Joe Biden will be declared the president, if not today then early next week. Everything now depends on the two senatorial runoff elections in Georgia. It is a long shot, but the consequences will be enormous. Yesterday, I donated $1000 each to the campaigns of Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock. As my son, Tobias, suggested, we should put the whole thing in the capable hands of Stacey Abrams.
Hope springs eternal.
I know from personal experience that in South Africa under
the old apartheid regime, if one was white it was quite possible to live a
comfortable, interesting, intellectually lively, politically engaged life in complete
safety and tranquility. Because of the deliberate governmental policy of
separating whites from Blacks (which is to say, in South African terms,
Africans, Coloureds, and Asians), one could spend extended periods of time in
South Africa and never actually see the conditions in which non-whites lived or
the brutalities they suffered. South African academics were, I found, bright,
well read, and familiar with the latest tendencies in continental and Anglo
American thought. I don’t know, but I
have often thought that if one were not Jewish, it would have been possible in
the same way to lead an interesting, comfortable, lively existence in prewar
Nazi Germany – certainly Martin Heidegger appears to have managed to do so.
I am an upper-middle-class old man living an extremely
comfortable and secure life in pleasant surroundings. I actually know several
Republicans personally – they live in the same building in which Susie and I
have our apartment here at Carolina Meadows – but I am not aware that any of
them is a Trump supporter. I know, but not from direct observation, that I live
in a country roughly half of whose inhabitants actively support and are
prepared to vote for a racist, misogynistic, autocratic wannabe fascist, but
even if that fascist wins reelection – something that I considered unthinkable
48 hours ago – nothing in the safety, comfort, or immediate pleasantness of my
life will change. And yet I am finding
it difficult to face the fact that the remainder of my life will be spent in
such a country.
As I’m sure you can imagine, there were a good many moments
last night and this morning when I was consumed by such loathing that I
thought, “to hell with them all, why should I go on worrying about people who
embrace an autocrat hell-bent on robbing them blind to line his pockets and
those of his rich friends?”
And yet, and yet. I cannot do it. I cannot stop fighting
even though absolutely nothing in my personal circumstances requires me to
fight. I cannot stop caring even if it would be less painful to do so. So I
will set aside the things I was going to post here about the exciting
opportunities for productive struggle that the election would present and instead
try to think about what we can do to limit the damage. It is rather a pity that
I am not religious. It is my impression that a serious religious belief is of
use at times like these.
As for how things are likely to play out as of 12:30 on the
day after the election, it looks more and more as though Joe Biden will eke out
a win and find himself with a diminished but still majority Democratic caucus
in the House but not with Democratic control of the Senate. This means no
enlargement of the Supreme Court, which is an unmitigated disaster.
Ralph Warnock will have a runoff in the Senate race in
Georgia and if we are really fortunate, when all the votes from the Atlanta area
are in, so will Jon Ossof. In that case,
I will send $1000 to the campaign of each of them. It is all I can think to do
but it is something rather than nothing.
Crap!
Oh by the way. If you are young and looking for a career, I wouldn't consider being a pollster if I were you.
I would just like to say that the breadth and depth of knowledge exhibited by the folks who read this blog and comment on it is extraordinary, and it is a pleasure to spend time with you. Thank you.
I am back from a bracing walk – it was 34° – and ready to spend some time responding to a number of interesting comments on my blog post concerning what I see as a fundamental incompatibility between Kant’s theory of knowledge and his ethical theory. I will begin by repeating and expanding on my account of how I approach a philosophical text, this time using as an example not the Critique of Pure Reason but rather a contemporary text with which, I imagine, many of you are familiar, namely A Theory of Justice by John Rawls.
What interests me about a philosophical text are not the
opinions of the author or the relationship of those opinions to the opinions of
other thinkers but rather a powerful and deep argument that I find in the text.
When I cannot find that sort of argument, I set the book aside as
uninteresting. I am not at all claiming that this is the only or the best way
to read a philosophical work. I am simply reporting that is the way I read one.
Almost always, when I grapple with a great work of philosophy or even one not
so great, I find that there is a great deal in the text that is ancillary to
the argument I am interested in and frequently even in conflict with it. For
the most part, I simply set aside those portions of the text as irrelevant to
my inquiry. Quite obviously my identification of what I consider an interesting
argument is subjective and personal and my view may not be shared by other
readers, many of whom of course may be far more accomplished scholars than I.
But that is what I do and when I have completed my investigation and have published
it, I simply hope that what I have to say will find readers who consider it
interesting or helpful.
A good example of this approach is my engagement with the
work of John Rawls as set forth in my book Understanding Rawls. Some of you may
be quite familiar with my take on Rawls and to you I apologize for repeating
myself but as Socrates replies to Callicles, who complains that Socrates is
talking about the same things over and over again, “yes, Callicles, and in the
same way too.”
