must perforce be taken and respected. If not all political issues can await the transformation of prepolitical preferences into integrated inter­ ests, this integrative process must be complemented by an aggrega­ tive process; some acceptable balance must be struck between the goal of maximizing agreement and the goal of minimizing the costs of reaching such agreement, which include both the transactional costs of the decision process itself and the external costs to certain individuals or groups that are caused by their minority position in the decision-taking process. In turn, the introduction of aggregative mechanisms and strategic behaviour means the emergence of power structures. Power strug­ gles are thus a socio-political fact that cannot be definitively swept away by communitarian republicanism. A democracy is not a utopian society enjoying total internal harmony and perfectly rational, sincere discourse, and in which power struggles and strategic political behaviour have no place; rather, it is a society in which power relationships are so structured as to favour the attain­ ment of qualitatively superior political will. The deliberative theory of democracy rejects the communitarian republican tendency to transfer political philosophy to the sphere of ethics, replacing it with a view of democracy as a complex synthesis of convergent and strategic political activity, of rational discussion and pursuit of individual or group preferences. And the achievement of this synthesis involves an issue shied from by aggregationists and integrationists alike: the nature of the institutions through which democratic power is wielded. But before addressing this issue in a later section, we must first look more deeply into the nature of political action and its relationship to the identity of political agents.

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Political Action as Self-Defi,nition Process In classical accounts of politics, whether liberal, communitarian republican or Marxist, the notion of exogenous interests is closely linked with the ideal of political action as the expression of individual or group identity. For the liberalist, social action has an explicitly predefined objective, the achievement of prepolitical preferences for the satisfaction of completely self-defined needs. Similarly, the communitarian republican tends to see admissible social action as the mere manifestation or execution of the nature or objective of an underlying social entity, be it the nation or a set of either vague or precise but inherently unquestionable civic values. Finally, Marxism regards social action as simply the dynamic reflection of the objective interests dividing collective subjects (the social classes) that are defined by relations of production. In each case, and in spite of other differences, the social action described is fully determined by the fixed nature of agents defined prepolitically in terms of exogenous interests. This view reduces politics, in Marx's words, to the illusory form in which conflicts are manifested that are really being waged elsewhere, on the 'true stage of all history' defined by the matrix of given prepolitical preferences. An immediate consequence of both liberal and Marxist expres­ sive views of social action is that incompatibility between pregiven preferences automatically implies political antagonism between the corresponding individuals or groups. Admittedly, in the liberal case, political dispute of limited resources is regulated by adver­ sarial institutions that manage the aggregation of preferences and limit the extent to which victorious preferences may damage the rights and freedoms of other parties, 40 but there is no feedback between political activity and the formation of preferences; prefer­ ences strictly precede action, which is limited to a sequence of choices that are strictly dictated by the given preferences. Communitarian republicanism too tends to cherish an expressive view of social action as dictated by that utopian entity the general will, which is not only identified with the 'true' will of the individual, but is held to emanate from an underlying unity of interests that denies any positive value to the plurality of opinion 40

J. Mansbridge, Beyond Adversary Democracy. - 161 -

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that is an inevitable consequence of diversity of lifestyle. While in classical Marxism the admissible political action of the individual (that is, such action as is not the product of 'false consciousness') is the mere expression of class interest, the internal solidarity of the social classes being taken for granted; and politics, obeying laws following by unbending necessity from the antagonistic interests defined by the relations of production, not only makes no contri­ bution to the definition of preferences, 4 1 but can even afford to i gnore the problem of choice. Recent democratic theory, it must be admitted, shows the way beyond the expressive theory of social action and how to avoid its denaturalization of politics. Connolly42 has rejected the concept of a Rousseauian general will discovered and identified with by the individual through altruistic ethical transformation, and has instead stressed that self-government consists in the genesis of a general will that, in general, differs from prior individual preferences, and that capacity for democratic self-determination lies precisely in the identification and awareness of this difference. In other words, individuals define themselves and each other through political inter­ action, which thereby generates interests and preferences. Certain parts of the most overtly post-structuralist theory of discourse, Laclau's, would indeed appear to push the transmutational capacity of social action beyond credible limits, postulating a total lack of determination, but it should not be forgotten that social action does not take place in a vacuum; its transformational potential cannot be identified with the complete absence of structural influences, firstly because it seems difficult to deny that the feasibility of political action, and the range of possible options and arguments, must in the long term be subject to economic constraints, and secondly because of the inevitable institutionalization of social action by means of rules, conventions, custom, routine and procedure. Rather than by completely dissolving prior identity, democratic participation allows the transformation of political identity by developing citizens' autonomy, 43 that is, their capacity to exercise judgment free from manipulation, free from coercion and free from total predetermina­ tion by group membership or postulated innate preferences. 4 1 R. Maiz, 'Karl Marx: de la superaci6n del Estado a la dictadura del proletariado'. W. Connolly, Political 11,eory and Modernity (Oxford, 1988) ; and Identity/Difference. 43 S. Benhabib, 'Autonomy, Modernity and Community'; J. Habermas, El discurso .filoso.fico de la modemidad; D. Held, Models ef Democracy. 42

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Autonomy is political self-determination understood as a capacity for interactive communication and informed judgment, and hence for a kind of political action that can generate and transform values, beliefs and second-order preferences. 44 Models of collective action such as those put forward by Olson or Hardin, in which action boils down to the mechanical aggrega­ tion of prepolitical interests, are in fact disproved by empirical social science, which has repeatedly found that action is often influ­ enced by cultural dicta and social norms that have crystallized from the melt of history. In other words, behaviour often derives more from a notion of what is fitting, from a logic of appropriateness, than from rational calculation of the effects of possible alterna­ tives. 45 Duty, a sense of fitness and disinterested trust are just as important a part of political motivation as rational expectations of the outcomes of decisions. Political action thus often seeks to be the appropriate expression of a certain role in a certain kind of situation, and decision on what actions are to be taken accordingly involves identification of situations and consciousness of roles and their associated obligations. In this sense, political action is frequently dictated more by a notion of what is expected than by rational calculation of expectations. And it is to a large extent citizens' autonomous ability to accept or reject, adhere to or deviate from, support or criticize, roles, routines and traditions that allows their individual or collective identity, interests and values to be modified and moulded as the result of their political interaction. Politics is not just the arena of strife among conflicting interests and values; by allowing, favouring and channelling citizens' autonomy and capacity for judgment, it brings about the constitution, construction and articulation of personal and collective identity. This theory of political action thus implies that the political agent is himself a political construct defined, not by his static objective situation, but rather by the intrinsically provisional, continually fluctuating set of his positions on diverse issues. The political subject is in a sense an abstraction, a 'myth'; the political agent is not uniquely determined by his prior preferences, but is instead overdetermined by his context and origin. And it is this construc­ tivist concept of the political subject that unfolds the full potential 44 J. Elster, Sour Grapes; R. Dahl, Cot1trolling Nuclear Weapons (Syracuse, 1985) ; M. Warren, 'Democracy and Self-Transformation'. 45 J. March and J. Olson, Rediscovering Institutions.

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of the insights contained in the republican model of democracy in fact, the fundamental difference between the liberal and repub­ lican models can be said to lie in the political subject's being treated as prepolitically defined by the former and as the locus of continu­ ally mutant interests and values by the latter. 46 Favouring individual autonomy and judgment, and the construc­ tion of political identity, political interaction can favour solidarity and the convergence of perceived interests and values; but, as already pointed out, it does not guarantee this outcome. The continual rearticulation of individual and collective interests, values and identities does not necessarily lead to cooperation, but can instead engender intolerance, violence and domination of a minority by a despotic majority. It is the insight of the most socially conscious liberalism that this cannot be guarded against by faith in eventual convergence to a general will in harmony with nature; what is required is an appropriate system of institutional safeguards - first and foremost, constitutional rights and the separation of powers.

Reinventing Political Institutions: Participation versus Rep resentation? The least subtle versions of the traditional theories of democracy share a marked failure to comprehend fully the function and value of formal democratic institutions. In consonance with their view of social action, hardline liberalism and Marxism look upon democ­ ratic forms as mere channels for the expression of exogenous inter­ ests; any shifting of preferences in the course of the aggregative processes that are considered to constitute the formal institutions' role is treated as a strictly secondary effect. In the opposite camp, naive communitarian republicanism implies much the same relationship with the general will; while in more recent versions concentrating on the proliferations of areas of autonomous decision (Arendt's 'new domains of public freedom'), a similarly passive view of state institutions leads to their disparagement, to the point of encouraging a kind of Staatsverdrossenheit or 'allergy to the 46 B. Barber, Strong Democracy; C. Offe, Disorganized Capitalism; C. Gould, Rethinking Democracy; J. Dryzek, Discursive Democracy (Cambridge, 1 990).

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On Deliberation: Rethinking Democracy as Politics Itself

state' . 47 In actual fact, contemporary research provides abundant empirical evidence that formal democratic institutions do not act merely as the neutral arena of conflict or as the aggregative machines. On the contrary, not only are they the womb in which individual and group positions, values, identities, norms and customs are conceived and defined, 48 but also, in Western 'polyarchies', the means of avoiding the instability theoretically inherent in aggregative processes. Through their formal procedures, democratic institutions are able to limit, coordinate and integrate social agents and alternatives to achieve a stability that cannot be guaranteed by purely aggregative mechanisms. Hence analysis of the social context of politics and of the individual motives of social agents must be complemented by examination of the specific efficacy of political institutions if, as declared above, a theory of democracy as deliberation must reconcile aggregation and integra­ tion. The institutionalization of suitable democratic procedures is the key to a plausible theory of democracy, 49 since it is institutional procedures and structures than can favour or make impossible simultaneous fulfilment of the twin objectives: the attainment of compromise among conflicting interests, and progress in conver­ gence towards consensus. so Liberalism's traditional mistrust of power and its fear of despotic maj orities have achieved the establishment of institutions and proce­ dures which rule out communitarian republicanism's exorbitant aim of attaining unanimity through ethical self-understanding, and have encouraged a healthy regard for civic virtue and plurality as a defence against didactic authoritarianism. 5 1 However, awareness of the actively constructive role of the democratic institutions allows one to advance much further. To begin with, it clearly shows how artificial is the traditional antithesis between political participation and representation, since the treatment of plurality of interests in the political forum cannot be the same as in the marketplace, where a much wider plurality is admissible. Political deliberation implies a reduction in plurality on two accounts: on the one hand, because it does not simply help maximize the realization of independent 47 48 49 50 51

J. G. Merquior, A natureza do proceso. J. March and ]. Olson, Rediscovering Institutions.

R. Dahl, Democracy and its Critics. A. Lijphart, Democracies (New Haven CT, 1984) . J. G. Merquior, A natureza do proceso, and Liberalism Old and New.

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Ramon Maiz prepolitical preferences, but contributes decisively to the transforma­ tion and convergence of these preferences and to the institutional­ ization (in law or the constitution, for example) of qualitatively improved second-order preferences; on the other, because the delib­ erative construction of interests, values and decisions in the democ­ ratic forum via a heterogeneous process of integration and aggregation requires minimization of the number of possibilities to be explored in defining the general will. For both reasons, a deliber­ ative theory of democracy must overcome the eighteenth century's aversion to factions and recognize political parties as essential inter­ mediaries between the individual and the general will, between the prepolitical preferences of the private citizen and the deliberatively constructed will of the state. Furthermore, it is not only political parties as such that are necessary for deliberative democracy and the integration and aggregation of preferences: complex societies are characterized by their plurality of lifestyles and by the wide range of social movements and intermediate or second-level associations that spring up within them for the purposes of discussion, communica­ tion and decision - in short, for citizen associative participation; 52 if this rich variety of organizations is not to lead to confusion and incoordination, but rather to assist in the cooperative construction of the general will, then mechanisms must be implemented for their adequate representation, so that they serve as stages in the overall integrative, aggregative and coordinative process. The above conclusions reinforce the importance of the organiza­ tion of the state as the 'pattern of politics' (Skocpol). As de Tocqueville or Durkheim knew, the efficacy of the state - in the broadest sense - arises from the way in which its institutions, rules and procedures configure a certain kind of political culture, encourage the formation of certain kinds of group, facilitate certain kinds of collective action, and sanction certain kinds of decision. And it is worth recalling that one of the sources of the efficacy of democratic institutions and procedures is simply their enforcement of a generous time scale, which favours stability at two levels: firstly, by encouraging political agents and social groups in general to take a broader view of particular situations, which can help resolve immediate conflict; and secondly, by providing frustrated 52 J. Cohen and J. Rogers, 'Secondary Associations and Democracy', Politics and Sodety (1992) 20 (4) : 393-473.

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groups with a framework for negotiation and for recruitment of support which offers them the possibility of future success and so justifies their participation in the democratic process. This latter incentive is particularly important: the core of democratic institu­ tional strategy is the provision of room for all with appropriate procedural guarantees. 5 3 Recognition of the importance of the state as institutional frame­ work guaranteeing participation as well as representation naturally demolishes liberalism, since it denies both the hardline liberal justifi­ cation of democracy as pure aggregation of initial preferences and likewise denies an alternative liberal view of democracy as a sequence of changes of ruling elite (Schumpeter). But it also demol­ ishes communitarian republicanism: democracy is no longer govern­ ment by the people, tout court, but government by the people subject to certain limitations, procedures, guarantees and precommitments. 5 4 Democracy is not justified by its ensuring pursuit of the general will as faithful reflection of an underlying harmony, but by its guaran­ teeing participation in the integrative and aggregative construction of political decision. To this end, one of the keystones of the delibera­ tive democratic edifice is the existence of a constitution that, striking a viable balance between participation and representation, defines a sovereignless, law-abiding constitutional state guaranteeing the rights of minorities; 55 for a constitution produced by an appropriate constituent body is the ultimate expression and abdication of a sovereign people in that, born at a time of maximum political partic­ ipation, awareness and debate, it voluntarily abolishes sovereignty by limiting the powers of all the components of the state. Henceforth, the law, for example, is not the expression of a general will reflecting an external objectivity, but simply the outcome of the political balance of power at a given moment. Recognition of the importance of democratic institutions for a deliberative theory of democracy also brings with it the question of their adequacy and possible reform. For although the pressure of republican arguments in favour of participative democracy has succeeded in achieving a quantitative increase in participation (for 53 A. Przeworsky, Democracy and the Market (Cambridge, 1991). 54 S. Holmes, 'Precommitment and the Paradox of Democracy' , in J. Bister and R. Slagstad (eds) , Constitutionalism and Democracy (Cambridge, 1988). 55 B. Ackerman, 'Neo-federalism?', in J. Elster and R. Slagstad (eds), Constitutionalism and Democracy.

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example, by progressive expansion of suffrage, direct presidential elections and the generalization of procedures such as referendums or automatic prior consultation with those to be affected by projected decisions), room remains for its qualitative improvement. The limita­ tions of massive unstructured participation in Burgerinitiativen involving ethnic or religious minorities or sexual discrimination, for example, has been clearly demonstrated, and derives not only from the difficulty of determining exactly who the affected citizens are, or from the tendency of certain forms of political pluralism to degen­ erate into segregationism, 56 but also from the increase in participants being accompanied by a decrease in the quality of the information and debate upon which their individual decisions are based. Condorcet's obsession thus returns to haunt us: we must not only make rational politics democratic, but also make democratic politics rational. 57 The outstanding objective is no longer to give power to the people, but to do so in such a way that the people dispose of the information necessary for responsible exercise of power. Otherwise, the advocates of participatory democracy must sadly acknowledge that increased participation tends to be associated with increased manipulation of public opinion, or with increased mistrust of democ­ ratic procedures, or both. In short, the participation of the masses is achieved only at the expense of rational ponderation of the subject of decision; elitism, which contradicts the principle of equality, has in practice been guarded against by promoting mass participation without regard to the quality of deliberation. 58 To sum up, deliberative democracy involves the following three things: 1. political equality as opposed to elitism, that is, real equality that includes the removal of economic and cultural constraints preventing informed political participation; 59 2. deliberation as opposed to roughly quantitative mass participation, that is, mechanisms and customs promoting discussion leading to the maturation and integration of prepolitical preferences and to the aggregation of pluralities; 56 K. Offe and U. Preuss, 'Democratic Institutions and Moral Resources' , in D. Held (ed.) , Political Theory Today (Cambridge, 1991) , pp. 132-65. 57 R. Maiz, 'Las teorias de la democracia en la Revoluci6n francesa' PoUtica y Sodedad (1990) 4. 58 J. Fishkin, Democracy and Deliberation (New Haven CT, 1991) . 59 R. Dahl, Democracy and its Critics.

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3. institutionalized tolerance, that is, defence of minorities against majorities as the result of recognition of the former as central to the political constitution of complex, differentiated modem societies. Ensuring fulfilment of the above characteristics of qualitatively superior democracy requires not only that existing organs of democratic representation and participation be reformed, but also the introduction of mechanisms relating traditional state institutions with the newly emerging forums of deliberation and grass-roots organization. Devices for improved construction of interests and values, for more informed, more considered citizen participation, must be designed and tried out. The secret ballot and the principle of one man, one vote must be supplemented with increased access to information and with the establishment of vehicles for informa­ tion, temporalization, dialogue and debate such as deliberative opinion polls, secondary assodations etc. 60

Democracy as Politics Itself, at its Best The above re-examination of certain features of politics and democ­ racy stressed by the liberal and republican traditions suggests the possibility of a synthesis between these traditions in the following terms. In the first place, politics is not a specific sector or level of social life, an activity running parallel to economic or cultural life (for example); rather, it is a distinct ontological category, the process by which society is continually constituted, society's mise en forme. 6 1 Hence there is no question of politics depending on underlying elementary or natural social structures, subjects or interests (class or community structures, for example). Accordingly, politics - the dynamical articulation of society - ultimately takes precedence over social phenomena deriving from the existence of certain structures created in the course of history. Secondly, politics is not the mere reflection or expression of 60 B. Barber, Strong Democracy; J. Fishkin, Democracy and Deliberation; K. Offe and U. Preuss, 'Democratic Institutions and Moral Resources'; J. Cohen and J. Rogers, 'Secondary Associations and Democracy' . 6 1 C. Lefort, Essais sur le politique (Paris, 1986) .

