Brandis 3

I've been looking at an essay on liberal values by the Australian right-liberal George Brandis. Here's the next section:

Secondly, conservatism and socialism share a theory of social change which owes much to the dogma of historical determinism. Both believe that the forces which shape a society's development - whether those forces are understood according to the conservative's metaphor of society as an organism with its own spontaneous causes of growth and change, or the socialist's more formal theory of dialectical materialism - are impersonal and irresistible. Neither gives any place to human reason as a reconstructive social force. For both, the past determines the present and therefore limits the future. The socialist feels that he is the prisoner of the past; the conservative would like to think that he still lives there.

Liberalism, by contrast, simply rejects historical determinism. It asserts that individuals, acting rationally and with co-operative goodwill can consciously shape the future of their societies so as to avoid the errors of the past and correct the injustices of the present. The reconstructive spirit of liberalism was captured well by Robert Kennedy when he proclaimed that it was 'the shaping impulse' of a liberal society that 'neither fate, nor nature, nor the irresistible tides of history, but the work of our own hands, matched to reason and principle, will determine our destiny'.

What does this tell us about Brandis? It suggests to me that Brandis does not feel a positive connection to the past. What matters for him is the idea of individuals rationally following a principle in order to create a just future. In this sense, the individual can only be acting against the past. The past is a kind of foil against which the rational individual sets himself.

I do think that Brandis has accurately described a liberal mindset in all this. Liberals have set themselves to create a new order based on the rational unfolding of a principle that aims at justice.

But there are major problems in taking this approach. First, a society is not built on the basis of a single, clearly enunciated principle. Any society faces the difficult task of coming to a sense of an "order of being" - an order which brings together the natural, the social and the spiritual aspects of life. There is no single principle which can express all of these things. What (ideally) happens instead is that a society gives rise over time to a culture which represents the best efforts of that society to reach a harmonious order of being.

Things are likely to go wrong if you seek to reorder society along the lines of a single principle aiming at justice. First, there is no such single "rational" principle. Second, the negative effect of adopting a false principle, as liberals have done, is radically heightened. Third, once you adopt such a principle there is no way to provide limits to its effects, as it becomes the sole organising principle of a society. The principle is likely to run to much more radical extremes over time than its originators ever intended.

Does this mean that Brandis is right when he claims that traditionalist conservatives do not give "any place to human reason as a reconstructive social force"? It's true that we reject the idea of radically breaking with the past in order to reconstitute society on the basis of an ideological principle. But it's not true that a culture, as an expression of an attempt to create an order of being, is frozen in time. Each generation tries to add to it, to improve and refine it, and this is partly an act of human reason (and conscience and creativity). Traditionalists do have a sense of justice and the good, and we do expect society to aim to measure up to this, but not as a singular, rationalistic principle that serves as its own starting point. We aim to carry forward a culture and a tradition and we look instinctively to the best of what our forefathers achieved to inspire us in reaching toward the good.

One final point. Brandis approvingly quotes Robert Kennedy speaking about "the shaping impulse" of liberalism, an impulse which overrides not only history but also nature. A traditionalist would never set reason against nature in a simplistic way. It's not that nature is sacrosanct. Anyone who has had children knows that they don't come ready civilised. Ruder aspects of their nature do have to be overcome. Even so, principle has to have regard for our created nature. You can't formulate principles about the way that human life is to proceed abstractly and without consideration for what humans are, for both better and worse, in their given natures.

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The Righteous Mind

Jonathan Haidt has written a book called "The Righteous Mind" which should be of interest to traditionalists.

Haidt is a "social psychologist" who until recently thought of himself as a liberal. He has a particular theory of morality; he believes that what really drives our moral beliefs is a "moral intuition," an immediate feeling of what is right or wrong, rather than our rational intellect.

Haidt studied the moral beliefs held within communities across the world and came to have a greater sympathy for non-liberal moral systems. A reviewer of Haidt's book summarised his position this way:

In the West, we think morality is all about harm, rights, fairness and consent....But step outside your neighborhood or your country, and you’ll discover that your perspective is highly anomalous. Haidt has read ethnographies, traveled the world and surveyed tens of thousands of people online. He and his colleagues have compiled a catalog of six fundamental ideas that commonly undergird moral systems: care, fairness, liberty, loyalty, authority and sanctity. Alongside these principles, he has found related themes that carry moral weight: divinity, community, hierarchy, tradition, sin and degradation.

That's interesting. When I read it I immediately thought that liberal morality was very cut down compared to traditional morality. Of the twelve principles and related themes, liberalism only cares about the first three - and as we shall see, this narrower moral focus is recognised by Haidt.

The reviewer, William Saletan, goes on to address his liberal audience as follows:

The worldviews Haidt discusses may differ from yours. They don’t start with the individual. They start with the group or the cosmic order. They exalt families, armies and communities. They assume that people should be treated differently according to social role or status — elders should be honored, subordinates should be protected. They suppress forms of self-expression that might weaken the social fabric. They assume interdependence, not autonomy. They prize order, not equality.

In other words, individual autonomy is not made the sole organising principle of society.

Haidt makes a sympathetic defence of the non-liberal moral beliefs. That's unusual and welcome coming from someone who identifies as a liberal, but unfortunately his chosen defence is flawed:

These moral systems aren’t ignorant or backward. Haidt argues that they’re common in history and across the globe because they fit human nature. He compares them to cuisines. We acquire morality the same way we acquire food preferences: we start with what we’re given. If it tastes good, we stick with it. If it doesn’t, we reject it. People accept God, authority and karma because these ideas suit their moral taste buds. Haidt points to research showing that people punish cheaters, accept many hierarchies and don’t support equal distribution of benefits when contributions are unequal.