Rawls began in the 1950s with a problem and a brilliant idea
for its solution. The problem was the seemingly endless and irresoluble conflict
between the two major schools of Anglo-American ethical theory, Utilitarianism
and Intuitionism. Rawls’ idea was to reach back to the social contract
tradition of political theory and marry it to the quite modern discipline of
Game Theory. He claimed in his early article, Justice As Fairness, that he
could prove, as a theorem, that a group of rationally self-interested
individuals situated roughly in the condition of those posited by social contract
theory would arrive at a unanimous agreement on two principles to regulate
their social interactions, and these principles Rawls described as the
principles of justice. It was, as I say, a brilliant idea which seemed to offer
the possibility of resolving the conflict between utilitarianism and
intuitionism while preserving what was appealing and powerful in each. Problems
with his first formulation, which undermined his claim to be able to prove the
theorem in Game Theory, led Rawls to introduce a number of revisions into his
theory, including most famously what he called the Veil of Ignorance.
By the time Rawls published A Theory of Justice the journal
article had ballooned into a 400 page book with seemingly a thousand words on
every page. Rawls had elaborate and interesting things to say about an
extraordinarily wide variety of subjects, all of which he attempted to hang on
or connect with or derive from his core idea.
I was not powerfully drawn to Rawls’s vision of a just
society – to put it as simply as I can, he had learned nothing from Marx. But I
thought his core idea was brilliant and fascinating and so I engaged with it,
ignoring all of the ancillary materials that stuffed his big book. (Not in my
commentary, but more recently, I have taken to describing the book as a slender
monograph wearing what in the film world is called a fat suit, but that, I am
afraid, is somewhat unkind.) I thought about Rawls’ central argument carefully
and came to the conclusion that, for a variety of technical reasons which
interested me, the argument did not work. And I demonstrated that in my book.
But that was not the way Rawls’ book was read by most of the very wide
readership which spanned a number of different disciplines. I did not care.
What interested me was the core argument, with which I engaged quite seriously,
and once I had demonstrated to my satisfaction that the argument simply did not
succeed in demonstrating what it sought to demonstrate, I published and stop
thinking about Rawls.
I do not by any stretch of the imagination mean to suggest
that Rawls and Kant occupy the same philosophical universe. But I approached
their work in the same way. It took me years to work through Kant’s arguments
and come to conclusions that I did. It only took me about three weeks to do the
same with the arguments of Rawls.
Now let me turn to the comments on my blog post. When I had finished my engagement with Kant’s
ethical theory and had published my thoughts in a book called The Autonomy of
Reason, it occurred to me that there was an irresoluble conflict between the
argument I had succeeded in finding in The Critique of Pure Reason and the
claims Kant was making in his ethical writings. I was fairly confident that
Kant himself had not seen this conflict, and I even had some idea why that
might be, but a conflict it clearly was and I articulated it in the rather
obscure article that I referenced in my blog post.
Now it is one thing for me to say that Rawls’ argument does
not work. I am not nearly as important a philosopher as Rawls but we inhabited
the same universe of late 20th century American philosophy. So it
is, one might say, a fair fight. But when I say the same thing about Kant, that
has somewhat the comic air of a flea crawling up the hind leg of a female
elephant and yelling” Rape!” Not only am I clear that Kant does not see the
problem that I claim to see. The major philosophical tendencies of the past 2 ½
centuries do not see it and instead find countlessly many other things of
interest in Kant’s great writings.
Let me get right to the central issue, which is whether two
noumenal agents can encounter one another in the field of experience. Clearly
Kant believes they can. That is not the issue. My question is whether it is
logically compatible with his central argument to say that they can. I take it
as not in dispute that Kant’s ethical theory requires that they can, because it
is as moral agents, as selves in themselves, so to speak, that they have
binding obligations to one another, obligations to tell the truth, to keep
their promises, to treat one another as ends always and not merely as means.
As I argue at length in my book, Kant’s Theory of Mental
Activity, and also in my nine part series of lectures posted on YouTube, one
can only make sense of the central argument of the Transcendental Deduction by
taking seriously the argument from the first edition in what is usually
referred to as the Subjective Deduction concerning the so-called threefold
synthesis of apprehension, reproduction, and recognition. And if one spells
that argument out precisely, it follows, as I explained in my original post,
that no Transcendental Ego can encounter another Transcendental Ego in the
field of experience. That was the point of my example about the creative
writing class in which the students write stories about the class.
One commentator noted that my interpretation of Kant made
his views incompatible with the modern understanding of the natural sciences as
a collective undertaking, and that is absolutely correct. Kant’s conception of
science is derived from the work of people like Newton. He has no idea
whatsoever of a group of researchers led by a principal researcher going into a
laboratory together, doing collaborative experimental investigations,
publishing them collectively, and interacting with other groups of researchers
to arrive at some advance in our scientific understanding of the universe. I do
not think the core argument of the Critique can be made compatible with such a
conception of scientific research, to which one can only say, so much the worse
for the Critique.