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Ramon Maiz prior preferences, but a complex open-ended process of positional articulation that simultaneously creates and enriches interests, values, identities, practices and institutions. Consequently, all these political products are essentially uncertain; there is no immanent or teleological necessity fixing them once and for all prior to their political constitution. Thirdly, according to deliberative theory, politics should not attempt to reproduce philosophical debate, nor ingenuously assume the existence of an underlying communality that will ensure the achievement of social concord through ethical self-enlightenment, but instead possesses both integrative and aggregative aspects (in Hirschman's terms, political activity is both voice and exit). Politics is integrative - and hence an end in itself - insofar as it transforms prior preferences, debates and promotes agreement on second­ order preferences, and generates consensus and solidarity; it is aggregative insofar as it must provide mechanisms for achieving balanced, negotiated, tolerant compromise among a plurality of conflicting interests. It is this dynamical equilibrium between convergence and differentiation - between the 'logic of identity' and the 'logic of difference', 62 community and pluralism, wholeness and dispersion, citoyen and homme - that gives rise to the radically articulatory nature of politics in complex modern societies. Democracy can now be seen as the very essence of politics, as an ideal of political activity, with characteristics paralleling and intensi­ fying those sketched above. Firstly, democracy implies the definitive disappearance of fixed reperes de certitude; 63 democracy can no longer be thought of in terms of a totally unified general will or any other kind of predetermining entity. Neither the state, nor the people nor the nation exists like a sort of Naturgrund prior to their political construction. Consequently, fundamentalist ethnic nationalism, for example, becomes not only antidemocratic, but strictly antipolitical. Democracy is a process in which the results depend on what the participants decide, but in which no one can control the outcome; as such it can be described as rule-governed relative uncertainty. Secondly, democracy emerges as an ideal of individual and collective self-determination, as the unceasing development of 62

W. Connolly, Identity/Difference; Ch. Mouffe, 'Penser la democratie modeme', Revue Franfaise de Sdence Po/itique (1991) 4: 123ff. 63 C. Lefort, Essais sur le politique; A. Przeworsky, Democracy and the Market; E. Laclau, New Reflections 011 the Revolution ef Our Time.

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procedures and institutions that reconcile integration and their aggregation, and whose legitimacy derives both from their long­ term results and from the participation of all citizens. This is not to advocate a purely procedural concept of democracy; for democracy to work, its formal characteristics must be realized in terms of the ongoing struggle for satisfaction of substantive demands. Democracy is thus a model to be striven towards, an unattainable guiding paradigm of liberty, equality, tolerance, plurality and solidarity in which democratic procedures are at one with values deriving from the procedures themselves. The democratic process requires real equality, the equality of all citizens - the sources of the demands that it must satisfy - as regards material and communicational conditions under which they participate in this process, which must accord­ ingly possess more than what Hofstadter referred to as a slight social democratic tinge. Democracy, by its very nature, grows; unceasingly seeks the qualitative maturation of the concept of citizenship; removes, rather than merely identifies with, social, economic and cultural issues. Democracy promotes political activity for the constructive re­ definition of collective identity within limits imposed by rights guaranteeing plurality of lifestyle. Democracy, in short, is a never­ ending process of democratization: politics at its best.

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-10 On 'Postmodern' Scep ticism RAYMOND BOUDON

J.

G. Merquior was one of the few people who looked with competence, gentlemanly detachment and irony to modem intel­ lectual movements. 1 He was a critical mind in the best sense. He belonged to the few true unbelievers, who are always convinced of four things. First, that the social world is too complex to follow a simple theory. Second, that a complex world generates a need for simple theories. Third, that the role of intellectuals is to be critical against simplism. Fourth, that intellectuals are as likely, however, to contribute to the consolidation as to the criticism of received ideas: the trahison des clercs would be a normal phenomenon. In one of his last papers,2 he elaborated brilliantly on the irrationality of modem culture, raising the question of whether the kind of humanism proposed by postmodern thinkers should be regarded as 'historical' or rather as 'hysterical'. Our friendship came probably in part from the fact that Pareto's question - why do people believe so easily in the unbelievable? seemed to the two of us one of the most intriguing and challenging philosophical and social-scientific questions. 1 J. G. Merquior, Foucault {London: Fontana, 1985) ; Western Marxism (London: Paladin, 1986) ; From Prague to Paris: A Critique of Structuralist and Post-structuralist Thought {London: Verso/NLB, 1986). 2 'In Quest of Modem Culture: Hysterical or Historical Humanism', Critical Review (1991) 5: 399-420. (A lecture delivered by Merquior at the Gould Center for Humanistic Studies, Claremont McKenna College, California, on 20 September 1988.)

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In a nutshell, he made the point in his essay about humanism that modern culture, in the sense of the set of current intellectual productions treated as 'new', 'important', 'path breaking' in the fields of literary criticism, philosophy, the social sciences notably, are all characterized by two features: they (rightly) defend humanism; they (wrongly) claim that, to this effect, Protagoras's formula 'man is the measure of all things' should be taken literally: all men, groups of men, 'cultures' and 'subcultures' not only are habilitated to have their own truth on all questions, but they can claim there is no truth of higher rank. Objectivity is a myth; the very notion of universality an illusion. That such a view can lead to endorse 'hysteria' is evident: in such circumstances, why not a Nazi or Stalinist truth? Foucault excellently illustrates this mixture of nihilism and culturalism, so characteristic of postmodernist thinking: the Kathedernihilismus3 that he advocates brilliantly may explain his success: each historical phase is a more or less coherent cultural whole: Structuralisme oblige. But as such, it is 'arbitrary' and unintel­ ligible. Cultures cannot be ranked in value. Nor can historical eras. Cultures cannot be explained by one another. Nor can historical periods. Thus, the age of Representation, say, was to him, as the era of History, a cultural whole. As such, it was unexplainable. It could only be explored as a whole in its structural coherence. Generalized and radicalized holism and nihilism go here tightly hand in hand. In this chapter, I will take some examples to illustrate this postmodern intellectual convergence towards nihilism and cultur­ alism. Then, I will ask whether we need to believe in these 'postmodern' theories, in spite of their tremendous influence and of the fact that, in direct contradiction to their own conclusions, they are presented as the Aujhebung of - that is, as surpassing and destroying - all previous theories. Finally, I will explore the question of the sociological reasons for their audience.

3 Merquior's Foucault was translated into French under the title Foucault ou le niliilisme

de la chaire.

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The Postmodern Consensus Its generalfeatures

One of the most interesting features of the intellectual life of our time is effectively the broad consensus in many intellectual circles on a set of going-without-saying 'truths'. For example, that value statements cannot possibly be objective; that they are always social illusions. More generally, that any theory, either normative or positive, is always 'conventional' in the broad sense of the word: for the 'convention' is in most cases interpreted as the outcome of a mutation-selection process rather than of an explicit agreement. That all beliefs should be explained by the context, never by their objective validity. Generally, that any statement of type 'X is true', 'X is right', 'X is bad', 'X is wrong', etc. should be considered as a shorthand version of 'X is considered true (right, bad, wrong) in context C'. Bar Hillel's notion of indexicality4 should be extended to all statements. This conventionalist view is certainly relevant for some state­ ments, sets of statements or rules. Thus, the rules of politeness in use in a given society are context-dependent, though they can serve the general purpose of facilitating social interactions. The difficulty is that, according to postmodern theorists, 'convention­ alism' should be considered as explaining any type of attitudes, rules or beliefs: what we consider as good, true, beautiful or attractive would never be objectively good, true, attractive or beautiful, but merely perceived as such by the effect of local social 'conventions'. This view contradicts our immediate experience: we tend to see our value judgments as grounded in the objects to which we apply them. We think that we experience a moral action as good or a work of art as great because they are so. In contradiction with this experience, postmodern thinkers teach us that a work of art is never objectively great. The fact that a social actor at a given time in a given context believes X or Y should be exclusively explained by the features of his social context. A corollary from this postmodernist Vulgate is that the discipline Auguste Comte had placed at the top of his hierarchy of sciences, 4 Y. Bar-Hillel, 'Indexical expressions', Mind (1954) 63: 359-79.

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that is, sociology (in modem parlance: 'sociology' plus 'anthro­ pology') has - with biology - a vocation: 5 to become, not only the queen of all human sciences, and the postmodern science par excel­ lence, but the only 'real' science. Epistemology, morals, aesthetics, philosophy, psychology and many other disciplines that were tradi­ tionally cultivated in the long premodem and modem eras, from Plato to Foucault exclusively, say, are condemned by postmodernist thinkers, since they all start from the view that sometimes we believe that something is true or beautiful because it is so and that we can explain why it is so. According to Feyerabend, epistemology is an illusion. 6 Anthropology is the only · discipline able to talk seriously about science. It looks at scientists exactly as it should: in the way anthro­ pologists look at the Azande, that is, just trying to understand why what they do, think, or believe has a meaning for them, given their social context. No anthropologist would come to the idea of holding Azande beliefs as true. By contrast, epistemologists come to scientists with the wrong a priori belief that truth and objectivity do exist. To Feyerabend, substituting anthropology for episte­ mology has the effect of liquidating a modern illusion to the benefit of a postmodern truth. The most advanced and consequential postmodern theorists have even proposed annexing to sociology the natural sciences themselves, substituting the expression 'social natural sciences' for 'natural sciences'. 7 For, if all statements of the form 'X is right', 'X is good', etc. are socially indexed, why would not physics or chemistry, say, be socially indexed? The spedal case of the hard sdences It may be harder, however, to endorse this relativism in the case of science than, say, of art. This explains why the socio-anthropology of science is a basic dimension of postmodernist thinking and probably its most active and spectacular branch: to postmodern nihilists, science was certainly the territory hardest to conquer. This intrinsic difficulty perhaps explains why the socio-anthropology of science is definitely of higher intellectual quality than, say, the 5 As Rotty says in an interview to the French newspaper Le monde on 2 March 1992. 6 P. Feyerabend, Against Method (London: NLB, 1975). 7 H. Bouillon and G. Randnitzky, Die ungewisse Zukunft der Universitiit (Berlin: Duncker & Humbolt, 1991).

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postmodern sociology of art or law. 'Showing' that scientific truths are social illusions implies not only a familiarity with the hard sciences, but a definite sophistication in the argumentation. In this case, the audience has to be convinced, while in other cases, it is sufficient to grind the prayer-mill: it has always been considered by many people as going without saying, well before postmodernism developed, that moral beliefs, say, are social illusions. Pascal and before him Montaigne had already suggested that they are culturally indexed. To a Pascal, though, only particular types of moral rules our 'folkways' - are conventional. Marx himself stressed the point that legal norms are determined externally to a limited extent. But postmodernist thinkers ignore Marx or Nietzsche and paraphrase rather the Nietzschean or Marxian Vulgate. 8 The only serious diffi­ culty that postmodernism was confronted with, as far as moral or aesthetic values are concerned, was to put the old wine in new postmodern - bottles. Bringing the hard sciences to the common nihilistic fate was more challenging. But postmodern thinking could take benefit from the fact that the operation was already unwillingly started by Popper. There are no true scientific theories, taught Popper, only provisionally non-false theories. So, with Popper, science had already lost a part of its aura. But his 'critical rationalism' aimed at making rationalism stronger by making it critical. Popper tried to find a clear-cut demarcation line between science and the other cognitive activities. Metaphysics, he contends, is legitimate and meaningful, but it is, by its very essence, different from science: while scientific theories can be shown false, metaphysical theories cannot. But the main teaching of Popper that was retained is that, properly speaking, there can be no scientific truths. Kuhn9 went one long step further: no discussion between paradigms can be conclusive. The choice between alternative theories is always subjective, grounded in such criteria as elegance, etc. Progress is not less real in science than in art or philosophy, but it is not more real either. For the necessary and sufficient condition for a feeling of progress to appear is that a given activity goes on for a while in a stable framework. Reciprocally, there can be no 8 See Ferry and Renaut on the influence of the Nietzschean and Marxian Vulgates on postmodemism (L. Ferry and A. Renaut, LA pensee 68 (Paris: Gallimard, 1 985)). 9 T. Kuhn, T11e Structure of Sdent!fic Revolutions (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1962) .

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progress from one paradigm to another: they are incommensurable. Thus, not only science but, say, Aristotelian philosophy or baroque sculpture can give - and actually give - the impression of being capable of progress. By contrast, philosophy certainly cannot: for 'philosophy' is a polysemic notion covering heterogeneous activi­ ties conducted in incommensurable frameworks. Briefly, the difference between science and art or philosophy does not derive from the fact that the former would be capable of progress, but from the fact that several styles or frameworks tend to coexist at the same time in art, the social sciences or philosophy, while a dominant paradigm tends to be present in science. Why is the situation monopolistic on one side, oligopolistic on the other? Don't ask. Feyerabend went still further. 1 0 The very impression that the natural sciences are capable of progress would derive from an 'epistemological illusion'. We perceive Aristotelian physics as inferior to Galilean: it is not. We have only the illusion that the latter is better because, under the effect of a mythical history of science, we have retained exclusively the questions successfully answered by Galilean physics but not by Aristotelian physics, and occulted the questions answered by the latter and not by the former. Science, claims Feyerabend, is a system of beliefs neither better nor more objective than, say, religious beliefs. The same topic was taken up by Hiibner. 1 1 Myths offer explanations which cannot legitimately be considered less valid than those proposed by science. A French 'anthropologist of science', B. Latour, 12 went to what is possibly the end of this nihilistic path: not only can the same scien­ tific 'facts' be explained in many incommensurable ways, but facts themselves should be considered as (meaningful social) illusions: they are mere constructs treated - provisionally or more definitely as facts by scientists. In other words, scientific facts are nothing else than the artificially produced data that scientists consider as facts. Once this theory is accepted, the traditional problem as to why, say, the abstract and mathematized theories developed by physicists corre­ spond to the world is easily solved, since there is no reality 'out there' which would be different from the picture science produces of it. So, the coincidence between reality and science is necessarily 10

Against Method.

1 1 K. Hilbner, Die Walirheit des Mythos (Munich: Beck, 1985) . 12 B. Latour, Sdence in Action (Milton Keynes: Open University, 1987) .

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perfect, but it is an illusion. Latour may be joking; 13 or he may be serious, when he claims that his 'theory' is true. But, beyond doubt, if it were true, it would bring to an end the philosophy of knowl­ edge, as developed by Plato, Descartes, Hume or Kant. Beyond their mutual differences, postmodern thinkers all agree on one point: that the only serious intellectual enterprise about science, once the 'illusions' developed by epistemology or the philosophy of knowledge have been dissipated, remains to describe scientists and their beliefs in the way Evans-Pritchard described the beliefs of the Azande. According to our postmodern Protagoras, the subculture represented by, say, such and such laboratory, scientific community or scientific network is the measure of all scientific truths. Needless to say, many philosophers of science have presented convincing criticisms against these views. But the intriguing sociolog­ ical fact is that they did not succeed in receiving much attention. Why is that so? I leave aside this question, the red thread of this chapter, for a moment and go on with my review. Most soft sciences are affected by postmodern nihilism Postmodern radical scepticism has become the dominant style, not only of the sociology-anthropology of the hard sciences, itself a soft science, but of all soft sciences. It is not difficult to provide in this respect a long list of symptoms, all going in the same direction. Once upon a time, literary criticism started from the view that it was possible to argue objectively about the best interpretation of a text. Spinoza had fixed this programme when he claimed that, when two passages of the holy texts look contradictory, it is advis­ able to introduce the postulate that it is possible to reconcile them. This classical principle has disappeared to the benefit of the postmodern conception according to which the meaning of any text would always be a creation on the part of its reader. Hence the duty of postmodern writers: be obscure, since the greater the obscurity of the writer, the greater the freedom of his readers. 'Mes vers ont le sens qu'on leur prete', P. Valery once said. This principle has been generalized to all texts by postmodern literary 1 3 As Amsterdamska suggests (0. Amsterdamska, 'Surely You Are Joking, Monsieur Latour', Science, Technology and Human Values (1990) 15 (4) : 495-504) .