The problem here is that non-liberal morality is being defended not because it is rational or true, but because it fits an evolved human nature. Our moral sense evolved to like a non-liberal understanding of justice and therefore this preference has a basis within human nature. That is Haidt's position, according to Saletan, and as we shall see it allows Saletan to reassert the supremacy of a liberal morality.

But first, here is the quote from the book review which recognises that liberal morality is more cut down or reductionist compared to traditional morality:

You don’t have to go abroad to see these ideas. You can find them in the Republican Party. Social conservatives see welfare and feminism as threats to responsibility and family stability. The Tea Party hates redistribution because it interferes with letting people reap what they earn. Faith, patriotism, valor, chastity, law and order — these Republican themes touch all six moral foundations, whereas Democrats, in Haidt’s analysis, focus almost entirely on care and fighting oppression. This is Haidt’s startling message to the left: When it comes to morality, conservatives are more broad-minded than liberals. They serve a more varied diet.

This is what I've argued for many years: it's not that individual autonomy is necessarily wrong, but it needs to be balanced with a range of other goods. It cannot always be the overriding good in society.

I don't think it's right, though, that the Republican Party is committed to a non-liberal understanding of morality to the degree that Haidt/Saletan appear to believe it to be. Some of the Republican Party base might hold to the values of faith, patriotism and valor more than their Democrat counterparts, but there's not much evidence when it comes to policy direction that leading Republicans think all that differently on social issues than leading Democrats.

What follows next is a more detailed defence of traditional moral norms. Haidt agrees that for a society to hold together there has to be a level of cooperation (the moral capital of society) in which individualism is constrained:

One of these interests is moral capital — norms, prac­tices and institutions, like religion and family values, that facilitate cooperation by constraining individualism. Toward this end, Haidt applauds the left for regulating corporate greed. But he worries that in other ways, liberals dissolve moral capital too recklessly. Welfare programs that substitute public aid for spousal and parental support undermine the ecology of the family. Education policies that let students sue teachers erode classroom authority. Multicultural education weakens the cultural glue of assimilation. Haidt agrees that old ways must sometimes be re-examined and changed. He just wants liberals to proceed with caution and protect the social pillars sustained by tradition.

Here traditionalists would certainly agree with Haidt. Again, I've argued many times that the more that the state steps in to provide for women, the more that the role of husbands within a family is undermined, leading to greater instability within family life. This is also a better defence of traditional morality than the "it fits evolved human nature" one, as it is effectively an appeal to reason and truth. What Haidt is really arguing here is that the logic of liberal morality is to dissolve forms of cooperation that are important for the functioning of society.

Haidt also puts the case for particular loyalties or what he calls parochial altruism:

Another aspect of human nature that conservatives understand better than liberals, according to Haidt, is parochial altruism, the inclination to care more about members of your group — particularly those who have made sacrifices for it —than about outsiders. Saving Darfur, submitting to the United Nations and paying taxes to educate children in another state may be noble, but they aren’t natural. What’s natural is giving to your church, helping your P.T.A. and rallying together as Americans against a foreign threat.

Whilst I agree that it is natural to be more focused on serving those you have particular connections to and specific responsibilities toward (your own children, spouse, friends, ethny, conationals etc), I don't think it's sufficient to leave the argument at what is natural. The argument needs, at least, to be elaborated: what we feel particular loyalties toward, such as our family or ethny, have a distinct character and value - a goodness - that rightly inspires our love and attachment, and which it is therefore reasonable for us to want to uphold. We cannot easily substitute one loyalty for another, as (for example) my place within the larger Anglo tradition (my sense of ancestry, of a shared history, of language and culture) cannot be replicated within any other randomly chosen tradition - say the Chinese one. The Anglo tradition will necessarily be more meaningful for me than the Chinese one. Whilst I might like the Chinese tradition and wish it to endure, it is reasonable for me to want to primarily serve the tradition that is most meaningful for me; to which I am most closely connected; which forms a significant part of my identity; which most inspires my love and attachment; which I am best in a position to help reproduce (through children, contribution to culture etc); which is most likely to carry on what I love as distinctive features of my own ancestry and character and culture; and to which, therefore, I feel the greatest sense of duty and responsibility.

It's important to elaborate the sense in which it is reasonable to have particular loyalties rather than global ones, because otherwise it leaves things open for a liberal like Saletan to argue that we should transcend what is natural in order to adapt to the different conditions of the modern world:

Traits we evolved in a dispersed world, like tribalism and righteousness, have become dangerously maladaptive in an era of rapid globalization...

If we can harness that power — wisdom — our substantive project will be to reconcile our national and international differences. Is income inequality immoral? Should government favor religion? Can we tolerate cultures of female subjugation? And how far should we trust our instincts? Should people who find homosexuality repugnant overcome that reaction?

Haidt’s faith in moral taste receptors may not survive this scrutiny. Our taste for sanctity or authority, like our taste for sugar, could turn out to be a dangerous relic. But Haidt is right that we must learn what we have been, even if our nature is to transcend it.

See? It hardly makes a dint in Saletan's commitment to liberalism to argue that traditional morality fits better with human nature. He has an easy "out" which is to argue that we are to use reason to transcend an evolved nature. If it's just a question of what "fits" he can argue that what fitted a premodern society no longer fits, or may even be maladaptive to, a modern society.

We challenge liberals more effectively by exposing the arbitrary underpinnings of their own morality, on which their sense of what is just is based, and by defending our own positions as being not only true in the sense of being objectively moral, but as being rational and necessary for the long term functioning of society.

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