Well, I will stop there. Perhaps I can conclude with a little
story about Hannah Arendt which I have told before. Back when I was teaching at
Columbia, I gave a lecture attacking the views of John Stuart Mill. Arendt was
in the audience and came up afterward to say hello. She was pretty obviously
not thrilled with the talk but she politely asked me what I was working on and
I replied that I was writing a book on Kant’s ethical theory. She brightened
and said, “Ah, it is so much more pleasant to spend time with Kant.”
I can only say that it has been more pleasant spending time
with Kant that obsessing about the results that will come in this evening.
Several readers made interesting and suggestive comments on my post about the contradiction between Kant's theory of knowledge and his ethical theory but I have been so absorbed by the election that I have not responded to them. Later this morning, after I take my walk, I will try to do justice to them while waiting 12 hours for the first results to come in. I will try to do a good job, because if the results are not what I hope, this may be the last philosophy I ever write.
I heard it said once that in the shtetls of Eastern Europe in the old days, when a young Jewish boy began his studies, his teacher would put a drop of honey on the page and have him kiss it so that ever after he would associate the sweetness of the honey with the study of the Talmud. The drop of honey that got me hooked on politics was a baseball game I saw 72 years ago. (I have told this story before but retelling old stories is what old men do so you will have to bear with me.)
1948 was the year in which Harry Truman ran against Thomas E
Dewey, Strom Thurmond, and Henry Wallace.
On September 9, Johnny Brown and I decided to go to a Wallace rally
being held in Yankee Stadium. Wallace was the standard bearer of the
Progressive Party, and more for reasons of family tradition than deep
understanding, he was my candidate. The real attraction for me, I think, was
the announcement that Pete Seeger would be performing. When Johnny and I got
there, it was raining and people were leaving the stadium. But the rain let up
and since we had come all this way, we decided to walk across the bridge to the
Polo Grounds, pay our way into the cheap seats, and watch the Dodgers play the
Giants. We were both rabid Dodgers fans, of course. The rain held off for the
most part and we watched Rex Barney pitch a no-hitter – the only no-hitter I
have ever seen in my entire life. That was my drop of honey and ever since
politics has left a sweet taste in my mouth.
In the words of the immortal Yogi Berra, “it is tough to make predictions, especially about the future.” Nevertheless, I feel a certain obligation as a blogger to predict the outcome of the election and its immediate aftermath. If I get this wrong, don’t come looking for me. I couldn’t let you in any way because you might be carrying the virus.
Joe Biden is going to win the presidency. I am aware that it
is logically possible, even statistically possible, that Trump get 270
electoral votes but there is simply no evidence that that unlikely event is going
to occur. How big will Biden’s victory be? That is hard to say even for someone
willing to make predictions. He will have well over 300 electoral votes but
several states, such as Texas and Georgia, could go either way and make a very
large difference in the total EV outcome.
The Democrats will hold the House – that is a slam dunk.
Will they take the Senate? That requires flipping four seats, assuming Doug
Jones loses. I feel comfortable predicting the Democrats will do at least that
well but it is possible that they will do a good deal better. It may take a
while to tell.
Will Biden have 270 electoral votes by Tuesday night or
early Wednesday morning? I think there is a very good chance that the answer is
yes and if it is, that will put paid to a number of Republican plans for
troublemaking. My own North Carolina will be decided early in the evening and I
think there is a very good chance Biden will win it. Florida will also be
decided a bit later in the evening unless it is too close to call and if Biden
does post a win sometime Tuesday evening in Florida then it is all over.
All this is fairly easy. Now I want to go a little bit
further out on a limb. I predict that on election day and into the evening,
there will be very few actual disruptions of the election process by Republican
goons. Oh, there will be some events and they will be reported on in
excruciating and hyperventilating detail, but they will be minuscule in the
larger picture. There will of course be standard voter intimidation and voter
suppression of the sort that is a seemingly permanent part of the American
electoral process, but it will not change the outcome in any significant way
beyond the way in which it always does.
The really interesting question, and one about which I have
no insight whatsoever, is what Trump will do once the results are clear. Will
he concede in the standard manner of losing candidates in American elections? I
suspect not. Will he file endless lawsuits, in an attempt to reverse the
results of the election? Of course. What will those lawsuits accomplish? Just
about nothing, I predict.
But he will still be president for 2 ½ months and I simply
cannot imagine Trump surviving the daily humiliation of being a public official
loser. The greatest loss he will suffer, I predict, is a decline in media
attention, something that he will find simply unbearable. With the pandemic
raging evermore furiously, media attention will be drawn to reports of Biden’s
plans for action come January 20, to rumors about cabinet appointments and the
like, to speculation about the elimination of the filibuster in the Senate, about
statehood for the District of Columbia, about the expansion of the Supreme
Court – in short, the media will be focused on anything but Trump. He will find
that intolerable and it would not surprise me in the slightest if he summarily
resigns and retreats to Mar-a-Lago.
In short, it is my prediction that the day after tomorrow is
going to be a good day. If I am wrong, don’t bother me. I will be mourning the
loss of innocence and contemplating ritual suicide.