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critics, and notably by 'deconstructivists' : the notion that a text can have an objective meaning is a social illusion. Exit literary criticism; enter the socio-anthropology of literature. These postmodern ideas are as old as the world, however: Benda labelled them 'byzantinism' 1 4 and claimed rightly that byzantinism has been a permanent intellectual tradition, notably in France. Evidently, it is not true that literary texts have generally no objective meaning. It can be shown, even in the case of the most esoteric poems, 1 5 that one interpretation can, in principle at least, be considered as better than another. But, as in the case of the philos­ ophy of science, these objections were not heard. 1 6 Curiously enough, although postmodern sceptics, from Feyerabend to Rorty, tell us that socio-anthropology is the only credible source of knowledge, sociology itself is far from preserved from postmodern radical scepticism. This can be seen in the example of Lepenies. 17 This German historian of the social sciences has an impressive factual knowledge of a number of European intellectual movements. Epistemologically, he is a 'positivist' in the sense of the word current among historians: the only way of avoiding value judgments is to place all facts on an even level. Lepenies' 'positivism' seems rather to be taken from the Zeitgeist, however. For this reason, he represents in himself an interesting symptom. His writings on the history of classical sociology devote no attention whatsoever to the fact that Tocqueville, Weber or Durkheim discovered, if not final, at least solid and valid explana­ tions of many phenomena: the religious exceptionalism of the USA, the uneven development of agriculture in eighteenth century Europe, the differential rates of suicide, etc. These classical theories, which are as ingenious and solid as natural-scientific theories, are simply ignored by Lepenies, probably because, to him, his 'positivism' notwithstanding, genuine explanations and theories should be treated as illusions. How otherwise may we explain that he retains essentially from Weber, Durkheim and the others, the 14 15

J. Benda, La France Byzantine (Paris: Gallimard, 1 945).

See R. Pommier, Mallarme en Explications litteraires (Paris: SEDES, 1990). Postmodern literary criticism is represented not only by deconstructivism but also by other branches. See A. Pommier, Un marchand de salades qui se pretid pour un prince (Paris: Roblot, 1 986), and Le Sur Radne de Roland Barthes (Paris: SEDES, 1 988) ; and earlier, R. Picard, Nouvelle critique ou nouvelle imposture (Paris: Pauvert, 1 965). 17 W. Lepenies, Between LJterature and Sdence: 17,e Rise of Sodo/ogy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988). 16

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topics on which they appear as rewording without much originality the current ideological, social philosophical and emotional topics of their time? At any rate, he ignores their cognitive achievements and openly stresses the fact that their scientific ambitions should be considered as obsolete and even ridiculous. Lepenies is not only a symptom of the prereflexive radical scepti­ cism of our time. He also brings it unwillingly to an end, since, with him, even the queen science - sociology - is treated as an illusion. So, like the hard sciences themselves, the social sciences should be treated as illusions as soon as they pretend to serve a cognitive function. They must be treated as meaningful beliefs, as cultural products, not different in their essence from mythical or religious beliefs. However, as in the case of the natural sciences, this scepti­ cism is contradictory with regard to the most evident hard facts: that the social sciences can produce and have actually produced hard knowledge. So, to cite examples taken from my own immediate intellectual environment, a brilliant dissertation recently presented at the resolutely not postmodern Sorbonne proposes a convincing theory of the religious exceptionalism of Quebec before the Revolution tranquille. Another one explains why Bolivia was politically more unstable than other Latin-American countries. 1 8 And these are only examples. I take them only to suggest that not just Tocqueville or Weber but doctoral students too continuously produce in some places genuine contributions to knowledge. Another symptom worth noticing of the rampant radical scepti­ cism that characterizes our time is that the classical and crucial distinction between opinions and ideas seems to have disappeared altogether. We remember the name of Hume - this is at least my guess - because he offered important contributions to knowledge: for example, when he claimed the logical impossibility of induction. We recall Kant's name because he brought a major contribution to the theory of knowledge when he contended that we approach reality through mental frameworks; or to the theory of moral feeling when he claimed that values cannot be reduced to interests. The two ideas have been indefinitely modulated and they have inspired a number not only of philosophers but psychologists (such 18

M. Blais, Nationalisme et Catholidsme au Canada franftliS (Paris: University of Paris­ Sorbonne, 1 992) ; J.-P. Lavaud, L'Instabilite Politique de l'Amerique Latine, le cas de la Bolivie (Paris: L'Harmattan, 1991) .

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as the Gestalt psychologists) and sociologists (such as Simmel and Weber). We remember Tocqueville's name because he has explained American exceptionalism or the differences between French and British societies at the end of the eighteenth century by theories which have never been invalidated. All have offered ideas (that is, statements with a real or potential objective validity) and not opinions (that is, statements interesting only to the extent that they are related to a given person or context). Although I do not want to elaborate on this point, the very notion of 'classics' refutes the historicist view according to which the value of a contribution - to art, science, etc. - would be relative to the values of the observer. My guess is that the 'classics' are those who have brought an objectively valid contribution in their field of activity. Simmel made implicitly the same point, when he devised ways of 'measuring', almost in a Lazarsfeldian style, the importance of their contributions. 1 9 Contradicting these observations, however, is that the history not only of sociology, but of all social and human sciences, including philosophy, tends to be written in the doxographic mode: as though Hume, Kant, Tocqueville, Durkheim or Weber had merely had opinions on the world. 20 The hard and soft sciences are not the only activities to be treated by postmodern sceptics as exclusively able to produce socially meaningful illusions. For sceptics of the first degree, legal norms should be considered as inspired exclusively by the 'weight' of custom; for sophisticated radical sceptics following a Marxist inspi­ ration, they should be treated as a means more or less consciously used by the 'dominant class' to consolidate its power. In this latter case, scepticism uses in a radicalized fashion insights borrowed from the Enlightenment by Marx, as Nisbet rightly saw. 21 But Marx was well aware of the autonomy of law, as of science. 22 Social factors can explain their birth, he claimed; but once born, they tend to become autonomous. While to modern sceptics, law - as well as science or morals - should be held as a cultural product exclusively 19 G. Simmel, TI,e Problems of the Philosophy of History (New York: The Free Press, 1977) . 20 R. Boudon, 'Comment ecrire l'histoire des sciences sociales' Communications (1992) 54: 299-317. 21 R. Nisbet, TIie Sodological Tradition (Glencoe IL: The Free Press, 1966). 22 R. K. Merton, Soda/ TI,eory and Soda/ Structure (Glencoe IL: The Free Press, 1964).

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reflecting vanous anonymous forces emitted by each singular culture. The same sceptical mood can be easily detected in the field of aesthetics. As scientific beliefs, aesthetic values are treated as social illusions: they would have no objective correlates. A significant writer in this respect is H. Becker. 23 In a nutshell, the main idea of his renowned book is that aesthetic values should be analysed as the effects of the social influence of the networks building up what he calls the 'art worlds'. To illustrate Becker's theory by an example less esoteric than those he uses himself in the USA after the Second World War, Mozart was considered as much less important than Beethoven. This is not the case now. This spatio-temporal variability in the aesthetic judgments would 'show', following Becker, that they are not objective. Otherwise, aesthetic rankings would be irreversible. On the other hand, these rankings cannot be treated as subjective, that is, as depending on personal idiosyncrasies. Otherwise, they would not be treated by the art lover in the 'going-without-saying' mode, nor would it be meaningful to argue about these value hierarchies. So, the only theory that can take these various facts into account and bring them together is the theory that sees aesthetic rankings as grounded in social, intersubjective reasons. But who is going to influence these social evaluations? Becker's answer: the networks of experts and decision-makers belonging to the 'art worlds'. So, the social networks should be held as the measure of all things. Becker does not satisfy himself, however, with saying that Leonard Bernstein or Sony have the power of influencing, say, the consumption of Mozart records: an acceptable statement. They would also fix the relative musical value of Mozart here and now. This value would be a social illusion: while it is merely a social secretion of the activity of the music worlds, it is perceived by the public as objective, that is, as an attribute of Mozart's music itself However, the causal influence of the networks postulated by the theory is often contradicted by data, 24 showing that the objective value of art works is also responsible for the preferences of the public. 23 H. S. Becker, Art Worlds (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1982). 24 P.-M. Menger, 'L'oreille speculative, consommation et perception de la musique contemporaine', Revuefranfaise de Sodologie (1986) 27 (3) : 445-79.

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As Feyerabend proposes to forget epistemology, Becker proposes to forget aesthetics to the benefit of the sociology of the 'art worlds'. As many radical sceptics, Becker sees his own contribution as a proposal to treat aesthetic facts in a sober, genuinely scientific fashion wie sie eigentlich sind, as they really are, by contrast with the philosophers, who would approach them with heavy a prioris, and also with the public itself, who would naively think Mozart's value to be a property of Mozart's works. As a whole, Becker's work illustrates in typical fashion the postmodernist syndrome we observed in other fields: • nihilism: values are fictions; • sociologism: values are socially produced; • culturalism/historicism: values are a secretion of the relevant social context, here and now; • anthropology: the queen of sciences; • traditional approaches (aesthetics, etc.): worthless and obsolete; • the vocation of anthropology: demystifying illusions.

In Sp ite of Postmodernism, Life Goes On This influence and audience reached by postmodernist radical scepticism is a puzzling social phenomenon. In spite of the 'postmodernist' reflection on science, science appears as ever growing and its rapid progress is in evidence. So, the dominant style of the reflection on science seems to have nothing to do with science. (This is not to say that scientists are not occasionally attracted by this sceptical philosophy of science.) The 'postmodernist' reflection on art also contradicts many undebatable facts. Artistic values, we are told, are mere illusions, mere conventions between the members of the art worlds. The networks can undo tomorrow the glories that they fabricate today. An alternative version of this radical scepticism about art can be summarized by a single word: snobbery. The works held to be great are those that the upper class considers and treats as symbols of distinction. Aesthetic values would be mere illusions. Veblen, Bell and others long ago elaborated on the idea that artistic 'tastes' can often be explained by the latent function of - 184 -

On Postmodern Scepticism

social identification which they fill. 25 Thus, the uselessness of English gardens symbolizes the economic surplus that upper class members can afford to waste: gardens represent a symbol of class­ belongingness. But Veblen, and Bell and Simmel, 26 who also develops the idea that 'tastes' can have a function of social identifi­ cation, were very specific on one point: that snobbery can certainly not explain aesthetic values themselves. Snobbery explains the musical tastes of the snobs, says Simmel, not of the connoisseur. So, to Simmel, aesthetic values are objective. Otherwise, there would be no connoisseurs, nor any distinction between snobs and connoisseurs, which contradicts the most evident sociological observations. This objectivity is as evident as the existence of scientific truths. That Beethoven, Debussy, Messiaen and others have created a new language, new combinations of sounds, rhythms not heard before them, musical forms that had not been used previously, is a hard fact, able to satisfy the most 'positivist' historian. The fact that nobody had painted in the way Manet or Toulouse-Lautrec did, or that, by so doing, they were able to express subjects that had not been expressed before them, is in the same way a hard fact. The fact that Beethoven's piano sonata Op. 111 or Messiaen's Quartet Pour la fin du temps are lasting sources of emotion for those who are prepared to taste these works is also a hard fact. In his La Nausee, Sartre legitimated the idea that going to a concert is motivated by snobbery. This can be the case. But it is difficult to see on what grounds the emotions people claim they experience could be treated by the observer as illusions. Unfortunately, this abuse is frequent. As Wittgenstein disliked the idea that primitive people could believe in ideas he himself considered to be stupid, he decided unilaterally that they did not believe what they claimed quite explicitly they believed. 27 As the beliefs in magic are hard facts, so are aesthetic emotions, however. Treating them as arbitrary is illegitimate. On the whole, postmodern theories of art fall at a stumbling block: they disregard evident facts, such as the lasting power of 25 T. Veblen, 11,e 11,eory of the Leisure Class (New York: Mentor, 1 960) ; Q. Bell, Ot1 Humat1 Fitlery (London: Hogarth, 1 976). 26 G. Simmel, 11,e Philosophy of Mot1ey (Henley: Transaction Books, 1978). 27 L. Wittgenstein, 'Bemerkungen ilher Frazer's 11,e Goldet1 Bough' , Syt1these (1 967) , 17: 233-53.

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emotion contained in ' great' art works, or that some artists are considered as classics. Postmodern sociologists of art are unable to explain a simple sociological fact: why so many plays by Ibsen, Shakespeare and Moliere are permanently played around the world. The same contradiction can be observed between moral feelings as they are and postmodern thinking about morals. To some postmodern theorists of moral phenomena, morals, as legal norms, are in last instance a way used by the 'networks' or by the 'dominant class' to maintain their power. We live in a selfish world and morality has to be analysed as a social hypocrisy hiding egoistic interests. To other postmodern thinkers, morals would simply not exist any more: in the postmodern world, morality would be a purely private concern. These views also stumble over hard facts. How are they compat­ ible with, say, the feeling of indignation normally experienced by any directly unconcerned observer who sees an old lady being robbed of her handbag? None of the current sceptical theories about moral feelings can explain this fact. Or take the present French political situation (in the spring and summer of 1992): surveys have shown that, for the sake of realism, many people normally accept a considerable amount of corruption among polit­ ical men. But people have little tolerance of cynicism: do take advantage of your political position to get a more comfortable way of life, but don't pretend that you are innocent or above the common law. And is not a feeling of indignation normally experi­ enced, even by unconcerned people, when a crime remains unpun­ ished? Does not courage still normally give birth to a positive evaluation, even from those who receive no 'external' benefit from it? All these facts are not only hard facts, they are so trivial that one has to excuse oneself for mentioning them. Sometimes, postmodern theories about morals are indirectly sceptical, as when they see the positive evaluation of punishment either as a manifestation of a primitive instinct for revenge or, in the utilitarian fashion, as coming from an indirect concern of social subjects for their safety. Even if it were shown that punishment has no effect on the frequency of a type of crime, punishment would still be required by the public. Classical sociology, notably through the voice of Durkheim, has seen clearly that the utilitarian as well as the 'revenge' theories contradict a number of easily observable data. In summary, current postmodern theories on a number of - 186 -

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subjects - art, science, morals, etc. - appear to contradict many hard facts: Popperian criteria should lead to their rejection. But we know, as was shown by Duhem and others, that even scientists may have good reason to keep up theories heavily contradicted by data. In the absence of a better theory, they can always hope that minor arrangements would increase the compatibility between the theory and the world. But, to survive, the theory must have sufficient coherence, and, if it is extrinsically debatable, must be intrinsically acceptable. In other words, disregarding its congruence with the world, its statements should appear acceptable. Otherwise, the Duhem-Quine-Durkheim excuses cannot be evoked. Now, postmodern theories are not only very weak extrinsically (incompatible with obvious data), they are also intrinsically very debatable.

We Do Not Need to Believe in Postmodern Theories I will now suggest - in a summary fashion, since I have dealt exten­ sively with this point elsewhere28 - that we do not need to believe the postmodern sceptics. Their theories are sometimes interesting, unsophistical for many of them, but also unacceptable in the sense that the strength of their conclusions depends not only on their explicit arguments but also on implicit, unacceptable ones. I will take some examples from the sociology of science, since, as I have already mentioned, this discipline has produced theories that are generally of a far better quality than, say, the postmodernist sociology of art, law or morality. (1) Hubner makes the point that myths can be held as valid as scientific theories. 2 9 Why? Because any scientific 'truth' depends on all kinds of principles that we cannot test. Otherwise, they would not be principles and we would have to ground them on other principles, etc. Even the observation of hard facts depends on procedural rules that cannot be entirely legitimated (because they rest on ultimate postulates). Thus, a scientific truth depends on all kinds of untestable and untested statements. Science is a particular language game. We play it. It is obviously interesting. But nothing tells us that it can bring us closer to an eventual truth than any 28 29

R. Boudon, 'Comment ecrire l'histoire des sciences sociales'. K. Hilbner, Die Wahrheit des Mythos.

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other. The pos1t1vist model used by science is one explanatory model; mythical stories are another. As the two rest upon undemonstrable principles, they are incommensurable. Hence, there would be no difference in validity between myths and scien­ tific theories. We believe there is a difference because we live in a 'disenchanted world', to use Weber's (and Balzac's) vocabulary. But we must be aware that even technical success is in no way a sign that scientific theories picture the world as it is really: my watch is mechanical though I think it is electronic; this invalid theory does not prevent me from using it in a 'technically' correct fashion. All these arguments have always been known. The novelty is that they are used to defend a radically sceptical view. Popper, for instance, had stressed against the Vienna Circle that there are no genuine facts. All registered facts depend on some theory. But that a fact depends on a theory does not mean that it has no reality, that it is not objective. Actually, Hubner's argument rests in large part upon the ambiguities of the expression 'depends upon' (hangt davon ab) . I ask you a question. Your answer 'depends on' my question in the sense that without the latter, you would not have answered it. But this certainly does not mean that the content of your answer 'depends on' my question. Has he committed a crime? Yes, he has. The pronoun 'he' refers to the same person in the question and in the answer. In that sense, the answer 'depends on' the question. But the fact that you answered 'yes' rather than 'no' evidently does not depend on the question. The whole argument developed by Hubner rests finally on the implicit a priori: 'depends on' = 'is affected by'. Sophism? It is unnecessary to introduce this assumption, which is even unlikely. Few people would spend the energy mobilized by the writing of a 500 page book when they know they develop sophisms. A more appealing hypothesis is that Hubner has been a victim of the above linguistic equation: because it is often valid, he implicitly treated it as going-without-saying. (2) I mentioned earlier the notion of 'epistemological illusion', as developed by Feyerabend: 30 we have the feeling of a progress from Aristotelian to Galilean physics, say, because our collective memory has forgotten the problems solved within the Aristotelian but not within the Gahlean framework. 30 P. Feyerabend, Against Method.

