The Philosophers' Cocoon

There's something I've had in the back of my mind lately that I'd like to float out there for discussion. I'm curious to hear what everyone thinks. The question I have is how we should think about the potential consequences and risks of philosophy. While I'm no historian, from what I do know philosophy often seems to make a real impact in the world–sometimes in horrifying ways. Socrates, if I recall, was put on trial not simply because challenged the status quo but in part because his arguments against democracy were thought to be partly responsible for the bloody rise of the Thirty Tyrants. Similarly, I trust many of us have heard that Rousseau's political philosophy influenced the Jacobins and Robespierre, who were responsible for French Revolution's Reign of Terror. And of course there are the not-exactly wonderful forms of government inspired by Marxism; the ways in which Nietzsche's and Heidegger's philosophies have been utilized in the service of Nazism; and so on.

Given that philosophy can be (and often has been) used in the service of evil, how should we think about the moral risks of engaging in it? This question has long been in the back of my mind, and surfaced again the other day when I read this article about how Richard Spencer and others in the "alt-right" have again twisted philosophical ideas in support of what many of us regard to be a dangerous and harmful social movement. One possible answer as to how we should think about the moral risks of philosophy is that bad people will find resources to support evil ends regardless of what we philosophers do–so, what we should do is simply seek the truth and do our best to make sure our ideas aren't twisted by evil people. Another possibility is that we have a duty to do more than that: to be careful to defend morally good ideas–ones that cannot easily be twisted to serve evil ends.

However, on that latter note, I cannot help but wonder whether the moral risks of philosophy are in part caused by how value theory (i.e. moral and political philosophy) is commonly done. There is, I think, a common tendency in value theory to engage in what we might call moral exceptionalism. If we go all the way back to Plato, one of the things we see throughout history is a tendency of value theorists to argue that one idea (or roughly thereabouts) is the 'God's Honest Truth.' We see this in Socrates' doctrine of rule by "philosopher kings", in Rousseau's idea that government should be ruled by the General Will, in the utilitarian idea that morality is a matter of maximizing social utility, in Kant's idea that morality is solely a matter of autonomy rather than consequences, in Marx's idea that capitalism should replaced by communism, in the libertarian idea that government should do nothing more than protect human liberty — and so on and so forth. In each case, a philosophical idea is singled out as exceptional–as "the true."

I have two worries about moral exceptionalism. The first is its susceptibility to extremism. When philosophers argue (say) that morality or justice is a matter of one thing–whether it is happiness, or the general will, the communal sharing of goods, or even liberty–that thing can be twisted in harmful ways. For example: I don't think Spencer and Nazis get Nietzsche right, any more than Robespierre got Rousseau right, Nozick got Kant right in defending libertarianism, and so on. What I think they all did is misconstrue a moral idea in harmful ways (I don't mean to compare Nozick to Nazis or Robespierre, but I do think libertarianism is dangerous!). Of course, one could argue that this isn't the fault of philosophers, but of those who misconstrue their ideas. Philosophers should seek the truth, we might say, and let the chips fall where they may. However, this brings me to my second concern about philosophical exceptionalism–a concern that I pursue in Rightness as Fairness.

To simplify a great deal, I argue in my book that moral exceptionalism is false because of the moral risks involved. Morality, I argue, is fundamentally about risk–about "safeguarding" our future from being undermined by our choices in the present. Along the way, I argue it is diachronically irrational to take morality or justice to be all about "one thing" (e.g. liberty, happiness, etc.) because of the ways in which that one thing can undermine one's own pursuit of one's future ends (should, for instance, one's preferences about that very thing change over time). More generally, as I explained in this true story/parable, we human beings don't grapple with very well are the unexpected consequences of our actions in the present, particularly the ways in which our actions can, by how they affect others and how they treat us in return, reverberate back at us to our disadvantage. I argue that to resolve these problems of diachronic risk rationally, we should understand morality and justice not as a matter of one thing (liberty, happiness, etc.), but instead a matter of reconciling many different things through public negotiation (within certain constraints).

It could of course be argued that this view is a kind of moral exceptionalism of its own, as there's an obvious sense in which it too suggests that morality and justice are "one thing": namely, reconciling opposing viewpoints subject to certain constraints. One could also argue that the view could be twisted in the service of harmful or even evil ends–such as negotiating compromises with racists, sexists, Nazis, and so on. Although, to be clear, I argue in no uncertain terms that we should not negotiate with people with inherently oppressive ends, one could well argue that my view could be misinterpreted just as any other theory could be. Finally, while of course I would want to defend my view against these concerns–arguing that it is comparatively resistant to these kinds of risks (insofar as the very point of negotiation is to prevent moral and political extremism)–I imagine that other philosophers would want to say that their views are not only true, but also resistant to abuse if properly understood.

All of which brings me back to my original question: how should we think about the moral risks of philosophy? While it's probably true that few of us will make a philosophical "dent" in the world beyond philosophy (I don't pretend that I will), that doesn't make the question any less important to answer as a profession.

Anyway, I'm curious to hear what everyone thinks!