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This argument shows that Feyerabend endorses a going-without­ saying but very particular definition of the idea of progress: a theory T2 is better than T1 if and only if the facts they respectively explain can be represented by two concentric circles, the smaller circle (the circle representing the facts explained by T1) being included in the larger (the circle representing the facts explained by T2 ). This definition is the simplest and probably most current one. But others are more satisfactory in the sense that they are better correlates of the objective situations that normally provoke a feeling of progress. Science consists not only in explaining new facts, but also in clarifying concepts, creating new physical beings (such as molecules), inventing new hypotheses, explaining some facts in a simpler fashion, with more acceptable assumptions, etc. This last situation also appears in the social sciences: Wittgenstein's or Levy­ Bruhl's theories of magic are unsatisfactory not because they contradict irrecusable data, but because they contain statements that are difficult to accept. 3 1 In other words, one of the most central arguments developed by Feyerabend rests upon a very particular definition of the notion of progress, namely the strictly empirical one. If other definitions are introduced, his conclusion is invalidated. As in the previous case, it is not necessary to consider Feyerabend's book as sophistic. It is simpler to pay attention to the fact that besides explicit statements, his argument includes implicit statements that he endorsed without paying attention to them, because they seemed to him as going­ without-saying. (3) The same analysis can be developed about Kuhn. 32 One of his most central arguments is that when scientists are in the process of choosing between concurrent theories, they consider not only objective criteria, such as the sets of facts respectively explained by the theories, but also subjective criteria, such as elegance, simplicity, etc. Kuhn proves this conclusion with the help of irrecusable historical data. Thus, given the state of knowledge at that time, the arguments used by Priestley for - and by Lavoisier against - the phlogiston theory appear equally convincing, and as a mixture of subjective and objective arguments. And this seems to be true of any discussion of the same type. This observation convinced Kuhn 31 Ibid. 32 T. Kuhn, The Structure of Sdet1tific Revolutiom.

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that, by contrast with the philosophy of science, the history of science would describe science as it is really. In fact, the historical studies conducted by Kuhn were not indis­ pensable: as long as a discussion on a subject between two well informed people lasts, this means - by definition - that no objec­ tively valid arguments have yet been found to support one theory against the other. But often, such arguments will be found after a while and the discussion will stop: Kuhn fails to see that what is true in the short run can be false in the long run. That the arguments used by Lavoisier and Priestley were equally convincing at the time of the discussion does not mean that scientists make up their minds on the basis of subjective arguments. But only that this can be true in the short run. Here again, the whole argument is spoiled by implicit 'going­ without-saying' statements: what is true in the short run is also true in the long run; the reasons developed by Priestley and Lavoisier are more 'real' than the reasons reconstructed by the philosophy of science, etc. In a word, we do not need to believe that science is unable to reach objective knowledge. The arguments developed by postmodern thinkers are often sound and grounded on valid data, but their conclusions are affected by implicit statements. It should also be noticed that these implicit arguments occasion­ ally introduce 'premodem' assumptions, such as the empiricist definition of progress used by Feyerabend. Postmodern thinkers are all aware of the pitfalls of language. Rorty says33 that modern philosophy is a philosophy of language, whereas premodern philos­ ophy was a philosophy of representation. All postmodernists revere the 'second' Wittgenstein, the author of Philosophical Investigations. Still, in their analyses, they often fail to take into account the complexity of the relationship between the language and the world: in their discussion, neither Kuhn nor Feyerabend pay any attention to the fact that the notions of science, progress, etc. cannot be as easily defined as the notion of chair, for instance. Postmodern thinkers have actually 'discovered' an old thing: the daily history of science. They have promoted it to the status of History of science with a capital H, because, in a very premodern fashion, they are ultra-empiricists: what is real is what can be observed hie et nunc. Thus, the arguments exchanged by Lavoisier 33 See note 5.

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and Priestley are observable. By contrast, the fact that most scientists believe (and are entitled to believe) that discussions can in principle be concluded on an objective basis cannot so easily be observed. Still, without this belief, it is hard to see how science could make sense to scientists. The same kind of analysis could be conducted on the theories produced by other postmodern theories. Thus, Becker's sociology of art also appears as deeply affected by a particular metaphysical viewpoint: ultra-empiricism. 34 It is true that Mozart appears sometimes as ranked lower than Beethoven and sometimes higher. This does not mean that aesthetic values can be reduced to the supposedly volatile opinions of art worlds. But only that two composers - or two painters, etc. - can be compared on a variety of dimensions (type of emotions produced, innovativeness with regard to rhythm, orchestration, etc.). Now, a careful analysis of musical criticism would probably show that, on each dimension, the rankings appear as fairly stable, while the overall comparison necessarily includes a weighting of the dimensions, which can be variable. In the 1 950s, the extension of the musical 'language' (dodecaphonic, concrete music, etc.) was perceived as a main crite­ rion of musical creativity. Many composers had been impressed by the innovations of Schoenberg and Berg and thought that the only way open to them was to go 'still further'. This 'intellectual conjuncture' led naturally to the placement of Beethoven as an emblematic figure. Today, the notion of 'avant-garde' has lost its attraction for a number of reasons (frequent esoterism of and lack of interest in the music produced by the most visible post­ Schoenbergians; interest aroused by the neoclassical style of the later Stravinsky or by the 'post-romantic' style of Shostakovich, etc.). This new conjuncture led naturally to a more open weighting of the various dimensions on which the composers of the past can be compared. But again, on each dimension, the rankings are probably highly stable: because they are objective. This discussion leads me to the same remark as in the case of science: postmodern sceptical argumentation often rests on premodern metaphysics. Because of his ultra-empiricism, Becker does not see that the apparently erratic variability of aesthetic judgments results from a combination of objective value rankings 34 H. S. Becker, Art Worlds (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1982) .

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and of weightings depending on conjunctural effects. Here again, more attention paid to the analysis of language would help: see for example the ambiguity of 'greater than' in the statement 'In the USA in the 1950s, Beethoven was considered as " greater than" Mozart'. Kuhn recognized that his theory of science was unable to explain why science is more effective than magic. And nobody believes seriously that Aristotelian physics is better than Newtonian physics. Still, Kuhn's or Feyerabend's relativism on the chapter of science, Becker's relativism on the chapter of art, are often considered as going-without-saying, final, irreversible truths.

How Can We Believe in the Unbelievable? How can we explain that the representation of science, morals, law, art proposed by postmodern thinkers appears so often as incompat­ ible with the most easily observable facts, or unable to explain obvious facts? Some intuitions from the great classical sociologists in their writings on the 'sociology of knowledge' can be usefully mobilized to answer this question. I will develop them in a sketchy fashion. Cognitive effects I come back first to an important model: Simmel made the point that any argument includes implicit as well as explicit statements and suggested that this can lead the social subject to a false consciousness about his own thinking. Pareto suggested in the same way that some arguments appear as convincing to the social subject, because he takes for granted for instance that the same word is used with the same meaning throughout the argument. 35 De Gre has suggested that illusions often come from the fact that the subject complements what he sees with reasonable conjectures. 36 By codifying these hints, one gets a powerful model essential to the explanation of illusions. 35 V. Pareto, Mind and Sodety: A Treatise on General Sodology (New York: Dover, 1935) . 36 G. De Gre, T11e Soda/ Compulsion of Ideas: Toward a Sodological Analysis of Knowledge (New Brunswick, 1979).

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This model is of the utmost importance. lt shows that illusions can often be explained in a rational fashion: the social subject intro­ duces implicit arguments which he normally considers as going­ without-saying. ln most cases, they have no 'secondary effects'; but in others they lead to hyperbolic or false conclusions. As the conclusions will appear to the social subject as grounded on a valid argument, they will be perceived by hím as solid, however. I do not come back to the applications of this model I have evoked above: Hübner's 'proof that myth is as valid as science requires the implicit linguistic equation 'depends on = is affected by'; Feyerabend's proof that Galilean is not better than Aristotelian physics requires a particular - empiricist - definition of the notion of 'progress'.37 Communication effects

Pareto wrote that the history of science is the history of all these false ideas that most people have believed because they were presented as true by 'experts'. 38 According to Tocqueville, we can ourselves check only a very small number of the many questions on which we need to have an opinion. So we have to be confident in the statements produced by a host of experts on all kinds of topics. But which experts are habilitated to select the experts? That these 'communication effects'39 play a role in our problem is clear. ln the scientific community, the works of Kuhn or Feyerabend, say, have been abundantly criticized. 40 However, these criticisms were hardly perceived, in spite of their often undebatable character. They remained enclosed in the tiny community of the philosophers-sociologists of science. They contributed little if at all to the erosion of the general postmodern sceptical view of science, truth and objectivity. 37 V. Pareto, Mind and Society; G. Simmel, 17,e Problems of tl,e Phílosophy of History; G. De Gré, 17ie Sodal Compu/sion of Ideas. 38 V. Pareto, Mind and Society. 39 R. Boudon, 17,e Analysis of Ideology (London: Polity/Blackwell, 1989). 40 See, for example, J. Passmore, Science and its Critics (New Brunswick: Rutgers, 1978); F. Isambert, 'Un "programme fort" en sociologie de la science?', Revue Franf(lise de Sociologie (1985) 26 (3): 485-508; W. W. Bartley, Evolutionary Epistemology, Rationality and the Sociology of K11owledge (Peru: Open Court, 1986); G. Randnitzky, 'La révolution kuhnienne est-elle une fausse révolution', Archives de P/,i/osophie (1990) 53 (2): 199-212; M. Bunge, 'A critical examination of the new sociology of science', Philosophy of the Social Sciences (1991) 21 (4): 524-60.

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We may introduce the hypothesis that, to use Piaget's vocabu­ lary, a 'centration' effect is at work here: once I have come to a given opinion, I do not pay attention any more to the objections that are raised against it or to the facts that appear as incompatible with it. 41 As is well known, Lazarsfeld rediscovered repeatedly the same kind of process in his studies on communication and voting: people tend to expose themselves to the messages compatible with their choices and opinions. This 'centration effect' probably explains to some extent the weak effect of criticisms produced against postmodern theories. But another effect should be taken into account. The chains of communication of our modern societies do not directly relate the 'experts' to the final social actors. The common man does not get his information on physics or economics, say, directly from the physicists or econornists, but from the media. 42 In many cases, little distortion will be produced in the course of the mediation process. ln others, strong distortions will commonly be produced. Suppose, for instance, two contradictory theories T1 and T2 are supported by some members of a 'scientific community'. If the mediators perceive the supporters of T1 as more 'modern', 'new' than the supporters of T2, they will tend to diffuse T1. We have here a trivi­ alized current version of what can be called a Lysenko effect. 43 The influence of Lysenko derived from the fact that a number of scien­ tists were perceived as experts in genetics, whereas they were special­ ists in sectors of the biological sciences that actually had little to do with genetics proper. 44 Geneticists were all convinced that Lysenko's theories were ungrounded, but these other 'experts', though incompetent in genetics, were perceived as competent by the general public. The trick used by the Soviet authorities was to gather congresses of biologists where the geneticists were in a rninority. So, while Lysenkoism was imposed by a deliberate manipulation, it used natural social mechanisms: notably, it took benefit from the fact that we must have recourse to experts or so­ called experts on a number of subjects. Now, whereas in technical P. Moessinger, 'La théorie du choix rationnel: critique d'une explication', Iriformation sur les Sciences Sociales (1992): 1-92. 42 Boudon (1990). R. Boudon, 'Les intellectuels et le second marché', Revue Européem1e des Sciences Sociales (1990) 28 (87): 89-103. 43 R. Boudon, 11ze Analysis oJ Ideology. 44 J. Medvedev, Grandeur et C/Jute de Lysmko (Paris: Gallimard, 1971). 41

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subjects all kinds of mechanisms regulate the relationships between the media and the scientific community and ensure the validity of the message received by the final 'consumer', the situation is much more complicated in the case of the soft subjects. Here, the media­ tors would normally introduce their own principles of selection in the diffusion process. These distortions, commonly produced in many subjects by mediation processes, probably explain to some extent the general­ ization of intellectual fads and the diffusion of theories considered as fragile within the scientific community. A media man will normally see that, from Kuhn to Feyerabend and their followers, the 'discoveries' of the best known philosophers of science all deliver, in a more and more radical fashion, the same message: no truth, no objectivity, or rather a unique Archimedean truth: that beliefs all rest upon social illusions. He will normally endorse this scepticism and contribute to its diffusion. As to the objections raised against the message, he will treat them - if he perceives them at all - as of secondary importance, and of interest only to acade­ mics. This type of process probably explains why the criticisms addressed against a theory can have a very limited effect. Axiologicalfactors Cognitive factors explain why social actors can with good reason believe in false or ungrounded ideas. Communication effects explain how and why the criticisms opposed to a fragile or false theory can be ignored and confined to narrow circles, so that the theory can remain on the market and even keep a dominant position. The position of monopoly is then reinforced because the impression will be created that the theory represents an irreversible 'progress'. It remains to ask, however, why postmodern theories in all fields, from the theory of art and literature to the theory of science, all advocate radical scepticism. Why has radical scepticism become the dominant philosophy of our time? A first hypothesis would be a diffusionist one, of the type used by anthropologists: because sceptical theories gained attention in the case of the sociology of morals, say, try them ín other fields. I do not believe in this theory, however, far it rests on a heavy assumption, namely that 'imitation', to use Tarde's vocabulary, - 195 -

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would be a basic behavioural principle. Another theory - more credible, it seems to me - is the following: people want their beliefs to be minimally coherent with one another; to reach this coher­ ence, they rank them ín importance, so that the 'secondary' beliefs tend to be selected ín such a fashion as to be as coherent as possible (given the state of the market of theories and ideas) with the 'primary' ones. These assumptions are familiar ín social psychology. They have also been proposed by classical sociologists such as Tocqueville and Pareto, and by philosophers and logicians. 45 Pareto's theory of 'derivations' makes the point that the real cause of illusions is generally to be found ín 'feelings': derivations themselves are essentially 'ratíonalízation'. An ínterestíng reformu­ latíon of Pareto's theory has recently been proposed: 46 derivations would be filtered as a function of their degree of congruence with basíc beliefs, notably axiological beliefs. Tocqueville had already suggested a theory of the same type: theories tend to be accepted, he says, when they are congruent with basic values, the 'passions générales et dominantes'. Thus, ín a 'democratic' society (ín Tocqueville's sense), equality is a basic value. Consequently, all theories leading to the conclusion, say, that all opinions should be respected, treated on an equal hasis, and even consídered as equally valid, tend to be the object of a selective attention and to be posítively treated. Thís model plausibly explains to a large extent why sceptical theories are easíly advertised by many medíators and welcomed by concerned actors. As these theories claim that all values are 'local', that there are only contextual truths, they appear as more easily compatible with the basic egalitarianísm of democratic societies than alternative theories: if there are only 'ethnotruths', if method­ ology is always 'ethnomethodology', the values and views held by any culture, subculture and ín the limit by any índívidual can be held as valid. Tocqueville had already suggested that scepticism is the only phílosophy capable of reconciling the empirical fact that opinions often appear as contradícting in many subjects the 'dominant' valuation of the idea of equality ín a 'democratic' society. This model may explain many success stories: why a Foucault could present as a path-breaking scientific novelty the old 45

N. Rescher, Plausible Reasoning (Amsterdam: Van Gorcum, 1976). A. Bouvier, 'La persuasion philosophique' (Dissertation. University of Paris­ Sorbonne, 1992). 46

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romantic idea that truth can speak through the mouth of the crazy, or that each historical era has its idiosyncratic truth. As Pareto said, theories can be true without being 'useful' and useful without being true. Unbelievable as they often are, postmodern theories are 'useful' in the sense that they provide world visions compatible with the basic value system of 'democratic' societies. It is easily understandable, in the Weberian sense, that to many people, and notably to the intellectuals who traditionally consider themselves as in charge of supporting the 'right' values, inequalities between groups and between nations, or the various handicaps suffered by minorities, are perceived as the most visible axiological problems raised by the modern world. lt was recently contended that history has come to its end, in the sense that the hot discus­ sions of the past as to the best political regime, or whether private property should be abolished, or the most efficient organization of the economic system, seem to be over once and for all. Maybe. But history is certainly not finished in the sense that the group, nation or culture an individual is born into retains a heavy influence on his future: this 'inequality of opportunities', this influence of ascription, is normally perceived as unfair and deeply contradictory with the basic values of democracy. This 'feeling' of unfairness explains the attraction exerted, say, by dependency theory at the time when Marxism was considered as a plausible theory.47 Today, Marxism itself, because of its evident failure, cannot constitute a source of inspiration any more. Still, the idea remains that any theory legiti­ mating in a direct or indirect fashion the notion of the superiority of one culture or group or another is in itself undesirable and illegitimate. Reciprocally, any theory contributing to the erosion of the idea of the superiority of any group, culture, etc. tends to be perceived as both 'true' and 'useful', even though it is often only 'useful'. The 'Political Correctness' movement in the USA may well be rightly considered, to use Merquior's vocabulary, as 'hyster­ ical'.48 It represents a very interesting symptom, however, which would probably not have surprised Tocqueville, since it is grounded on the idea that the true lover of equality cannot accept the idea of ranking cultural systems with respect to one another. Theories showing that scientific theories cannot be considered objectively as 47

R. Boudon, TI,e Analysis of Ideology. R. Kimball, Tenured Radicals (New York: Harper, 1990); Dinesh D'Souza, flliberal Education (New York: The Free Press, 1992). 48

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better explanations than myths are welcome to egalitarians, since they put on the same level the so-called 'primitive' and modern societies and by consequence, any society whatsoever. ln the same way, the statement that aesthetic values should be analysed as context-bound rather than objective has the beneficial consequence of making Shakespeare or Moliere local products. T he sociological explanation of the PC 'hysteria' can be extracted from Tocqueville. The eminence conferred today on anthropology by postmodern thinkers can also be easily explained with the help of the Tocquevillian model. According to the basic paradigm on which modern anthropology is grounded, cultures and subcultures should be analysed as closed totalities. As these wholes are incommensu­ rable, they cannot be ranked relatively to one another. As I said earlier, the audience met by Foucault's Les Mots et les Choses plausibly derives to some extent from the fact that he extended the anthropological paradigm to historical conjunctures, treating them in the anthropological fashion as Leibnizian monads, with the consequence that the old idea of progress was made empty. (As we saw, the idea that progress is a premodern illusion appears repeat­ edly in most postmodern theories). By contrast with anthropology, disciplines such as epistemology, aesthetics and ethics start from the postulate of the objectivity and universality of the values they deal with. If there are only 'ethnotruths' and 'ethnovalues', these disciplines should be described as illusions. For centuries, the history of science and of art had coexisted peacefully with the phílosophy of science and of art. Everybody recognized that they represented two valid and legiti­ mate 'viewpoints'. Postmodernism wants to convince us that only one of the viewpoints is true and that the other is a mere illusion. Do we have to welcome this reduction? Beside these 'Tocquevillian' hypotheses, others should still be taken into account. Sketchily: the massification of universities around the world has a mechanical effect: that hosts of demi-habíles in Pascal's sense are now entitled to teach in the most prestigious institutions. From an individual viewpoint, the idea that knowledge is an illusion and that 'anything goes' has a definite functional value in such a system.

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Shall We Have Postmodernismfor Ever? While to postmodernists progress is an obsolete topic, they claim for postmodernism itself the status of representing, so to say, the end of the intellectual history of mankind. 49 Now, while many social forces, and notably the social forces described by Tocqueville, play in favour of the radical scepticism advocated by postmodernism, the weaknesses of postmodern theories play strongly against them. On the other hand, if radical scepticism is individually functional, it is evidently collectively dysfunctional. If I had to make a prediction, I would say that postmodernism will probably very soon belong to the past, and postmodern theories will become an episode in the history of ideas - more accurately of intellectual movements - but not in the history of knowledge. For what did they really teach us? 49 See, for example, W. Welsch, Aesthetisclzes Denken (Stuttgart: Reclam, 1990).

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-11The Futures of Latin America: Conservative or Liberal-Democratic? CÉSAR CANSINO AND

VÍCT OR ALARCÓN We are the other West: condemned to mediate between the North and the South; geoculturally and economically our fate is not to resist modemity. It is simply to modulate it. José G. Merquior1

History and politics are constructed with events, with institutions, with men and women who seek to see their desires fulfilled. With ambitions sustained by Being and Remaining, which are part of a fate adhered to utopia, but also to contingency. 2 This chapter outlines some impressions regarding the most relevant ideas originally put forth by José Guilherme Merquior in order to situate the experience of Latin America as one of the paradigms of cultural identification which, in their own right, have offered important contributions for defining the political and social course of modernity in the West. What are the ideological underpinnings that have allowed a Latin American identity to be förmed? What considerations allow its historicai deveiopment to be situated? What answers can be offered to define a possible political horizon that will keep viable its project as a part of the world? These and other questions were continually raised throughout Merquior's writings, whether in his essays on the 1 José G. Merquior, 'El otro Occidente. (Un poco de filosofia de la historia desde Latinoamérica)', Cuademos Americanos 1 (13), 1989, p. 9. Mexico. 2 Agnes Heller, A Philosophy oJHistory ín Fragmmts (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1983).

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philosophy of history and on political science, or in his ground­ breaking contributions to the field of the sociology of culture. ln all of these, Latin America always remained a logical recipient that continued to demand tribute in order to try to solve its limitations and find the meaning of its existence - that is, its historical-political legitimacy.

A Legitimacy Always on Trial If legitimacy is viewed in this way - that is, as a factual-ideological validation of norms, values and processes - then it forces us to accept the idea that all societies are far from being characterized as homogeneous unities. On the contrary, their structures imply definitions - always incomplete and particular - of meanings and contents that instead place them within a territory of complexity. ln this sense, Merquior always attempted to contrast the Rousseauian idea of legitimacy as an act of general will - as histori­ cist exercise - with the Weberian vision that interprets it as a conscious process of rationalization which leads to the consolida­ tion of an institutional order that authenticates all human action. 3 Nevertheless, each society tries to communicate and extend its ideas. That is, it draws from and moves in culture, as well as the knowledge provided by culture for interpreting our horizon of reality. 4 lt requires constructing foundations that, even if they are not entirely accepted by all, will allow a first movement towards an opportunity for encounter. Yet this, at the deepest level, implies a struggle among identities that, if successful, will allow for the creation of an entity more solid and better able to undertake more ambitious projects. ln this respect, we can resort to a 'metahistory', which is shaped through the presence of ' great narratives'. 5 N evertheless, Latin America has also been immersed in the pseudo-intellectual groundswell that has decreed an atmosphere of nihílísm against any attempt to pave the way for the notions of 3 José G. Merquior, Rousseau and Weber: Two Studies ín the 111eory of Legitimacy (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1980). 4 José G. Merquior, 'ln Quest of Modem Culture: Hysterical or Historical Humanism', Critical Review 5 (3), 1991, pp. 399-420. 5 José G. Merquior, 'Philosophy of History: Thoughts on a Possible Revival', History of the Human Sciences 1 (1), 1988, pp. 22-31 .

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progress, and against Homo economicus. 6 Thus it would appear that in Latin America's particular 'great narrative', only the classic images of indolence, conformism and passivity make up what is prominent and tragically insurmountable in this region, whose dependency, conservatism and populism have been the successive - and at tímes combíned - enemies of achíeving solid regional development. Although Latin America has on several occasíons been called upon to inítíate a stage of integral modernízation-cum-democracy, thís process has only materialized ín mutual ímages and deceits. Merquior vísualized two recourses that attempt to conceal or deny this hístor­ ical failure of 'socíeties that attempt to Be and Remaín': the veíl and the mask. 7 For our purposes, these recourses are extremely illustrative for interpreting the path taken by Latin Ameríca ín its now-long road to obtaín hístorícal-politícal legitimacy.

The Veil and the Mask The veil allows only a part of what is tangible to be seen. But in no event does it provide any certainty of what remains concealed. The challenge is to leave it ín place, or remove it at the rísk of discov­ eríng something entirely different from what we wish. But, in the final analysis, its use implies a half-truth, a truncated feeling of somethíng that could be shown fully in the future if we decide to overcome our present fears and limitatíons. ln contrast, the mask is an image that conceals something completely distinct from what is before our eyes. It is an open call for us to become accomplices of a lie, to try to be something without being it - and what is worse, to even maintain that behav­ iour knowing that we wíll never be able to reach the other side, no matter how many attempts we make to get beyond the obstacles. Hence the mask is the príson of an ídentity that will never see the líght of day if nothíng is done to make the inside adjust to the image. Many of our societies wear veils and masks. Very few are able to live showing their real face, are fit to 'live in truth', as Vaclav Havel has so correctly expressed it. Both metaphors place us 6 A devastating criticism of this 'state of the art' in social theory can be found in Merquior's article 'Death to Homo Eco11omicus?', Critical Review, S (3), 1991, pp. 353-78. 7 See José G. Merquior, 11,e Veil and the Mask: Essays 011 Culture and Ideology (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1 979).

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exactly within the political coordinates in which Merquior situates Latin America, insofar as he defines it as an entity many of whose protagonists have exchanged veils and masks, but where very few appear able to live within a world without appearances. Thus modernity continues to be a promise and a utopia, so that history - in a meaning recovered from Giambattista Vico, an author for whom Merquior felt particular affection - will offer a 'new opening' through which to pursue the ideal. That is, as occurs with Cliocide - the murder of history - which attempts to makes us see things as if they had never happened, we commit Logocide, since we deny any possibility of survival and of the transmission of knowl­ edge. And this is a drama not only of Latin America, but of the very idea of the West and of civilization. 8 Historical-political legitimacy and the meaning of what is 'Latin American' appear, then, to rest on a process that has only partially been able to take root, and that has been secularly minimized by many of the interest groups who have attempted to lead this region to a modern cultural status that in theory implies attaining a democ­ racy of freedoms and rights through the achievement of equitable welfare. Hence, as a central criticism of this problem, Merquior glimpsed the need for a rebirth of liberalism in Latin America9 - not as a part or an echo of a fashion that has irradiated as an ideological sign in this last stretch of the twentieth century, but rather as one that must locate as a fundamental challenge the 'decentralization' of all assumptions, a1l myths sustained in the veil or in the mask, in order to encourage the renewal of structures and values through social action itself Consequently, Merquior felt that liberalism in Latin America should assume the task of making historical-political legitimacy strongly and collectively accepted, so that this type of legitimacy would provide greater institutional coherence, and allow the contin­ uation of the processes in which until now the development of culture and social identities in the centre of the region itself have left unconcluded. iO 8 José G. Merquior, 'El logocidio occidental', Vue/ta 149, April 1989, pp. 7-11. Mexico. 9 José G. Merquior, 'Una panorámica del renacimiento de los liberalismos', Ciencia Política, 12 (3), 1988, pp. 22-33. Bogota. 1 ° For a more direct reading of Merquior's positions as a thinker and interpreter of liberalism - an objective that is beyond the scope of this chapter - his !ast book is manda­ tory reading: Liberalism Old and New (Boston: Twayne Publishers, 1991).

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Latin America, despite its historical misfortunes, has resisted living among veils and masks. For this reason, its identity, although it has always been in transit, in many ways proves capable of claiming itself to be an heir of and a participant in a Western culture, precisely because it enriches this culture with traits from its indigenous past and its multiple migrations, thus allowing the creation of the concept Merquior visualizes as the 'decentralization' from the West's values - and from its vicissitudes as well.

The 'Other West ' Based on this circumstance, Merquior coined one of the most felic­ itous expressions that have arisen to describe Latin America: the 'Other West'. This concept implies that the region is the projection or extension of something, but that at the same time it continues to be something with characteristics completely particular to itself 1 1 In this manner, Merquior placed us Latin Americans in the nucleus of our tense transition, where our myths and conventions languish out of exhaustion, by opening our eyes not only to the 'unveiling' of our false cultural masks: he also assumed the intellec­ tual endeavour of 'revealing' our own political mythology - a tradi­ tion which has remained based on the action of the populist state, which is present in the practice of what we could call 'nationless nationalisms', which, in tum, conjure up an idyllic past sustained on inviable subjects and goals. Thus, Merquior exhorted us Latin Americans to recognize our own statute of modernity, based on the criticism of the extension of a model of 'criollo contractualism' that has particularized and identi­ fied only one part of our societies, precisely through the creation of new veils and masks that continue to promise to allow us to attain modernity without paying any cost (the logic of populism), and which claim that maintaining the failed past intact - making it pass for our present - is the best way for us to protect ourselves from the strangers who 'do not know our history' (which is a particular trait of passive, conservative nationalisms). Nevertheless, the rulers of this 'America of Ours', with very few exceptions, have fallen very short of knowing and understanding 1 1 Jose G. Merquior, 'El otro Occidente' .

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our nations' historical pulse, which for Merquior is the construc­ tion of an efficacious legitimacy under an active institutional order, which is always shifting and looks in all possible directions, without intervening idyllic constraints: Today, in Latin America, the break with the weight of the past means overcoming a complex constraint: the patrimonial state, periph­ eral capitalism and subsidiary modernizations. 1 2

In this sense, Merquior also vindicated two social abilities that Latin America has 'revealed' as part of the true traits of its political identity: (1) Its sense of Revolution, of recovering - when necessary - the political power and popular sovereignty usurped by the oligarchies and elites that wantonly use the nation's resources as prebends (here, once again, the figure of Rousseau appears). (2) Its ironclad populist and liberal vocation as an understanding of and rational response (Weber) to - present in the true moments of crisis regarding its future identity - what it means to develop democ­ racy in a collective sense of integration, which for Merquior means, in summary, the dignification of standards of living (to be part of the economy-world) and the full recognition of the citizenry as quality and identity in every individual who is a member of political society. Moreover, the 'Other West' has assimilated and enriched languages, clothing, religions. Hence the 'Old West' must feel proud, although it paradoxically continues to obstruct the farmer's full entry into the stable democracy and economy Western countries in fact have. Although this is completely true, for Merquior it is not possible to forget 'the other face of History', which, as Karl Popper has pointed out, expresses itself precisely in one's own mistakes - in the paths that have led us now and again to dead ends. 1 3 This idea has rarely been fully understood, because we are always looking for culprits or 'sacrificial lambs' in others, never among ourselves. For this reason, during the darkest stages of the bureau­ cratic-military authoritarianism of the 1960s and 1980s, some of Merquior's positions were seen in Latin America as apologies for 12 Ibid., p. 1 9. 1 3 Karl R. Popper, In Search of a Better World: Lectures and Essays .from 11,irty Years (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1992), especially chapters 2 ('On Knowledge and Ignorance') and 10 ('Emancipation through Knowledge').

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of l..Atin America:

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the status quo, when, in fact, they undoubtedly advocated just the opposite, because Merquior never grew tired of calling for recon­ ciliation or of seeing politics as reason and dialogue in which all parties must recognize their responsibility for failure. Many of his positions were also criticized because of their boundless optimism regarding what is universal, since the differences between nations and individuals in Latin America persist in following the path of a terrible fragmentary provincialism. For this reason, although he was educated in and assumed a broad spectrum of liberalism, Merquior never hesitated to place himself in the uncomfortable position of seeking to reconcile the mercantile utilitarianist extreme and 'old liberalism's' defence of privacy with its premodern traits, with social rights that make essential and feasible a just, equitable development in terms of providing equal, vital opportunities to all citizens, a principle Merquior understood as the axis of 'new democratic liberalism' with aspirations to attaining a high degree of modernism. 1 4

A 'New Democratic Liberalism ' New democratic liberalism is the foundation on which Merquior thought it was possible to reform the ancien regime of the economic, political and cultural contractualism that has prevailed since Latin America's nineteenth century origins, though without losing the notion that the existence of the contract is necessary. True revolu­ tions are produced not only as simple violent events; rather, their implications and results allow the maintenance of a continuity that guides the movement of our societies towards collective identities, without intervening mythological romanticisms. 1 5 In order to attain this goal, we Latin Americans have to produce an effective, rational, ideological transformation of our structures. Hence Merquior saw the simultaneous reform of the state and society as an unpostponable task: he viewed both reforms not only as a mere broadening of spaces, but also as the redefinition of tasks in which political power contributes to the improvement - rather 1 4 Jose G. Merquior, Liberalism Old and New. 15 For a closer examination of 'Revolution-Event' and 'Revolution-Movement', see Jose G. Merquior, 'Reinterpretando la Revoluci6n', Cuademos Americanos, 16, 1989, pp. 6--7. Mexico.

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than to the oppression - of mankind. In this respect, with the support of Max Weber's ideas, Merquior foresaw that a new polit­ ical historicity for Latin America should begin by reforming the models of 'statification', which means saying No to centralism, to autocracy, to state patemalism. 1 6 Essentially, this also implies saying No to the state that acts as a parasite, as well as carrying out a civic, political secularization which, although it succeeded in marking the limits between religion and politics, did little to plot the effective boundaries between a modem civil society and the old concept that turns politics into a mere courtesan mechanism, which continues to pay homage both to caciques and to distorted presidential systems which, in Latin America, survive as living proof of a not-yet-eradicated colonial heritage, and which worship the all-powerful state Leviathan. Here we can see a more appropriately developed re-expression of a thesis Merquior defended fervently, beginning with an article he wrote in 1984 - and which has been somewhat forgotten in Latin America - referring to the recovery (in democracy, and from the standpoint of freedom) of the real state. That is, the qualitative idea of an efficient, strong state does not mean the same as a maximalist or minimalist state. Finding the state's real, optimum size means promoting its true symmetry with the constitutional figures that give coherence to contractual legitimacy. This is an important point, since in real events the political history of Latin America shows that liberalism has been used only as the mask that conceals the face of the minimalist state's militarist authoritarianism and the maximalist state's populism, the impact of which has been extremely heavy millstones preventing us from overcoming ancestral backwardness. 1 7 For this reason, it is also appropriate to place Merquior within the political positions that hold a republican concept as the founda­ tion and ideological support of democracy. And this implies that democratic liberalism, when correctly understood, defends the separation of and balance among powers. Hence Merquior saw that 16 This idea is expressed in the last article Merquior published in Mexico before his departure to France as Brazil's representative to Unesco, in 1989. Jose G. Merquior, 'Latinoamerica: Cr6nica del Estado', Examen 1 (5), October 1989, pp. 6-7. 17 Jose G. Merquior, 'Power and Identity: Politics and Ideology in Latin America', Government and Opposition 19 (2), 1984, pp. 239--49.

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the problem of governability in Latin America (though in reality the backdrop of this consideration was the particular circumstances in Brazil - trapped, like other countries in the region, by its economic reforms and the transition to democracy) does not lie fundamentally in determining if presidential regimes are better than parliamentary ones, but in locating the historic context and the needs in which either one of these can better serve the purposes of the political development of nations. Thus Merquior was always able to express his radiant optimism regarding the possibility that Latin American societies have to put into practice everything on which they theoretically agree: the respect for guarantees and the rule of law. These elements, which strangely enough are the best positive elements of those gathered from our historical mestizo relationship with Western political philosophy, are paradoxically those that have least been able to be defended from the false populisms, which propose a total break with and isolation from advanced capitalism. Moreover, Merquior felt that this criticism was equally valid for authoritarianisms that see monoproductive links as merely a means of overcoming internal economic crisis, but which do not set out in earnest to thoroughly transform the social structure, or that attempt to redistribute income, but which maintain a logic of predatory corruption through the patrimonialist enslavement of the state machinery.

Regarding the Future of Latin America What then may we expect from Latin America in light of its recent history? Merquior might reiterate his always unrestrained liking for all transregional attempts to continue the tradition of thinkers such as Bolivar, Haya de la Torre, Vasconcelos and Marti, whose vision of a strong political and cultural community is the best expression of what can be expected from a history that arose 'from within' rather than being borrowed 'from without'. In many ways, Merquior's political idea is being confirmed through the incipient development and trade interaction of new economic agreements throughout the continent, as well as by the adoption of a civic philosophy that more and more actively advocates the idea that a strong state does not have to survive

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through forms of providentialism or clientelism which lock individ­ uals and civil society in narrow ideological cages. The state is a necessary actor, albeit not the only actor, in carrying out tasks to reconcile the challenges of internal growth and economic opening towards new markets. Nor is the monopolistic forum for promoting the existence of mechanisms that extend the development of democratic procedures as a norm of coexistence and legitimate decision. This is the essence of the historical cultural undertaking that Merquior conceived as necessary for promoting the building of a new public moral based on freedom and trans­ parency with neither veils nor masks. There is still a long way to go. Spectres such as the foreign debt and the failure to consolidate democracy in several nations of the region persist as harrowing examples of what Isaiah Berlin (another author whom Merquior respected enormously) has correctly called the 'crooked trunk' from which human wood comes. 1 8 Hence, for generations such as ours - premature disciples of a friend who should still be among us - all that is left for us to do is to continue practising with modesty the noble profession of thinking about - and acting to achieve - a Latin American legiti­ macy rooted in a democratic modernity with the full enjoyment of freedoms. But, especially, a Latin America where justice - in whatever way it expresses itself - offers an opportunity for a digni­ fied life for all. Infused with the particular breath of the Aronian 'engaged observer' - of which Merquior was a concrete example - we would like to conclude this essay with the optimism and certainty that Jose Guilherme will not be forgotten by the future political history of our Latin American 'Other West'. 18

Isaiah Berlin, 11,e Crooked Timber of Humanity: Chapters in the History of Ideas (New York: Vintage Books, 1 99 1 ).

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PA RT I I I

On Merquior's Life and Work

-12Jose G. Merquior, 1 941-1 991 CELSO LAFER

'Saying Good-bye to Hannah ( 1 907- 1 975 ) ' is the title of a short essay by the American writer Mary McCarthy. Because of its tone, it comes to mind and inspires me as I write about Jose Guilherme Merquior. Indeed, in that essay, Mary McCarthy said goodbye to her close friend Hannah Arendt in a text that she did not wish to have the solemnity of 'funeral prayers' . A very balanced essay, it mixed both the public dimension of the loss of a great intellectual figure and the private dimension of the always painful loss that is present when a friend, as well as a generational companion, leaves, swallowed by fatality. Jose Guilherme and I were both born in 1 941 , but his initial circumstance as a Carioca intellectual and later on a diplomat, and mine as a Paulista who later pursued postgraduate studies in the United States, meant that we did not meet personally as adoles­ cents, but rather, when we were approaching thirty years of age. The person who brought us together, very aware of our potential affinities, was Marcilio Marques Moreira, on the occasion of a trip Jose Guilherme and Hilda made to Sao Paulo when he had left his initial diplomatic p ost in Paris and was serving in Bonn. Our encounter confirmed the prediction of Dinah Flusser, who was a j unior-high-school companion of mine in Sao Paulo and a companion ofJose Guilherme's at the Instituto Rio Branco, in Rio de Janeiro. Dinah said, in the mid-1 960s, that above and beyond the obvious convergences of intellectual interests, which we - 21 3 -

Celso LAfer

realized from our reciprocal reading, something more profound united us: the manifest destiny of a vocation for friendship. Friendship, Aristotle taught us, is a privileged relationship between two persons, based on trust and on the equality of common esteem. For that reason, a loyal friend is - like the wisdom gathered from ecclesiastical writing - a vital balm. With Jose Guilherme, the fraternal, vital balm of a friendship, based from the beginning on Aristotelian principles, was established, and it consolidated over time. In this contributed the sympathy for the original acceptance of the inclination that unites two persons. In our case it flowed from the pleasure of mutual coexistence; it was nourished by the convergent multiplicity of our interests; and its horizon was the partnership of insight brought about by common sensibilities, which identifies a generation. Ortega y Gasset said, along this line, that the variations of vital sensitivity, which are decisive in history, appear in the form of a generation, and he added that a generation is a human variety. For each generation, living is a two-dimensional task, the first of which consists of receiving what has been lived by the previous genera­ tion, and the second of allowing one's own spontaneity to flow. During our fraternal friendship, Ortega's topic regarding genera­ tions brought about much analysis and, on countless occasions, Jose Guilherme and I conversed on what explained the identity of ours. We thought about how, having agreed on the life of ideas during the presidency of Juscelino, we drew from that experience a confi­ dence in the countless possibilities of our country. We had in mind, as well, that we had studied in an era in which debate in the Brazilian university and on the national stage was very lively and that this had marked us, from the viewpoint of our range of inter­ ests. We felt that we - along with many of our generational companions - had had the opportunity to conduct postgraduate studies abroad, and thus to acquire not only a broader vision of things, but also the intellectual rigour and discipline that, as a general rule, the universities in the great centres offer those who have access to them. We concluded, from these conversations, that our generation had enjoyed more intellectual opportunities than had the one that preceded it, and that it had not faced, as was the case of the next generation, the difficult experience of being formed during the years of the military regime. In sum, we found that with a certain good will and, yes, favoured by circumstances, - 214 -

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we made up one of the our country's best-equipped generations, which, emblematically, had the mission of broadening the control of Brazilian society over its own destiny and contributing to freedom in its multiple dimensions. In this - our - generation, which had all these opportunities, Jose Guilherme was the most complete talent, and the dense path of his life, so prematurely interrupted, was a paradigm of freedom as a great adventure of the spirit. I believe, along this line, in freedom as the individual's self-fulfil­ ment, which, along with freedom as absence from arbitrary oppres­ sion (negative freedom) and freedom as autonomy and participation in the 'public body' (positive freedom), constitutes the study of the types of freedom undertaken by Jose Guilherme in his Liberalism Old and New. In this excellent book, Jose Guilherme emphasizes the importance of the development of the human potential inherent in each individual. He points out that this meaning of freedom is linked to the ideal of Bildung and that it is an aspect of the Goethian contribution made by von Humboldt, who expressed the humanistic concern with the construction of personality and with the progress of each person's individual 'being.' Jose Guilherme's life and work are a Bildung that reveals, in his Kantian process of 'auto-telia', the construction and the awakening progress of a great personality who strove to enlighten ideas in multiple ways. Those multiple ways, through either the diversity of interests or through methodological experimentation, are the fruit of a common generational manner of feeling and understanding life. In this common manner, what distinguishes Jose Guilherme and makes him stand out, making him project himself from the begin­ ning of his path, are the answers he offers to the questions put on the agenda by the generational sensitivity of his contemporaries. Indeed, the answers given by Jose Guilherme to the themes of our generation express, firstly, and at the level of vital reason, the concerns of an intellectual from the family of the great carnivores whose 'mind-set' did not obey the vocations of the ruminants. In their multiplicity, these answers do not have a unity given by an explicit methodological consistency - since, as he himself said, 'my ideological path was passably erratic until it flowed, in the 1 980s, into the fortyish prose of a neo-illuminist liberal'. What gives his path unity is the presence of certain recurring topics, such as the - 215 -

Celso LAfer

oppos1t1ons: formalism/anti-formalism, reason/irrationalism, tradi­ tion/ modernity. In dealing with these recurring topics, and in the affirmation of anti-formalism, he gives reason to modernity; in the realms of literary criticism, he gives aesthetics, he gives analysis of culture, and he gives political theory. No one had an intelligence as comprehensive, as well-served by an encyclopedic erudition, continually broadened and nourished by a rigorous intellectual discipline and spurred by a limitless intellectual curiosity, as did Jose Guilherme. That led to a vast work that is heuristic in its whole­ ness, and whose circumference is the field of human sciences in their entirety. All that Jose Guilherme wrote - on poetry, fiction, history and literary theory, on legitimacy in politics, liberalism, Western Marxism, structuralism, individualism, diplomacy and Brazil's role in the world - is pertinent to the intellectual debate of our times. In this debate, the liberalism that characterized the world-view of the mature Jose Guilherme corresponded to the permanent concerns of his intellectual personality, since the somewhat centrifugal pluralism of liberal doctrine adjusted to the multiplicity of his interests, giving consistency to his path, by turning the various Jose Guilhermes into a single Jose Guilherme. 'E pluribus unum facere', to recall St Augustine's phrase. It should also be pointed out that, for the contemporary intellec­ tual debate, he contributed both with the firm moral courage of his convictions and with his healthy concern regarding the future which makes one watch and fight - of which Tocqueville spoke in a text that pleased Raymond Aron. I mention this because, for Jose Guilherme - one of whose paradigms was Aron - the liberal position does not mean indiffer­ ence or indulgence, meanings that can be negatively attributed to the value of tolerance, which makes up the axiological constellation of liberal doctrine. This translated into the public use of reason itself, as the objective of freedom of thought and of opinion, through discussion, a means of testing - at times - along with others, the partial truths he gradually laid down along the way. For this reason, Jose Guilherme's prose is the stylistic expression of the vivacity of his combative and fighting intelligence. It is always 'on this side of jargon' and 'on that side of vulgarity', revealing the scope of knowledge, the acuity of perception and intuition of what

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Jose G. Merquior, 1 94 1- 1 991

is relevant - whether in the broader measure of the books of encouragement and of the essays of great breadth and ambition, or in the lesser measure of the articles of circumstance, of polemics, or of occasional interviews. His death robs Brazil of one of its great cadres, and impoverishes the intellectual stage because of the large amount of things he had yet to achieve. It is, to end on a personal note, a tragedy for those of his friends who had found, in the pleasure of his seductive, insti­ gating and civilized coexistence - usually in a context full of life and of concrete intelligence that Hilda, with her gifts, knows how to create - a constant and irreplaceable stimulus. What Cicero said in De Amititia can do no more than console us: 'Thanks to friend­ ship, what is difficult to say: the dead live; they live in honour, in memory, in the sorrow of friends.'

- 21 7 -

-13Annotated Bibliography of Jose G. Merquior CESAR CANSINO AND

VICTOR ALARC6N

Brief Biograp hical Outline Jose G. Merquior was born in Rio de Janeiro on 22 April 1 941. He died at 49 years of age in January 1 991. He studied philosophy, law and diplomacy in Brazil. He received a doctorate in Latin American studies in Paris, and another in Sociology from the London School of Economics and Political Sciences. During the course of his diplomatic career, he held various posts in Europe and Latin America. At the time of his death he was Brazil's ambassador to Unesco in Paris. 1 His intellectual production began when he was 1 8 years old, with the publication of various articles on aesthetic problems. His first book, Razao do poema, was published in 1 965, and constituted Merquior's entry into the intellectual world of Brazil. This book would be followed by some twenty titles in the most varied fields: aesthetics, political and moral philosophy, the history of ideas, and cultural anthropology, among others. His most influential teachers were Claude Levi-Strauss, Ernest Gellner and Raymond Aron. Although a large number of his works 1 The biographical and bibliographical data given in the following pages were obtained from: Miguel Reale, 'As licoes de Merquior', in O Estado de Sao Paulo, 16 February 1991; Jose Mario Pereira, 'O pemamento do novo imortal', in Ultima hora, 13 November 1991; Antonio Medina Rodrigues, 'Merquior: 0 esaista e sua obra', in Revista USR, March-May 1991, pp. 129-32.

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have been translated into more than six languages, he has been particularly appreciated by the English-reading public. In England, he published some of his most famous works, including: The Veil and the Mask (1 979), Rousseau and Weber (1 980), Foucault (1 985), Western Marxism (1 986), and From Prague to Paris (1986). His last book, Liberalism Old and New, was published posthumously in mid1 99 1 . It constitutes a majestic fresco of three centuries of liberal thought, from Locke to Bobbio. Notwithstanding the vast range of topics and fields covered by Merquior during his intellectual career, we can recognize some fundamental directions in which his lucid rationalism developed. Firstly, we should note his opposition to any philosophical fashion, especially fashions of a Parisian origin. He refused to be seduced by the vagaries of psychoanalysis, the triumphalism of Marxism, or the idolaters of irrationalism, all the while acknowledging the value Freud, Marx and Heidegger each had for contemporary thought. Secondly, he maintained a critical position vis-a-vis structuralisms and post-structuralisms in philosophy. His criticisms of Foucault and Derrida stemmed from his fear of what he called 'Western logocide', or the murder of reason by acolyte thinkers who, in abdicating from rational analyses to concentrate on a false aestheti­ cism or an artificialization of language, fell into a narcissistic relativism or the empire of myth. Thirdly, based on his 'concrete rationalism', he severely criticized aesthetic formalism, while astutely pointing out the contradictions between Croce's formal 'lyricism' and his historicism. Hence, he was determined to correlate - unitarily and essentially - form, content and historical circumstantiality, as he opposed the current of unilateral interpretations that subordinate the value of art and the role of the artist to one element or another, abstractly linked to the global structure of the imaginal process. Finally, regarding his position in political philosophy, he defended a neoliberalism that, according to Merquior himself, is nothing other than 'social-liberalism'; in so doing he defended existential values, which he invoked not because of 'humanity' as a pure abstraction, but rather as a function of man in his irrenun­ ciable individuality and subjectivity. This set of proposals and orientations present in Merquior's work has been at the centre of important debates and discussions, as it will surely continue to be in coming years. For this reason, - 220 -

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Merquior's death constitutes an irreplaceable loss for the contem­ porary intellectual world.

Merq uior's Top ics In order to give an overview of the topics covered by Merquior during his prolific production, I will look at some of his most important books: Formalismo e tradifiio moderna (o problema da arte na crise da cultura) (1 974) is part of Merquior's extensive production in the field of literary and artistic criticism in general. In response to 'concrete rationalism', Merquior undertakes in this and in similar works a penetrating criticism of aesthetic criticism, inasmuch as he subordi­ nates the values of art and the role of the artist to elements abstractly separate from the global structure of the creative process. From Merquior's perspective, form, content and historical circum­ stance must correlate unitarily on the aesthetic plane. The Veil and the Mask: Essays on Culture and Ideology (1 979), which Merquior first published in England, is a collection of different essays that focus on the problem of legitimacy, written from a perspective that Merquior liked to call 'the sociology of culture'. Hence, for example, in the title essay, Merquior examines legiti­ macy from three essential perspectives: political legitimacy; the role and change of the models of legitimacy within culture taken as a whole; and the cognitive validity of legitimacy. Rousseau and Weber: Two Studies in the Theory of Legitimacy (1 980), which Merquior himself called his most rigorous and elaborate work, constructs and attempts to shed light on the concept of democratic legitimacy, adopting Rousseau's perspective in order to criticize Weber, without underestimating the latter's immense contribution to the social sciences. With this intention, Merquior arrives at conclusions that, although controversial, have a great value within the innumerable and often distorting interpretations of the German sociologist. In As Ideas e as Formas (198 1 ) we can see another recurrent position - 22 1 -

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in the work of Merquior, whose attraction to the philosophical dimension of literature overcomes the dissolution of his linguistic dimension, through the defence of the primacy of Idea over Form - though the latter is neither indifferent or alien to him: 'we try to surprise ideas over forms and also the form of ideas'. The linguistic variation of the formalist paradigm is severely criticized for being reductionist, insofar as it concentrates on sheer expression rather than on content, by which ideas are usurped by form. In A natureza do proceso (1982) and O argumento liberal (1983) some of Merquior's most suggestive political essays are brought together. In all these essays, Merquior rejects closed systems in principle and defends a kind of liberal ethics based on the acceptance of a valua­ tional pluralism and an exigent yet tolerant dialogue. Since Merquior chose to be a 'neo-illuminist liberal', he discussed, among other topics, the implicit dangers in a Hayek-type 'neoliberalism' or in a 'liberal-conservative utopia'. Merquior preferred to look towards 'social-liberalism', in clear allusion to Raymond Aron, for whom social democracy was 'the dominant ideology of our times'. In the controversial Foucault (1985), which has been translated into several languages, Merquior outlines his position in defence of rationalism and against all types of trendy philosophical currents, such as Foucault's or Derrida's post-structuralism. The criticism Merquior levels against Foucault and influenced by him is based on his fear of what he called 'Western logocide', or the death of reason at the hands of nihilist relativism or the empire of myth.

From Prague to Paris: A Critique of Structuralist and Post-Structuralist Thought (1986) brings together most of Merquior's philosophical tenets. This is a strong criticism of formalist thought resumed in the abstract formula of 'structuralism', which influences the linguistics of Roman Jakobson, the anthropology of Levi-Strauss, the 'anti­ realism' of Roland Barthes, the 'incomprehensible' psychoanalysis of Lacan, or the supposed deconstructionism of Derrida. In Western Marxism (1986), which is as controversial as many of his other works mentioned here, Merquior analyses various problems and contradictions present in one of his more recurrent interlocu­ tors: Western Marxism. At one time, this book caused a wide range - 222 -

Annotated Bibliography ofJose G. Merquior

of polemics. For example, the well known Marxist theoretician John Gray wrote that ' Western Marxism is a model of a strange genre - an essay of intellectual history conducted as an extensive exercise m trony'. Cr{tica, 1 964- 1 989: Ensaios sobre arte e literatura (1 990) is a compila­ tion of essays that constitutes a true retrospective look at Merquior's career in the field of art criticism. The common link between these articles is the controversial treatment of the pairs formalism/antifor­ malism, romanticism/ modernism and modernism/ postmodernism. In addition, a second aspect that unifies the various essays in this collection is the method of reflection used - a form of refined rhetoric that underlines the theoretical dispute as an instrument of control of its own premises which, for the same reason, can be accepted or rejected.

Finally, Liberalism Old and New ( 1 991), which was published posthumously, constitutes perhaps his most complete and funda­ mental work. This impressive fresco portrays three hundred years of liberal ideas from Locke to Nozick including, along the way, Kelsen, Aron and Bobbio, among many other authors. Through reconstructing liberal thought and outlining the main tensions between its distinct ideological offshoots, Merquior argues for his choice in favour of a social-liberal position, midway between more extreme positions. As such, social-liberalism does not mean statism from any perspective, least of all the economic one; nor does it mean 'statephobia', characteristic of more conservative neoliberal positions that do not have a proper idea of what the historical role of the state has been in the modern world. Thus Merquior's work contains many highly diverse elements for discussion, whence we believe that encouraging serious debate on his thought can have great value for contemporary philosophy. Without exaggeration, Merquior will be remembered as a twentieth century Plato, not only for his erudition, but also and especially for his vocation for reason and doubt as ways of living.

- 223 -

Cesar Cansino and Victor Alarcon

Books Written by Merq uior 1 965

Raziio do poema (ensaios de critica e estetica)

Civiliza�ao Brasileira).

(Rio de Janeiro:

1 969

Arte e sodedade em Marcuse, Adorno e Benjamin (ensaio critico sobre a escola neo-hegeliana de Franlefurt) (Rio de Janeiro: Tempo

Brasileiro).

1 972

A astuda da mfmese (ensaios sobre llrica)

Olympio).

Saudades do Carnaval (introdufiio

Forense).

a

(Rio de Janeiro: Jose

crise da cultura)

(Rio de Janeiro:

1 974

Formalismo e tradifiio moderna (o problema da arte na crise da cultura) (Rio de Janeiro: Forense Universitaria / Universidade de Sao

Paulo).

1 975

0 estructuralismo dos pobres e outras questoes (Rio de Janeiro: Tempo Brasileiro). Verso Universo em Drummond (Rio de Janeiro: Jose Olympio).

1 977

De Anchieta a Euclides: Breve historia da literatura brasileira

Janeiro: Jose Olympio).

L'Esthetique de Levi-Strauss

(Rio de

(Paris: Presse Universitaire Fran�aise).

1 979

The Veil and the Mask: Essays on Culture and Ideology

Routledge & Kegan Paul).

(London:

1 980

0 fantasma romantico e outros ensaios (Petr6polis: Vozes).

Rousseau and Weber: Two Studies in the Theory of Legitimacy

Routledge & Kegan Paul).

- 224 -

(London:

Annotated Bibliography ofJose G. Merq uior

1 98 1 As Ideas e as Form.as (Rio de Janeiro: Nova Fronteira). 1 982 A natureza do proceso (Rio de Janeiro: Nova Fronteira). 1 983 0 Argumento liberal (Rio de Janeiro: Nova Fronteira). 1 985 Foucault (London: Fontana). 1 986 From Prague to Paris: A Critique of Structuralist and Post-Struduralist Thought (London and New York: Verso / New Left Books Ltd). Western Marxism (London: Paladin). 1 990 Critica, 1 964- 1 989. Ensaios sobre arte e literatura (Rio de Janeiro: Nova Fronteira). 1 99 1 Liberalism Old and New (Boston: Twayne).

A Selection of Merquior's Most Imp ortant Essays 1 979 'Cultural Values, Science, and Technology: Contemporary Theorizing', Cultures 4: 24-39.

A

Glance at

1 980 'Mort a l'homo oeconomicus?', Archives europeens de sodologie 2 1 : 372-94. 'Modernisme et apres-modernisme dans la litterature bresiliene', in Jacques Leenhardt (ed.), Litterature latinoamericane d'aujourd'hui: Coloque de Cerisy (Paris: Union Generale d'Eds).

- 225 -

Cesar Cansino and Victor Alarcon

1 98 1 'The Politics of Transition: On the Work of Ernest Gellner', Government and Opposition 1 6: 230-43. 1 982 'More Order than Progress? The Politics of Brazilian Positivism', Government and Opposition 17: 454-68. 'L'essai bresilien depuis le modernisme', Europe : Revue litteraire mensuelle 60: 141-8. 1 983 'Defense of Vico Against Some of His Admirers', in G. Tagliacozzo (ed.), Vico and Marx: Affinities and Contrasts (Atlantic Highlands NJ: Humanities Press), pp. 401-26. 'Discurso de recep�ao de J. G. Merquior na Academia Brasileira de Letras e resposta de Josue Montello' (Rio de Janeiro: Nova Fronteira). 'Radical Reformism in the Pampas: The Case of Battlismo', Government and Opposition 1 8: 1 20-4. 1 984 'Power and Identity: Politics and Ideology in Latin America', Government and Opposition 1 9: 239-49. 'A Hedonist Apostasy: The Later Barthes', Portuguese Studies 1 : 1 82-92. 1 985 'Fighting the Nietzschean Demon', Government and Opposition 20: 550-5. 1 986 'Patterns of State-Building in Brazil and Argentina', in John A. Hall (ed.), States in History (Oxford: Basil Blackwell), pp. 264-88. 'Virtue and Progress: The Radicalism of George Sorel (1 847-1 922)', in John A. Hall (ed.), Rediscoveries (Oxford: Clarendon Press), pp. 123-38. 1 987 'Georges Sorel and Max Weber', in Wolfgang J. Mommsen and Jiirgen Osterhammel (eds), Max Weber and His Contemporaries - 226 -

Annotated Bibliography ofJose G. Merquior

(London: German Historical Institute), pp. 1 59--69. 'Sohre a doxa literaria', Coloquio/Letras 1 00 (November­ December): 7-1 8 (Lisbon). 'Brazil's New Republic: The Social-Liberal Path', Bulletin of LAtin America Research 6: 269-77. 'The Renaissance of French Political Theory', Government and Opposition 22: 1 0 1-14. 'Glasnost, Please, in Marxology Too', Government and Opposition 22: 302-1 4. 'Pattern and Process in Brazilian Literature: Notes on the Evolution of Genre', Portuguese Studies 3: 17 1-85. 1 988 'Raymond Aron desde America del Sur. Un liberalismo diferente', Vuelta 1 38 (May): 61-4 (Mexico). 'Defensa de Bobbio', Nexos 1 1 (1 30) (October): 31-44 (Mexico). 'Vico, Joyce y la ideologfa del alto modernismo', Cuadernos Americanos 4 (10) (new series) (July-August): 9-23 (Mexico). 'From Marcionism to Marxism', Critical Review 2 (4) (Fall): 1 01-1 3 'Heidegger: mas alla del nazismo', Vuelta 1 42 (September): 58-61 (Mexico). 'Philosophy of History: Thoughts on a Possible Revival', History of Human Sdences 1 (1) (May): 22-3 1. 'Una panoramica del renacimiento de los liberalismos', Cienda Pol£tica . Revista Trimestral para America LAtina y Espana 1 2 (3): 23-33. 1 989 'El logocidio occidental', Vuelta 1 49 (April): 7-1 1 (Mexico). 'El Otro Occidente (un poco de filosofia de la historia desde Latinoamerica)', Cuadernos Americanos 3 (13) (January-February): 9-23 (Mexico). 'Back to the Context: Harry Levin, an Appreciation', Journal of the History of Ideas 50: 667-78. 'Spider and Bee: Towards a Critique of the Postmodern Ideology', in Lisa Appignanesi (ed.), Postmodernism: ICA {Institute of Contemporary Arts] Documents (London: Free Association Books). 'Reinterpretando la Revoluci6n', Cuadernos Americanos 1 6 (new series) Ouly-August) : 1 1-3 1 (Mexico). - 227 -

Cesar Camino and Victor Alarcon

'Latinoamerica: Cr6nica del Estado', (Mexico). 1 990 'For the Sake of the Whole',

Examen

Critical Review

1 (5) (October) : 6-7

(Summer): 301-25.

1 99 1 'In Quest of Modern Culture: Hysterical or Historical Humanism', Critical Review 5: 399-420. (A lecture delivered by Merquior at the Gould Center for Humanistic Studies, Claremont McKenna College, California, on 20 September 1 988). 'A prop6sito del liberalismo' (Entrevista a Jose G. Merquior realizada por Cesar Cansino y Victor Alarc6n), LA Jornada Semanal 1 26 (November): 1 9-23 (Mexico). 'Octavio Paz', Breviario Politico 7 /8: 1 0-1 1 (Mexico). 'El sentido de 1 990', LA Jornada Semanal 1 26 (November): 24-5 (Mexico). 1 992 'Attention Mongers',

Reason Papers

1 7.

1 993 'O problema da legitimidade em politica internacional', in Jose Guilherme Merquior, Diplomata, 48-76 (Brasilia: Fundac;:ao Alexandre Gusmao-Funag / Instituto de Pesquisa de Relac;:oes Internacionais). (Tese apresentada no I Curso de Altos Estudos do Instituto Rio Branco no 1 978.)

- 228 -

INDEX Note: Contributions to this volume are shown in bold type Adorno, T. W. 57 Alarc6n, V. see Cansino, C. and Alarc6n, V. Alberdi, J. B. 23, 27 , 36 Althusius, J. 25 Anderson, P. 73 Andrade, A. C. de 27 anthropology, postmodern view of 175-7 , 1 80, 1 84, 1 98 antidemocratism 9-1 0 antistatism 1 1-13 Aquinas, Saint Thomas 90 Arendt, H. 50, 1 64, 213 Argentina 27 , 71 aristocracy 1 1 3-14, 1 1 9-20 Aristotle 86 Aron, R. 18, 22, 30, 85 as inspiration 23, 2 1 6, 219, 222 Merquior admired by 32, 74 Merquior's writings on 7, 18, 20, 32-3, 35, 73 Arrow, K. 1 50-2 art and morality 134 and postmodernism 1 83-4, 1 85-6, 1 91-2 Australia 70 authoritarianism 1 3 , 1 1 5-16 in Latin America 20, 3 1-2, 206-7, 208-9 autonomy and democracy 1 53-5

and political action 1 62-4 as purpose of modernity 39 Aylwin Az6car, P. 32 Bagehot, W. 26, 35 Bandeira, M. 76 Bar Hillel, Y. 175 Barbosa, R. 27 Barthes, R. 222 Battle, J. 1 5-1 6 Becker, H. 1 83-4, 1 91-2 Beethoven, L. van 1 83 , 185, 1 9 1 , 1 92 Bell, D. 44, 59, 69, 184-5 Bellah, R. et al. 1 1 6 Benda, ]. 1 80 Bentham, ]. 24, 29, 35, 88 Berg, A. 1 9 1 Berlin, I. 3 1 , 35, 7 3 , 210 on positive and negative liberty 71-2, 84-5 Beveridge, W. and Beveridge Report 13, 30 Bobbio, N. 7, 85-6 as neocontractarian 20, 32, 34, 35 on neoliberalism 10, 1 1 , 13, 18-19 Politics and Morality 1 33-43 Bodin, ]. 1 42 Boesche, R. 1 03 Bolivia 7 1 Botana, N . 27 Boudon, R. , On 'Posttnodem' Scepticism 173-99

229 -

Index Brazil 27, 33, 70, 71, 73, 96 and Merquior 12, 20, 21-2, 74-5, 209 Brittan, S. 10, 17, 19, 20 Burckhardt, J. 124 Burke, E. 17, 26, 72 byzantinism 17 4 Campos, R. 21 Merquior the Liberalist 65-76 Camus, A. 30, 35, 73 Canetti, E. 136 Cansino, C. and Alarcon, V. Annotated Bibliography ofJose G. Merquior 219-28 The Futures of Latin America; Conservative or Liberal­ Democratic 201-10 capitalism, and democracy 13, 68-9 Castoriadis, C. 17 centralization and decentralization 106, 110-11, 113 Chartier, E. 30 Chateaubriand, F.-R. 26 Chile 24, 71 China 70-1, 93 civil society Ferguson on 119-31 and separation of military function 121-4, 126, 128-9 survival of 127-31 classical liberalism 25-6, 35, 72 Clemenceau, G. 50 clientelism 70 Coleridge, S. T. 90-1 collectivism 66-8 Collor de Mello, President F. 36 common will and deliberation 152-3 shaped by political process 148-55 communism 33, 66, 68, 69 Communist Manifesto 67-8 communitarian republicanism 146, 147, 159-60, 165 communitarianism 101, 116 Comte, A. 175 Condorcet, Marquis de 168 Connolly, W. 162

consensus on the common good 149, 159-60 postmodern 175-84 conservative liberalism 26-9, 35, 72 Constant, B. 8, 26, 29, 86, 88-90 constitutionalism 84-5, 92-3, 113 consumerism 3, 4 contracts, in private or public life 137-8 contractualism in Latin America 205 see also neocontractualism; social contract conventionalism 175 cooperation 106, 116-17 corruption 96 Croce, B. 28, 35, 72, 75, 220 Cuba 71, 93 culturalism 43, 17 4 Dahrendorf, R. 8, 22, 23, 73-4 as sociological liberal 32-3, 35-6, 73 Dalberg, J. 26 Danton, G. J. 26 De Gre, G. 192 Debussy, C. 185 Declaration of Independence 67 deconstructivism 180 deliberative theory of democracy 152-71 concept of values in 156-9 and construction of common will 148-55 integrative and aggregative 160, 165, 170 and nature of ideology 155-6 and plurality of interests 159-60, 166 and political institutions 165-9 democracy 13-20, 41-4, 81-4, 85-7, 145-71 and capitalism 13, 68-9 egalitarian 41-2, 79, 87 and individual autonomy 153-5, 162-4 and liberalism 70, 85-7, 207-9 and neoliberalism 13-20

- 2 30

Index

participatory 4 1-4, 1 06, 1 1 1 , 1 45-55, 1 66-9 as politics 1 69-7 1 representative 8 1-4, 1 45-7 social 43-4, 70 see also deliberative theory of democracy; liberal democracy; participatory democracy democratic institutions 1 64-9 democratic liberalism, Latin America 207-9 Demosthenes 1 21-2 Derrida, J. 47 , 53, 57 , 58 criticism of 48, 220, 222 despotism 8 enlightened 25 and equality 1 03-4, 108 in France 1 08-1 3 Dewey, J. 3 1 , 3 5 , 1 48 Dias, P. 27 Dicey, A. 29 Diez del Corral, L. 80 dissimulation 136-7 divide and rule 1 1 2 division oflabour, and civil society 1 20-3 1 domination 9, 53, 56-8 Duguit, L. 30 Duhem, P. 1 87 Durkheim, E . 30, 1 66, 1 80, 182, 186 and social division oflabour 1 20, 1 28 Eastern Europe, systemic intranquillity 70-1 economic growth 3, 4, 1 27 economic liberalism 9-10, 13, 66-72 and The Road to Seifdom 1 1 , 67, 68, 1 26 economic neoliberalism 66-7 egalitarianism egalitarian democracy 79, 87 egalitarian individualism 40-3, 59-61 , 78-80 Rousseau's 41-2, 44 see also equality egoism 97 Einaudi, L. 75

Engels, F. 67 England English school of liberalism 24, 72 Tocqueville on 109, 1 13-15 'entitlements' and 'provisions' 74 envy 103, 1 07-8, 1 1 1-12, 1 1 5, 1 17 equality and despotism 103-4, 1 08 and liberty 105-6, 109, 1 1 1 , 1 54 see also egalitarianism Erasmus of Rotterdam 1 40 European integration 70, 9 1 Fabianism 67-8 fascism 1 3 Ferguson, A. , and civil society 1 1 9-31 Ferry, J. 30 Feyerabend, P. 193, 195 scientific progress as illusion 176, 178, 1 84, 1 88-9, 1 90, 1 92 Ausser, D. 213-14 Foucault, M. 47 , 1 96, 1 98 criticism of 48-9, 53, 220, 222 and postmodernism 48-9, 53, 55, 57-8, 174 France 30, 70, 83-4, 108-13 French revolution 25, 26-7, 74, 88 French school of liberalism 24, 26-7, 72 Tocqueville's analysis of 108-13 Franco, General 2 Frederick the Great 25 Freud, S. 220 Freyre, G. 65 Friedman, M. 18, 3 1 , 67-8 Fukuyama, F. 68, 70 Gadamer, H.-G. 38, 46, 63 Gambetta, L. M. 30 GATT 91 Gellner, E. xi, 38, 54, 2 1 9 Adam Ferguson an d the Surprising Robustness of Civil Society 1 1 9-3 1 Introduction 1-4 Germany 3 1 , 96 German school of liberalism 24, 28, 72

- 23 1

Index Gibbon, E. 1 2 1 globalism 70 globalized liberalism 93-6 Gobetti, P. 30 Gonzalez, F. 70 Gorbachev, M. 94 Graciin, B. 138 Great Depression 66, 69 Green, T. 13, 22, 29-30, 35 Guevara, Che 3 Guizot, F. 72 Habermas, J. 44, 53, 1 49 Halevy , E. 1 2 , 1 1 5 Hall, J . A. , Liberalism and Trust 101-18 Hardin, R. 1 63 Havel, V. 203 Hayek, F. von 7, 22, 38, 46 as neoliberal 10, 13, 17-1 8, 23, 3 1 , 36 statephobia 43, 73 The Road to Serfdom 1 1 , 67, 68, 1 26 Hegel, G. 136, 1 40 and modernity 38, 54, 55, 59, 61 Heidegger, M. 53, 57 , 79, 220 Heller, E. 61 Heller, H. 12, 1 49-50 Helvetius 88 Herzen, A. 26 Hirschman, A. 0. 170 Hitler, A. 68 Hobbes, T. 10, 1 5 , 24, 25-6 Hobhouse, L. 13, 30, 35 Hobson, J. 22, 30 Hofstadter, R. 1 7 1 Horkheimer, M . 57 Hilbner, K. 178, 1 87-8, 193 Hugo, V. 30 humanism historical or hysterical 45-6, 6 1 , 173-4, 1 97 Mill's liberal 1 6 Humboldt, W . von 24, 28, 2 1 5 Hume, D . 52, 6 1 , 1 1 4-15, 124, 1 8 1-2 Husserl, E. 53

Ibn Khaldun 1 2 1 , 1 24, 126 Ibsen, H. 16 idealism 139-40 identity collective 1 62-4, 171 individual 1 56, 158-9, 1 62-4 ideology 94, 155-6 India 7 1 individual autonomy of 153-5, 1 62-4 as Christian concept 86-7 identity of 156, 1 58-9, 1 62-4 interests of 1 46, 1 47-8, 1 54-60, 1 6 1 , 1 66 morality of 88-90, 9 1-3 preferences of 1 45-55, 156-7, 1 58 privacy of 87 protection for freedom of 95-6 self-policing 129 individualism 40-4, 59-6 1 , 77, 78-97, 1 1 6 or communitarianism 1 1 6 egalitarian 40-3 , 59-6 1 , 78-80 or egoism 97 and modernity 40-4, 77 origin and etymology 79, 81 and pursuit ofliberty 84-5 relative 90-1 and representative democracy 8 1-4 Rousseau's 41-2, 44, 78-9 Indonesia 7 1 Industrial revolution 7 4 , 1 27 information revolution 82-3 , 93-4 institutions, political 1 64-9 interdependence 70, 82-4, 94-5 interests 1 46, 1 47-8, 1 54-60, 1 6 1 , 1 66 concept of 1 54-5 construction from preferences 155, 1 56-7 , 158 in deliberative theory of democracy 156-60 plurality of 1 59-60, 1 66 Ionescu, G. , Variations on a Theme by J. G. Merquior 77-97 Islantic fundamentalism 69, 70 Israel 96 Italy 30, 96

232 -

Index Jaguaribe, H., Merquior and Liberalism 2 1-36 Jakobson, R. 222 Japan 70, 96 Jefferson, T. 29 Johnson, G. R. , Modernity and Postmodemity in the Thought ofJose Merquior 37-63 Johnson, P. 67 Juarez, B. 27 justice, social 9-1 6 Rawls's principles of 1 4-1 5 , 34 Kant, I. 15, 28, 38, 1 37, 1 40, 18 1-2 as modernist 40, 59, 6 1 Kaufmann, E . 1 49-50 Kelsen, H. 3 1 , 35 Keynes, ]. M. 1 3 , 16, 3 1 , 35, 73 and Keynesianism 66, 68, 70 killing 136, 1 4 1 , 1 42-3 Kissinger, H. 74 knowledge axiological factors 1 95-8 cognitive effects 1 92-3 communication effects 1 93-5 and postmodernism 48-52, 1 80-2, 1 92-8 Kolakowski, L. 1 30 Kristo!, I. 7 , 1 8 Kuhn, T . 177-8, 1 89-90, 1 92, 1 93 , 1 95 Kulturkritik 45-6, 47-52, 55 Lacan, J. 222 Laclau, E . 1 62 Lafer, C. 20 Jose G. Merquior 1941-1991 213-17 Languedoc 1 1 3-1 4 Latin America authoritarianism 206--7 , 208-9 contractualism 205 democratic transition 7 1 futures o f 201-10 identity of 203-5 , 206 legitimacy 204, 205-6, 210 liberalism 2-3, 27 , 36, 204, 207-9 nature of the state 12, 208-9

neoliberalism 32 nihilism 202-3 as the 'Other West' 205-7 Latour, B. 178-9 Lavoisier, A. 1 89-91 law, and postmodern scepticism 182-3 Lazarsfeld, P. F. 1 94 legitimacy 43-4, 45-7 , 54 in Latin America 204, 205-6, 210 Leibniz, G. 1 0 Leninism 13, 94 Lepenies, W. 1 80-1 Levi-Strauss, C. 219, 222 Levy-Bruhl, L. 1 89 liberal constitutionalism 84-5, 88-90 liberal democracy 93-4, 1 1 5-16, 1 45-9, 1 5 1-2 given nature of preferences 1 45-6, 1 47 , 1 48-9, 1 5 1-2, 155, 1 64 and the global market 93-4 postulates of 1 45-6 liberalism classical 25-6, 35, 72 conservative 26--9, 35, 72 constitutional 84-5, 88-90, 91-3 and democracy 70, 85-7, 207-9 economic 9-10, 13, 66--72 English school 24, 72 French school 24, 26--7 , 72 German school of 24, 28, 72 globalized 93-6 in Latin America 2-3 , 27, 36, 204, 207-9 or liberalisms 7, 20 neocontractualism 13-1 6, 1 9-20, 34 neoliberalism 10-20, 3 1-2, 35, 66--8, 73 new 29-3 1 , 35, 73 origin and definition of term 23-4, 86 political 68-9 protoliberalism 24-5, 35, 77, 86 social 1 6 , 1 9-20, 29-30, 31 sociological 32-3, 35-6, 73 success of 2-4, 7-20, 66--72, 101-2 see also liberal democracy

- 233

Index

Liberalism Old and New, Merquior

22-36, 65-6, 7 1-3 , 215, 223 liberty economic 1 8 and equality 105-6, 1 09, 1 1 1 , 154 individual's pursuit of 84-5, 95-6 indivisible 9-10 negative or positive 55-9, 7 1-2, 84-5, 95-6, 2 1 5 perversion o f 96 and religion 106-8, 1 1 2, 1 1 4-15 and trust 102, 1 1 1-12, 1 1 5, 1 17-18 Lindblom, E. 80--1 Lipsio, J. 137 Lloyd George, D. 16 Locke, J. 8, 15, 25-6, 29, 72 Lyotard, J.-F. 47, 55, 57, 58 Lysenko, T. 1 94 Maastrict, Treaty of 83 Macaulay, T. 26 McCarthy, M. 213 Machiavelli, N. 138, 140, 141 Madariaga, S. de 30 Madison, G. B. 63 Maiz, R., On Deliberation; Rethinking Democracy as Politics Itself 145-7 1 Malaysia 7 1 Manent, P . 90 Manet, e. 1 85 Marat , J . P. 26 Marcilio de Padua 25 Marcuse, H. 57 market 1 7-1 8, 70 Marsh, J. L. 63

Marx, K. 130, 1 49, 1 6 1 , 177, 1 82, 220 Communist Manifesto 67-8 Marxism 8, 67-8, 72-3 , 94, 1 97, 220 and civil society 130--1 Maxwell, R. 96 Mazzini, G. 26, 29 Mendes, M. 65 Merleau-Ponty, M. 38, 63 Merquior, H. 2 1 3 , 21 7 Merquior, J. G. annotated bibliography of 21 9-28

and Aron 23, 32, 74, 2 1 6, 219, 222 biographical outline 2 1 9-21 and Brazilian politics 12, 20, 21-2,

74-5, 209

changing political convictions

21-2, 36

and Dahrendorf 23, 73-4 as diplomat 21, 75, 213 egalitarian individualism of 40--3,

59

and future of Latin America

201-10

Liberalism Old and New 22-36,

65-6, 7 1-3 , 215, 223

on modernity 37, 38-47 , 52-4 Panoramic View on the Renaissance of Liberalisms

7-20

and postmodernism 44-52, 58-6 1 ,

173-4, 220

Rousseau and Weber 40--4, 221

tributes to 1-4, 2 1-2, 65-6, 73-6,

213-17

The Veil and the Mask 203-5 , 221

Messiaen, 0. 1 85 Mexico 3 1 , 71 Michelet, J. 26 Mill, J. S. 8, 10, 16, 1 48-9, 1 53 · and classic liberalism 8, 24, 26, 29, 35, 72 Misztal, B. 1 1 8 Mitterand, F . 83 modernity 37 , 38-47 , 54, 55-63 cultural contradictions 55-61 and individualism 40-4 Merquior's vision of 37, 38-47, 54 and postmodernism 55-63 Moliere, ]. B. 186 Montaigne, M. de 1 77 Montesquieu, C. de 8, 72, 1 04 morality individual 88-90, 91-3 in the liberal society 96-7 postmodern theories of 186 in private or public life 136-8, 1 4 1 ,

1 42-3

More, Sir T. 1 40 Moreira, M. M. 213

234 -

Index Mornet, D. 1 1 2 Mozart, W. A. 1 83-4, 1 9 1 , 1 92 Napoleon 26 nation-state 69 nationalism 69, 70 Nazism 66, 68, 69 neocontractualism 1 3-16, 1 9-20, 34 see also contractualism neoliberalism 1 0-20, 3 1-2, 35, 66-8, 73 Neves, T. 1 2 new liberalism 29-3 1 , 3 5 , 73 Nicolet, C. 30 Nietzsche, F. 53, 1 59 , 177 nihilism in Latin America 202-3 in postmodernist thinking 17 4, 176-84 Nisbet, R. 1 82 'No More World Wars' (NMWW) 94-5 Nolan, D. 75 Nozick, R. 1 6-17, 32, 34, 43 Oakeshott, M. 38, 46 Ockham, William of 25 Olson, J. 1 63 Olson, M. 1 9 Ortega y Gasset, ]. 28-9, 3 5 , 72, 2 1 4 Orwell, G. 3 1 , 3 5 , 61 , 73 'Other West', Latin America as 205-7 Paine, T. 29 Pareto, V. 173, 1 92, 1 93, 196-7 participation, and representation 1 45-55, 1 66-9 participatory democracy 4 1-4, 1 06, 1 1 1 , 146-8, 1 67-9 Pascal, B. 103, 177, 1 98 Peru 7 1 Physiocrats 1 12 Piaget, J. 1 94 Pinochet, A. 32 Plato 24, 86 pluralism constitutional 85 political 159-60, 1 66, 1 68

political action 1 61-4 political agents 1 63-4 political correctness 1 97-8 political institutions 1 64-9 political liberalism 68-9 politics 133-43, 1 45-7, 1 48-55 , 1 69-7 1 democracy as 1 69-7 1 essential virtues in 138-9 idealism and realism 139-40 liberal or republican 1 45-7 and morality 1 33-43 and shaping the common will 1 48-55 social welfare as task of 152 Popper, K. 31, 35, 73, 206 and scientific theory 177, 1 88 Portales, D. 27 positivism 180 post-structural theory of discourse 1 62 Poster, M. 49, 61 postmodernism 48-52, 55-63, 173-99 and art 1 83-4, 1 85-6, 191-2 culturalist 43 , 174 and modernism 55-63 and the nature of knowledge 48-52, 1 80-2, 1 92-8 nihilist 174, 176-84 postmodern consensus 175-84 and science 176-84, 1 87-9 1 unacceptability of 173, 1 87 , 1 92-8, 199 see also Kulturkritik

power 7-9 democratic 1 60 separation of 9, 72 and wealth 128, 130 preferences construction of interests from 155, 156-7, 158 in liberal or participative democracy 1 45-55 not revealed by voting systems 1 50-2 Priestley, J. 189-91 privacy 87

235 -

Index progress illusion of scientific 178-9, 190, 192, 193 market's ability to cope with 17 'progressive permissiveness' 91-3 protoliberalisrn 24-5, 35, 77, 86 'provisions' and 'entitlements' 74 Quinet, E. 27, 30 Rapp, C. 55 rational choice theory 147, 151-2 rationalization 56-9 Weberian 42, 44, 56-7, 202 Rawls, ]. 7, 32, 34, 35, 148 A Theory ofjustice 14-15, 34 Reagan, R. 31, 68 realism 139-40 Reformation 24 religion and liberal constitutionalism 88-90 and liberty 106-8, 112, 114-15 role in civil society 124-5 Remusat, C. de 26-7 Renan, E. 27 Renouvier, C. 30 representation, and participation 145-55, 166-9 representative democracy 81-4 republican model of democracy 145-7, 159-60, 161, 165 nature of preferences 147-8, 153-5, 164 Ricardo, D. 35 Ricoeur, P. 38, 63 Robespierre, M. de 26, 88 Rocard, M. 70 Rorty, R. 180, 190 Roselli, C. 30 Rousseau, J. J. 24, 61, 103 egalitarianism and individualism 41-2, 44, 78-9 Merquior's critique of 40-2, 43-4, 221 on the nature of politics 148, 149 social contract 13-14, 15, 72 Rousseau and Weber, Merquior 40-4, 221

Russian revolution 66, 68 San Tiago Dantas 21, 36 Sarmiento, D. 23, 27, 36 Sartori, G. 86-7 Sartre, J.-P. 30, 185 Schmitt, C. 134-5, 142, 149 Schoenberg, A. 191 Schumpeter, J. 16, 167 science 134, 175-84, 187-91, 192-8 'hard' 176-9 and morality 134 postmodernist view of 176-84, 187-91 'soft' 179-84 validity 187-8 Scruton, R. 18 self-determination 161-4, 170-1 separation of powers 9, 72 sexuality 134 Shakespeare, W. 186 Shils, E. 44, 87 Shostakovich, D. 191 Sieyes, Abbe 148-9 Simmel, G. 182, 185, 192 Skocpol, T. 166 Smith, A. 29, 35, 66, 72, 114-15 The Wealth of Nations 67, 119-20 snobbery 184-5 social choice theory 150-2 social conflict 115-16 social contract 14-15, 16 social democracy 70 social equality and despotism 103-4, 108 and liberty 105-6, 109, 111 social justice 9-16 social liberalism 16, 19-20, 29-30, 31 social welfare 152 socialism free-market 70 'real' 69 state 8, 102 supply side 70 socio-anthropology, as 'real' science 175-7, 180, 184, 198 sociological liberalism 32-3, 35-6, 73 sociology, and postmodernisrn 180-2

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Index Socrates 24, 78 South Korea 7 1 sovereignty 89--90 Soviet Union (former) 70-1 , 93 Spain 30, 70, 96 specialization, and the civil society 1 2 1 , 1 22-4, 1 28 Spencer, H. 10, 26, 35, 72 Spinoza, B. de 179 Stael, Madame de 86 Stalin, J. 68 state 1 1-1 3 , 124-5 , 1 66-7, 210 demonization of 9--10, 1 1-13, 3 1-2 nation-state 69 welfare 1 1-12, 3 1-2, 70 state socialism 8, 1 02 statephobia 9--10, 1 1-13 see also antistatism Sting (musician) 1 1 8 Stoics 25 Stravinsky, I. 1 9 1 supply side socialism 70 sustainability 68, 70 systemic tranquillity 69--70 Taiwan 7 1 technology 1 27 , 130 Thailand 7 1 Thatcher, M . 3 1 , 68 Tocqueville, A. de 102-18, 1 80, 1 81-2 classical liberalism of 8, 26, 29, 35, 72 and democracy 1 03-8, 1 1 6, 1 29 and despotism 103-4, 108-13 on England 1 09, 1 1 3-1 5 and envy 103, 107-8, 1 1 1-1 2, 1 1 5, 1 17 on France 108-1 3 on individualism 78-9, 80, 97, 103-4 and religion 106-8, 1 1 2, 1 1 4-1 5 scepticism of 1 93, 1 96-8, 199 social equality and liberty 103-4, 105-6, 109, 1 1 1 'the habits of the heart' 106-7 , 109--10, 1 1 2, 1 1 4, 1 66 on trust in political life 102-18

'tyranny of the majority' 8, 1 03 , 106, 109 on United States 104-8, 1 29 totalitarianism 9, 1 1-12 Toulouse-Lautrec, H. 1 85 tranquillity, systemic 69-70 transnationalization 82-4 trust 1 13, 138 and liberty 102, 1 1 1-1 2, 1 1 5, 1 17-1 8 Tversky, A. 1 52 'tyranny of the majority' 8, 103 , 1 06, 109, 1 65 ultramodernism 59--60 United Kingdom 24, 30, 3 1 , 72 see also England United States 3 1 , 96 Tocqueville's study of 104-9 universality 68, 70 Uruguay 7 1 Valery , P. 179--80 values, and deliberative theory of democracy 156-9 Veblen, T. 1 84-5 'veil of ignorance' 1 4-1 5 The Veil and the Mask, Merquior 203-5, 221 Vico, G. 204 Vienna Circle 1 88 Villari, R. 137 virtue in the civil society 1 29--30 or wealth 1 24-5 Visconti, F. M. 137 von Mises, R. 22, 23 , 3 1 voting systems 1 50-2 wealth and power 1 28, 130 or virtue 1 24-5 The Wealth of Nations 67 Weber, M. 9, 38, 58, 72, 159, 1 88 contributions to knowledge 1 80, 1 8 1 , 182 Merquior on 28, 40, 42-4, 22 1 rationalization 42, 44, 55, 56-7 , 202

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Index

Weber, M. contd. theory oflegitimacy 43-4, 54, 202, 208 welfare state 1 1-12, 3 1-2, 70 Wilson, W. 3 1 Wittgenstein, L . 1 8 5 , 1 89, 1 90

world peace 94-5 Wrigley, E. A. 130 Xenophon 1 25 Yeltsin, B. 94

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